@Zebasiz
I’m glad you’re willing to be understanding and reasonable about this discussion. I’ll try to better explain things from my point of view, and in order of how you listed them.
I see nothing wrong with attacking someone for something they definitely did,
especially for a severe breach of trust such as tracing or selling stolen artwork. His annoyance means nothing to me. Though I will say, the previous threads spent a lot of time arguing about nothing. It could have been condensed to about 20 posts max, I think.
His offering to seek information is also worthless. Lip service is one thing, actions are another. If or when he ponies up the videos, I’ll be happy to humble myself and apologize for calling him a tracer. I doubt he will (or even can) because of how utterly obvious it is that he traced that picture, but I extend that courtesy to anyone I call out. I never use BP for this very reason. I am willing to bet that he won’t provide any sort of proof whatsoever.
The evidence is pretty damning. As a freehand artist, it is
very hard to copy lines exactly, even with tracing.
Again, I think the scope of a single comment section is small enough to prevent any sort of backlash. Or at least, it would have been, if Toxic-Mario and another moderator hadn’t decided to escalate things. As I said before, dealing with an ethical breach doesn’t have to turn into a mountain of pain. It’s trivial to just say, “Oh, oops, my bad. I’ll fix that in the future.” It’s the attitude of the accused artist and the subsequent string of blatant lies and condescension that turns the issue into something much greater than it ever was before.
@LightningBolt
The collective consciousness has a hard time forgetting things that were blown way out of proportion. Ever heard of the Streisand Effect? Not to mention, there’s no forgiving a person who has done nothing to warrant forgiveness. You don’t forgive someone who shows no desire or signs of changing; that’s not forgiveness, that’s idiocy. The best thing you can do for them is a firm reminder that certain behaviors are too far. If they make it a bigger deal than that by trying to lie and deny, well, that’s their problem.