The Problems With The Current Moderation System

Hello everyone,

Today I have come here to discuss a matter that I think has not only been impacting both my wynncraft experience, but other players as well.
Before I start discussing this however there are a few things I want to make clear so there are no misunderstandings:

- This is NOT a post to insult the moderators in any way. Please do not hate on any members of the moderator team.
- This post is mostly directed towards the way the mod team works as a whole and the rules they follow.
- Through this post I will be giving examples of real cases that hapened in-game, however to keep everything private I will not name anyone, whether it is the person who got banned or the moderators who were involved. I will also not share any screenshots from any discord/wynncraft private messages.

Now that I got that out of the way let's get to the issue.
The first example that I would like to bring up is the Goose vs Hestia raid. As most of you know a lot of people were banned during this raid. Some took hours some took days some took weeks but i believe everyone was unbanned. Now the issue with these bans was that none of these people really deserved to be banned. The evidence provided was not absolutely certain. The proof of this is that they were all unbanned, however the damage was already dealt since the bans of these people demotivated a lot of guilds. There were even people who had to admit to something they didn't do only to get unbanned.

To sum it up there were 3 main issues that i saw during this raid:

- People were getting banned without full assurance that they were cheating.

- Some mods would ban for a reason however if you would present that very same reason to another moderator they would not ban the person.

- It took way too long for innocent people to be unbanned.

I would now like to bring up an example that happened a while ago. Players were questioning whether warring on alternative accounts was bannable or not. After reaching out to moderators some said it was ok after a certain amount of time, some other people said mods told them it was ok but there were certain requirements and another moderator said "it's up to the mods".
Once again we can see an example of bans not being 100 per cent accurate with all the mod team.

For my third and final example i will be talking about a certain player that had a class hard stuck in Lutho (due to a glitch with an Se quest). So he then tried to "glitch" his way out of lutho to fix this problem (which is a bug from wynncraft itself). One moderator was watching him the whole time and did not ban him and another moderator told him it was ok to do it. He later got banned by a third moderator. This could possibly be a misunderstanding which is fine we're all human after all mistakes are natural. However I went to contact the author of the ban to try to fix this misunderstanding in a friendly way however I did not get a response and the person remains banned.

These examples and some more are what made me write this post. So now that I have raised the issues I suppose i should propose some solutions.
For starters the guideline to ban people should be the same for every single moderator. If something is bannable for one mod it has to be bannable for all of them. This makes it much easier to eliminate any biased bans that could potentially happen and it also makes it easier for players to not make mistakes like on the example i stated above.
Secondly, ban appeals should be able to reviewed by more than the author of the ban and they should be viewed faster. I know people who have appeals on read for weeks.
And last but not least, only ban people when you have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. I understand that this might make it harder to ban people who are "closet" cheating, but honestly, it's better than having people unfairly banned.

Thank you for reading this post, I hope that even if there are people who don't agree with everything I say in this post I would encourage them to atleast think about it a little.

 

I tottally dislike how the third example is a thing. its horrendous how you can ask the different mods the same question and get differing answers on weather it is against the rules.

 

Agreed, & the notion that another moderator said it was ok doesn't seem to be enough for an unban even though it really wasn't the player's fault because they were told it was ok

 

I agree the lack of standardisation is an issue the staff team really has to deal with, although there are often factors that need to be judged on a case by case basis, in my opinion too much is left up to being decided by the moderators and not enough is written out clearly in the rules.

 

It's quite sad to see that even if you're a little suspicious, if you are on the wrong side of the warring factions in Wynncraft, your little suspiciousness can result in a ban. Whereas someone on the "right" side of the faction could be doing the exact same thing and wouldn't received a ban.

If I were to put the mods decisions on bans in a math equation, it SHOULD look like this ---> Reasonable Suspicion + Evidence = Ban. But instead, the mods use this formula to ban people --> Suspicion + Opposing War Team member = Ban

Sadly, a lot of mods are biased :(

 

I've experienced this myself. Not in the guild community, but the trading community. A mod who was friends with those traders, who didn't like my trader group decided to ban me without clear evidence. Later I was unbanned, and even my strike was revoked due to insufficient evidence, but no one gave me any compensation for being banned unfairly for days-weeks.

In my opinion Mods should be completely unbiased. And by this I think, they shouldn't be part of any guild, neither in any group of the trading community.

 

Imo this isn't an issue with the mods themselves, its an issue with how the moderation balances the moderator's experiences on wynn vs how this could effect their moderation, at a point you've got to limit it otherwise you end up with moderators deeply engrained within guilds, trading communities & other things where bias could be a deciding factor

don't rlly think it'd be fair to tell the mods currently in guilds to leave them or leave moderation, though, so you'd need to find a fair balance with stuff like this.

 

I wouldn't go that far. At the end of the day, they're still just players. But I do agree that there is definitely some bias that needs to be addressed.

 

A mod feedback thread that doesn't resort to insults? Bravo.

 

It is a very harsh solution, I agree. But I think it's necessary. As the example shows many mods can't be regulated, and they can't differentiate between playing and doing their job as a mod. You stated a good point, "they are still just players". If WynnCraft wants to be professional, they will hire professionals, and the first step would be to be completely unbiased, preferably without a guild.

 

Mods in theory should be in a guild with other mods that is the most optimal way to avoid bias with people. Its not saying mods shouldn't be friends with people but majority of bias comes from guilds

Edit: it also puts them in constant interaction with eachother so they can figure out the rules instead of each making their own understanding because it seems to me mods barley talk to each other

 

me and the boys when the mod arrives in lutho

 

The communication is a big problem. For example my thread about discord invites got answered after a month and contacting both mod managers (where one ignored me and the second one answered after a long time).

Even IF this would happen you won't clear the ties. For example a unnamed nice mod in unnamed guild will have ties with them even when they would be forces to leave. (I am not saying they are biased, just an example of ties)

 

Ngl if the hypothetical idea of mods being forced out of guilds happened, we'd probably lose a lot of moderators due to their commitment to their guild having pre-existed their commitment to wynn staff, so the idea of their ties to the guild staying in tact probably wouldnt be a big deal because they'd likely have left wynn staff instead for the most part, with some obvious exceptions but a lot of wynn staff are in guilds & aren't especially active in the guild scene, just thinking of some that are

 

Perfect solution doesn't exist, I agree. And you can't remove bias completely, that's also true. But you CAN reduce it. And making mods leave their guilds or their position as a moderator would greatly decrease the amount of bias among the mods.

 

See in my opinion mods being involved in guilds itself isn't the issue its when they get involved in the politics and decide to start being "loyal" to an alliance. It slowly starts changing their opinion on others and I wont call names but I know multiple mods who refuse to talk to people because of past guild drama which shouldn't be a thing meaning in my mind at least the best way is to remove mods from politics (not guilds just politics)

 

And probably the amount of mods. Or not help at all. They would still have the tues and friends, so unless you fire them all and get a new team it won't happen.

This would also alienate them from the community even more. Not many of them are really (from my experience) active within it. They shouldn't be "mighty enforcers of the law", but rather part of the community. But yes, I realise this is just a nice wish that won't become reality.

 

To be fair mod team system is also bad in my opinion, majority of the mods need to be referenced by another mod meaning its still bias if you apply without someone recommending you, you have super low chances. Maybe we would have more mods if this system was fixed.
Its just a system favoring already existing mods getting their friends into the mod team

 

Yes, that can be a problem. But why exactly did you quote me for this?

 

Because you said

"And probably the amount of mods. Or not help at all. They would still have the tues and friends, so unless you fire them all and get a new team it won't happen"

And im saying sure we would lose mods but if the system of how they recruit is changed it wouldn't be that bad. The current system makes it so only friends or people with recommendations can be new mods which just keeps the cycle of bias going just my opinion I guess. Rules and the way they recruit is really what causes all this but yeah