What's up nerds, it's the greatest one himself, Hingle. I'm here to talk briefly about hacking ban / appeals, and the SGM staff team's decision making in them. https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/eggnogs-appeal.46366/#post-469260 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/phoonthecookies-appeal.46916/#post-479235 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/f-e-e-l-i-n-g-ss-appeal.47059/#post-481916 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/stanley-andrewss-appeal.47229/#post-485649 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/moonmoons-appeal.47510/#post-490250 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/dance-dance-revolutions-appeal.47429/#post-488910 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/mxoscars-appeal.47270/#post-486229 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/cmdpunkers-appeal.47856/#post-496866 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/floyd2s-appeal.47844/#post-496645 https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/miggos-appeal.48134/#post-502637 ( Pending, but I'm confident that my client will receive a full pardon. ) So let's start with some statistics. Starting at the beginning of the year, there have been 30 appealed hacking bans on SGM. Ten have been approved, twenty have been denied. That rounds to 33.33% of hacking bans being false. Now, those statistics do require a caveat: it's silly to say that only thirty people have been banned for hacking since the start of the year. Unfortunately, since they didn't appeal, I have no way of getting any other stats. There could be 200 more hacking bans that would have been denied due to foolproof evidence, but since they weren't appealed, they never received attention. There could also be many more players who were falsely banned and just gave up playing on SGM instead of appealing. It can go either ways - realistically, there probably are far more valid bans than not - but that is just speculation. 33.33% is the percentage that I have to work with. Next point: Why am I bringing this up now? I bring this up because of the community and staff response to this report, and the actions that led up to it. You should just read the report anyway because it's one minute long, but it's about two moderators who placed a ridiculous amount of slays on each other. That's it. Does it break the staff guidelines? Yes. Is it abuse? I guess. Is it an actual issue? Not really, no. This type of thing - staff misusing some powers - happens once a year. It's so insignificant. It doesn't affect the rounds or the normal gameplay in any way. Yet the reactions from people who saw what happened appear shocked and horrified. The moderators were "heavily warned". Some people expressed that they should be demoted. Bottom line, community and staff were incensed at this horrible, abusive conduct. ( I was actually one of the people who spoke out against the actions of the moderators, but I'd just like to add that I was more concerned with the fact that two admins were reportedly on the server when the mods were messing around. Mods expected to be dumb sometimes, but it's the admins duty to put them in line. Instead, what happened in this scenario was the two admins did not do their jobs and two newer mods were community scapegoats. You two know who you are. ) Got a little tangential there. The main reason I created this thread was because I feel like there is some weird standard in hacking bans and in what went down yesterday. Let's compare two scenarios. Moderators Joe and Bob are briefly immature and place silly amounts of slays on each other. No one else is affected. No reports are needing to be completed. After a minute, they remove the slays and get back to being serious moderators. Moderator Jim bans Mike for what he suspects is hacking. It takes him twelve hours to upload his one minute video evidence. He then consults with the rest of the staff team, which takes another twelve hours. He concludes that his evidence is not enough and lifts the ban on Mike. At this point, Mike has had to wait an entire day. Hacking bans aren't global, but seeing how some servers ( East ) are entirely inactive, it's very possible he won't be able to play on a populated SGM server. He's endured a day of not playing on his server, all because of a rushed decision by a moderator. Anyone else see the problem here? The difference is moderators in situation #1 will be heavily warned, because after all, it is abuse. The staff in situation #2, however, are very rarely appear to be warned. Worse, the situation in the latter is a consistent, monthly occasion. There are no admins in shout box saying "What the hell" when they hear about an accepted appeal, nor are there admins who say "This is unacceptable" when a mod accepts that they banned someone without solid evidence. You guys will so easily condemn the actions of a couple moderators who place slays on each other, but when it comes to a commonplace occurrence like bad hacking bans that can actually have serious effects on players, your righteous indignation is nonexistent. The staff need to get their shit together when it comes to hacking. You guys need to accept that a lot of you are straight garbage at this thing, although you may excel at other parts of moderating. Before you ban someone, get a second opinion with evidence. Talk to the rest of the staff team. Figure out who actually knows their shit on this subject and come to them with evidence. It doesn't even have to be staff. Let me tell you guys, I'm not one of those people. My first hacking ban was invalid, and from then on I always checked with people I knew had an iq over 200 on whether or not something was hacking, save the extremely blatant cases. Did this method result in slower bans? Absolutely. But at least I can say I never made the mistake of another wrong hacking ban after that. Quit being cocky and do your jobs right.
Hingle > Han Solo But yea I agree that there are some rather apparent hypocrisy amongst how different punishments are treated. Maybe having a range rule of thumb would help this out like imo the slays thing didn’t really need punishment since the admins online didn’t give a shit. As for the hacking bans I feel as though since we don’t have anticheat the staff have to eye it and that becomes difficult as new hacks are made.
The fact that two admins were online is probably the most retarded thing about that whole situation. It should have been taken handled on the server, but instead it had to be escalated to an unofficial, then official, report. It's not the admins fault that two mods used their powers in that way, but when they do nothing about it, they're only encouraging behavior like that.
see the thing is when i banned collin everyone was like oh no hes not hacking BUT GUESS WHAT HE WAS HACKING HA SO I WAS RIGHT
Solution - have staff serve bans based on the length of time falsely banned players had to serve for just like slays
Just FYI on this- I have already handled that portion myself. It was part of a misunderstanding, but negligence in itself. ( @andrewca79 was supposed to mention this in his reply ) But mods/admins- these words arn’t wrong. I rarely EVER ban on norecoil bans because quite honestly, I’m total shit at judging it, and you have to realize the limitations of Garry’s Mod spectator mode. You shouldn’t be issuing punishments on stuff you’re not 100% sure about.
lol @ those mods abusing, I was always told that'd be an instant demote. I feel like the tl;dr here is simply for hacking bans on regulars that many people are to be consulted, not just a mod or two. Get a fucking consulting service with people like miggo, mae, nexxus, cherious, angelx, etc to consult on hacking bans / accusations
This. No offense to the mods but some of them just haven't seen enough to know what is hacking. People who have been along long enough can just tell sometimes.
Also please for the love of god never write anything along the lines of this in a ban appeal I've seen this so many times and everytime it makes me upset. It's not the accused persons job to prove their innocence, it's your job to prove they're guilty. It shouldn't matter what they bring to the table because YOUR evidence should be sufficient enough to begin with. If you need to type that in an appeal then realize that your evidence fucking sucks.
You don't need to consult with everyone on the damn earth, you need to get consistent footage of someone snapping onto targets. That means more than 20 seconds of evidence. In fact I usually dont do anything unless I see several instances of hacking across several situations involving different guns and scenarios. I usually go super hardcore with my evidence collection. It's like the supreme court, you want to be as careful as possible to destroy any possible chance for someone to get their appeal through. I would be the one who could witness 50 snaps in one second and still want to see a little bit more. Consulting with people is good, but you may not get a concrete answer. Then there can be problem if the people you consult are pre-disposed to think someone is a hacker. As a staff member you should have the ability to make valid judgement on hacking, so simply giving up and saying you aren't good at finding hackers will lead you into a position where you never look. The opposite is true, going out of your way to be convinced that every regular is hacking is bullshit and will get you in a heap of trouble. Bottom line is that I agree that false banning is much more serious than two mods being idiots, and if I noticed any of my mods banning falsely I know I would be pretty upset. Ps, this one is just unfair: https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/floyd2s-appeal.47844/ dex's video was corrupted, what was he suppose to do? Un-corrupt his stuff?
Abuse of powers? I mean, It was a joke imo. They removed the slays, literally did nothing bar give everyone a little laugh. I mean I was online at the time and found it hysterical, Mainly because of the use of constants (e) in the slay numbers, legit so funny. Ofc they are using the commands to do shit that isnt right, but is this really worthy of a "heavy warning"? Its unprofessional sure, But staff running rounds saying "nigga" is a bit more unprofessional imo. No hard r? I guess its ok. Thats just my opinion anyway. EDIT: This is dumb? I mean, I always thought abuse of powers was just mods running around teleporting players everywhere and slaying them mid round, doing things actually destructive to the round.
Sorry being informed late on this, but it's about fuckin' time that guy got banned. I constantly would inform staff that was on at the time he was hacking, but I would just get shut up'd about it cause of his past and how close he was with certain staff members around that time. Anyway, hacking is and should always be treated as one of the most serious offenses on the server. And if you are not fully capable of making the right decision to punish someone for such a serious offense, you are going to just make the upper staff look bad, in my opinion. Reason I feel that way is cause dealing with a player that is suspiciously hacking, should be a common enough situation to be included in Trial Mod training. And if the trial mod isn't trained properly, whose to blame? If they were trained and it was done "properly" then by all means, don't look poorly onto his/her Admin. Not trying to get too wrapped up into this by the way. It just seems to me like there are issues in training when it comes to dealing with hacking offenses. Some mods may take the initiative to question their Admin or fellow moderators for assistance to better themselves. But if that's not taking place I'd suggest the upper staff team to come up with a sort of quiz to test their entire staff team that will sure enough tell who knows and doesn't know the correct strategies for catching and dealing with such situations.
