Hello PCB, I was wondering if we had such a policy for ban appeals. Until now, we have basically used common sense for appeals but I think it may be good to add this in writing somewhere.
Basically, when someone comes to us with a ban appeal, we should treat them well until they are proven guilty of their crime. I don’t know how everyone else’s judicial system works, but in the US, we have a Jury who decides the fate of the defendant.
Right now, we have been allowing the person who banned the individual to have the final say if a person should be unbanned. I have never liked this system because it means that individual is the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. Also, we have had this policy of not posting in a ban appeal when you were not involved… This really discourages staff involvement and restricts who the judges could even be. It does make sense to keep non staff out of course.
Instead, we should have the person that banned the defendant be the prosecution. They present their case as to why a person was banned and other staff vote on the final decision. It is already anonymous voting so this would be fair. This system also forces both sides to present their cases well and convince others to their reasoning. “Witnesses” can be brought into the thread to add testimony. We can’t really screen our Jury, but I still think this is a better idea.
I just feel that anger can cloud even the best of people so it is a bad idea to allow the person that got mad enough to ban to be the judge.
Or we could just keep it short and simple and too the point. The system we have works perfectly fine right now, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the United States judicial system, is shit. Hardly something we should base our system of off. In my opinion, we should have the ban appeals including all staff, not just the ones present at the time. I also think we should completely obviate all members from participating in the cases unless they are in some way affiliated with the case/player itself. No need to make this more complicated than it needs to be IMO.
I don’t think what I’m suggesting is complicated. The main point I am making is to not give the final say of unbanning to the guy who banned him or her to begin with. He may vote of course. A vote added to these appeals just makes more sense to me.
Maybe allow the original banner have the right to unban despite what the vote comes to. A kind of veto power? This creates more chances for a person to be unbanned overall.
You know there are times when an appeal can be shut down by the original banner saying, “You stay banned, final decision”.
Just wanted to post this regarding banning systems.
I attend another server which is white-list only, the way they handle bans is someone makes a report or a mod bans the person. The offender can either leave the server or post appeal. Then all the mods review the appeal and judge together. If there is conflicting decisions, a higher ranked mod not involved originally or players will have to decide.
The person who did the banning cannot have the final word but can submit video or photo evidence.
(Similar to Kyle’s idea)
This system has worked great so far.
I thought that the system that we had ‘here’ (as in the US) worked pretty well, assuming nobody was biased and you had a good judge that actualy considered everything.
(Then again, the only time I was in court was when my father had to pay off a ticket for skipping a stop sign that we had to wait at for 2 minutes, because the certain town was supposedly low on funds and had been giving people tickets left and right for stupid reasons. We lost because my father was accused of being a ‘druggie’ due to his long hair and unshaven face)
Ha! Sorry to hear that drk. This is getting off topic, but I think the main problem with the US Judicial system is not the concept of it, but the bureaucracy behind it. The laws themselves are so convoluted and complex, that almost any outcome can be argued for and won based on similar cases.
I mean, if a robber who gets injured while trespassing can win a lawsuit against they people they robbed… Well, I will just say that common sense was not present. In that case, I don’t care if the robber died. He had no place being there.
I don’t want to lay down the law on anyone. We don’t really need a set of rules on this. I just wanted to discuss something I was uncomfortable with and to offer a possible solution.
All ban appeals should have an automatically made poll that only allows OPs+ to vote. This will need Andy to alter the appeal form… Sorry Andy!
i think we should have it so theres 3 people that get the final decision so things can be sorted and any staff may put forth their information with the 3 “judges” hearing what has been said then making the final choise of what happends to the person this way all staff have their say and theres not only 1 person making all the decsions
Having a limit to determine how long the decisions take is important. I was thinking the 24 hour time period was plenty for most to get their say in.
We had it happen once before that a ban appeal did not hear from the person that banned the user. I felt that defaulted to the user’s victory the same way that a cop not showing up for a court date works.
It may be a good idea to raise it to 48 hours if the original banner does not post in the thread. It really is nice to hear from them what they found.
Guys, remember when all griefing required us to take screenshots and post them to the forums? Or at least post about every person you banned? That thread got really long!
Ka, I think I know what you meant, but the way you wrote that sounds like your including members in the vote. I would still like to keep it OP+ for who votes. We sure have enough of em, right? lol
Yeah, part of my reason for doing this is to make appeals more accessible. Not in the sense that people can’t already make them, but because people might feel more inclined to try for one.
I know if I was banned somewhere (it happened once), I would be discouraged to find out that the guy who banned me was the judge. Granted, this really only applies to situations where there may have been an argument or ill will between the two involved.
Actually, I was once banned from a classic server after about 2 minutes (This was when multiplayer was new. A classic/survival hybrid server). I was having an issue with my screen being too dark and I asked the OP on what the cause might have been. That was all it took to get banned. He said he did not want “noobs” in the server… Clearly, if that guy was my judge…
