Reports and the lack of response from the staff team

[St.Denis]

I suppose it is time one of us responded to this.

Yes it would be nice if this happened. I actually asked the same question years ago, before I became an Admin (so pre 2015). The answer was something along the lines of 'Not enough hours in the day to do all the added work'.

Once I became an Admin, I could then 'understand' it more.

Because it's simple really; they chose to be mods, devs, admins, they knew that there'd be a lot of bureaucracy, no?

For the "why was I wrong?", it honestly seems obvious to me; personally, I forget, and when I get fire upon without having time to answer to the hostilities etc, I go and write, spend 40 minutes gathering the evidence, writing, explaining, only for my report to go to, I don't know,

Now we get a lot of Violation Reports (VRs) in, along with Player's Requests, Faction Perks Requests, SRP Requests along with my Account is banned, I have lost 70 Ships, and I didn't back them up, please give me them back etc etc etc.

These all add to the 'bureaucracy'.

Now to the actual Violation Reports. These, most of the time, aren't as straight forward as they seem.

The latest one I have just 'archived' due to it being a 'Not Valid' Report.
It was a "2.2 - Attacking others without roleplaying first is not allowed. Players must be given reasonable time to react to hostilities." Report.

The Reporting Person provided a Video, nicely starting at the point he/she believed the offence occurred. They also provided 128 lines of Logs.
Yet if we just 'looked' at the video, it looked clear cut, but looking at the Logs we could see that there were 4 lines of RP, from the Offender, over a 94 second period before shooting occured that weren't shown at the point of the video.

As for the time taken for assessing a VR:
1) Numerous people watching the video/looking at screen shots.
2) Same people reading numerous lines of provided Logs to 'hunt' for the relevant parts.
3) Same people then writing their thoughts on the Report (as very few VRs come down to a vote as the inputs generally have a majority conscensus).
4) Sometimes a discussion on whether we feel this is a malicious Report (because said person didn't show all the Logs, only ones to put the Offender in the worse light).
5) An Admin checking the Server Logs to 'pull' any relevant evidence from the Server Logs.
6) An Admin then to look at the same Report, read all the input from the others and see if the concensus is Guilt or Innocence and either do a Sanction Report or archive it.
This all adds up to a lot of 'bureaucractic' time.

And now some want us to send a pm to the writer of the VR saying whether the VR is ending in a Sanction or not. If the VR is valid, the you will see a Sanction Report arriving on the Forums.

The Reporting Person isn't going to be accepting of a quick pm just saying 'We have archived your VR'. They will want a full explanation of the whys and wherefores. Then I am sure there would be a backwards and forwardings of pms as they argue that we are being unfair, protecting our friends and a whole plethora of other such Admin Bias Theories.

I have Sanctioned in Game friends and have also Sanctioned members of the Team (ending in deletion of their Ships). So all this rhetoric of Admin Bias, protecting friends etc is just fanciful thinking.

As for sending a pm, I just did to the VR mentioned above. That was another 15-20 minutes of my time whilst I explained, thoroughly, why it was archived.

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'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are'
Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person

[sirlagsalot]

This is something I have noticed while reporting actions I have found worthy of being reported. You make the report, put the screenshot(s), or video(s), you make SURE to follow the TEMPLATE, because it has to be more stringent and rigorous than filing your taxes or press charges against an individual or company (ironically) - and you're not SURE it will be even be processed, since it is a black box to the majority of the player, to my understanding.

Reports system is not what you think it to be and not even what others explain it to you to be. As for the processing of the sanctions and how it is done - players almost never were notified of it before, at least as far as i know and as far as i was told. And most probably never will be, things staying the way they are.

Here, have a good example of evidence added - and report being shrugged off for what you would normally call "technical reasons". Didn't add actual fireworks record to what you sent, even if you had the person in question accepting their wrongs? Your problem.

Image 1
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Suppose that sums it up to you if you still had any questions about how it works. Long story short: don't always expect it to work your way. Check and re-check the stuff you actually uploaded, not just the template. Don't expect to be contacted about the thing - and instead expect the fact that the issue is resolved to be at the discretion of the staff, not the players involved. You, wanting it otherwise would only add more work to the people in charge of the system as it is, and i suppuse you'll have hard times convincing them that the outcome is worth the efforts.

[Kauket]

This is something I have noticed while reporting actions I have found worthy of being reported. You make the report, put the screenshot(s), or video(s), you make SURE to follow the TEMPLATE, because it has to be more stringent and rigorous than filing your taxes or press charges against an individual or company (ironically) - and you're not SURE it will be even be processed, since it is a black box to the majority of the player, to my understanding.

Reports system is not what you think it to be and not even what others explain it to you to be. As for the processing of the sanctions and how it is done - players almost never were notified of it before. And most probably never will be, things staying the way they are.

Here, have a good example of evidence added - and report being shrugged off for what you would normally call "technical reasons". Didn't add actual fireworks record to what you sent, even if you had the person in question accepting their wrongs? Your problem.

Image 1
Image 2

Suppose that sums it up to you if you still had any questions about how it works.

I just wanted to add, even if that person was in the wrong, there was someone there who actually gave legitimate rights to shoot. (if I believe what incident you're referring to is true)

Even if they broke the rule by accident, unintentionally without malicion, they still had a fallback to have legit rights for themselves and the others around them. Because there was someone there who could do the thing they tried to do, which was dish out a bounty.

Accidents can happen - especially when people get a bit too immersed in the RP, and if people can talk it out, that's great. But we shouldn't need to always result in one-upping others with petty revenge reports.

These reports can be easily twisted like so, for someone's personal vendetta. I'd personally not disclose results of Violation Reports. The things I believe that need input are player requests, faction perks and more importantly - dev requests.

[Karst]

I'm going to post this topical section from the Rule Violation Report Templates and Guidelines:

Ask yourself the following questions - If your answers to these might be a little sketchy, odds are your report will be too.

1. Am I filing a relatively petty report because I’m currently angry?
   • If you’re a little hot under the collar, the Sandwich Rule* always helps to keep yourself from looking silly. Just step back for half an hour, then come back and decide whether or not it’s worth pursuing.
2. Do I really have enough evidence to make this stick?
   • Sanctions won’t go through unless sufficient evidence is provided of the report. You were there for the entire incident, yep, but the administration was not. All we have to go by is what you give us. Is that enough?
3. Is what this person did really worth removing all his credits and guns?
   • That’s the standard punishment for server offenses. Is what the suspect did serious enough to warrant this sort of punishment?
4. Is this person clearly just a new player who doesn’t know better yet?
   • You should know by now that while most of the rules are common-sense, we’ve got a lot of ‘em. Go ahead, swap tabs to that list you’ve got open. There’s a lot of them, and to new players that can be daunting, or perhaps they haven’t even seen the forums yet. If you suspect someone of being a new player, unless the violation is serious, you’re better off pointing them in the right direction than slapping them with a violation. Remember, we were all in their shoes at one point.

Obviously, you should read this before submitting a violation report.
I would also strongly suggest reviewing it again before you ask for details on the dismissal of a report, because in all likelihood the explanation can be found there.

The most common reasons for dismissal by far are:

- There's no evidence of the alleged violation in the report.
- The evidence in the report directly contradicts the allegation.

But there are plenty of other reasons. Misunderstandings of the rules themselves leading to reports of actions that aren't rule violations. Or reports for violations that are so minor they don't warrant a sanction, or situations that cleared themselves up. See points 1 and 4: Not every rule violation actually needs to be sanctioned.

Having a quick conversation about this actually shows pretty well why this isn't something that we generally do, because of course everyone wants the reports they file to be upheld, and actually explaining why they weren't will swiftly lead to a situation in which all we can say is "well, the team does not see it that way, end of story" after a bit of back and forth that doesn't go anywhere.

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[sirlagsalot]

I just wanted to add, even if that person was in the wrong, there was someone there who actually gave legitimate rights to shoot. (if I believe what incident you're referring to is true)

I am fairly sure you know or at least have the means to check how it actually went. Ifnot - here's the hint.
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These reports can be easily twisted like so, for someone's personal vendetta. I'd personally not disclose results of Violation Reports. The things I believe that need input are player requests, faction perks and more importantly - dev requests.

Not sure how "not disclosing it" is supposed to work, given that forum related section is open for all - and both of the sides in question can see if any consequences followed - or not. Other than that, it is more of a "no feedback to the reported bad quality of the product" (which bad RP is, a salty product of salty interaction) problem. At least from what i understand. As Kherty mentioned, a simple "your report was processed and passed / did not pass" notification would be nice to have.