That sounds like a great Idea.

This is only a great idea if we can find someone willing to spend time and effort for no recompense and is also willing to be despised by the rest of the community - and make the present mods' lives more difficult (remember - they're not getting paid, either). And then we'd need to find a Banning Judge, because it's no point to having this position if the prosecuting mod still decides the outcome of the case.

All good points, Tolstoy.

I suppose I was thinking we could still trust the other mods to make the decisions, because unfairness is not the concern (so far as I can tell) so much as overwork. They don't have time to drudge up all the evidence in defense themselves. The defense moderator would be more focused on finding / discussing things that cast the other evidence into doubt.

But like I say, might be a dumb idea, after all. Your points are well taken.

Your idea implies a lack of trust of the moderators. I'm sure that the mods do not ban people without good reason and look at both sides of the issue. If they do not then they should not be mods. You can't say that the mods are one-sided and need a counterbalance just because they are the ones who give out the bans.

A problem with having an open discussion on who is or is not cheating is that much of the evidence is only available to mods and if they release it then future cheaters will have more information about how to get away with cheating. I don't think it is a good idea to make it easier to cheat.

As for MPM, I had noticed him before and thought he was suspicious and reading the recent posts doesn't make me think differently.

I mean.. that's a neat idea in principle. But I think I can say for myself and at least some of the other mods that we try to be really really lenient, and usually are. Sometimes I even reprimand myself for being *too* lenient, for example a player that doesn't respond after 48-72 hours of an email sent to them is at our mercy and supposed to be punished, but I often wait a long long time.

The reason we want these responses is because it affords the player in question an opportunity to defend themselves.

I don't think it's a dumb idea, just a poor use of the limited resources available to a community such as ours. If people had to pay to play (for instance), I think this would be much more practical (and a good sales point to folks who have been wrongly banned from other sites for whatever reason).

@FT, as I said in my prior post (which you probably hadn't seen when you were writing yours), I don't mistrust the mods: I just suspect that it's easier to find evidence FOR cheating than to go further and find potential evidence AGAINST the same cheating. I could be wrong.

More generally, however much I may trust the mods, it's not a great process that wraps prosecutor, defense, and judge up into one role that acts in secret. Any of us would be outraged if our place of employment treated discipline like that, for example. Well, this is less important, and unpaid, and so on, so certainly I understand if the decision is made that it's not worth the mods' time to implement what would be a more onerous system. But I don't think your response is particularly convincing. Everybody's human and fallible, and everybody deserves fair process where feasible. This is, of course, just a free game site, but it's fairly important to some people. Certainly I would hate being accused wrongly of cheating.

@Thucy, thank you for the response. Makes sense, and it's good to hear that people have this opportunity to defend themselves.

@Tolstoy, point well taken once again.

Also, the main reason we keep our proceedings secret is to prevent people from getting good at avoiding detection.

In the real world we don't do this because people who want to know how to avoid getting caught just do. Here however, since it is the internet and lot of people that use it aren't, you know, hackers, we don't exactly publicize what we do.

Also since mods aren't democratically elected or anything, all making our proceedings open would do is generate a shitstorm and divide the community over things they don't have a lot of say in anyway.

You are right that it's not exactly the Justice System, but since we do these jobs because we like this site and want it to be fun, we (or I at least) put myself in everyone's accused shoes.

And yes, among ourselves, we use terms like "reasonable doubt" all the time.

As I said before, I probably err on the side of too lenient, I wouldn't be surprised indeed if some guilty people have escaped punishment because there wasn't enough evidence. In my opinion, better that than banning people who didn't do anything wrong. I hate nothing more than being blamed for something I didn't do, bit of a complex of mine actually. Lol.

@Thucy, I certainly wasn't suggesting making the proceedings open. My whole suggestion was aimed at getting around one of the drawbacks of NOT being able to make the system open. You're right that perps can't have access to all you do, but that's why it would be good to give them a rep who could (without, obviously, letting them know what data was there).

Anyway, just clarifying. I'm glad to hear you're too lenient, as I agree that's the right side to err on.

I would like to make on thing clear:

Every suspect is contacted before they are banned, no matter how guilty they look. Their responses are always read and taken into consideration. A vast majority of people who complain about being banned never bothered to respond to the mods in the first place.

If a player believes they were banned without cause, they can as an Admin (myself or FK) to review the case. If they are still unhappy, they can always talk to Kestas. The reality is that most bans are not overturned because bans are used as an absolute last resort and with the utmost care.

Honestly, I don't see how this suggestion will do anything other than add anything but extra work and confusion. Also, it seems to imply that mods are rewarded for banning players, which requires a counter balance. The reality is, the further up the chain of command you go, the more lenient the mods are, so mods end up justifying their decision to ban quite a lot already.

Cool, abge. For all the reasons raised by you, Thucy, and Tolstoy, I'll withdraw the suggestion.

I will, however, disagree with you that the suggestion implied that the mods were rewarded for banning. I think I explicitly said otherwise.

^ word up on abgemacht, he is absolutely right. It's as if some of them either don't check their email or don't take us seriously until we actually ban them - and we can't be held responsible for their tomfoolery in that respect.

Also lmao at "perps" semck, you're definitely a lawyer.

Who suggested we were rewarded for bans?

I mean, I get off to it, but besides that?

@semck

Sorry if I misunderstood you. But, it seems if this was just a staffing problem, it would make more sense to just add another mod. Since that wasn't what you suggested, I thought you were implying there was another problem.

@abge, I was, but the problem wasn't that you were more REWARDED for banning people. Just that it's harder to find evidence of innocence, and you might lack motivation.

@semck83

I agree that it's not a great system to have prosecutor, defense, and judge (also police) all wrapped up together and if it was judging something really important like crime it would be open to abuse and we should all protest about it. When the mods start abusing their power we should demand they be replaced.

The process can be fair if the mods operate it fairly. It's possible to be impartial even if you are the one investigating and giving out punishment. Adding an extra person doesn't necessarily make it fairer, it just adds extra work. The criminal justice system takes up enormous amounts of resources, because its really important to make the right decisions and because you don't want the people making the decisions to be affected by bribes/relationships/threats etc.

However as this is a game and I think it is unlikely that anyone attempts to bribe or threaten or otherwise corrupt the mods, its probably fair to say that they will make good unbiased decisions. The mods have no motivation to find more or less cheaters than there actually are and I presume that they only act when they have firm evidence of cheating that the someone is not able to explain.

Really if you add another person to do basically the same thing as the original person (conduct a fair investigation) then you are are just adding a rubber stamp and more work.

If you want a really fair process it should be open and you should be able to see all the evidence and argue your case or else choose someone to see the evidence and argue for you. If you don't get to choose who will represent you then it isn't really an improvement over the current system.

Oh, but what if the Defender is in on it too? Maybe we should have an Auditor who monitors what the Defender does (without being directly privy to the confidential information) and reports to an Oversight Committee. Members of the Oversight Committee can be elected by webdip members. Except then you have to worry about multi-accounters stuffing the ballot box, so let's appoint a Screener to track IP addresses or whatever.

It's a free site staffed by volunteer mods. There's no due process to protect and no need for a justice system. If I don't like what happens here, I am free to go play Farmville.

In on what, HM? I nowhere suggested a conspiracy. Thanks for playing though.

Your lack of suggestion of a conspiracy only confirms that you are part of it. No way do I trust you to be the Defender. This whole thread was probably their idea.

lol.