The point should not be what people may have done in the past. Bringing up thing such as that really don't further your argument at all.
The point of this petition is to change a rule that people believe could use editing, not to bring up past events. Those really do not give much leverage because of the fact it was done by an Admin. It's not something that can be changed, and it's not something that is going to further your point, or this topic at all.
That alone is an entirely different topic, and isn't really something that should be discussed here, as it really has no relevancy.
With that said, I do believe this rule could be changed, and that doing so could help the community greatly. I still entirely think this rule should be in place, but with a lessened punishment.
The reason this rule has such a hefty punishment is because of the issues it can cause if it wasn't in place, and wasn't a fairly threatening rule. If this rule didn't exist, people could simply remove evidence at their will, causing players who have broken even the worst of rules to be unbanned, and to run free.
That said, most of the time when evidence is removed it's not done on purpose, or with malicious intent. All of the cases I've heard of were complete accidents, which is where this petition comes along, and makes sense.
It wouldn't make sense to unban players on a case-by-case basis either, as that would cause just as many issues with people asking "why was ___ unbanned, but I wasn't", etc. and it would be just as easy to say "it was a total accident" even if the intent was to remove that specific bit of evidence.
The rule itself would need to be changed completely, rather than simply going case-by-case.
Possible solutions vary, but the most sensible seems to be using a similar basis to the punishments for hacking. One-week first offense, permanent second offense.
Another point that seems to be brought up consistently is having staff members re-upload everything. This makes sense, and I see where this is coming from, but you have to keep in mind that we get hundreds, if not thousands of reports daily. Though not everyone who is reported is banned, there are still many reports to be dealt with daily. Having one database for all staff members to use would result in a crazy amount of unorganized hacker videos. Having each staff member re-upload to YouTube works, but many staff members do several reports a day, and downloading, and reuploading every video would take quite a toll on their internet.
In the end, I think a few things could be done. The rule itself could potentially be publicized a bit more, possibly with a note at the bottom of the 'Report Abuse' templates for people to agree to the fact that removing any offered evidence may result in punishment. I also think the rule itself could be lessened, maybe to something similar to the first and second offense for hacking. A lot would need to be figured out, and worked with, but I do think that a potential rule change could be a very beneficial thing, so;
"I, duckluv321, would like to sign the petition.
This is almost exactly my take on this situation.
