Petition - Change the deleting evidence rule. [200+ Signatures!]

[Zinc]

I, Zinc, would like to sign the petition.

 

[MiCr2]

Time to break this down!

If we ever allowed removing of evidence, we would be wronging everyone who's been banned off our network, and we would only be more biased with the situations.

Not asking for it to be allowed to remove evidence. The rule has been there since I began moderating. It was never stated that they should get banned for it.

Should we come across bans without evidence attached to it, should it be a moderators ban, they get in serious trouble. To the extent of being fired and possibly banned themselves. Upon seeing those bans, we do un-ban the person, which only lets another hacker or rule breaker onto our system, due to the fact that someone didn't have evidence to begin with or removed it. Without evidence, we cannot guarantee that whomever this person is, is truly breaking our rules or even deserving of the punishment given.
Now, lets get into the real meat and cheese of this thread eh? Removing people who remove evidence from our network. This rule has been in place for a very substantial amount of time, (I think coming up on a year to a year and a half), and it was put in place for the reasoning in the first paragraph. Its always been standard, and made known both on the rules page itself, in the template for the report abuse section, in some moderators replies to report abuses (This is now becoming more standard), and so on and so on. As harsh as people view this rule, its as necessary as it is harsh. If we allowed people to delete evidence, the quality of this community would drop exponentially. There is no right balance of removing evidence and letting people off free. We are working on a much better system for evidence in general, that will alleviate all of these concerns, but until that time comes around, this is the system that will be in place.

Again, we are not asking you to get rid of the rule, just not have the punishment included or as some have suggested, change the ban length.

If you have a better idea of a system to run for the removing evidences, that is possible, contact a member of the sr staff. No matter how many signatures this petition gets, it won't get any of its idealisms put into place until a reasonable one is brought up, and while remaining in the realm of possibility and fees-ability.

We try our best, but like I've said we get shot down, as we will also see that happening in the rest of this post.

To address some of these ideas, no we can't just "store them all in our database"

Of course it doesn't make sence to store it on a database. For one thing, database's aren't used to store images and videos, they are to store data from e.g. player logins, play time etc.

So say the average video size is between 1 and 200 gigabytes, depending on the video compression, put the average at around 50 gigabytes for standard math purposes. We average 2000+ bans a day (if half of those are hacker videos, which more than half are), for the last 720 days of MCG's being at this average. That comes out to somewhere near 36,000,000 gigabytes of hacker videos alone. Im not even accounting for all the screenshots on a daily basis. Thats 36,000 terabytes, or 36 petabytes. For more information on a single petabyte, see http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-does-a-petabyte-look-like . This is unrealistically impossible because we (nor google, nor the government), have enough money to buy, and maintain that much data. We are working on a similar solution however too this that won't be anywhere near as extensive.

False, depending on the recording software you use, bandicam video's only take up for a 15sec video, that is vaild proof, 107MB. True, FRAPS can make a big file, but after its been compressed etc, it is much smaller.

Another large suggestion is that we either let those who delete evidence off free, I'm sure anyone who's read this far in this post understands why we simply can't do that. Some suggest we do lower the ban times, or try harder to get in contact with people. We keep the permanent ban time because thats how on scale of an offense it is. We get nearly 150 ban disputes a day, and if more of those lack evidence, the amount of rule breakers on the servers will go up. This rule is as necessary as it is harsh in order to provide the best playing experience for the 90k people who play our system per day.

Its the moderators job is make sure that the proper evidence is used and is vaild for banning people. The community players do it volenteer to report players, while its the moderators job to catch and ban hackers. We should not get punished for a job that we don't have to do.

Now, its been made public for a while now, but I guess never necessarily went "viral", is the procedure if you want to remove videos either from your channel, for any generalized reason, etc. Should you for some reason want to "clean up" your channel, your plenty fine to go to a moderator and ask them to re-upload your videos (if you have a LOT of videos, you may require multiple staff members). From there, the moderator will go to a sr member of staff in order to add the new evidence link to the current ban tab so that all records are kept. For "accidents" if you (or someone else) re-upload the video and contact a member of staff, you will be unbanned, simple as that.

ey want to clear up their channel, they have to ask the moderators to make backups of their evidence and reupload them to the ban reports. Why not do this in the first place? Which I've suggested before, multiple times.


There, we had multiple shot downs on some reasonable suggestions, but yeah. You guys are just focused on your one idea and not open to other suggestions.

 

[cscoop]

Alright, so I'm just going to address this here and now. The rule that is currently being discussed, is one that is a necessity to be in place. Were proud to say that 99.9% of our bans have a solid evidence behind them. Every moderator is *required* to have a solid evidence behind their ban, and if they don't, repercussions are had. Furthermore, we require players whom submit evidence to keep their evidence around in order to not only keep up this standard, but to protect our players of any future damages, loss or hate. If we ever allowed removing of evidence, we would be wronging everyone who's been banned off our network, and we would only be more biased with the situations. Should we come across bans without evidence attached to it, should it be a moderators ban, they get in serious trouble. To the extent of being fired and possibly banned themselves. Upon seeing those bans, we do un-ban the person, which only lets another hacker or rule breaker onto our system, due to the fact that someone didn't have evidence to begin with or removed it. Without evidence, we cannot guarantee that whomever this person is, is truly breaking our rules or even deserving of the punishment given.
Now, lets get into the real meat and cheese of this thread eh? Removing people who remove evidence from our network. This rule has been in place for a very substantial amount of time, (I think coming up on a year to a year and a half), and it was put in place for the reasoning in the first paragraph. Its always been standard, and made known both on the rules page itself, in the template for the report abuse section, in some moderators replies to report abuses (This is now becoming more standard), and so on and so on. As harsh as people view this rule, its as necessary as it is harsh. If we allowed people to delete evidence, the quality of this community would drop exponentially. There is no right balance of removing evidence and letting people off free. We are working on a much better system for evidence in general, that will alleviate all of these concerns, but until that time comes around, this is the system that will be in place. If you have a better idea of a system to run for the removing evidences, that is possible, contact a member of the sr staff. No matter how many signatures this petition gets, it won't get any of its idealisms put into place until a reasonable one is brought up, and while remaining in the realm of possibility and fees-ability. To address some of these ideas, no we can't just "store them all in our database", as there has been too much to ever be amassed. So say the average video size is between 1 and 200 gigabytes, depending on the video compression, put the average at around 50 gigabytes for standard math purposes. We average 2000+ bans a day (if half of those are hacker videos, which more than half are), for the last 720 days of MCG's being at this average. That comes out to somewhere near 36,000,000 gigabytes of hacker videos alone. Im not even accounting for all the screenshots on a daily basis. Thats 36,000 terabytes, or 36 petabytes. For more information on a single petabyte, see http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-does-a-petabyte-look-like . This is unrealistically impossible because we (nor google, nor the government), have enough money to buy, and maintain that much data. We are working on a similar solution however too this that won't be anywhere near as extensive.
Another large suggestion is that we either let those who delete evidence off free, I'm sure anyone who's read this far in this post understands why we simply can't do that. Some suggest we do lower the ban times, or try harder to get in contact with people. We keep the permanent ban time because thats how on scale of an offense it is. We get nearly 150 ban disputes a day, and if more of those lack evidence, the amount of rule breakers on the servers will go up. This rule is as necessary as it is harsh in order to provide the best playing experience for the 90k people who play our system per day.
Now, its been made public for a while now, but I guess never necessarily went "viral", is the procedure if you want to remove videos either from your channel, for any generalized reason, etc. Should you for some reason want to "clean up" your channel, your plenty fine to go to a moderator and ask them to re-upload your videos (if you have a LOT of videos, you may require multiple staff members). From there, the moderator will go to a sr member of staff in order to add the new evidence link to the current ban tab so that all records are kept. For "accidents" if you (or someone else) re-upload the video and contact a member of staff, you will be unbanned, simple as that.

"This rule has been in place for a very substantial amount of time, (I think coming up on a year to a year and a half)"

It has been in place since last January. That's less than a year.

"We get nearly 150 ban disputes a day, and if more of those lack evidence, the amount of rule breakers on the servers will go up."

It won't go up, it will stay the same as it was before.

"Its always been standard, and made known both on the rules page itself, in the template for the report abuse section,"

It does not mention a permanent ban in the template thread, and it states "*Please note that deleting or removing evidence after it has been submitted is not tolerated, and you might be subject to a ban if it is found you are purposely removing evidence." This basically states that evidence of purposely deleting evidence is needed. If this is the case, i'm banned for skype evidence. No where does it state that it is an immediate permanent ban. The place it says it on the rules thread is incredibly hard to see, as it is in a wall of text and most of the way down the page.


What i'm getting at is that we try to help clean up hackers, the videos that we provide to you all get cluttered/take up hard drive space, so we delete them. We expect you to make the final decision when the ban is relevant. After a certain amount of time the ban should become a closed case because hopefully the staff made the right decision in banning the player and the situation is dealt with. If the player disputes it months or a year later, it should be declined because staff made the final decision when it was relevant. You're main argument is that it adds hackers to the system... it doesn't at all.. it keeps them the same if they come back. Besides, I'm sure a majority of the bans made in a day are first offences and the players only banned for 7 days. If the player gets out of a 7 day ban with 2 days to go because the evidence is deleted, does the person who uploaded it get perm-banned? because IF that player decides after 5 days of not being able to log in that he is going to continue to hack, that's not the players fault, and it was inevitable. Now the player who deleted the evidence is banned forever and the "hacker" is still out there hacking or just free of his ban. Now, i'm not saying that it shouldn't be punished, but an automatic perm-ban is ridiculous and excessive. Many people including myself and Twee didn't know this was even a rule until we got the red text message when we tried to log into the server. Until this insane amount of attention was brought to the subject, the rule went unquestioned because not very many people knew about it. Now that it has the attention and rational thought of the community, it is being questioned. A shorter ban period should be filed UNLESS there is conclusive and obvious evidence that the player who deleted the evidence deleted it on purpose. In that case it should be permanent. But In my honest opinion, it should take on the same line of punishment that hackers receive. A 7 day ban, and a perm-ban on the second offense.

 

[Buxtonaters]

This situation was dealt with long long ago, and dave was reprimanded as such a long time ago anyway. This is irrelevant to current conversation.

This isn't not irrelevant. You said it yourself, "http://i.imgur.com/LXQID16.png"
Dave did this within a year and a half ago.
So one more time. Why is Dave allowed to go behind staff's backs to remove and alter someone's ban evidence just because he's his friend.
But if someone like Cscoop does it accidentally he gets permanently banned?

 

[Domilz]

I, Kallbergz would like to sign the petition.

So if the staff force us to keep a video of someone we reported without us even agree to keep it, we can aswell stop reporting hackers? Let's see how good they do without us as we are more safe without reporting.

 

[cscoop]

This isn't not irrelevant. You said it yourself, "http://i.imgur.com/LXQID16.png"
Dave did this within a year and a half ago.
So one more time. Why is Dave allowed to go behind staff's backs to remove and alter someone's ban evidence just because he's his friend.
But if someone like Cscoop does it accidentally he gets permanently banned?

I had someone check the edit logs of the rules thread, it was updated some time last January. Not even a year.

 

[Disruptor]

CAmadeusA
As a player, if we choose to adopt the responsibility of reporting hackers, we do NOT adopt the ability to store evidence for them. As far as I am made aware, we did not agree to any statements made by the administration that bounds us to such...

... you allow hackers a second chance. You allow players that perpetually abuse others a second chance. You don't allow players who tried to help the servers a second chance? Obviously, reporting players does not exempt you from the rules, which I recognize. However, when this rule is hardly even advertised and we were not made aware of the responsibilities we adopted when we report a player...

Right now, it is clear there is misunderstanding on both ends.

Made your points clearer.

Looking at this as someone that doesn't even play Minecraft anymore, these servers feel more and more like a dictatorship and not like the community-driven democracy that every sever should be.

 

[CAmadeusA]

Time to break this down!



Not asking for it to be allowed to remove evidence. The rule has been there since I began moderating. It was never stated that they should get banned for it.



Again, we are not asking you to get rid of the rule, just not have the punishment included or as some have suggested, change the ban length.



We try our best, but like I've said we get shot down, as we will also see that happening in the rest of this post.



Of course it doesn't make sence to store it on a database. For one thing, database's aren't used to store images and videos, they are to store data from e.g. player logins, play time etc.



False, depending on the recording software you use, bandicam video's only take up for a 15sec video, that is vaild proof, 107MB. True, FRAPS can make a big file, but after its been compressed etc, it is much smaller.



Its the moderators job is make sure that the proper evidence is used and is vaild for banning people. The community players do it volenteer to report players, while its the moderators job to catch and ban hackers. We should not get punished for a job that we don't have to do.



ey want to clear up their channel, they have to ask the moderators to make backups of their evidence and reupload them to the ban reports. Why not do this in the first place? Which I've suggested before, multiple times.


There, we had multiple shot downs on some reasonable suggestions, but yeah. You guys are just focused on your one idea and not open to other suggestions.

It has always been stated. For reference, see the report abuse template.

A database is a place to store data. Videos fall under the qualification of data. That was also a quote as Ive seen "store it in your database" as a major suggestion from several people who don't understand the magnitude of what they're asking.

Again, I took the average, as most users don't know about video compression, etc.

I can agree with you on the first sentence. They look through every report abuse and be sure its valid. When reporting people, or using any of our services, you agree to follow our rules. Its put blatantly in our rules that removing evidence will get you a ban.

Im more than open to reasonable suggestions, all so far have been unreasonable, or impossible to implement. We currently have the best solution in place for what resources we are given. If a better solution comes up, it'll be adopted. So far, there has been no "better solution" .

I had someone check the edit logs of the rules thread, it was updated some time last January. Not even a year.

You realize we are consistently adopting new rules, just because it was once edited in january doesn't mean that was when that rule was put in place. We also can, not show edit information. We edit it several times a month keeping it in a stabile condition.

 

[Dave]

This isn't not irrelevant. You said it yourself, "http://i.imgur.com/LXQID16.png"
Dave did this within a year and a half ago.
So one more time. Why is Dave allowed to go behind staff's backs to remove and alter someone's ban evidence just because he's his friend.
But if someone like Cscoop does it accidentally he gets permanently banned?

i did that with a superiors permission

 

[cscoop]

It has always been stated. For reference, see the report abuse template.

A database is a place to store data. Videos fall under the qualification of data. That was also a quote as Ive seen "store it in your database" as a major suggestion from several people who don't understand the magnitude of what they're asking.

Again, I took the average, as most users don't know about video compression, etc.

I can agree with you on the first sentence. They look through every report abuse and be sure its valid. When reporting people, or using any of our services, you agree to follow our rules. Its put blatantly in our rules that removing evidence will get you a ban.

Im more than open to reasonable suggestions, all so far have been unreasonable, or impossible to implement. We currently have the best solution in place for what resources we are given. If a better solution comes up, it'll be adopted. So far, there has been no "better solution" .

I talked to some moderators and they told me that you guys had told moderators to download the evidence to keep it safe.. then recently told them they don't have to. They should have to in my opinion because it is their job to back up a ban they made, not the person who voluntarily went out to catch the hacker. The person reporting it is doing the moderators job for him/her. It should be the moderators job to keep the evidence that the player got for them just out of gratitude for making their lives easier.

 

[Kauff]

Im more than open to reasonable suggestions, all so far have been unreasonable, or impossible to implement. We currently have the best solution in place for what resources we are given. If a better solution comes up, it'll be adopted. So far, there has been no "better solution" .

Here's a solution: Staff should be required to reupload evidence to their own YouTube channels. Since they're staff, they can be trusted to not delete it.

 

[cscoop]

It has always been stated. For reference, see the report abuse template.

A database is a place to store data. Videos fall under the qualification of data. That was also a quote as Ive seen "store it in your database" as a major suggestion from several people who don't understand the magnitude of what they're asking.

Again, I took the average, as most users don't know about video compression, etc.

I can agree with you on the first sentence. They look through every report abuse and be sure its valid. When reporting people, or using any of our services, you agree to follow our rules. Its put blatantly in our rules that removing evidence will get you a ban.

Im more than open to reasonable suggestions, all so far have been unreasonable, or impossible to implement. We currently have the best solution in place for what resources we are given. If a better solution comes up, it'll be adopted. So far, there has been no "better solution" .


You realize we are consistently adopting new rules, just because it was once edited in january doesn't mean that was when that rule was put in place. We also can, not show edit information. We edit it several times a month keeping it in a stabile condition.

I meant when the rule first showed up in the rules thread. . . .