Quote from Highroller »I would like to chime in with regards to the whole D_V thing, having thought about it for a while.
D_V absolutely deserves to be banned for his actions. He should have been banned long ago, and on a sane site, he would have. His actions were utterly unsportsmanlike.
However, D_V is also correct in pointing out that he was allowed to get away with way too much.
The fact of the matter is that the state of moderation on this site is appalling. It's questionable what the mods actually do. I know I won't make any friends on the mod team saying this, but I respect you enough to be honest about it. When I first came here, I gave up trying to report inflammatory posts. What was the point? The mods made it very clear they weren't ever going to respond to them. They were just allowing them to run rampant. It was unbelievable to me. What is the point of not angrily trolling people? **** it, let's act like angry kids on Fortnite, it's not like the people whose job it is to police conduct seem to care. If they don't, why shouldn't I just tell people what I think of them?
In fact, I actually had a mod tell me, and I am not making a word of this up, that a problematic player was warned, but they didn't want to publicly announce it. This mod apparently thought the best way to promote a law-abiding community was making certain that the fact that a post was against the rules was keeping it a secret. Literally making certain that other people didn't know. Breathtaking.
For context, I used to play on MTGNews, which was the parent site of MTGSalvation before the schism (long story). On MTGNews, if you had to be replaced ever, even once, you were put onto a ban list. If you had to be removed from the game for bad behavior, which was almost entirely unheard of, even once, you were placed onto a ban list. The ban list was not binding, hosts could choose to ignore it at their own peril, but the fact was that this type of behavior was very infrequent because if you acted up, THE MODS DID SOMETHING.
That might seem draconian. Fair. You have to adapt your method of governance to suit the community, what worked in one place might stifle another. But the fact of the matter is the moderation here has been toothless, and this is what you get as a result. Be gentle with weeds, and your garden gets overrun.
So no, I don't believe it's necessarily fair that D_V gets banned, because yes, he might be one of the most flagrant cases, perhaps the most, but it's not like he's 100% responsible for the caustic environment here, and it's not on his watch that this occurred.
The objection I have is calling this "probation." No, it's not probation. D_V should be banned if he ever does this again, but that's not because he did it a bunch of times, and therefore if he does it once more, he's out. It should be because if ANYONE goes to that flagrant and gratuitous a level of personal attack, they should be banned, irrespective of how many times that person has done it. They should be banned on a first offense for this.
It's fine to say that we need to shape up, but that "time to shape up" shouldn't merely apply to him, because singling him out is ignoring the problem, which is not him, it's the forum at large. There needs to be a clear delineation. This was the old site, we're tightening things up now, this is the new era of moderation. And the mods need to follow through on actually enforcing the rules. People will continue to flame if there's no real punishment for flaming. People will continue to troll if there's no real punishment for trolling. People will continue to drop out of games if there's no real punishment for dropping out of games. This is basic.
You seem to be under some drastic misconceptions about the way Mafia and MTGS site rules operate. Let me clear this up for you (though shadow did an okay job of this on the last page).
There are three entities as far as rules are concerned within the Mafia subforum. In this way, we're a unique structure within MTGS.
1. Site Moderators+. Mods govern actions that are against site rules. Currently, shadow, Cythare, and I are the Mafia mods. We card posts that are reported or that we happen to spot that are in violation of MTGS's rules. I opt not to leave public warnings in posts, because WITHOUT FAIL, any time I did, I received multiple PMs from people whining about how one person got carded but another didn't, when the other post was not reported and I did not see it, or because the other post was not in violation of the site rules, and arguing with users about who does and doesn't deserve cards is not how I like to spend my time, and arguing with users about who does and doesn't receive cards is not their business. There is also a statue of limitations wherein if we miss a post that deserves a card after 2 weeks, we do not card it, as doing so in the past (in other parts of the site, as well) has looked like targeted Moderation and received cries of discrimination from the affected users. (Contrary top popular belief, we can not read every post on the site every day, and more often than we would like, things slip through the cracks. This is the downside of having a very human team of volunteers under whom the site is run.) I guess you misunderstood what I said when you PMed me about your reports (where if a rule was violated, I issued a card, otherwise, I declined the report), but hopefully my language here is less open for misinterpretation or ambiguity. The short version is that Mods are enforcers of site rules. We do not decide which players are and are not allowed to play Mafia. The Mafia Council does. On that note...
2. Mafia Councillors. Mafia Councillors dictate the specific rules of the subforum beyond the basic site rules. Because of the nature of Mafia, a little more leeway was requested with regards to flaming matters. There's a clear difference between calling an argument bad and calling the player making it bad. Mafia Councillors have the power to put players on probation, blacklist players, determine the Mafia Secretary/Secretaries, and implement programs (such as the Mafia League or when to run FTQs and the like), but will generally elicit feedback from the playerbase before making a decision of this nature. Mafia Councillors do not have site Moderator powers, unless that Councillor is explicitly also a site Moderator (as I was, before, and shadow is, presently.) Mafia Councillors can request that, if a player circumvents a probation or blacklist order, or is otherwise completely toxic to the playerbase, that they can be banned from Mafia, and, if that order is violated, a site suspension or ban will be issued, to be carried out by a senior staffer of MTGS Moderation. Again, MTGS staff, in this capacity, acts as an enforcer.
3. Mafia game hosts. Hosts have the ability to forcibly replace or modkill players they feel are violating the spirit of the game, or are explicitly breaking the rules set forth in their game's OP. This is in addition to whatever penalty MTGS Moderation decides to hand out per site rules, whether it be a blanket "Play nice and behave," in-thread, or carding a user, and is a completely separate decision from any site staff's intervention. Hosts and MTGS Mods can and will collaborate regarding particularly problematic users - i.e. if I see a player I've just given 2 warnings to toeing the line, I may bring it to the attention of the host so that they are aware of how that may affect their game, and they may choose to speak to the player privately, or post a warning of their own in-thread, i.e. "any further flaming will be met with modkills". Again, this is independent of MTGS staff actions.
So, to sum it up, no, nothing about the rules is "kept secret". When users sign up for MTGS, they agree to abide by the site rules. The players who are misbehaving in violation of site rules are receiving cards as they should, and are fully aware of how their actions are against the rules. Any further action regarding whether or not that player is eligible to participate in future Mafia games can and should be brought up to the Mafia Council by either the hosts of games where this player was a detriment to the enjoyability of the game overall, or by fellow players who were on the receiving end of such actions of their co-players, as that responsibility falls on them given the unorthodox nature of the way Mafia governs itself in our community.
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It's pretty behind, but I'll try to get it up here some time this week.
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