GM's and Intern's responses should be neutral in ban appeals

For those lurking the ban appeals and enjoying the endless daily content, you will notice a certain GM or Intern that has very emotionally charged responses, quite often.

Simply put, it comes off as arrogant and prideful. Yes, there are some ban appeals that are rude and hostile towards Staff, but the process should not have opinions or emotions expressed in the responses from Staff. It should be a yes or no, when and where, guilty or not guilty process. We should not be giving advice for mental health, leaving snarky comments, and demanding respect.

Just my 2 cents. I enjoy reading the ban appeal section, but it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth after reading this Staff member's responses.

 

The staff members are humans like you and me. They do this work voluntarily , for the sake of the server and the community.
Yes, they are expected to act as professionally as possible, but let's not forget they too have feelings and are not robots who reply to appeals with automated responses. They are very, very often attacked by the appealers, and do their best to remain objective and treat each person respectfully.
"We should not be giving advice for mental health"?
Urging someone who says they have mental health issues to seek professional help comes off as bad advice to you? If anything it shows this person actually cares and wants them to get better, which I find heartwarming.
Lastly, they have every right to demand respect; you don't go to a store, steal something, insult the staff members there, and then demand they speak to you with respect. No one is forced to play in this server if they don't want to. And if they do, they should follow the rules and be respectful.

 

Yes, and I agree with you. We all are human and we have good or bad days, but when it's a repeated pattern of behavior, it makes me wonder if it's just the person.

I take mental health very seriously, BUT, I still don't think anyone should be recommending others to seek professional mental help publicly. Almost has a hint of "You're sick, go get help" type of vibe in the negative sense. The response in that ban appeal was not necessary, and should have just stated your ban appeal is denied. I think the best approach would have been to start a private message with that individual regarding mental health. I'm glad that we in the community care for others, because that is what will keep us together and thriving.

I agree with you, and if someone is not being respectful, Staff members should be able to say something along the likes of "Please cool-off as I am trying my best to help you out," but if Staff responds with something similar to "I'm not helping you until you say please," (NOT AN ACTUAL QUOTE) we're just adding fuel to the fire instead of trying to disengage potential conflict.

 

As someone whose been here through a couple dozen different gm's, I actually find the bluntness quite refreshing. Could his responses towards Vote abuse, or general 3 day bans be a little more refined? Sure. Id prefer his bluntness most when hes responding to hackers, scammers or botters. All of which think their hacks are somehow undetectable military grade hacks, who think they're dealing with someone whose more dense than osmium. Treating the GM's like they're idiots deserves nothing but a blunt response IMO. Dealing with all the other day to day ban appeals involving 3 day bans or other minor issues can probably be a little less antagonistic.

Edit: in regards to the Ban Appeal involving mental health, I personally dont see it as him giving advice and more of him saying the only thing he could do when put in that awkward position. Someone claiming to have attempted suicide multiple times and then trying to use that as a defense to get unbanned from a video game? Sheesh doesnt get more awkward.

 

If he didn't address to it publicly, A. it would've made him look very bad, and B. you never know if someone else with similar issues reading this might not realize they do need professional help and could be motivated to seek some by reading this. On top of that, the person talked in detail about his mental health in a public forum post, so that's really on him.

 

I get where you're coming from, and I respect your opinion, but I still stand by my stance regarding public statements from authority figures because it sets the precedence/narrative justly or not.

I don't think anyone who read that ban appeal didn't come to the same conclusion regarding that individual and I think it was inappropriate for it to be spelled out for him/her like that.

If you have a giant zit/pimple on your forehead and everyone who sees you can see it, you don't need someone to come up to tell you publicly to go see a dermatologist or a skin-care professional. That's something you confide and tell someone in private.

 

I actually kind of agree with this on a broader level--there have been instances of staff members occasionally responding to ban appeals somewhat inappropriately. I generally don't mind the sass, but when it comes to memes and other types of dismissals without consideration, it does subconsciously cause one to feel at least somewhat skeptical of the legitimacy of this entire process.

That said, in regards to the specific mental health-related ban appeal you're likely referring to, I'm really not sure how else anyone could have possibly responded to it. I felt that the staff member's response was actually as appropriate as it possibly could have been.

 

Hard agree, I've posted about this in the past. I'll try to find it and quote here because I can't re-type rn.

Unsure of the specific ban appeal being discussed, though. I had reported one of the responses that was incredibly unhinged and inappropriate, but no action was ever taken to even remove the post that the GM had made (there was no question that it was inappropriate). It's more the lack of professionalism with the newer staff members more so than it is old ones (since that one bad apple no longer deals with ban appeals - thank lord lol) - you never catch Shane behaving the same way these interns do, and some of the interns seem to be making far more mistakes than ever before by using their judgement and emotions to ban people.

Found it:

This type of insanity and clear lack of judgement even takes place in the threads where players report a DC issue. An intern comes in, says it never happened and the players are wrong, then in comes an admin to clarify the intern was wrong...that shit shouldn't be happening in the first place. If the intern can't access the info. needed to give a definitive answer they need to just pass the case over to the admin who can do research instead of just going off of the limited info. they do have access to which could be incorrect.

Edit:
Like how on Earth can anybody defend this as appropriate behavior from a GM in a ban appeal?



Edit 2: So here's the quote in question in the OP? I don't think this was handled nearly as poorly as the incident above ^ but I'll help out, this is how it should have been worded:

"I advise you to seek professional help and not solace in an online video game. You will not be unbanned.

Please take care of yourself, if not for you, for the people who care about you. Once again, I heavily urge you to continue to seek medical help."

Bolded is all that a GM needed to say. Anything with a strike through was unnecessary and irrelevant to a ban appeal. A GM telling somebody who just mentioned in their previous reply that they have already been seeking and receiving medical help over the span of 1.5 years to "seek medical help" only shows a lack of reading comprehension on the GM's end.


Player: "I have been trying to seek proper medical help for 1.5 years"

GM: "I suggest you seek medical help"

????????????????

 

Fact: both sentences are advise
Fact: both sentences are not related to MapleRoyals
Conclusion: you are now judging about what subjective comments gm’s can and can’t make.

I completely agree with @iEatEmoKids ^

Edit: as for the original post: my moral self totally agrees with you, my guilty pleasure side doesn’t n_n’

 

I intended to strike through everything on the bottom line aside from "Please take care of yourself" (which is not actual advice, it means have a good day and is commonplace in every day life for people in NA). I would agree with you, editing it, thankz

A little OT but you do a good job. Especially with helping/guiding and giving live assistance/direction. Something like player relations is where you seem to excel, most of us can all tell your intent is positive and your goal is to truly help the players and the server improve.

 

I also wanted to add that while I do agree with the overall idea of this thread, there is a considerable amount of extremely fine nitpicking that feels awfully convenient for us to discuss after the fact. Personally, if I were the staff member in that position, I would have locked the thread without response and banned their forum account. Because if we're really going to proudly proclaim about how we take suicide and mental health seriously, we should also recognize the immense dangers that these veiled threats of self-harm can (and do) have on others. And while there is a certain amount of buffer when it comes to written communication that allows for prolonged thought and judgment, this was a circumstance that was both unprecedented and felt particularly time-sensitive.

All that is to say: Yes, I agree staff members could make greater effort to improve their professionalism in certain situations. But that ban appeal was not one of those.

 

just thought i'd respond since my name and post were directly mentioned here

thank you for highlighting this. to give some context for those statements, phase 2 here referred to Singapore's gradual reopening of a couple months of lockdown, which is probably (one of) the reason(s) why that particular player had decided to make an rwt listing prior to that date. i'm from Singapore myself and i genuinely hate how Singaporeans have become pretty much synonymous to RWTers here - most of my friends can attest to this, and it was one of the primary reasons why i'd decided to apply for Staff in the first place. while i accept that it's likely impossible to eliminate RWT entirely, i'll still continue to do everything in my capacity, both as a player and a Staff member, to mitigate it as much as i can

the points above might not justify my response entirely, but in my honest opinion, that ban appeal was shaping up to be a waste of time, and the person appealing was using irrelevant analogies/references to victimise himself. i still stand by the view that he (or any of us really) was thinking too highly of himself when he assumed the ban was made out of a personal vendetta against him - no bans are made on this premise

there are individuals in Staff who genuinely care about the community and its people, and i firmly believe this has also been evident in their day-to-day actions as they carry out their duties. i'm not as outgoing or friendly as them, which is something i recognise and also admitted in my application previously. as such, my replies might come across too strongly or offhanded for some. unfortunately though, i didn't sign up to coddle players or make others feel good, much less a group of cheaters (especially the RWTers) who are affecting the game in every detrimental way possible. i'm sorry you found my behaviour unacceptable, and i'll be more mindful about this, but i'm not going to apologise for doing (what i feel is) my job

perhaps you'd disagree with this approach, but ultimately, Staff members share a common vision of improving the server, albeit in different ways. we appreciate your feedback and as already mentioned, all of us are humans and all of us are still learning. if you (or anyone else) feel that a lot more can be done a lot better, please feel free to make an application and i'm sure your subsequent contributions will be valued as well

also, fwiw, besides painfully obvious cases, major bans (e.g. RWT, vote abuse etc.) are always verified with an Admin first. please also bear in mind that the Staff member answering the appeal is not necessarily the Staff member who made the ban - i hope this helps to address some of the concerns you'd raised

 

Being from Singapore, being against RWT, him being an RWTer, and how common RWT is in Singapore are all irrelevant to the point that was being made. I don't disagree with any of that and I wasn't at all critical of the ban itself. I'm with you, that shit is rampant, it's a problem and it needs to stop. We see eye to eye there entirely.

The disconnect we're having is that you're somehow conflating "coddling" players or being "friendly" with simply acting respectful, mature, consistent, and keeping your emotions in line. In a nutshell, behaving professionally. Claiming that the "ban appeal was shaping up to be a waste of time" as a way of somehow justifying acting rude and insulting the player makes no sense whatsoever considering you went on to waste your time making comments that had zero relevance to the game, ban, or appeal. This was the issue the other Singaporean GM kept having too. He'd mistake being a polite adult for being soft, and make excuses almost identical to yours about how he knows how these people are blah blah blah. (maybe it's just a disconnect in culture and your normal is our rude? Idk)

Again, "doing your job" isn't the issue. It was never the issue. It has not been brought up once. Do your job, hell yeah, dude, do that shit! I'm all for you doing your job, that's what you were hired to do, and you should be doing it.

Don't be rude to players, and don't insult players in the process, is the message that I am trying to send (the issue was this: "please go out and get some sun because evidently you're in desperate need of it"). Obviously I get it, you can continue to behave however you'd like just as long as there isn't enough backlash (and I'm a minority voice for sure), but ultimately that's the point I'm trying to get across and nothing about "doing your job" or anything like that - I'm on board with that 100% and we all appreciate each and every GM who does perform their duties!

I'm glad you guys appreciate it and I appreciate you guys listening to what we have to say. We may sound critical but we know that there are plenty of good things y'all are doing too.

 

fwiw, depending on the state you're in I can recommend such things. Hooray for being a healthcare professional.

Anyone who makes claims to have cut their wrists (either seriously, or as an attempt to guilt people...) should seek professional help. Period. He opened that door by posting it, not the other way around.

edit: I'm aware he was speaking in the past tense, I've bolded the relevant part.

 

I think you're missing the point. Staff members shouldn't be giving these type of recommendations in a ban appeal or in a public forum.
This should be addressed in a private message.

 

No- I get what you said I just disagree lol.

The player brought it up- could gert have just ignored it? Sure. But you're claiming he shouldn't have addressed it publicly when the player brought it up, then it would have been even less appropriate to PM him about it.

 

can we just respond all ban appeals with memes?

 

OP, I want you to know that people can interpret things differently from one another. Unfortunately, this means that there are interpretations that aren't correct or logically sound in relation to reality. It might hurt ones feelings but sometimes its best to admit that in some instances what one feels isn't correct or logical.

 

I don't think it's the staff's responsibility to respond to everything tit for tat all the time.

In other words, I disagree with your reasoning that because the appealer brought something up, staff should respond. This is a ban appeal, so we should keep it as a ban appeal. Any life tips should be shared elsewhere or in this case, privately. Why are we under the impression if someone dishes out their dirty laundry in a ban appeal, staff members have to respond or it looks bad?