[AC] Propsal for Overhaul of Ban System/Policy

[Mumberthrax]

I believe our banning policy is in need of an update. I've put together a draft of a proposal for such an update - though there are a few parts that are not fully fleshed out, and I'd like to hear any comments or suggestions. The short version is: temporary bans for minor offenses are automatically reverted when the time is up, bans for serious misconduct are "permanent" but may be appealed if they are believed to be unjust or if the player believes they have reformed themselves.

 

I submitted this in the thread about policy on ban evasion with alt accounts, and mrloud suggested it should be in its own thread, so here it is. : ]

 

Outline:

• Most bans should be temporary bans with automatic unbans if the user verifies via website or plugin they have read the rules or relevant section (These would include: crop grief, minor grief, pvp/fly/speed/macro hacking, spam, trolling, etc.)
   
• Egregious rule violations should be normal bans without automatic unban - essentially a permanent ban requiring appeal and believability regarding whether they have reformed
  • These would include: harassment/personal attacks, being a source of "toxicity" in the community (being a dick/disrespecting others), security threat, massive rule violation, compromised accounts, ban evasion, breaking the law, etc.
  • These would also include those who have had several temporary bans in the past, and continue to demonstrate a disregard for the rules
     
• illegitimate bans of any sort should be appealed, and appeals claiming the ban is illegitimate do not follow any time limitations
   
• Appeal time limits (for those not claiming illegitimate ban) are not manually-processed automatic unban periods. they are a time at which your appeal will be considered. It does not guarantee that you will be unbanned just by repeating the rules and promising to be good. Recognition of what you've done and how it affects other players, an apology, some method of tangibly demonstrating your remorse or that you are reformed. This needs fleshing out but the point is that it's not something left up to an inconsistent enforcement of "ok ur unbanned lolz" sort of deal like we have sometimes.
   
• Bans apply to any and all known alt accounts of the player banned. Bans on alts for ban evasion must be appealed.
   
• Times until appeals (for legitimate bans) will be accepted would follow our normal routines more or less, and in the case of ban evasion: evade once, time is doubled; evade twice or more and time before appeal is heard = 1 year. (alternatively just going with the +2weeks for each evasion with a cap of 1 year)
   
• Bans for harassment, spam, trolling, being a dick, etc. (i.e. social misconduct) would apply across all nerd services (mc servers, irc, forums, mumble, subreddit, etc.) regardless of where the behavior that earned a ban took place. Bans for gameplay-specific misconduct (griefing, possibly xray, player traps on P, etc.) could be just for the minecraft servers and not other services.
   
• When a player is unbanned, it is documented in something accessible in-game, such as adding an mcbouncer note saying for example, "unbanned: griefing, xray, and jaywalking"
   
• Ban information needs more space for details - minecraft does not allow much space in the chat entry line. Perhaps a link to a special profile page on the website which includes all relevant information about their ban, and how to appeal it.

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Ideally evaluation of appeals must follow some set of criteria. A checklist of requirements perhaps which seek to evaluate if the appeal is sincere based on conduct outside of the appeal and past history, whether the player attempts to empathize with those they have harmed, any legitimate demonstration of remorse or of having been reformed... basically just a more stringent set of requirements than the easily deceived "have you read the rules and are you sorry?"

 

Possibly such appeals should be handled by admins if they are uncommon enough thanks to the temporary ban system. But if the set of criteria for approved appeals are prepared effectively then it probably would be fine being any staff member or the staff member who banned the player.

 

Phrased in another way:

 

The appeals section should not be the "ok read the rules and reply back stating you have done so (whether you're being honest or not) and I'll unban you" section, nor should it be the "I was banned long ago for x (eg. grief) and i just now realized that I can actually be unbanned and have fun now but you're going to ask me to read the rules and I'll forget to reply saying I've done so and will try to log in a week from now and be disappointed that I can't play" section. It should be for bans that are believed to be illegitimate, or for those who have broken some serious rules and wish to be given a second chance.

 

If you grief some crops and forget to replant, or you're having a bad day and being a little shit, then you should get a temporary ban - these work like our current ban system except they're automatic. You basically go into time out, and when the time is out you're back. But if you demonstrate a pattern of being banned like that, then you get a regular ban that you would need to appeal. Such an appeal for a legitimate ban would only be heard after a reasonable amount of time in which for you to cool down and perhaps develop some maturity or responsibility.

 

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What do you think?

 

[slide]

Mumber, I like these clarifications to bans. In regards to the implementation, I think Deaygo is considering adding timed bans which we could maybe use for bans less serious than your first bullet point.

 

I am currently working on the banning procedure in the website, so this is a great time to discuss it's actual implementation. Bans/notes will be tracked for all of our services both separately and under their "Nerd" account (if they have linked them). Minecraft ban/notes will be synced with MCBouncer, however the website will provide additional functionality including adding a "ban explanation" area for more lengthy bans, ability to upload files (screenshots, logs etc) and for staff to comment on the ban.

 

From your overview here, implementation wise, these are the different 'types' of bans we would have:

1. Timed ban that automatically expires
2. Timed ban with required automated rule/policy acceptance
3. Normal ban with required staff approved rule/policy acceptance

All of these types could be applied to either a single account (Minecraft, Mumble etc) or to their entire Nerd account and any linked accounts (which we can forcibly link privately or simply apply a separate ban for). "Appeals" and "Unban Requsts" would be separate processes to not confuse the two concepts. "Unban Requests" would only be allowed after the ban has ended for types 2 and 3. I think we should separate the two out because "Appeal" implies that they think their ban is unjust/not valid. Ban/notes will also be archived once they are resolved (for whatever reason).

[redwall_hp]

I like the idea, Mumber. I definitely agree with the need for (at least some) bans to be global across services, and the idea of timed bans would greatly alleviate the issue of new players being swiftly banned for something like griefing and never appealing.

[Cyotie911]

As much as you guys are going to not like what I'm about to say, I'll go ahead and say it anyways.

I am totally against timed bans with several reasons for this.

#1. If a player doesn't appeal, then he will never really be held accountable for his actions. The minimum requirement for being unmanned is "making someone go reread the rules and state they are aware of them and will follow them from now on", in doing this, they become accountable for further actions and learn what they did wrong.

#2. With times bans, someone might not even know they have ever been banned in the past. If a young kid comes on the server and breaks some things, then leaves. A mod comes around and finds the grief and puts a 3 day temp ban on the player, however the player doesn't happen to log back in for a week. By this time he's automatically been unbanned... he breaks a few more things and leaves. A mod sees that they have grieved again, sets a ban for 2 weeks this time. The player happens to log back in a few days later to find they are banned. Is there really fair to ban someone a longer amount of time when they might never knew they were banned in the first time? Especially if they might not really have known they were doing anything wrong in the first place?

#3 automatic unbans take away any record keeping of past bans. Once a ban is removed from McBouncer it's gone. As of now, we currently look through old ban appeals for player history. This will essentially stop and unless the same mod happens to ban someone repeatedly, we'll have a hard time recognizing repeat offenders.

[Cyotie911]

Sorry, must have somehow missed the part about acknowledging the rules in the upper post. You can retract some of what I said, however, I'd like for them to acknowledge they have read the rules by having them have to type "I have read the rules" and not just clicking a button. To me this makes them more so understand what they are doing and not just clicking shot ( like the people who install McAfee when they update Java because they just click okay instead of reading what they are doing)

And if they are required to have to do this, isn't this more or less appealing? It's not really automatic, except for the part where we lose an appeal record.

[redwall_hp]

Would #2 be alleviated if the ban started from the next time they attempted to log on, so they're guaranteed to see the ban screen? #3 could be remedied by having the system automatically add a note about their prior ban when it is lifted.

 

Just throwing ideas out there.

[Cyotie911]

I would want to avoid adding notes about past bans. Since notes can be seen from all servers who use McBouncer I don't want someone getting punished on another server for a ban that is already lifted on ours. That is why we don't make notes about previous bans as it is now.

[redwall_hp]

I would want to avoid adding notes about past bans. Since notes can be seen from all servers who use McBouncer I don't want someone getting punished on another server for a ban that is already lifted on ours. That is why we don't make notes about previous bans as it is now.

 

For now. Private notes are something Deaygo's been planning for MCBouncer, I believe.

[Mumberthrax]

The way I see it we have two problems.

 

1) bans are already effectively automatic  - but mostly only for people who have been banned a thousand times or are part of the group who has been banned a thousand times and know how to go through the appeal process whenever they get caught - it's just a slap on the wrist to them.

 

2) for new players, the appeals process is daunting, and confusing. Just the other day I was on C and a regular player mentioned in passing that nerd was unfair and corrupted because they banned his friends who didn't do anything wrong. SirTacoFace and I asked him for details, and apparently the bans were for minor grief from over two years ago. One of the accounts had been unbanned, but they never realized it because when they had logged on previously they were still banned. I told SirTacoFace that in my opinion since the bans were so old and for apparently minor infractions, and performed by someone who is no longer on staff, that they should be lifted right then and there - but because of our current policy these players cannot play with their friend on nerd without going through the appeal process again. We told this player they need to just go and appeal, and he said they already did in the past. It was difficult to help him to understand that if they just go and make an new appeal that one of us would unban pretty much instantly. This whole mess is not attractive, in my opinion, to new players who may unintentionally break minor rules, or be banned mistakenly if the claim of illegitimacy is true.

 

It may seem ironic that I'm talking about two seemingly contradictory problems - but these problems affect different people. New players who we want to attract to the servers are put off by the appeals process. Our regular troublemakers know how simple it really is and get away with everything - including some of the most harmful behavior to the integrity of the servers such as [redacted] conduct in the past. (which if you look him up in mcbouncer for example - there is absolutely nothing there to indicate he ever had any problems on our servers at all)

 

I'm not sure why it would be appropriate to hide past ban information from the public, or from other server administrators. It is currently accessible through our appeals forum with some searching - assuming that you don't have to search through the archives from the old forums - which is a hassle. What value can be gained by making ban information technically "public", but difficult to find? When people have a criminal history, though they may have reformed that record still is visible to all police who punch in the person's name. People make mistakes, yes, and people learn to live with their past. If we hide that relevant context away from staff who are evaluating a present ban, we are doing other players a disservice.

 

Why have current bans and notes public, but not old bans or relevant information about their conduct that caused those bans? We do not have a formal note appeals process, so even if a player has a hundred bans if they are all appealed and removed, they're invisible. If the players have a note, its there forever (unless they feel bold enough to ask a head admin to remove it). Why even use a public ban system like mcbouncer at all? What is the point of it? It seems to me that it is for relevant information about players to be available. what is more relevant than information about past conduct that warranted a ban? Why would a note about behavior that led up to a ban be more relevant in a public system like mcbouncer than information about the behavior that tipped the scales and landed them an actual ban?

 

And if you want to advocate for removing notes related to behavior leading up to bans, then again we come back to why even use the system at all?

 

Lets say that I am a relatively new moderator - in fact I am, since nerd had existed for a long while before I even started playing here - and there is a player being disruptive. I run a /lookup on him, and see nothing so I just give him a verbal warning and nothing else. When in fact this player has a history of abusive or harassing behavior and has been banned for it previously, maybe even told that if it happens again it will be a longer ban. This contextual information would be valuable to me in determining how to respond to his conduct - but because it is more or less hidden away in the closed appeals section our forums, or worse the difficult to wade through archived version of our forums, I will not see it.

 

Sorry for the wall of text. I don't mean to come across aggressively, I just kind of feel like there is a resistance to changing things for the better because "this is the way we've always done it". Maybe that is not how it really is, and it's just my own interpretation separate from the reality of the situation.

Edited March 7, 2016 by Barlimore
Removed one username for declassification.

[Cyotie911]

The reason we have a banning system the way it is now is because whenever a person is unbanned, they are supposed to be treated with a fresh slate. I'm not talking about forgetting past bans, but not hunting for them because they have been banned in the past. I know that it is normal for a mod on C to immediately tp to someone who logs in on C and it shows that they have 2 bans on other servers. This player has probably done nothing wrong on our server but we are already putting them under a microscope because he is currently banned on other servers.

This to me is like, someone who goes to jail for robbery, does his time and gets out of jail a reformed man. But what we want to do is make him drive around with a big sign on his car that says he's a convicted bank robber. He's done his time and should be treated differently by anyone for his past actions, but his record is still available, and will be looked upon if he gets caught doing anything wrong again.

[Cyotie911]

As far as making it an automatic unban, I would like for there still to be something they have to acknowledge that they have done something wrong so they will be aware and accountable in the future. If this happens, I'm going to assume though, that there will still be the same problem that people are going to be to lazy to do anything and never even do the smallest steps to appeal.

Maybe we can come up with something that gives every player 1 or 2 automatic unbans but after that they are a habitual offender and will have to appeal properly every time after that.

[redwall_hp]

Paging slide23. :P

 

He talked about this in the last admin meeting, as something going in on the new website. Something about automatic unbans with a confirmation that player has to go through. Basically like the "yep, I read the rules, this is the one I broke" comment we often require on the forum. As a whole, his outline seemed like a nice balance. You get the timed unbans for minor offenses, with a confirmation requirement before they're actually unbanned, the ability to do manual extended ones for more serious infractions, records are kept (not sure whether internally or synced to MCBouncer), etc.