Are you serious

Why is this happening in the dispute forum...

 

I bet Sin666 will get to it first. >_<

 

I'll delete the spam and ban him, he shouldn't have an active account anyway.

But, it's a hard dispute to deal with, because he's claiming to be hacked when the person who stole his account also used it to try to buy other Sythe accounts. The IP's might confirm it wasn't him, but that's not terribly useful if he might have handed over the account intentionally.

Edit: Solved now

 

I think blade meant, "Why did it take so long to deal with the dispute?" I think that question answers itself, though.... some disputes are just hard to look into and take a lot of time, which isn't always available.

 

^Exactly, not this dispute in particular, it's just an easy example.

 

We are trying to find a way of answering disputes more efficiently. I'm currently adding "Banned by:" tags to disputes so that at least one person is specifically accountable for answering it, but it will probably take a few attempts before we find a system that works.

Unfortunately, of all the disputes I've done over the last couple days, so far I've unbanned perhaps 4 people - the dispute option is completely abused, and from a practical standpoint, my time would probably be better spent answering scam reports.

 

Wouldn't it make it much more efficient if all new bans had more descriptive ban reasons with the name of the person who requested the ban and perhaps a link or small description of why the person was banned as it used it be done before sometimes?

 

Efficiency is the big issue. Checking a thread, approving it, finding the page with the ban reason, editing the thread title, and separately editing the ban reason into their post may simply take too long for mods to get into the habit of doing, especially for multiple reports.

If the ban reason does contain specifics not mentioned in the thread (like links to scam reports), I've been putting it in the moderator notes since it can be added with the title change, but obviously that puts the inconvenience on the mod replying to the report since notes can only be viewed by going to 'Edit Thread'.

My original suggestion was to create a work-order section in the staff lounge that would just be:
Title: [@ Mod] X's Ban Dispute
Link:
Ban Reason:

But that's obviously harder to implement.

 

^ That's a great idea, Sin. So, kind of something like the "Report a Post" type thing?

 

Yes it is a good idea, indeed.

 

I don't want to push the workload on Matthew and/or Govind, but is there a way to rework the banned database so that you can do a direct search? I remember it took about 2-3 minutes per person to find their banned reason and who requested it.

Also, a system that I used to like was that a global would put the name of the ban issuer in the title if he (or she, now) could not answer it expediently at the present moment. Since the ban issuer is more familiar with the case, (s)he will notice the name in the title and answer the dispute more quickly. It's like your moderator notes system, but it's more viewable and doesn't really detract from the actual writing of the banned member.

 

Even if he replaced the numbers with what the names start with.... Like "AA", "BE", "BT", ect. That would most likely limit your options to a page or two and would be very easy to implement (if you are easily able to get the first name on the page and if you can, just take the first two letters from it).

Yes, doing all of that does seem like a burden and is approaching FBI status bureaucracy. If Matthew could change the banned page slightly (like I mentioned above) that would cut a lot of time out of each dispute right there. My gut also tells me that using another staff lounge section (like you mentioned) would also cut down time to get the right mod looking at the dispute. However, it make it actually take less time without making people confused is that anytime a thread is approved the new thread in the staff lounge would have to be made right away so that one is not forgotten. Then, the moderators could either discuss the ban in private or in public depending on the situation.

The other thing that will help in some disputes is having specific information and the mods name in the ban reason. That just adds more time to the banning end of things and may not pay off in time savings (if the user doesn't dispute).