‘This user has been dealt with…'

[I_love_desk]

Right, I just want to address a problem which has only occurred to me recently (sorry for the essay, not very good at putting a point across quickly).

If an abuse report is accepted as bannable evidence and the user is going to be banned, it will be locked by a mod with a message saying something like: “The user has been dealt with appropriately. Thank you for the report.” Great, so the player you reported, let’s say for regen hacks, has been banned for a week/perma, so that’s that.

It’s only in the past month that I’ve noticed that, occasionally, this isn’t the case. The first time I noticed this happening, the player was a VIP and so, after some confusion, I found out that it was being processed with senior staff since he was in a higher position in the servers. However, since then, two of my reports have been given a ‘this user has been dealth with…’ without being banned.

Obviously there is some sort of reason behind them not being banned: Maybe the evidence wasn’t enough, maybe I mis-saw (although I doubt that I mis-saw a regen hacker), or maybe it is somehow being processed. I respect that. What I don’t understand is the fact that the reporter is being left in the dark. Now obviously the way in which the rulebreaker is punished is not for me as the reporter to know: I don’t care about how long, as long as their actions have been judged and been correctly dealt with.

The problem is that I have no idea why my report has not been accepted as enough evidence. What is the point of telling me the rule-breaker has been dealt with if he hasn’t? If I somehow have a misconception on what a hack is and isn’t then I will just continue to post incorrect reports which waste the time of the mods. If it is being processed somehow, then what is the harm in telling the reporter that this is happening?

So basically I thought I’d make this thread – If I’m making some sort of amateur mistake then please correct me on it, but if it’s not some sort of rule already, I think it would be great if mods started telling users more about what was going on in their abuse reports, just to inform them on the situation and educate them on what makes enough evidence.

TL;DR: read paragraph above ^

Thanks for reading

 

[Zacharoutio]

Just to tell you, Mods AREN'T allowed to tell you about any punishments or bans given out, so don't blame them.
If you think that this rule is unfair go to any Admins or Senior Staff. I don't think making a thread like this will help that much, sorry. I guess you could make a suggestion thread about changing the rule, but I think the rule is unlikely to change. I think this has been brought up before anyway.

 

[I_love_desk]

Just to tell you, Mods AREN'T allowed to tell you about any punishments or bans given out, so don't blame them.
If you think that this rule is unfair go to any Admins or Senior Staff. I don't think making a thread like this will help that much, sorry. I guess you could make a suggestion thread about changing the rule, but I think the rule is unlikely to change. I think this has been brought up before anyway.

It's less about the mod actually telling the user exactly what is going on, but more about the mod actually disclosing whether the user has been punished or not. I don't mean that the mod should reply

"So I was talking to a senior mod and he thought this should be a permaban since he has spammed and hacked before, I'm going to check over with the senior mod again to see if it's sufficient evidence but if it is I will ban him"

I mean something more like:

"This report is being processed by higher staff due to its complicated nature"

and then when it has been dealt with, the standard 'dealt with' blabla. Opinions on that?

 

[Bamber]

I agree, the usual "Your report has been dealt with accordingly" isn't really enough information for me to know if what I did was actually worth reporting. I've had times, Lively knows what I'm talking about here, where my report is forgotten about and didn't do anything. I wasn't told about this until I asked months later.

This makes me feel angry...I don't know what happens after the same message is given to me. It sometimes feels as though they have a message ready to be copy-pasted into every report.


All I'm saying is that I think we, the reporters, should have a little bit of information regarding the report. I know that telling about bans isn't allowed...but I think there should be more than just a simple sentence after we report them.



I could compare this to a real life crime.
Say, someone vandalized your house. You call the police, and he is taken into custody. Obviously, you would want to know that this won't happen again and that he was punished, some way or the other. If I remember correctly, this person would be allowed to know. He/she would be told that he may be in prison, serving community service, ect.

I'm not sure how much we should know about bans and punishments, but I think that right know, we should be informed in a more proper way.

 

[Lively]

The reason we have mods do a general "the report has been dealt with" thing is because if we have them say specifically, "They are now banned" or "This is not enough evidence" Then we have players complaining that mods don't know what hacks look like because to them that video was clear evidence for hacking, when it really wasn't.

 

[Pixelatorx2]

The reason we have mods do a general "the report has been dealt with" thing is because if we have them say specifically, "They are now banned" or "This is not enough evidence" Then we have players complaining that mods don't know what hacks look like because to them that video was clear evidence for hacking, when it really wasn't.

I can see your point in that, the fact that when you dont ban someone when it does look like hacks then you get complainers, but if it is hacks, can you not say something along the lines of, "Thank you for the report, this player was using xxxxx. The player has been dealt with accordingly." If the player wasn't hacking, something along the lines of, "The player in question is not using said hacked client. Please PM Me further...." blah blah. At least people know further of what is going to happen, and as not to see the player the next day, not knowing if he/she is bypassing a ban you know the deal.

 

[I_love_desk]

I can see your point in that, the fact that when you dont ban someone when it does look like hacks then you get complainers, but if it is hacks, can you not say something along the lines of, "Thank you for the report, this player was using xxxxx. The player has been dealt with accordingly." If the player wasn't hacking, something along the lines of, "The player in question is not using said hacked client. Please PM Me further...." blah blah. At least people know further of what is going to happen, and as not to see the player the next day, not knowing if he/she is bypassing a ban you know the deal.

Was just trying to respond to that, but you've pretty much said what I was going to but in a better way. Firstly I pretty easily found out that these people weren't banned and called mods out on it by PM. Secondly, while it's good that the mod isn't abused, surely it's more important that that player learns how the hacked client works, or he'll just keep reporting the wrong thing and waste the staff's time.

 

[roguehh]

Then we have players complaining that mods don't know what hacks look like because to them that video was clear evidence for hacking, when it really wasn't.

That's one scenario. But what about when a mod doesn't ban a player because he thought the evidence wasn't good enough, when it really was?

Moderators sometimes make mistakes. We know that by looking at all the successful ban disputes. It's not unlikely they also occasionally make the mistake of not banning someone, when they actually should have. But unlike the Ban Dispute system, there's no mechanism in place to correct this kind of mod error. The user who reported the player doesn't know and usually nobody reviews an abuse report after it's been dealt with.

It would be something to think about to tell reporting users if the reported user has been banned or not, and at the same time expand the Ban Dispute section to include declined Abuse Reports. This has multiple advantages:

• Now if a user sees a player in game they reported for hacking, they can complain regardless. With is a system in place, you can regulate these complaints.
• A reporting user will be given the same right as banned users, namely: to appeal an, in their mind, unfair decision.
• This will increase the capabilities of Sr. Staff to review moderator actions.

There are no real disadvantages to implementing this. As the system is already in place with Ban Disputes. This proposal is basically the mirror image of that, but for reporting users instead of banned users. If there would be a downside to doing this, it would be the increased workload for Sr. Staff. And that is something to take into consideration.

 

[Levah]

I know it's a typical and useless thing to say but we don't want to give you to much info e.i how long they where banned for etc.

If there is a problem with the evidence will say something like "Sorry, but this evidence is edited/insufficient."

 

[WeiBeX]

As previously stated, we don't want to give out ban information including if they were banned or they were not banned.
We will always say "Thank you for reporting. The user has been dealt with accordingly." or something like that. That might mean we punished the user(s) or that might mean that we haven't punished the user(s) because we think the evidence isn't sufficient.

We get a lot of old evidence as reports and then we find out that the user has been already banned. There might be many reasons. We always have a reason.

 

[jonnysurvives]

As previously stated, we don't want to give out ban information including if they were banned or they were not banned.
We will always say "Thank you for reporting. The user has been dealt with accordingly." or something like that. That might mean we punished the user(s) or that might mean that we haven't punished the user(s) because we think the evidence isn't sufficient.

We get a lot of old evidence as reports and then we find out that the user has been already banned. There might be many reasons. We always have a reason.

That's the problem though, if the answer is always the same, how is the reporter supposed to know if they've got the right idea? What if they've got more evidence they would be willing to upload if what they had already submitted turned out not to be sufficient? It's a dumb convention that does nothing but keep the reporter in the dark when they don't need to be.

 

[WeiBeX]

That's the problem though, if the answer is always the same, how is the reporter supposed to know if they've got the right idea? What if they've got more evidence they would be willing to upload if what they had already submitted turned out not to be sufficient? It's a dumb convention that does nothing but keep the reporter in the dark when they don't need to be.

I see your point...