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Revisit punishment severity


mj2002

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2 minutes ago, Chuckles said:

I feel that in certain instances punishments are too lenient on repeat offenders but on other instances, enforcement and the threat of punishment is immoderate and completely excessive. I find that a lot of administrators are imprudent in their decisions and if punishments are too become more severe, then we will be in the exact same situation as we are now but with more bans. This shouldn't even be discussed until the problem within the administrative team is addressed itself and the application of variability is implemented.

 

People repeat their offense because they do not learn from their mistake. Help them learn from their mistake instead of locking them in a cupboard with no food, water of explanation. Education and awareness has the potential to deescalate a lot of these problems but most of the time when someone is punished, the problem's locked and the key's thrown away with no acknowledgement, admission or enlightenment -- it's considered "open and closed." The word adequately is acceptable to one but unacceptable to another, this is why it is usually contested. If I am not satisfied with the outcome of a report, an an application or a decision, I will contest it to seek resolution. Just because a player has a green name doesn't mean their decisions are scrupulous. Simply put, I am not comfortable in the level of enforcement to be comfortable with harsher implications until there is clear progress within the staff team itself. If they can't come to an agreement between themselves then the players have the right to be leery.

 

It takes in excess of 2-3 weeks to have a report concluded. It takes 2-3 weeks to have an application concluded, regardless of genre. It would take 2-3 weeks to have these aforementioned bans concluded. Complacency and inconsistency is what is contributing to the players' lack of faith in the institution. The problem players would have is not with "harsher punishments" it's who and what would consider them harsh. I understand that there is too many habitual offenders getting off light, but the minority would suffer more from this than what known infringers would. If you give administrators one reason to ban, no matter how big or small the reason is, they will ban people and we'll be revisiting this topic months down the line but with the shoe on the other foot. The foremost focus before introducing something like this should be to fix the shrewdness and complacency, this "we're doing this by choice, we'll handle it when we handle it" attitude.

 

I've sometimes looked at punishments and warnings being handed out in reports because it's intriguing to read through. The player report section helps the community gauge the perspective of not just players but staff members too and it offers us a certain transparency. A player's report is made public and I know nobody wants to end up there willingly for fear of ridicule, embarrassment and punishment. If this was the case for staff reports too then it'd help us, the community, see these situations with a fresh perspective and inside view and I think it'd directly correlate to the aforementioned: staff would be more careful in their rulings and judgments for fear of ridicule, embarrassment and even punishment. It has the potential to be a double edged sword and it's something I would welcome with open arms.

 

If you want severe punishments, start by addressing the elephant in the room: how these punishments are determined. Whilst I have seen my fair share of lenient punishments, I have also seen an even fairer share of questionable decisions.

So much wisdom in one post. WOW.

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Personally- as someone who's usually sticking to rules and has a good enough grasp on them to spot out intentional or unintentional violations of them- what keeps me from regularly reporting these as I should is that even in comparably clear and evident cases, where I have enough insight to tell what's going on and what went wrong, I have no idea what the outcome of a verdict will be (even if I am absolutely certain to have spotted a clear rule breach).

 

I obviously get the basic idea of benefit of doubt and that admin discretion is mandatory, but the absolute lack of guidelines for staff here is what marginalizes rulebreaks:
Typically, no one wants to be that bad guy that strictly cracks down on petty issues, and with no explicit guide on what's a how severe offense (and how it's to be sanctioned) it is incredibly tricky to define on a case by case base how bad this instance of deathmatching is, how much timeout this horsedong on facebrowser warrants and so on.

 

Guidelines that differed various offense into various categories of severity might be helpful here both for players to estimate what is a serious issue they should report about urgently, as well as for staff to hand out according punishments without being argued over being too strict.

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I'm all for normalizing punishments, especially if it encourages higher quality roleplay and acts as a tougher deterrent against rule-breaking. The caveat here being there's a consistent approach to handing out punishments across the board and not just harsher sanctions because a player irked an admin the wrong way. This works in both ways  — harsher punishments where deserved and more lenient/no punishment where none is warranted. The discussion open alongside this one around context is very relevant here. I've seen players reported recently for fairly standard illegal scenarios and it's bewildered me that admins have even entertained the reporter.

 

However, I don't think admin jails are fit-for-purpose at all. They're an outdated form of punishment and shouldn't serve a purpose in any gaming format. You're essentially having a real-life punishment enforced on you for breaking the rules of a game. By real-life I mean you actually have to dedicate your time in order to fulfil your punishment. Liken this to rule-breaking in another game, i.e. CS:GO. Let's say a player uses derogatory slurs against another and he/she is sanctioned by Valve. Would forcing the player to stand around in an empty server for x amount of time be considered a viable punishment? No, because it's akin to putting someone in prison. Make punishments relevant and consistent. A player insults another through OOC channels? Communication ban then, disable all OOC access. This is all coming from someone who has never been admin jailed.

 

Tying in with the above, I think bans should be the default form of significant punishment starting from as little as either 12 or 24 hours scaling up to permanent/indefinite bans for severe rule-breaking or repeat offenders. Prior to this, insignificant offenses should be punished via warnings or even by providing education/guidance. Kicking someone (aside from being AFK) achieves nothing. The player will return and re-offend.

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58 minutes ago, ThatDutchPerson said:

 

 

These things honestly sounds like there is some kind of culture of fear running within the team coming from above (Management). I was part of this problem, given I had my fair share of staff reports aswell. Most of them were completely useless, I can see that now, but thats in the past now. Point is I can see where these replies are coming from; players get punished and in the heat of the moment file a staff report to get out of their punishment (which is against the rules). We however never get told what happens behind the scenes, your replies make clear that something severe happens behind the scenes.

 

Maybe staff reports should be handled in a different way? Perhaps before fully handling it, someone in Management decides wether its even worth to handle (much like an appelate court operates). If staff reports are weeded out that are very obviously made in a frivolous way and the punished person has evidence against him/her beyond reasonable doubt, then staff reports would be way less intimidating and cause less burnouts; as less will be actually be handled. Kicks shouldn't apply to a staff report, and ajails shorter than 60 minutes shouldn't be handled in staff reports. Instead, apply to expunge these as these are minor punishments.

 

People also file staff reports to have certain admin entries in their record expunged. Perhaps split these, and make a seperate forum section for expungement requests? These would be handled by the punishing admin and a (not all) member of Management. Strict requirements for expungement should apply.

 

These are just a few ideas that come to mind when responding to your arguements about staff reports when punishing harshly. I believe if we tackle the staff reports procedure and overhaul it, esspecially in the way described above, it could fix this culture of fear of staff reports burning people out. Will people be mad? Yes, people will be mad when their staff report ''gets denied''. But what do you expect when you are on video metagaming?

 

The system you speak of, about filtering petty or useless staff reports already exists. Problem is that its incredibly easy to spin your staff report in such a way that gives your case validity, and even if in the end your punishment doesn't get withdrawn, it may very well be reduced because you worded it in just the right way, and mentioned a little word or half-truth that gets you cleared of a part of the handling admin's reasoning, much like actual court. 

 

People who are repeat offenders are some of the most crafty rule lawyers, they'll find the loopholes and convince others they shouldn't have been punished as harshly.

Edited by Brian3898
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