Policy How to appeal a warning/punishment

Policy How to appeal a warning/punishment - Printable Version

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How to appeal a warning/punishment - Kyng - 09-02-2021

Recently, we have made some alterations and improvements to our moderation practices. As part of these improvements, we are introducing a formal process by which certain moderator actions can be appealed. This guide will explain what kinds of actions can be appealed - and how you would go about appealing them.

1. Which actions can be appealed?

The appeals process applies to the following moderator actions:

Warn level increases;
Revocation of privileges (e.g. losing your signature, being put on the mod queue).

At this stage, bannings cannot be appealed. This is because we view banning as a last resort, which we use only if we feel that we have no other reasonable options. (If you get banned from TCH as a punishment, either permanently or temporarily, then you've done something seriously wrong - and there's really not a lot of point in debating exactly how seriously wrong

).

2. How do I appeal a punishment?

If you feel that you did nothing wrong (or that you are guilty only of a lesser offence than the one for which you were punished), then you must PM an admin (either myself or Nilla) with a request to appeal your punishment. Your request must be civil in tone (attacking the staff will get you nowhere), and must contain both of the following:

Demonstration that you can see the moderator's point of view (i.e. you understand why the moderator in question punished you, even if you don't agree with the punishment);
An explanation of why you believe your punishment was unfair (and your behaviour either didn't break the rules at all, or did but was worthy only of a lesser punishment).

Any request which does not contain both of these will be denied - and if a request is denied, then no further appeal requests for the same offence will be considered. Furthermore, the appeals process is intended for arguing that you shouldn't have been punished under the rules currently in force: it is not a place to complain that the rules themselves are unfair and should be changed. Any appeal requests that fall into the latter category (rather than the former) will be denied too.

3. What happens next?

If your request for appeal is accepted, the staff team as a whole will review the incident. This process normally takes around three days (allowing roughly two days for discussion, and one day for voting). Once the process is over, you will be informed of the result of your appeal - which will fall into one of the following three categories:

The punishment is overturned in full.
The punishment is reduced.
The punishment is upheld in full.

In rare cases, new evidence might emerge during the appeals process, which shows that the offence was worse than originally thought, and therefore additional punishment would have been warranted. In these cases, this additional punishment will not be given out immediately. Instead, it will be suspended (i.e. only applied if another offence is committed within a set period of time). For example, if the original punishment was a warn level increase, but after seeing new evidence, we conclude that it should have been worth a 1-week ban... then, the result of the appeal would be to uphold the original warn level increase, and only hand out a 1-week ban if another offence is committed within a set period of time (e.g. within the following 3 months).

Other than the above scenario of "suspended punishment for new evidence", once the result of an appeal has been decided and communicated to you, the matter will be considered closed. If the outcome of the appeal is not the one that you had hoped for, then please do not lash out: not only will this not change the result of the appeal, but it will be treated as another offence in and of itself.

Thank you for reading and understanding. We hope that you'll never have to use this (because you'll never have any punishments to appeal in the first place

) - but, if you ever do get punished when you believe you shouldn't have been, then this is the way to get that situation addressed

RE: How to appeal a warning/punishment - Bluezone777 - 09-02-2021

I personally don't believe a warn appeal should lead to more punishment or even the potential for it outside of getting an appeal blocked or the ability to appeal removed for abusive appeal requests. It is going to discourage people from ever attempting an appeal in the first place even those who might have had a genuine case to getting a punishment lowered or removed altogether but won't even attempt to appeal because of the threat of increased punishment lingering in the air. A lot of what gets someone punished and for how long is mostly subjective and varies from person to person and forum to forum so there really is no way for someone to even have the slightest chance of seeing a warn appeal leading to more punishment coming without making an attempt.

Just my thoughts on this from the perspective of having been a staff member and admin on forums in the past.

RE: How to appeal a warning/punishment - Lurkerish Allsorts - 09-02-2021

(09-02-2021, 05:15 PM)Bluezone777 Wrote: I personally don't believe a warn appeal should lead to more punishment or even the potential for it outside of getting an appeal blocked or the ability to appeal removed for abusive appeal requests. It is going to discourage people from ever attempting an appeal in the first place even those who might have had a genuine case to getting a punishment lowered or removed altogether but won't even attempt to appeal because of the threat of increased punishment lingering in the air. A lot of what gets someone punished and for how long is mostly subjective and varies from person to person and forum to forum so there really is no way for someone to even have the slightest chance of seeing a warn appeal leading to more punishment coming without making an attempt.

Just my thoughts on this from the perspective of having been a staff member and admin on forums in the past.

In principle I agree with you, but although I have never been in a position of authority here, I have been a moderator for forums for many years.
There have been times I have investigated what could be considered informal appeals in my moderation days, and there have been times in these appeals, further evidence comes out (as remember everything is getting a look over again), that got missed the first time around that shows punishment has been too light and/or the offense was greater then originally thought to such a degree further punishment is warranted.

Heck even in my real life professional life that doesn't deal out punishments, such things happen. Take for example a recent case some one comes to me saying their power cord for their laptop doesn't work any more, then "Oh my laptop doesn't turn on". I confirm this is the case after keeping on a charger for an hour just in case the laptop was fully discharged. It doesn't turn on. Me and my supervisor go to open it up, we find evidence that the laptop was tampered with and was opened up and tampered with. These laptops are new and have only been issued since my boss started working there summer of 2020. There are no records that the laptop was serviced by us. What turned in to a routine power cord swap should have (if the C level who over sees IT had any backbone) turned in to a very serious issue (given the industry I work for)

RE: How to appeal a warning/punishment - Kyng - 09-02-2021

(09-02-2021, 10:09 PM)Lurkerish Allsorts Wrote: There have been times I have investigated what could be considered informal appeals in my moderation days, and there have been times in these appeals, further evidence comes out (as remember everything is getting a look over again), that got missed the first time around that shows punishment has been too light and/or the offense was greater then originally thought to such a degree further punishment is warranted.

Indeed - I have experienced cases of this in the past, and it was one of the motivating factors behind me adding that in.

With that being said, I also acknowledge that Bluezone777 raises valid points: I certainly don't want to discourage well-founded appeal requests (though I do want to discourage frivolous ones). I'm more than happy to amend or remove that bullet point if that's what people want and their arguments are persuasive enough (and I probably will make some changes to it: I'm still undecided on whether or not to remove it altogether, but even if I don't, I'll probably at least modify the wording)

RE: How to appeal a warning/punishment - Kyng - 09-04-2021

With regards to the "What if new evidence comes up?" scenario, I did have another idea for how we might resolve that:

No threat of immediate further punishment for the same offence. This means that "The punishment is increased if the original punishment is judged insufficiently harsh" would be removed as a possible outcome. (Abuse of staff would still be punishable; however, it would be punishable as a separate offence, which could theoretically itself be appealed!)
In the rare case that new evidence comes up during the process, which shows the original punishment to have been too light, then the additional punishment is suspended. That is, it's only applied if the person commits another offence within a set period of time of the appeal. (For example: if we give someone a warning increase - but after new evidence turns up, we decide they should have received a 1-week ban... then, we'd uphold the original punishment without increasing it, and if they commit another offence within the next three months, then we'd give them a 1-week ban there and then (on top of whatever punishment they're receiving for the new offence). However, if they don't commit another offence in the next three months, then they're in the clear)

So, would this work to resolve the issues?

RE: How to appeal a warning/punishment - Kyng - 09-08-2021

Since I have received no further comments on the above proposal, I have modified the opening post to incorporate it into the official policy