Post closures.

[Dim]

Hi, Forum staff.

Firstly, I'd like to stress that I have no problems with the current staff at all, but I have made this observation many times after the past few months. Surprisingly more since wadi returned.

Anytime anyone makes a complaint on this TW Staff forum gets their thread closed, it strikes me that if staff are indeed corrupt or are not doing their job we should know about it. Instead it is kept behind closed doors, I'm sure PUSH and Pure do indeed with corruptness. But in my experience on staff, I was never questioned about my actions unless it appeared on a forum thread. Sure, close the threads that are nothing more than idle flames, such as: DIMBOY IS A GAY 13 YEAR OLD AXE HIM PLZ KTHX as I had many times.

I think that if staff screw up, they should come under the spotlight like Fireballz would probably like to speak to the people who banned him, and they are hardly going to talk to him in game and when theres a forum thread they are almost obliged to reply since if they don't they look bad.

Cheers,

[Sarien]

If you didn't notice in any of the, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, (in just my time here) veritable assloads of ban posts:

It says so very clearly, if you get banned, go through proper channels, use the ban email, respond properly, and you will be treated accordingly. Though in all fairness.. If you have a person that is so blatantly dumb as to ignore the few rules that Trench Wars has, or the big giant red: Moderator Warning messages, then I guess it would be a pretty foreign concept for them to understand the rule: DO NOT POST ABOUT BANS ON THE FORUM.

I agree with dimboy here, because while it looks like a deceptively simple rule, maybe it should be dumbed down so evvverybody can get the idea, something along the lines of: YOU NO POST BAN HERE. WRITE BAN EMAIL. SEND NOW. And since the red is also apparently a color that lots of the people are colorblind to, i would also suggest that be made a bright neon color, and perhaps flashing to draw attention.

[Troll King]

The problem is that for every legit complaint that crops up you get a half dozen yahoos who claim that the same thing happened to them, except in their cases they were actually at fault and deserved what they got. The other problem is that other people, who were not there at the time and have no real knowledge about what happened, join in and muddy the picture.


Might I offer a solution though: for any case where a complaint was made by a player and they made an appeal to the complaints or ban e-mails, and staff agrees with the complaint and either overturns a ban or takes other sanctions, they make an announcement about it and post a brief report here. If however the complaint falls through, then it shall remain behind closed doors. The difference here is that the case is made public after the fact.

That way, staff can show that they are accountable without giving the yahoos unwanted publicity.

Another alternative would be that if the complaints that fall through also get posted to show balance and to let people know what the ruling was and how it would apply to future cases. (Or if the person complaining about a ban was found to be guilty, so everyone knows what that person did.)

This kind of thing is done regularly by many groups when assessing the behaviour of one of their own. For example, when a teacher in Ontario is accused of professional misconduct, the Ontario College of Teachers reviews their actions and publishes the results.

[wadi]

Hi, Forum staff.

Firstly, I'd like to stress that I have no problems with the current staff at all, but I have made this observation many times after the past few months. Surprisingly more since wadi returned.

Anytime anyone makes a complaint on this TW Staff forum gets their thread closed, it strikes me that if staff are indeed corrupt or are not doing their job we should know about it. Instead it is kept behind closed doors, I'm sure PUSH and Pure do indeed with corruptness. But in my experience on staff, I was never questioned about my actions unless it appeared on a forum thread. Sure, close the threads that are nothing more than idle flames, such as: DIMBOY IS A GAY 13 YEAR OLD AXE HIM PLZ KTHX as I had many times.

I think that if staff screw up, they should come under the spotlight like Fireballz would probably like to speak to the people who banned him, and they are hardly going to talk to him in game and when theres a forum thread they are almost obliged to reply since if they don't they look bad.

Cheers,

Here's the deal dimboy. You bringing up a staff complaint here, that's fine. By that I mean the way TW Staff runs things, or something they're not doing, or something you feel they could do differently. HOWEVER, if you bring up a personal issue with a staffer, or ANYTHING regarding a ban, it's gone. Both those types of posts are served better by official channels, and
usually (always) end up turning in to pro-staff/anti-staff bitch fests with little attention paid to the original complaint.

Take the FBZ post for instance, quite clearly about his ban. Sure it's also about the TW racism policy, and he's free to post on that topic here, but if you read the FAQ it clearly says don't bring up bans, so it's closed. There've been several instances of people posting about their bans, getting those threads closed, and then reposting about the issue involved in the ban, but not about the ban itself, and having those threads stay open until the topic dies or degenerates.

Basically, this forum is for discussion about tw staff policy, discussion about new improvements tw staff could make to existsing arenas/bots/systems, or criticism about how tw staff currently runs itself. It is not a place for you to come and get a public hearing for your ban, and it is not a trash talk forum for specific staffers. We're trying to promote discussion about tw staff, but remove the crud that was so common in this forum. Every second post would be someone trying to get out of a ban, and that's just nuts.

I appreciate your concern about staff not hearing about complaints, and maybe that's an issue that should be brought to this forums (Deans not giving enough feedback to their staffers?), but this isn't enough of an argument to go back to the "every second thread a ban" days. I also like Troll King's conduct idea, couldn't hurt.

[Dameon Angell]

Take the FBZ post for instance, quite clearly about his ban. Sure it's also about the TW racism policy, and he's free to post on that topic here, but if you read the FAQ it clearly says don't bring up bans, so it's closed.

my next thread is your fault if anyone asks.

[arwen_7]

And since the red is also apparently a color that lots of the people are colorblind to, i would also suggest that be made a bright neon color, and perhaps flashing to draw attention.

that would give people fit's i would expect :P