Minecraft Name: @nikalsaki Suggestion: Staff complaints should be public and open. Reason: Transparency is key to holding authority figures accountable, whether it be government officials, company CEOs, or Minecraft server moderators. The users of ECC have a right to know what the staff have been up to, both good and bad. I personally believe that this server does an exceptional job at choosing only the best of the best for staff roles. In my opinion, we currently haven't even the slightest problem with staff corruption or the like. This suggestion is a preventative measure as it is intended to make future staff corruption far less realistic. Any Other Information: Some may say that staff complaints are a private issue and should remain as such. If that is the case, we should also privatise the complaints of private users. If we don't want to run the risk of tarnishing the reputation of an innocent staff member, we should also ensure to not run the risk of tarnishing the reputation of an innocent player. Link To This Plugin/Is this a custom addition?: N/A
Please note that the other suggestion I made about public staff complaints just a few moments ago is considered invalid and thus moot as it was not submitted in the proper format.
And posting this yet again: Staff complaints are very different than complaints against normal players. To say that because complaints against normal players are public, staff complaints should be public too is a pretty stupid thing to say. A player isn't a person in position of authority who's expected to be well-respected by users and properly enforce the rules. Now, staff on the other hand, they're quite different. They're expected to properly enforce the rules and have players listen to them and obey them - Public complaints just serve the purpose of tarnishing their reputation. Players will stop listening to staff if they get complaints on them, even if it's petty. All this can do is cause disorder on the server with players refusing to listen to staff who "should've been demoted". The consequences of publicizing staff complaints are even worse when you realize the fact that staff have power - When staff publicly see users filing complaints on them, they'll start targeting users - Giving them less warnings and being more ban/kick-happy with these users. This alone will lead to even more issues and disorder than the initial case of staff abuse, as players will complain about "Staff abuse" in global", often leading to things like flame wars. To add onto all of this, we'll just see a massive amount of irrelevant posts and drama in them. When you have staff complaints public, you're opening the doors to irrelevant posts on them - And these aren't just any normal complaints; These are ones against people who have a position of authority. Trolls will quickly realize this is an opportunity and jump right at it making troll posts on them. This will exacerbate our already bad irrelevant posts problem, and cause drama in the complaints themselves. When you see the large amount of players posting on complaints already, you can't help but imagine how worse the situation could get if staff complaints were public. This will only exacerbate the issue at hand. Finally, my biggest problem with publicizing staff complaints: It causes unnecessary drama. When publicizing staff complaints, players will begin discussions about them in global, leading to drama and flame wars - Not just that, but users will start harassing staff members about the complaints on them and then say even more negative things about staff members, leading to even more drama and people not obeying staff authority/taking staff seriously. This will just add more issues to chat and cause even more problems. And quite frankly, what effect do you think these issues and drama will have in newer players? They'll leave. And so will many experienced players who are quite frankly tired of the unnecessary drama caused by public staff complaints. This will just make the server unwelcoming both to newer and experienced players, further decreasing the player count - Which isn't beneficial to the server nor something we should be aiming for. Staff complaints are private for a reason for a reason, and should remain so for the sake of the staff team and the community as a whole.
I addressed the first two paragraphs under "Any Other Information." Thank you for bringing up the other points I didn't address. Those really got me thinking. Allow me to address your point on staff abuse. While that could potentially be a problem, it has been in history that less transparent governments tend to abuse their power more and more transparent governments tend to abuse their power less; thus a more transparent staff wouldn't really abuse their power less (it's kind of hard for our staff to abuse their power less seeing as they already don't) but what they would do is not abuse it more as the evidence would e right there in the complaints. It seems that we hold staff to high standards. Which is good. Our staff already exceeds all the standards we hold them to by a longshot. In regards to staff abuse, most staff already exceed this proposal and thus this wouldn't affect them. In terms of staff abuse, what this proposal would do is minimise the threat of potential future staff abuse seeing as they'd be held even more accountable. Now to address your point about trolls. Trolls will always be a problem, regardless of public or private staff complaints. If not in public staff complaints, they'll find somewhere else to troll. I have no proof of this following claim as I'm not a member of staff, but basic logic would lead any reasonable person to believe that trolls already submit troll-y private staff complaints. All this would do is make those troll complaints more public. People don't really like trolls much so all this would do is bring down the reputation of trolls. You're qualified to correct me if that's untrue; I'm not qualified to speak for trolls because the only trolling experience I have is a few years ago when I was a wannabe troll but failed at that simple of a task. On your point of the discussion of complaints about staff in global, it could be dealt with like the discussion of any complaint. Same with staff complaint related flame wars. All staff should be held to the highest level of accountability and this is purely a preventative measure to ensure that ECC is still one of the best servers with one of the best staff teams.
You only argue against the first half of his suggestion. What about his alternative to make regular complaints private?
Staff complaints that don't relate to there job should be made public. For example, if a mod is late paying back a loan, there is no reason why that user gets to have that complaint handled privately while everyone else's are public. Complaints about how things are handled should be private though
Staff complaints should only be made public if; A) After they have been locked and action has been taken for non moderator things. B) They are dismissed for non moderator things.
This ^ Everyone just assumes mods are perfect little angels. But not all of them are. How are we supposed to know who can pay a loan and who can't? Yes, some complaints should be kept private, but there are some that could be out in the open.
So due to the input suggested above, I'm resubmitting the suggestion right here with the incorporation of some of the above input. What I'm doing is literally copying and pasting the suggestion's code and then making edits (additions are both in light grey and in italics, while removals have been struck through). Minecraft Name: @nikalsaki Suggestion: Staff complaints, when not about how a certain member of staff handled a certain situation, should be public and open. Reason: Transparency is key to holding authority figures accountable, whether it be government officials, company CEOs, or Minecraft server moderators. The users of ECC have a right to know what the staff, in their civilian playership†, have been up to, both good and bad. I personally believe that this server does an exceptional job at choosing only the best of the best for staff roles. In my opinion, we currently haven't even the slightest problem with staff corruption (in their civilian playership) or the like. This suggestion is a preventative measure as it is intended to make future staff corruption far less realistic. To clarify, only staff complaints that regard to the civilian playership of the staff would be public. All complaints regarding staff duties, such as how a staff member handled a certain situation, would still remain private. †The term "civilian playership" menas the non-staff actions of staff members. That includes stuff like a staff member selling fraudulent donator features, a staff member fraudulently selling a melon sword, et cetera. So pretty much everything a staff member does that a non-staff member can also do, i.e. every action that isn't limited to staff members. Any Other Information: Some may say that all staff complaints are a private issue and should remain as such. If that is the case, we should also privatise the complaints of private users. If we don't want to run the risk of tarnishing the reputation of an innocent staff member, we should also ensure to not run the risk of tarnishing the reputation of an innocent player. Link To This Plugin/Is this a custom addition?: N/A
@UnitedStates2 Then why can't you just file a staff complaint on a staff that is targeting a player? Yes players will call out staff on targeting users, keeping staff in check. Staff should fear the players, not players fear the staff.
That's actually incredibly unbalanced. This isn't a democracy. Do you know what happens when staff actually fear players? You get a community of trolls and toxic players because staff are too scared to take action.
Sounds like how things are right now... What I don't understand is why Staff aren't viewed as or treated as players/users, because.. they are. Staff shouldn't be exempt from any normal user/player functions, rules, scrutiny, punishment, lectures, discussions, etc. Seriously. Any complaint that is made on a Staff member that falls under any of the server rules, and that you would see made on other users should, be made public. Because those are about players/users, not a faculty/staff member. However, it is debatable on whether or not these are made public before are after being closed. TBH, they should probably be public immediately, otherwise Staff are being treated special and not like normal players/users. Also because there can be things like loan "scams" and private harassment (which DOES COUNT AS NORMAL PLAYER/USER COMPLAINTS). In the case of "players/users harassing and trolling the Staff members because complaints are publicly made on them" ... Someone who doesn't have the complaint on them could actually do their job and moderate. I'm not sure why it is so hard to teach users right from wrong, let alone teaching them that harassment and trolling are not okay. Harassing and trolling is breaking rules. Deal with it. Heck, it will even pull out those who don't respect or appreciate the community/emotions/people.
