Sanction Reviews

[Luke.]

Nah. Sanctions get reviewed again if a decent appeal is made (see Jayce's sanction about jittering and a couple of others). They're fine the way they are. If you get sanctioned, clearly you're guilty of something. Believe it or not, the admins are human.

Also, you need to stop posting in sanction threads when you're not involved at all. You won't like the irony that follows repeated offence.

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[Technogeist]

Nah. Sanctions get reviewed again if a decent appeal is made (see Jayce's sanction about jittering and a couple of others). They're fine the way they are. If you get sanctioned, clearly you're guilty of something. Believe it or not, the admins are human.

Also, you need to stop posting in sanction threads when you're not involved at all. You won't like the irony that follows repeated offence.

How do you make a decent appeal when the thread is closed and the admins don't respond to PMs?
And nobody who wasn't involved in the sanction posted in to the thread, what are you even talking about?
I'm not involved, I'm just calling it as I see it. And I'm not doing so in the sanction thread, I'm doing it here.

[Luke.]

Second comment was aimed at OP, my bad.

Skype tends to work for appeals.

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[Mister_X]

tl;dr

For the OP idea, NO cuz we in Soviet Russia 8|....

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[Govedo13]

Believe it or not, the admins are human.

This.
Technogeist I got hit 3 times because of admin mistakes/ general misunderstandings/different views in their team and rule sets:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=80482
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=81131
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=44451
I find it quite ok to have different opinions on matters so it is np in general as Jack said if you get hit by sanction even if you are innocent, none cares and all move on. After all the sanctions here are not harsh. None deletes all of your stuff or ban you forever unless you are not cheating. Also there is always the possibility to reverse them.

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€œ

Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[Technogeist]

Believe it or not, the admins are human.

This.
Technogeist I got hit 3 times because of admin mistakes/ general misunderstandings/different views in their team and rule sets:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=80482
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=81131
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=44451
I find it quite ok to have different opinions on matters so it is np in general as Jack said if you get hit by sanction even if you are innocent, none cares and all move on. After all the sanctions here are not harsh. None deletes all of your stuff or ban you forever unless you are not cheating. Also there is always the possibility to reverse them.

This is true, people will probably move on and the sanction is probably not too harsh. However those sanctioned will start to question the integrity of the admins when they don't respond to PMs and close and bury a thread when people notice that they have taken that hit because of extremely flimsy evidence, especially when those sanctioned know they are innocent.

[Daron]

 
As an example, I used to work with an anti-cheat community for another on-line game and we had a very, very simply rule of thumb: 100% or they're innocent. We had to prove absolutely convincingly that the player had cheated and we had to submit our evidence to the community, otherwise nobody would have paid a blind bit of attention to our decisions.

Otherwise you are subject to a lawsuit even if your community is a non commercial one - please don't get me wrong i totally support this idea but i want to point out this little important thing.
Meanwhile there are alot of judgements and laws regarding internet stuff.

Regarding GC i think the Admin team did a good work.
While everyone is focused on sanctions many rule violations are not reported for several reasons.

[Enkidu]

 
Good afternoon,

I would like to propose that the Administrators facilitate some kind of appeal system for sanctions. I firmly believe that the current methods are flawed.

As an example, I used to work with an anti-cheat community for another on-line game and we had a very, very simply rule of thumb: 100% or they're innocent. We had to prove absolutely convincingly that the player had cheated and we had to submit our evidence to the community, otherwise nobody would have paid a blind bit of attention to our decisions.

Here, many sanctions are being made and the threads closed when the accused has tried to put forward their defence. That is not my idea of a fair trial. If the accused has reasonable grounds to issue an appeal, it ought be heard.

Some sanctions are being enacted with minimal evidence, although there may be instances where additional server-side evidence supports decisions. Well, I'm afraid to say that this evidence really should be disclosed if used to uphold a complaint. If it cannot be disclosed then the decision cannot be valid.

I do understand that some things cannot be disclosed by the Administrators. Going back to the anti-cheat community I worked for, we actually used a tool to detect cheating which itself could be used to cheat on-line. As such, we could not under any circumstance publicly discuss that tool. In any case, the manner in which we put forward our evidence was sufficient in its integrity and depth, in so much that the common members trusted the outcomes. That is what we need here: trust.

To conclude; I am urging the Administrators to have a good, long think about how reports are approached, how decisions are finalised, how they are delivered to the community and, further, how the community itself can provide feedback on the results.

Thank you for understanding my concerns.

It's a well-thought-out, good idea, but the more open you make things, the greater the risk of TBF from my point of view; people (me included), sometimes can't help themselves when it comes to taking sides on sanction issues.

Why else do people browse the sanction report threads?

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)

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(Links pending redevelopment).

[Widow]

As I said about the community I worked for one time; the onus was on the staff to prove that somebody cheated. It was always maintained that if somebody was innocent, they had nothing at all to worry about. Mistakes were made sometimes and it usually became obvious so the player would regain their good name.

Players should never be expected to prove that they are innocent unless there is compelling evidence to suggest the contrary. Some things are quite clear; swearing, hacking, silent attacks with sufficient timestamps, etc. Sometimes, though, the accused may well have a good case for defence and they are often completely ignored. Ideally it would all be kept private, but there are many, many instances where the "offending" party has no chance to put their side across and so they might do it publicly, which usually results in them getting into more trouble.

Usually if you send a PM to one of the admins we will get back to you in due time. You need to realize we do have lives outside of Disco, I for one am planning a wedding so I am no way near as active as I use to be (You don't realize how much time it takes until you do it yourself).

We work as a team in the processing of sanctions. If there is evidence that is 'incomplete', we usually don't look too much more into it, we can't be sure it did/did not happen. For example, showing chatlogs after the fact and then trying to get someone done for shooting without RP. They might have engaged without RP but we don't have the screens to make us believe 100% that he did.

Most of the ones we process are very black and white. Someone swearing is pretty straight forward and we know 100% that they did do it.

Yes, there are some sanctions we need to take some more time on trying to figure out whats happened, unfortunately these ones usually take a lot longer to process. These are far and few between but are occasionally processed wrong. We are happy to be told that it needs to be reviewed and we will certainly look into it if it is necessary. These situations do seem like 'guilty until proven otherwise' and it is unfortunate that this is the case, but it is a necessary evil.

Getting the communities input has been thought about before, but it wont make anything any better. All it will do is encourage the naming and shaming of people - and I personally don't believe anyone who tells me that it wont be translated into game. The community sees something they don't like, I can almost guarantee the ship/person will be hounded in game. Being completely unbias is not easy, and even we stay out of processing sanctions if we don't believe we can not pick a side in it.

If the offending party posts in the thread, we will post them the evidence via a private message. It is their choice as to whether to respond via PM or in the thread.

The community needs to understand that we are only human. We get evidence submitted to us and sometimes we get it wrong. We all know this and are happy to admit we made mistakes.

This isn't a paid job, we do it for the love of it so cut us some slack every now and again.

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[Mark_Brown]

Good Afternoon Discovery,

My forum name is Mark_Brown but I'm better known as "Bellck" or Chris under Presidency of Universal Shipping Incorporated as Charles.Bell within Liberty.

I've been here since the beginning so I've seen the server grow and the admins grow with it.

After going through these talks about sanction reviews, I do have plenty to say towards them and I'm not a bias person at all.

@Vigilia.Procuratio -
Here, many sanctions are being made and the threads closed when the accused has tried to put forward their defence. That is not my idea of a fair trial. If the accused has reasonable grounds to issue an appeal, it ought be heard.

Mark: This is done as Widow has kindly said through Private Message, I don't think its in the interest of all discovery for everyone to know who's done what and I don't want to see pictures of people swearing on here either just to prove evidence. Needless to say what the other community members would say to such member regarding that sanction "Your a bad member of disco, get out ext" It would only encourage the average keyboard warrior into bulling.

@ V
In any case, the manner in which we put forward our evidence was sufficient in its integrity and depth, in so much that the common members trusted the outcomes. That is what we need here: trust.

Mark; That depends on the trust of the players also, this isn't directly down to administrators here, people could be doing it to bully a player for sanction reasons or pushing them far enough in-game just so they do swear so admins have to sanction them. Admins do have hard decisions to make when it comes to sanctions, but I do believe if someone does break the rule regardless of bullying it should be a punishable offense. I have only one saying here, and I say it to all my members of Universal.
"Say it don't type it."
Further more, if you do believe a player is bulling you, speak to an admin it is why they are here.

@ Widow
Getting the communities input has been thought about before, but it wont make anything any better. All it will do is encourage the naming and shaming of people - and I personally don't believe anyone who tells me that it wont be translated into game.

Mark; Widow has my full backing on this, its happened before and has generally forced members off the server. It's unfortunate and I'm glad this is the way admins follow up sanctions via private rather than having the community's input where it is not needed at all.

@Widow
These are far and few between but are occasionally processed wrong.

Mark: This is true, I've had a sanction lead against me before and it was processed wrongly. I managed to get enough sufficient evidence and pm said admin back and ask for a review. Needless to say, an apology was given and my equipment was returned. I guess members shouldn't be too harsh on admins and understand that as window has correctly said and I quote'

"The community needs to understand that we are only human. We get evidence submitted to us and sometimes we get it wrong. We all know this and are happy to admit we made mistakes."

Mark; Further more I don't think changing the way admins pursue sanctions or delegate consequences should be changed, and I'm happy with the way things currently are running.

I hope this is sufficient for you all to understand. If anybody would like to further discuss this with me through skype you are more than welcome to do so;
Please add me;
"bellck"

Thank you.

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