The Fundamental Flaw in the warning system.

[Cal]

I present you with a thought experiment.
You approach an intersection. You signal your intent to turn, you stop before the line, check your mirrors, and when safe to proceed, you make your turn. You believe you've followed all the rules of the road to make your turn. Suddenly, lights, sirens, "Pull over now" on the speaker system, you've been pulled over. The police officer gives you a ticket for running a stop sign. You believe you've followed all the rules of the road, but the officer does not believe you and writes you a ticket. You believe this ruling is false, so you attempt to appeal your ticket in court. The weeks run by and your court date arrives, it is time to appeal your ticket. When you enter the court room however, there is no jury, there is no prosecutor, and the man sitting upon the Judge's bench is none other than the officer who issued your ticket. This judge will never overturn your ticket, for he issued it to you, he went through the trouble of pulling you over, writing you the ticket and filing the paperwork associated with that ticket, of course he believes you are guilty.

This is the system MC-Market operates under. When you receive a warning, the staff member who issued that warning is the user you are supposed to ask your questions to, and to dispute the warning with if you disagree with their judgement. This staff member has already decided his opinion, he's done the legwork of doing your warning, and likely is not interested in going back on his decision, that's bad for appearances, and bad for business.

Unfortunately, it is not feasible for every warning to go to a trial by a jury of peers, and an "Overwatch" system is all too likely to end with more votes based on social influence, rather than an actual interpretation of the rules. Which is why I propose a new system for warnings. Instead of the staff member who issued the warning sending a private message to the user, using a template format they fill in. The warning private message should be sent by a bot, with the template being filled in by the staff issuing the warning. If this bot receives a reply to it's message, it is added to a queue, where only replies for warning actions the staff member did not issue are accessible. A simple solution, to a fundamental problem.

"But wait Calvin! The staff need to be know what the warning is about, if they have to reply to disputes they didn't issue, they won't know why the other member who issued it did". If that is so, and the staff member does not why the warning was issued based on the provided evidence and the punishment issued, is it not unreasonable to assume the punishment is incorrect? As I've seen time and time again, circumstance is irrelevant, so if the warning's reasoning cannot be clearly determined from the evidence, it is only reasonable that the warning is invalid.

Serving as judge, jury and executioner is an idea our society left in the middle ages because of its clear failure as a fair and logical judiciary system, I see no reason to continue the fundamentally flawed practice any longer here, or anywhere.
Thank you,
Calvin.

 

[Justis]

Your highly patriotic avatar is amusingly on the nose for this suggestion.

EDIT: Never mind. Shamefully, it was changed.

 

[Ajdin]

Your highly patriotic avatar is amusingly on the nose for this suggestion.

• The suggestion section is a very serious place. It basically decides the future of MC-Market. All posts on suggestions must be on topic, contributing and relevant.

This user wrote a fairly serious post criticizing your warning system and this is all you have to say?...

I agree with this. Just to make sure, did this occur to you? What steps did you take? Did you respond to the warning PM asking questions or did you open a support request? If you opened a support request, what was the interaction like? Who responded? Was the it the original staff member that warned you?

Back in the day when I ran the forum (if I remember correctly as it's been almost 2 years), people that were arguing against a warning got forwarded to me. And to be fair, in many cases I had to agree with the person complaining. Staff makes mistakes, that's normal. The question is, how well are you going to deal with said mistakes.

I think most issues of MC-Market come down to shitty management and decision making. There's so much inconsistencies and questionable decision making visible to the public. I honestly wonder what happens behind the scenes (if anything even happens).

 

[Justis]

This user wrote a fairly serious post criticizing your warning system and this is all you have to say?...

99% of my several hundred responses in suggestion threads would suggest that I probably have more to say, however, I would have liked to wait for a more convincing argument if possible.

I've actually been considering something along the lines of the suggested system since the start of the year, trying to weigh its benefits and flaws, but I've been unable to weigh in favor by any significant margin with our staff team and site users as small in number as they are.

From my perspective, the great number of my own warnings/bans I've ended up retracting is evidence that the theory behind this suggestion thread makes reality out to be worse than it honestly is.
This suggestion makes our staff out to be people who are incapable of even seeing their own mistakes let alone fixing them.
My experience with our staff members is that most of them will ask each other and myself when they're uncertain of a decision they've made or are about to make, because nobody wants to be unfair.
However, this is but a minor point.

This suggestion thread misses out on the major fact that every single person can escalate a dispute over a warning/ban they've received if the final decision of the staff member they received it from is not to their satisfaction.

Why the suggested system wastes too much time
A vast majority of offenses are by people who easily realize what they did was wrong just by reading the rules, warning message, and their own message(s). They may have even known they were in violation when they posted it.
Therefore our staff team would almost always be wasting their time explaining every aspect of a situation which they've placed a warning on that could potentially be argued once the warning is submitted and the situation is taken outside of a view where they can enter any further input.

"if this bot receives a reply to it's message, it is added to a queue,"
Most warnings receive a response such as "sorry" or more often, some vulgar insults at the staff member for warning them rather than handling the reports they made on other people or their reputation, etc. Which has nothing to do with wanting to dispute it for any valid reason other than not wanting the warning.


Why our current system is actually more accurate to the courts system than the suggested system
If we're using your metaphor, the initial warning is given by the police officer when he pulls you over.
At this point, if you believe yourself innocent of what the officer is accusing, you can make your case right then and there on the side of the road, and perhaps he lets you off, apologizes, and sends you on your way. Or perhaps he has evidence backed certainty that you were in violation.
At this point you can either pay the ticket, or appeal it to the court system.

This is similar to our current system, because you can either handle it with the staff member that warned you, and if their final decision is that you were in violation, you can accept it and move on, or you can ask to escalate the decision.

The suggested system fails to be accurate to the court system because in the court system, the police officer that made the decision is always present for the dispute over the decision they made. Whereas in your suggestion, they are not.
Our current system is accurate because the staff member who issued the warning is still in the conversation when you are appealing their decision to a higher staff member, and thus all relevant parties are able to discuss it and come to the most reasonable conclusion. You can even escalate again it if you're still for whatever reason, unconvinced and dissatisfied unless it was Mick or I myself who placed the warning.

In closing
The suggested system favors appealing for the sake of appealing over actually enforcing our policies accurately upon reality.

It wastes far too much time trying to allow people the opportunity to attempt to appeal valid decisions and fails to more accurately represent the modern court systems than our current system does with our current escalation process at every member's disposal for every warning decision made.

 

[fieldy]

got a week ban for saying the n word, shit system!

 

[Ambrosia]

i present to you, how you wasted time out of your life (as I did right now) writing this post for it to be looked over for 10 years and then eventually denied.

 

[Mick]

99% of my several hundred responses in suggestion threads would suggest that I probably have more to say, however, I would have liked to wait for a more convincing argument if possible.

I've actually been considering something along the lines of the suggested system since the start of the year, trying to weigh its benefits and flaws, but I've been unable to weigh in favor by any significant margin with our staff team and site users as small in number as they are.

From my perspective, the great number of my own warnings/bans I've ended up retracting is evidence that the theory behind this suggestion thread makes reality out to be worse than it honestly is.
This suggestion makes our staff out to be people who are incapable of even seeing their own mistakes let alone fixing them.
My experience with our staff members is that most of them will ask each other and myself when they're uncertain of a decision they've made or are about to make, because nobody wants to be unfair.
However, this is but a minor point.

This suggestion thread misses out on the major fact that every single person can escalate a dispute over a warning/ban they've received if the final decision of the staff member they received it from is not to their satisfaction.

Why the suggested system wastes too much time
A vast majority of offenses are by people who easily realize what they did was wrong just by reading the rules, warning message, and their own message(s). They may have even known they were in violation when they posted it.
Therefore our staff team would almost always be wasting their time explaining every aspect of a situation which they've placed a warning on that could potentially be argued once the warning is submitted and the situation is taken outside of a view where they can enter any further input.

"if this bot receives a reply to it's message, it is added to a queue,"
Most warnings receive a response such as "sorry" or more often, some vulgar insults at the staff member for warning them rather than handling the reports they made on other people or their reputation, etc. Which has nothing to do with wanting to dispute it for any valid reason other than not wanting the warning.


Why our current system is actually more accurate to the courts system than the suggested system
If we're using your metaphor, the initial warning is given by the police officer when he pulls you over.
At this point, if you believe yourself innocent of what the officer is accusing, you can make your case right then and there on the side of the road, and perhaps he lets you off, apologizes, and sends you on your way. Or perhaps he has evidence backed certainty that you were in violation.
At this point you can either pay the ticket, or appeal it to the court system.

This is similar to our current system, because you can either handle it with the staff member that warned you, and if their final decision is that you were in violation, you can accept it and move on, or you can ask to escalate the decision.

The suggested system fails to be accurate to the court system because in the court system, the police officer that made the decision is always present for the dispute over the decision they made. Whereas in your suggestion, they are not.
Our current system is accurate because the staff member who issued the warning is still in the conversation when you are appealing their decision to a higher staff member, and thus all relevant parties are able to discuss it and come to the most reasonable conclusion. You can even escalate again it if you're still for whatever reason, unconvinced and dissatisfied unless it was Mick or I myself who placed the warning.

In closing
The suggested system favors appealing for the sake of appealing over actually enforcing our policies accurately upon reality.

It wastes far too much time trying to allow people the opportunity to attempt to appeal valid decisions and fails to more accurately represent the modern court systems than our current system does with our current escalation process at every member's disposal for every warning decision made.

If you would like to appeal a warning or report a staff member for a warning you feel is invalid, it will be assigned to Justis or me to resolve, so I'm not too sure how this is exactly a problem. Our staff team has been improved massively over these past few months and I don't believe this to be as much of a problem, obviously, nothing can ever be 100% perfect though unfortunately.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion