I've unlocked this thread for now as an acknowledgement of the polite and reasonable manner you've drafted up your post, but this is definitely an exception and won't be the rule going forward.

First things first: there is no :airquotes terrorist list :airquotes. The phrase "We don't negotiate with terrorists", a quote by President Bush, was jokingly invoked by me in a conversation with Ruby to summarize my approach in dealing with problematic users that try to hold the Guild's attention hostage with public outrage instead of discussing issues like adults. 

Our policy of not discussing bans in the public domain has nothing to do with anything so melodramatic as a "scare tactic". It's only for the reasons you've outlined yourself -- it gives the drama a chance to continue, which defeats the purpose of banning the user in the first place. It's between us and the user and simply isn't anyone else's business. We don't have to justify ourselves to [i]anyone but the user in question.[/i] We're not obligated to tell anyone why j8cob and Nytem4re were banned or why Odin was muted on Discord. The Evidence Chest thread is a method to meet the vocal minority that wants to discuss bans halfway. If banned or muted users don't know why they've been smacked with the hammer, they should probably reflect on their actions or just ask us outright. 

There's no coverup or grand scheme. We just don't like to waste our time on people blowing things out of proportion. As for reporting threads, the best way to get our attention is to PM every staff member at once in a group conversation. Nobody bothered to do this when it came to the Negro Academy thread. Moderators don't actively scour the forums looking for rulebreaking. We're all too busy for that (a side effect from the fact that the people most suited to being moderators tend to be adults or teenagers with full-time responsibilities).

PS. We do listen to appeals. [@Sven] is a good example of this. Grim can obviously forget it for now.