I couldn't disagree more I'm afraid. The rules are public and how the staff enforce them should be kept amongst staff. To draw an analogy with real life - Police guidelines for handling incidents aren't public, just the laws which they are enforcing.

The punishments are already internally discussed/checked etc. When I was an SA I read every single complaint/appeal and between the GA+ team, the vast vast majority of ingame incidents are picked up on and dealt with. We don't want a situation where players can nit pick every single decision - it would make staffing the server near impossible.

The rules aren't complicated. Players who spend more than a day or two on the server are well aware of most things which aren't permitted in chat for example. I guarantee you if staff published a list of banned swear words, certina players would see how many times they could say them in chat and then you would have people calling for staff members' heads if anything was missed.

 

I disagree with your disagreement. The police isn't a group of volunteers. They are paid individuals who uphold a certain degree of professionalism, and most importantly, they are trained to be police.

on ECC, there are no trained individuals, only volunteers.

The problem is that there is too much to nitpick with staff. The guidelines are vague and thus leave too much open for individual judgement. The way the rules are interpreted and the way rulebreakers are dealt with vary wildly. This suggestion should go hand-in-hand with a more extensive punishment guidelines. One that covers individual examples and and makes it VERY clear what staff should and should not punish for.
Right now it's a huge mess. It's feasible, other servers can do it, ECC should follow put. (hell, <<Mod Edit>> has a 20 page document that's nothing but how to deal with rulebreakers (and it's public!))

But the problem here is that it's unclear what can and cannot be punished for. As it stands, a staffmember can arbitrarily shut anyone up without giving a reason. And you wouldn't know whether he was following the guidelines or not. How are you supposed to file a staff complaint when you're not even sure they're not following the guidelines.

And most of all, the problems you are describing come from the fact that people are allowed to publicly discredit staff. If a staff is abusing their authority, or not following the guidelines, people should file staffcomplaints. It's about policing staff, not having users yell in global for every little thing. And it's fine if there's some leeway, leave some room for interpretation.

The problems you're describing come from the way the rules and guidelines are right now. This suggestion can exacerbate that problem, but all that needs to be done is fix the underlying problem first. You have to punish staff complaints in global chat, and you also have to make the staff punishment guidelines very comprehensive.The guideline should be good so that staff knows what to do. And the guidelines should be public so everybody else knows what staff should do.

It's a system of mutual policing. Where staff keep the users in check, and the users keep staff in check. Only by doing this can you recover from the current situation where staff can make arbitrary decisions, and users won't know if they should file a complaint or not.

 

I don't necessarily agree with this. While our current guidelines may not be good, making them more comprehensive (aka. longer) isn't the way forward in my opinion. When chat is moving quickly, staff don't have time to open up a 20 page document and find the right answer. As for having such a document to study pre-needing to use it - people are busy enough with real life, studying, sports, friends etc. to be studying such a long thread. There needs to be a balance between guidelines which guide staff in the right direction and having a very long document - ultimately, they are guidelines and shouldn't dictate every single possible scenario.

One main problem is that how to best deal with situations comes with experience, not studying a document. As you said yourself, staff are volunteers, more often than not at school. This is a mix which leads to a high turnover of staff - meaning that often people don't rack up the experience needed to handle situations in the best way. Sure, better guidelines may speed this up, but nothing can replace actually doing it.

I don't disagree that the guidelines could be improved, but I stand firmly by my belief that they shouldn't be public. In a perfect scenario, maybe they could be public but you know as well as I do that if they were made public, global would turn into a shitstorm of calling out staff on every tiny little mistake.

Also, on the topic of more comprehensive guidelines, how do you begin to put into words the blend between a current situation/emotions/relationships/prior history? There are simply too many variables to make very clear guidelines which can be applied in every situation by turning to the right page of a document. It is completely unrealistic to think that all, or even most, interpretation by staff could be removed.

 

Being more comprehensive doesn't mean covering anything. But it does mean involving more examples. The guidelines as they are.. are simply unhelpful. Too much is left to individual interpretation. And when you have so many people from such diverse backgrounds, that means there is too much inconsistency in the way situations are dealt with. It has to be comprehensive enough to reduce the inconsistency. It does not at all need to cover everything.

 

-1

"The punishments are already internally discussed/checked" - Dewsy92

This.

Plus the fact that if was determined that a harsher punishment was needed for a certain case/situation, I would hate to think of the backlash it may cause publicly. We have a few users that stretch the lines now to see what they can get away with. They will just have more ammunition to troll with if this is made public. I do not see how this can improve the situation, only make it worse. It would just lead to more mini-modding, back-seat staffing, and Monday quarterbacking.

If you feel a staff handled a situation poorly or abused their power, report them, and it will be looked into. If it was an abuse or unjust, it will be handled.

 

I think that there should be a rule board, if there isn't one already, then also a message at the end explaining that if the person really cares enough about what someone else is doing wrong, then they should fill out a staff report. Then from that point a staff member can punish, ignore, or call in another staff member for advice so he/she can learn what they think they should do in the future.




Also, can someone look at my ban appeal. I got banned for a stupid reason and have been trying to get staff to look at it. I got banned for saying I was a hacker because I got mad.

 

I don't know...seeing the problems that have arisen in the past, this just seems like a good tool for the people who try to bend the rules and boss staff around.

 

Honestly, I'll have to disagree with this suggestion - The staff guidelines are private for a reason. They're for staff, not players. If you feel like a staff is abusing their powers, it can't hurt to file a staff complaint - There's no in filing one, lol (Unless you file a troll one, but that's a different story.)

The only thing I can see coming out of this is players (Trolls in specific) always ranting about staff abuse of power because it "violated the guidelines".

-1

 

The rules clearly stated in the Wiki *are* the guidelines that Staff follow... all the rest is just nitpick and the procedures by which they administer the guidelines. There is always some leeway to be forgiving, or if someone is really pushing it, to be less forgiving. Situation and circumstance, shades of grey, over black and white.

In the customer service work I do for a living, for example, we have "terms and conditions" which are the guidelines that I follow, and what the customer doesn't see, and doesn't need to, is all the processes and steps that I have to take to admin a claim or by what qualifications I find a technician with, etc. None of the processes change the terms... and the more there is to read the less likely a customer is going to do so, so... give them what they need to know and leave it at that.

We already know the rules, we don't need to know the rest unless we're on staff.

 

I disagree with this, they are private for a reason. Yes, they may need to be clarified a bit, but not made public.

Sorry, -1

 

I would say provate because if we release how we moderate, I'm sure some people would find loop holes and find ways to get around the rules even more so than currently.

 

Loop holes come from making the guidelines too strict, too detailed. A middle ground is by releasing a "vaguer" version of the guidelines. Enough to give people an impression of how staff has to behave and what they can expect, but not enough to leave room for loopholes. (kinda like how the rule should be, but I digress)

 

By reading all these responses I can tell that it's not a good idea to release the procedures, but to release how staff must behave

(talking about AFK messages).

We need to know when it's worth it to make a staff complaint. When I made one about a certain staff member who said "Don't post stupid shit, and your shit won't be deleted!". The response I got was "We are trying to clarify our guidelines", what does this even mean? Maybe something would've actually happened from that complaint if I knew if he was allowed to say that or not.

 

Going with your comparison, the punishments are part of the laws, not of the police guidelines: here on ECC rules are public, but punishments are not. I'm not saying staff guidelines (those can be internal) should be made public: just the punishments. Would you agree with this, at least?

 

What do you mean by punishments exactly? A ban or temp ban are the only punishments that exist on ECC.

 

There's also warning and stern warning (although I understand those could be considered not real punishments). But regardless: what I mean is the duration. How long will be the tempban? But also when someone is banned and appeals, they can be admitted back with a tempban: how long? And: when is the punishment a tempban, and when a ban?

 

You're essentially asking for the staff guidelines to be public then. Those ARE the guidelines.

 

Well, if that's all what staff guidelines are (seriously? I doubt), then why shouldn't those be made public? Going with @Dewsy92's irl analogy: punishments are public, irl. If those were made public here, people would know what they risk if they don't respect the rules. If punishments were public it would be the most effective deterrent against offenders