None of this is true. Ban length in those threads were only two weeks, as was standard for refuting allegations of assault at the time. Only a single ban of this nature was issued in that original thread. You can look through the threads yourself as they succeeded each other. Like with any high profile controversy thread, guidelines were put in place to discourage rampant speculation and conspiracy. People who crossed these guidelines received the standard two week ban, which were uncommon. It is not hard to go through these topics from the beginning and see this. You can also see the staff posts that say that of course new information can be discussed and examined as it comes out.
The issue is that in rare situations where an allegation is untrue people feel vindicated for their skepticism wand want to treat it like a win. They want to prove that they knew better or were right and that people who believe the allegations were wrong. People want to be praised or rewarded for their restraint before passing judgment. People say "what are you going to do now that you were wrong?" But it is not wrong to believe somebody who claims they were attacked or assaulted. Claims of this kind should be taken seriously, even if they end up false. These sensational standouts are absolutely not the norm in the world of abuse allegations.
You have to remember that to tend to an issue like that multiple people have to put down their personal lives or day jobs to research an issue, read a thread up until that point, establish a baseline, then issue moderation evenly across multiple examples of behavior. Meanwhile, you are still processing reports from everywhere else in the forum. Thirty minutes to do all this, especially in a subject matter as serious as rape allegations, is a more rapid response than you would ever see on a forum with a less dedicated staff. You have to consider the incredible complexity and difficulty that comes with a group of volunteers on a gaming forum trying to strike a fair balance on how the most controversial and complex events in the news should be discussed.
I was staff here for eighteen months. In that time I had to try to become an expert on criminal cases with no clear conclusions, on controversies in every industry, on cultural expectations across different continents, on major historical events I'd not heard of previously, on personalities I didn't follow, and on geopolitical conflicts nobody has ever solved. I would stay up late reading about topics that I knew were in the news, asking for feedback from people more familiar with the issue, and convening with the rest of the staff who were all doing the same to try to understand as much about an issue before we passed judgement. As much as people want to believe it is, this is not easy to do. This is very stressful, very draining, and you do it knowing that people will not be happy with you no matter what. You're criticized for not being fast enough, or people misrepresent the actions you took and why, and you will always be the bad guy no matter what.
People have this image of free-wheeling or rogue moderators who just moderate in accordance of their opinions. But I had to get so far in to complex situations and process so much information and perspective that I don't even have my own opinion on some things anymore.
The Depp/Heard conflict has always been a traumatic one for me to read about because I am somebody who endured a violent domestic relationship. The abuse shaped me in a lot of ways and I had a lot of difficulty talking about it or even admitting I was being abused because I felt like I needed to take the violence "as a man" and it would be weak to admit it was hurting me or scaring me. My situation was not like this situation. I never retaliated physically. But there are parts of this story, like Depp pleading for the violence to stop and Heard saying she can't promise she will, that are very similar to what I went through. It is a disgusting, frightening, and devastating thing to endure.
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