Results Time!!! First off, thank you to everyone who completed our Staff Action Survey recently. These surveys are crucial in helping us to understand the thought process behind our community and help us to work to make changes and policies that reflect the best decision for our diverse community. This doesn't mean that the majority answer always win, but that we use survey results in conjunction with Staff input to create our policies. After roughly a month of receiving responses to our Staff Action Survey 2019, we have finalized the results and discussed how best to use these results and modify our current procedures with player punishments. The following are the summarized report graphs for the topics of interest, along with explanations of how EMC Staff is going to adjust current procedures as a result.
Chat Spam Offenses Previous base punishment: 10 minutes starting mute, with variance for repeat issues. New base punishment: Look in chat logs to determine if player has been warned already. If continued spamming after a warning, issue 5 minute mute. If no warning given, in-game warning provided (if staff available in-game). All spam punishment subject to escalation determined on a case-by-case basis and repeat offenses. Reasoning: Player vote majority indicate warning. However, a good portion of players have already been warned by other players by the time a report is issued. A warning should not need to come from a staff member for it to be heeded. Therefore, if player warning issued, and the offender ignores it, they should escalate to a muting.
Griefing Offenses Previous base punishment: Mostly permanent bans, with 10 day temporary ban variance for small grief incidents that had no true negative effect on another player. New base punishment: Same as previous, with increased lenience for small grief scenarios that involve minimal impact to other players, subject to 1-3 day temporary bans instead of 10 day. Intention with grief reviewed on a case-by-case basis and may result in escalation of punishment, as determined by Staff. Reasoning: Player votes for minor griefings show indication for warnings or 1-3 day temporary bans. Staff agrees that sometimes mistakes are made. However, even with small amounts of blocks broken, if the intention to grief to cause harm is evident, the offending player will be punished more severely. With anti-grief protection in place, it is increasingly more difficult to accidentally break something crucial in a build or grief large areas without ill intentions.
Movement Hacking Offenses (Fly/Speed) Previous base punishment: Mostly permanent bans, with required appeal to return to EMC. Successful appeals subject to 10 day temporary minimum, after/with a purge of account (deletion of items/residences). Review of each case individually and possible lenience in extreme scenarios with new players. New base punishment: If a player is obviously new, defined as <10 days and/or evident lack of sufficient in-game time (staff's discretion), player should be warned in-game following a fly/speed hack witnessing and informed to read over the rules, if they haven't already. If player ignores staff and goes back to using hacks immediately, a permanent ban is issued. Older players subject to permanent ban default, with purge. Punishments modified at staff's discretion on case-by-case basis with games/events. Reasoning: Player votes with hacking scenarios show a definite lenience for newer players, but a divide on proper procedure to handle them remains. Some want the same harsh ban in place, and others are more inclined to believe the player may need a simple warning or a slap on the wrist. Players who join the server and do not immediately understand the rules will be given lenience. After ignorance is removed, either via direct staff communication or time spent on the server, player is subject to harsher punishment because they are aware of the rules and are blatantly disregarding them. 1-3 day and 1-2 week bans not used due to discussion of player return rates. Direct correction of problem with communication is more prevalent in correcting the use of illegal mod use than passive timeouts.
Mining Related Hacking Offenses (Xray/CaveFinder) Previous base punishment: Mostly permanent bans, with required appeal to return to EMC. Successful appeals subject to 10 day temporary minimum, after/with a purge of account (deletion of items/residences). Review of each case individually. New base punishment: No change. Mining offenses remain permanent bans, with purges except in VERY rare instances. Reasoning: Player votes with hacking scenarios show a definite lenience for newer players, but a divide on proper procedure to handle them remains. While some scenarios involve a certain understanding that a new player may be just ignorant, the use of xray/cavefinder, as well as other mining hacks, indicates a specific desire to cheat in obtaining items for economic gain. Therefore, Staff does not feel comfortable allowing a player to retain their items after being caught using one of these illegal mods, and continue to require a purge of the account, for the fairness of the players who obtain their items legit.
Overall Staff Performance Out of a 7 point scale, we are operating at a solid 5.1-5.4 on all accounts. To increase this, we are already looking into bringing more staff onto the team, and will be training and re-training all staff to the new procedures as outlined above that we believe will help with some item grades. Note that all punishments on EMC are always subject to variance based on numerous factors, including repeat offenses, severity of actions, intention, etc. Every situation on EMC is a case-by-case basis, but we do our best to ensure a general evenness in application of punishment. Once again, thank you to all who gave their input. We look forward to working to improve our scores, as well as our policies going forward. If anyone has any questions regarding the reasons given and do not feel comfortable speaking in this thread, please reach out to me in a private message at pmcm.emc.gs and I will be more than happy to assist you with understanding.
Interesting It would be cool to see the percent of people banned for griefing compared to the percent that are repeat offenders... then again that might be hard to calculate Glad to see the results, thank you Krysyy!
Yes, it was reviewed and some comments followed up on in a pm. However, the majority of the comments made are not ones that contribute in any specific regard to manageable results, and are best left as commentary staff-side only.
