I'd like to address a few things brought up in this thread, as a member of the TD team and the host team.
On the topic of the punishment bestowed on devin:
The host team has three (3) people on it, two of us are tournament directors. The remaining tournament directors only get to comment on SPL related concerns if they are not a part of the tournament. This is essential to avoid conflicts of interest. We are not here to make new rules, especially not in the middle of an on-going tournament. This is not the first time that we have stated it, in fact it's not even the first time that we've stated in during this edition of the tournament. We make small patches to existing rules which do not adequately cover the circumstances and are time sensitive. Following the tournament, these are discussed with a full team of tournament directors, so that we can try to decide what direction to go in.
In the case of devin being handed a punishment: devin's sell back was approved under "not meeting the minimum activity requirement". There is a rule attached to being sold back at midseason under the guise of inability to meet the minimum activity threshold. For your convenience, I have attached the rule below.
Minimum Activity Expected of Players: Being picked for a team tournament also means we expect a minimum level of commitment to that team, regardless of whether a player is starting or not. If a manager finds that their player is not showing acceptable levels of activity, and after attempting to work things out with the player themselves, they may get in contact with the TD team about it. A player whose activity we find to be below this threshold will be infracted with Unsportsmanlike Conduct, a DQ from this edition of the Tournament in question and a ban from the next edition of this same tournament. (Source:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/tournament-rules-and-general-guidelines.3642760/)
The argument seems to be that we are applying this rule incorrectly. As soon as devins sellback under minimum activity was approved, this comes directly alongside it. Other arguments, i.e. whether or not he should be allowed to be sold back, come from further upstream. Once we arrive at the fact that he was sold back under minimum activity, this rule is applied. This is, by the Letter Of The Law, not an incorrect application of the rule.
Now, of course, there are circumstances that make this a tricky situation that occurred further up the stream. devin was given a forum ban. Should this rule apply to users who have already been removed from the tournament as a result of a forum ban? The way that it is currently written does not make a distinction. This is not a problem with the application of the rule, this is a problem with the rule itself.
As mentioned when other existing rules were brought up for post-hoc modification following SPL, we are happy to have the discussion in a Tournament Policy Thread and append further guidelines for handling situations like these. Such rules can even be applied retroactively! The commencement/week threads are not tournament policy threads however, and posting in them is not going to get us anywhere.
This is something that can and will be revisited when a full team of TDs is available for discussion.