Rejected Ban appeals handled by another staff member of the same or higher rank

Discussion in 'General Suggestions' started by Xproplayer, Jan 21, 2018.

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  1. Zack

    Zack Shepherd of Fire VIP

    Couple of reminders here - RDM & Leave 1st Offense doesn't necessarily mean literal '1st'. Could be their 6th, with a lot of expired SoL. History is taken in to account when an appeal is considered. The other thing is, we -are- in fact encouraged to show adequate lenience to players with lower/no offense record/s. Encouraged, not enforced.
     
  2. neutral

    neutral Banned VIP

    I'm against this for a couple of reasons- some that are already stated, some that arn't.

    The largest concern I can see in this is that we don't want staff handling their own appeals because of biases. I'll say here, that staff is required to leave biases out of their responses and decisions in these ban appeals. I get that this is hard to do, and may not happen 100% of the time. But that also brings another point that was mentioned- these reports are very often peer reviewed unofficially. I can tell you right now that when a verdict is made that just seems a bit off, I'm usually getting several messages within a matter of minutes after it is concluded. We do a pretty good job at keeping each other in check.

    This part hasn't been mentioned and is more on the logistical side of how the staff team works. We actually give our moderators quite a bit of freedom in how these appeals are handled. Majority of the bans they place are up to their decision on whether an appeal is approved or denied and they are able to make decisions that they are typically not able to make in server without discretion. This is actually a really helpful tool to help administration evaluate our moderators and their interaction in the community. Also, because of this, I wouldn't want our moderators stepping on each others toes. By allowing moderators to overturn each others bans, as an equal rank, this is just asking for animosity to occur between each other when they don't agree with each other's decision and is actually a pretty good way to start gaining "sides" and forming cliques. Sure- any easy solution would be to have their superior handle the ban appeal, but this isn't exactly the most feasible plan and can get pretty time intensive pretty quickly.

    We already have an outlet for this- if you don't feel your ban appeal was handled properly, you can go to their superior in either a PM or a report. This fills that gap pretty nicely actually.
     
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  3. ink

    ink Genuine Happiness VIP Silver

    This statement is very misleading. This is very dependent on your definition of "bias". Now I say it depends on your definition of bias because if your bias is against the player because the player seemed to harass you or something, you may see him differently when you handle his appeal. @forcie has publicly said many times that he himself judges a ban appeal on everything a player does, so if a player who harassed in-game would be very less likely to have his appeal accepted for RDM & Leave 1 rather than a player who stayed quiet. All staff members are given the ability and freedom to use bias when handling appeals in a sense when they are left on their own to judge whether they want to have the player play on the server once again. If you incline that this is bias because multiple offenses are being taken into account on a ban appeal that's unrelated to the other offenses, then staff are allowed to have biases and use bias when dealing with appeals, and this has apparently been used by many staff and admins. If you see this as an evaluation of how the player is overall, and not bias, then there is seemingly no way a staff CAN have bias because how they feel towards a player is just part of what is used to consider appeals and feelings are just part of the deal. Judging all his offenses and history is fair to some extent and I presume this is how adminstats notes were born out of. Regardless though, this statement is very misleading.

    In any case though, this requirement to ban appeal is trying to solve a problem, but doing it the wrong way. Too much time is sacrificed for this for whatever it's worth to have peers look at your appeal. Moreover, peers giving judgement on the appeal itself creates problems like others have mentioned in the previous posts. Overall, this solution isn't the right one for the problem.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2018
  4. 4sea

    4sea VIP

    I want to add, I said this as admin, as it was admin discretionary.

    Also, I wouldn't call it a bias. The definition of bias: inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.
    I never had any unfair prejudice against any person or group, I merely factored in the other offenses I saw them commit. That's not a bias, that's merely a direct consequence of behavior.

    If there was somebody who'd rdm and leave with a completely clean record and they appear apologetic, I don't like to punish just to punish so he'll be granted an unban.
    However, if that same person was insulting and harassing players before he rdmmed and left and he'd create an appeal on the forums where instead of being apologetic he'd rage, I'd decline his appeal.
    There is no bias towards that person involved, it's merely a direct consequence of his behavior.

    The punishments are there to keep it fair for everybody, as admin we had limited discretion to keep that fairness if there was a grey area in the rules or if the punishment clearly outweighed the offense (or the other way around). Somebody who just made a simple mistake for the first time will get more sympathy from me than somebody who is intentionally trying to break rules.
     
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  5. Opalium

    Opalium Stay Awesome Banned VIP Silver

    I'm sorry, but this is not going to happen. @HelixSpiral summed it up fairly well.

    Thanks for suggesting.
     
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