Remove likes from ban appeals

It's a thought I've had before, that came to mind again as i wrote my previous feedback post today.
The ability to like posts made in the ban appeal section should be removed. I explained in this thread how staff can't expect players to behave, when they themselves act disrespectful and childish in ban appeals. I believe a good part of the reason for this behavior from some staff members are due to the likes they receive. It's not a secret that many people here go to the ban appeal section whenever they want a good laugh, because usually there is some random hacker trying to lie his way out of a ban, or there is a staff member being disrespectful. I guess people find that funny, so they choose to like the various posts where staff members have been "savage(...)". I believe these likes makes the staff members in question feel better about themselves when saying things they honestly shouldn't say, thus leading to them making more childish posts in an attempt to gain likes. So i simply suggest removing the like feature from the ban appeal section if possible, to hopefully make ban appeals more civil and promote more good behavior in the community.

 

Totally support this. I suggested around a year ago that ban appeals should be completely made private (along with abuse reports) to prevent this types of issues.

 

I support this suggestion 110%. The like system plays an important role in the forum of course, but in ban appeals it really has no place.

Rewarding "savagery", though amusing, is quite inappropriate because it doesn't lead to healthy or civil threads. If GMs want to make jokes to obvious hacker threads or whatever the case may be I don't think that's bad, but the community encouraging that kind of behavior seems less than ideal and even problematic. I can't find any reason not to make this change immediately, unless it's tricky to implement from a technical standpoint.

 

100% agree.

I think your observation of people acting the way they do for likes is very accurate.
Ban appeals should always be private, to avoid problems such as "he was unbanned for toxic behavior twice, but i got perma after one offense" kind of things

IT would allow staff to be less influenced on their decisions from player opinion as well.

 

Only question I have about this is, doesn't the transparency of ban appeals help protect players from mistreatment? If ban appeals were private, there wouldn't be the same community backlash at unfair bans, which is what sort of what balances the power and keeps the system together. Biased or unfair bans don't seem to be an issue here, but if we made ban appeals private, who knows?

As a player I also like that public ban appeals show me how GMs interpret and enforce rules that are sort of in the gray area, so I know for myself. In most online games this whole banning thing isn't as much of an issue, because well, they just don't ban anybody xD. But here since it's a private server and they try to preserve the integrity of the game and community and all that, seeing how they enforce the rules is pretty important to me as a player.

 

Its better to keep it private. If its public, people have the ability to complain. If its private, they don't.

Its also none of a regular player's business to know why someone was banned, if they were unbanned, who unbanned them, etc. It has nothing to do with an outsider.
There will most likely be a few cases where a ban is slightly harsher than it needs to be, but from what I've noticed, the ban appeal system seems to be pretty fair. Ban appeals have absolutely ZERO to do with the public affairs of a typical regular player. So it should not even be a matter of concern for us.

 

I support removing the the like functionality, but I don't support making the ban appeal section private.

I think a public ban appeal serves a good reference of how the T&C is being enforced. Just like any law in real life, many clauses of the T&C may be interpreted and enforced in various ways. A consistent and reasonable enforcement of T&C is crucial for the well-being of this server, and it is nice that players can observe the enforcement process.

 

I believe that after a ban appeal is handled, it should be sent to a public archive for obvious documentation and transparency between administration and the community. However, during an ACTIVE ONGOING appeal , it should not be visible.

 

Sorry! Let me clarify that I wasn't intending on bringing up making ban appeals private in this thread as a suggestion on its own. I was just contextualizing my support for Martin's suggestion.

EDIT: I'm sorry I accidentally derailed your thread Martin

 

We have to keep ban appeal visible,so we can know which friend is banned and can be expelled from buddy list.

LF>buddy list extension

 

Ban Appeal was the first board I ever visited here because I wanted to see what other people had done to get themselves knocked out. If you took that board away from the public eye, you’d have an unending supply of opinions about how the staff here never do anything and no one combats vote abuse to curb inflation.

 

I still stand by what i said earlier and do think removing the like feature will help remove unnecessary toxicity from the ban appeal section, even if by just a little. If anything, I really don't see a reason not to remove the like feature. Even besides toxicity and "like farming", i would still say remove the like feature from ban appeals. Once upon a time, I was on the appealing end of a ban appeal, and i can just say it wasn't exactly fun when all the staff members ganged up and liked each others post. Not saying that's necessarily always the case here, but it's something to think about. I also believe removing the like function would result in ban appeals feeling more private and civil, and less like a freak show, as community presence would be less apparent.
On the topic of reporting / giving feedback about staff members; I have done this before, through both the forum report function and through public posts. I'm not sure if i can see any improvement on the things I've brought up, which is why I'm now suggesting things like this. I really don't see anything negative coming from removing the like feature from ban appeals, so if it has even the slightest chance of improving ban appeals and by extension the community as a whole, i wouldn't hesitate to get rid of them.

 

That's no fun when it happens, regardless of the sub-forum or who the group is, and you know what it's like when a hacker appeals a ban, knowing full well they did something wrong and want a free pass, or like when Stunk led staff on a wild goose chase till one of the Admins put their foot down and he admitted to it all being just trying to get around a ban he knew he deserved. I think all staff are guilty of posting cheeky responses to threads like that.

I had suggested in the shoutbox to remove the likes from counting towards your total, simply because the likes go both ways, it also allows players to show support (in a small way) if a friend got banned for a bad reason (it happens). The appeals will always be a sort of entertainment for people on the forum, lack of likes towards the total will help quash potential like farming (even if that wasn't the main point of why you want them removed), while allowing others to toss in your 0.02$ like towards players appealing.

Both sides have merit, IMO.

 

I don't really get why you'd want likes to stay, but to not make them count towards the like total. That wouldn't help the issue i presented in the first post. A bit of an extreme example, but bullies only bully because others laugh, they wouldn't do it if no one else cared. Even if the likes don't count towards a staff member's total like count, it will still make them better about themselves when they do act out of line and get likes for it. Not to mention, shouldn't the evidence be the deciding factor in a ban appeal? I don't see how likes on post are at any help at all. If players think someone else got banned for a poor reason or whatever, they can always report any posts they feel are unfair or lack evidence or common sense.

 

Likes contribute nothing to ban appeals. Absolutely nothing. They don't help the individual, the players, or the staff. There is no reason to have them.

I agree that on the surface they appear fuel things such being rude, overly strict, unhelpful, or an overall asshole where it is not needed nor beneficial to the thread/discussion. Something I am typically all for, but has no place when handling ban appeals. I notice specific GM(s) are much worse than others when it comes to professionalism, tolerance, and willingness to help/explain in ban appeals. Some do a great job in maintaining a professional approach while providing the user with answers, evidence, and supporting reasoning. Meanwhile others act as if this is their first time in a position of authority, constantly lashing out, defending themselves when lashed out at (I get it, it sucks but think about yourself like a LEO - you are the authority figure required to maintain your composure, you can't go off on people because they say mean things while they're angry, frustrated, or confused), and often being unwilling to explain/provide detail/evidence. It would be nice to at least see the impact that removing them has on the specific staff member(s) who tend to struggle to maintain full professionalism in the ban appeal section.

IMO ban appeals is the *only* section that actually has a reason to require strict professionalism, zero bias, and one to put aside their ego entirely. All others should be fair game, and if anything, less strict, but that's just my personal opinion and a discussion for another thread.

 

I didn't say evidence shouldn't matter, and sometimes bullies bully because they want to feel above someone else, that's why children of abuse are often seen attacking the family pet or the younger sibling, the one thing in their house they can be above.

I explained pretty clearly how I think likes might have some benefit

It's not a matter of... poor or unfair. What posts would they report? The responding staff member who is saying "You got banned for X", I mean that is certainly something they could do, but average players might not know what happened, but hey they might know the player for 2 and a half years and a like is like a small vote of confidence that maybe there's an inconsistency that only an Admin can tease out.

I'm not against the likes being removed, but if I had to choose to remove them from staff posts in appeals and leave them for other players, I would.

 

^ I don't mind the idea of removing likes from the staff posts and leaving them to remain for the players (in the ban appeals section, of course). Personally I don't see what likes would impact or influence when it comes to player post(s), but the main goal here is to see the impact that it has on staff behavior, so I guess likes directed towards players isn't something that we need to squabble about (I don't think?)

 

It's just... deciding between removing all likes from appeals vs. doing nothing, I'd rather split the difference because I don't think either extreme is a good solution.

Just an opinion.

 

Ban appeal section is realy useless.
they just ban you and i never seen a thread for a unban.