New Appeal System by Arigenn February 20, 2016 at 7:02 PM UTC

What if the user is forum banned and wishes to appeal?

How long would you have to wait if your banned to get appealed

tbh I don't think its a great idea to allow Moderators to speak with the ban dispute. All you are doing is prolonging the ban appeal system.
We all know staff members falsely ban players some times and can't notice it and actually need a Sr Mod to who actually knows to figure it out. Having the Moderator come out and talk to the player is just more work then needed.
And I'm sure that if someone is appealing they're gonna say no either way, thus bringing the Sr Staff in anyways.

Short form:
Y'ALL ARE JUST WASTING YOU AND EVERYONE ELSES TIME WITH THIS

Bad idea.

Bad idea.

The Moderator knows more about the situation than the Senior Moderator, as they are the punishment dealer. We normally have to wait longer for a moderator to explain the situation, not to mention the fact that there are many more moderators than senior moderators, making the rate at which appeals are dealt with higher.

That is why there is evidence. You don't need to have a moderator's opinion on a ban. If there is an opinion on a ban and no evidence/evidence is insufficient it's called the Moderator using bias. If the evidence is sufficient then no consultation with a moderator should be needed.
All Sr Staff should be doing is looking at whatever evidence and decide weather it is sufficient or not and if you aren't sure either you get the opinion with other Sr Staff. That's why there is more than one.
Evidence cannot lie, man can lie. And if its for a chat offence you guys have chat logs, go check it out, that's all I hear whenever there is a dispute to understand the situation that has been going on.

A moderator only has a valid claim if they can produce sufficient evidence, if not then the player appealing should be appealed.

Don't you guys have a place that you put all evidence? That's what I've heard.
All you need to do is put it there and that's it. Moderators should be putting evidence on right after they ban/start uploading and put it there as soon as they can.
If all evidence is there you don't need to speak to the moderator who banned it since evidence is there. Like I said, evidence cannot lie, man can.
If there is no evidence Sr Staff appeal right away, if there is evidence Sr Staff look at the evidence and decide if sufficient or not and then appeal. You don't need the moderators word on if its sufficient or not since they got the evidence, they decided it was sufficient and they banned the player.
When they hit enter with the /ban they are locking in their consent that it's sufficient. If they find its insufficient before it gets to the appeal stage it should go directly to Sr Staff to get it appealed as soon as possible regardless if the player who got banned wants to or not.
You don't need to have said moderators opinion because again, if there is no evidence its insufficient, if there is enough evidence the moderator already hit enter and banned him thus giving consent that said staff member that it's sufficient. If said moderator negotiates with a Sr Staff member about it in words, regardless if evidence or not there is bias because you are being influenced by a third factor.

Appeals don't work in that manner. A punishment could be valid, but 6-7 months old. There are so many circumstances for appeals that simply looking if there is evidence or not does not work at all. We're giving moderators the ability to decide whether or not the punishment that they dealt may be appealed or not. Besides, a Senior Moderator must review the response before ending the thread. If your point is that things were fine the way they were before and there is no reason to change the system, that's not true. Although I do appreciate your opinion, you often don't get to see the efficiency of our previous appeal system. There are not enough active senior staff members to keep up with the amount of appeals coming in, and several complaints have been made about the rate at which appeals are dealt. In order to increase this rate, and to make a more structured appeal system, we've decided to make appeals run in this manner. We will not revert to our previous system, it was unorganized and slow.

Also, before someone twists around what I stated and tries to use it against me, I'm not saying that our Senior Moderators cannot do their jobs. However, as many of them are not as active as our moderators, and there are not as many of them, giving Moderators a say about their own punishment has allowed appeals to be dealt with in a more smooth manner. Replies come in very quickly from Moderators, which gives a bit more time for a Senior Moderator to come in a little bit later to finish the appeal.

What if your web banned?

"A punishment could be valid, but 6-7 months old"
They can be, but do you really think a moderator will remember what happen to this ban to this person in 6-7 months?
 
"a Senior Moderator must review the response before ending the thread"
I know it gets reviewed, but if it gets reviewed either way by a Sr Staff while I'm hoping you guys check all evidence. And it's proving my point. You guys are wasting your time with this, instead of having you guys check it when you can you are leaving a Moderator to decide whether it should be appealed or not, and then Sr Staff have to make sure its the right decision before locking. So you practically have a moderator do what the Sr Moderator will do after.

"There are not enough active senior staff members to keep up with the amount of appeals coming in"
As stated above, you have the Sr Staff finalize whatever decision was made thus having a Sr Staff check it out either way keeping the length of the whole appeal process the same, all you are doing with this is have the player be able to debate or maybe even flame with the moderator who banned him until a Sr Staff can check out the ban and make sure the Moderator made the correct decision.

"unorganized and slow."
All you are adding is to allow the player who is asking to be appealed to fight/debate with the moderator who banned him as in the requirements to ban you have to state why you should be appealed either way. So there isn't much else to add onto the player who is appealing.

"They can be, but do you really think a moderator will remember what happen to this ban to this person in 6-7 months?"
Surprisingly, it's not that hard to remember a punishment if you still have the evidence. 

"You guys are wasting your time with this, instead of having you guys check it when you can you are leaving a Moderator to decide whether it should be appealed or not, and then Sr Staff have to make sure its the right decision before locking. "
I don't see how this is bad. Why waste the Sr Staff's time to have to deal with an appeal when a staff member can deal with it and the Sr Staff can just review the evidence to make sure everything check out? As Qinn said, there isn't enough active Sr Staff to have the deal with the appeals. Watching evidence videos and actually dealing with an appeal are two different things, and take different amounts of time and effort.

"Surprisingly, it's not that hard to remember a punishment if you still have the evidence."
If there is evidence you don't need the moderators opinion since the evidence shows all that has happened.

"don't see how this is bad. Why waste the Sr Staff's time to have to deal with an appeal when a staff member can deal with it and the Sr Staff can just review the evidence to make sure everything check out? As Qinn said, there isn't enough active Sr Staff to have the deal with the appeals. Watching evidence videos and actually dealing with an appeal are two different things, and take different amounts of time and effort."
They says if the player denies what the mod said then it goes to Sr Staff who reviews the case and deals with it him/herself which the player will probably deny it since he wants to be appealed. And if he accepts his faith then the Sr has to make sure its the right decision before appealing said player or not. In either case the Sr Staff gets involved and should look over all evidence to make sure everything is correct. And what does that consist of? The Sr Staff coming on, thus waiting and keeping it at the same pace, wasting the moderators time since the Sr Mod should be doing that job to finalize decisions. So its not making it faster at all, just doing the same thing twice

"If there is evidence you don't need the moderators opinion since the evidence shows all that has happened."
I agree with you. However, there's going to be people that don't like their punishment, no matter if the evidence is right in their face. Now the moderators get the tedious work of telling the player that no they broke the rules and here's the evidence right here instead of the Sr Staff.

In terms of the second point (I'm not going to quote it because it's a little big), it does save some time. Not all the appeals will "escalate" (if you let me use that term, that's the one I'm used to). As a said above, there's going to be people that don't agree with their punishments. The Sr Staff will be there to deal with the appeals once that stage (being escalated).

First Point: 
Even if the evidence is in their face, whats the moderator gonna do about it? Say no, then what, the punished player will call it bias and abusive. Most people want a Sr Mod to answer since they are of higher rank and they are probably not the person who punished them.

Second Point:
It doesn't have to escalate. If you read the diagram Sr Staff have to check to make sure the mod did the right decision and lock it.
Either way a Sr Staff member gets involved thus having to wait through the whole process again.

First Point:
If the evidence is right there, then yes, a moderator would basically tell the punished player that the warn/kick/ban is valid. There's nothing a moderator can't tell the player that the Sr Staff can, to a degree of course.

I'm assuming the system would work like this. Let's say a fly hacker makes an appeal. The moderator then links a video of him/her flying, and denies the appeal. Now the player either doesn't care and won't respond, accepts the ban, or doesn't accept it. If he doesn't accept it, then a Sr Staff member steps in and deals with the appeal.

Second Point: 
If you had read what I said about that, I said I do understand the Sr Staff have to check. However, checking evidence and dealing with an appeal are two different things. And because of this, they take different amounts of time and effort.

First Point:
There are things called false bans ya know where the moderator thought the evidence they had was sufficient and banned while the evidence was blatantly false where Sr Staff saw it was false in an appeal and unbanned the player. That's bringing the whole "There's nothing a moderator can't tell the player that the Sr staff can't of course"
Part Two:
Actually checking the evidence is only one of the step in dealing with an appeal. After that its breaking the news to the player amd unbanning the player if player was appealed

First Point:
There are things called false bans ya know where the moderator thought the evidence they had was sufficient and banned while the evidence was blatantly false where Sr Staff saw it was false in an appeal and unbanned the player. That's bringing the whole "There's nothing a moderator can't tell the player that the Sr staff can't of course"
Part Two:
Actually checking the evidence is only one of the step in dealing with an appeal. After that its breaking the news to the player amd unbanning the player if player was appealed

First Point:
There are things called false bans ya know where the moderator thought the evidence they had was sufficient and banned while the evidence was blatantly false where Sr Staff saw it was false in an appeal and unbanned the player. That's bringing the whole "There's nothing a moderator can't tell the player that the Sr staff can't of course"
Part Two:
Actually checking the evidence is only one of the step in dealing with an appeal. After that its breaking the news to the player amd unbanning the player if player was appealed

Usually at least 3 months or more?

This diagram represents the appeal system a little better:

This diagram represents the appeal system a little better:

First Point:
If the evidence is right there, then yes, a moderator would basically tell the punished player that the warn/kick/ban is valid. There's nothing a moderator can't tell the player that the Sr Staff can, to a degree of course.

I'm assuming the system would work like this. Let's say a fly hacker makes an appeal. The moderator then links a video of him/her flying, and denies the appeal. Now the player either doesn't care and won't respond, accepts the ban, or doesn't accept it. If he doesn't accept it, then a Sr Staff member steps in and deals with the appeal.

Second Point: 
If you had read what I said about that, I said I do understand the Sr Staff have to check. However, checking evidence and dealing with an appeal are two different things. And because of this, they take different amounts of time and effort.

Vlad has good points. 

Stated by staff members, evidence is usually deleted in 6-7 months. Then the victim can either have a better or worse chance at appealing, depending on their situation. 

False se bans happen all the time, due to lag, glitches, an occurance that happens in real life and affects some part of your gameplay, etc. Staff don't usually false ban, but mistakes happen.

On the topic of bans, is four words in capital letters enough for an infraction? Bear in mind 3 were in one message and the fourth was in a separate one (public chat not private)

It all depends on the situation. Also, it was too long ago for the chat logs and the person who dealt the punishment to remember, if you had appealed it earlier it might have been appealed, but now there is pretty much no chance. Sorry :/

"Surprisingly, it's not that hard to remember a punishment if you still have the evidence."
If there is evidence you don't need the moderators opinion since the evidence shows all that has happened.

"don't see how this is bad. Why waste the Sr Staff's time to have to deal with an appeal when a staff member can deal with it and the Sr Staff can just review the evidence to make sure everything check out? As Qinn said, there isn't enough active Sr Staff to have the deal with the appeals. Watching evidence videos and actually dealing with an appeal are two different things, and take different amounts of time and effort."
They says if the player denies what the mod said then it goes to Sr Staff who reviews the case and deals with it him/herself which the player will probably deny it since he wants to be appealed. And if he accepts his faith then the Sr has to make sure its the right decision before appealing said player or not. In either case the Sr Staff gets involved and should look over all evidence to make sure everything is correct. And what does that consist of? The Sr Staff coming on, thus waiting and keeping it at the same pace, wasting the moderators time since the Sr Mod should be doing that job to finalize decisions. So its not making it faster at all, just doing the same thing twice