[AC] Mass Ban Amnesty

[Mumberthrax]

I'd like to propose nerd.nu grant amnesty to the majority of banned players whose bans are older than a pre-selected time period, barring those who were banned for particularly egregious rule violations.

 

I have heard it said that nerd.nu is the server that everyone is banned from. Our ban appeal setup, while effective for the most part, does not lend itself to temporary bans of any sort, so a ban for crop grief has the same effect as a ban for repeated harassment and homophobia so long as neither is appealed.

 

Long story short, have a set date or period of time in which ancient bans are rescinded, and make it well advertised that old players who were banned are welcome back so long as they abide by the rules. This would not necessarily be a regularly recurring thing, and would not replace our regular ban appeal system, just a sort of cleaning house and forgiving those who may not have thought to appeal long ago, or who may simply have forgotten to and never came back.

 

What do you guys think about this idea? What pros and cons might there be, and if we chose to do this what steps would be involved?

 

edit: I was just informed that some DDOSers have been demanding we wipe our ban list completely. I hadn't been aware of this previously and it in no way motivated the creation of this post. My suggestion is a rescinding of old bans from players we would normally have unbanned already had they appealed, not removing recent bans.

[jchance]

It is my opinion that we should remove all bans older than 1 year as long as they are not a special circumstance ban (toxic players, repeat offenders, etc.)

[schererererer]

I'd also include under those special circumstances offenders who clearly only came to the servers to grief - e.g. people without constructive edits on C who have thousands of block destructions. We have a ton of bans for minor things back when the policy was to try to clear out griefers as fast as they appeared; thus we have tons of bans for minor griefing and crop grief - those would be great to grant amnesty. I know some of us really don't want to give the impression we're "caving in" to demands, but I expect this discussion to take long enough for this ddos to be all but forgotten anyways by the time an amnesty would be implemented/revealed to the public.

[Sapphric]

I like the idea of rescinding bans more than a year old (with exceptions for the toxic players and intentional griefers, etc.), but I'm not sure it's something that should be announced, at least explicitly. A lot of the ban appeals from older than a year are from people who were banned but weren't even aware of it until they tried to play again. This would allow them to play without announcing to every griefer out there, "Hey, you're all unbanned, come fuck our shit up!" I feel like it would be better to just amnesty the bans, then address questions if anyone asks.

 

I also think we need to have a clear criteria for what kind of ban would be eligible for amnesty. Anything with the word "minor" in it would probably be a good candidate, for example. Things like crop grief as well, as while it's against the rules and bannable, it's not that big of a deal a rev or two later.

[Mumberthrax]

I like the idea of rescinding bans more than a year old (with exceptions for the toxic players and intentional griefers, etc.), but I'm not sure it's something that should be announced, at least explicitly. A lot of the ban appeals from older than a year are from people who were banned but weren't even aware of it until they tried to play again. This would allow them to play without announcing to every griefer out there, "Hey, you're all unbanned, come fuck our shit up!" I feel like it would be better to just amnesty the bans, then address questions if anyone asks.

 

The reason i felt that a well advertised announcement would be good is because otherwise nobody will really know about it, so players who may once have had an interest in returning to the servers to play legitimately would figure they were just banned permanently and that's that.

 

I can definitely see your point though about it inviting griefers to come to nerd. but then again it's been said in the past that groups like AVO were probably one of the reasons we became so popular to begin with... i even recall a discussion in the mod chat forum about mods interacting with a griefer who decided to stay on and just play and chill after talking with folks on mumble. We can always roll back grief if we know about it, albeit that does mean more work.

 

I'm interested in what other admins have to say about this.

 

I also think we need to have a clear criteria for what kind of ban would be eligible for amnesty. Anything with the word "minor" in it would probably be a good candidate, for example. Things like crop grief as well, as while it's against the rules and bannable, it's not that big of a deal a rev or two later.

 

I agree. Crop grief, bans with "minor" in the text would be definite good choices. And I think even slightly heavier bans beyond a certain time period should be lifted. just not bans for excessive harassment, 'toxic' players, etc. It's a lot easier to repair a busted house than it is someone's emotional state.

[schererererer]

If there's anywhere near the number of grief-focused accounts now as in the past, I would definitely avoid announcing a wipe of the ban list. At one point on C we considered making worldguard protections effectively mandatory for all builds (especially near spawn) because the rate of new griefers appearing and proceeding to break things exceeded the rate of mods rolling things back, especially with the then-unremoved exploits of sanddropping and bonemealing trees being unlogged in logblock. It wouldn't be so bad now due to a much-improved set of mod tools, and many of those accounts are likely long bored of griefing and/or trolling in minecraft, but the sheer number is still a concern.

 

Also, many ban reasons were extremely vague in the past; an instance of minor grief and a wild spree of thousands of block destructions might both be characterized as simply "griefing". I'd also like to know how many of the bans on our list were compromised accounts - I remember them being a quite large number, and I'm not sure whether or not these should even be included in an amnesty.

[Cyotie911]

I'm still for at least making people appeal. Also, how would we keep track of older bans? An appeal is how we keep track of them now. Would we add notes? If so, then will essentially be announcing that we are getting rid of old bans, and I can see the drama session that will be created on the forums from this.

[Mumberthrax]

how would we keep track of older bans? An appeal is how we keep track of them now. Would we add notes?

 

I thought that we used mcbouncer to check the dates on when a ban was issued, since a player may not appear immediately after being banned. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. :s

[schererererer]

He means how we keep track of people who have been unbanned (for purposes of identifying repeat offenders) - afaik MCBouncer doesn't keep records of unbanned players.

We could use a bot to auto-populate notices of amnesty in the ban appeals section (basically appeal for them).

[Cyotie911]

He means how we keep track of people who have been unbanned (for purposes of identifying repeat offenders) - afaik MCBouncer doesn't keep records of unbanned players.

We could use a bot to auto-populate notices of amnesty in the ban appeals section (basically appeal for them).

 

Probably, but again, this would publicly announce that we are doing this, which I'm pretty sure will induce a ton of unnecessary drama from people who disagree.

[schererererer]

Probably, but again, this would publicly announce that we are doing this, which I'm pretty sure will induce a ton of unnecessary drama from people who disagree.

Well, even if you don't publically announce a mass amnesty, those who disagree would undoubtedly still find out about it and then explode about not only the amnesty itself but the lack of transparency in its implementation.

[Cyotie911]

Well, even if you don't publically announce a mass amnesty, those who disagree would undoubtedly still find out about it and then explode about not only the amnesty itself but the lack of transparency in its implementation.

hence the reason I'm against it all together. Just seems like it's going to be more of a headache than its worth. I mean, the people who will benefit are either, people who will probably never play here again, or ones that won't remember they were banned in the first place. All All it will accomplish is giving us an unnecessary headache.

[slide]

I'm not sure I'm ok with a complete mass ban removal unless it is filtered for things like 'simple grief' or similar, unless we completely ramped up staff/grief prevention tools in preparation for a mass of griefers coming on once it gets out. However I would love potentially a better way to appeal. The forums are not even close to an ideal platform. I am working on a new website and an actual ban appeal section is something it will have. Potentially it could even have some appeals be automated. IE if the ban message has 'homophobia' and 'grief' in them, it would present the person with a list of our rules where they are to check the rule that they violated, hit 'I agree to abide by all rules' and be on their merry way.

[schererererer]

However I would love potentially a better way to appeal. The forums are not even close to an ideal platform. I am working on a new website and an actual ban appeal section is something it will have. Potentially it could even have some appeals be automated. IE if the ban message has 'homophobia' and 'grief' in them, it would present the person with a list of our rules where they are to check the rule that they violated, hit 'I agree to abide by all rules' and be on their merry way.

This would be absolutely wonderful. The way we do ban appeals now is pretty crude and slow - inconvenient for all.

[TheRandomnatrix]

I'm not sure I'm ok with a complete mass ban removal unless it is filtered for things like 'simple grief' or similar, unless we completely ramped up staff/grief prevention tools in preparation for a mass of griefers coming on once it gets out. However I would love potentially a better way to appeal. The forums are not even close to an ideal platform. I am working on a new website and an actual ban appeal section is something it will have. Potentially it could even have some appeals be automated. IE if the ban message has 'homophobia' and 'grief' in them, it would present the person with a list of our rules where they are to check the rule that they violated, hit 'I agree to abide by all rules' and be on their merry way.

That does sound interesting. I'm curious how you would account for past bans/severity though. For example, if a player who's been banned 10 times in the past gets banned for homophobia and gets immediately unbanned this way, I can see it being an issue.

[slide]

That does sound interesting. I'm curious how you would account for past bans/severity though. For example, if a player who's been banned 10 times in the past gets banned for homophobia and gets immediately unbanned this way, I can see it being an issue.

I'm sure some kind of formula could be worked out that accounts for *most* things, there would definitely need to be some kind of "admin/mod adjustment factor" that could be used to lengthen/shorten the ban by the staff. Either way they wouldn't get immediately unbanned, they would still need to wait the ban length out.

[jchance]

Since we're kinda talking about bans now, I thought I would throw this out there since I've been vocal about it in the past-

 

I think our current appeal system is kinda stupid.   It really doesn't encourage any kind of good behavior- all it does is make people say they're sorry, even if they don't mean it.  I don't care if people are sorry.  

 

Appeals should be actual appeals for if someone was banned incorrectly (it happens) or they don't feel they deserved the ban.  There should be no requirement to appeal if you get banned- you should just be banned the set amount for doing your "crime" and no appeal necessary. 

 

I am 100% in support for timed bans + keeping our appeal system for when someone is wrongly (in their eyes or in reality) banned.   Did you grief?  Cool, take your 2 weeks and come back or don't.   Did chance ban you for grief on your own house you were taking down because he didn't pay attention to log block time stamps?  Then appeal and we'll be happy to review it.  If it was found to be a good ban you still have the remainder of your 2 week ban.  If it was a mistake then it will be removed. 

 

 

I think to do it right though we need to change how bans are handled:

 

1.   Mod or admin bans a player.   The player gets a ban description that says "Banned for X, view details at nerd.nu/bans" and don't state a length.   We would need a new in-game ban setup to set a length when creating a ban,

 

2.   Ban is posted to mcbouncer and website at nerd.nu/bans, where the player can enter their username and view their ban details:

 

Banned by:  Modname

 

Banned for:  Whatever

 

Unban Date:  12/1/2014  timestamp

 

Reviewed by Admin?  Y/N

 

Do you feel this ban was not fair or a mistake?  [appeal ban]

 

3.  Admins for each server have their own control panel where they can log in daily and for each ban either approve it (which would change the flag on the player ban page), modify it if they think the mod gave too long of a ban or increase it if its a problem player.  Admins should really be the only people giving longer bans for problem players- There are too many mods who take things personally.

 

Once an admin approves the ban it updates the player page with their final unban date.  On that date our script will unbar them from MCB and maybe add a note (past ban <timestamp> or similar).

[Cyotie911]

So with timed bans, i can see this happening... player comes on, griefs a little. Logs off. Gets banned a day later. Doesnt come back on for a month or 2. Logs back in. Ban length has expired. Player never knows he was banned, let alone that he ever did anything wrong and in my eyes, cant really be heald responsible for past actuons that he may not ever be aware that they did.