Increase ban duration of Minor Infractions

With the recent in-game shitshow of smega spamming, I think that a 3day ban for a few of the minor infractions is too short. I previously was the person (or one of) who got Lizzzzzzzz her first ban for spamming, but she came back 3 days later to spam even harder. I think the progression of bans doesn't really make much sense either, 3day, 7day, then perma.

Suggestion: Make Minor Infractions 1,2: First Offense: 7 day, Second Offense 14 day, Third Offense, Permanent Ban

• 3 days are too short in my opinion, but 14 day is way too long for a first-time offense. The ban duration would make more sense as 7day, 14day, then perma.
• Minor Infractions 1-2 are much more ill-intent than 3-6. While many players get hate speech banned for saying something stupid in all chat, most harassment+disruption cases are very straightforward with the intent to harm/agitate people.

Scenarios:
This is Lizzzzzzzzzz before the first ban:



This is her after waiting 3 days:



P.S.
While on the topic. I don't see why GM's don't just perma her preemptively. She's just going to come back in 14days to spam for the perma ban.

 

How did you successfully get her banned? I previously reported individuals for smega spamming but was met with reply by GM Luna that I can simply mute my megaphone (that’s not the point) and that it doesn’t show anything offensive or intent on harassment.

Another case is Heroicsoul who only got banned because of ks-ing and not because of his smega when his obnoxious volume of smegas should have been considered harassment long time ago. I don’t care what top guild he was/is in, doesn’t justify his shitty behaviour either way.

I support this increase in duration, it has been proven time and time again these individuals will just come back for more. Giving them only a slap on the wrist just makes them skirt around the rules and continue their antics in a manner that is barely acceptable but not bannable and disrupting to all.

 

I believe theres a difference between annoying smegas and straightout abusing the system, I believe HeroicSoul was before the smega CD.

So at this point spamming via the way Lizzzzzzz is doing is abusing the system.

 

Update:

 

I agree,this server is way too lenient with scummy behavior. You could theoretically scam someone out of 100b,ruin potentially years of progression on his character,and only get banned for 3 days,which is ridiculous.

 

While the premise of this feedback thread is good, the specific targeting of one individual is not. If you feel this change should only come about because of this recent case, then your reasoning isn't very just.
It seems this thread was made purely as a public report on the player shown in the screenshots.

 

This feels like an extremely unfair characterization of this thread. Community feedback on the how punitive measures should apply to various harassment offenses has been active discourse for as long as the rule has been in place. This thread brings up an extremely salient recent example of a case (Lizz) to argue that the current rule system is ineffective in preventing problematic behavior in the community. And that further allows other commentators to compare that case to another recent case (HeroicSoul) to discuss how staff should respond to such behavior. No one has even used any derogatory language in reference to those people. I don't see how a single part of this "isn't very just" at all.

I mean, we literally have a staff-sanctioned thread where we essentially publicly shame individuals for their behavior. But god forbid someone mentions a specific case as a platform to improve the server...

 

So you embolden one part of my response to make the rest irrelevant?
The first post was just showing one specific example. Targeting one individual.
The second post starts off asking how the thread starter got that same individual banned.
The third post shows again, one example of one person's behavior. Same individual.
The fourth and fifth (double post) is again only highlighting that person's SMegas and then a seemingly self congratulations on accomplishing a ban to that person.

So I don't see it as an unfair characterization.

Community feed back is awesome and always welcome, but scapegoating is not. I think everyone deserves a fair shake and currently the rules that are in place (and have been for years) seem to work pretty well. You will always have a bad apple here and there but that doesn't mean the whole orchard needs to be burned down. I dislike toxicity and foul behavior more than most and if it were only up to me the rules would be more strict, but it's not up to me. It's not up to any one person, really.
And to be clear, this is my response as a player, I guess we have to go back to that old trite disclaimer that this is not an official staff response.

 

No shit Liz is being used as multiple examples in this thread because she's the only person at the moment that bypass the current smega system to spam nonsense. How else can we illustrate the situation other than using Liz as an example? The point is to call for longer ban duration on minor infraction, not focusing on getting Liz banned because that has already been done by OP and the rest (if any) in Report Abuse.

Everyone else was advocating on stricter punishment for minor infraction except for Madori, so maybe you're having the wrong thought on this thread.

 

Old and trite that disclaimer may be, it is an important one because your label as staff means you are representing them in your each and every post. This is also why I disagree with the ban appeal shaming thread; it is best deleted to be perfectly honest.

We digress though. If the change in ban duration were to happen I would suggest enforcing the change for all of the minor infractions - we shouldn’t feel like we need to delineate minor infractions into “this deserves a 7 day ban” vs. “this deserves a 3 day ban”.

What we should be considering is perhaps if all of those minor infractions are appropriately worded. Kill stealing and mapownership related drama have been around for years and that rule probably needs to be reviewed or at least discussed. Is 20map Lyka ownership at the same time really appropriate?

Similarly the nature of hate speech bans is often questioned and I don’t necessarily think “you can always report the person who reported you if you are just retaliating” is a good response to those appeals.

 

I bolded one part of your response to emphasize what I was responding to in particular. I clearly addressed the rest of your comment as well so don't you dare try to pull that shit on me lmfao. Maybe I'll parse the rest of your post out this time for your ease of reading.

You seem to be explicitly ignoring the central point of this thread which is that these examples based on specific individuals highlight a specific need to reshape one of the most fundamental rules that we abide by in this server. Furthermore, the following posts regarding the disparity of results based on reports of same offensive behavior seem to be a critical point of discussion for this thread regarding the enforcement of rules.

I also want to specifically point out your dismissal of the fifth post in particular:



This is literally the owner of the server explaining the result of the individual's actions. If this isn't salient to the current discussion regarding how we punish harassment offenses, I don't know what fucking is.

What? Who's scapegoating who, exactly? This isn't a witch hunt trial. This is a case where a player has committed a clear and irrefutable wrong, followed by a community discussion of how those wrongs ought to be treated.

I strongly disagree. But you're entitled to your opinion.

This is an incorrect and misleading analogy, and reveals your fundamental misunderstanding of this thread. No one is suggesting that we burn down the whole orchard as a response to bad apples. If anything, people are literally saying maybe we should use stronger pesticides to prevent bad apples.

This makes no sense. Isn't this the whole point of feedback threads like this? So the community at large can have a stake in the way rules are defined and enforced?

 

I don't want to get off topic about having to clearly state that it's not an official staff response, but it seems pretty hypocritical to use your voice to say we don't get a voice.

As for the increase in ban duration, I think it's worked just fine as it has for years, so getting up in arms because of one recent occurrence likely will not change anything.
One interesting way to look at it, rather than increasing the duration would be to discuss stacking the Minor and Moderate infractions together instead of individually.

 

Hey @Muff, I think it’s valid reasoning that targeting one player normally is a bad point to go off of. However, with Lizzz it wasn’t her targeting a single player but affecting close to the majority people who were online, making her an extreme case.

I genuinely believe majority of players do reflect and think about their next actions from those who receive hate speech and ksing bans, but often times I don’t think many give a damn from harassment and objectionable behavior bans until they receive a second strike.

Another examples off of the top of my head are:
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.148189/

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/confession-and-request-of-clarification.147265/

You even were the one who dealt with the first link.

I think the offense of the first two minor infractions are more serious offenses. I believe the repercussions from a 3 day, 7 day, perma: harassment/obj behavior ban isn’t enough of a deterrent for players to care until they get their second ban or unless they get layered with multiple offenses.

P.S
@Dabsta We had one rare case of a player getting perma banned for repeated scamming, scamming gears upwards to 200-300b. The person took a 29 attack sock, and other assorted gears

 

They already hit the 2nd ban with 0 signs of changing. They most likely were just going to come back to do it again, or thought it was funny that they could do it 2 times and get away with it (not getting the perma). I think Lizzzz was a special case with not harassing a single player/group of players, but the entire server. Technically, if 2 different users are affected by her actions why shouldn't she get 2 bans? By that logic she probably deserves over 300 bans (This is a bad logic though lol).

If the situation had been different, like a guy who harasses girls for their social media plugs/pictures and stalks them, I would prefer him getting banned before his 3rd offense, rather than him hide behind the notion that he has 2 freebies.

I'm pretty sure muting specific smegas would require a decent amount of coding/time to implement. I'm sure if Matt could flip a switch on to mute specific people for smegas he would, people have been asking for it for quite some time since the TomBrady/Gardian days. But alas, I would not want Karven to spend time on such a feature, I believe most players would rather want Control Panel and new content instead.

 

Yeah. Unfortunately, the only way to not see certain smegas is to mute all. The smega CD was also supposed to help reduce spam/stupid smega wars, which it has for the most part.

Perhaps if you want, you could make your own feedback thread/poll to see how people feel about it after Control Panel stuff is live.

 

Getting back to the heart of the matter and the ultimate purpose of the thread, from my standpoint as a player I think first time offenders should only get a slap on the wrist. 3 days is plenty with how addicted we all are to this game (even if we don't admit it, we are). However maybe increasing the duration of the second offense to 10 or 14 days wouldn't be a bad option. I mean, everyone makes mistakes and sometimes the heat of the moment gets to us and we lash out. Or maybe a private conversation is over'heard' by someone else and some inappropriate language was used. It happens, slip ups are part of human nature. I don't think players should be punished their first time around, but 3 days is more like a warning.
A longer second offense duration would be more of a punishment. Some-many- players are ignorant of the rules and a first time ban shouldn't be a long drawn out punishment.
Again just my thoughts as a player.

 

I dont think u can unintentionally harrass someone tho , seeing as the thread is about increasing the ban duration for only 2 of the minor offenses and not the others