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

Agreed. After all it is a private server.

Also to be honest, while I enjoy reading ban appeal BS quite often, I can totally understand that reading the 1000th "I just played 2 months and got 80B net worth but no idea how my main is spelled" thread can be super frustrating. So I think there might actually be a certain burnout effect for sure, if you got a functioning brain so some harder tones at some times - we - as the users - simply have to condone that. "To live and let live"

I probably read most of the appeals during the last 2 years, and from this perspective, I was more often surprised how calm and "professional" those GMs respond to the bans than I was repelled from their responses. Sometimes I thought they were a bit too hard with probably honest players, but most of the times they are quite fair - especially when you consider it is not a PAID job but their own life time that they put in.

Also this "you overrate yourself" appeal - when I followed it, I totally agreed with that GM. Cause this guy really overrated himself quite a bit, following by posting memes and dramatic things like "you cannot silence the truth" and irrelevant stuff like that instead of once and for all just showing evidence. As I see it, It's actually the appealers dragging these appeals towards drama in my opinion. Your point is, that staff should be responding super nicely, perfectly political correct in every way at all times. But why actually? I do not think they should say "Have a nice day" or "Sorry" if they do not mean it. If you are polite they will not shoot back to you. As easy as that.

Also OP, I find it quite unfair that you expect one GM to be more polite by not publicy adressing certain topics in his own way - by actually exposing him publicly. You could call this rude by your own logic!

On top of that, the given example does not have to be interpreted that rude. Actually only rarely have I read a rude one during a long time - e.g. something like "get the F out of here and never come back". I think that you should not get offended by ban appeals that much - cause after all they are just here to narrow down the false positives?

 

Gert,

It takes a big man to take accountability for his actions, but completely stepping away from ban appeals is not a step in the right direction. As other have mentioned, we (the community) appreciate all the work you and other Staff members have done and will continue to do. This was meant as a feedback thread for you and other Staff members to take a more neutral stance on replies specifically in ban appeals. No one is out for your head and demanding you leave ban appeals.

Instead, you should take this opportunity to continue to improve your responses in ban appeals and that's how you can serve the community and show us that you care.

 

Alot of us appreciate the bluntness. Take time to work to refine how you respond in appeals based on severity of the offense but keep the no nonsense attitude when dealing with hackers, scammers and rwters. Especially the ones who try and play dumb or insult your guys intelligence.

Dont beat yourself up so much. This threads purpose is to help give you feedback and while i dont agree with all of it, atleast theyre not asking to remove you. Ive seen far harsher threads put up. You do a good job of being active and showing the community you care. Much love my dude

 

I can second this.

 

Yeah i may or may not have once even participated in it. Is it too late to apologize for the pitchforks?

 

I'm not sure if it's too late to add onto this thread, as it seems resolutions have been made, but I do want to talk about a few things...

- 1st: I think that @Gert has made a really professional statement and definitely showed immense strength as a person. It takes a lot of courage to admit your self-flaws and take in all the negative feedback. Not only that, but to make a public statement to the people makes me (as a bystander) feel that you really care about the server and have not acted with malice intent.

- 2nd: I think this may be a key to a lot of the disagreements in this thread.

Though its a generalization, I feel that alot of the supporters of the OP thread are from NA, like myself. I definitely think there is a cultural disconnect between us. In the US, we are always taught that the customer is always right, etc, and always being super respectful to the clients. That is even if they are clearly being dumb and wasting our time. We just go home and complain on twitter about the "Karens". It may not be the most logical thing to basically "baby" the client, but it really is what's expected of us. I do consider the ban appeals in a similar way of a customer service related job.

Here the thing is, I don't think that the demand is the speak with respect. The demand is to not speak with disrespect. It's completely different to belittle and make fun of the banned people for their ridiculous excuses than to say something like "you were caught RWT / hacking , you will not be allowed to continue playing on the server." I agree that the human thing to do is to be upset at them for basically assuming GM's are dumb enough to believe them, but remember the GM's are representing the server as a whole. just like the store rep is representing the store. Regardless, it's just how we are taught to not act w our emotions like that.

Personally, I don't think this is a valid reason to include any emotional comments. If it is really the case, the thread should be end with the simple statement of the verdict being served and the thread should be locked.

Though it's true that's not what the GM job details state, it's not the coddling I'm asking for. I think it should be the lack of disrespecting people and their character. For example stating "someone is in need of sun" is completely unnecessary regardless of what they have said or done. GM's act as judge and jury. And they need to in order for this ban appeal system to work. I think just addressing that the ban appeals are fair and not personal vendettas once should be enough. There doesn't need to be follow up comments regardless of what the appealer says. The verdict has been served. The appealer may be salty, but just lock the thread and continue on.

This just doesn't sit well with me when said out loud. I really don't think the point of the ban appeals is intended to be entertainment for the player base. Yes. it's true that's how most people see it, but realistically I don't think that's how it was designed to be. It shouldn't feel like the GM's are comedians poking fun and pointing out ridiculousness of the appealers. I feel that it should be like a court case. Publicized so that the player base can see that criminals are being punished and are being punished fairly.

- Lastly, I really dislike the attitude that a lot of players have towards the fact that being a GM is volunteer work. In my opinion, whether or not someone is getting paid to do something really shouldn't determine if they should be required to act a certain way. I think it's a poor excuse. Paid or not, GM's represent the server. They signed up to do that. Their actions will leave impressions on the player base regardless of the wage. An example for this I have experienced personally would be volunteering at a nursing home or hospital. As a volunteer, it doesn't mean I'm not expected to treat the patients with respect and patience even if they are being really difficult and refusing to listen. The supervisors expected me to treat the patients the same way the paid nurses treat them. I just really don't think volunteers should be allowed to act entitled like that. No pay, no politeness??? GMs are humans so they will have emotions, but all that I expect are that they keep these out of public eye where they should act as unbiased leaders and judges.

 

As of my point of view-
People break the rules- hack/rwt/vote abuse, then make a ban appeal that totally wastes the gms time- checking voting history/digging dipper into dits (they don’t get paid for it) and they could’ve helped someone else instead of wasting their time, and then you expect the appealer to be sugar coated?
hell nah, if someone would’ve wasted my time like that It’d totally annoy me.

I feel the banned dudes pain, ofc it hurts, but there are always 2 sides to an equation.
And of course, we all can try to improve ourselves every day and try to be better human beings, but remember we all are human beings! :3

 

the main purpose of my comments was to provide a context for those who're not aware of the situation in Singapore, both for the lockdown and for the prevalence of Singaporean RWTers in the game. it wasn't to provide reasons or excuses for the response, simply because i personally feel there's nothing about my actions to defend - it's my style/personality and that isn't something i'm going to apologise for (unless i'd committed a cardinal sin or something). the same way OP and other players have called us (Gert and i, since it's no secret that we're in the crosshairs here) out, i too, called that appealer out for his baseless and absurd analogies

nevertheless, i fully acknowledge that it was highlighted due to the nature and phrasing of my statements, and also understand that all of us would have different views. this, in turn, is perhaps attributed to varying cultures, upbringing, perspectives, environment etc. (we could continue to discuss this further but it would probably derail from the point of this thread). as such, i'd apologised that my behaviour was deemed unacceptable to certain groups of players due to this premise -

i'm admittedly not the most amicable person around, but i believe majority of my responses (be it in appeals or other forum sections) have generally been polite, or at the very least, rational. i do undoubtedly tend to get more invested when handling RWT bans though

if we go through the ban appeal in question (linked here: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.163921/), i think it's quite clear who and what eventually resulted in the aggravated exchanges, especially from the appealer's last post

were my final comments deliberately snarky? yes, they were
were they personal/emotional? yes, they definitely were
were they necessary? for the most part, no

but were they founded? given what transpired, they were (well, at least to me)

it's been brought up many times before about how Staff should embody professionalism akin to a full-time job, regardless of the fact that this is an unpaid, volunteer stint for a game. but there's no official manual, there's no detailed job description, there's no career path to define. because of that, there will inevitably be different interpretations of what the position entails exactly and our personalities will go on to determine how that manifests in our duties

to reiterate, we (and i believe i speak for Staff as a whole) do value and appreciate the feedback that players give, even though it might not always be apparent or that obviously acted upon. in this case, since the relevant Staff members can address the concerns directly by being mindful of our behaviour to be more considerate of others' views, of course we'd be happy to do so. but please do also respect that we too have our values, beliefs, and even idiosyncrasies. no matter what we do, we can't satisfy everyone and we can't make everyone happy, but we can learn along the way and improve from there

likewise, if you strongly believe that things around here are not handled up to your standards, then please make a Staff application as any and all contribution is always welcomed

editing in an afterthought (had to rush for cake earlier):

i think the comparison of Staff to volunteer positions irl and appealers (specifically) as patients is over-used and inaccurate

“patients” would probably be more applicable to the general playerbase. and (please correct me if i’m wrong) i don’t think any of the Staff members are inherently rude towards anyone and everyone just for the sake of it

on the other hand, at least 80% of appealers did break a rule of some kind, be it major or minor. to represent them more accurately in the above analogy, these players would probably fall under a “wrongdoer” category (e.g. people who commit insurance fraud to get a free hospital stay and hence deprive the general community of resources)

in such instances, would you still be subservient to these people, knowing full well what they’d done, not to mention having to indulge their countless excuses? i honestly doubt so. most would likely feel indignant towards them as well, and might even go as far as to give them a piece of mind

these might not entirely be identical situations, but i think the point is clear

 

While I can see how snarky, emotionally fueled comments and meme-slinging in ban appeals by GMs can somewhat degrade the perceived integrity of the process, these people are doing a multifaceted customer service job for free. I think a lot of us can relate working a shitty customer service job or two, where you become the scapegoat for somebody elses problems and run out of give-a-fucks for the day, repeating the same lines over and over. Imagine having to be a floor manager at a retail store that also has to catch thieves. Now imagine that job, but its like ban appeals and over half the customers are shitty. Now imagine again you're not even getting paid for it, just doing it for the love of the game. Who wouldn't lose their cool sometimes?

 

I agree with urban, nofrauds and many other people on this thread. After reading to maaannyy ban appeals I can say this: Gert is probably the most emotional person on the staff, and he really believes people can change for the better, but when they start lying on ban appeals he gets very mad (the gm is there at your disposal, doing volunteer unpaid job, as many have stated above, and are you really going to lie and try to make the staff look dumb? come on, if i was a gm I would be veery pissed at that too).

Spoiler

after reporting over 100+ people, i saw some appeals with their igns that i caught hacking + made video evidence and they still make a ban appeal and just say: "oh really? how was i hacking may i ask?" and im reading that rolling my eyes saying: dude pls. Just imagine this happenning every single day with them, that's not easy to not be pissed

Josh gets very emotional when talking about rwt (I can understand since we all can see the hard work he has put in this server as a player since 2016). We have to really see both sides of the equation, as nofraud stated.
Could their response be any different? Yes it could but it will get boring, all GM's would look like robots... I love how every staff's response is different and with that we can see a little bit of their personality, it is just a child game that we all love playing and having fun, we don't need to mechanize it.
Please staff, don't change anything I don't want to miss on those masterpiece responses on ban appeals, and that's also why we have a post dedicated to funny ban appeals

Spoiler: Masterpieces

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/oh-no-ban-appealo.163132/
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/gert.164761/
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/this-is-an-id-that-has-been-deleted.161677/
I can't remember the one where gert replied with the brain expanding meme
And let's not forget tim's famous bugs bunny "no"

 

yup I agree with everyone saying they are humans and I never intended to attack anyone, but rather my main point was to highlight where I think the criticism is coming from. I believe its still a culture thing where some may think its okay to be short w a customer/client because they are clearly wasting time rather than treating them neutrally/unemotionally (not even sugar coating) in order to preserve a company image. I'm not saying there's a correct way or incorrect way. Just saying there's got to be a cultural disconnect.

agree with this completely. I just expect people to see losing their cool as negative thing about themselves and I am seeing that. In the end, I'm not saying GMs should be perfect neutral and robotic, (which in my opinion would be ideal for ban appeals, but thats a topic for another day. Yes we mostly use them for entertainment, but really are ban appeals designed for our entertainment?), but they should at least understand that certain response styles will always invoke some negative feedback. It's not uncalled for. It's fine to get heated and emotional especially about something you care about, but afterwards I think we should reflect and say "wow I loss my cool. that wasn't the best way to handle it."

Side note: The GMs do participate in the community a lot. Make sure to catch them at other more "fun" oriented events or threads to get to know them better and see their character.

All I'm saying is that people in general, not even just GMs, should recognize when they are doing something that can negatively affect the brand they are representing.

Yup this is exactly what I, as a player, is looking for in GMs. I think this is a clear example of what I spoke about above. This is how, atleast I think, a good GM acts. I really like this statement.

Not that it matters too much, but the insurance case managers that have to deal with the fraudulent claims are still expected to act neutrally even to the most obvious false claims. I think my hospital example has taken away from my main point too much and really was unnecessary.

Despite everything I was talking about, I am an emotionally driven person and knowing that I don't think I'd be a good fit for the position. I wouldn't enjoy a moderator-like job where I think the best course of action would be remaining neutral and holding back emotions.

Last point: just want to restate this again. All of the above comments are my thoughts and opinions. They aren't some sort of infallible commandments. I don't think there is an actual "right" or "wrong". only cultural perspective.

 

"Go get some sun cause you desperately need it" and "never come back to our server" after wishing him "best endeavours" sounds rude/patronizing to me. But instead, you say "its my personality/style" and "theres no official rulebook" or "we all interpret things differently, cant please everyone." You can't use a tough love personality to justify your inappropriate comment. If it were a blatantly sexist or racist remark, would you still be using the same excuses when more people gang up on you for it? Or is that still up to interpretation because we all have different styles? Im sure youre mad, but it doesn't do any good to fight fire with fire or with a tit for tat attitude. People are saying its ok to be mad, and I agree, but its also ok to be mad and NOT type anything back too. I highly doubt that the guy is gonna burst into in tears after reading your comment, so you don't get anything from giving him a piece of mind either. If anything people are gonna be upset with the way you handled it and this thread shows why.

 

this is going to be my last response since we’re quite unfortunately going in circles here

(imo) we (Staff) are still the volunteers (“nurses”), dealing with the fraudulent “patient”. not sure how or why we would instead be the insurance fund managers

i’d only quoted your example context bc the point itself has been raised numerous times in several other threads, and i was hoping to put things into clearer perspective

the point (again, my opinion) remains though - players in general are the beneficiaries, and undoubtedly, we would and should treat each other with respect (my role/identity as a player comes first, not as a Staff member!). appealers (esp the ones who take us for fools) on the other hand, are the “fake patients” (for the lack of a better phrase) - they usually knowingly cheat (in particular the RWTers), then go on to lie and quite often, victimise themselves through fallacious statements in an attempt to squirm out of the situation

i believe the bulk of any responses we’ve made have largely been polite and professional as well. yes, there have been wrong bans before (though i daresay relatively few), for which we’ve readily apologised for our mistakes and for the trouble

i’ve made statements that address all of these so i’m not quite sure how to respond to you further

both the Staff members in question have already

1. acknowledged that we can be more considerate to certain groups of people
2. apologised for our perceived tactless behaviour
3. presented an actionable outcome on our parts for future learning

contrary to what might be popular belief, i don’t personally feel Staff members are an entirely customer-facing role (for reasons alr mentioned previously), but i’d overlooked that there are players who feel affected even if they’re not directly involved. so this thread will serve as a good reminder (which i believe was OP’s purpose as well)

i’m still not going to change my style and i’m still going to call cheaters out if they try to bullshit their way through. but i’ll be sure to sanitise my response(s) out of respect to those reading the appeal as well

 

I think at this point, we're traveling in circles.
The message from the community on both perspectives is loud and clear, so there is no more need to beat a dead horse.

I am requesting we lock this thread @Josh @Becca @Gert @Evan