Category talk:Banned players

Unbanned players category?

Since some players get banned then unbanned, I think this would be a good idea for a category. --Hardboned (talk) 10:01, July 4, 2021 (EDT)

If players were unbanned, they’d be removed from the banned category and have their controversy profile explain how they were unbanned.

MemeDedede (talk) 10:14, July 4, 2021 (EDT)

Agreed. I really see no purpose to create a separate, rather niche category just for unbanned players. CookiesCreme 10:50, July 4, 2021 (EDT)

Deletion

I been having reservations for a while about this category and the practice of labelling players as "banned" in their infoboxes, with such reservations strengthened after finding out today that there never been a formal discussion with consensus for this; it appears a user just created this category back in 2019 on their own initiative, and someone started putting "banned" in infoboxes, while other users just went along with it without any scrutiny on the merit of it. So I decided to open up a formal discussion on if we should keep this category and continue labelling players as "banned" in their infoboxes. I think we should end both, for the following reasons:

• There is no central governing body to Smash. The closest were the SSB Code of Conduct Panel and the Global Ban Database, but neither of these had ultimate authority, especially the latter which was ran by just one guy, and both went defunct within a couple years while mired in their own controversies. This leaves us with having to decide what bans are "notable" enough to merit labelling a player as being "banned" (for example, ZD was recently banned from a couple local tournaments, is that too minor, or do we label him as banned while giving readers the impression that he is banned on a much larger scale than he actually is?), and leaving the murkiness of having to decide if the players that were "recommended" to be banned by these two former bodies are still upheld in lack of any actual formal ban announcement (for example, Alex Strife was only listed as being "permanently banned" because he was on the GBD, do we still label him as such when the GBD no longer exists and have no idea if tournaments would still actually uphold it?).

• No ban is universal. Something that commonly comes up is that a player who is supposed to be "banned" still competes somewhere because not every TO agrees with the ban, thinks the player has "served their time", or has otherwise improved enough as a person to be allowed back. Some of the most notorious examples include; Ally still competing in Montreal tournaments with its TO publicly denouncing Ally's ban from the SSB CoC Panel; the Mexico scene never banning Hyuga like US tournaments did; Mikeray having that weird thing in his infobox where he is labelled as "banned" from Ultimate but not Brawl, since the Brawl scene never followed his "recommended ban" by the NE TOs and GBD; and Samsora has a weird state of limbo where NYC and other scenes have been allowing him to compete, despite the lack of any official "unbanning" from majors or other large bodies. Not to mention, a "banned player" could just host their own tournament at any point and be able to compete then, like Nairo has done and ZeRo has joked about doing. Combined with the problem explained by the prior point, this ultimately gives readers a false impression, who will naturally assume a player being labelled as "banned" means they can't compete anywhere at all, when this is very much not the case.

• These things require nuance to them that must be explained. These ban cases are not black and white, and often bans have caveats to them, such as a player being banned from only certain tournaments/scenes, the player being banned for only a temporary length of time, or any other sorts of conditions to their bans. These things cannot be conveyed by a blanket "banned" label, and must be thoroughly explained and sourced in their respective sections on the smasher's article.

• This ban labelling has the propensity to not only cause problems within the wiki from the editing disputes they will naturally cause, but outside the wiki too from people taking the ban labelling on the wiki as an authoritative source. It's unconfirmed, but for example none of us can find a formal announcement of DaShizWiz having been banned anywhere, with the wiki being the only place that he was labelled as banned before he went on his transphobic tirades against the Smash community on Twitter. He was also only labelled as being banned here because he was on the aforementioned GBD, where the only citation on his placement there was a link to an old news article about his arrest in 2016, which besides the also aforementioned issue of the GBD no longer existing, this makes Shiz's placement on there dubious when he was competing in tournaments unrestricted after that arrest, including majors, up through 2019. Given the impetus of his rants was the Smash community "persecuting" him for his beliefs by "banning" him from tournaments, a few of us speculated that he saw he was labelled as banned on this wiki and thus assumed from it that he was banned by the community as a whole. Regardless though of if the wiki's ban labelling played any role in the recent incidents with Shiz, I certainly see such a problem with the ban labelling arising again, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happened before with less prominent players that we just didn't see blow up like Shiz did.

That's everything I have to say for now, what are everyone's else stance on deleting this category and no longer labelling players as banned in their infoboxes (as well as deleting Template:Banned by association)? Omega Tyrant 01:01, April 22, 2023 (EDT)

I support the deletion from your perspective; it makes more sense to go into details on bans in a "Controversies" section, which is more flexible, already done for more extreme cases, and allows for the ban's actual context to be divulged. Most, if not all Smasher pages that list a player as banned should have these in the first place - many do, but I have seen a few that don't in the past. I often shrug my shoulders at extreme individualised punishment things, but when it comes to Smasher pages, if anything, not doing so on a page dedicated to the player is silly. Another thing: While rare, one thing you didn't mention is that on a local scale it's possible for some players to be persecuted and banned for pettier reasons, which in the wiki's current state could end up misrepresenting further (or even being exploited), leading to further persecution. This hasn't happened to my knowledge - and I don't expect it to, mind you - but it is technically a potential consequence that can happen. --Plague von Karma 01:12, April 22, 2023 (EDT)

There has actually been an ongoing case with a particular player who was banned from somewhere in the scene, and said player has been trying to scrub it off the wiki under the claims of it being some harassment campaign by a scene that didn't like him for supposedly petty reasons. Currently his page has nothing about it, since I removed the being banned stuff before for being completely unsourced and badly written, but in the case that citations are provided proving the ban happened and the guy is actually 100% truthful of the nature of his ban, he certainly shouldn't be labelled in the same category that will make readers assume much worse about him. Omega Tyrant 01:27, April 22, 2023 (EDT)

I agree with getting rid of this category simply because "banned" is way too broad a stroke to be useful. Toomai Glittershine The Producer 10:44, April 22, 2023 (EDT)

Bumping this for a last call, I'll take the lack of comments about this as apathy towards keeping the category and related template, and so will go through with deletion in 24 hours without any good opposition arising. Omega Tyrant 11:37, May 7, 2023 (EDT)

Echoing comments from Plague, it makes way more sense to list any bans in a controversies section than it does for it to be front and center on a page or a sorting spot. Aidan the Gamer 12:03, May 7, 2023 (EDT)

Well with no one opposing this, and especially with three admins supporting it, I'm going through with purging this category and the related template, as well as ending the practice of labeling players as "banned" in their infobox. I'll be keeping this talk page up though like we did with the purging of the female smashers category, to keep a publicly accessible record of this in the likely case anyone tries reviving this category in the future. If something ever arises that makes any of the points brought up invalid (such as competitive Smash actually getting a legit central governing body that handles bans or Nintendo itself gets involved and starts officially banning players from tournaments), we can revisit reviving this category. Omega Tyrant 11:16, May 8, 2023 (EDT)