Example of this:
http://www.ecocitycraft.com/forum/threads/ban-appeal.76500/
http://www.ecocitycraft.com/forum/threads/ban-appeal-.70365/
http://www.ecocitycraft.com/forum/threads/ban-appeal.48868/

Notice how each time this user got a 3 day tempban. This is unacceptable imo.

 

After reading the suggestion and 99% of the comments, I would like to give my opinion.

As regular players, you do not know what we in staff discuss before we ban people. For nearly every single ban and appeal, we discuss with at least 2 other mods to get their opinion before doing anything. In addition, we have set guidelines for when to warn, kick, and ban, although we are allowed some discretion too.

For appeals, we *do* have a sort of 3 strike system, and we research the player's previous history before they receive their tempban. For each offense, we have recommended amount of time that the player should be tempbanned for, but obviously, regular players cannot see this. Same with warnings. Some people are warned right away, because we know that particular person will continue if they aren't warned immediately, but other times players will stop without a warning.

This sort of stuff is not public because it does not need to be. Even rule breakers deserve *some* privacy. Also, if everyone knew exactly what punishment they would get before they get banned for something, I guarantee that players would start to break more rules because they would think to themselves: "Well, that player got a 2 hour tempban for doing this, which means that the mods *have* to ban every player who does this for that amount of time. I am really mad at this other player, and I think ruining his day is worth the 2 hour tempban I will get." Which would cause chaos. Even in real life, you do not get to know the punishment for every person who is arrested or put in jail, and every person who does the same crime does not get the same punishment. Another thing that has happened before, is that some players become bullied after they make one mistake. We don't want players to bully each other, so that is another reason why some warnings are private.

dork1877 The reason we do not usually use monetary punishments is because it is hard to incorporate. What would we do if the player did not have any money? What if the player keeps all their money in signs? As of right now, the only way to really make people pay monetarily is for scams, and even then it does not work every time, so the player ends up rebanned. We do use fines for some things, like incorrect apps on the forums, but it is not easy to do.

I am not saying that I agree with every ban or tempban length, but there is a method to the madness. I do not think that it will change. At least, not drastically as you are suggesting.

 

Fines are possible
Negative balances are possible
It could work if enough and the right people wanted it to.
Negative balances are possible right?
...right?

 

I'm not saying that the entire offense-punishment discussion needs to be had in global. What I'm saying is that there should more transparency whenever possible.
Yes mods should exchange ideas in private staff only channels. But those decisions need to be communicated to the community.
Like I asked about a certain user we will call "Bernie". How can we tell how long a user or what the user is banned for if there is no complaint or appeal?
Answer is: we can't
This is the kind of lack of transparency I am talking about.

 

If the user banned did something to get banned, without needing a complaint, and did not make an appeal, why does it matter? Making no appeal means they could have gone inactive for a while, and will later. Or, it could mean they didn't really care in the first place... So, again: Why would it matter if we know or not, if the banned user didn't care and left anyway?

 

I definitely agree with Emau on what he had to say. I feel that if people are banned, they can reflect on what they had done, and appreciate coming back onto this wonderful server. If you don't ban people and give them a warning, they most likely with keep repeating that same wrong action, causing them to not learn from their mistake(s). I know that silly bans can be annoying, but it keeps you from doing that same stupid action again.

 

Negative balances are buggy, and can cause money problems.

 

I've been calling for something to this effect for a while. I feel it well never happen because I feel, for better or worse, this server "babies" it's users on one hand and expects them to have the wherewithall to not be manipulated our taken advantage by more manipulative users.
The only way that can work is to make who is and who isn't trustworthy more readily obvious for the user that isn't combing the forums each day for who is and who isn't a scamming d-bag.

I really would love to see something like a "on probation tag" for serial offenders. That could allow new or oblivious players to who they might be able to trust and who they definitely shouldn't trust.
Let's talk about a user we will call noci. This user has been banned and renamed more times than I thought would be possible. But at the end of lengthy ban he comes back and immediately starts scamming and manipulating users. This behavior really kills the fun for the majority off the server. But he is still welcome back time and time again.

 

I don't understand why you think it is unaccceptable? Would you prefer someone to be permabanned for trolling 3 times? We would lose half of the server's players.

 

Your player names are not very ciphered :/ Anyway, players who have been banned before, even several times for the same thing, can change, and have changed before. In that particular case, he is not coming back.

 

This is exactly what I am taking about.
3 exact same bans for nearly the same behavior. They even make reference to previous offenses! Yet the punish is still the same, ineffective, 3 day temp ban.
Do we honestly think that 7 day temp ban would've have worked? We need to talk about 2 week bans at minimum for this type of serial offender.

 

It matters to ME. it matters because I want to know what is and isn't accepted. I want to know what justice what enacted. I want to know what else was taken into account in the decision making process. It doesn't matter if they are or not coming back. I want to learn and I want other to learn from their malfeasance.

 

So because " it's buggy " we can't ever use it as a punishment or more precisely a THREAT of punishment.
Can we work on those "bugs" so we can use them as a form of punishment for the betterment of the server?

 

His point is that he had the same exact (ineffective) punishment with no escalation.
That
Is
A
Mistake

 

At least I tried to disguise it somewhat eh?
Yeah they CAN
It's POSSIBLE
In some cases it's even likely.
But
There should be a way to make these serial scammers stick out like a sore thumb to the people they are likely to scam-manipulate etc.

 

Bugs with this can include money dupes. There is a good reason why andrew has it disabled. Aswell as if Negative money is added that means that lets say I could go to a shop and spend all my money + as muchmore as I want because of negative costs. It basicly allows you to buy as much as you want. This is a huge issue with plugin that dont belong to our money operating plugins. A threat is no good if it cant ever happen either, meaning that if you arent able to go through with that threat what good is it?

 

No, type in the search bar in titles: Ban Appeal and then posted by the user for the appeals

 

At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that you are not part of the decision making process, and you will never be unless you become a staff member. You will not get to know what justice has happened because it does not concern you. Read the server rules, that tells you what is and isn't allowed, and make sure you are following them. That is the best you are going to get.

As far as I know, Andrew does not intend on changing how we handle bans/complaints/etc. because it has worked well for more than two years. We shouldn't change something that isn't broken, in my opinion, just because 2 or 3 or even 10 or 20 players don't like it out of the 24,000 that have joined the server.

 

I don't know what you are talking about.