Ban Appeal Policy Suggestion

[Guest]

Firstly, I want to give credit to Magnyus who appears to have raised the founding concern that my suggestion is based upon via the head admin uservoice.

 

To save people clicking the link to see what Magnyus said:

 

It's pretty ridiculous how many times a moderator claims they'll reply soon or the nest day and several days pass before they ever receive a response. If you're not paying attention to the bans the start automating the system, because even short bans end up lasting longer than they're supposed to just because of the crappy appeal process.

 

 

I can imagine that it is not always feasible to reply by a promised date or time-frame as real life intervenes but that last part of the quote about short bans lasting longer than they would have been intended for is what concerns me the most. These people want to play on our community servers and this may be a deterrent for returning!

 

My suggestion is to update the ban appeal policy to empower all staff with the ability to pick up an appeal if there has not been a reply from the banning moderator within a reasonable time-frame (such as 48 hours from the banning moderator last posting), handling what they feel comfortable with. The current policy only mentions when the banning moderator has not responded but not for when they have responded with a "I've seen this and will reply tomorrow." response but do not respond further. There then seems to be an awkward situation where the appealer is unable to progress their appeal.

 

I understand that at the moment admins will tend to do this (as shown here) but there are situations where, and I'm choosing from the most recent example that I could find, an admin appeal does not require extensive chat log reviews or anything to that effect and could be handed by anyone else who would feel comfortable. Without discussing that ban appeal in detail, I can see the original poster has not yet responded however it may have helped to have had someone else empowered and willing to handle that appeal with the suggested policy amendment.

[Narissis]

This is a good suggestion; it's not fair to people for not to be unbanned on the timeline that the appeals process guarantees to them.

[c45y]

All MCBouncer bans should have a duration attached to them at which point they will be automatically removed. An appeal should only take place if the player feels the ban duration is excessive or has other issues to raise.

 

In an ideal world MCBouncer would handle this process itself, if thats not still in the works (last I heard it was) then adding 1w / 1d/ etc to bans can help other moderators know when they are safe to close bans

[Guest Former Staff]

All MCBouncer bans should have a duration attached to them at which point they will be automatically removed. An appeal should only take place if the player feels the ban duration is excessive or has other issues to raise.

 

In an ideal world MCBouncer would handle this process itself, if thats not still in the works (last I heard it was) then adding 1w / 1d/ etc to bans can help other moderators know when they are safe to close bans

 

This has been mentioned in the past and I understand that it is an ongoing implementation for Deaygo with MCBouncer (which we can provide feedback upon here).

 

While that is a great idea and I would love to see that in effect, I took a look through our total number of bans which I estimate at around 102,278. This means once a temporary ban has been put into place at some point in future that will help to automate new bans but for those that are already banned, action of some sort would need to be taken if/when people appeal.

 

I may have dreamt it or read on the forums about considering a mass-unban of accounts so sorry if I'm not crediting your idea. Could we look into a defined list of criteria to get the number of bans well under 100,000?

 

Such as:

• Duration of ban: Those over one month, two months, six months, a year (as examples) could be targeted.
• Then the ban reason could be considered: If the person has been banned for griefing and fall within the selected time period above, they could be moved to a mass-unban list.

How does everyone feel about mass unbanning people (regardless of the example criteria I have made up above)?

 

Edit: Assuming we unbanned, under acceptable criteria and retained just 0.1% of people currently banned as regular players or members of the gaming community, we would gain around 100 active users. We can't know if anyone will come and stay but I do feel it worth the chance.

[Narissis]

I always thought that the reason for requiring appeals was so that we had a record, in writing, from the player that they agreed to reform whatever behaviour got them banned in the first place. I think, for this reason, there's merit to the system even in an environment where auto-expiry is possible.

 

That's just one man's opinion, of course.

[jchance]

I may have dreamt it or read on the forums about considering a mass-unban of accounts so sorry if I'm not crediting your idea. Could we look into a defined list of criteria to get the number of bans well under 100,000?

 

 

This is a current admin concern and we're working on the criteria for a mass amnesty on old bans.   The last time it was visited I believe we had over 80% of old bans in the "unbanned" column and we're looking at some specific bans (mostly for old community issues or excessive hacking, etc.) to make a determination on those.

 

As soon as we've finished going through the list all the heads are in agreement that the mass amnesty will happen.

 

I am also in support of timed bans for minor infractions.   I am not interested in making a bunch of kids pay some lip service and pretend their sorry to get unbanned, and for minor things like grief temporary bans are just fine for getting their attention and letting them know that is "not ok" on our servers.   As Barli has said, this is something Deaygo is working on for MC Bouncer.

[Guest Former Staff]

I always thought that the reason for requiring appeals was so that we had a record, in writing, from the player that they agreed to reform whatever behaviour got them banned in the first place. I think, for this reason, there's merit to the system even in an environment where auto-expiry is possible.

 

That's just one man's opinion, of course.

 

Your opinion, regardless of right or wrong is one that I respect. I hadn't considered that perspective.

 

This is a current admin concern and we're working on the criteria for a mass amnesty on old bans.   The last time it was visited I believe we had over 80% of old bans in the "unbanned" column and we're looking at some specific bans (mostly for old community issues or excessive hacking, etc.) to make a determination on those.

 

As soon as we've finished going through the list all the heads are in agreement that the mass amnesty will happen.

 

I am also in support of timed bans for minor infractions.   I am not interested in making a bunch of kids pay some lip service and pretend their sorry to get unbanned, and for minor things like grief temporary bans are just fine for getting their attention and letting them know that is "not ok" on our servers.   As Barli has said, this is something Deaygo is working on for MC Bouncer.

 

Thanks for confirming that Jchance, I am glad to know that I am not going mad. I have since found the post mentioning the ban amnesty here.

[Narissis]

Taking my own last post and jchance's together, maybe another good idea would be to do something like have timed ban expiry for first infractions, and require appeals for repeat offenders and/or more severe offences.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Narissis

[kittypuppet]

maybe another good idea would be to do something like have timed ban expiry for first infractions, and require appeals for repeat offenders and/or more severe offences.

 Maybe something like getting banned 3 times for griefing would require them to go through an appeal?

This is, of course, speaking specifically for *griefing* incidents

 

I think I mentioned something similar to this before.

[Difficult1]

 Maybe something like getting banned 3 times for griefing would require them to go through an appeal?

This is, of course, speaking specifically for *griefing* incidents

 

I think I mentioned something similar to this before.

 

I feel like if you where the type of person who would grief, and you where just given a ban that lasts X amount of days, you would just return and do the same. The ban appeal process shows that the person appealing actually bothers to write out an appeal and go through the process. Syphoning people who will grief but be too 'half assed' to appeal. Appealing shows at least a form of detection or reform. Admittedly there are some every so often that say "aaayy lmao can i be unbanned i won't grief m8", but i digress

[roastnewt]

I think people here are looking at tempbans the wrong way.  Don't think of them as "banned people getting off easy," think of them as an "extended kick."

 

It would be another tool for moderators, for minor offenses like spamming chat, using inappropriate language, not replanting crops, spawn-killing, very minor grief, etc.  Give this person an "extended kick" as a warning, to correct the behavior.  The idea being that if you can correct the behavior without rising to the level of a ban, it's better for everyone.

[tobylane]

I think people here are looking at tempbans the wrong way.  Don't think of them as "banned people getting off easy," think of them as an "extended kick."

 

It would be another tool for moderators, for minor offenses like spamming chat, using inappropriate language, not replanting crops, spawn-killing, very minor grief, etc.  Give this person an "extended kick" as a warning, to correct the behavior.  The idea being that if you can correct the behavior without rising to the level of a ban, it's better for everyone.

 

I like that we don't do it that way. It sends a clearer message that is considerably less ignorable. It's not a hardcore-like tempban where you go away for an hour and come back to do the same thing again. You come to the forums and spell out your wrong-doing. If that would correct the behaviour then I'd agree with you, it just doesn't fit human nature.

[Magnyus]

You come to the forums and spell out your wrong-doing. If that would correct the behaviour then I'd agree with you, it just doesn't fit human nature.

It's clutter and we all know by now that if a kid wants to grief, they'll do it no matter how many appeals they make or tempbans they serve. It's clutter and it's annoying, and we shouldn't waste any "manpower" dealing with them. So tempbans that act like extended kicks would get rid of the problem for the moment and add a tally against that player. And if we were to use a three strike policy like kitty mentioned, only then would they have to appeal and "reform".

[roastnewt]

I like that we don't do it that way. It sends a clearer message that is considerably less ignorable. It's not a hardcore-like tempban where you go away for an hour and come back to do the same thing again. You come to the forums and spell out your wrong-doing. If that would correct the behaviour then I'd agree with you, it just doesn't fit human nature.

 

By that same argument, all kicks are useless because you don't have to spell out your wrongdoing.

[tobylane]

What roast said applies to Magynus and what Magynus said applies to roast. 

 

All bans are useless if you make an arbitrary assumption that they'll never reform. All bans are a waste of space if they, or trouble with common decency, take up space in your mind. All kicks are a waste of effort if they don't take notice. Lets not make such terrible broad assumptions. If we're wanting to think positively of new people then lets say that as the aim. Otherwise it seems you have a conclusion based on your desires not reasoning.

 

I still like kittypuppet's idea, but only if we have a problem with too many bans, and griefing is a significant portion of them. I don't see the current occasional delays as such a problem.

[Mumberthrax]

Mildly relevant discussion recently published from the admin forum: https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/2772-alt-account-banning-policy/

 

Still waiting to see the posts I made about mass ban amnesty, and the standalone ban policy overhaul post, as well as the admin meeting notes/comments discussing these subjects (including the discussions that it would be trivial to set up a CommandHelper script to handle temp bans and the plan to set that up as an interim solution until mcbouncer rolls out temp bans themselves).

[Difficult1]

It's clutter and we all know by now that if a kid wants to grief, they'll do it no matter how many appeals they make or tempbans they serve. It's clutter and it's annoying, and we shouldn't waste any "manpower" dealing with them. So tempbans that act like extended kicks would get rid of the problem for the moment and add a tally against that player. And if we were to use a three strike policy like kitty mentioned, only then would they have to appeal and "reform".

 

Its a bit of a contradicting statement. You say that they'll do it no matter how many appeals they make or temp bans they serve, so how will a 3 strike system solve it?

 

It wouldn't be any different, it would just be grief-tempban-grief-tempban-grief-tempban-grief-appeal and the process continues. Appeals are not all that tedious either, unless your a staff member. Anyone who wants to keep bouncing back can spend 30 seconds writing a bullshit appeal. Sometimes the staff catches it sometimes they don't, either way it isn't much of a solution to just put them in a loop.

 

 

TLDR: making the loop bigger doesn't solve the issue with the loop.