I want to be infinitely clear that I am not challenging the result of these appeals, just expressing that no lesson was really learned here; https://royals.ms/forum/threads/raonys-ban-appeal.180354/ Raoyny's infintiely more difficult ban appeal, with 2-3 people providing evidence of repeated behavior was let off on a warning and was resolved within 3 days, with barely a full week suspension. https://royals.ms/forum/threads/loopy’s-ban-appeal.180383/ The other ban resulting from this petty feud has been not even discussed for a full 11 days. Triple the amount of time to reach a conclusion, with nearly no work involved. Loopy's ban was essentially he got a fair ban for saying a slur. The other two bans were treated retroactively and became permanent as far as I can tell from the thread conversation. Thus he was given a chance to appeal it, which by common sense should be an easy yes or no answer. Spoiler: With this context They were both in the wrong, Tim acknowledged this and said both would serve a ban, while Raony tried to utilize a connection to avoid it. Both these cases should have been handled at the same time, with the same amount of applied leniency. I just want to emphasize I don't know either of these players, their results do not impact me, but this just demonstrates the clear favoritism that was complained about in the other threads. This should be common sense. Merry Christmas eve.
Just because one case had a 35-page feedback thread on it does not necessarily mean that it's "infinitely more" complex than another unrelated case.
I find it extremely jarring for multiple reasons, but what frustrates me the most is that Loopy’s 2nd ban for saying the ‘c-word’ was considered hate speech, not harassment. Why has the dialogue not progressed, giving him the opportunity to state his case and appeal?
Let's humor this thought; You have an individual that had to cross reference with another person's story, including within 35 pages others being treated the same way. I will trust there is some factor that was not known to us that led to the GM reaching her decision. But this required Context from an admin Context from another party 35 page thread of other info What does Loopys appeal have that makes it more complex than this? You literally had a rule placed to avoid the type of ban that Loopy went through, retroactive 3 stage prong. I feel this is a lot less complicated as it's literally just the very staff talking with eachother and making a determination based on the circumstances, even if that's a no. I don't have the imagination to quite come up with a variable that would make this case more complex than this individuals, I welcome any ideas.
Without revealing any confidential information... Raony's case involved one action against one player. Loopy's case involves multiple actions against multiple players, and naturally involves multiple reports as well. Loopy's appeal is additionally complicated because it involves a permanent ban caused by ban evasion, and requires us to look through his infraction history. This is particularly relevant for members of Staff like me and Dave who do not have access to ban logs. And the rule that was recently implemented also complicates the case, as there are questions of whether it should apply retroactively and also of how to best enforce the spirit of this rule in light of community discussion. You say Raony's case required assessing a "35 page thread of other info" as if much of that thread was even relevant information, or as if we would break proper procedure by personally digging for evidence from a public thread in the Fedback section rather than accepting actual proper evidence submitted through the Report Abuse section. And you say that Raony's case required "cross reference with another person's story" as if that isn't the fact with literally every harassment-related ban appeal. Raony's case was much simpler than most people would imagine--especially once we reversed Tim's involvement in the case and considered his ban appeal on a blank slate. If the point of this thread was that Loopy's ban appeal individually (and maybe also ban appeals generally) was taking too long, I would consider that fair feedback. But your point is that Loopy is selectively being shown disfavoritism by Staff based on the limited information you have on the situation, and I would not consider that a fair assessment. Concluding all of this as being "common sense" is not a good-faith argument. But to address any legitimate concerns players may actually have of favoritism: The Staff member who took the initiative in processing Raony's ban appeal had no idea who neither Raony nor Loopy were before their whole situation was publicly brought to light in the forums. And I'm pretty sure they don't care now either. As a matter of fact, this applies to all members of Staff who were involved in Raony's most recent ban appeal.
This worries me. In the feedback thread, multiple users confirmed that raony did in fact post sharon’s facebook pic (from 2014) in a particular guild’s discord server, which goes against the information harvesting rule worded within the terms of service. In terms of applying the rule retroactively, if this happens to be the case, it is clear that raony decided to report Loopy only once loopy had collected two bans for profane language (if you consider the timing of the report and the SS between raony and tim). If I am not mistaken the incident reported by raony happened prior to loopy’s 1st and 2nd ban. Loopy’s case is complicated due to his ban evasion. While i don’t agree with his actions, it is worth noting that loopy started evading during his 2nd ban. He acted under the assumption that the punishment for such offence would only be an additional 7 days. There was no way for him to know that raony had reported him for an incident that had occurred several weeks prior. He was unaware his ban was made permanent. I realise this is no excuse for such behaviour, but it should be considered that his intention was not to evade a permanent ban. It does not make sense why he would evade a permanent ban without having yet to appeal. Regardless of the ban evasion, he should be given the chance to appeal his 1st, 2nd or 3rd ban due to the fact that - if one ban was incorrectly given, he would not be on a permanent ban. The dialogue for such an opportunity has progressed slowly which is annoying considering the level of attention offered to raony in his ban appeal. Being able to overturn one offence would change the ban evasion duration from permanent to 7 days.
What's jarring to me is how loopy was given a second chance to appeal very shortly after his first appeal has been denied and he was caught ban evading while many others were denied this privilege many years after their ban, their thread getting locked with no reply
The multiple reports to the multiple players is such a red herring. Mapleroyals runs by infractions based on the circumstances, Tim used this as the basis for most of his decisions, so if he's reported for say the C-word by 20 people, he's not infracted 20 times. The question isn't if the reports at this point are valid, the question is the implementation of the infraction; which results in the question of how the rule should be applied. This leads to my basis that it shouldn't take a week to resolve this, while Raony's is actually more involved as it does take actual research, only took 3 days lmao. That's ridiculous. I could list at least 4 things off the top of my head that would have made that bannable in any system with a ToS in place, disregarding it because it's not in a formal report is not only irresponsible but flat out dishonest. Imagine minimizing peoples contributions with screenshots because they aren't put in a report to be ignored, which wow interesting, it's like, when RWT is mentioned a report doesn't need to be made. It isn't, because harassment is an umbrella term that can be solved just by looking at whispers of someone calling me a fat virgin loser or something. This one took special care to get context (which btw, arguably has demonstrated a misogynist attitude that is no longer valid because of the new rule); half your staff quit over this appeal because of how it was handled, yet reached extremely different conclusions. I would argue to ascertain the spirit of someones words is infinitely harder than doing something as simple as determining how rules are placed, with little to no consequence. You made a quicker decision on whether to allow a misogynist on the server lol The entire ban appeal was written twice and once in the thread, by Tim himself, what context do you believe I'm missing? The issue is you have two high profile cases that both hurt the reputation of the staff, yet only the one who had proven favoritism was handled with the upmost haste. They were both involved/connected yet it only reinforces the point that this player received favoritism even if that wasn't the intention. One high profile case was taken care of in 3 days time with immediate attention and it's only a coincidence he was friends with the admin which we have screenshot evidence of him asking for preferential treatment. None of the Gm's need to know who he is, we have proof the admin did already. Even if the cases are both being handled as any other case, you guys really lack the foresight to see the repercussions of resolving two high profile cases like this? Like damn, no wonder half the staff quit lmao.
this is what i think: 1. don should be unbanned 2. loopy should be unbanned 3. raony shouldn't be banned due to the background regarding his relationship with Sharu but given their relationship now it's better for them to avoid each other and similar behavior from either side would have no tolerance given the new context. ty have a nice day. i also found out i think u can say "porn" in the game but not "c word" literally just c word so well... What is the moral of this story? Don't watch British comedy movies like Hot Fuzz with Simon Pegg because they use words like that XD. After all it is rated R. R people!! That means if u are 16 and below you need a parent to see it!! So if you are a MapleRoyals player aged 13-16 you will be traumatized from playing here if people use that word!!!!! omg. but on the other hand if u say weird stuff like uwu daddy or some other weird stuff I guess the chat filter can't understand it. does not compute error !!!!
An umbrella warning to everyone: This thread will be swiftly locked if it devolves into another debate of who should and should not be banned. You're out here throwing out pretentious debate terminology, but I need you to understand that you don't know what you're talking about. And that's okay, because you lack full context on the cases you bring up and I want to clarify any misunderstandings people might have. The problem is that you're so adamant about insisting how obvious your logical conclusions must be when they are based on mistaken assumptions. You don't want to accept my explanation as to why Raony's case was simpler than people believe, and why Loopy's case is more complex than people believe. Unfortunately there's nothing I can say further. That is correct, we don't always rely on formal reports when it comes to hacking and RWT. However, the way we manage reports of players actively exploiting game systems is appropriately very different from the way we manage reports of harassment between individual players. A major point of the feedback thread was that the entire process was mismanaged, but the solution was to make sure that Staff specifically do not become personally involved outside of official reports and appeals--not even more so. This has nothing to do within "minimizing people[']s contributions," and everything to do with the fact that there is a specific procedure of due process that we (try to) uphold--so it doesn't turn into complete disasters like it did back then. I'm actually baffled that you think it would be appropriate for Staff to dig through different sections of the forums in order to secure evidence for a harassment ban. How is that not absolutely ripe for issues of favoritism for and against certain players by Staff? It's the same reason we accept reports of hackers based on names alone, but for reports of other infractions such as scamming or harassment we require full and unedited screenshots. We take action on what is properly submitted through an anonymous abuse report, and not allegations arising from public discourse. If players want to submit a report against another player for harassment, the responsibility is on them and not on Staff to provide proper evidence of the reported actions in order for us to best evaluate the situation. You're entitled to your opinion, parts of which I would even agree with. But like I said before, you're relying on way too many assumptions in formulating your conclusions. I can understand why people think we're showing favoritism. The only thing any member of Staff can realistically reply to that is that it's untrue. And if people don't want to believe my earlier explanation on the matter, then I honestly don't even blame y'all given the circumstances lol. But like I said, aggressively asserting how infallible your conspiracy theory must be based on the limited information you have is not good-faith feedback for improvements to this server. Like damn, I really did not expect the repercussions of Staff trying to do their job as best as possible would be this. No wonder half the Staff quit lmao.
You're extremely misreading my tone and I feel that is making your own posts more aggressive than necessary. For example, this is not a debate, and I feel red herring was an appropriate terminology (including this post) to be used. Appealing to the unknown isn't as credible since the circumstances have been kind of laid out publicly. You're talking about enforcing rules on a system that has lost player base confidence, I feel as though discussing a compromise to show discipline since an erroneous error appears to have been made. Complicated is verifying the claims of two strangers, enforcing your own server rules on a specific case, the worst has already happened. You do realize in the appeal your staff had conceded they did exactly that right? They conceded in the report that he saw how he responded to people and for him to be the bigger man, as if Tim had his own contribution to it lmao. Yes, I feel in a sexual harassment circumstance, these screenshots and explanations should be taken into consideration. You're hyperbolizing a specific circumstance where half the staff quit over the decision, prior to the thread, so yeah, I believe when the user is being dishonest about many factors and other users come to report a behavioral problem, such as sexual harassment, all cards are on the table. So for you to suggest that players confessions are not relevant in the thread, is either misspoken or extremely disrespectful, pick one. Is it not my responsibility as a player to bring this perspective to your attention? Do you think it's right that two high profile cases at face value were handled at entirely different paces with the context of the entire Tim instigation? Let's be clear you chose the tone of this conversation, I'm a rational person, if you explained that it is being handled and it's an unfortunate coincidence, fine. However with that context in mind it be much in the better interest of the staff to show reflection that the case has it's appropriate attention, image now more than ever is important.
You can close the thread, you answered but my feedback ultimately should be not that appeals are lazy but there definitely should be more communication shown specifically for that case as it's high profile and players like me are in doubt things are being handled honestly.
