Review Appeals Process

[stephanreiken]

https://entgaming.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=50942

Just randomly looking around ENT, seeing that Heroes and Empire is no longer hosted when I came across this.

Looking at this Appeal, it is pretty clear that the Ban was unwarranted and an abuse of power yet the Appeal was denied.

Rule: Don't build in Dark Green area.
List of Proofs (Screenshot, Replay Video): Clearly not in violation of 'Don't Build in Dark Green Area'.

It is also pretty clear that the Rule should have been 'Don't Build outside of your lane'. But a ban shouldn't be about 'should have beens'. It should be 'The Rules'. 'Dark Green Area' means 'Dark Green Area', it doesn't mean anything else without context and mods should always assume that the players are do not have any context or experience to know Dark Green Area also means the area to the left/right of the actual Dark Green Area. The Mod provided insufficient explanation at the start.

After reviewing the topic, I would highly recommend that the appeals process includes an Administrator's review of the problem or at least other Game Moderators rather than having the Game Mod that did the ban handle it. Having the Game Moderator, who is clearly in the wrong, handle a ban appeal for his own bans is unfair to the banned person and makes the whole appeals process questionable.

[aRt)Y]

Off topic:
The mods' job is not to explain rules ingame - at least not the way you make it sound. The players have to read the rules before playing the game and if there's a question, they either ask the moderators or post on the forum.

Secondly, we don't ban "should have beens". OP admitted to the violation and nabo judged it the same as guennter did. All in all, the mod did nothing wrong except "handling" this appeal which brings me to:

Thirdly, guennter pmed higher mods to review the appeal, so he did not handle the appeal himself. One of the reasons why moderators are supposed to post on the appeals of players they banned is because we would like to hear their comments (because they obv know the case).

tl;dr; Reviewing every appeal by multiple persons is inefficient; if players would like another mod to review it, they are free to ask for it (just as it happened yesterday). However, in general we do apply the guideline to avoid handling own ban cases. But that's not a fixed rule and it wont become one.

If you have any suggestions to rephrase the rule, please do so and post a new topic. If you have any ideas on how to phrase other rules, please do the same. Phrasing rules is not easy and the staff tries to do it as good as possible.