Zeldo - Ban Appeal

Appeal Your Ban
101

I just had to pop in and make a quick post about this after stumbling across it.

And I notice how this isn’t happening…I thought you had to do the stuff listed in the job description as it were? Not just go “You did it” and that’s that…which is what’s going on…

For all those people saying “The mods don’t need to prove anything to you” are just being tools. Think of yourself in Zeldo’s position, if you were accused then immediately punished for doing something without proof of you doing it being shown to you…how would you feel? ESPECIALLY if you are innocent.

I don’t know if Zeldo was hacking or not…there’s no evidence of it. Also it would be a bit pointless to ban him just cus they felt like it…but then again, how do we know that this isn’t the case? There’s no proof…All we are getting is mindless squabbles because nobody can bring up solid proof of what went on.

Abusing power is abusing power…it doesn’t matter if it’s a court of law or a video game sever/forum…it’s the accusers job to show proof of their claims because then how do we all know if they are right or not? Because of their word?..anyone can make up their word and be lying through their teeth…no matter what authority position they hold

It’s only fair if they can provide evidence of Zeldo hacking, then giving Zeldo the chance to defend himself against it, maybe the video or image looks like he is hacking but he isn’t and he gets the chance to prove why, maybe he is and gets rightfully banned.

This seems to be a no fair trial area here. I know people bang on about the servers being a privilege and not a right, but still the system doesn’t properly account for if any innocent people actually do get banned by it. Especially regarding in the first page about colorpinpoint effectively saying he doesn’t gather evidence for all his bans…he might THINK somebody is hacking…but does that mean they really are? People are never right 100% of the time.

If Zeldo was hacking, then it’s great he got banned, but it’s not great that he got banned with no proof of it.

102

Yo, let’s cut the spam shit. Don’t reply unless you’re a staff member / ban-ee, or if you have evidence.

103

It’s very simple. Aloha makes the rules.

Admins are carefully selected and only those who receive total trust and have shown to possess perfect judgement skills get the job. No one is forced to back every ban up with evidence, the only reason why many admins capture cheaters on tape is to prevent threads like this from happening.

Now, colorpinpoint is one of our topadmins, and when he bans someone you can be sure that person deserved it. So, when you say it’s your word against his it becomes a matter of credibility. The word of someone who has a lot of experience in admining and recognizing cheaters against your word.

And what does your word exactly mean after you’ve made a second account on this forum just to back your first account up? I can tell you, Zeldo, or nein, if you had any credibility left it sure is gone now.

104

I would agree with you Drebbel, but we’re not the same person. And how are you going to prove it, huh? Because, “you said so”?
Well I have proof.
But guess what? I just don’t want to show it.
Again, Reki stated that an admins job is to verify hackers. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been helping the site or not. I know Colorpinpoint is a great admin because I can see how often he replies to threads and gets things sorted out. But, does it ever cross your mind that he may be wrong? Everyone makes mistakes. I’m not saying he was lying, so this isn’t a matter of credibility. It’s a matter of, okay he said he saw it, so he can ban without proof. It’s on giving reason to a ban.

105

That’s about enough of this “I have proof I just don’t want to show it” line…if you read carefully, you’d see that Color hasn’t ever claimed to have proof that he didn’t want to show.

I’m open to the idea that admins can make mistakes (well no duh, that’s why we have this forum at all), but you need to present some sort of argument. It might not seem fair that admins only need their word but you need to show proof (or at least reasonable doubt), but it’s the best system we can think of. And, considering most 0.75 players are on our servers, it’s working pretty damn well.

I don’t want to get into the topic of why we suspect you and Zeldo of being the same people, but we’ve basically traced your IPs to the same city. I’ll just assume you guys are close friends/neighbors or something.

106

We do live in the same city. And I know, but the same argument of “They’re an admin and they’re well known” is a bit overused too.

How are we supposed to show proof, then? Say an admin suspects me of using ESP overlay or something. They ban me without notice. I can’t show them my files or a video, because the file could have easily been deleted, and if I had or had not been hacking I would not have video recorded it without reason. The difference is the admins will have a reason to record someone or gather evidence. The player shouldn’t have to regularly take screenshots or videos of themselves to prove their innocence without cause.
I’m not saying that your system is terrible and you mods are terrible and blah blah, but I think that there really needs to be a better system for banning someone besides the word of someone.

107

Screenshots are very fast and easy to take. You just press a button, and some programs you just press it several times to take multiple pictures. Some video programs start just pressing a button too. Anything would work as long is provides even some footwork for the moderators, like “in this picture you can see that the killfeed is spammed with his name and his ratio is 95 kills and no deaths”.

108

To get back to Nein’s question, here’s what I would do in the case of not admitting guilt (aka maintaining innocence):

  1. Submit a sincere ban appeal. This one isn’t bad, but a tad bit accusatory, but that’s better than half the other ragey unformatted crap we get.
  2. Wait for the relevant admin who banned you to respond (or if they don’t respond in a day or two, PM me). Not just any guard/mod/forumite. Specifically the admin who banned you.
  3. Look carefully at the arguments he proposes which he uses to ban you.
    4a) If he has video evidence, you better be able to clear your name 100%.
    4b) If he’s going by his word, you need to refute each one to a point where anybody can have reasonable doubt. This isn’t very hard to accomplish: “I heard footsteps coming”, “I saw a downed teammate and realized an enemy was in the base”, “My hand jerked ad thus my screen did too, that wasn’t a snap.”
  4. However, going “I never did that” doesn’t really work since one of our admins clearly saw you doing something. Now it’s your job to show that what they saw couldn’t possibly only be hacking.

The reason why this thing became 12 pages was the original appealer decided it was a good idea to throw the board to tons of people, who started interjecting irrelevant questions which derailed the conversation to a dumb strawman argument. The fact that a bunch of other non-admins decided to jump on the bandwagon and make overzealous comments about admins while accusing the appealer wasn’t helpful either, and just fanned the crap that happened.

TL;DR don’t try to make things big, it’s just bad for everyone.

109

no one is perfect and neither admins nor players should ever claim to be.

i agree evidence is important and our policy encourages admins to gather as much of it as possible before taking action, however due to the enormous number of cheaters in this game doing so for every single case isn’t realistic because that’s a time-consuming process and we are constantly bombarded with swarms of other demanding situations. it’s a never-ending battle and we put in a ton of effort, most of which happens behind the scenes, to help legit players have a playing field that isn’t completely overrun by cheaters and griefers. our team is phenomenal and i can’t thank them enough for their willing efforts.

this appeal is ironic to say the least because we often get a lot of flak from legit players for being too slow/lax and trying too hard to do the right thing, which as an example includes gathering evidence (videos, screen shots, logs, etc.) before taking action.

our way of doing things is very involved and group-oriented, but some situations call for immediate individual judgment, especially when dealing with people who are believed to be damaging the experience for the majority. everything from policy changes, to abuse reports, to new admin recruits are privately discussed at great length between most members of the team. to give you a better idea of what i mean, anyone who’s interested in being part of the team is heavily scrutinized at any time and all position changes require a majority vote, a process most don’t pass that lasts anywhere from two weeks to four months. in fact, statistically we accept only about 15% out of the hundreds of applications we’ve already received for some kind of admin position.

with that said, this is why i as well as other members of the team stand by colorpinpoint’s word without evidence. he has been an admin for a while and enough of us have personally observed his actions in various situations to consider him as part of one of our most trusted tiers.

now, i’m not saying colorpinpoint is perfect - actually, i’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and accept this as our mistake even though i believe colorpinpoint made a judgment that was perfectly reasonable. at this point it doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong; what’s important is that you and us don’t end up in this situation again in the future.

since you’re willing, i’m willing. what i’m going to do is unban you if at least three members from our team reply to this topic with a “yay” for giving you another chance. consider this my yay, so now you only need two more.

p.s. for those wondering, i did some quick investigating… Zeldo and Nein are most likely different people who use the same ISP.

110

yey

?

111

I’ll say yay. I disagree with people saying we should record all evidence and such, that seems unnecessary and would put extra work on an already burdened team.

However, I was swayed by what (a few) people had said last night regarding this whole thing. I think it could have been handled better by both us and you.

112

I agree with Froe, the amount of time to record AND upload the video will take up the admins/mods/guard’s time when they could be catching hackers/griefers. Stop saying we need to have evidence when the evidence is obvious. Stop spamming useless things that wont help. Besides (to Taylor Swift), its already too late, they cant record the past from the present.

113

Yay. Just so everyone can shut the hell up, and we can lock this topic. If he is suspicious again, perma-ban, BUT WITH SOLID (i.e. video or screencapped) EVIDENCE!
 No arguments, and no turning back. Thanks. :slight_smile:

114

Thank you Izzy, for offering another chance. It’s very generous of you. I apologize for all the trouble, but I never asked for any of that to happen. At least it’s over now.