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

This isn't dirty laundry, this isn't him sharing about the time he went to Ben and Jerry's.- the player was using his past mental state (and attempted suicide) to garner sympathy on a major vote abuse (perm) ban. It was relevant.

Also, saying someone needs help isn't a life tip lol.

 

That's a really wordy way to say I disagree with you.

You have every right to disagree with me but do not act as if your opinions are only valid and everyone else's opinion "isn't correct."

 

I don't think we will agree on this and that's okay.

 

GMs should give this meme when they know their time is being wasted xd

 

I think the general feeling from the community is that we do appreciate the work GM's put and acknowledge it's volunteered time, the community, believes the edgelord responses can probably be done away with. I'm really surprised a template isn't applied since majority of the threads are:

Vote abuse
RWT
Hacking

The rest are tech support issues that take a little more time to review/figure out. This is a feedback thread so I'll list what I feel are good responses to these scenarios:

Vote abuse: We have found you have been banned for major vote abuse, you are only entitled to vote on one character once per day. Per our policy you will no longer be able to access MapleRoyals.

Leave a response available, I'm not sure how GM's or even if they care about a post white list, or to make sure they aren't in an internet cafe or something.

RWT: The team has found substantial evidence of you soliciting, attempting to, or performing RWT, per our policy we cannot reveal the evidence or details as it was either reported anonymously or jeopardizes our ability to catch these cases in the future.

Hacking/botting: We have evidence of you using one of the following hacks and or botting: (Input hack here), per MapleRoyals policy your account, IP, and mac address all have been suspended/blocked and will no longer have access to Mapleroyals.

This one I'm kind of iffy on because there was a time where a lot of false bans were made where people were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I also don't agree that threads should be ended with "Wish you the best, take care of yourself", just comes off very pretentious and insincere. If they respond with "okay", then just say: "As the appeal has been resolved the thread will be closed". Or if they try to ask for a second, just reinforce policy statement: Per our policy users who have violated the rules that result in perma ban and are unable to appeal the ban, will lose access to MapleRoyals with no additional considerations. The appeal has been resolved and the thread will now be closed.

It's to the point, has no emotion or a reflection of personality with an authoritative conclusion. I think more players just want to see this, otherwise being in a power position, can see some innocent responses suddenly become insincere and pretentious.

Overall I do think the bottom line is majority of the time we are dealing with unapologetic cheaters and I can understand how that is frustrating. I'm not going to sit here and say anyone is doing a bad job but if I were king for a day, that's my feedback on how I'd handle my responses.

 

Just pa

Just passing by saying thx for your help in the forum about that damn folder, haven’t been able to fix it yet but I appreciate your time

 

by using a template, the next thing you know people are posting feedback saying gms are bots. one person says gm should be acting professional and shit, another reply says gm should respond only using memes. tbh i'm all for meme replies

is there even a correct answer? maybe it's time for a poll

 

Could've been worse.

 

I just went to see the thread you are mentioning and you are totally getting out of context the words of the GM. He legit sent him to seek help in all good intention, the guy that made the post alleged that he has a severe mental condition and as a guy who has depression I can confirm that maplying this with friends Helps a lot but in his condition he really needs to seek help not maplying a game for a momentary fun

 

I enjoy the drama of ban appeals as much as the next guy, but some of the responses do come off as a bit sharp sometimes. That being said, I don’t really hold it against them, I can’t imagine the monotony of dealing with the same issues over and over again, they are basically stuck in Groundhog Day. You have to been insane to take that job in the first place, so I think a bit of combativeness can be forgiven.

 

It's a ban appeal. All that needs to be said is, "Sorry, we do not reverse permanent bans for any situation," and if Gert wishes to do so, he can privately message the person regarding mental health and seeking help. AGAIN, I don't understand why caring for someone has to be shown publicly, almost as if it's some sort of dog + pony show.

Read previous responses. I am not saying Gert SHOULDN'T care about the guy, I'm saying that a ban appeal is NOT the platform for this. A private message would have been more appropriate.

I agree that this is not an easy job considering it's volunteering work. BUT, that is no excuse for continued bad behavior towards players. We're not complaining about one-offs because we're all human and have bad days sometimes. It's the repeated bad behavior that we are calling out.

 

If you insist that ban appeal isn't the right place for GMs to discuss subjects that are irrelevant to the appealer's ban status, the same should apply to the appealer.

Here's an easy solution. Before staff replies to a ban appeal, let them delete any text in the appeal that's irrelevant to the ban so that they won't have to meddle with irrelevant fields of interest AND save their time. Then, they won't have to worry about refuting all the dramatic excuses and made up stories that may entail immoderate responses. All their replies will be systematic and "professional". If the appealer wishes to bring up anything external, let them initiate the irrelevant talk via PM.

 

Regarding the main subject - I think it's completely natural that every GM has their own way of responding to ban appeals, and also completely natural for them to get upset when people are personally attacking them. they're human, like everyone else.
They're not here to be your friends. especially not in the ban appeal section.
At the end of the day, if someone came forward with proof of innocence, they'd unban them not matter how rude they were.

Regarding the mental health remark - I think you guys should try to empathize what it's like responding to a post where someone tries to use their (supposed) attempted suicide to get unbanned.
I'm positive that's not a situation any of u want to be in, and I don't think you should be nitpicking how a specific GM responded in it.
You might think saying "please seek professional help" or giving other advice is rude, evidently, others don't. it's a matter of opinion, and I don't see how a GM can respond in a way that works for everyone.

I think a point that almost no one addressed in this thread is the sheer amount of appeals the staff has to deal with on a daily basis.
I think we should all appreciate the fact that the staff in this game are volunteers, who are doing their very best to help shape this community and game into a better one.

 

Exactly! You're never gonna be able to cater to everyone's opinions, so there's no point nitpicking.

 

I personally love the responses GMs give. If every response was some copy-paste vanilla crap, I wouldn't enjoy reading ban appeals.

 

Gee, this thread blew out quickly.

Re. the mental health related post, I think Gert could've said something like "I will pm you. However, as you've unequivocally breached the TnCs of our server you will remain permanently banned." It's easy to see how remarks like "Seek professional help" can come across as dismissive / sardonic when placed in a public forum in a situation where the responder is not in a same position of power. Having said that, of Gert's recent ban appeal replies this was probably one of the more professional ones so it's probably not the best example to reflect OP's point.

Spoiler

This is irrelevant. The two ban appeals have entirely different premises under which account sharing was perpetuated and in any case, most of the responses were actually targeted at Dave's insensitive remarks as staff, rather than Shane's handling of said appeal. "Just this once lift the rule" also doesn't capture the substance that was discussed in that thread which centred around compassion and discretion and in any case I'm not convinced that's a quote someone actually said.

The OP was clearly talking about Gert, and there's not much point making things anonymous when we're clearly pointing fingers here. I agree that the demeanour in which he has been replying to recent ban appeals has been a distinct contrast to when he first was promoted to staff. This is nothing personal, and I don't think it's a reflection of his underlying attitude. In fact, I'm not even sure it's intentional.

To me this is a reflection of burnout. I think the few staff members who retain a sense of responsibility for this server have been extremely overworked over the last few months especially with the influx of hackers / rwters / vote abusers owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a number of GMs who remain as staff for well over 6 months and are barely active both in game and in their staff duties - yes, you volunteered for the job. No, that does not mean the community doesn't have a right to have expectations of you. Replying ban appeals once a fortnight and banhammering hackers once a month does not suffice to make you an active member of staff (yes, to an extent I am making assumptions here but more than welcome for individuals to dispute this with evidence). What we're subsequently left with is some of the interns, some of the GMs and some of the admins who are tanking the workload of this server's maintenance and with the lack of autoban rollout, burnout is inevitable.

If members of staff feel like they're not making a contribution to this community in their capacity as staff, or are experiencing burnout (officially an ICD-11 diagnosis as of 2022), may I suggest taking a hiatus from your staff status, focusing on the things that you enjoy about this game and beyond this game, and taking a genuine break?

The ban appeal subforum is there to promote a sense of transparency. It is not so people can entertain themselves. Staff have every right to expect respect from appealers, and similarly the community also have the right to observe the way in which staff handle appeals which is a direct reflection of their professionalism.

Spoiler

to this end, I am requesting that the thread "What is your favourite ban appeal" be locked and deleted. I don't believe staff should be endorsing appeal-shaming.

 

Absolutely agree with all of this, from self-care during burnout to removing the favorite ban appeal thread. I've mentioned that exact thing repeatedly in the past, but it didn't feel right for me to bring it up this time around since recently I've been relentlessly milking that thread for forum likes lmfao.

In terms of staff activity though, I will say that this is one of the most active I've seen the staff roster been in a really long time (since I've been here really, if I'm being honest). Although not all of them are active in ban appeals--especially since we put a different staff member on blast for their colorful language in that section a while back--I do know that they are active in the server and in their duties. We always talk about how MapleRoyals is a community, and about how we should respect our staff members for dedicating their time and energy for the good of this community. But then we criticize them for suggesting that a fellow player threatening self-harm ought to seek professional help. While I agree that there can certainly be an increase in professionalism for staff members in handling ban appeals as a whole, a lot of this also hinges on the community at large to consider the unrealistic expectations we place on them when we want to laugh at ban appeal memes but also demand mechanical precision of due process. Ultimately, there does seem to have been a significant increase for this server's permanent playerbase for the long term beyond COVID. This is great news, generally. But given this increase in workload maybe it's time again for more batches of people to apply for GM, since I know there are many qualified people out there.

 

As a frequent viewer of the ban appeal section, I just want to say some of the appeals are downright mean to staff. Staff are doing everything they can to help the server stay hacker / RWT / etc free. The amount of appeals they have to deal with is probably longer than any book you've ever read.

Just like we volunteer our time to play this game, they volunteer their time to moderate it. While some of the language they use when replying to appeals can be a bit nicer, I don't see anything inherently wrong with how they reply. Holding a volunteer to the same standard as someone who is paid doesn't seem fair to me and with Covid going around and tensions are high in many different households for a lot of different reasons. As long as there isn't any blatant disrespect coming from Staff's replies, which I don't feel there is, I don't see a problem.

I do like that the OP posted about this because it is an issue that should be discussed openly. I personally don't find it a problem as of now but it's good that it is brought out into the open so going forward we can all be a bit more conscientious.

Keep up the great work, staff!