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OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION: The Hell Runners Motorcycle Club is an attempt to portray a realistic 1% MC, basing ourselves on existing real-life outlaw clubs from the United States. We welcome anybody, with experience in this field of roleplay or not, to join us! If you want to join our faction and have no idea on how to approach us, you can join the Discord server or let us know in a private message as we are more than happy to help you create a believable/realistic outlaw biker character. Discord Invite Link: https://discord.gg/g8b2fMAf3B

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.

Just when things were beginning to get quiet...

Kosowarner sells drugs irl and that's a full time job. Keep it up everyone!

=p