Consistency in rule enforcement

[SSH]

I've seen dozens of threads about rules and it usually comes down to this: MCM staff decide when and where to enforce rules. They can do this because the rules are so vague. For example, with Samuel. UberKeys had no issue operating, but once it was Samuel doing it, they cracked down hard on him. MCM switches what it wants to enforce every day pretty much.

We need to make the rules more specific, and we need to be enforcing them consistently and properly. Right now, if I said "{staff member here} go brrrrr" and they were not happy about it, I could get warned and it would stick. Staff are very, very selective when enforcing rules and it really needs to stop.

Oh the selective enforcement of ethical standards on MCM are ever fluxuating.
Every so often one product group will get chased down for being unethical.
A little bit ago is was the piracy issue surrounding everything related to plugins. Then before that there was the "no more selling streaming service accounts". There is still a lot of looking the other way about all the cracked accounts for sale on the accounts forum.

It seems like the core issue here is the site has yet to decide if it is going to commit to being ethical or if it will look the other way.
I would expect most people on the site don't care which way that is. It like the site wants to be ethical, but the lack of commitment to enforcing ethical standards universally (IE: pirated windows keys) says otherwise.

This is a really accurate representation of what I'm trying to say, and it applies to pretty much all of the rules on the site. I am not against all staff, there are even a few that I like and think are good. This is a systematic problem higher than staff members. Rules cannot be subjective whatsoever. "Harassment" is very subjective, some people think sending 2 messages in quick succession is harassment, and some people think that harassment basically never happens. We have both kinds of staff on the team and it really is not good. I'm not saying that staff need to be removed, I'm saying that the rules they enforce need to be adjusted to be less up to the staff to decide whether something breaks a rule. Staff members are not Judge, Jury, and Executioner. They are just executioners and need to be treated as such.

That's the end of my rant, thanks for reading.

 

[flamelier]

I can agree with a lot of this. Though it is up to the owner and possibly the admins to decide how they wish to go with this.

I know that some stuff can be fun and games so having less strict rules can help that. But some rules must be strict and enforced.

Though isn't it up to the staff member to typically tell if something is breaking the rule or not?

I've let some of my more trusted staff members decided on certain rules and potential rule breaking because sometimes I can be bias. Especially if I've been dealing with something over and over.


Personally I think communication between the staff members and members is key can they should have regular discussions about such things. There should especially be communication between the staff members and they should ultimately have a say in the rules and what happens and how strict they are with them. As they will be the ones wielding the hammer or in this case the mouse/keyboard.


This is all based on my years of running communities, being staff and generally playing games.
I can add more on to this if someone wants.

 

[Sloth]

If there’s one thing that Mc-Market has never had it’s consistency. Not even with the rules alone, but with how the site is operated.

The removal of Minecraft accounts is a prime example of a lack of consistency. I doubt this will ever change.

 

[Mick]

I can definitely understand where you're coming from with this suggestion and you have some great points about our issues with consistency with our policies and moderation.

As many of you know, just a day after this suggestion thread was made we implemented major new policies regarding the removal of Minecraft account sales and made our future plans and direction of the site clear; we want to be a legitimate marketplace. At the moment it is certainly a slow and delicate process for us to follow all services' Terms but that is what we are working towards. Additionally, a particularly useful resource has been released which is our list of disallowed products and services: https://www.mc-market.org/wiki/forbidden-products-and-services/. Hopefully, this list should help our users know what they are allowed to offer and what they are not.

No particular solution to the problem was suggested in this thread, so I'll explain what I think the solution to this is. Any inconsistencies that arise from staff enforcement of rules can come down to a lack of clear documentation for us to refer back to. Right now our staff documentation is certainly lacking, but moving forwards we do have plans to move to a better platform which will allow for us to write more guides and explanations for each of our rules and how they should be enforced so that less is left up to discretion.

Right now we're planning on implementing our own instance of https://wiki.js.org with authentication to ensure that only staff get access to it. Does anyone happen to have any ideas for what other platforms there are that could provide us with an organised way to document staff policies? We're using Notion for the moment, but that doesn't quite have the features we need to be sustainable.

 

[Geek]

It's inconsistent to hand out individual warnings for shout-box violations but not hand out individual warnings for non shout-box violations such as above.

I don't think I understand what you're saying?

Each shoutbox rule is it's own rule, not a sub rule of the one preceding it. The subrule that you've listed is a further expansion of the main rule. By criticizing a user/product unless in a dedicated thread, you are trashing them. Therefore, to violate 1.5.2 is to violate 1.5 as 1.5.2 is just further expanding 1.5?

Am I missing something? I'd love for you to explain this again to me if I am, sorry.

 

[Geek]

(which 1.5 main rule does not cover business so wtf?) and that I was "more specifically" violating 1.5.2

I see the confusion. Perhaps the more relevant suggestion would be to add business into the list of qualifiers for the rule so that it is more clear that businesses, which are run by members of the community, are not able to be trashed or slandered unless in the thread dedicated to their services.

 

[Geek]

I'd receive another verbal warning since they are both very different rules that start with the same number

They start with the same number because they are from the same section, but they are not from the same rule as they are not subrules? Does that mean that if I verbally warn you for say 1.5, you shouldn't receive a verbal warning for 1.9? You receive two separate warnings because they are two separate rules?

 

[Geek]

Of course you're going to miss it. Trying to defend your staff buddy, eh?

Anyhow, anyone who is not apart of the team and doesn't have to try to justify the actions of staff members can see the inconsistency in how y'all do things.

I don't disagree that there is inconsistency, I just don't understand your point of verbal warnings for subrules.