Clearing out the Ban Archives

Krysyy, Alex, and others have done excellent jobs of already addressing the majority of your points, but you seem to be stuck on one particular thing that I'd like to address.

Throughout your entire argument, you are essentially saying that the griefing, though deliberate, is mostly due to a lack of understanding on the child's part, and that by banning them, we are not providing any opportunity to correct that lack of understanding and allow them to continue on as potentially valuable members of our community. I understand your reasoning and hear what you are saying; however, please take the time to read my response carefully and genuinely think it over, as I think our process does a pretty good job of that and I want you to understand exactly how it works.

In psychology, there are three general modes of parenting: permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative. Think of the EMC Staff Team as a parent. If we were permissive, that would mean letting the kids get away with what they wanted, likely without even talking to them. If we were authoritarian, as you seem to think that we are, we would be banning left and right for the smallest levels of griefing with no ability for explanation on the part of the player. Authoritative parenting is a bit of a medium between the two other options; with authoritative parenting, the parent strictly enforces the rules, but recognizes the child as another party in the situation and gives them some part in the rule-making, explaining the reasons behind rules and letting them have some say.

We are not secretive about our rules; we make it clear through the Tutorial, ingame, through the website, through notes at outposts, time after time that griefing is not and will not be allowed for any reason. Kids DO read those; some just choose to ignore it or, as you think, don't "internalize" it. They may break the rules, and are punished as such; for very minor offenses, they may be tempbanned, and for major ones, permanently banned.

This is where the authoritative parenting comes in.

We as a staff team are not able to reach out and explain to every single player why the rules are wrong, what they should do next time, etc., etc. We provide plenty of information on that on our website and ingame as general notices, first of all, and second of all because again, these are kids, a number of them may see that as getting off scot–free and choose to push the limits further. And, of course, as you noted, that's simply not practical because we have so many players and not every player who griefs comes back the next day or even the next month, or will be willing to talk on the forums or even have a forums account.

You acknowledge that this is not practical and yet seem to think we still are not putting in the effort in. This is where you are mistaken. We hit as close to that ideal situation of talking the player through it as possible: rather than us approaching them (impractical as you said), we allow them to approach us.

Welcome to the (very authoritative in style) appeal process.

Whether you realize it or not, we are EXTREMELY forgiving the first time around in the appeal process. The entire point of that process is to foster the understanding that you so desire in these children; we encourage them to be honest (a poor initial message in an appeal does not cause us to just sweep them off the table) and try to foster that understanding, and far more times than not, the appeal is granted and they are allowed back ingame. Furthermore, if the player truly feels the ban is undeserved, we allow them to try a dispute, and, if that feels, still gives them a chance to appeal. The appeal is an opportunity for conversation with the player that at the end of the day makes sure that those we let back on EMC (a majority of them) have the understanding we're looking for and aren't going to commit the same crimes.

But what about the purge? Isn't that more authoritarian than authoritative? There are two kinds of players who have been banned. There are the players who come on and within two weeks have been permabanned for griefing or the like–a vast majority of the time the kids you are speaking of fall into this category due to one of the reasons you've described. The second type are players who, months into the game, suddenly decide to try their hand at griefing. For the first kind, the purge does not mean much since they do not have that much to begin with; many of these players have empty or mostly empty residences and very little rupees. The purge is not the horrible, monstrous punishment you make it out to be–just a fresh start to remind the player that what they did really was wrong. For the second type of player, yes, the purge carries more weight because they may have acquired more physical items, but these players also have been around long enough that they can no longer attribute their crimes to simple ignorance or lack of understanding. At this point, the player knew what they were doing was wrong, and yet did it anyway (and no, "boredom" or "revenge" are not acceptable reasons as you listed–these are very deliberate and as wrong as griefing maliciously/randomly for the sake of causing pain). For these players, again the purge acts as a reminder, and its greater magnitude is proportional to and matches the greater crime which, due to its origins in the mind of the player, may indeed require that greater reminder.

So yes. We do try to foster understanding. We do listen to our players, and we do provide punishments that work for the better of the community. The ban creates opportunity for the conversation, the appeal serves as the conversation, and the purge locks the conversation in. Highlighting that point because it's so important to understanding the general concept of how our process works and WHY we have it that way. I'm not sure what more you want than that; you say "I'm positive that it would be possible to achieve significant results with acceptable effort," but I'm not sure what more effort we could make without doing exactly what you just agreed it was impractical (if not impossible) to do.

Lastly, and on a slightly separate note:

"It has been taken care of" does not mean we permabanned a player for taking a single ender chest. We do not share the details of griefings, so for all you know depending on the situation they may have been given a minor tempban.

What it sounds like here is you're more bitter about the lack of return of the ender chest and feel that we are not solving the actual issue of the griefing. I'm sorry, but this simply is not possible to do in an official staff capacity. We cannot be certain every single time of the exact blocks taken and we cannot prevent the many opportunities for scams that would come out of a change to this rule. We created the Anti-Grief system in large part to prevent you from losing those blocks; not replacing them isn't for lack of effort, it's for not wanting one crime (the grief) to allow for a subsequent crime (a scamming).

So yes. We took care of it to the best of our abilities and as we saw fit given the situation. If that's not enough for you, well, I'm sorry, but if making sure the offending player isn't going to do it again and giving our time and energy to you to try to make that happen isn't enough for you, I'm not sure what will be.

Our staff team puts in an incredible amount of effort and I for one am proud of each and every one of them for the VOLUNTEER JOB they do improving this server each and every day. We could be doing a lot less: you're an old member–look at our past policies and how they've evolved over the years for the sake of our players and giving more chances as you've wanted. We've become MUCH more authoritative over time and have involved the players more and more–just look at what this thread is trying to do, the opportunity it's providing!

So you might think we don't work hard enough, but while you are welcome to have your own thoughts, I think we've done a pretty darn good job.

Thanks for reading. I hope you legitimately think about what I've said.

~6200 were auto-unbanned. The other metrics it might take a little longer to get numbers on.

Welcome back capostolico! =D So glad you've come home. =]