Staff Complaint - Alberyk/MattAtlas

[Kaed]

BYOND Key: Kaed/Kaedwuff

Staff BYOND Key:  Alberyk/MattAtlas

Game ID: N/A

Reason for complaint:

Evidence/logs/etc:

When I was given a permaban in January it was due to repeated failures to control my temper on the forums, and as a result, when I appealed my ban, I was told that repeating this behavior would result in consequences.  What was not made clear to me at the time, I assume because that was not the intent behind the stipulation, was that any violation of forum rules, regardless of how minor or unrelated, would result in an immediate re-establishing of that permanent ban.

Yesterday night, I made a post on this thread, which at the time I thought was qualified as being a witness to the issue, owing to the fact that it was directly related to my experience with the staff team.  The post has been deleted, but the summary of the contents was that the ruling the staff made does not match up with the rules that have on the forums. This morning I was greeting with two things - an infraction from Alberyk bundled with another permanent ban, along with my command whitelist being summarily rejected due to the same incident.

 

I attempted to bring this subject up with Alberyk this morning on discord, and the conversation was as follows: 

This was a matter of subjective information on the concept of 'being a witness that can refute claims', and I have been told the staff standpoint on the matter, but I'm willing to go with that. The problem with Alberyk's ruling is that they feel my attempt to bear testimony in this forum thread is tantamount to a resurgence of my previous behavior of being rude on the forums, of which I will indicate here:

These are my list of offenses that have occurred in the last year and a half. Every single one of them was related to a specific issue, my tendency to lose my temper and be rude.  Insisting that I deserve to be permabanned for this is akin to permabanning someone on the server for repeated powergaming, then after they appeal they misunderstand a corporate regulation, and you permaban them them again after explaining what the staff expects, stating 'a rule break is a rule break, and you have a history.'  Neither of these incidents are related or even close to the same severity, and rulings for punitive measures should not be so binary.

Additionally, I would like to lodge a complaint about the behavior of MattAtlas and Alberyk in regards to how my whitelist application was handled. I posted that application 10 days ago, on the 11th of June, and in that period since I have asked Alberyk twice to have someone review it, and both times the promise to get a response resulted in absolutely nothing, not even a notification that someone was evaluating it. 

By contrast, MattAtlas showed up to deny the application less than 5 hours after Alberyk issued an infraction against me. This prolonged lack of communication followed by immediate retributive action has left me confused as to whether the staff team places a higher priority on punitive action and bureaucratic process than making the playerbase's experience function in an enjoyable way. The fact that you have added a new addendum to the rules very recently that any ban will result in losing your whitelist seems to support this. It was, in fact, the sluggishness by which this command app proceeded that lead me to feel it was important I share my experience and feelings on this apparently new ruling that any ban of any length will result in a whitelist strip. 

I should also mention that the content of my post that was deleted was pointing out that it is frustrating that staff members will make rulings behind the scenes and not inform the players until after they try to appeal and present rules as they were provided on the forum.  Sure enough, before I made that post, this is how the 'Removal of Command Whitelist' section read, as written by MattAtlas, per the complaint by Hesphos. 

And this is what it it now reads:

 

This is an act of bad faith that seems to be directly in response to my commentary that the staff is changing the rules without notifying us, and one might even be able to make an argument given the timing that deleting my post and issuing a permaban followed by editing the rules as a result could be an attempt to silence valid player critique under the veneer of rigidly adhering to the rules about staff complaints. It could also be an excess of draconian policies and the staff expecting the players to know beforehand their private rules. It was my opinion at the time I made the post (perhaps incorrectly) that making a staff complaint about a staff complaint about a staff complaint (Hephestos's complaint is a followup to another) would be an unnecessary escalation of bureaucratic process, but the staff team has taken the hardline approach of expelling me from the forums for essentially not filing my complaint paperwork properly while claiming that I deserve it because I am a repeat offender on a completely different matter.

Additional remarks:

It should also be worth noting that when I attempted to request the ability to make this complaint earlier today, I wasted a half hour of my time due to Alberyk (and apparently Arrow) incorrectly managing my posting permissions that caused my original complaint to be unpostable, and I had to be asked to get direct links and permissions to even SEE relevant threads so I could get screenshots.  It seems to be fixed now, owing to the fact that I can post this, but if you plan to allow people to make appeals after forum, you need to train your staff on how to manage forum permissions, because whoever was doing it this morning did not seem to understand what they were doing, and it made the experience extremely frustrating.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Kaed

[Alberyk]

You still broke the forum rules, you keep breaking them; you will be punished. Under the logic that something similar happened to you, anyone could post under any complaint that got them banned or punished in anway way. The rules are clear that you have to be related to the incident in question, not the punishment. You were given a lot of chances to start following the rules. Those in particular:

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Don't be a dick. We're all here to have fun, not fight and argue with assholes. Don't ruin the game for everyone else, and use common sense. This includes anything from attacking other people, starting arguments over nothing, etcetera.

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All sub-forums have rules, violating them counts as violating the standard forum rules.

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Only post if involved. If you are not a moderator or administrator and were not involved in the incident(s) referred to, you may not post or reply to a staff complaint regarding said incident(s). It is permissible, however, to provide testimony regarding a staff member's behavior backed by proof, in the form of screenshots or logs, or as a witness of some form that can (respectfully) verify/refute any claims made.

You were not involved in the incident, you had nothing to really add besides the fact that you also had your whitelist removed due to administrative action. The complaint section used to be plagued with infighting, peanut galleries and cherry picking. We really need to be strict for it to don't devolve into a mess.

Now, in regards to the waiting time. I have asked for the team to look into it after you contacted me. However, half of the people dealing with whitelist were busy with irl stuff at the time, Abo and Read, which reduced how much we could process in regards to trial and discussion.

As I said before, a ban is too many administrative actions for me, but I just decided to make this more clear what is the team instance on this and so I updated the whitelist guidelines to reflect it better. It was also not unannounced, I posted it in the general discord announcement channel and updated the title of the topic to reflect that it was updated today. 

[Kaed]

You are cherry picking your own stated rules to establish your point and focusing only on the part about not posting if not involved, while also assuming that I have some kind of foreknowledge of the chaos that used to be the complaint forums. Here's all of it that's related to this

Quote

 

Only post if involved. If you are not a moderator or administrator and were not involved in the incident(s) referred to, you may not post or reply to a staff complaint regarding said incident(s). It is permissible, however, to provide testimony regarding a staff member's behavior backed by proof, in the form of screenshots or logs, or as a witness of some form that can (respectfully) verify/refute any claims made.

Stay on topic, this means that the posts should be constructive and focus on the complaint itself only. Any off-topic post made will be removed and met with a reminder to remain on topic.

 

The post was both on topic and directly related to the complaint, which was about the ruling to remove a whitelist and about how your ruling does not match up with the standards that were visible at the time. The claim of two staff members was that the rules were including this new no-tolerance whitelist strip and I was refuting it by being a witness to a different standard.  The fact that you made this announcement and changed the rules this morning, after you had banned me for pointing out the problem, does not mean that you retroactively gave notice. 

Certainly, I can understand your standpoint on this now that you have explained it to me, and since you are a staff member your ruling matters more than mine on interpreting the rules, but it's not strictly fair to treat a mistake in rules interpretation as the same thing as deliberately choosing the disregard the rules.

I would like someone who is not Alberyk to weigh in on this, because the complaint is a direct result of his choices as a staff member, and it is not presenting an unbiased standpoint for him to handle his own complaint.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Kaed

[Alberyk]

You were not a witness or involved in it incident. The rule is clear, you have to be involved in the incident, you were not. And you were not the first one to complain about being banned being equal to have your whitelist removed. Everything you said in your post was not related at all to the incident or the complaint, you were just saying your opinion/pointed out how your case was handled. You were not really adding to the complaint at all. Suggesting how or when a whitelist should be removed also had no place there, you should have done a suggestion. Anyone that was also banned or had their whitelist removed could also come and give their piece, which as I said, could turn that complaint into something else that was not related to that case in particular. Take in mind that the rule starts with ONLY, that means that this is the sole case that third parties should come and post it.

11 minutes ago, Kaed said:

I would like someone who is not Alberyk to weigh in on this, because the complaint is a direct result of his choices as a staff member, and it is not presenting an unbiased standpoint for him to handle his own complaint.

That is how complaints go, I am not handling this complaint myself, I am only explained why I did this.

In regards to the change, I see how it is bad when we are making more clear on how/when we will do something. We are not reactively changing the rules to punish anyone, we are making them more clear. Being banned is too many administrative actions in our vision.

[Kaed]

This argument is becoming circular as I re-explain my reasons for misunderstanding the complaint rules and you insist that it does not matter what lead me to do so, only that I did, so I am going to end it here.

But I will express the hope that people can look beyond a record of being rude and understand that people can make mistakes. My behavior on the forums previously was not a mistake so much as me choosing to put my own desire to be rude with people above the health of the forum community. It was a regrettable decision, and I am doing my best to improve. I do not feel that this action, even if it was a violation of the rules, should be treated with the same gravity as my previous conduct eventually gained me.  It does not match the malicious intent represented by my previous conduct, and was a sincere attempt to critique the way the community is managed.  It is clear that I should have put the post in a different location now, but it was not at the time I did it.

If I, and other problematic members of the community, cannot improve if with each new misstep because every mistake, regardless of context, is judged as if it represents a continuation of our most severe misconduct in the past, then there will be little opportunity for us to actually grow to become a good part of it.  You must ask yourself if your priority is to issue me another ban as swiftly as possible, or if your system is intended to make me correct my actions. 

Certainly, the path that lead to my previous permanent ban has brought about an attempt to correct my behavior, but this action of expelling me the moment I put another toe out of a line I did not realize was there does not seem to represent an attempt to correct my behavior, but rather to make me go away.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Kaed

[MattAtlas]

20 hours ago, Kaed said:

By contrast, MattAtlas showed up to deny the application less than 5 hours after Alberyk issued an infraction against me. This prolonged lack of communication followed by immediate retributive action has left me confused as to whether the staff team places a higher priority on punitive action and bureaucratic process than making the playerbase's experience function in an enjoyable way.

I'm not sure why I'm even in this complaint? We were discussing your application the same day that administrative action was taken on you. I then noticed this and denied your application. This would've happened to anyone else.

Your application was not an easy one to discuss. You had basically just come off a forum permanent ban and we needed time to make sure that you would actually not break the rules.

[Goret]

Hello, sorry for the time. @Pratepresidenten and I are taking this complaint and we will look into it.

[Goret]

I'm back. Prate and I spoke and we decided the outcome of this.

While your point was valid, you still shouldn't have posted on a matter that wasn't related to you. We will unban you from the forums, but you will still be walking on thin ice as you used to be.
As for the whitelist application, Matt said his piece and there's nothing wrong with the rulling their took, given your history.
 

This will be locked and archieved in 24 hours.

[Goret]

Locking and archieving.