I think I found the main thing where we disagree: Some solutions that were thrown aside in this thread might be considered "loads more work" by you and staff, but I don't think it is.
I'm 100% for changing the rule so that falling asleep doesn't count as a strike towards getting a permanent ban, since that would be very unfortunate. And what are you even referring to Marty? Please don't bring your personal disdain for staff into this thread
I'm all for that, too, don't get me wrong. And I think your question's answered by the small 'conversation' me and @Rob had here. I'm not referring to a specific case but the entire position of the staff in almost every discussion. Finally, to elaborate for @Rob: The entire goal of this thread was to account for human error, which isn't a lot to do as a GM, so the argument of "a lot of work would come with a rule change" isn't even valid here. We went a bit off-topic here, because you can't argue that this thread did offer a reasonable and workable rule change, but that staff doesn't want to actually go through with it because of the minimal grey area, even if it's fair for the players to have said grey area. I'll get out of this discussion since all my comment did was bring it away from the topic at hand, which wasn't my intent. (but since when does intent matter rite?)
And then you contradicted yourself by saying this thread didn't offer anything and the staff didn't want to go through with it when multiple members of staff said they supported it.
I just don't understand why you'd pick this topic, a topic where the staff is willing to change the rules, to say this: It's like you didn't even read the thread. Your opinionated views are so blatant and now you're trying to backtrack.
Can we all stay on topic please? Let's leave our snide remarks to each other in PMs or somewhere else.
To summarize, if someone falls asleep do ~gm to get them D/Ced and if you do get banned for botting while asleep it won't count against your permanent record. Is this something everyone can agree on?
I think this is the part people aren't thinking about, "How does the staff know the person fell asleep and didn't 'fall asleep'?" You cannot rely on someone's friend's as naturally, everyone who gets caught botting will have friends attest they "fell asleep" and then there's no point in having the strike system for botting at all. Additionally, you cannot say "if the person was botting in a way that they weren't getting any advantage by botting" because then it would require listing every single case which is considered not getting an advantage. In short, I don't understand how we can definitively 100% distinguish every single time, without fail, whether someone fell asleep, or was botting and to avoid getting a strike claimed they fell asleep.
In this case I think multiple eye witness accounts should suffice; screen shots to prove the witnesses were with the accused and not just trying to cover for them. And the "not having any advantage" could be a case by case thing. I think we can agree that spamming HS in the FM is more advantageous than spamming Brandish in town. I don't think having a bit of grey area is necessarily a bad thing, especially since this is only an issue maybe once every six months tops? But when there's multiple points of proof that the person was asleep they should all be considered together rather than separately.
You said things such as chat logs aren't in place. Maybe implement those to see what the people on boss runs say about those that fall asleep during them to prove that the suspect is, in fact, asleep. It'd be easier to come to more accurate decisions that way, if that's possible. I'm guessing temporary chat logs (only up to a week old or something? Ban appeals or other things that might require such logs are normally posted with 48 hours) would do the trick and help with other things alike.
Or instead of expecting the GM's who are volunteers to spend way more time investigating and thinking about botting cases, maybe, just maybe, people could not fall asleep on keyboards, and could go to bed when their body is clearly saying they should. Why are GM's expected to work so much harder so that people who do silly things such as falling asleep on keyboards do not get banned?
You can't have a black and white rule for something like this. Banning players who fall asleep is not just no matter how you slice it. In fact any ruling that deals in absolutes is more chances than not unjust. Not everything can be determined in dualistic fashion of right and wrong. In Sh0ok case it was obvious that he was sleeping, in fact is not the first time he slept while playing. Many people who know him will tell you such. Like him their might be others who fell asleep while playing the game. While it might be a bit of detective work to determine if someone is botting or not I think is imperative to do so because I don't think is just banning players who did not do anything wrong. That being said the botting issue should indeed be fixed and while I don't know much about the server software maybe in the future the new source or even the current one can implement an auto D/C if someone is triggering the same key multiple times without moving from a spot. It could stop most of the obvious GS2 Heal/SR spam by D/C them if they try setting up a program to do that. But that is for another thread.
This is actually so far from being true, and is the opposite of true. More than not the bannings are just, it's only a very small portion of the time that someone is banned unjustly.
I know it wasn't directed towards the staff, only that it sucks that a small group destroys it for everyone... like always.
The minority in this case are the people playing when it's clearly not in their best interests, both for health reasons and account/ban reasons. Most of the people banned for this are actually botting.
We obviously have different opinions on what is unhealthy, I'm perfectly fine falling asleep watching a movie, reading a book or listening to music. Playing maple is not really full of action, to me it doesn't take much focus holding down a button and hardly disrupts my sleep if I were to fall asleep. If a mistake like this happens then there should be a gray area, right now the rules follows the line of rather banning you than taking into account probabilities and follow written rules more than common sense. This is such a rare thing that making an exception show player sympathy more than, we are unfair and now 4 hundred obvious botters will appeal and we have to give everyone this right... to avoid more work you take the easy way out instead of being nice to a single player, look at details not only at the big picture.