I have been thinking recently and it has come to my mind that there are several users out there who know about a user who is breaking a rule but who have also made the choice to not report said rule breaker because they do not want to lose their reputation or friendship with said user. So my suggestion to this is to add some sort of option to allow users to be anonymous to everyone except for staff members. this would only be in the user complaints section and again this would be an option and the thread would be seen to everyone however they would go unseen.
+1 I like the idea, so long as staff can see that a complaint was filed by said user, I don't see an issue with this.
+1/-1 +1 rule breakers dont like snitches. -1 if your friendship is more important than doing the right thing your just as bad as the person who is doing it.
If there is an absolute need for a complaint to be private they can be sent via forum pm to a staff member (ideally GA+).
Nicit that may be true however that process takes quite a lot longer than the process of creating a complaint on the forums. Also it would not allow for the rest of the server to see the complaint for example. Say player_x scammed player_y and player_y for whatever the reason wishes to be anonymous. Well player_y could report to a staff member but that would then make it so the rest of the server is unaware that player_x is a scammer and when dealing with trades with them they should be careful.
While this is a nice idea in principle, the practicality of it is not there currently to make this a feasible suggestion. With the current implementation of complaints and forum software, the only way to hide the user who is filing a complaint would be to use a moderated forum section, albeit, that has the downside of no one besides staff and the user who posted it could see it. While that may sound like exactly what is suggested, the problem is how would the accused user respond to the complaint to be able defend themselves? One solution to that may be having a staff member repost it as a public complaint so everyone can see it, and keep the user who filed it hidden, but what if it was a conversation in private message or other private-esc means? The act of revealing that evidence to allow them to defend themselves will indirectly reveal the identity of the person who filed the complaint, and made the process of handling it much more difficult for no real gain. Now, for the sake of argument, let us say we solved the issue with how to allow them to defend themselves. We now have the problem of archiving the complaint. The reason all complaints have been publicly viewable is so every user can review the complaints, see for themselves the history of a user, and the evidence presented that lead to the conclusion. Once again, we run into the issue of if we reveal the evidence, we run the risk of indirectly revealing who filed the complaint in the first place. We could remove the archive of complaints in its entirety, however that is something that would need its own thread to even discuss as there are many issues that is tied to that action. Thirdly, we have the issue of no user being able to see the pending complaint for themselves until a staff member handles it. As an example, let us say a user files a complaint based on a user being untrustworthy, as would be caused by a scamming or breach of contract complaint. However, while it is hidden, no user from the community can view the complaint, with all the pending evidence, to make a conclusion of their own. This would allow someone that wants to break the rules even more time to act on their urge before the community is aware of their actions.
Maybe there's the possibility of forum msging a staff member complaint while requesting to remain anonymous. Could this work? As for the evidence part you have a really good point here, but does the accused user need to see the evidence if it is just confirmed by staff?
