Hello,
Before I start, No this is not specifically about me nor is meant to be an attack on any one person I understand a bar was set, and people followed it for years I'd like to raise that bar so to speak. We can only work towards the future, not the past.
Over the past several years I have noticed a problem that's popped up more and more, and in my personal opinion is a fundamental issue. People aren't understanding what or why bans, mutes, gags, team bans, VIP stripped, and of course, isos are being applied. While I have personally have been affected by this in the past I know a lot of other people have and are too, just look here on forums take a random appeal, accepted, declined, still pending even, and about half of the time I can bet you there's a line somewhere that goes like "I don't know what I did to get banned but it says _______". (A few examples are below)
Now I am specifically going to be talking about TF2 punishments here, but some points will still apply later. I think the current system for looking up bans is great. However that's not the issue, the issue is that I've yet to see it fully utilized, on the website right now I've gone back 30 pages which is 900 punishments for various reasons looked at them, and found no demos, nor any other punishment I've ever looked at. While looking at those 900 punishments, I noticed some of them have very great and detailed reasons as to why they were applied, most of them are from the anti-cheat other than that it's umbrella terms, like Racism, Toxicity, Hate speech, trolling. Now at the same time, I also noticed these used but with added context like "Racism (slur usage)", "extreme toxicity, accusing people of being pedophiles, and community disrespect", and "Hate speech (homophobic and racial slurs)". These are in my opinion good, especially the toxicity one (obvious example used), which tells exactly what they were doing and others what not to do, it sets a clear precedent that can be pointed back to and used as an example. Now I'm sure many of you reading this are just saying "Read the rules" which many people and staff point to, but that's mainly only going to be useful for the Jb rules because they're actually detailed and played out throughout the years. But the general rules here on the forums, discord, and all other Wonderland places are, generalized and unspecified and sometimes left up to interpretation, and this alone is the reason I'm convinced rule #1 under other rulings "Staff reserve the right to add or amend rules at any time to close loopholes or to keep the server a friendly and fair place." is a patch job made to make sure no one could say "But it's not in the rules". The main problem with this is, that it's entirely dependent on which staff you're talking to and sometimes even their opinion of you, your tone, and their mood even (I've seen and had this happen). These rulings are never consistent across all staff until one common agreed upon one is made official, either by vote for the rules or out of the need for consistency. Jb is a good example of this, the rules have to constantly be edited, changed, and at points, even conflict based on interpretation, or "it's this way because staff told me". It's a mess but I'm glad it's being worked on, but Jb is a small part of the whole and I believe that a well-written detailed base ruleset is needed just as a baseline to set a precedent because as it stands not even I know all the rules after 6 years there are still new things people are being punished for I thought was totally fine or were before and as a new member, being told you can't do this, this, and this despite reading the rules and thinking otherwise has to be a bit off-putting at the least this is what I'd like to suggest alleviating.
My suggestions to these issues I've pointed to are to have the future ban reasons across all of Wonderland to be semi-detailed (adding like 5-6 words to point out what exactly or near what was under the punishment category) to avoid it being left up to assumptions. For example, using hate speech as a reason is a very generalizing term, as hate speech's establish dictionary definition (Link) is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation" which is a generalization of different offensive language under one term, but like Hate speech (homophobia and racial slurs) would provide more context and set precedence. As for the rules, they need to be clarified maybe even expanded upon now, or especially if major things come up later, such as changing definitions of words, or finding out something people used to do was, or is now offensive. For example, I am on places that have temporarily banned talking about the current war in Ukraine because it's deemed too political and potentially offensive, but it's announced and understood.
This third part is gonna be more specific toward the discord punishments but as stated earlier some points still apply. Now I can't actively look at the discord logs, or even my own ban reason currently, that's an issue plain and simple. If you don't have friends on the server tell you why, or you ask staff to tell you which might not be possible because you are now banned from what might be the only server you share, so you'd have to track down their Id's and friend them. Or you could come here to the forums and open a helpdesk page mind you this is to ask why you've been punished and the last person to do that was Majora for an iso, then Sinpers_ for a ban reason, then myself (had to appeal to get an answer) that's it for all of 2021. Now I already know the wln.tf discord bot tells you that you've been warned and I appreciate that however, it does not tell you that you've been banned or iso'd and for what reasons. In light of a recent appeal by Phoenix, I am scared by the precedent it sets, not only for my own potential appeal, but Cheems's, and Hoshi's if they choose to do so as well. And where it scares me is when Phoenix says "I shouldnt have asked or talked about it in the first place" despite also saying "I Only know a little on what happened but ill try to explain it as best as I can" when my or neither of the other two's ban reason wasn't even posted so I don't understand how he was supposed to "not talk about" when 3 people were banned without an explanation, reason, or warning because as you might have seen, it concerned some people in general chat.
My final suggestions are similar to the above, simply adding more detail to ban reasons. A more clarified ruleset although it's pretty good as is, mainly pushes towards updating them when newer more specific actions are deemed punishable. There's one main difference however, (sorry Isla) the bot, please have it send you an iso and ban notification, reason included, or have them available as a tab on bans.wonderland.tf, just please let us have a way to find out ourselves why. (iso not as much as a concern if it's in public logs) and I'd like to ask the warns system to be used more, I've had 5 total iso's and only 3 warns (one was removed)
To conclude this post I'd like to start with my reasoning behind making this, I touched upon this topic lightly in the ticket I was banned for and wanted to elaborate more at a later time, well it's been nearly a month and I've had time to sit down and write this and think about it, I don't want to seem like I'm trying to trash on Wonderland I've been around here for closer to 6 years, and through my own experiences bad or good this place has been a space to grow as a person. I don't want to see people discontent or hysterical just simply having to speak here because they're afraid to get banned for asking about something, I want it to be as open and accessible to everyone as it was to me. I know I'm brash about my opinions but that's simply because I truly care and have the best intentions that I'm passionate about. It's not the strict punishment I have a problem with I do that myself and have for years, it's when no explanation is provided to avoid further rule-breaking and the whole chat starts talking about it causing more punishments to be dealt with. People don't break rules because they know they are there, they break them because they had the intent to cause trouble in the first place. When you go to appeal you should be able to easily know why or what you've been punished for and know you've fucked up, or be able to prove you did nothing wrong. Obviously, not NSFW punishments as those would need to be handled differently. In short, I made this post because I see it as a fundamental flaw in the way punishments, information, and appeals are dealt with currently and it disturbs me something this simple can turn people down and away.
Thanks for reading, I know it was long but I felt it needed to be said, definitely let me know your thoughts,
Riley
References:
Forum Pages Mentioned:
-Current General rules
-Current Jb rules
-Majora's helpdesk question about iso reasoning
-Sinpers_'s helpdesk question about iso reasoning
-My own helpdesk question about iso reasoning
-My appeal for an answer
-Phoenix's discord ban appeal
Bans Examples Mentioned:
(All steam profiles and bans listed were triple checked using rep.tf (for consistent Steam Ids and Username matching), bans.wonderland.tf (for punishment reason listed, if listed), and Steam (duh) to ensure accuracy, but please let me know if I've made a mistake.)
-A Banned user whose ban reason isn't listed on bans.wonderland.tf (only one of the listed alt accounts is listed as banned for avoiding punishment, again with no original ban listed)
-Banned user whose ban reason was unknown to staff and themselves
-Only notable because 3 of their 6 bans have 3 or more words in the reason listed (Ban list)
-Discord ban, user didn't know why
-Rare instance of someone getting IP banned for actually no reason
-The second instance of a user whose ban reason isn't listed except for one of the 3 accounts (VPN ban) still, no original ban listed (I'd assume the same reason though)
-Guard ban, Reason: freepb and j, not listed on bans
Before I start, No this is not specifically about me nor is meant to be an attack on any one person I understand a bar was set, and people followed it for years I'd like to raise that bar so to speak. We can only work towards the future, not the past.
Over the past several years I have noticed a problem that's popped up more and more, and in my personal opinion is a fundamental issue. People aren't understanding what or why bans, mutes, gags, team bans, VIP stripped, and of course, isos are being applied. While I have personally have been affected by this in the past I know a lot of other people have and are too, just look here on forums take a random appeal, accepted, declined, still pending even, and about half of the time I can bet you there's a line somewhere that goes like "I don't know what I did to get banned but it says _______". (A few examples are below)
Now I am specifically going to be talking about TF2 punishments here, but some points will still apply later. I think the current system for looking up bans is great. However that's not the issue, the issue is that I've yet to see it fully utilized, on the website right now I've gone back 30 pages which is 900 punishments for various reasons looked at them, and found no demos, nor any other punishment I've ever looked at. While looking at those 900 punishments, I noticed some of them have very great and detailed reasons as to why they were applied, most of them are from the anti-cheat other than that it's umbrella terms, like Racism, Toxicity, Hate speech, trolling. Now at the same time, I also noticed these used but with added context like "Racism (slur usage)", "extreme toxicity, accusing people of being pedophiles, and community disrespect", and "Hate speech (homophobic and racial slurs)". These are in my opinion good, especially the toxicity one (obvious example used), which tells exactly what they were doing and others what not to do, it sets a clear precedent that can be pointed back to and used as an example. Now I'm sure many of you reading this are just saying "Read the rules" which many people and staff point to, but that's mainly only going to be useful for the Jb rules because they're actually detailed and played out throughout the years. But the general rules here on the forums, discord, and all other Wonderland places are, generalized and unspecified and sometimes left up to interpretation, and this alone is the reason I'm convinced rule #1 under other rulings "Staff reserve the right to add or amend rules at any time to close loopholes or to keep the server a friendly and fair place." is a patch job made to make sure no one could say "But it's not in the rules". The main problem with this is, that it's entirely dependent on which staff you're talking to and sometimes even their opinion of you, your tone, and their mood even (I've seen and had this happen). These rulings are never consistent across all staff until one common agreed upon one is made official, either by vote for the rules or out of the need for consistency. Jb is a good example of this, the rules have to constantly be edited, changed, and at points, even conflict based on interpretation, or "it's this way because staff told me". It's a mess but I'm glad it's being worked on, but Jb is a small part of the whole and I believe that a well-written detailed base ruleset is needed just as a baseline to set a precedent because as it stands not even I know all the rules after 6 years there are still new things people are being punished for I thought was totally fine or were before and as a new member, being told you can't do this, this, and this despite reading the rules and thinking otherwise has to be a bit off-putting at the least this is what I'd like to suggest alleviating.
My suggestions to these issues I've pointed to are to have the future ban reasons across all of Wonderland to be semi-detailed (adding like 5-6 words to point out what exactly or near what was under the punishment category) to avoid it being left up to assumptions. For example, using hate speech as a reason is a very generalizing term, as hate speech's establish dictionary definition (Link) is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation" which is a generalization of different offensive language under one term, but like Hate speech (homophobia and racial slurs) would provide more context and set precedence. As for the rules, they need to be clarified maybe even expanded upon now, or especially if major things come up later, such as changing definitions of words, or finding out something people used to do was, or is now offensive. For example, I am on places that have temporarily banned talking about the current war in Ukraine because it's deemed too political and potentially offensive, but it's announced and understood.
This third part is gonna be more specific toward the discord punishments but as stated earlier some points still apply. Now I can't actively look at the discord logs, or even my own ban reason currently, that's an issue plain and simple. If you don't have friends on the server tell you why, or you ask staff to tell you which might not be possible because you are now banned from what might be the only server you share, so you'd have to track down their Id's and friend them. Or you could come here to the forums and open a helpdesk page mind you this is to ask why you've been punished and the last person to do that was Majora for an iso, then Sinpers_ for a ban reason, then myself (had to appeal to get an answer) that's it for all of 2021. Now I already know the wln.tf discord bot tells you that you've been warned and I appreciate that however, it does not tell you that you've been banned or iso'd and for what reasons. In light of a recent appeal by Phoenix, I am scared by the precedent it sets, not only for my own potential appeal, but Cheems's, and Hoshi's if they choose to do so as well. And where it scares me is when Phoenix says "I shouldnt have asked or talked about it in the first place" despite also saying "I Only know a little on what happened but ill try to explain it as best as I can" when my or neither of the other two's ban reason wasn't even posted so I don't understand how he was supposed to "not talk about" when 3 people were banned without an explanation, reason, or warning because as you might have seen, it concerned some people in general chat.
My final suggestions are similar to the above, simply adding more detail to ban reasons. A more clarified ruleset although it's pretty good as is, mainly pushes towards updating them when newer more specific actions are deemed punishable. There's one main difference however, (sorry Isla) the bot, please have it send you an iso and ban notification, reason included, or have them available as a tab on bans.wonderland.tf, just please let us have a way to find out ourselves why. (iso not as much as a concern if it's in public logs) and I'd like to ask the warns system to be used more, I've had 5 total iso's and only 3 warns (one was removed)
To conclude this post I'd like to start with my reasoning behind making this, I touched upon this topic lightly in the ticket I was banned for and wanted to elaborate more at a later time, well it's been nearly a month and I've had time to sit down and write this and think about it, I don't want to seem like I'm trying to trash on Wonderland I've been around here for closer to 6 years, and through my own experiences bad or good this place has been a space to grow as a person. I don't want to see people discontent or hysterical just simply having to speak here because they're afraid to get banned for asking about something, I want it to be as open and accessible to everyone as it was to me. I know I'm brash about my opinions but that's simply because I truly care and have the best intentions that I'm passionate about. It's not the strict punishment I have a problem with I do that myself and have for years, it's when no explanation is provided to avoid further rule-breaking and the whole chat starts talking about it causing more punishments to be dealt with. People don't break rules because they know they are there, they break them because they had the intent to cause trouble in the first place. When you go to appeal you should be able to easily know why or what you've been punished for and know you've fucked up, or be able to prove you did nothing wrong. Obviously, not NSFW punishments as those would need to be handled differently. In short, I made this post because I see it as a fundamental flaw in the way punishments, information, and appeals are dealt with currently and it disturbs me something this simple can turn people down and away.
Thanks for reading, I know it was long but I felt it needed to be said, definitely let me know your thoughts,
Riley
References:
Forum Pages Mentioned:
-Current General rules
-Current Jb rules
-Majora's helpdesk question about iso reasoning
-Sinpers_'s helpdesk question about iso reasoning
-My own helpdesk question about iso reasoning
-My appeal for an answer
-Phoenix's discord ban appeal
Bans Examples Mentioned:
(All steam profiles and bans listed were triple checked using rep.tf (for consistent Steam Ids and Username matching), bans.wonderland.tf (for punishment reason listed, if listed), and Steam (duh) to ensure accuracy, but please let me know if I've made a mistake.)
-A Banned user whose ban reason isn't listed on bans.wonderland.tf (only one of the listed alt accounts is listed as banned for avoiding punishment, again with no original ban listed)
-Banned user whose ban reason was unknown to staff and themselves
-Only notable because 3 of their 6 bans have 3 or more words in the reason listed (Ban list)
-Discord ban, user didn't know why
-Rare instance of someone getting IP banned for actually no reason
-The second instance of a user whose ban reason isn't listed except for one of the 3 accounts (VPN ban) still, no original ban listed (I'd assume the same reason though)
-Guard ban, Reason: freepb and j, not listed on bans
