I recently found that the website that had a log of all bans and mutes was removed. I enquired about this on discord and the responses I got were as follows: 1) People get salty and begin to riot when their friends get punished. 2) Removing the log will stop staff getting harassed by other players 3) Larger servers have removed the log. In response to point (1), friends will get salty regardless of whether there is a log or not (and this is still a minority of people). If they are friends, then they will find out the reason of the ban through other means, i.e. general conversation, skype, discord etc. In response to point (2), Similar to the aforementioned point, for the minority that do decide to interperet a punishment in an unprofessional manner, they will harass staff regardless of whether the logs exist, since they are friends of the punished player in question. In response to point (3), I don't think this is really a justification at all. We need to evaluate whether something suits us, not blindly copy other servers (though I don't think this is necessarily a justification the majority of staff would give). Why do I want the database back? 1) It makes staff more accountable for their actions. When there is a physical log of the actions a staff member takes, it forces them to think more carefully about the action they are about to take. It is a helpful way to mitigate abuse of power by staff. 2) It helps players in their own unban/unmute appeals. If players are unfairly punished, access to the logs allows them to provide evidence of malpractise by staff. 3) Slightly irrelevant, but in recent times I have noticed that numerous players have left/been banned for potentially trivial things (up to interpretation). Nonetheless, for such a large portion of what could be considered dedicated players to just leave, it begs the question on whether they were subject to abuse of power from staff. Without the logs, it makes it difficult to interepret this. Regarding the above point, I'm not saying this is the truth of what is going on, but it would not be silly to assume that as a possibility. Thank you for taking the time to read,
If you are banned/muted, it tells you your reason, nevertheless the web interface was just a visualization for the db, there are still several other ways to check past punishments. Aside that, some people just don't want their punishments being publicized which I can fully understand, therefore the index has been privatized.