Our Moderation Process

[General_Mudkip]

Hello everyone!

This post has been written by a few members of the moderation and administration team, mainly to explain how we decide upon punishments for edge cases, where the offender has not gone against any of our rules in specific. We hope that this can answer any questions or doubts that you might have about our process.

The first thing to make clear is that this is a process that takes time. One mod or admin is not responsible for a sudden mute or ban of a player, it's almost always the decision of multiple members of the moderation and administration teams after a lengthy discussion. In fact, half the time this discussion will result in players not being punished. We take the rules very seriously and if we can't find any that the player in question has broken we'll almost always drop the case.

That is until we feel like a player has gone against the spirit of the rules to the point where they are severely affecting the community. In these cases we use our discretion and punish them based on what we feel like what will benefit the community the most. We don't just punish people for breaking the rules, that's not our job as moderators. We're here to ensure that everyone can feel safe and can enjoy spending time here. One of the ways we ensure this is by getting rid of players that have nothing to contribute other than a negative attitude to those around them.

Once one (or in most situations, many) of us have identified a problem player we'll go through their punishment history, actions, and their general attitude that they have on the server. This process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months/years, collecting evidence and discussing what effect they've had on the server. Once we have come to a decision, we'll confirm the punishment time and type with everyone and address any remaining doubts, and finally issue the punishment.

And that is a general outline of what happens behind the scenes. If you have any further questions feel free to ask below, but keep in mind that any messages that go offtopic or are overtly rude will be removed.

Thank you for reading!

 

[ARMcPro]

then how did you mute more people without discussing it with other moderators?

you didn't even warn, you just muted for 3d for User Harassment

 

[Refrizor]

you didn't even warn, you just muted for 3d for User Harassment

Hi, what case are you talking about? We get a bazillion of cases per day lol. What are you referencing?

then how did you mute more people without discussing it with other moderators?

For edge cases that don't violate the rules but require an alteration as @General_Mudkip mentioned, it is discussed across the moderator team. This requires a lengthy discussion because it needs to be fair and just, and backlash can occur as everyone might know. For general mutes, it is usually not discussed across the moderator team as this would take an immense amount of time to take action on players when we need to protect the community from harm timely and efficiently (both are important factors with how the moderator team functions). I hope this helped!

 

[ARMcPro]

Hi, what case are you talking about? We get a bazillion of cases per day lol

Pinging someone on 2 different days and saying "happy birthday" because I thought it was their birthday not knowing it was a joke
So mudkip just muted almost everyone that did it instead of warning them (yes almost, not everyone that did it got muted)

 

[Refrizor]

Pinging someone on 2 different days and saying "happy birthday" because not knowing it was a joke
So mudkip just muted almost everyone that did it instead of warning them (yes almost, not everyone that did it got muted)

The ones that were muted already had a prior instances to doing it. We don't mute people without a reason ya know? If people are doing it multiple times especially if it's trying to annoy someone, it raises a concern because at some point, the user that it was targeted at expressed frustration which is a cue to stop.

But, there's also that idea of, what if they did not know if it was a joke, and that's understandable too. We are always trying to improve the moderation team (believe me, we are) and how we handle situations, what constitutes as just and unjust behavior, and we will let this be a learning point in time to help us improve. This opened up an internal investigation between both branches (moderation and administration), so we of course take it extremely seriously to protect the community and make sure everything is fair on the player side and the staff side. We are sorry if this was an inconvenience, but again, we are trying our best to improve, things happen obviously, and we will let this help with future cases. We always have room to improve, and we work for that all the time.

To be transparent, I know how it looks, but I do think that no one is at fault here. We make mistakes of course, and sometimes we don't always have the full picture. We aren't always able to obtain 100% of the story at times because of our limitations as volunteer staff members apart of the network, but we try our absolute best to get the full picture on all sides as best as we can. When these things happen, we correct it and continue to try to thrive as a team to help protect the community and take action on players that violate our guidelines. Again, I don't think anyone is at fault here, people were repeatedly telling someone happy birthday and there's evidence on file that had the targeted user in this case express their frustration very explicitly, but we will use this case as a learning curve because we are always trying our best to improve. I do promise though that we did look into this thoroughly. We don't want to let the community down, and we can't please everyone, but the best we can do is try.

 

[Requals]

If enough moderators are biased against you, you get the punishment. Its like a jury, but there is no jury duty and its the same 6-10 people

 

[Refrizor]

Just to make it clear, there was no unfair bias involved in that case. All in all, it was a misunderstanding and the moderation team didn't have the full perspective when the mutes were given, but it's being corrected and it will for sure be used in future cases to change how the moderation team performs. We correct it, learn from it, and try to move on and adapt to improve the team; staff management works hard to do that.

But if you feel like you are experiencing unfair bias in a situation, you are able to reach the staff management team, they manage both the staff branches. You can reach them on the forums or on Discord. They will take a very deep dive into it. These things, like unfair bias, are taken seriously, I promise you that. List of staff managers: @ryanroo2, @MrAwesome0024

 

[Wobber]

If enough moderators are biased against you, you get the punishment. Its like a jury, but there is no jury duty and its the same 6-10 people

they might be biased against you because you have an extensive punishment history

 

[stinkey]

they might be biased against you because you have an extensive punishment history

did you unironically say this

 

[Wobber]

did you unironically say this

biased was not the right word. i used the word "biased" to poke a bit of fun at what he said. the point was that mods won't think highly of you if you have a bad punishment history and/or have a reputation for doing bad things like mr. requals does over here.

 

[Requals]

they might be biased against you because you have an extensive punishment history

those punishments were accumulated from bias smh

 

[DogWithHats]

Hello everyone!

This post has been written by a few members of the moderation and administration team, mainly to explain how we decide upon punishments for edge cases, where the offender has not gone against any of our rules in specific. We hope that this can answer any questions or doubts that you might have about our process.

The first thing to make clear is that this is a process that takes time. One mod or admin is not responsible for a sudden mute or ban of a player, it's almost always the decision of multiple members of the moderation and administration teams after a lengthy discussion. In fact, half the time this discussion will result in players not being punished. We take the rules very seriously and if we can't find any that the player in question has broken we'll almost always drop the case.

That is until we feel like a player has gone against the spirit of the rules to the point where they are severely affecting the community. In these cases we use our discretion and punish them based on what we feel like what will benefit the community the most. We don't just punish people for breaking the rules, that's not our job as moderators. We're here to ensure that everyone can feel safe and can enjoy spending time here. One of the ways we ensure this is by getting rid of players that have nothing to contribute other than a negative attitude to those around them.

Once one (or in most situations, many) of us have identified a problem player we'll go through their punishment history, actions, and their general attitude that they have on the server. This process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months/years, collecting evidence and discussing what effect they've had on the server. Once we have come to a decision, we'll confirm the punishment time and type with everyone and address any remaining doubts, and finally issue the punishment.

And that is a general outline of what happens behind the scenes. If you have any further questions feel free to ask below, but keep in mind that any messages that go offtopic or are overtly rude will be removed.

Thank you for reading!

 

[DogWithHats]

The ones that were muted already had a prior instances to doing it. We don't mute people without a reason ya know? If people are doing it multiple times especially if it's trying to annoy someone, it raises a concern because at some point, the user that it was targeted at expressed frustration which is a cue to stop.

But, there's also that idea of, what if they did not know if it was a joke, and that's understandable too. We are always trying to improve the moderation team (believe me, we are) and how we handle situations, what constitutes as just and unjust behavior, and we will let this be a learning point in time to help us improve. This opened up an internal investigation between both branches (moderation and administration), so we of course take it extremely seriously to protect the community and make sure everything is fair on the player side and the staff side. We are sorry if this was an inconvenience, but again, we are trying our best to improve, things happen obviously, and we will let this help with future cases. We always have room to improve, and we work for that all the time.

To be transparent, I know how it looks, but I do think that no one is at fault here. We make mistakes of course, and sometimes we don't always have the full picture. We aren't always able to obtain 100% of the story at times because of our limitations as volunteer staff members apart of the network, but we try our absolute best to get the full picture on all sides as best as we can. When these things happen, we correct it and continue to try to thrive as a team to help protect the community and take action on players that violate our guidelines. Again, I don't think anyone is at fault here, people were repeatedly telling someone happy birthday and there's evidence on file that had the targeted user in this case express their frustration very explicitly, but we will use this case as a learning curve because we are always trying our best to improve. I do promise though that we did look into this thoroughly. We don't want to let the community down, and we can't please everyone, but the best we can do is try.

 

[DogWithHats]

Just to make it clear, there was no unfair bias involved in that case. All in all, it was a misunderstanding and the moderation team didn't have the full perspective when the mutes were given, but it's being corrected and it will for sure be used in future cases to change how the moderation team performs. We correct it, learn from it, and try to move on and adapt to improve the team; staff management works hard to do that.

But if you feel like you are experiencing unfair bias in a situation, you are able to reach the staff management team, they manage both the staff branches. You can reach them on the forums or on Discord. They will take a very deep dive into it. These things, like unfair bias, are taken seriously, I promise you that. List of staff managers: @ryanroo2, @MrAwesome0024