Bedrock BRING BACK OLD CUBECRAFT

[IgnRed]

Greetings fellow members and staffs. As per the title says i am really missing the old cubecraft as it had following features
1) FPS friendly even for low end devices
2) Capes and Custom 4D skins
3) better report moderation
4) Region to Region Less Lag
5) Better KB
6) Better Queue in Games.

I don't know why kb was updated but that's like least of the priorities for me in the above list i have mentioned. but other things mentioned kept cubecraft alive with more player count. Please bring back Old non laggy cubecraft.

Thanks
xXMasterRedx

 

[Eli]

3) better report moderation

Hi! I'm not a Bedrock player so I cannot provide any insight about your other suggestions, but I am interested to know what you consider would improve our handling of reports?

 

[Beeeee 🍯]

If we can't get the 4D skins back because someone said that it was used before in a way that makes it hard to see players (which is understandably annoying), then at least give us back the capes even just the official ones from Mojang and nothing else.

And the better queueing ig, I have no clue how to make it better honestly, but the game starting regardless of how biased the player count looks like helps a little because staying is a choice at that point, but mid-q takes the cake and slapped it right back at the floor. It's so bad. Though I understand the concept and why it's still a thing now but it makes more people hate playing the game, thus lesser amount of people playing, thus longer the q, thus even more people not wanting to play it anymore.

 

[IgnRed]

Hi! I'm not a Bedrock player so I cannot provide any insight about your other suggestions, but I am interested to know what you consider would improve our handling of reports?

okay so regarding this process, the /sr report takes so much time and in most cases it doesn't work. There is something called as Closet cheating which is not blatant enough for sentinel but still cheating exists. and also the alt bypassing even when the players accept its them in global chat, after reporting as well it gets denied because they use software to spoof device ID, ip address and mac address. If we report cheating with evidence through forums it doesn't get attention for a long time and the video evidence gets expired ( 14 days constraint) and it gets denied. Please make the Player Report Department Faster and efficient. thanks

 

[Eli]

Thank you for your feedback, it's very appreciated!

the /sr report takes so much time and in most cases it doesn't work

This is entirely dependent on the amount of Moderators that we have, since /sr are handled by moderators in-real time. So if it takes a while it's just because nobody is available/there are many other reports to look at.

There is something called as Closet cheating which is not blatant enough for sentinel but still cheating exists.

It is very hard for an anticheat to be efficient against closet cheating, I would even argue that it shouldn't be a priority because the amount of people who actually closet cheat in comparison to blatant cheaters is minimal. Hence why we have other ways of handling cheaters, the best way to get a closet cheater banned is by making a report here on our forums or by using /sr. Then again, if you're unable to acquire sufficient evidence to prove any closet cheating, then you should question whether they really are cheating in the first place.

the alt bypassing even when the players accept its them in global chat, after reporting as well it gets denied because they use software to spoof device ID, ip address and mac address

I am unsure if there even is a workaround for this, I believe there's a limit as to what we can do to detect bypassers. I will however inquire on this internally, just don't expect a response here because I might not be able to share details.

If we report cheating with evidence through forums it doesn't get attention for a long time and the video evidence gets expired ( 14 days constraint) and it gets denied.

I am very hesitant to believe this is true, our bedrock staff works really hard to handle reports every single day. I don't think reports ever reach the 14 day constraint and get denied as a consequence of our speed, it just seems very unlikely to me.

 

[Prixifye]

Greetings fellow members and staffs. As per the title says i am really missing the old cubecraft as it had following features
1) FPS friendly even for low end devices
2) Capes and Custom 4D skins
3) better report moderation
4) Region to Region Less Lag
5) Better KB
6) Better Queue in Games.

I don't know why kb was updated but that's like least of the priorities for me in the above list i have mentioned. but other things mentioned kept cubecraft alive with more player count. Please bring back Old non laggy cubecraft.

Thanks
xXMasterRedx

I agree with everything, the old cube was much better than the way cube is rn.

 

[IgnRed]

Thank you for your feedback, it's very appreciated!


This is entirely dependent on the amount of Moderators that we have, since /sr are handled by moderators in-real time. So if it takes a while it's just because nobody is available/there are many other reports to look at.


It is very hard for an anticheat to be efficient against closet cheating, I would even argue that it shouldn't be a priority because the amount of people who actually closet cheat in comparison to blatant cheaters is minimal. Hence why we have other ways of handling cheaters, the best way to get a closet cheater banned is by making a report here on our forums or by using /sr. Then again, if you're unable to acquire sufficient evidence to prove any closet cheating, then you should question whether they really are cheating in the first place.


I am unsure if there even is a workaround for this, I believe there's a limit as to what we can do to detect bypassers. I will however inquire on this internally, just don't expect a response here because I might not be able to share details.


I am very hesitant to believe this is true, our bedrock staff works really hard to handle reports every single day. I don't think reports ever reach the 14 day constraint and get denied as a consequence of our speed, it just seems very unlikely to me.

one thing i would like to mention is how much time it takes for bypassing ban reports. it takes more than a week for it and the player starts sharing accounts so eventually making it hard to get bypassers banned even though they mention in global chat its them. i also would like to mention how anti cheat system works, most times it bans people who aren't cheating and it takes quite a while for that appeal to be reviewed. and in the mean time when they alt and get banned for bypassing their original ban gets increased :(

 

[Eli]

one thing i would like to mention is how much time it takes for bypassing ban reports. it takes more than a week for it and the player starts sharing accounts so eventually making it hard to get bypassers banned even though they mention in global chat its them. i also would like to mention how anti cheat system works, most times it bans people who aren't cheating and it takes quite a while for that appeal to be reviewed. and in the mean time when they alt and get banned for bypassing their original ban gets increased :(

I would say these are both symptoms of the current size of our staff team and I am hoping that with the changes to helper requirements we will see good growth, thus things should get handled faster.

 

[adrian525pl]

okay so regarding this process, the /sr report takes so much time and in most cases it doesn't work. There is something called as Closet cheating which is not blatant enough for sentinel but still cheating exists. and also the alt bypassing even when the players accept its them in global chat, after reporting as well it gets denied because they use software to spoof device ID, ip address and mac address. If we report cheating with evidence through forums it doesn't get attention for a long time and the video evidence gets expired ( 14 days constraint) and it gets denied. Please make the Player Report Department Faster and efficient. thanks

To add to things that need improvement in the report moderation department:

Last month I posted a series of threads about a person trolling in giga blockwars.

For anyone not wanting to read into it: a person has made several identically named accounts and kept trolling giga blockwars games for a year. They slowly started getting banned, the first one getting banned for moderator witnessed use of cheats (not suprising, his whole thing is that he spams blocks near his teams spawn all the time, you can't tell me he is not using an autoclicker for this), and another one for ban evasion.

After making a report that could have gotten them banned for good because sentinel has a feature blocking certain IPs or devices (not quite sure here) from joining if there are too many banned accounts linked to it, I found that all of his accounts were unbanned. And they remain unbanned at the time I am writing this.


What needs improvement, on top of the things you mentioned, are the punishment severities. ALL ingame offenses should be punishable with a ban, "less" severe ones with a temporary one, severe ones with a temporary one. This way all reports matter, and offenses such as trolling, crossteaming or camping won't require an entire year to actually get people punished for commiting them.

Moderators, specifically appeal moderators, should also reply to people who made reports on players who they chose to unban (not ALL of them, just the most recent accepted report), explaining in detail why they chose to unban that player.

They should also take into consideration all of the existing (accepted) reports on the players whose punishments are being appealed.

Something that would also be nice, though its not necessary, is the same thing, but for report moderators.

Speaking of which: Moderators should also disclose the exact punishment they are handing (if there is one) to the person who made the report. Not explain the exact reasoning behind their decision making, but simply disclose the decision that they made.

Players should also have a limit on the amount of times they can appeal punishment before their account is banned for good.


Something unrelated to this that would also be good would be extending the 14 day evidence age constraint to at least 4 times as much or getting rid of it entirely. Why is evidence that is 15 days old any less valid than 13 days old evidence? I see no reason to not accept "old" evidence.



Also, in reply to the moderator in this thread claiming reports don't take so long to investigate that evidence could expire: I may not have witnessed 14 day long report investigations (yet), but sometimes it sure gets close.

The longest investigation I ever witnessed lasting 9 days.

With evidence being allowed to only be 14 days old.

Now I only saw 9 days once, still not a good sign if, with an evidence age limit of 14, a report investigation can potentially take longer than half of that.

9 days basically require me to report things instantly after they happen just in case they take a little bit too long to investigate.

Not everyone has the time to take a recording, cut out the unnecessary bits, upload it to youtube and then also fill out the report form that quickly.
There is also very little reason to actually do it, given how little is done about anything that isn't blatant kill aura or fly hacking.

 

[Eli]

ALL ingame offenses should be punishable with a ban

I think the way you phrase this is a bit misleading, all in-game offenses are already punishable with a ban, we just choose to warn people for specific offenses that may not be immediately obvious or severe enough to warrant a ban straight away.

I don’t think the use of warnings should change because it allows us to educate players in the rules without being overly severe for not so serious infractions. And yes, I do believe team trolling is a not-so serious offense, at least it cannot be ranked to the likes of cheating.

This way all reports matter, and offenses such as trolling, crossteaming or camping won't require an entire year to actually get people punished for commiting them.

All reports already matter, I don’t think a report NEEDS to result in a ban for it to have served its purpose. When a player receives a warning that leads them closer to the possibility of a ban in the future, in many cases it stops them from committing the infraction ever again.

Moderators, specifically appeal moderators, should also reply to people who made reports on players who they chose to unban (not ALL of them, just the most recent accepted report), explaining in detail why they chose to unban that player.

I disagree, I understand why you might think this is something reporters should be entitled to, because in the end you did put the effort into submitting a report. But as soon as you submit that report, you are no longer related to it in any way, and although we really appreciate the time you took in submitting evidence, I see no need for you to continue to be involved in a case that, moving forward, is to be handled between the Moderator, and the reported user. You might have provided the evidence, but that does not make you an active participant in someone else’s case.

Your proposal also raises a ton of privacy concerns, often times when we choose to remove punishments even if the evidence was conclusive is because of new evidence that comes to light / possible explanations etc, everyone who receives a punishment on CubeCraft should be able to calmly provide as much information as necessary in their appeal, without worrying about that information being shared publicly elsewhere.

Furthermore, having to explain the reasoning behind the removal of a punishment to the player who made the report is an open invitation for the reporter to argue against our decision, which just makes our job significantly harder, mostly because we have our own internal procedures for certain things that we cannot reveal, and because we cannot and will not share information that would otherwise be private about the reported user.

They should also take into consideration all of the existing (accepted) reports on the players whose punishments are being appealed.

This is something we already do, when reviewing appeals we trace back and look at all the evidence against and in favor of keeping the punishment, all of it feeds our decision to accept or deny an appeal.

Speaking of which: Moderators should also disclose the exact punishment they are handing (if there is one) to the person who made the report. Not explain the exact reasoning behind their decision making, but simply disclose the decision that they made.

I also do not think this is viable, part of the reason why we do not use public punishment tracks anymore was to allow moderators more flexibility when it came to enforcing the rules, something which is truly beneficial to us in cases in which we consider a punishment should be more/less severe than usual based on the circumstances.

The exact punishment that a player has received is also, private information, that we are not entitled to share, and although I understand why the reporter might want to know, it’s not fundamental if their report has already been accepted, THAT should be enough proof of the fact that their effort in making a report did matter, and justice was served.

The longest investigation I ever witnessed lasting 9 days.

9 is still 5 days away from being 14, I think mentioning this serves no purpose, as again, having evidence expire because of us taking too long is not something I have personally ever seen happen and I am sure it’s historically been very rare. Our team truly does try its best to review reports as quickly as possible, and I think we deserve a bit of good faith on that end.

 

[adrian525pl]

I don’t think the use of warnings should change because it allows us to educate players in the rules without being overly severe for not so serious infractions. And yes, I do believe team trolling is a not-so serious offense, at least it cannot be ranked to the likes of cheating.

Have you ever heard of the rule in pretty much all existing legal codes, stating that ignorance or lack of knowledge of the laws (often viewed as "willfull ignorance") is no excuse?

When you enter a minecraft server its your responsibility to learn what the rules are. You should punish people the same, whether they are aware of the rules or not, no matter how obscure, specific or weird some of the rules are.

The use of warnings should change, because it does absolutely nothing. Trolling is something that can not be done "just by accident" and commited without intent of it. And with things such as teaming/crossteaming it seems that you conveniently forgot that just about every game mode, especially solo mode, has a warning appearing at the start of every game, saying that its bannable.

The ONLY rule where I agree with this approach is camping, as this one is not always done with explicitly harmful intent, especially by those unaware of the rule, but that's just ONE rule where this applies, an exception from the norm.

With the rest of the rules, at least ingame rules, you always break them with harmful intent, whether you know about them or not.

All reports already matter, I don’t think a report NEEDS to result in a ban for it to have served its purpose. When a player receives a warning that leads them closer to the possibility of a ban in the future, in many cases it stops them from committing the infraction ever again.

I know it does not, the prime example being the user from the threads mentioned in my previous reply.

With the amount of trolling reports I had accepted on them, that's at least 4 separate warnings on 3 different accounts. Now I don't see him trolling, but its also because I do not see him online in my games recently. And I know he is not online by choice, because he is still not banned.

And that just on top of the countless people I told about them violating rules before reporting them not stopping what they are doing. The only thing happening with them, if anything, is that I don't see them online as much.

And even after punishment without a ban, if we consider the fact that they are now aware of me being someone who reports players for certain things, as well as aware that mods can punish them for certain things, the chance of them breaking rules if they know I am in their lobby or if there is a moderator in their lobby is near 0, but guarantees nothing outside of those cases.

A warning serves no purpose other than reinforcing your belief that you are actually going to change things without bans on a platform where even a perma ban means you can easily make an alt account.

A report resulting in anything other than a ban is one that does nothing other than waste someones time. The only people choosing to waste their time like this are either the ones who don't know its a waste of time or people who are extremely petty.

I disagree, I understand why you might think this is something reporters should be entitled to, because in the end you did put the effort into submitting a report. But as soon as you submit that report, you are no longer related to it in any way,

That is only partially correct.

While I am not involved in the process directly, the evidence used in it still belongs to me, and is often linked to some form of account I use, which, if someone through the appeal system was to see it, might lead to being a threat to the person who made the report. Especially given that the evidence is just given to the people appealing by simply entering the appeal site.


This also renders the whole "privacy concern" talk after the paragraph I quoted useless, because it implies you value the privacy of saying "user xyz has been banned", or the privacy of "user xyz has been unbanned because he provided sufficient evidence of his innocence" over the privacy risk that comes with putting the link to the video on my YT account on the appeals site for anyone who types the banned users name to see.

The fact ANYONE can just go on the appeals site and type a users name to see if he is banned and see evidence (if there is any) is also a privacy concern that goes conveniently ignored here.

Don't preach privacy to me when a good portion of the processes here rely on said privacy being actively ignored.

Furthermore, having to explain the reasoning behind the removal of a punishment to the player who made the report is an open invitation for the reporter to argue against our decision

as they should. You are moderators, you have a degree of responsibility here, and you should be held accountable if said responsibility is visibly not handled well.

which just makes our job significantly harder, mostly because we have our own internal procedures for certain things that we cannot reveal

how convenient, though I don't see how sending a simple "player xyz has been unbanned because he was able to provide sufficient evidence of his innocence" or something like that reveals any of that in any way.

and because we cannot and will not share information that would otherwise be private about the reported user.

Yeah, so private that I can enter the appeals site, type in their name, and see it for myself.

I also don't see how saying "player xyz is banned for trolling" is a reveal of private information, other than maybe the username, which, spoilers: you are already revealing by publishing the evidence on that same appeals site for the banned player and anyone else typing their username and anyone else who they may share that video with to see.

And that without my explicit knowledge. I once had a guy who got unbanned who decided to share the evidence I uploaded, how did I find out about that? By randomly looking on my youtube account when uploading evidence for some other report and seeing that the view count of the evidence has gone up way higher than it normally does.

Now luckilly he was pretty chill, so nothing happened because of it. But there is a huge risk someone may not be chill, and that they may do something because of it.

Now idk how about you, I'd prefer not to be in risk of harassment or online stalking all because I reported someone in a video game. But you seem to ignore that privacy concern literally everywhere in these processes.

This is something we already do, when reviewing appeals we trace back and look at all the evidence against and in favor of keeping the punishment, all of it feeds our decision to accept or deny an appeal.

Remember the example of the troll from the previous reply? The one I wrote a couple threads about?

Now, based on that situation I already have reason to doubt what you are saying is false.

And even if its not false and if what you are saying is true, then that's a sign of the appeal moderation being bad at their jobs.

And true or not, you sure did make a claim here with nothing to back it up.

And true or not, the situation is bad and needs improvement regardless, either in the way the moderation and reports/appeal processing works or in the competence of the people working within those processes.

Its undeniable change is needed, otherwise a situation like that would have never occured.

I also do not think this is viable, part of the reason why we do not use public punishment tracks anymore was to allow moderators more flexibility when it came to enforcing the rules, something which is truly beneficial to us in cases in which we consider a punishment should be more/less severe than usual based on the circumstances.

And that's a problem. It lowers the efficiency of processing the reports while also making it rely solely on what is basically the "feeling" of whoever happens to look at it even more than before, as not only does it base on that moderators interpretation of the rules, but also whatever they think makes for a sufficient punishment.

Now that system may work elsewhere, but not in an environment where people can make free alts if they get banned, or appeal banned accounts as the mods either do not have an actual process when investigating appeals or they are simply bad at doing it if they do actually do it.

That's the part of the system that needs change.

Rules and punishments for breaking them need to be "written in stone". You do x, you get y. Not "you do x, and I will decide what you get".

This way moderators don't waste time as their only job becomes deciding whether or not, beyond a reasonable doubt, someone did something based on the evidence provided. This will also scare rule breakers off more effectively than any warning or "flexibility" ever will, as now they can not get away with their offenses based on just getting lucky.

On that note, rules also need very clearly written definitions, in order to even further limit personal biases and interpretation possibilities mods and users have, so it is 100% clear what is allowed and what is not.

Besides: I am not asking for public punishment tracks, I am asking for people who were involved in making the punishment possible to be informed about certain things.

The exact punishment that a player has received is also, private information, that we are not entitled to share, and although I understand why the reporter might want to know, it’s not fundamental if their report has already been accepted, THAT should be enough proof of the fact that their effort in making a report did matter, and justice was served.

Its not private, anyone can type the players username on the appeals site and see the punishment. If it was private, the appeals site would be secured against this type of thing.

And no, seeing the report being accepted is not proof enough, its a mod claiming things are happening, its just words.

And given the case with the troll I keep mentioning, the one where the guy has been trolling on several alts over the span of a year, and even was banned for cheating at one point, makes those words extremely untrustworthy.


It is fundamental to know what punishment has been handed out, as that's proof of things happening. If you say "player xyz has been banned for 2 weeks", then that's something that can be verified. A vague verification involves things such as not seeing them on the server for those 2 weeks (which in some gamemodes, due to small playerbases, is actually not a bad form of verification). And a hard verification involves going on the appeals site and checking for yourself.


"Your report has been accepted and the rule breaker(s) will be dealt with accordingly." is also not very reassuring, and extremely vague.

Especially given the lack of a defintion for "delaing with accordingly".

Now if there was, as I already suggested in this reply, a written, "hard coded" list of rules and punishments received for breaking those rules, that would not be an issue, as you can then say "what 'dealing with accordingly' means is defined on cubecraft.net/whateverPlaceYouWillPutTheListOfRulesAndPunishments".

Though I suppose those claims are trustworthy if your baseline for "sufficient punishment" involves having a person who has been very intentionally trolling players for more than a year and has had at least 4 reports accepted for it go off with a warning, then I guess you claims are trustworthy. Like: they are true, maybe with horrible implications for how the moderation seems to deal with rule violations on this server, but at least true.


Until you have clear, hard-written defintions, and make claims that are verifiable or measurable, while also giving what is needed to verify or measure those claims its all just words, untrusthworthy words and extremely vaguely written words. But I guess you will just go on to call it flexibility and make up some reason why its important.

9 is still 5 days away from being 14,

5 Days is not a lot though. Its about one full work week. In a scenario where someone takes longer than 5 days to upload the evidence and make the report, or makes the report a day or two after uploading for whatever reason, that can lead to problems.

I think mentioning this serves no purpose, as again, having evidence expire because of us taking too long is not something I have personally ever seen happen and I am sure it’s historically been very rare.

The only reason you are not seeing it happen that much is because the people most harmed by it are also the type to usually not make that many reports. You know, people without much time? They usually won't go through the process anyway, in part due to how much time it consumes, and in part due to restrictions like the maximum evidence age of 14 days.

What's the reason for restrictions like this anyway? The Process is already time consuming and pointless enough for anything that's not literally the use of cheats. And 14 days, no matter what purpose it even achieves, is extremely little time.

 

[caraMel]

You should punish people the same, whether they are aware of the rules or not, no matter how obscure, specific or weird some of the rules are.

The use of warnings should change, because it does absolutely nothing.

Unfortunately not everything is black and white. Things exist on a scale, with some stuff being more extreme than others. It would be extremely odd to punish everything the same way imo. Let's take a look at a real life example, as you decided to mention legal codes earlier: would you want a murderer to receive the same punishment as someone who called another person 'stupid'? I (hope) the answer is no. I could keep going, coming up with examples that get closer and closer together in terms of what you may consider more moral or more extreme and eventually might reach two things that you consider to be 'even'. However, this hopefully demonstrates that things are a little more nuanced than you are implying. Even though in both given cases the user may be aware of what they are doing, that most definitely does not mean they should receive the same punishment.

I know it does not, the prime example being the user from the threads mentioned in my previous reply.

I was previously a mod here, and I am also a big maths (+stats) fan, so this part particularly bothers me. Please do not make the claim that warnings don't work with such a dramatic lack of evidence to back up that claim. From what I experienced, I can say they certainly did work. Of course you'll be able to find one (or maybe even more than one!) out of thousands and thousands of cases where the general trend did not apply, but to use that to conclude warnings don't work is a little silly ;-;

That is only partially correct.

While I am not involved in the process directly, the evidence used in it still belongs to me, and is often linked to some form of account I use, which, if someone through the appeal system was to see it, might lead to being a threat to the person who made the report. Especially given that the evidence is just given to the people appealing by simply entering the appeal site.

You actively chose to report them. If you are concerned about your safety, player safety reports exist. I'm sorry to hear that this happened though.

how convenient, though I don't see how sending a simple "player xyz has been unbanned because he was able to provide sufficient evidence of his innocence" or something like that reveals any of that in any way.

I completely understand why providing this sort of information seems like a good, helpful idea immediately, and were it not for my experience on the team, I'd probably agree with you here. However, there are several issues that arise from this. Firstly, a player may be unbanned for another reason (e.g. what if they sincerely apologise and it is the first time they've ever broken a rule). Also, does the reporter also need to be informed if an appeal is denied? What if a punishment is extended or shortened? And how far back would this information be provided to users - do you really need to know if someone is unbanned after 3 years through their 5th appeal? This sort of thing would provide a pretty large amount of extra work for mods. There are definitely days in the past as a mod where I handled hundreds of reports. To be expected to provide extra information for all of them would certainly take time.
The other main issue that I have with this is that alongside the sizeable amount of time needed to provide said extra information, it would lead to so many more arguments and needless back and forths (also taking up the time of mods). Not all reporters are as good-hearted as you may be. Some will argue about a player being unbanned even without this information being given directly to them, often times just because of a personal dislike of the user or because they have nothing better to do than start drama unfortunately.

And even if its not false and if what you are saying is true, then that's a sign of the appeal moderation being bad at their jobs.

Firstly, all moderators handle their own appeals. There are no 'appeal moderators' or whatever, just to clear that up.
Maybe it's unintentional, but this part in particular comes across as rather rude towards the entire moderation team if you ask me. Moderators are volunteers that are only provided with limited information (being volunteers) and they are all doing the best they can to moderate fairly using all the information they have access to (and, yes, requesting more information if that's possible/applicable).
I haven't read through all of your threads on that one specific user you gave as an example here in detail to be completely honest, so feel free to point our if I say anything incorrect here. However, it seems the issue here is that the different accounts of the user were treated as separate, unlinked accounts? If there is not enough evidence for the moderation team to be sure an account is bypassing then they won't punish for it (which is a good thing. And if you're actually interested, there have been cases of users being 'framed' for bypassing by others creating accounts with similar names).

Now that system may work elsewhere, but not in an environment where people can make free alts if they get banned, or appeal banned accounts as the mods either do not have an actual process when investigating appeals or they are simply bad at doing it if they do actually do it.

...

I am not asking for public punishment tracks, I am asking for people who were involved in making the punishment possible to be informed about certain things.

Again, unnecessarily rude. There is a process. Mods are not bad at it. No more needs to be said here, I think.

On that note, rules also need very clearly written definitions, in order to even further limit personal biases and interpretation possibilities mods and users have, so it is 100% clear what is allowed and what is not.

I agree with this!! I can say that there exists a pretty clear internal guide on exactly this as I helped proofread it myself, and looked through it plenty of times as a helpful resource. The rules are more concise and simple than they used to be, however I feel that this change led to a lack of clarity from the perspective of the community. Perhaps something separate to the rules could be created with such a purpose. I don't think it should be as detailed as the internal one, as it contains a level of detail that is unnecessary to a random community member and while a moderator will remember it is a 'guide' I don't believe everyone else will, which will very quickly make it very difficult for moderators to have any freedom in their choice of punishment. However, I do believe that the current level of detail isn't great and would love to see this fixed.

Rules and punishments for breaking them need to be "written in stone". You do x, you get y. Not "you do x, and I will decide what you get".

...

This way moderators don't waste time as their only job becomes deciding whether or not, beyond a reasonable doubt, someone did something based on the evidence provided.

In line with one of the first things I mentioned, not everything is black and white. I was a moderator both before and after the change where this increased flexibility was introduced. I preferred afterwards. Almost every punishment I issued was following set tracks anyway (and I imagine it is the same for most other mods), however being able to do something differently in those few cases that required it was great and I don't see why having that option is a bad thing.
Also, "you do x, and I will decide what you get" is very misleading as a statement. Flexibility doesn't mean giving a warning to someone who did something deserving of a permanent ban (or the other way around). There are clear guidelines in place for moderators. Instead, it is more about being able to consider each situation on a case-by-case basis. Maybe it's skipping a warning on a punishment track or it's deciding to give a 3 day ban instead of a 7 day ban.

It is fundamental to know what punishment has been handed out, as that's proof of things happening. If you say "player xyz has been banned for 2 weeks", then that's something that can be verified.

...so you're again saying you'd need to verify it even if this information were provided? ....and that contrary to what you say, it's in fact not 'proof of things happening'? If the issue is that you don't believe stuff is being done, how does being told this make any difference at all? You would check the appeals site every day anyways, whether you're told it's 2 weeks or not by the sounds of things. I'm just genuinely kinda confused by what you're trying to get at here.

If we report cheating with evidence through forums it doesn't get attention for a long time and the video evidence gets expired ( 14 days constraint) and it gets denied. Please make the Player Report Department Faster and efficient.

...

With evidence being allowed to only be 14 days old.

Now I only saw 9 days once, still not a good sign if, with an evidence age limit of 14, a report investigation can potentially take longer than half of that.

9 days basically require me to report things instantly after they happen just in case they take a little bit too long to investigate.

I actually agree that there wouldn't be much harm (at least that I can think of?) in extending the 14 days to something a little bit longer, but I will say that the situation you're fantasising here of someone submitting a report then having it denied because a mod takes too long to respond and the evidence becomes old doesn't happen. Luckily it's just that.... a fantasy. Unless things have changed for some weird reason since I left the team, if that situation were to occur the report would still be accepted as it is not the reporter's fault. Hope that makes you feel a bit better about that.
On a side note, some reports do take longer than others. In particular, any that require just one specific team member will naturally take longer (examples being some bypassing bans and some reports in languages other than English). Handling bedrock forum reports was my favourite thing to do before I left the team, and it definitely seemed like the average time for a report to be handled was a day (maybe 2 if I'm giving an upper bound). I find it very difficult to believe this number has increased quite so drastically since I've left.

What's the reason for restrictions like this anyway? The Process is already time consuming and pointless enough for anything that's not literally the use of cheats. And 14 days, no matter what purpose it even achieves, is extremely little time.

Like I said above, I personally don't see harm in that deadline being extended a bit, although it doesn't bother me personally either. But, there is definitely a point to it. To answer your question "What's the reason for restrictions like this anyway?", off the top of my head: preventing a user from being punished for something done, say, a year ago; reducing the potential for reports due to personal vendettas; reducing the number of repeat reports.




Sorry if any of this came across as overly harsh!

 

[FluffySnowFox]

I would like to see some of the og seasonal themes come back to Cubecraft

 

[Eli]

I will preface by saying that I will avoid many of the things that @caraMel has already very eloquently stated, for I see no purpose in repeating certain arguments.

Have you ever heard of the rule in pretty much all existing legal codes, stating that ignorance or lack of knowledge of the laws (often viewed as "willfull ignorance") is no excuse?

When you enter a minecraft server its your responsibility to learn what the rules are. You should punish people the same, whether they are aware of the rules or not, no matter how obscure, specific or weird some of the rules are.

I understand your point, and I respectfully disagree. Because rule enforcement works both ways, sure players are responsible for knowing and understanding the rules, but we are also responsible for doing whatever is in our power to ensure that our rules are known and understood. We would be failing on our side of the bargain if we expect every single casual player, age 13, 27 or 72, to have the willingness to not only read our rules, but understand and memorize them. If you ask me, that is just too much to ask for to be able to participate of a Minecraft server.

Either way this is not really an argument against warnings, because just like in the real world, there are many crimes/infractions (specifically traffic infractions) that get you a warning in the first few instances that you commit them, this is not done under the assumption that people don't know/shouldn't be responsible for knowing the rules, but simply a stylistic choice where pedagogy and second chances are valued over unnecessarily harsh punishment for minor infractions.

A warning serves no purpose other than reinforcing your belief that you are actually going to change things without bans on a platform where even a perma ban means you can easily make an alt account.

A report resulting in anything other than a ban is one that does nothing other than waste someones time. The only people choosing to waste their time like this are either the ones who don't know its a waste of time or people who are extremely petty.

This is, respectfuly, an opinion, not a fact. We could argue endlessly on whether you consider warnings are in their own way forms of punishment or not, we can agree to disagree, but I don't see them disappearing any time soon, just like I don't see sensible parents, teachers, and police officers abandoning their use of words in favour of immediate punishment justified behind the concept of "willful ignorance".

While I am not involved in the process directly, the evidence used in it still belongs to me, and is often linked to some form of account I use, which, if someone through the appeal system was to see it, might lead to being a threat to the person who made the report. Especially given that the evidence is just given to the people appealing by simply entering the appeal site.

Your observation, although arguably a good one, has nothing to do with my initial point. The fact that you may be a victim of harrassment because your name is linked to the evidence provided in a report is awful, and we encourage you to reach out if necessary so that we can assist you in taking the necessary measures to protect you. Remember blocking and ignoring people on our platforms is always an option, and reaching out on our Player Safety subforum if things get more serious is always welcome.

But that has nothing to do with the fact that after providing the evidence, you might be the source, but that does not entitle you to be an active participant of another person's case, I still wholeheartedly believe that getting an "accepted" tag on your report, and a message that says the player will be dealt with accordingly should be sufficient gratefulness and satisfaction for the reporter.

Why did I bring up the topic of punishment tracks when you said you would like to explicitly know what punishment the user received and its length? Because we would then have players keeping track of the types and duration of punishments that we administrate, creating a false expectancy for there to be standard punishment tracks to follow, when in reality, there are many cases as stated by caraMel, where we deviated from punishment tracks to better suit the situation.

This also renders the whole "privacy concern" talk after the paragraph I quoted useless, because it implies you value the privacy of saying "user xyz has been banned", or the privacy of "user xyz has been unbanned because he provided sufficient evidence of his innocence" over the privacy risk that comes with putting the link to the video on my YT account on the appeals site for anyone who types the banned users name to see.

The fact ANYONE can just go on the appeals site and type a users name to see if he is banned and see evidence (if there is any) is also a privacy concern that goes conveniently ignored here.

Don't preach privacy to me when a good portion of the processes here rely on said privacy being actively ignored.

This is another case of an argument that I can respect and appreciate as well formulated, but still poorly employed to "render useless" something with which its totally unrelated. I would personally not mind modifying the appeals page so that the details about someone's punishment only show up after the appeal code has been inserted, obviously that has some complications because appeal codes are a one time use, so that would have to change. But I agree that such information shouldn't be immediately available to anyone with the time to seek it. But the fact that this is a part of our privacy practices which we could improve does not imply that we cannot actively make an effort to protect user privacy in other parts of our processes, unfortunately not all problems can be solved 100% straight away, but we can try our best to work through pieces of it on our accord.

how convenient, though I don't see how sending a simple "player xyz has been unbanned because he was able to provide sufficient evidence of his innocence" or something like that reveals any of that in any way.

It's not convenient, it's just the truth. I personally would not implement this because it seems like an unnecessary extra step on the Moderators' workload, and a problematic one at that, because I can assure you we would get countless tickets and forum conversations putting into question this said "sufficient evidence", people wanting to see said evidence, and more, and then the whole "you are not an active participant of someone else's case" can of worm re-opens, together with our ongoing efforts toward player privacy.

And true or not, you sure did make a claim here with nothing to back it up.

And true or not, the situation is bad and needs improvement regardless, either in the way the moderation and reports/appeal processing works or in the competence of the people working within those processes.

Its undeniable change is needed, otherwise a situation like that would have never occured.

I don't think we want to start counting non-backed up claims here.

"the situation is bad" appears to me as an unfair assessment which you have reached because of a single incident. I take no personal offense in criticism, I thrive in it, that's probably why I've been active on the forums for so long, but I will say I do find it unfair, in a way that seems intentionally hurtful, to question the "competence" of hard working volunteers because of a single case.

"Your report has been accepted and the rule breaker(s) will be dealt with accordingly." is also not very reassuring, and extremely vague.

Especially given the lack of a defintion for "delaing with accordingly".

Now if there was, as I already suggested in this reply, a written, "hard coded" list of rules and punishments received for breaking those rules, that would not be an issue, as you can then say "what 'dealing with accordingly' means is defined on cubecraft.net/whateverPlaceYouWillPutTheListOfRulesAndPunishments".

Though I suppose those claims are trustworthy if your baseline for "sufficient punishment" involves having a person who has been very intentionally trolling players for more than a year and has had at least 4 reports accepted for it go off with a warning, then I guess you claims are trustworthy. Like: they are true, maybe with horrible implications for how the moderation seems to deal with rule violations on this server, but at least true.


Until you have clear, hard-written defintions, and make claims that are verifiable or measurable, while also giving what is needed to verify or measure those claims its all just words, untrusthworthy words and extremely vaguely written words. But I guess you will just go on to call it flexibility and make up some reason why its important.

I think I've given enough reasons as to why I personally believe that you are not entitled to know the exact punishment a user has received, and the acceptance of your report should be sufficient. Furthermore, I disagree with this notion of hard-written definitions, because if you ask me, our rules already contemplate all possible scenarios in which a player might receive a punishment, and the beauty of their simplicitly is not something that I would take for granted. Should you find a meaningful loophole, I would love to see a thread about it, I would be the first to react to it and make sure our Admin Team reads it.

Having been a Moderator in 2020, back when we had as you call them, hard-written definitions, with rock-solid punishment tracks, and countless anotations for even the smallest, most obscure, and strangest loopholes, our Moderation team was often times very limited in the way they could flexibly adjust to the severity of a situation, and our rules were difficult to understand, demotivating to even try to read, and frankly impossible to memorize. Something which I find very incompatible with the code of conduct of a Minecraft server, that sees players of all ages, but emphatically a lot of young people. You don't just have to take my word or CubeCraft's word for it, I invite you to visit the rules of two of the largest Minecraft networks in the world: Hypixel and The Hive. Surely if they've all employed this methodology, it is working.

 

[Username8234]

Crazy debate

 

[adrian525pl]

would you want a murderer to receive the same punishment as someone who called another person 'stupid'?

No, that's why these are two DIFFERENT "crimes", with two different predefined punishments.

A good example would be where you suggest punishing two people differently based off the SAME crime.

I was previously a mod here, and I am also a big maths (+stats) fan, so this part particularly bothers me. Please do not make the claim that warnings don't work with such a dramatic lack of evidence to back up that claim.

If you can provide evidence that they do work, maybe I will. Because so far, all I hear is claims they do work, without having anything to back it up, which is not any more valid of my claim that they don't.

From what I experienced

I love how you ask for evidence, then INSTANTLY try to back your claim up with an anecdote, which in terms of evidence is not actual evidence. Now normally I'd not point that out, but since in the sentence before this part you explicitly demanded evidence and spoke against making claims without evidence, you effectively contradict yourself if you back your claims with anything other than hard proof.

Of course you'll be able to find one (or maybe even more than one!) out of thousands and thousands of cases where the general trend did not apply

If there is an actual system behind any of this, the amount of cases that would be outside the trend would be zero, with the only thing capable of increasing it being moderator incompetence.

Implying things can go outside the trend this badly as in this case implies you have no actual system for how things are done, which in itself is not good.

You actively chose to report them.

Yes, report them, not risk my privacy. The terms of service that allow you to do this without legal consequences (btw, on an unrelated side note, those terms may not even be enforceable based on some countries data protection and copy right laws, especially in europe) are not even actively referred to at any point and not actively shown to users making reports or making accounts.

I may have "consented" to risking my privacy, but I did so unknowingly due to the terms of service being somewhat hidden and not actively referred to at any point of the process that leads to a person getting reported.

But I know noone will make an effort to fix it, because "warning: you may get doxxed for this" or "warning: we might share the evidence to the person you reported" pretty much guarantees noone will ever report anybody.

Your observation, although arguably a good one, has nothing to do with my initial point. The fact that you may be a victim of harrassment because your name is linked to the evidence provided in a report is awful, and we encourage you to reach out if necessary so that we can assist you in taking the necessary measures to protect you. Remember blocking and ignoring people on our platforms is always an option, and reaching out on our Player Safety subforum if things get more serious is always welcome.

Nothing to do with it? I said that, due to my evidence being used, protected by my copyright, with it also often being linked to (at least one) of my socials or whatever, I am still (indirectly) part of the process. I agree that I am not directly working "on the process" once the report has been submitted, but due to me being at such risk I am still very much part of it, even without having to put in any work beyond submitting evidence.

I appreciate the sentiment here, but I don't think you can do much if the player in question has my ingame username, at least one of my socials, and access to the video I uses to report them.

Also: cubecraft forums are one thing. Linking evidence that was uploaded to a third party service makes it possible for the player who I reported to go way beyond just going after me on the forums. Ironically enough, the only privacy the report system ensures, is that of my forums account, as its name is not linked anywhere.

But that has nothing to do with the fact that after providing the evidence, you might be the source

correction: source and owner of the evidence, as well as credited "creator" of the evidence due to my ingame username possibly appearing in it, as well as the evidence often being linked to some form of account of mine on a third party platform.

For me to be the source, and ONLY the source, you'd have to make the effort to ensure that the person being punished based on the evidence can not trace it back to me in any way. As long as that does not happen, I am still a part of the process due to possible risks, even if I am not the one directly handling the report or executing the punishment.

I still wholeheartedly believe that getting an "accepted" tag on your report, and a message that says the player will be dealt with accordingly should be sufficient gratefulness and satisfaction for the reporter.

Nice for you to believe that.

Unfortunately that is not sufficient, as it means nothing, not until there is a hard written, easily accessible definition of what "dealing with accordingly" means.

But I agree that such information shouldn't be immediately available to anyone with the time to seek it. But the fact that this is a part of our privacy practices which we could improve does not imply that we cannot actively make an effort to protect user privacy in other parts of our processes, unfortunately not all problems can be solved 100% straight away, but we can try our best to work through pieces of it on our accord.

It actually can be done if you want to: you either simply don't share the evidence to anyone who is not a server staff member, or at the very least not without the reporters explicit, written consent.

Or you figure out a way to share it anyway, but in a way that does not allow it to be traced back to me in any way.

The first one is extremely easy to do, with the second one I agree its way too much work to even bother.

However, there are several issues that arise from this. Firstly, a player may be unbanned for another reason (e.g. what if they sincerely apologise and it is the first time they've ever broken a rule).

*Insert family guy clip of osama bin laden going to heaven after acknowledging jesus christ as his lord and saviour*

WHAT DO YOU MEAN "APOLOGISE"?

Apologies should not be able to get you unbanned, first offense or otherwise: on evidence based reports or mod-witnessed offenses, the only thing that should be able to get you unbanned should be proof of innocence. Or, if the punishment is not a permanent one, then it should simply be waiting until the punishment runs out if you can not provide such evidence.

The only time proof of innocence may not be sufficient is an anticheat ban, in which case I feel you should actually be able to get unbanned by just explaining what happened and providing a good enough reason as to why the anticheat may have mistaken something perfectly normal behavior for cheating.

The rules are more concise and simple than they used to be, however I feel that this change led to a lack of clarity from the perspective of the community. Perhaps something separate to the rules could be created with such a purpose. I don't think it should be as detailed as the internal one, as it contains a level of detail that is unnecessary to a random community member and while a moderator will remember it is a 'guide' I don't believe everyone else will, which will very quickly make it very difficult for moderators to have any freedom in their choice of punishment. However, I do believe that the current level of detail isn't great and would love to see this fixed.

Glad we agree. And yes, that level of detail is a bit unnecessary, just something more than "something we call 'trolling' is like bad or something" would be good for community members.

Especially given what offenses such as trolling or camping entail, because with the currently provided definitions, trolling for example is any action intended at making the game less enjoyable for someone, which is extremely vague and in some scenarios I agree that it might be hard to sniff out whether it was intentional or not,

but its mostly due to the vagueness of this defintion, not because actual trolling can be commited unintentionally, it can't, its just that this definition is so vague one could actually commit it by just playing the game normally if one were to interpret it in a certain way.

I was a moderator both before and after the change where this increased flexibility was introduced. I preferred afterwards. Almost every punishment I issued was following set tracks anyway (and I imagine it is the same for most other mods), however being able to do something differently in those few cases that required it was great and I don't see why having that option is a bad thing.

Its a bad thing, because moderators personal biases have a much bigger influence on the whole process.

And what you as a mod prefer does not matter. A moderator is someone who willingly consented to put his needs and wants below those of the community to ensure its safety. What is the best for the community matters. And what that would be would be more clear and hard-coded rules, which define that if someone is guilty of x they get y, no matter what, as well as very clearly definining what x and y exactly are.

There are clear guidelines in place for moderators. Instead, it is more about being able to consider each situation on a case-by-case basis. Maybe it's skipping a warning on a punishment track or it's deciding to give a 3 day ban instead of a 7 day ban.

If those guidelines include anything other than bans as punishments or allow someone appealing a ban with an "apology", then they need rewriting.

...so you're again saying you'd need to verify it even if this information were provided?

Nope, you are misunderstanding me.
What I am saying is that, if I ever felt like I wanted to verify it, I could do so easily if you state "x was banned for 2 weeks because of y".

I am not saying that I need to verify it. I am saying I could do so if I wanted to.

I can not do that with the, already vague statement, of "the user has been dealt with accordingly". I can not verify it, as no explicit statement has been stated, and even if it was: what exactly defines what "dealing with accordingly" means from the things I am given as a user?

If the issue is that you don't believe stuff is being done, how does being told this make any difference at all?

If you actually understood what I said, you'd know I don't trust the way in part BECAUSE of you NOT TELLING ME THIS. If you told me this, not only can I more easily verify it if I feel the need to, but that claim in itself is a hard statement without any wiggle room for interpretation or vague statements.

Vague statements are not trustworthy because they can mean absolutely anything. For all we know, "dealing with a user accordingly" might as well mean spamming them with the letter "L" in ingame chat the next time they're online.

If you made statements that aren't vague, that automatically raises trustworthiness, because now make an actual promise/claim that can be proven or disproven in some way if I felt the need to do so. And if you can consitently continue to deliver on those promises, then that makes you more trustworthy as you rarely make statements that aren't true.

Not to mention the words "Thing x and y has been done" is a more assuring statement than "Something has been done".

I actually agree that there wouldn't be much harm (at least that I can think of?) in extending the 14 days to something a little bit longer, but I will say that the situation you're fantasising here of someone submitting a report then having it denied because a mod takes too long to respond and the evidence becomes old doesn't happen. Luckily it's just that.... a fantasy. Unless things have changed for some weird reason since I left the team, if that situation were to occur the report would still be accepted as it is not the reporter's fault. Hope that makes you feel a bit better about that.
On a side note, some reports do take longer than others. In particular, any that require just one specific team member will naturally take longer (examples being some bypassing bans and some reports in languages other than English). Handling bedrock forum reports was my favourite thing to do before I left the team, and it definitely seemed like the average time for a report to be handled was a day (maybe 2 if I'm giving an upper bound). I find it very difficult to believe this number has increased quite so drastically since I've left.

Like I said above, I personally don't see harm in that deadline being extended a bit, although it doesn't bother me personally either. But, there is definitely a point to it. To answer your question "What's the reason for restrictions like this anyway?", off the top of my head: preventing a user from being punished for something done, say, a year ago; reducing the potential for reports due to personal vendettas; reducing the number of repeat reports.

Fair enough.

Sorry if any of this came across as overly harsh!

No need to be sorry.

If anything, I should apologize as I am being way harsher than I should be.

"the situation is bad" appears to me as an unfair assessment which you have reached because of a single incident.

Sorry for that, I just genuinely don't believe the system is working that well based on the things I perceive from it and other using it.

I may keep referring to just one example here (the troll), but that's because its my most personal one and the only one I have any documentation of, because if I were to include what players have told me (mostly in ingame chat), and made an active effort to gain evidence on any cases they may have had, I could easily extend the point of why I think the system is not working way beyond that one example and most importantly way beyond just my personal experience.

Among the general giga blockwars community, at least the more active players in it, its generally agreed upon that moderators do not care about anything that's not cheating as the troll I mentioned is far from the only troll and far from the only person being an active troll, he is just the worst case and the only one I have been able to document myself (and the only one that I am aware of that uses alt accounts to continue doing this).

Yet we do not see the amount of trolling fall or anything, nor do we see the trolls actually getting dealt with in any meaningful way. The only thing I personally notice is that the players trolling rarely come back online after doing what they did, making the one case I mentioned stand out even more, as he is far more persistent and far more active than most.


And besides that, the system fails in various other ways. Speaking of blockwars again: the amount of people not aware that certain things are actual acts of trolling is extremely high. Now what they are doing, even despite the lack of knowledge of the rule, is just bad behavior regardless, and I still think should be punished more harshly, but the amount of people that, as an example, don't know that intentionally extending the game by refusing to capture a flag when holding it is astronomical.

I understand your point, and I respectfully disagree. Because rule enforcement works both ways, sure players are responsible for knowing and understanding the rules, but we are also responsible for doing whatever is in our power to ensure that our rules are known and understood. We would be failing on our side of the bargain if we expect every single casual player, age 13, 27 or 72, to have the willingness to not only read our rules, but understand and memorize them. If you ask me, that is just too much to ask for to be able to participate of a Minecraft server.

Either way this is not really an argument against warnings, because just like in the real world, there are many crimes/infractions (specifically traffic infractions) that get you a warning in the first few instances that you commit them, this is not done under the assumption that people don't know/shouldn't be responsible for knowing the rules, but simply a stylistic choice where pedagogy and second chances are valued over unnecessarily harsh punishment for minor infractions.

Like: I get that casuals can not be expected to memorize all the rules. I am fully aware of that as the guy who keeps protecting casuals at pretty much all times whenever someone as much as tries suggests something that could harm them here.

But I still think they should be expected to be vaguely aware of them at the bare minimum. And no effort seems to be made in order to make that happen.

What I mean is: if I was going purely off of the game and the server are telling me, the only things that are considered illegal by cubecraft are crossteaming and hacking. There is no effort to make anyone even aware of as little as the existence of rules such as trolling or camping.


I don't see why players can be given some sort of rule list as a ingame lobby item on the hotbar (which would open automatically if its their very first time joining the network), or why announcements other than the teaming stuff at the start of games and sentinel announcements can't be added.


For example, for blockwars specifically, you can add a warning that pops up in chat or on the screen of someone holding the flag IF they are holding it for a really long time stating "warning: intentional refusal to capture the flag is against the rules" or something like that, maybe something shorter that means more-or-less the same thing.

Or, for camping, you could do announcements if someone has not moved a certain distance for a long time, saying "warning: camping in areas that are extremely hard to access may result in a ban". And if someone is just standing still for too long, they could perhaps just get kicked from the game, not for camping (though it would lead to its reduction), but simply as an anti-afk feature.

I get that players can not be bothered to memorize all of the rules and what exactly they mean, but the least that can be done is making them vaguely aware of them and warning players through automatic announcements that they might be commiting a bannable offense if things happen that indicate a high possibility of such offenses being commited, such as the already mentioned example of "holding the flag for too long".





Again: I am sorry for being harsh,

I just want to ensure what's best for the server and its community, and I genuinely do not feel the way the moderation, the report and appeal system currently work assure that nearly as much as they could be.

 

[caraMel]

I didn't want to really get into an unnecessary debate, but there are some things that you've said that I feel it would be wrong not to address.

No, that's why these are two DIFFERENT "crimes", with two different predefined punishments.

A good example would be where you suggest punishing two people differently based off the SAME crime.

Yes, the point is they are different crimes that clearly demonstrate not everything should be handled the same way as you suggested earlier. However, if it's the same exact situation, it would be handled the same way with the same punishment. I don't know where you got the idea that it wouldn't be.

If you can provide evidence that they do work, maybe I will. Because so far, all I hear is claims they do work, without having anything to back it up, which is not any more valid of my claim that they don't.

...

I love how you ask for evidence, then INSTANTLY try to back your claim up with an anecdote, which in terms of evidence is not actual evidence. Now normally I'd not point that out, but since in the sentence before this part you explicitly demanded evidence and spoke against making claims without evidence, you effectively contradict yourself if you back your claims with anything other than hard proof.

Again, no need to be aggressive / negative. I'm sure everyone reading /replying to this thread is capable of being mature...
To actually address what you're saying here, yes, it's a claim. There is a difference that you conveniently ignore: yours is based on having 1 case that you reported not work out ideally, mine is based on thousands and thousands of cases I've encountered. I did not have an issue with you drawing a conclusion and not giving though rough evidence for everything you used to make that conclusion. It was the lack of such evidence seemingly used. You mention one person exclusively and yet hundreds (maybe even thousands) of players are reported each day. I don't need you to provide hundreds/thousands of bits of data here, I just don't like the idea of you drawing your conclusion based on just one (or maybe even a handful!!) of people. Perhaps I could have communicated that more clearly if it has led to this confusion, but hopefully this clarification is helpful.
However much I wish I could provide more detailed statistics here, I (1) don't have access to them, and (2) doing so would be providing others' personal information for the sake of a silly debate even if I had it.

Although in a perfect world, you'd want to record each piece of data, I think that if you flip a coin 10000 times and get only around 1 head, you'd remember that. And continuing with this, flipping 3 coins and getting 1 head is different from flipping 10000 coins and getting just 1 head - in one case it's pretty statistically well-based to conclude the coin is biased. In the other it is very much not. The 3 is an extreme to make this point (and yes, one should suggest the opposite conclusion to the other, but I really don't have the energy to come up with an elaborate set of numbers to match this exact situation; surely this is enough to bring across my point here). As you were so obsessed with differentiating between stuff that I've apparently made up for the sake of it (??) and facts/evidence, this is all based on both any law of large numbers and the way that decent hypothesis tests work.

If there is an actual system behind any of this, the amount of cases that would be outside the trend would be zero, with the only thing capable of increasing it being moderator incompetence.

Implying things can go outside the trend this badly as in this case implies you have no actual system for how things are done, which in itself is not good.

Sigh. How I wish everything in the world was as simple and perfect as you portray it as being.
Let's take a hypothetical case to quickly demonstrate why what you've said is not quite correct....

Moderator 1 punishes X for trolling with, say, a warning as the results of a report.
That same reporter encounters X trolling, but on account Y which is not linked to the other account in any way. Moderator 2 handles this report by warning Y for trolling.
X now starts trolling with account Z (also not related to the previous 2 accounts in any way). Moderator 1 punishes them for trolling with a warning when they're reported by that same reporter.
Has anyone done anything wrong? No.
So is it an 'either there's an actual system or mods are incompetent'? No.

As I'm sure you'll bring up, is there a solution to the above situation? Well, the best possible outcome is that the reporter who is aware that it's the same person mentions so in their report and the moderation team is able to confirm that's the case and punish them accordingly. Perhaps it's not possible to confirm the accounts belong to the same person. If that's the case, then there is genuinely not enough evidence to suspect the accounts belong to the same person, so it would be unfair to punish them like it was anyways.

Yes, report them, not risk my privacy. The terms of service that allow you to do this without legal consequences (btw, on an unrelated side note, those terms may not even be enforceable based on some countries data protection and copy right laws, especially in europe) are not even actively referred to at any point and not actively shown to users making reports or making accounts.

I may have "consented" to risking my privacy, but I did so unknowingly due to the terms of service being somewhat hidden and not actively referred to at any point of the process that leads to a person getting reported.

But I know noone will make an effort to fix it, because "warning: you may get doxxed for this" or "warning: we might share the evidence to the person you reported" pretty much guarantees noone will ever report anybody.

Not sure if you read it, so here's the next sentence:

If you are concerned about your safety, player safety reports exist. I'm sorry to hear that this happened though.

I'll also add that what you experienced is definitely an anomaly, not a norm.

Apologies should not be able to get you unbanned

Strongly disagree, but as this is a matter of opinion for the most part, I'll leave it at that.

And what that would be would be more clear and hard-coded rules, which define that if someone is guilty of x they get y, no matter what, as well as very clearly definining what x and y exactly are.

I agree that this is something helpful to mods as an internal resource to ensure consistency, hence it exists...
However, I don't think this needs to be provided to the rest of the community.
You may remember I said the following earlier: "Well, the best possible outcome is that the reporter who is aware that it's the same person mentions so in their report and the moderation team is able to confirm that's the case and punish them accordingly." What does punish them accordingly mean? (It would mean discussing it within the team.) Well I very much doubt there currently exists a specific outcome for this exact situation. It is impossible to list every such x anyways. I could genuinely come up with an endless list of situations.

If those guidelines include anything other than bans as punishments or allow someone appealing a ban with an "apology", then they need rewriting.

Again, strongly disagree. I guess that again this is a matter of your personal opinion which you clearly don't feel like changing, so I'll leave it there :)

I can not do that with the, already vague statement, of "the user has been dealt with accordingly". I can not verify it, as no explicit statement has been stated, and even if it was: what exactly defines what "dealing with accordingly" means from the things I am given as a user?

You can verify it. In the exact same way you can if you're told the punishment. If you receive that message, it means they have been punished. If it is a warning, you're likely aware those don't appear on the appeals site as they cannot be appealed. You'd be aware this is the case by the fact there is nothing on the appeals site. If it is a mute / ban, you've correctly pointed out you can check those yourself on the appeals site. Although it seems pretty obsessive imo, there's nothing stopping you from checking it every day to 'check' how long it is (I only mention this as you suggested this as your way of checking if you were to be provided with the exact punishment anyway!). That covers all cases with no additional effort on your part.

If you actually understood what I said, you'd know I don't trust the way in part BECAUSE of you NOT TELLING ME THIS. If you told me this, not only can I more easily verify it if I feel the need to, but that claim in itself is a hard statement without any wiggle room for interpretation or vague statements.

Woahhh capital letters :o
But yeah, I appreciate the fact you're addressing me like I would be the one 'telling you this' but reminder I'm not a mod...?
But yeah, I guess in response to what it seems you're trying to say, please read what I've said above.




I think that's everything I saw as necessary to reply to for now :D

 

[adrian525pl]

Yes, the point is they are different crimes that clearly demonstrate not everything should be handled the same way as you suggested earlier. However, if it's the same exact situation, it would be handled the same way with the same punishment. I don't know where you got the idea that it wouldn't be.

No, in the example I provided both players commit the same "crime" but are punished differently because a mod decided to punish one persons trolling, camping, cheating or whatever more severely than anothers.

Cheating is cheating, no matter what. Trolling is trolling, no matter what. All cheaters should get the same punishment, no matter what. All trolls should get the same punishment no matter what.

to actually address what you're saying here, yes, it's a claim. There is a difference that you conveniently ignore: yours is based on having 1 case that you reported not work out ideally

Correction because you either missed or just ignored the part where I say this: Its not based on purely one case, that case is just the best example and the only one I have any documentation of, at least documentation that I can access.

I also focus on that one example as its the most severe one I know, we are talking about a person on 3 identically named alts, commiting plenty of well documented, evidence backed acts of trolling over the span of a year, at least based on the things I have on the guy, because based on what other blockwars players have told me: there could be way more to this. What I am going off of are mostly the things I got, not anything anyone else might have.

As I already said: If I asked all the players who don't trust the system or think it doesn't work that well.

Also: not work out ideally is a very severe understatement of what actually occured. The alts are all identically named, and 2 of his accounts were even banned at one point until someone for some unknown reason went ahead and unbanned them, which considering the amount of "dirt" on this guy, such as the reports, the existing alts, two accounts being already banned, the things other blockwars players told me about this person.

The only way someone like this could have gotten unbanned is either because the system is so bad it allowed it to happen, or the mod who reviewed this persons appeals not doing their job properly.

sigh. How I wish everything in the world was as simple and perfect as you portray it as being.
Let's take a hypothetical case to quickly demonstrate why what you've said is not quite correct....

Moderator 1 punishes X for trolling with, say, a warning as the results of a report.
That same reporter encounters X trolling, but on account Y which is not linked to the other account in any way. Moderator 2 handles this report by warning Y for trolling.
X now starts trolling with account Z (also not related to the previous 2 accounts in any way). Moderator 1 punishes them for trolling with a warning when they're reported by that same reporter.
Has anyone done anything wrong? No.

Whether they did wrong depends on context. Firstly: was there absolutely no reason to believe the accounts are linked?
Are the names not similar? Are the accounts not coming from the same IP address or Device ID?

Only if both those things are answered with a no, only then you can safely assume the accounts are not linked.

So, if they did not check both of these, then yes, they did wrong.


And that just on top of warning instead of banning, which could have prevented the creation of further alts due to sentinel blocking IPs with too many banned accounts linked to them from joining the server.

So is it an 'either there's an actual system or mods are incompetent'? No.

I might have worder it wrong. What I meant by there not being an actual system to me means the lack of a good system. Which in this case totally applies, as the system does not punish trolling severely enough and does not take enough measures to prevent it from happening again.


So "either there is no (good) system or the mods are incompetent" very much applies, I just didn't word it as I originally meant it.

In a good system, this situation would have been prevented somewhere between the second and third report due to sentinel, and that is if we assume that the bans didn't scare them from doing it again way more than any warning ever could.

As I'm sure you'll bring up, is there a solution to the above situation? Well, the best possible outcome is that the reporter who is aware that it's the same person mentions so in their report and the moderation team is able to confirm that's the case and punish them accordingly.

Yes, there is a solution: bans for everything. Temporary bans for lesser offenses, perma bans for severe ones. And IP bans/blocks if an IP has too many banned account linked to it.

An alternative solution is: providing mods with the necessary tools to ensure the several accounts are not linked in any way, such as providing an auto-generated list of all (previously punished) accounts that were on that same device ID or IP Address to minimise the chances that someone slips through by making an alt.

Though I suppose that's a job for the dev team, not the mod team, so I don't think its the moderators responsibility or concern for that to get done.

I'll also add that what you experienced is definitely an anomaly, not a norm.

Its only an anomaly because the amount of players who actually report players and get them banned and the amount of players who appeal those punishments is too small for such things to occur on a large scale.

The only reason its an anomaly is because there aren't enough people using those systems (as of right now) for it to happen that often.

Also: anomaly or not, still a massive privacy risk for those who report players with evidence. And one that someone could abuse if they only felt like it.

You should not say "its an anomaly, not the norm" to such things happeninng. And the people making those systems, hearing of such things, should absolutely put in the effort for to even reduce the possibility of those anomalies to zero. Especially if the only thing that prevents those anomalies from happening is the lack of users.

Not to mention this would be extremely simple to do: just don't give the evidence to anyone who is not directly involved in the investigation process. Not the punished user. No third party unless absolutely necessary (for spam checking for example). Noone, but the ones who 100% need the evidence.

A lot of things already do not display the evidence on the appeals site. Such as moderator witnessed things, discord reports, or sentinel bans. Now I am aware those usually come without evidence, but that's also the point: Its not actually necessary for a reported player to see the evidence in order to appeal.

Out of all situations I can think of there is only one where a player may need to see the evidence, that being if they want to provide their "perspective" in a cheating case, but that is not enough of a reason to justify such a massive privacy breach.

Additionally the mentioned "anomaly" occured in a case exactly like the one I mention. Now again, luckilly the guy was pretty chill and only shared the link on his YT in a description of a video.

But that's just me getting lucky with the type of person who happened to get access to that evidence. If it was anyone else, I could very easily have gotten much less lucky with this.

Anomaly or not, a massive privacy risk, and it c

It is impossible to list every such x anyways. I could genuinely come up with an endless list of situations.

Its not. In its simplest form it could be"cheating = x, teaming = y, trolling = z, etc.".

The list for what "dealing with according" means does not need specific scenarios, it just needs to cover what kind of punishment is given for each rule offense.

For the list of what those rule offenses entail, yes, that would be endless, though its not necessary, as a clearly written definition of each rule should cover almost all of them, and for cases that may be "on edge", well, those are for mods to decide, or the users could just ask the moderators before reporting (I am sure that's something that already happens anyway, you can't tell me people don't ask about clarification on the rules).

You can verify it. In the exact same way you can if you're told the punishment. If you receive that message, it means they have been punished. If it is a warning, you're likely aware those don't appear on the appeals site as they cannot be appealed. You'd be aware this is the case by the fact there is nothing on the appeals site.

No, what I'd be aware is that the report is now accepted, not that a punishment or a warning has been given.

Punishments other than bans can not be verified in any way.

If it is a mute / ban, you've correctly pointed out you can check those yourself on the appeals site. Although it seems pretty obsessive imo, there's nothing stopping you from checking it every day to 'check' how long it is (I only mention this as you suggested this as your way of checking if you were to be provided with the exact punishment anyway!). That covers all cases with no additional effort on your part.

That's correct, fair enough.

Woahhh capital letters :o
But yeah, I appreciate the fact you're addressing me like I would be the one 'telling you this' but reminder I'm not a mod...?
But yeah, I guess in response to what it seems you're trying to say, please read what I've said above.

You are not a mod, that's correct, I meant to say the mod team, the "you" is sort of a hypothetical, as if you were a mod, something among the lines of "if you were a mod was telling me this, I'd not trust you". though I suppose the "you were a mod" is unnecessary, reducing it to "a mod" is more in line with I actually meant by this.

 

[caraMel]

No, in the example I provided both players commit the same "crime" but are punished differently because a mod decided to punish one persons trolling, camping, cheating or whatever more severely than anothers.

I can't help doubt that you've actually read what I said.
And what example are you talking about here. I genuinely cannot find one.

Correction because you either missed or just ignored the part where I say this: Its not based on purely one case, that case is just the best example and the only one I have any documentation of, at least documentation that I can access.

I also focus on that one example as its the most severe one I know, we are talking about a person on 3 identically named alts, commiting plenty of well documented, evidence backed acts of trolling over the span of a year, at least based on the things I have on the guy, because based on what other blockwars players have told me: there could be way more to this. What I am going off of are mostly the things I got, not anything anyone else might have.

As I already said: If I asked all the players who don't trust the system or think it doesn't work that well.

Also: not work out ideally is a very severe understatement of what actually occured. The alts are all identically named, and 2 of his accounts were even banned at one point until someone for some unknown reason went ahead and unbanned them, which considering the amount of "dirt" on this guy, such as the reports, the existing alts, two accounts being already banned, the things other blockwars players told me about this person.

The only way someone like this could have gotten unbanned is either because the system is so bad it allowed it to happen, or the mod who reviewed this persons appeals not doing their job properly.

Wow so many different things for me to respond to here.

1. Glad it's not based on exactly one case. That's a good thing, and I must have missed where you mentioned anything else. I still can't help but struggle to believe you actually have a large enough sample size to draw any sort of conclusion, but I don't really want to get into that for a third time tbh. I will say that, uhm, "I asked all the players who don't trust the system or think it doesn't work that well" have you heard of biased data before..?
2. I envy you if you really think that someone trolling with 3 accounts is some of the most shocking behaviour out there. I'm by no means saying it is a nice thing to do haha, just.... there are different levels on a scale from severe to, well, not severe.
3. Please do go and correct me if I've misread this somehow, but it certainly seems like your views are rather harsh towards anyone breaking rules. With no warnings, not wanting anyone unbanned ever if they can't prove they weren't breaking the rules, etc. This is your opinion. I can't tell you that what you think is objectively wrong; it's a point of view. But please, stop presenting it like a fact that everyone has to accept or like if others aren't doing what you think would be best they're doing a bad job. An example: "the only way someone like this could have gotten unbanned is either because the system is so bad it allowed it to happen, or the mod who reviewed this persons appeals not doing their job properly".

Whether they did wrong depends on context. Firstly: was there absolutely no reason to believe the accounts are linked?
Are the names not similar? Are the accounts not coming from the same IP address or Device ID?

Only if both those things are answered with a no, only then you can safely assume the accounts are not linked.

So, if they did not check both of these, then yes, they did wrong.

Names are not generally a safe way to confirm linked accounts. I explained why previously.
The others would have been checked if it was reported that the user was using all the accounts to intentionally bypass punishments.
That answers the questions there to the best of my abilities! :)

Which in this case totally applies, as the system does not punish trolling severely enough

.....in your opinion. Again, an opinion not a fact, but I'm sure everyone does value your opinion. Would be helpful to present it as one though!

In a good system, this situation would have been prevented somewhere between the second and third report due to sentinel, and that is if we assume that the bans didn't scare them from doing it again way more than any warning ever could.

Huh? We're talking about trolling, right? Sentinel does not punish for trolling... only cheating.

Though I suppose that's a job for the dev team, not the mod team, so I don't think its the moderators responsibility or concern for that to get done.

Well identified.

Yes, there is a solution: bans for everything. Temporary bans for lesser offenses, perma bans for severe ones. And IP bans/blocks if an IP has too many banned account linked to it.

Anything I would want to respond to this with is covered by stuff I've said previously.

Its only an anomaly because the amount of players who actually report players and get them banned and the amount of players who appeal those punishments is too small for such things to occur on a large scale.

The only reason its an anomaly is because there aren't enough people using those systems (as of right now) for it to happen that often.

Just... what?
Not sure where on earth this information is coming from, and it certainly isn't correct.

Anomaly or not, a massive privacy risk, and it c

Did you mean to say something more here..?
I agree that it isn't fully necessary to provide punished players with evidence of why they are punished.... and it also isn't fully necessary to provide the reporter with constant updates on everything that occurs, yet you wanted that? There is a slight disparity between those two things here, imo. I also think that it is not as much of a "massive privacy risk" as you are making it out to be, but I won't spend hours discussing that as it seems I won't get anywhere by doing so (and despite the impression this thread must leave, I do actually value my time).

The list for what "dealing with according" means does not need specific scenarios, it just needs to cover what kind of punishment is given for each rule offense.

Again, this exists internally. Due to consistency (that most definitely does exist despite what you seem to believe) across punishments, any member of the community who is sufficient interested / actually has the time could deduce "what kind of punishment is given for each rule offense" (at least for the first few offences). I will not provide this myself (as I would rather not do anything potentially considered leaking, as a previous mod).

For the list of what those rule offenses entail, yes, that would be endless, though its not necessary, as a clearly written definition of each rule should cover almost all of them, and for cases that may be "on edge", well, those are for mods to decide, or the users could just ask the moderators before reporting (I am sure that's something that already happens anyway, you can't tell me people don't ask about clarification on the rules).

Yes, people ask for clarification of the rules. There's no issue with that. If a user asks if something will receive some specific punishment beforehand though, I can say that my response would have been to just report them to avoid creating double the amount of work for the team. If that sentiment has changed within the team since I left, any current mod is more than welcome to correct that!
And yes. There are cases that are "on edge". Glad you've acknowledged that. This is why increased flexibility is a good thing.

Punishments other than bans can not be verified in any way.

I explained above exactly how they can be verified to the same degree of accuracy as if you were provided the information you wanted. Not repeating it, sorry.

That's correct, fair enough.

Wait huh, didn't you just disagree with the same thing in the paragraph right before? My head hurts.

You are not a mod, that's correct, I meant to say the mod team, the "you" is sort of a hypothetical, as if you were a mod, something among the lines of "if you were a mod was telling me this, I'd not trust you". though I suppose the "you were a mod" is unnecessary, reducing it to "a mod" is more in line with I actually meant by this.

Ok.






Oki doki, I'm heading off to read for a bit now (very good book!). Feel free to reply to what I've said here, but as a head's up, I don't plan to check back on any of this till at least tmr evening.

 

[adrian525pl]

Did you mean to say something more here..?

Imma be honest: I don't remember what I wanted to say there,

and I am slowly forgetting some of the things I say. I slowly can't be bothered to keep track of all of it, and I don't want to spend that much time on this thread, so I think this reply is a good time to just end this because I don't think this is getting anywhere, and I am slowly starting to notice that some of the stuff I say is indeed, pure nonsense. (I am far from the only one who does that though)

And apart from that:
It does not feel like the moderation values this or takes this seriously in any meaningful way, especially visible by how the privacy thing I mentioned was handled. If it was treated with even the slightest bit of seriousness, the appeal system would have already been adjusted to not give away user data to the banned users beyond the absolute bare minimum necessary to make an appeal (which is zero, as shown by the amount of times users have to make appeals with no evidence provided to them), and in the best case scenario someone would have already announced that change.


Instead what I hear are claims that privacy and safety is being cared for with nothing to show for it and valid privacy and safety concerns being dismissed with responses along the lines of "yo, we got like a link where you can like report people".

I get not wanting to put up with some people here, especially me, I am aware I am extremely irritating at times (and I do sincerely apologize for it, I am trying to work on that, but sometimes I fail), especially in this thread as I say things that, now as I read them, don't even make sense to me, and were completely unnecessary, and I went off-topic a couple times.

But that does not give anyone a reason, especially on the moderation team, to just dismiss valid safety concerns with a "yeah, I have not seen that happen, anyway: here is a link that does stuff".

Like, okay, the privacy thing is only very mildly related to this*, but its still a valid privacy concern that should not get ignored, and since this thread is a about seeking improvements (the initial post mentioning seeking improvements in the report moderation system), I still think its relevant to the thread, even if its relation to the discussion it was mentioned it is fairly small.

*I still believe that as long as my evidence is used, and as long as it belongs to me by copyright, I am still passively a part of the case. Especially for as long as the user getting banned can trace the ban back to me reporting them. And even ignoring that: this is very much built like a legal case, in most of which the people accusing someone or reporting a crime are still very much involved in the case and informed about its progress. Though that varies from country to country and state to state I suppose

Its not even such a big change that's required to deal with it, just don't give evidence to people who don't need it, its that simple.

Mods are literally being asked NOT to do something anymore in order to maximise safety and privacy of the reporters.

Out of all changes and Ideas I have suggested, that's one of the only ones I believe to be fully and objectively good (another being the addition of more possibilties to educate the player about the rules inside the games, eg. a "rule book" item for the hotbar, a /rules command or announcements when certain conditions are met), as it maximises user privacy and safety while also not having any real downsides to it.

Mods have slightly less work, because now all that has to appear on the appeal site is (You got banned for x by moderator y on day z). And that while users privacy and safety gets more protected as a result.

Besides: there is a reason why the majority of ingame or just generally online report systems do not reveal who reported a player/user to the players/users getting reported. Remember that the users getting reported, if found guilty, can be dangerous individuals. People should not be put at risk for simply wanting to do something good.



As I said: I sincerely apologise for being annoying and the nonsensical things I said and the couple times I went off-topic, I am done with this thread, so I will not be replying to this thread anymore.