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Staff should give an abridged/brief clarification on tickets prior to closing them.


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I may not speak for everybody here, but to most who have ahelped, I think they will find this anecdote familiar:

You spot a player involved in some gross negligence in regards to the server rules, and ahelp this to a staff member. Maybe they had [CLASSIFIED] x10s in their records, or they portray a baldhead in a grey jumpsuit for the memes, maybe its an antag deploying powergaming tricks or metainformation is used by a fellow player to trick/trap an antag. Eitherway, you help the staff member by providing either logs, or pointing out what this transgressor has done to warrant an ahelp and the admin acknowledges your concerns and tells you they will deal with it. Then you carry on and wait 5 minutes, 10 minutes or sometimes longer depending on how much investigation is required by admins. All of a sudden, you receive a ping. Finally, the admin/mod has dealt with it --- "It's been handled". Says the admin, before closing off the ticket and leaving you in the dark. Meanwhile, you can see the transgressor happily walk by as if nothing happened at all, leaving you with no clue what exactly has been done in regards to enforcement.

My suggestion isn't as big as my anecdote may make it seem, but my point is that I believe that staff should be somewhat more transparent  when it comes to handling these types of tickets by offering a brief or short clarification prior to closing it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not asking every moderator or admin to end every ticket with a 200 word paragraph case report. However, providing players with closure would probably help relations between staff and players.

This also isn't an attack to any particular staff member either. There are staff members who do inform players by ahelp what they've done, either by telling them they gave the transgessor a warning or a note, and sometimes they don't do it either. I think ahelp tickets need this type of transparecy to give players the sense that their tickets are taken seriously. If a player requests for more details, the staff member can always direct them to the forums/discord or simply refuse to provide more information if they deem it unnecessary.

 

If anyone has any additions or objections to this, I'd love to hear it. I think a discussion on this matter would contribute regardless of the outcome to see how players feel about how tickets are handled.

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Disagree. Staff don't owe an explanation; as staff, they're trusted to handle tickets, investigate properly, and dish out punishment if necessary. In my experience if they want you to do anything further they will ask you, such as "handled, ahelp if you see X doing Y again." If the staff member wants to tell someone what they did, that's their prerogative, but making it a requirement just heaps on more responsibility for frankly no reason beyond to sate a player's curiosity. If you don't think they did it properly or seriously, there are staff complaints. It's unfair to assume that staff did not handle something seriously or investigate something thoroughly because they don't tell you what they did; they have no obligation to defuse whatever skepticism the ahelping player has about how they did their job.

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Can't say I support this. Certain players would weaponize this theoretical policy against staff members in order to get details on whether or not staff discipline was doled out against another player. Information that not every player should even be privy to.

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Agree with the other commenters. In-game player issue-handling is just fine the way it is, any possible issue is between the player in question and the staff handling them. I don't want my issues discussed with other random players just because they reported it, neither do I want staff to feel obligated to do so in any way. I can understand the curiosity and need for closure, but it just can't be handled via policy in my mind, and I'd rather leave it open as-is than try to.

For tickets in general and that discussion, I can only provide a slight bit of critique regarding one (1) of my own personal tickets where I needed clarification on a subject and it was closed rather abruptly after my initial question was answered - the answer bringing up a new question I was about to write when it closed. In these situations an 'anything else?' or 'There are more pertient issues so I will leave you here' is better, when it is closed like that it makes me feel like they don't want to be disturbed again, which I am sure wasn't the intended impression.

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  • 1 month later...
On 07/06/2021 at 23:53, Ricky_the_banshee said:

staff should be somewhat more transparent  when it comes to handling these types of tickets by offering a brief or short clarification prior to closing it.

I agree and disagree with this statement.

While I understand that Staff may not want to reveal too much information on how a particular case is handled, I don't see how a brief clarification would negatively affect the community, specially considering that the player who ahelped, went through the trouble of calling out to the Staff about bad behaviour and should at least deserve a minimal answer.

However, I strongly agree with this opinion when it comes to tickets that would result in a warning/ban, while Staff may investigate what happened during the round, it may not fully encapsulate what truly happened or what the player thought when doing something that the admins seemed unruly. 

On 07/06/2021 at 23:53, Ricky_the_banshee said:

providing players with closure would probably help relations between staff and players.

And I completely agree with this statement, because there is nothing worse than Staff disregarding your responses, coming up with their own conclusions and banning you without taking into consideration your appeals to clarify the situation. Specially since after that point, the player is unable to defend himself in said ticket.

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