Policy on Staff Reports.

[WaveDev]

Hi there, recently I needed to report a staff member whom blatantly abused their powers in the discord server against me as they didn't like a suggestion I made.
This led to me getting suspended by said staff member and then needing to report them.

To my surprise, I found out it is MCM's policy for staff reports to be assigned to the person who is being reported. This is a very clear conflict of interest.

In the real world, an investigation like this must be conducted without any duress, assigning the person who is being reported to the report is the definition of duress and pretty much will never give any result.

If I were to report my manager at work, and then my manager was assigned to said report - there would be a very big issue with HR, so this shouldn't be any different.

 

[Andrew]

I would like to comment on this thread as there is a slight misunderstanding of our policy here.

We originally assign an issue regarding a warning or punishment to the staff member that issued the warning/punishment. This gives the staff member the chance to explain to you why you received your warning and answer any questions you have in regards to your punishment which in most cases resolves the issue as simply most users don't understand why they've received a warning/punishment and their first instinct is to say it's wrong.

If you then further don't agree with the staff member's explanation or still wish to report them for being "biased" or "abusive" then you can request an escalation to an administrator which is usually Kram who will then review the whole case and make an informed decision on both your actions as a user and our actions as staff members.

We, as staff, don't handle staff reports in any form, they're all handled by Kram but we do initially explain the warning/punishment to you.

If you feel you were not given this opportunity yet through your ticket, feel free to ask for an escalation and the staff member is required to oblige as per our internal policy.

I hope you had a fantastic new year!

 

[Andrew]

Are they just assigned to the specific staff member originally so they can properly see it in their queue?

All tickets are assigned to the staff member that's handling the ticket at that moment in time, if that changes the assigned staff member will change.

Once you've requested an escalation we would assign it over to Kram from that point, until that point we will handle it more as an appeal than a report. (Until told otherwise).

 

[WaveDev]

Assigning a staff report to the staff member being reported is a clear conflict of interest for one, and then if they don't abuse their powers and close it it just goes to one of their mates who will close it. This is why reports don't go anywhere on MCM. I actually posted a message in the discord yesterday saying that there should be a HR with nothing to do with the staff team who handles these things and Kram specifically ignored that message and kept responding to everyone else.

If that doesn't scream that the system is completely corrupt, I don't know what does.

 

[Harry]

Assigning a staff report to the staff member being reported

To clarify since I don't think it's been made fully clear, a ticket that was created with the intention of reporting a staff member will always be directly assigned to Kram.
When the ticket was created with the intention of appealing or questioning a decision, those are situations where they'll be assigned to the staff member in question (for the previously explained reasons).

Ie. an appeal != a staff report, and if your intention is to report a staff member, that should ideally be done via a separate ticket so the intention is clear.

 

[WaveDev]

Either way, in no reasonable company would this ever be the case. It's a conflict of interest and allows abuse from the staff member who did it very easily. But since the admin who responds to these tickets also is biased there is literally no hope for anyone trying to appeal a punishment or report a staff member. Something needs to change to make the site fair.

 

[WaveDev]

Two staff members disagree with a post that prevents them from abusing, what does that tell you about BBB ;-;

 

[Ally]

Two staff members disagree with a post that prevents them from abusing, what does that tell you about BBB ;-;

What it says is maybe you should consider what they're actually saying.

An appeal is handled by the staff who issued the punishment as they have by far the most context on the issue, and if it requires escalation it can be escalated by yourself or staff only when appropriate. That seldom happens since when a staff member issues a warning or other punishment, they generally have the backing of their peers, as appropriate. If there is an issue, the staff member who issued the punishment can revoke it and this does happen, despite what you may think.

This is separate to a report on a staff member for something they did or have done over a long period of time, which as mentioned above, can be escalated to Kram. What you're missing, I think, is that a punishment gone wrong is rarely grounds for a full report since it's handled internally anyway, and staff members are also human.

 

[JasmeowTheCat]

One trouble I see with this, again, mutual here, not taking sides, is Slack. You guys have private staff channels (Like any other Discord or Forum, not calling you special haha) and you can go "Oi Kram you lovely person you, go and deal with that ticket, here's my X proof." Kram has immediate power to decide and be bias about it, that's the problem. We don't know what the staff say behind the scenes.

The problem is, you can't solve this, so again, I am mutual as we all do it in our own Discords.

 

[WaveDev]

What it says is maybe you should consider what they're actually saying.

An appeal is handled by the staff who issued the punishment as they have by far the most context on the issue, and if it requires escalation it can be escalated by yourself or staff only when appropriate. That seldom happens since when a staff member issues a warning or other punishment, they generally have the backing of their peers, as appropriate. If there is an issue, the staff member who issued the punishment can revoke it and this does happen, despite what you may think.

This is separate to a report on a staff member for something they did or have done over a long period of time, which as mentioned above, can be escalated to Kram. What you're missing, I think, is that a punishment gone wrong is rarely grounds for a full report since it's handled internally anyway, and staff members are also human.

you completely missed the point of this, staff reports do still get assigned to the person being reported. and then if you're lucky it will get escalated to Kram - who is friends with all of these people and will never do anything about it anyway.

My point of this is it should be handled like it would in an actual functioning company, a HR department which reviews it whom aren't just friends with the person abusing the power to prevent abuse. You can't dispute that their is abuse going on here - as the staff just go after anyone who disagrees with them or that they don't like - they know nothing will come of it and they can do what they want.

funnily enough, it's mainly staff who disagree with this, and it's the staff that are responsible for the abuse and the other people disagreeing are their friends, a lot of the community who have seen this agree with me. Currently my dev partner is permanently banned for making a joke thanks to the abusive staff here & nothing can be done due to how the staff team is structured here.