Improve the way staff handle grief reports

I do agree with you in this situation the quick handling of it could have definitely presented a problem. It is a sound suggestion in several ways. However in grief reports the focus is to handle them as quickly as possible so as to prevent further griefing and because the log block clears. I personally think that the mayor should be responsible for contacting the other mayors before filing the grief report and the moderation should continue to handle them quickly to make sure griefers get off the server and the log block is still intact during the report. This is an issue that would come up in the vast, vast, vast minority of instances where if we changed the way every grief report was handled to account for these, then it would cause way more problems than it would fix. And therefore -1 to a wholesale change in this manner.

But you make an excellent point about the grief report system having issues and nuances we need to take time to examine. It is definitely food for thought so thank you.

 

That's an interesting idea. But in the many grief cases the griefing is rather clear cut and if the griefer is left on the server for 24 hours, they would possibly go on to grief other towns and cause a real mess. So a whole new guideline for handling situations where it isn't totally clear would have to be put in place, imo, to still allow for clear cut town wide griefers to get banned immediately. And as it is the smods can't even remove perms of "suspected" griefers temporarily so it would either involve higher staff in these cases or allowing mayors to temporarily remove perms of suspected griefers and both would be a big change up. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, just a complicated thing.

 

ooo mentioned one of the problems - log clears. There is another problem with that.
Yes, the data can be posted on the thread. However, what happens if a rollback is needed? The 24 hour timeframe could cause the logs to clear. If it is then determined that the grief report was valid and the rollback can be approved it cannot be done because the logs are missing.

(At least this is what I understand since rollbacks rely on the same database.)

 

I've seen very good points here. A small patch could be to change the message a banned user gets when he tries to login: instead of a generic "banned for griefing" it could be something more like:

This is just an example, it doesn't have to be this exact text.
Of course, what declared in that message should correspond to a change in the guidelines. But in this way:

• potentially server-wide griefs are still prevented;
• honest mistakes are investigated and automatically unbanned;
• new players are not discouraged by a flat "banned for griefing".

 

I like that idea. A good stop gap measure. Offers some room for more complicated situations getting resolved without completely upsetting the accused.

Well, you have to figure that the moderation will still be attempting to handle these reports as fast as humanly possibly so it should be very rare that it ever actually elapses a whole 24 hours. And the situations like the one that brought this issue to your attention are actually very few and far in between. Usually it is fairly straight forward. But for those less obvious ones, it would be cool to have a mediating option like @Expipiplusone suggested.

 

I know exactly what you are talking about. I asked @Ludolos, a member of the Maveth board, whether I could place a glowstone path from the Uluda warp and to my casino. What happened was @ghostsjack01 proceeded to evict me and file a grief report.

 

@Ludolos is not a member of Maveth board. Our two towns have a co operation but currently it is no more than that.

 

Personally I think that's a noble reason but in reality a terrible idea. While it means well it also reads "we don't trust you so we banned you in the meantime anyway". Not really a good message to send, honestly. Serial server-wide griefs simply don't happen, and if they do... well, I'm pretty sure after two or three reports in a day it's pretty obvious to see what's going on and just forgo the mayoral review and ban the guy (assuming it's even reported at all before multiple towns are griefed, in my experience we'd see two or three towns at most hit in an hour or two, and the grief reports would all come after that).

This is really a nonissue though... I think there's a big difference between "misunderstanding between comayors" grief and "oh shit the town is gone" grief, just use SA discretion for it if time appears to be a factor.

Given that this whole suggestion appears to be based on one situation though... may as well comment on that directly, as well as our grief handling system as a whole.

The Situation
A guy build a road to his thing, more or less. Didn't even cause devastation doing it, looked like at most a 10-20 minute job to fix. A major grief ban, while technically being correct seems stupidly overkill on something that really could've been handled by a sit down discussion between him and the mayors because it seemed pretty obvious there was no malicious intent.

The Griefing Guidelines
In the two/two and a half years I was on staff there was exactly one 'major' change to the griefing guidelines that I can remember, and I implemented it. I don't think our system is relevant anymore. Our playerbase is vastly different now.

For those who don't know, grief is either minor, moderate, or major. This distinction is made at arbitrary points in the block edit count. I'm pretty sure it goes something like Minor =< 25 Blocks =< Moderate =< 75 Blocks =< Major. It doesn't take into account how bad the actual grief is. A 100-block misunderstanding is still treated worse than a 50 block obvious malicious grief. It really shouldn't be too hard to look something over and just talk to somebody when they clearly weren't trying to be a dick about something. Bans should only be used in the worst cases and stuff like the grief report this suggestion is about, just doesn't qualify imo, misunderstanding or not.

 

I do agree with you to an extent however building outside of the area you are permitted to without permission does fall under grief and even if it is just some blocks being replaced, its still grief.

 

I never said it didn't?

 

Though the current system has it's flaws, so does this suggestion. I agree with @oootopia when she said:

Maybe handling grief reports like complaints is a better option? The smod can go and investigate the grief as normal and find out who did it and then give the accused 24 hours to reply with evidence they had permission or they will get warned/banned? That's certainly one option to still have the grief report done before a log wipe, but hopefully the 24 hour wait doesn't hurt a rollback.

Another option is to change the grief report format to include a question, "Have you spoken with any of your co-mayors about this grief?" and if the answer is no, it can be left open for 24 hours for this to happen. This would encourage co-mayors to communicate more. This isn't too far off of what you suggested and it does pose the same problems mentioned before in this suggestion, however it's just another angle to look at, another option.

The major problem with giving 24 hours for anything, is if the person is griefing to gain money or just to grief... this gives the person a window to do more grief and our current system at least stops that right there and then. Anyways, I am with you @THCOOL, I have always felt that there is more to a grief than just checking logs and banning names who appear. Unfortunately there will always be a hole somewhere no matter the way it's done... but I personally like the option of giving the accused a chance to speak up. I know 24 hours isn't a huge window, but it seems fair and works well on complaints.

 

Oh, I thought your suggestion was to have the smod tag all the co-mayors of the town and have them post whether they gave permission or not. My suggestion is to do the report as normal, post the finding, but then tag the accused and ask them for proof. I was just thinking that it may be easier to get in touch with a member who was just active than a list of mayors who might be inactive. That was my thought. Sorry if I misunderstood your suggestion.

By all means there is room for improvement, but the thing is, will we hit more problems? Will those problems have more of a negative impact? So far any suggestion, from where I stand, could have a worse outcome than our current system. That worse outcome being... letting a griefer have a free 24 hours to do more damage.

 

All things considered it's easier to fix an extra 24 hours of grief than it is to apologize for what's effectively a wrongful ban.