Moderation Team Feedback

I feel like I'm active enough and check out the prerequisites to be a moderator.
I'd like to try and alleviate some of these problems :)

 

Modolo

 

Privacy this privacy that, but personally I've never seen anything actually happen to mods. They don't seem to be affected by complaints. Reports don't seem to be acted upon. Perhaps people think the staff team doesn't care because mods don't seem to change.

(i think this was kind of addressed by bart? idk. if anyone could enlighten me on whether or not a mod has ever lost mod rank before, please do)

 

I’ve been punished several times in the past for things I definitely shouldn’t have done, but things many other people (including mods) have done before with no consequence.

Now that’s fine, either I can be unbanned/unmuted as it was an incorrect punishment, or the mod team can be more strict on the thing I did. However the problem with doing either of these is that YOU CAN ONLY DISCUSS YOUR PUNISHMENT WITH THE MOD WHO GAVE YOU IT.

So what would usually happen is I would contact other mods about it with a response usually like “Have you talked to the mod who x’ed you?”, I’d have to do this over and over until a mod would finally listen to what I had to say. After this, usually about a day later, I’d receive a message like “It has come to my attention that the punishment I have given you did not fit what you did, so I have unx’ed you.”

This problem would not occur if punishments were allowed to be discussed between mods, they are a team after all. It doesn’t help them either when they all seem to be pretty reluctant to talk to the community unless it’s for dishing out punishments.

Anyway I’m a good boi so I’m not sure if this has been changed or not yet, but obviously a lot of stuff is still the same. It’s completely fine for mods not to be perfect, just give us some way to combat this instead of leaving us in the dark.

Thanks for bringing this up Fish <3

 

From what I know of reports of mods they are all looked into by managers, the reason I don't know more is that as with player reports they're kept anonymous. What I do know for sure is that yes, mods have been demoted for misconduct. So if we abuse our powers we will face consequences.

For these punishments if contacting the original mod doesn't satisfy your questions about the length of the punishment contact a mod manager. They're the ones that handle things like this.

 

It’s not because my questions weren’t satisfied, it’s because the punishment was not the same as others with the same “crime” (for example I was given a perm mute once for the same thing someone got a 2 hour mute for). And the mods would not listen to what I had to say unless someone else higher up said the same thing.

 

Ok I haven't said anything in this thread yet but like this seems incredibly ineffective and could prob just be solved by letting multiple mods tackle an issue or smth, like if someone doesn't like the way their punishment is being handled they can push a button which can get another mod involved with the situation or smth

Cuz rn this system just sounds like me asking the teacher for help on what 1 + 1 is, instead of just asking mah table for help(bad example but u get ma point rjght?)
Ok imma leave before I get 38929594 comments on why I am wrong (real)

 

Small update on some changes we've made based on suggestions from this thread:
- The feedback form now has an option to add your contact info (discord name/forums name/ign), so the mod managers can contact you for questions/information about the report
- #bug_and_player_reports on discord and the thread in the player reports forum section now have information on how to report a moderator

Thanks for all the feedback that has been given here!

 

This is awesome, thanks so much! I'm glad this thread turned out the way it did. I appreciate it tons.

 

This is really great, I’m hoping this can have a beneficial effect!

 

ok so i just noticed this thread and i also didnt bother to read through the rest of the responses so yeah but

on the topic of community/mod divide:

one of the major reasons I left the team was that I joined because I loved the community. but as a mod, it basically feels like the entire community absolutely despises you when you're just trying to help (it feels like its gotten worse since when I joined the team too). after being mod for months and months i stopped interacting with the community because i knew people were just gonna hate on me or whatever. what's the point in making an effort to engage with a group of people where the majority hate you?

I think the mod team has its assumptions towards the playerbase, and the playbase has its assumptions about the mod team. Both sides don't like the majority of the other because they see them as bad/annoying/etc. for their own reasons. It's like a cycle basically, anything one side does will annoy the other side, which then they do something about, and repeat.

How can the divide be solved? Idk lol
It's not going away until hate between both sides stops, but I honestly don't see that happening anytime soon. I'm not speaking for all the current mods, and I do hope the divide does go away, but at least when I was a mod it felt useless to try because of how awful the playerbase reacts to every little rule. The new mod thread is a step in the right direction! Feedback and answering questions honestly seems really helpful, since players dont know how exactly stuff in the mod team operates and mods don't know exactly what players want unless they're told directly.

Ok reading this post back again it makes zero sense and its basically me rambling and im sure a bunch of mods have different opinions but im just going to post and hope that i dont get flamed ok yay

 

I had a feeling something like this was a case. Over the years, my view on this entire situation changed quite a lot, going from despising everything the mod team does to realising that the normal community themselves are to blame for things as well.
Now, that isn't to say mods aren't deserved to get under the fire sometimes, because they do, but the only way to fix this is for everybody to play their part and judge accordingly depending on the situation. Moderators sometimes make questionable decisions and sometimes members just wanna make life hell for some people, no side is 100% right every time, so all we can really do is just be a bit more understanding and... well, not being biased and judge fairly.
In the past, some mods kinda got attacked a bit too hard by members, but they also deserves some criticism because the stuff they did was really sussy (and im just gonna say openly that Moe was one of them), but in absolutely no case does anybody deserve to be harassed or attacked or what else.

I really hope you guys can be a normal part of the community like anyone else without fear in the future, because this divide should have never existed in the first place.

PS: shoutouts to iboju who keeps calling me a mod suckup because i'm friends with like... 2 mods

 

I was once Banned from the discord for basically nothing and wanted to appeal but i couldnt even message the mod that Banned me because they only allowed dms from friends ‍♂️

 

Super awesome thread, but I want to highlight a point mentioned in this thread.

I agree with the point made here, it's much more effective to discuss your punishment with multiple moderators rather than only the moderator who punished you, mostly because (hypothetical scenario) the moderator in this situation who punished you with any type of bias is likely gonna carry over said bias to your discussion with them.

 

I don't remember if this has already been mentioned in this thread, but players are allowed to request a different moderator on their appeal if they feel like they've been mistreated or the moderator is acting biased. The default moderator to handle an appeal is the moderator that gave the punishment because they were there when it happened and have the most knowledge regarding the case. That's just the most practical way to go about it and works fine in a large majority of cases. Say I vc-mute someone for repeatedly yelling into their mic, that doesn't make me hate the person(even if my ears are ringing), and when they appeal I only really care about making sure it won't happen again.

I agree that having multiple moderators on one appeal would ensure less bias, and most complicated cases do end up with multiple moderators looking at it as well, but we can't feasibly have 3+ moderators handling every minor punishment that is given out, we are still just volunteers after all and that would make the process take much longer as well.

Personally, if someone I'm friends with, or someone I dislike breaks the rules I would always try and ask a different moderator entirely to handle the situation if possible because as much as I think I can be impartial there's still a chance I could be biased and I wouldn't want that to affect the player. However, there are also cases where we simply need to act cause we're the only moderator available and we can't just let a situation go on unhandled. Everything goes both ways, of course, to give an example I've been asked before by a player if they could just break all the rules they wanted if I'm the only one present, and not be punished or get out easily by claiming I was biased against them because the player and I aren't on great terms. If that scenario does happen that would be a good case to have an extra pair of eyes on or I would pass the appeal to a different moderator for the players' sake.