Re: Nat
Nat was infracted two days ago for attempted price fixing, which triggered a temporary ban due to infraction stacking with her existing permanent lock. While we have since shifted the infraction from the standard "Repeated Offense" to "Forum Specific Rule", which is both less severe and lengthy, as a result of her appeal, this still is enough to temporarily ban Nat from Smogon.
As a best practice, we are not allowed to act in a fashion intended to specifically preserve a user's forum status when they are in I Could Be Banned (ICBB) status or have any existing infraction points. Moderators and Tournament Directors have to treat each case at face value given the user's actions and history, not moderating in a fashion that specifically avoids a ban at all costs. The infraction will also exclude Nat from SCL as her ban will linger until September 7th, which is past the likely auction date.
Seeing as the public deserves transparency on situations that impact our official tournaments, we wish to clarify a few points about this infraction:
- There was nothing wrong with her initial signup, which tier locked her to Little Cup only. You are free to lock yourself out of any tiers of your choosing, including tiers that are preceived as your "main", without penalty. Had she only signed up, there would be no issue whatsoever.
- She then posted in Commencement that she would "for legality reasons...learn to play LC" only if compelled and edited in that she had "no interest in being a building/scouting worker bee."
- The Tournament Directors began discussing at this instance if this qualified as price fixing as it was a number of subjective, unenforcable statements that could drive down her value and ensure she ended up on a preferred team (where she could potentially also contribute at a higher level than indicated in her post without repercussion).
- There is no reason to post in the Commencement thread clarifying your sign-up unless there are noteworthy activity concerns (i.e: missing weeks). Signing up implies you are willing to play for any team, excluding tiers implies you are not willing to play them, and so on. The current format of sign-ups is purposefully black-and-white.
- We have, unfortunately, seen this movie before both from Nat and others. It is an instance of skirting the line as much as possible through modifiers and exceptional language. This makes it acceptable for someone to not contribute or appear as if they will not contribute when drafted, potentially scaring away managers who lack prior favor. This violates the spirit of our sign-up rules.
- Given her past infraction for price fixing and general behavior, the team initially moved forward with infracting her for Repeated Offense, which is a two point infraction lasting multiple months. Nat has exhausted a lot of good faith and community standing due to prior incidents, but we recognize that this situation does not perfectly align with the incident last year, where Nat changed her CT to indicate she did not play the tier she signed up for. Moreover, we changed the infraction after her appeal to Forum Specific Rule, which is only one point for three weeks and we feel properly reflects this situation the best.
- We want to be clear she was not banned for this, merely infracted; however, her existing infraction for a Permanent Lock on Pokemon Showdown pushed this to a temporary forum ban. She also is not Tournament Banned upon her return.
TL;DR: yes, Nat was infracted for price fixing and there were a number of contributing circumstances leading to the decision. Yes, you absolutely can lock yourself out of your main tier without consequence.
