On the Issue of Private Player Reports

[Tungsten]

My fellow community members:

 

I have a trend that perhaps has existed for a long time, but that I feel is important to address. As we all know, Game Admins also roleplay but do not submit reports in the Report Player section when they encounter rulebreaking in a roleplay scenario they are involved in. I do not intend to criticize or disrespect, I simply wish to start a conversation about what it means to be a staff member as opposed to a "regular player" and how we can reconcile these differences for the benefit of the community as a whole.

 

This brings me to the question of what I call "private reporting", or a trend I have seen growing where members (or even staff) contact a Game Admin privately over discord, forum PM, etc. instead of using the Report Player section. For me, his has resulted in being brought into multiple Direct Message conversations and group chats to discuss potential rulebreaking by one or more parties involved in a situation rather than hashing it out in the public Report Player area. In my view, settling disputes in this way undercuts the Report Player process and creates two parallel systems of "justice" - one for staff, and one for the commoners. Ultimately, I believe this is an unhealthy practice to continue in the community and I propose the adoption of a much more horizontal, equality-driven methodology.

 

-----

 

My core question is this:

Should Game Admins be permitted to resolve their accusations of rule breaking privately (via PM), when everyone else must make a Report Player thread?

 

First, i'd like to steel-man the "pro" position-- It looks bad as a community when admins are reporting regular players. From the outside, it might also make administrators seem powerless. The benefits of this are clear - it makes the staff team appear more cohesive and unified when admins are not ruling publicly against admins. After all, this is why reports against staff are handled privately - we don't want to put off the impression that any staff member is incapable, because in truth most staff are the most capable and dedicated members we have in the community.

 

In the reverse, however, it hurts transparency when reports are handled this way. At the end of the day, we are all players and we ought to all abide by the same processes. If I am roleplaying with an off-duty administrator and they want to accuse me of rulebreaking then such a report ought to be handled the same way any other report is handled. From my perspective, staff who are not actively performing their duties ought not get any special privileges such as private reporting because it creates two distinct "classes" of player when ideally we should all be equals. Obviously, there must be some kind of private process to report staff so there aren't constant reports from people who got admin jailed or banned - but when a staff member is the accuser, I simply don't see why they should be able to resolve that accusation privately when everyone else has to do it in public where the whole community can see.

 

-----

 

When a Game Admin is not performing their duties, they ought to be viewed much like an off-duty police officer - having the same rights and privileges as anyone else until they put the uniform on again. Transparency, mutual respect, honesty, and trust are the core tenets of any thriving community whether in real life or digitally. If we want our community to be healthy, thriving, and strong, then we ought to view each other more as equals instead of viewing Game Admins as a sort of de-facto aristocracy with a different system of justice.

 

I sincerely hope this topic is not locked outright, because it is a genuine intention to have this discussion for the betterment of the community at-large. Ultimately, I am interested in seeing what the community thinks about "private reports" - perhaps i'm delusional, maybe i'm completely wrong and off-base here. Even then, however, we ought to discuss this because the community belongs to each one of us who volunteer our time as players, as application checkers, as rule enforcement, or even as managers/owners.

[Sal]

I see your points. As someone who hasn't had to A) report anyone recently nor B) deal with any actual reports, my perspective is obviously pretty limited. But here's my take:

 

If this were a court of law and we treated player reports as such, then yes, there's a strong argument that "all reports, no matter who they come from, should go through a strict procedure which does not take into account their status as staff members". In this way, equality is very obvious and so on and so forth, all the points you mentioned previously are valid.

 

In practise however I imagine that the actual act of dealing with these issues is incredibly long-winded - looking at previous player reports there's a hell of a lot of forum back-and-forth which can stretch out over days/weeks and even then, seem unresolved. Again, I speak obviously as someone who hasn't had to deal with this before.

 

If the individual bringing the 'case' towards an allegedly 'offending' player is a staff member however, there is an intrinsic amount of trust that's already been given to that staff member by management purely from holding the position in the first place. In other words, there is some implicit trust that the staff individual is less likely to come forth with a sense of bias, because if they were ever found to be lying or in breach, they would be jeopardising their position. Plus, they have earned trust in the first place by being granted the position. In this way, there is a sort of "class divide" from a trust perspective.

 

But it is also true as ever it has been in the past that there will have been some staff members who may have abused this privilege, or felt themselves 'above' things. I don't think this is right either, and as you say, a way of seeing whether this happens is for the entire process to take place in Report a Player. So that is one potential solution, but I think from a practical perspective, it would basically slow everything down. This is one of the reasons why forum court-based RP has never appealed to me: it's too longwinded and it takes ages to get to the actual point. If some cases can be resolved privately, then so be it. 

 

But is that right? I'm not sure. 

 

Tldr: I'm a bit on a fence about this and can see where you're coming from, but can also see why it's been done the way it is too. 

[ImperiumXVII]

So normal players messaging admins.

 

Admins should not be taking reports in their DMs. There are cases that are "open and shut", for example a person spamming racist slurs and another server's IP in /b that can be handled, but imo this should be limited to simply requesting an admin's presence to witness it for themselves. Screenshots can be edited, especially as we have the UCP chatlog that can be manipulated and pasted on top of a blank screenshot. If the admin cannot get ingame, it needs to go to a player report where logs can be checked and accounts searched; all account lookups are logged. Player reports need to exist to justify looking up a player's logs, otherwise I could look up everything Tungsten has done in his property since August 25 and shrug it off with a "a player reported in my DMs".

 

As for admins reporting other players, admins are already trusted with being able to use their judgement to dish out penalties if necessary. An admin has no need to report a player if they encounter rule breaking. Being on admin duty or not does not change their understanding of the rules and their ability to enforce them. Your metaphor of off duty police officers doesn't hold up as off duty police officers are legally allowed to make arrests and enforce the law if they see it.

 

It does happen though that an admin believes a player has broken a rule, but wants to consult another admin in case of their own possible bias. This is fine to do privately, it does not need to be done by an admin reporting a player. We do actually have policy in place that players involved in a situation that has become an admin situation should not handle it (but still can in the case of other admins being absent).

 

But if you're referring to a player private messaging an off duty admin to have a report resolved, then above answers that. It should not be happening.

 

After all is done, we have a very easy way to report staff members if the player really believes that they were wronged.

[Tungsten]

45 minutes ago, ImperiumXVII said:

So normal players messaging admins.

 

Admins should not be taking reports in their DMs. There are cases that are "open and shut", for example a person spamming racist slurs and another server's IP in /b that can be handled, but imo this should be limited to simply requesting an admin's presence to witness it for themselves. Screenshots can be edited, especially as we have the UCP chatlog that can be manipulated and pasted on top of a blank screenshot. If the admin cannot get ingame, it needs to go to a player report where logs can be checked and accounts searched; all account lookups are logged. Player reports need to exist to justify looking up a player's logs, otherwise I could look up everything Tungsten has done in his property since August 25 and shrug it off with a "a player reported in my DMs".

 

As for admins reporting other players, admins are already trusted with being able to use their judgement to dish out penalties if necessary. An admin has no need to report a player if they encounter rule breaking. Being on admin duty or not does not change their understanding of the rules and their ability to enforce them. Your metaphor of off duty police officers doesn't hold up as off duty police officers are legally allowed to make arrests and enforce the law if they see it.

 

It does happen though that an admin believes a player has broken a rule, but wants to consult another admin in case of their own possible bias. This is fine to do privately, it does not need to be done by an admin reporting a player. We do actually have policy in place that players involved in a situation that has become an admin situation should not handle it (but still can in the case of other admins being absent).

 

But if you're referring to a player private messaging an off duty admin to have a report resolved, then above answers that. It should not be happening.

 

After all is done, we have a very easy way to report staff members if the player really believes that they were wronged.

Fair enough. Perhaps I’m seeing the forest for the trees. With this information, the policies are a bit clearer.

[CYBER]

As I read this, I remembered my first year at university when we were studying "Introduction to Jurisprudence" and I started applying the law to anything and anyone I thought was unlawful or unjust. (Do not take this as a criticism, if anything it just underscores the high moral standards you possess (unless you are using this topic to have some sort of personal gain or get back at someone))

A player personally contacting an admin via DM would only create a chaotic situation where most admins handling the report would be biassed, as contacting an admin you already know and have some sort of relationship with would be an obvious way to somehow influence the outcome of the report. While it is true that admins and staff in general have different kind of trust within the community, the human faction should still be considered.

You have compared the administration to a LEO that is not on duty. It has already been mentioned why this is not an appropriate comparison, but I will offer you another comparison and try to justify it.

In most countries there is a constitutional review and thus a constitutional court, the highest instance of court. The constitutional judge is appointed, and all three branches of government (executive - legislative - judicial) are involved in the selection process. As a rule, there are nine (9) judges in total. This judges are treated differently from ordinary people. Even if police officers observe a constitutional judge shooting randomly at people in the middle of a busy street, they cannot arrest him. They have something called "judicial immunity". Well. Normally you can not sue a constitutional judge either, you can only do that in the constitutional court in the presence of other judges. This is done to protect the judges from ordinary people and to ensure their freedom from undue influence.

Needless to say, I would personally compare admins to constitutional judges. I have never been reported by an admin, so here's my take on it. An admin should have some authority, otherwise neither their judgement nor their word will be respected in a given situation. Losing that authority would mean that the admin in question should either resign or take radical measure when they encounter a rule breaker, which would negatively impact us (players) and the overall trust within the community. Taking reports in a "Report Player" area would obviously shake that authority, because..

1 - We would be dragging the admin down to the level of an ordinary player, and even if one of his/her reports was unsuccessful, that would already bring us to (see below)...
2 - The admin's competence or incompetence would be displayed to the whole community.

With authority now shaken, the admins would begin to distance themselves from the regular players. At this stage we would get two groups. Players and Admins. Admins would naturally empathize with their colleagues as they can relate to them more, they would start deciding the outcomes of these reports in favor of other admins with the expectation that the admin they previously supported would also support them in return if the need arose.

In extreme cases, groups would also form within the admin team where each admin would be sympathetic to at least one admin and a certain group of regular players. I will not break this part down because in both cases we would get skewed results not only in reports of admins vs. players, but also players vs. players. This would mean the end of the server.

On a side note. When one is part of a situation that escalates, one's judgment most likely becomes subjective and moves away from an objective view. For someone to recognize that and act on it doesn't happen every day. That's not to say their judgment is flawed, but when they have the choice to handle the situation themselves instead of reporting it to another administrator, and they choose the latter option, that's an impressive personal trait. Respect +

Edit: Your question could have been answered from other perspectives. There is the issue of equality vs. equity, right wing vs. left wing, etc. No matter which road I would take as destination would remain unchanged.
 

Edited September 21, 2023 by _CYBER_

[Overlord6969]

too long dindt read but yeah tungsten for president or whatever this is about

[Trceo]

I see both sides and I believe transparency is needed. Release the admin policy and or part of the policy that would cover general concerns about the abuse of power and or the lack of by staff. Same as when your city may request or look up the policy of said police department for whatever reason. None the less their procedures and how they’re supposed to handle things are public information so if anythings broken it can be challenged accordingly and in line with the rule break of the policy