Introduction
While the staff normally does an excellent job managing the server, there are certain areas where the processes are chaotic and inefficient. This leads to frustration, confusion, and extra work for everyone involved. The following is a short proposal that the staff adopt formal procedures for submitting, resolving, and appealing raid disputes:
Why change things?
Currently, raid petitions are handled reasonably adequately as a whole, but there is a large amount of detritus for the staff to sort through, and formal procedures will help reduce the workload to a manageable level. So, why adopt formal dispute resolution procedures?
1) Established policies will allow the creation of public and documented precedent.
2) Forcing summaries and word limits onto petitions will make the review process far more efficient. By allowing additional argument & explanation at GM discretion, injustice can be avoided so that the decision makers are fully appraised of the situation.
3) An official system puts proper channels into place so that the GM staff and the players know exactly where each other sits. There are no back channels to go through or deals to make. Appeals, arguments, and defenses are all fully public, concise, and officially submitted. Any requests to deviate can simply be met with "follow the procedure" as opposed to the current system of "send me a PM, and I'll get to it at some point."
4) The public nature of such a system will prevent the spread and abuse of misinformation that frequently surrounds raid disputes.
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Originally Posted by SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
1) Petitioning guild submits a complaint via the petition forum
A) A 3-5 sentence summary
B) Two pages MAX of argument/counter argument
C) Appendices of logs and fraps (unedited by highlighted for ease of reading & convenience.)
D) All appendices & fraps MUST be properly organized (logs bolded & fraps met with time stamps [Ex: train aggro @3:52 FD @7:34]
E) All Petitions (& defenses) will be made public as they were submitted verbatim
2) Accused guild is given/allowed to view the submitted petition & evidence
A) Accused guild submits a defense in the same format as the complaint
3) GM reviews all evidence in the submitted complaints & engages in additional fact finding in the server logs as necessary and requests additional evidence if necessary
A) GM's should rarely need to request additional evidence as guild officers should be smart enough to present all relevant evidence. Evidence omitted from the initial petition/response by neglect will NOT be considered without a reasonable excuse (Ex: a player who was on vacation came home and uploaded new fraps)
4) GM issues a ruling.
A) All rulings and arguments, evidences, and appendices shall be made public the moment the ruling is issued
B) All rulings will consist of a short statement of the case including the ultimate disposition (part A guilty / not guilty etc.), a brief statement on why the GM staff ruled the way it did, and a brief statement explaining the punishment and its justifications.
B) Rulings may be appealed in the same format as the original complaint
C) Appeals are owed NO response, and are heard strictly at the discretion of the senior GM staff
5) If all involved parties can reach mutual agreement, GM intervention will be deemed unnecessary and the petition dismissed.
A)Frivolous or abusive petitions/appeals will result in punishment for the abusers
B) If an accused guild admits wrong doing and presents no defense, that admission will be considered favorably when determining punishment
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