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+--- Thread: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. (/thread-20240.html)
"Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Quest - Mar 28, 2018
So recently my help and support thread was closed as it was "answered" by multiple people seen here:
https://limelightgaming.net/forums/thread-20235.html
But what I don't understand is, how can staff choose, with no guidelines, what punishment to give out. So what basically was said is that you get the luck of the draw. If BlackDog catches a player with a gambling site in their name they get a warning, if D.I views a PR of his friend he is told to remove it via ts. And no this isn't another "bias" thread - I am just confused on how it is fair for different punishments to be thrown out to people for the same reason just because it's a different staff member dealing with them.
In addition I did see some responses that confused me. Especially by the rule breaker, Gungranny:
Gungranny Wrote:So I perm someone for RDM on their last chance I should perm you for RDM on your first ban?
This is COMPLETELY different as it is multiple times of a rule breaking and cannot be compared to advertising a gambling site.
Also BlackDog made a point that my friend, PrisonDad failed to comply but yet he did and the warning appeal got denied.
With all of that aside - Punishments in general are not fairly given out by some staff members and I want to know the community's opinion on this.
Why are there no guidelines for staff?
And if there is, why aren't they made public - or would that be classed as "leaking"?
What is everyone else's opinion on this?
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - BlackDog - Mar 28, 2018
No one set of guidelines can ever cover 100% of all situations, and thus its at the discretion of staff handling the case to decide then and there how it will be handled using the rules as the guiding factor for enforcement.
Soviets example while extreme is a fair one, you wish for 100% fairness and equality, yet do not feel that the same punishment issued for a multi-time offender is acceptable to be issued on a first timer, its one or the other with no middle-ground in the desire for total fairness.
Its either everyone is treated the exact same regardless of context and prior record.
or
People are treated differently based on context of the situation at hand and prior record.
That is why the system we have now the better option, there is no:
"Bob got mad and ran someone over, 1 week ban and 10hr vehicle blacklist"
"Bill ran someone over on accident but did not stop due to circumstances preventing it, issue a 1 week ban and 10hr vehicle blacklist"
Depending on the context of the situation at hand, the rule violated, how it was violated, how the player acted while doing so, what the other player was doing when it was violated, what both sides reaction to the violation were, etc etc, a punishment can varry, from a slap on the wrist because
(While bob got mad and ran bill over, bill in the end was ok with it and suggested they restart the situation from before it occured, Bob agrees, and staff reset the situation, no punishment issued as all sides are in agreement)
to a severe punishment because:
(Bob ran over 5 people, got out started to propkill, when taken by staff micspammed then DCed to avoid staff)
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Quest - Mar 28, 2018
@BlackDog
But in the case I used, as real case, two people both were informed of the rules and both complied to changed their name. Heck, gungranny even argued it - PrisonDad didn't do that - yet they got different punishments.
Neither of them were multi-time offender, in fact I think I've seen gungranny with that bolt.gg more than once on the server so he may be a multi time offender
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - BlackDog - Mar 28, 2018
Whether the examples listed are real or not, the point still remains.
Depending on the context of the situation at hand, the rule violated, how it was violated, how the player acted while doing so, what the other player was doing when it was violated, what both sides reaction to the violation were, etc , a punishment can varry.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Soviethooves - Mar 28, 2018
(Mar 28, 2018, 06:39 PM)Quest Wrote: So recently my help and support thread was closed as it was "answered" by multiple people seen here:
https://limelightgaming.net/forums/thread-20235.html
It was.....yet here we are.....going in circles.....again....
But what I don't understand is, how can staff choose, with no guidelines, what punishment to give out.
So what basically was said is that you get the luck of the draw.
Or just listen, find out what you did wrong, and follow the rules. Most staff won't punish people if they know what they did is wrong. At the least it will be less severe if you just cooperate. If you ARE given a punishment you deem is a little too much, make a UBR or contact HR.
If BlackDog catches a player with a gambling site in their name they get a warning, if D.I views a PR of his friend he is told to remove it via ts. And no this isn't another "bias" thread - I am just confused on how it is fair for different punishments to be thrown out to people for the same reason just because it's a different staff member dealing with them.
>He told me to remove it.
>I did.
>You posted a PR on me (stating in Steam you would have just PM'ed me if I didn't negatively speak about you in TS without your knowledge of you listening in to my private conversations.)
>It got denied as you posted it after the fact that the situation was resolved.
In addition I did see some responses that confused me. Especially by the rule breaker, Gungranny:
Gungranny Wrote:So I perm someone for RDM on their last chance I should perm you for RDM on your first ban?
This is COMPLETELY different as it is multiple times of a rule breaking and cannot be compared to advertising a gambling site.
It's extreme, but it's what you said. Equal punishments for rule breakages. Without staff discretion this would be generally what would happen.
Again, think of it like real life. A court can't just write down EVERY POSSIBILITY. The courts needs to decide and go through piles of evidence and questions to offer a truthful sentence. This is up to the DISCRETION of the court.
Also BlackDog made a point that my friend, PrisonDad failed to comply but yet he did and the warning appeal got denied.
Do you have any evidence to his compliance to changing it? Was it before or after? Did it take him getting the punishment to get it? What was his attitude like? What's his history? All the questions and more had to be answered by BD when he was deciding the punishment.
With all of that aside - Punishments in general are not fairly given out by some staff members and I want to know the community's opinion on this.
Why are there no guidelines for staff?
And if there is, why aren't they made public - or would that be classed as "leaking"?
Their are and they're kept private as they involve policies and proecdures that the public can't view due to their private tools for investigating and regulating themselves and the community.
What is everyone else's opinion on this?
You're taking this way out of proportion because you got mad when I spoke negatively about you in a private TS room. You escalated to this after I already verbally warned to take the link out. This is rarely a problem and never really has had to have a discussion until now because YOU are mad that I got away with using private communications (Outside LL's jurisdiction) to talk negatively about you and your friend was warned by someone you don't like in the administration position.
This whole thing is ridiculous and quite frankly annoying. The staff member have a Human Resources department that is fair and just (And that's coming from someone they demoted). Talk to them about this. Don't start another BS contest.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Quest - Mar 28, 2018
@"Gungranny"
The post didn't get denied it got accepted lol.
I don't care if you didn't know that I could hear you, you still said it and it's not very nice to know that you talk shit behind my back anyways
"Court needs to decide" seriously? You really think B.D. read PrisonDad's whole appeal? He didn't even remember it when I asked about it. - They don't care.
Like I said, his first time being told it was against the rules, he changed it and got a perm warning
There are clearly no "punishment guidelines" for staff
Don't say this happened because you talk shit about me behind my back, this happened because I see it as unfair. If you find it annoying don't respond - this is a conversation for the community as of a whole not just for you.
I'm not angry with the fact that you "got away with insulting me" it's just not nice to know that a person with a role in this community, of helping and being supportive to players, is talking shit about players who have done nothing wrong behind their back.
And actually I do like BlackDog me and him have some all-right chats sometimes, what I do have against is people breaking the rules and not getting the same punishment.
I did say it wasn't a "bias" thread for a reason - So it didn't start a shit show.
Obviously you wouldn't see it as unfair because you got away with it Soviet.
Now I don't really wanna make this just responses between you and me so could you kindly PM your response to me via steam or the forums.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Jen - Mar 28, 2018
Quote:But the point is Quest,
That punishments are dictated by what the admin/moderater thinks should be issued.
As Nightmare has said.
Equal punishments completely disregards what the team does having equal punishments means that whenever anyone breaks a rule they get punished by what a sheet says. This isn't how we operate, the team operaters off discresion and choice. If someone believes it isn't the right choice or is abusing their powers they can get reported on the forums.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Night - Mar 28, 2018
Seriously Quest, I find that you're blowing this extremely out of proportion here. You've already had it explained to you on numerous counts by many members of staff that we're at our own discretion to issue whatever we see fit as a punishment. Not all cases are the same, thus we're trusted to enforce what we see and sanction a user based on that. If we step over the line or make the wrong call, then sure, HR are able to step in. The same way it'd be in a business if you were to mess up, you'd be liable to an audit into your actions and sometimes those actions can be superseded if deemed to be too over the top, but that rarely ever happens mainly due to the fact that, despite what you may think, a lot of thought does actually go into deciding a player's punishment for a rule violation.
To answer some questions you've raised, yes, there is guidelines in the form of a code of conduct which dictates our behaviour as staff members. To refrain from leaking information within that document, I can't explain what it does and does not cover however. Human Resources are best placed to answer this, as I'd rather not end up leaking information inadvertently. As for whether it's going to be/why hasn't it been made public, simple. It's staff guidelines. Players aren't supposed to see a document which is restricted for internal viewing. If you believe that a staff member has acted out of line or broken rules, that's what the staff report forum is for, or alternatively you can approach HR with your concerns and they'll be handled like that.
At the end of the day, whatever Blackdog decides to do in regards to punishment is down to his own discretion. Something that, again, we're trusted to be able to do as staff members. There simply can't be a "book of rule violations" that we have to follow, and if we don't then god knows what will happen, because that in itself will result in over the top punishments (despite what you may be thinking now). Here, let's try putting this into a form of context.
Jimbo, a 2 hour player has decided to RDM a bunch of people. His reasoning isn't very consistent and he doesn't sound apologetic for his actions either. Oh dear.
Now we've got Brian. Brian is a very experienced player with 1000+ hours now, and in that time he's also gained a couple of REP's as well, which demonstrates his ability to roleplay to an exceptional standard. His rapsheet isn't too long, but he has some priors on there too for other RDM cases that are fairly recent.
If we were to issue "equal" punishments here, then we'd end up slapping Jimbo and Brian here with a 4 hour weapons blacklist perhaps, or at worst a suspension for a couple of days. Considering that Brian is an experienced player, that punishment doesn't seem to fit up entirely to me, and it could also result in Jimbo being scared away from the server after his suspension because of how severe the punishment issued was. Not all punishments can be balanced, as it'll always sway in one person's favour that way.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Quest - Mar 28, 2018
@"Nightmare"
But your example there doesn't make sense either because PrisonDad, the one with the lower hours and no rank, got more of a punishment then gungranny, a player with over 1000hours and a teacher rank.
I just wanna see some responses from the players here rather than staff.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Night - Mar 28, 2018
It does, because that's how it'd be if "equal" punishments were a thing.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - BlackDog - Mar 28, 2018
Verbal warnings are also more or less the same as a Permanent warning.
If Bob has 1 warning on record for an offence, and he is caught doing it again, further punishment is issued.
If Bill has been given a verbal warning, and is caught doing the action again, further punishment will be issued, it does not go from Verbal To Permanent Warning.
They are basicly identical
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Overlewd - Mar 28, 2018
Quote:Staff have quite a bit of freedom when it comes to issuing punishments, because largely it depends on the context and prior history a lot of the time, and it's impossible to account for all possibilities and somehow end up with exactly 100% perfectly calculated punishments for each offense.
For something like this, without any context at all, both a verbal warning and a written warning are completely reasonable outcomes. And then further context can be achieved. Gungranny edited his name as asked, when asked. If he were to start complaining and arguing, delaying the removal, he could have well gotten the perm warning. I don't know exactly the situation with your friend but regardless both perm and verbal warnings for this are fair.
Hell even IRL they have a range of possible sentences, something ridiculous like 10-40 years for the same crime depending on multiple factors. And on the server we don't have a 10 page flowchart to calculating exact punishments, taking everything into account, nor do we have the time to do so even if we had something like that.
^ What I said in the last thread. The system cannot function without a fair amount of staff discretion. Now, if a staff member banned someone instantly for having a random site in their name with no history and without asking them to take it out first, we'd have a problem. But the difference between a perm warning and a verbal warning is well within general discretion and both are fair for the violation.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Doctor Internet - Mar 28, 2018
Both users got warned.
Both users removed the advertisement from their name.
What's the issue here @Quest?
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Quest - Mar 28, 2018
(Mar 28, 2018, 08:46 PM)Doctor Internet Wrote: Both users got warned.
Both users removed the advertisement from their name.
What's the issue here @Quest?
I don't see a warning for Gungranny on the warning tab.
RE: "Staff discretion" and the fairness of punishments for the same rule. - Doctor Internet - Mar 28, 2018
(Mar 28, 2018, 08:51 PM)Quest Wrote:(Mar 28, 2018, 08:46 PM)Doctor Internet Wrote: Both users got warned.
Both users removed the advertisement from their name.
What's the issue here @Quest?
I don't see a warning for Gungranny on the warning tab.
But as you heard, I chewed him out, in a verbal warning.
Both users were warned.