I propose that a thread be made in a similar fashion to the abuse report thread for the purpose of recording who was demoted and why. Also allowing those who were demoted to understand why they were punished and have a chance to request reconsideration of the decision in a civil manner.

The administrator could follow a format similar to the abuse thread:

Who:
Evidence:
Action taken:

and the suspect could be allowed to post to defend themselves along the lines of explaining a misunderstanding, provide counter evidence or, clarifying possible confusion.

If demotions occur to often at a certain level such as builder to guest, then perhaps just requiring the paperwork for demotions of people already holding the rank of artisan or higher.




I see fairly often people coming on to find themselves demoted and no one who is online can tell them what offense they did to deserve demotion. This addition would both help justify demotions and eliminate confusion.

Theres something like that already on the Forums, only Ops can Discuss in it...

Well then it doesn't doesn't do the person who was demoted, fairly or unfairly, any good!

The reason a user was demoted is not really up for public discussion. The reason we have an Operators only topic is because, if the user who was demoted, or that users friends etc ask why, then any Operator can view the topic, and see why they were demoted, and if any other actions need to be taken. So it's actually very fair. At the current version of the webserver software too, since Emails aren't being given out, they wouldn't be able to see why they were demoted anyway.

An Operator can demote you if you were caught breaking our rules or Terms in a non serious offense, like minor block harvesting, or minor tunneling. From that, the user is then demoted in respect to the severity of the offense. The Operator then informs others by replying to the topic (and giving a warning if needed) to inform all other Operators why the user was demoted. Then if they come online, and ask why they were demoted, there's a reason posted.

Making a public topic will just throw it all out the window, and demoted users will go on a rage saying that the reason wasn't true, or whatever else, and the situation would escalate, likely resulting in them being banned, which we ultimately do not want.

It sounds like what is already in place makes a reasonable amount of sense, so perhaps I'm just catching examples when it seems uncommonly ineffective. Fortuntely I haven't had to deal with the issue of demotion directly, so I was unaware of the current method of handling the situation.

Perhaps the actual inconvenience I'm noticing is either a lack of available admin/ops or an inconvenient bunching of active operators in specific times zones. It's not uncommon for operators to be completely unavailable for many hours at a time during nonpeak hours. Perhaps Hours of Activity should be included in future operator applications to help make efficient use of operators time when considering between multiple qualified candidates.

I have to admit however that I am relatively new to the server, so my experiences may or may not be typical.

We have Operators in all the major timezones around the world. East US, West US, UK, Europe and Australasia. Unfortunately, school has started, and most of our operators are younger than 18, so they're likely going to be in school.

curses school! I can be on forums though from 12:40-1: something or other MDT during 3rd period

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