if it was, most of the regulars would be banned by now. But I really don't get how questioning someone's decision is considered as such. Doing so you're learning and making sure if the staff member didn't do a mistake. we are human and human errors exist not trying to ridicule anyone by asking? - (saying this cause recently cause someone wrote as such) also i think its illegal if it goes out of hand
imagine the double work you have to do as a mod First you PM a player not to break the rules and then you also have to tell the backseaters you did your actual mod job.
Because it's not as common as the other offenses and even then, it's mostly something that is so meaningless (just like Bad's case) that it's not even worth it to do the warning. Just let it happen and be done with it, whatever. Tell them not to do it in the future and walk away, and if they do it again you warn since they now already know what they're doing. Plus, it's sometimes just such a thin line between giving advice and backseating that you can't really say anything. When staffing the servers, in 200+ days of staffing combined, I've only seen 2 cases of backseating worth warning while I was on as a case of actually trying to do my job. Being able to enforce backseat moderating doesn't mean it's worth anyone's time to enforce it.
No it's probably not illegal. If it is it's probably just like a misdemeanor or something. I'd be really surprised if backseat moderating was a felony charge.
I really don't like this advice on how to handle it tbh if they are literally going "gag player, kick player, ban player for this", sure that's a demerit however most times those named "backseaters" are often the regulars asking pivotal questions of things the mod may of missed on a hectic server. i.e. "hey, why hasn't this dude been kicked/warned/crucified yet, he said the bad bag of sticks word in chat , have a picture if u missed it". Ignoring actual inquiries just because the player sounds like they could be backseating seems unfair
imo that's not backseating so long as the mod had ample time to warn/gag but didn't, he likely missed it, so it's more a reminder than backseating. obviously this is is a case-by-case thing. although maybe you should define what backseat moderating is, because in my experience there doesn't seem to be a clear definition.
That's a good point, it's all up to interpretation, and without a definition there's 40 different interpretations of it on the staff team