Staff's leniency in pardons and mod apps

In 2016, 97 pardons were made and 79 of them were approved. (81.4 %)
In 2017, 221 pardons were made and 139 of them were approved. (62.8 %)
In 2018, 181 pardons were made and 95 of them were approved. (52.4 %)
In 2019, 195 pardons were made and 70 of them were approved. (35.8 %)
In 2020, 278 pardons were made and 102 of them were approved. (36.6 %)
In 2021, 173 pardons were made and 48 of them were approved. (27.7 %)
So far in 2022, 107 pardons were made and 33 of them were approved. (30.8 %)

I've had this in my mind for a while now, but looking at the pardon results once again made me quite sure we've been systematically more against having people return to the community. As a staff member you're supposed to leave your personal feeling aside and hold no grudges. We've not really used the word 'veto' for a long time now, as they were mainly used by ex-admins, but the existance of such words on here proves staff members do hold grudges/use emotional feelings as a reason to vote. While this is fine and all, as we're humans, though we are expected to strive towards professionalism and this includes giving people the benefit of the doubt, aswell as ignoring your personal feelings.

Let's take Bus/Divine/Pain's recent pardon as an example. I believe the initial ban reason was me reporting him for self interaction, after which the ban reasons started to pile up. Some older ban reasons (I believe he was already unbanned/pardoned for) were used, correct me if I'm wrong, however the main concerns seem to be self interaction and evasion. Don't get me wrong, we all know he's stupid and will probably get himself in trouble again once he's been unbanned or whatever, but you can't possibly keep denying the guy for the same reasons over and over again. I'd much rather have him hit his head again than recycle the same reasons. It'll be a great sight to see him throw tantrums on how he's made Sythe to how it is today aswell.

I'll waste no words nor energy on saying the same for mod apps (not just mine) but I'd say this speaks for itself. I can only understand people not going through the pardon process if they will get denied eternally anyways, might aswell invest in a proper VPN and go from there. Right?

 

I don't quite follow this post because it feels like you're kind of skipping subjects. Anyway, let me try to summarise what you're saying, please correct me if I'm wrong:

you first post data that shows staff having become conservative throughout the years in pardons. Afterwhich you conclude that it probably has to do with staff's power of veto (hence the analogy with mod-apps). You conclude by saying that it's easy to ban evade by using a proper VPN? You don't explicitly write this, but do you mean to say that these low pardon rates in combination with VPN accessibility incentivize people to evade bans? If so, I'm interested to see what you propose to improve the current system.

Anyway, regarding pardons: I think the primary objective is to achieve effectiveness. Not to solely increase the size of the group of people who get pardoned as a whole.

Why? The primary importance of pardons is to: reduce the ratio of people who get pardoned and end up scamming to the total group of people who get pardoned. That should be analysed and only after doing that should be looked at ways to increase the total group of pardoned people, without it being at the expense of the effectiveness of the pardons. Whether or not some staff members veto a pardon is thus only of a secondary nature.

Edit: @ChellBell is grinding some numbers

 

I wont lie, I was going to comment on the thread made regarding Don but it seems you have made this so i'll say it here instead. So I think it goes without saying that I have had my fair share of issues with the staff in the past, and honestly some of that is due to me as well but one thing I have always said is you don't shit where you eat and that includes the professionalism needed to be shown and upheld at most times when it comes to dealing with users of the forums



Now I am using my previous ban information as a reference here. You can see Blue said the information cannot be used essentially because it's 3 years old, yet staff have just as much done that and held it against me it would seem in my previous pardons too. Let's not get into their feelings towards me, but I will show a few examples below

This was probably wrongly put, me and @Gladiator had a chat about my ban and such, and I felt the information back in 2020 was of poor taste/misleading so like anyone I mentioned it to him. We discussed things back and forth, to which this was said before the image below -

Such things just lead you to believe there is uneasy feelings towards both parties, like I didn't once try threaten the guy etc and just wanted a normal conversion which seemed to go south so was left once he said that

Now I wouldn't say he is a bad guy. He has in fact reached out to me once or twice since that day and have responded to me normally like anyone else would expect, and our conversation was brief but dealt with easily.

Now we can move to people like @Techie and the reason I bring this up as well is because it seemed bias at the time, but then again anyone can say that about him. With what I showed above from Blue, you would expect me to have not been banned to begin with although I was which makes no sense

- So what I understood, and even now when I think about it again. I don't feel comfortable at this time, don't feel comfortable supporting a pardon to a member of the community who has not scam quit or such, and actually wants to be a part of the community for the better, keeping in mind that this was just personal feelings (as you mentioned shouldn't be @Wortel ) and not because of me being banned when I wasn't meant to be at the given time



There are many examples including Bus or whatever you want to call him now days where although a copypasta pardon and him going full anal it is someone who would bring attraction back to Sythe. I mean where do you see all these new "big guys" exactly? beyond the odd CDT event thread maybe if we're lucky and the obvious autobumping they are nowhere to be seen. Many of us have been the backbone of the community. Regardless of if we're memes, friends, enemies, whatever between we have done our best to be something despite possibilities of discouraged staff in the past

Again this isn't to shit on the current staff or ex staff either in fact. This is more just more input, I will edit it as I find more or i'll make a follow up post quoting myself as I know there are several pardons who should have passed by now but for whatever reason haven't

 

So I know there is a lot of backstory to it all and that cant be told to us, but these are some of the people I looked at and was like it's way over due

OvrLoad pardon for scam and ban evasion repost
https://www.sythe.org/threads/4176307/theboatyfozi-dnt-remove-request
Agile Life - Pardon request

There are others too but I don't want to bore you with even more links, so i'll just say some stuff below this and i'm sure others will say the same because it does make sense

- Agile. Yes he did that rig thing, and yes it was an "apparent joke" that was taken too far, but look at how long he was banned/DNT for. Me and him do not see eye to eye like we did one time ago, but even seeing the guys threads and such I was like fuck man. I remember seeing that report that originally got him in trouble and I was just like hopefully nothing comes of it, although I didn't know the full story I know there are some people who are real work horses here

- Fozzy. Fozzy is a bit like Pain/Bus/Memeking/Owner of the world or whatever you want to call him now days, a bit of a pain in the balls but surely cant be that bad of a guy. I mean everyone does stupid shit at some point, and this is a guy I am forever seeing appeal

- Ovrload. He hactually reached out to me on discord after he was banned, and although at the time he thought he was right and the ban was wrong and all I spoke to him quite a bit about that situation. I explained the obvious rights and wrongs that he did as such and what he could do to improve, and do I think he has improved? Only time will show that. The problem is, if you're not giving simple people small features a bone so to speak, how do you expect them to want to come back after a year, 2 years, 100 years of appealing?


Just my two cents, following what @Wortel mentioned about Bus etc. I could be wrong about these people because let's be fair none of us are the best judge of character (I mean look at Zwei and so on)

 

Nope, I could look that up but it's not relevant to the feedback provided here.

 

I don't know if I'm allowed to provide any kind of input given my lack of posts, however, it would be interesting to see the average number of pardon attempts it takes to achieve a pardon. From what I've seen almost nobody has their appeal accepted on the first through third attempt - is there a reason for this or is it purely down to the power of restricting someone's business? I believe there are a number of people that make their daily living through this site.

I don't post much but I scour the site for hours a day as for a start I rarely have anything better to do but ultimately it's an interesting community and some of the reports / appeals are comical.

Going back to this:

Has the most recent Video situation not highlighted this as another issue?

Surely any staff member involved directly or indirectly (from partnership to competitor) should pass the case on. Or is common sense not something we all share? Regardless of how highly regarded or 'straight' you are, it doesn't seem right to have you review a case. In the rare cases whereby it is impossible for an impartial staff member to review the case (ie Video), it should be left to @Sythe himself to review (once he gets the time).

Just my two cents.