The whole thing is that some of what the staff did in this case is, as far as I can tell, less than the standard we would wanna hold them to. But Barhandar was way more wrongful than they were, and he won’t own up to it. And what the staff did wasn’t even all that bad.

@2k.bb

User banned for consistently abusing the tagging system.

What a descriptive message. No username, no specification as to how the system abused, no links. Let me help you.

That user is me. The listed ban reason is “Nearly a year worth of tag abuse.”

The ban has been enacted the same day you have become an administrator, as you were a moderator the day before. The only message discussing the infraction was 5 days ago; there have been no warnings for the entire “nearly a year” before that.

The “tag abuse” can be witnessed at the relevant list of tag changes, and consists of:

• Removing the opinion tags cute and sexy (and derivatives thereof such as beautiful or adorasexy) from images such as >>2990573 or >>2917053
• Adding the opinion tag ugly to images such as >>2999948 or >>3029833
• Adding the tag blackwashing to images that contain black-skinned humanizations of characters who live in a climate that is conductive to white skin, are inspired by predominantly white culture, and have traits that correspond with neither human black race, nor the representation of Africa in the show (that being Zecora the zebra) or the comics (zebras, kelpies, abada), such as >>3063936, >>3063150, >>3060314 (also an example of removing “cute” because it ain’t)
• Adding the tag virtue signalling to the image consisting of a meaningless gesture that accomplishes no positive change, namely >>3057068
  That is more or less the entirety of the offending changes.

However, I suspect that the real reason is that I’ve dared to argue with you, and that you’ve enacted the ban the moment you’ve been given ban permissions. As such, my responses to you from the PM conversation are provided here, with quotes of your messages removed:

“cute” and “beautiful” are the needless opinions, slapped on by the uploader/artist most of the time, and similarly most of the time on images that don’t deserve it. Derpi should’ve purged them at the same time it purged all the “daaaaw”s and other opinion tags.

Also, portraying a purple character who comes from blatantly white backgrounds and more importantly latitudes is objectively blackwashing, just like how drawing Zecora as white is whitewashing.

The majority does not even look at tags, much less change them. And either way, it’s a terrible argument since “majority” is also perfectly okay with blatant tag deficiencies like gigantic breasts being tagged as merely “big”.
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Go tell someone who draws black twilight that she’s not black and watch the fireworks.
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You can if you keep insisting that a given technicolor horse is totally black and attacking anyone who insists otherwise. Like, again, what happens with Twilight and often Pinkie.
It’s wewuzkangs, horse edition — trying to ascribe traits to the black race that it blatantly does not have and never did, and in the process proving racists right by trying to steal a character instead of creating their own (or even using Zecora; all those people seem terribly averse to actual Africans and characters inspired by them).
It’s same as transwashing Trixie — it could be fine if they were fine with other people’s opinion, but the people who do it are physically incapable of accepting that someone else thinks Trixie could be a biological mare, and have to interject that she’s a psychopatic castrate instead. It’s what makes it x-washing as opposed to merely a headcanon or for fun.

P.S.:
Essentially, they’re insisting not that a character “could be” X under given conditions (in this AU, in my headcanon), they’re insisting that character “is” X (or “isn’t” Y, which is no different because it’s applied to the same racist goals, i.e. “TS is black” is practically no different from “TS isn’t white, but I will only draw her as black”), and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong and must be set right.
I want the early fandom insisters that Equestria is a peaceful paradise with no violence back. They were far less obnoxious and far less politically charged.
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There’s also no “black=unicorn”, or “black=pony”, or “white=pony”, or “american=pony”, there’s “pony=pony”. There’s also “african=zebra” and “native american=buffalo” which kiiiinda excludes ponies from being black or native american unless they’re crossbreeds. On top of, you know, common sense of ponies not living near the equator (so no dark skin) and also not in whatever conditions that formed the native american phenotype.

“Dark skin” does not distinguish between race and tan >>1325729. More importantly, until tag grouping (i.e. “this tag belongs to this specific character”) is implemented, filters also don’t distinguish between “there’s this character and a dark-skinned character in the same image” >>3029066; there’s also the aforementioned “if there’s no in-universe justification on why the character is black, it’s arbitrary and hence blackwashing” and so blackwashing is the most suitable tag for the task.
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Majority in source are by the uploader. Additionally, it’s no different from me deeming the image ugly and adding appropriate tag — both “help with searches” it could be argued that deserved “ugly” helps searches and filters far more than wanton “cute”; when someone uses the latter in search, they want to see cute images, not random non-cute images someone decided to slap with “cute” or “adorasexy” and for complimenting the artwork there’s comments. If “ugly” goes, so should “cute” and “sexy” go.
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Pony, please.

*i.e. an AU where Twilight is a zony or a zebra, an AU where Equestria altogether is in Africa and everyone is black, et cetera. No, “Equestria is literally USA and so there will be black slaves and interracial breeding” isn’t an in-universe justification, it’s a projection of the artist’s limited-ass stereotypes and they should be ashamed of being so narrow-minded. Yes, it works for whitewashing too.