Appeals: Inconsistencies

You can’t compare 1 stat booster to the thousands of blatant cheaters. We compare one on one, because we’re talking about why the duration of the ban should be so long.

 

Aww Marzie, I wish I could say this was true but I know near a dozen players whom I personally know who have been caught cheating, said they are sorry in their appeal and then been unbanned the same day.

 

A dozen isn't even close to the amount we get a day. I would know as I was previously a FN and have been a part of the appeals team for a bit now :^(
Also not completely fair to say any of this since obviously theres a lot more hacking bans done than there is stat boosting bans. Therefore we'll get a higher amount of hacking appeals anyways. Adding on- justified punishments have to be served for at least a week now and cannot get immediately unbanned. There are exceptions to this of course like skin, cape, name and compromised account bans.

 

I understand that justified punishments have to be served for at least a weak, hence why I waited a week before appealing and as of now my appeal has been escalated 9 days on top of the 7 days I waited out. Also I said a dozen whom I know personally, I didn't mean 12 random people.

However, this is not what I am trying to get at. What I am trying to say is that I assume almost all stat boost bans get appealed and I'm sure like me everyone whom is appealing them is incredibly apologetic and it is most likely their first offence so I'm sure they will stick to their word and not repeat it. I'm sure it would either make more sense for these punishments to be dealt with before the cheating bans - seeing as imo cheating is a much worse offence than for example in my case 'boosting' 70 kills in a seasonal game (roughly 700xp), or I think that, as @Disgruntle said, 1st offence punishments for stat boosting unless incredibly severe, for example boosting 100 wins or more in a specific game, should be reduced to a more reasonable time limit e.g a couple days; seeing as even some cheating bans only last a day or less.

 

That is not working for GWEN appeals. We only accept GWEN appeals if we think it could be incorrect.

 

Some of my fellow appeals team members and some members of QA have already done a great job of addressing most of the misconceptions in this thread about our appeals system, how it actually works and why it works that way, however, there are a few things I must address here:

As Marzie said, we get a lot more than 12 appeals per day...



This is just the active appeals that are in the open forum right now, this doesn't count appeals that have not been sent in yet, nor does it count GWEN appeals or appeals that are in the archive. From this image, you can get an idea of the number of appeals we get every day. I would say the number of appeals we receive every day is more like

I agree with the severity of the rules being quite different. This in no way means stat-boosting is not something that can be dealt with or not something we will go out of our way to deal with because we will ensure it gets forwarded, however, I would always prioritise someone cheating over someone stat-boosting. By stat boosting, yes, you ruin leaderboards and gain unfair stats over other players, however, with cheating you are actively ruining people's games non stop. A bunny hopper in say SKY or SG can wipe out lobbies quickly, which is why I make an effort to deal with those reports when they crop up as quickly as possible, it's a general principle that with limited resources you distribute them in an efficient and wise manner.

Take this analogy, if you are an ambulance, you can only be in one place at one time. You receive a call at the same time for someone who had a moderate burn on their hand and needs to go to the hospital to get it checked out, but you also have someone who has had a heart attack and needs a paramedic within a few minutes before it is too late. Yes, this is a discussion about appeals on a block game and it is being compared to ethics and medicine, but the principle is the same? You want to cause the least suffering/damage with the resources you have. Does this mean that the person with the burn won't be seen by a professional? Of course not, they will just be a lower priority due to the severity and urgency of the issue, the same can be said with appeals and hacking in general.

With regards to the teams which handle various appeals and who can handle what:

The reason why certain teams handle certain cases is that they are trained and given the resources to do something specific. QA have access to specific logs that they can use for GWEN appeals, a regular appeals member cannot infer if a GWEN ban is false from the metadata given to them, even if they had access to it (which would not happen), it would likely be inefficient, we have done trials of allowing FMs access to GWEN metadata and handling these appeals and it only confirmed that the system right now is how it should be done.

In regards to RC-only punishments, and appeals that must be confirmed such as Inappropriate Names, stat-boosting, F2 spamming, etc... Forum Management are not qualified to deal with these so they must hand them onto RC, we are going to be possibly working with Forum Management soon to have access to more of these appeals but, for now, they will go through our regular internal processes whereby they confirm them with the team that can issue them.

I suppose a summary of this section is, if a team cannot punish for something in the first place why on Earth should they be determining if said punishment is valid or not? That makes no sense in my opinion and in the eyes of an appeals system that would create incorrect appeal handling and would not promote a fair environment that we try to maintain with the appeals system.

The last thing I wanted to say was in regards to Quality Assurance. Quality Assurance has been receiving quite a bit of negative attention specifically in this thread because lots of what they do is associated with quite a competitive environment and directly associated with well-known players (like dealing with closet cheaters, update testing and GWEN appeals). What you must remember is they are volunteers too, everyone I know on there works very hard to keep things running smoothly, and if you look at how many tasks they must maintain just for the general operation of the server you'll see how impressive it really is.

GWEN appeals are generally responded to swiftly and accurately from my experience, but please do not bash a team if you are not sure of what they do internally. We are not as transparent with this because it is a very secretive team that involves NDAs, but do remember they have a lot of tasks that all link into "Assuring Quality", it is a bit like the staff team would not function without Staff Management or Recruitment, the appeals system would not function without Forum Management, and every other Sr Mod team feeds into the overall goal of "creating a better player experience". The goal of quality assurance is to "assure quality", a very general and wide range of tasks which I feel should be recognised a bit more.

TL:DR

We do receive a lot of appeals each day, they are all handled on a case-by-case basis. Stat-boosting is against the rules, it will be seen to but we always prioritise what causes the most damage to player experience as that is our priority as a staff team. Various teams pitch into appeals because various teams pitch into punishments and the workings of the server, it just makes sense. QA need to be recognised more for what they do beyond GWEN appeals and closet cheaters, this is not their only purpose, do not bash them if you do not fully understand all of their tasks or the range of their work.



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I'm gonna be honest, I was just voicing my opinion if you think I'm reading that exam on why you like being a Mineplex staff then your on another planet.

 

Not sure what you mean by the word "exam" here. "exam" and "long piece of writing" are quite different things, I don't see how this post relates to an exam in any way.

I completely understand not wanting to read the full post, some people don't have the time or patience, which is why below all my long replies I include a "TL:DR", not reading that would invalidate replying to the post since my arguments have not been understood or read.

None of my arguments or replies were based around "liking being a Mineplex staff member" and again I don't know where this came from. If you don't wish to read my replies that is completely fine, however, please do not write unconstructive short replies regarding the post if you don't have time/a wish to read it.​

 

This thread has become so petty lmao