Creation and appliance of rules

[steady ridge]

I'd like to make a formal complaint about the way rules are being written and enforced.
Firstly, the rules seem to be written in terms that are often up to interpretation by the reader.
Secondly, I find the enforcement of said rules to be rather selective.

For instance, my first warn, though justified, was prompted in response to someone doing the same offense and nothing happened about that. Furthermore as of a couple minutes ago, there were a number of s on a lot of chatters in #al-general for the subject of NNN. However, Koikatsu was brought up as subject within seconds and this seemed to be a non-issue.

Please understand that the way the rules are created and handled makes it extremely uncomfortable to chat, especially when enforcement happens on a perceived irregular basis (both topical and timely).

Whilst on topic, would it not be possible to be more conspicuous about the placement of the rules? In sometimes cases "for more info see the said channel" and then there either is an empty statement or nothing buried in a list of pings, which can be changed at any time without warning.

[tough night]

If you believe your warning wasn't fair - you're free to request an appeal.
If you believe someone who should be warned wasn't - feel free to report them to a moderator.
I understand why it might feel this way, but the way rules are written is deliberate since it's impossible to clearly define things that are often very context dependent. Our system has a very wide allowance for mistakes for users so it's not really an issue for most people who aren't trying to intentionally skirt the rules.
I'm not sure what you mean by placement of rules. If you give specific examples - I'll look into it.

[steady ridge]

Unfortunately, I'm unable to request an appeal as they have been denied before without much elaboration. Furthermore, I'm not willing to pursue the given examples of double standards in verbose detail as I do not feel comfortable incriminating someone for my own benefit, especially in a public space. I feel I have given enough context to serve as example, though moderators could pursue as they seem to like doing.

As to the the latter part, I have been told in varying degrees the opposite by multiple moderators (though unable to bring forward examples due to the closed curtain nature of this discord); that the intent did not matter but the method brought forward or the interpretation of the moderator. Nor am I willing to believe 4 strikes is a very wide allowance. This feels like a weak excuse for the perceived inconsistency.

As towards the placement and the updating of the rules (the latter I drop due to the second thread that was posted a minute before mine). The former, a clear example would be #al-lore that had been a club in the past, where the rules redirect you towards a buried pin, which simply repeats a very generic statement said in rules without much elaboration, which is in stark contrast to something like #al-art. Another example I would give is #history, however I am unable to view said examples and to my knowledge those have been updated after the enforcements of said rules. And if pedantic, one could take the #avrora-general club which even insinuates that the rules there are to bully lil mods, though I pray it was in jest it's not a very congruent ruling.

That said, these were simply to server as examples of a what is a wider perceived pattern.

The rhyme or reason between:

• what necessitates moderative action (especially rules 1, 5 and 10 are up to interpretation of the user and moderator which can cause conflict. Another case was that in the past 5 emotes was an unofficial denominator of emote spam)
• when it's going to strike (moderative action can be taken 15 minutes after the message, a day or austensibly months)
• and the severity of the punishment. (I've heard about people with 16, 35 and 100 strikes, yet 4 was enough to evict in some cases)

Even after asking elaboration on the rules before with assurances of moderators that it would be looked into, that the soft system was fine, reversal to harsh methods of ambiguous were immediate.
Then there is the appeal system of which its mechanics are inadequately elaborated.

The nature of a social platform and human tendency to be unsystematic can result in a myriad of infractions to what is good behaviour. And moderation understandable leaves itself with much agency on how to act, but it seems to fail being in concord about itself or how to act on matters of degree.
The result is a moderating team which appears in discord and to inexplicably overreact on various matters. And when it does, it does not ensure adequate comprehension of methodology.

I do not wish to appeal or incriminate anything as of now, I simply wish communicate to the moderation team to be more emphatic and verbose about their approach. Because to me this deficiency seems to be the core reason I see many people migrate to private servers.

[tough night]

1. I'm still not quite sure what you mean by placement of rules part, sorry. Some channels have channel specific rules that are clearly marked as rules in pins, for example #trophy-room and #gameplay-help (tho gph rules are buried quite deep in pins, we're already working on some ideas to fix this). Not every pin is "a channel specific rule", the #avrora-general example is simply a joking pin, nothing more.

• what necessitates moderative action
  it would always depend on context. Same thing said in 2 different situations might be judged and punished differently. I understand that it might seem arbitrary and inconsistent, but it allows us to be fair more than technically correct.
• when it's going to strike
  Not every infraction gets noticed immediately. Not every infraction is cut and clear and can be acted on immediately. Sometimes we need it pointed out to us. Sometimes we need to discuss it before taking action. But we rarely punish something that's older than couple of days old, and we have internal guidelines that prohibit warning for anything overly old, so no, no months.
• and the severity of the punishment.
  If you're talking about general server rules, then we operate on point thresholds, not on strikes. These points decay with time so it's quite possible for someone to have a lot of warnings, (but no, I'm very confident there's noone on the server with 100, or even 40 warnings) as long as it's spread over a very long time. If you're talking about club evictions, then there's a slightly different system that tracks warnings specifically in that club. If you've been evicted, it means you reached enough warnings in that specific club. The punishment system is very consistent as it doesn't rely on mods' interpretation, purely on numbers.

3. We're currently looking into appeal system revamp. It might end up not being the most popular change, but it will be much clearer and straightforward, which hopefully should make up for it.

[steady ridge]

It's too late and I'm too deep into an autistic burnout to hold a proper dialogue but here goes.
This is not only about consistency but also the perception thereof.
The 1st point pertains the rules that were in #history, at least back when I was still allowed there. I recall the rules being extremely inverbose and they never properly explained, despite requests, and the distinction in the 2nd 3rd and 4th warning I received to this day it is still not explained to me. It eludes me how 1) an image regarding the proliferation of a fictional ship, which is a topic dear to me and any historian-afficianodos, 2) the discussion of listing a catalogue of bluewater ships or how to anthropomorphise the aspects of a ships history and 3) calling the Mk XXIII quad turret French, do not pertain to history in the rules that were described as they were back then.
And since you've elaborated that older posts don't get warned, I can elaborate further without regret, that I find it artificial that on the 22nd of may for posting art from the metalwaltz game in history how Kremlin_lover did not receive a warning but I did. I'm sure there's more to point out, but I do not even have access to my own posts (of which to this day I hope my Intellectual Property is removed after I requested it). Then there's the various off-topic in #al-lore which I won't delve into despite the examples I can give because there is a situation about there. Furthermore there's the usage of slurs that does seem to be considered okay, as appended.
Then there's also Shyny threatening to ban people for 8 hours, both in the past in a maintenance chat and today, for context that eludes me.
... it's getting late, I can't type on like this.

What I wanted to get across is that at least you seem to understand: I understand that it might seem arbitrary and inconsistent, but it allows us to be fair more than technically correct.
being seemingly arbitrary and inconsistent makes it extremely hard to know what's against the rules and what isn't. This means that a lot of people will feel uncomfortable just chatting, because they never know when or why they crossed a threshold for punishment. And neither the rules give any solace nor are the staff communicating what's right or wrong without throwing a fraction of a banhammer (or whatever punishment it is, it is not documented) first.