Boards›Discuss the Boards

My thoughts & questions on overall mod organization/communication and encouraging open discussion.

Lenn·6/24/2018, 10:46:23 PM·6 votes·3,910 views

_I will preface this post by saying that I have a lot of respect for the moderation team. I am personally friends with a few and I think the team does great work - one of the particularly lovely mods encouraged me to make this thread. The moderation discord is a great addition and I've had mostly positive and respectful interactions with the mod team there. _

Recently I was falsely permabanned for "ban evasion". I had gotten the ban reverted, however I am disappointed in the handling of the followup. I had pursued the case further to find out what caused the "false flag" to occur, if there was any fact checking made, if something was wrong with my account etc. Not to go too into detail but I received conflicting information from various mods & heralds and was discouraged from seeking answers or "pestering the mods over a closed case." I must make it clear that I don't hold anything against the mod team over this - mistakes happen, but needless to say I was disappointed.

This situation prompted me to think about what is actually going on behind the scenes with actions taken. It feels like most mods have very little information when it comes to specific punishments and no one can really explain what happened besides the singular person who made the action. Is this the case? Obviously I don't expect every mod to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every reasoning behind a punishment but it seems they can't really access that information anyways. Are punishments even discussed? Even just a mention in a mod chat like "I'm making a ban against so-and-so for such-and-such reason"? I hate that I even have to ask this.

When I go to the moderation discord to contest a case, it's not just about having the punishment removed. It's about understanding what happened and knowing that the mods will be careful in the future to not make the same mistake, not just with my account but with anyone's. I do not want anyone to feel that their problems get handwaved and I would like users who are worried about their account standing to feel encouraged when speaking with mods.

In my mind, the fact that a punishment gets reverted does not equate to a closed case. But it feels like you're not expected to worry about WHY a punishment happened and you're expected to be satisfied with a vague apology and a punishment revert. Are strategies changed to avoid future similar mistakes? Is the rest of the moderation team made aware of the mistakes that took place so that it will not happen again? I don't get that impression, and it feels wrong.

So I make this thread mostly as an effort to suggest a few things to the community mod team and hopefully some of what I say will be considered:

  • If a false punishment is made or an action is contested and taken back, I would hope that every mod is made aware of the situation and what action should be done instead, for the sake of consistency. Even the mods you speak to regarding punishments can be pretty unaware of what happened, through no fault of their own - hopefully with better communication and organization this could be avoided. I would also hope that there is a list or some kind of log of deletions, punishments and punishment reverts somewhere for all the mods to reference.

  • ** I would like to see more willingness to communicate with the users about WHY a ban happened after the fact**, rather than just rolling back the punishment and hurrying them off. I understand the mods can't share everything due to Riot policy but it should be clear if something was entirely human error, you should be ensured that steps will be taken to prevent similar wrongful actions in the future, even if exact details can't be shared.

  • **More openness to discuss rules and changes. **It can be pretty disheartening to try to open a dialogue regarding rules and possible improvements or whether or not a rule is truly necessary, as you get shut down pretty fast by a mod or get told to go to off topic (what is boards inquiries for then? lol) Perhaps a suggestions room in the discord? I would like to see more encouragement when it comes to meta discussion of the boards rather than having everything set in stone. It is a community with community moderation, after all.

In closing, I am grateful for the mod team and I enjoy the better transparency of the community mod system. I care about the community as much as anyone and I would like to feel confident that the system is continuing to be streamlined and improved and that the modbase is able to learn from contested actions and listen to input.

Thanks for reading.

14 Comments

Chermorg6/25/2018, 12:41:30 AM5 votes

So, as far as I can remember, I was never involved in your case. I will thus be responding to your suggestions/concerns from an uninvolved point of view.

Unfortunately, there's absolutely no chance of you being given access to internal information about how bans are determined. While nobody assumes you have malicious intent, it is unfortunately necessary to assume any leak of internal processes, procedures, information available/used, or any other proprietary and/or confidential information may result in malicious users being able to use that to circumvent moderation. It is the same reason Riot does not release information on how/what program was detected when a player is banned for third party programs, and why cases with confidential information in them in court are subject to a gag order from the judge, even after the case is over.

To your points specifically:

I can confirm that your case was brought up and reviewed internally (it appears multiple times, in fact) and seems to have been the reason behind information passed to the moderators. I will not be going into details of what these discussions entailed nor the result of them, but I will confirm that it was discussed.

You were ensured by multiple moderators and/or Heralds that the situation had been reviewed and steps had been taken, yet you continued to demand exact information even after you were told that it would not be given. If you needed someone who wasn't involved to tell you - it has been reviewed.

I have not seen any recent threads on rule changes that have been "shut down" on the boards (specifically Discuss the Boards). This is the proper location to have discussion - not the #boards-inquiries in the discord. That channel is designed for inquiries (ex: is this behavior against the rules, can someone change my name, can someone sync my account, etc) that do not fit in the report/violation rooms (which are for reporting specific posts or inquiring about moderation actions). Put another way, the channels of "inquiries" and "report" are for direct communication with moderators about specific issues - not general discussion of rules - thus why it is directed towards either #off-topic or the boards. You'll notice we have an entire sub-board dedicated to this specific issue here - for rule discussions/etc.

I would also like to point out that you seem to think that moderators act in a bubble, with no record of things. I can assure you that there is enough record made with any action (and even many inactions) that any moderator can, with a little researching, be up to speed and handle any issue, even if they were not the one who originally took the action to begin with.

Lenn6/25/2018, 1:51:44 AM4 votes

also im trying to be as polite as i can but i might as well mention, while im on the topic of not shutting down discussion, its kind of disrespectful to just pin a message like its "case closed." dont do that. im trying to have a discussion, please.

SharbyQue6/25/2018, 1:57:42 AM3 votes

Probs woulda been better to wait till the thread was over m8 cause it def gives off those vibes.

Also no offense you come off rly passive aggressive with those quotations.AurelionSol ~~

AirKingNeo6/25/2018, 4:23:36 AM3 votes

Ban evasion isn't even against the rules anymore.

The rule is only against posting "rule breaking content" while ban evading/posting on behave of a banned user.

ModThe Djinn6/25/2018, 12:33:15 PM3 votes

{quoted}Recently I was falsely permabanned for "ban evasion". I had gotten the ban reverted, however I am disappointed in the handling of the followup. I had pursued the case further to find out what caused the "false flag" to occur, if there was any fact checking made, if something was wrong with my account etc. Not to go too into detail but I received conflicting information from various mods & heralds and was discouraged from seeking answers or "pestering the mods over a closed case." I must make it clear that I don't hold anything against the mod team over this - mistakes happen, but needless to say I was disappointed.

Hey Lenn.

I'll be honest -- this puzzled me a little bit (I know it isn't the main point of your thread, but I'm going to mention it briefly). On 6/20 DTN was very clear about this, and seems to cover your concerns later that you were not told that we couldn't share information or that your account had no strike against it. As per that conversation:

There's a number of flags we take into consideration, but unfortunately this is sensitive information I'm unable to share with you.

It was a mistake on our end which was cleared up, there's no mark against you for it or concerns of compromise. Unfortunately do to privacy concerns for other users or the integrity of the information we have I can't get into it any more than that, sorry.

To me (and I realized you may not agree) that seems like exactly the information you mentioned that you had wanted to receive, and it was given during your second conversation with a Herald (the first being the one where I rolled back the improper punishment).

This situation prompted me to think about what is actually going on behind the scenes with actions taken. It feels like most mods have very little information when it comes to specific punishments and no one can really explain what happened besides the singular person who made the action. Is this the case?

In 99% of cases this is not the case -- we're typically very good at sharing information and getting second opinions from other moderators (a lot of actions are discussed internally prior to being issued), and have a record of most of this stuff. In this particular case, as the issue was with a faulty ban evasion (which doesn't have the same information trail) it was harder for people to get the required information on. It was also the first incident of its type we've encountered, so we didn't really have a precedent, which I apologize for.

When I go to the moderation discord to contest a case, it's not just about having the punishment removed. It's about understanding what happened and knowing that the mods will be careful in the future to not make the same mistake, not just with my account but with anyone's. I do not want anyone to feel that their problems get handwaved and I would like users who are worried about their account standing to feel encouraged when speaking with mods.

In that case, definitely tell me when you come on! Our conversation on 6/11 was a brief one that seemed to end after I acknowledged the mistake and rolled back the ban, and had I know you were worried I'd have personally explained the situation in more detail.

For what it's worth, we have looked into how we handle situations like this to reduce the possibility of this happening again.

  • If a false punishment is made or an action is contested and taken back, I would hope that every mod is made aware of the situation and what action should be done instead, for the sake of consistency. Even the mods you speak to regarding punishments can be pretty unaware of what happened, through no fault of their own - hopefully with better communication and organization this could be avoided. I would also hope that there is a list or some kind of log of deletions, punishments and punishment reverts somewhere for all the mods to reference.

We do tend to discuss seriously incorrect actions internally, although not every "this was a fine punishment but we're rolling it back a bit based on a conversation with the poster in question" is discussed, as those are more often discretionary. There is also a log of deletions, punishments, reverts, and reasons behind punishment that we use as a reference. Again, given the specific circumstances behind your incorrect punishment these things weren't as readily accessible, as the process used to determine ban evasion isn't linked in the same way. In short, your case fell through the cracks of our existing system because we hadn't encountered a situation like it before, and we'll be better prepared next time. I'm sorry that you had to be an unwilling guinea pig. :(

  • ** I would like to see more willingness to communicate with the users about WHY a ban happened after the fact**, rather than just rolling back the punishment and hurrying them off.

May I ask where you felt hurried off in your initial interactions? I'd like to know where we went wrong so we can improve, but looking at the logs there was definitely time to ask questions, and no indication that there were concerns of yours left open. I'd have happily addressed them had I known about your concerns, but most of the volunteer team has other responsibilities/jobs/children/etc, so our standard procedure isn't to information-dump, although we will if asked.

  • **More openness to discuss rules and changes. **It can be pretty disheartening to try to open a dialogue regarding rules and possible improvements or whether or not a rule is truly necessary, as you get shut down pretty fast by a mod or get told to go to off topic (what is boards inquiries for then? lol) Perhaps a suggestions room in the discord? I would like to see more encouragement when it comes to meta discussion of the boards rather than having everything set in stone. It is a community with community moderation, after all.

That's what this very board is for, and things like the threads I made prior to the new board rules, or the thread I made discussing the new rules and why they were created the way they were. We prefer to keep that sort of discussion here on Discuss the Boards because it makes it more visible to anyone else who might be interested in joining the conversation and we can see input/ideas from other community members as well. To be honest, with how fast Discord moves, ideas/suggestions there would actually be LESS visible than they are here (where we read 99% and respond to probably 90% of them).

Colonel J6/25/2018, 2:11:30 AM2 votes

Good thread +1