Mabe brawl staff is very elastic on their punishments...

Hello Brawl community.
I noticed these days the punishment records of some players that are very bright indeed.
What i realised is that punishments for certain offenses is fixed and does not change based on the severity of the incident ect. For example lets take a look at the mute history of A Player:

Lets take it from botom to top...

Diserspect -> 5 minute mute
Staff disrespect -> 5 minute mute
Racism -> 30 minute mute
Flame -> 6 minute mute
Flame -> 10 minute mute
Flame (Just a day after) -> 10 minute mute
Flame -> 10 minute mute
Bypassing filters -> 5 minute mute
Ez calling (same day as previous offense)-> 5 minute mute
Rude in chat -> 5 minute mute
Bypassing 'last warning' (keep reading) -> 10 minute mute
Flame -> 5 minute mute
Consistent filter bypass -> 5 minute mute
Calling jew -> 5 minute mute.
Name calling - > 10 minute mute
-You guessed it- Flaming ->5 minute mute
Various rules broken -> 5 minute mute
Bypassing filters -> 10 minute mute
Disrespect -> 5 minute mute.
Bypassing filters -> 10 minute mute
Player disrespect -> 0 minute mute?
Flame -> 5 minute mute
Death threats -> 1 hour mute
Death Wish (a few days later) -> 1 hour mute
Extreme harasment -> 0 minute mute?
Bypassing -> 5 minute mute
Racism -> ~7 minute mute
Racism -> 12 hour mute

I have coloured similar offenses with different colours to make them easy to distinguish, So lets see...
Almost all mute times for each offense seem to be fixed. But i think they are REALLY small and ineffective.

But lets think why punishment exists...

1. To show to someone that their actions have consequences
   
2. To protect the community from further harm.

So with very small and fixed punishments, None of the above are achieved simply because the offender becomes used to this nice `small break` that usually lasts a few minutes, and does not hesitate to continue offending afterwards because who doesnt like a 5 minute break to grad a drink?
And the community is not protected once they return and continue on their rule breaking spree.

In the pre-mentioned case, as you see from the picture, only in December 15 offenses where commited by this Player, so essentially every second day of this month they where breaking a rule and where punished.
And that teaches us that although they where punished numerous of times for similar offenses, they where not bothered at all.

Lets analyse the case a litle bit more...
Disrespect-related offenses: 7
Flaming-related offenses: 7
Racism-related offenses: 4
Bypass-related offenses: 6
Extreme offenses: 3

As i said previously, sentences are RIDICULOUSLY small. I mean, 5 minutes of mute solve the problem temproary and allow the player to chill a litle bit but does certainly not teach them a lesson. So as i just showed you, they will re-offend. Thinking from another prespective, if someone is muted for 5 minutes, because they where shouting at someone else, they will simply get off their computer, go grab a drink, come back and continue on because 5 minutes have elapsed. Also lets think about the longest mute time shown above, 12 hours. 12 hours is half a day; The average sleeping time of humans is 8 hours, so overnight 8/12 hours are gone, what is left? 4 hours. Im sure that very few are playing from the time they wake up to the time they go back in bed.

Now lets see things from another prespective. As staff has proven to us, chat filters are and will be strict sensoring even every-day words that are not classed as swear words, and the main reason is to protect the younger players of brawl which i think is very reasonable. But seriously, you care so much about saying an inapropriate word in chat, and you show such disregard for Death threats, Extreme harasment and Death wishes? Puting things into a scale, if i was a young player, i would be much more distressed by someone who threatened me with horrific stuff and harased me than someone who said "darn" in chat. Doesnt that sound reasonable?

I am sure some of you will think that the user of interest was baned a couple of times for these offenses, Indeed they where. However, the duration is tiny once more... Have a look for yourself:

Even for the ones with a promising duration, (1st row from the top), the user was unabned less than 1 hour after the ban was issued! Check the unban time!

Isn't it clear that this user will not stop offending? What else do they have to do for braw staff to realise they dont belong in the community? And also, this is not even an extreme senario. There are other users with more bans and more mutes that are still in the community, breaking rules and making other player's game miserable.

So lets recap
- I belive that brawl staff should be a litle more strict for repeated offenders, mabe follow a geometric sequence of punishment time, so the time on the next mute lets say, is double the previous time of mute for a similar offense, or at least use logic and ban the user for a longer time once they re-offend.

- Re-offending shows that the user acknowledges the rules and still violates them.

- Extremely tiny sentences are not helping at all as you just saw. They just hide the problem away.

What do you think about this?

 

That sounds like a good system but still 10 minutes of mute are nothing. (depends on the case) for instance, extensive harasment for me, should be a month ban or so. I know it sounds too much for Brawl's standards but it is more fair.

I dont think many are following the same system judgin by the consecutive punishemnts of the user shown above... they mostly punish with the fixed penalty and that is it.

Indeed, I personally belvie that for those abusing game flaws to profit, stats should also be changed. For instance, in war, i bought nades (100 credits for 1 game) and i was ready to fight agains blue (suiciding). Before i had a chance to suicide, someone drops a nade, suicides, and kills us all (the ones on the spawn point) so the vast majority becomes infected, we all get 3 deaths, and because only like 10 blues where left, i got 1 more death and no kills. So i wasted 100 credits, and got 4 nice deaths. The user was temp-baned for 1 hour. he got well over 60 kills! and was given a short break for 1 hour for that. I can do that too then, nade glich, get tons of kills and have a short break afterwards.

Yep, i remember this case -_- This is another issue, we spend so much time reporting the same people and in the mean time we loose our gameplay! I still remember you trying to report A Player in an FFA and dieing constantly...

Indeed, i belive that the 5th ban should be forever still, but that depends on the case :/ it is different to be baned for filter bypass compared to ban because of death wishes and harasment. So i think there should be some kind of seperation between the two cases. Also it would also sound like a good idea to have an automated system on the forums to create a post once someone exceeds 5 bans, and other users will vote if and how they should be punished from then on.
I understand it is not the easiest thing to implement but still its an idea.

 

Well i think we more or less sugest a change to this protocol and require critical judgment of the staff members in these cases because every case is different. Saying "Darn" is not as bad as saying other words or aiming them towards another player.

I wouldnt characterise 1 hour as "extended ammount of time" really, and as my example demonstrates this doesnt seem to aply. The user above broke a rule 2 hours after a punishment but the next punishment was nothing different than few hours ago.

I am not expecting staff to remember each user, really that is impossible in the scale of brawl! but it took me 1 click and 3 seconds of typing to check the bans database. Since we all have this tool, why not utilising it.

"Another issue is that punishments are often assigned by multiple staff members (If you PM me the name of the player you are using as example, I could check if that is true for this case). Looking at the punishment history you can clearly see how the player is constantly violating the rules, but the punishments strech across multiple month. This means that an entire month could have elapsed before the same staff member had to punish the player again."

Let me stay on that a litle bit, if the database i, you and everyone has access to is used they can tell when, the user broke the previous rule, what punishment they received and how long they where punished for and can decide acordingly. Also a command can be added to show the latest punishments for a player (last 3 for instance) so the staff member can do /cp <player> to find the previous offenses, and act acordingly. Or allow them access to a different page on the site showing more details about the user and punishments. From my knowledge in programming, and since you already have the system build, minor changes can make it possible. The command part is simple, i have made a plugin that does this amongst other things with a database.

"If you come across a player with such a long punishment history you can always notify staff about it and we will look into it and give a longer punishment the next time the player violates the rules. "
Sure, no problem, but that doesnt mean that still doesnt solve the problem though. Still, an SQL querry can be executed and bring you back a set of players with X or more mutes up. that can be done through the database configuration page in seconds by a staff member instead of having us manually searching each username for large records.


"One possible solution to this problem could be a dynamic list showing the players with the highest amount of punishments (mutes and kicks/bans). Even though this would only be based on the quantity and not on the severity of the rule violations it would still be very helpful to find players constantly breaking the rules."
That sounds like a very good idea.

 

Indeed, Common sense exists in all staff members (or so i belive) so i think that a staff member is in a position to judge and while following the guidelines and turn 5' to 20' depending on the offense, also dont you agree than 5' is too minor? Mabe the guideline has to change.

Ok still critical judgmen of the staff may be used instead of sticking on the guideline on 5' exactly. I think i provided quite some reasons why this is too litle and i packed them up correctly. I can analyse further if needed.

When someone breaks a rule ingame, it takes 3 seconds to type in the name and click the button to check their history and punish apropriately (having gone past the warning stages)

Ok then, whatever suits you the most. I wont really stick with technicalities, thats up to the staff to figure what works better for them, i just sugested possible improvments.

Indeed Missed the point sorry.

@CaptainBrawler @Jaetpack1 @_Featherpaw_ @Liffy_ @Lord_Roke
Update:
We are talking about a great player. They defenately belong in the Brawl comunity...
Since yesterday that i started this, the same user has received anoter mute and another ban, which apears to be permanent. Lets hope its global too.
Aditional screenshots: