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This is a document explaining common moderation procedures and what to expect from them.
Reporting
As a moderation team, we can’t keep track of and monitor every thread and post on SMD. Our
community plays a massive role in helping us keep SMD a clean and welcoming environment. One of the ways community members can do this is by reporting.
When you report content, moderation is notified in two ways. The first way is in our moderation channels, a message will notify the team that a new report has been made that needs to be addressed. The second, is through our report manager in the moderation tools. A moderator will take a look at your report as soon as possible, the time it takes for us to get to a report depends on how much time moderators have that day or week and how many reports are currently in queue. We aim to have a report addressed within 24 hours, but could take longer.
Once moderation has gone through your report, you either get a notification that the report was accepted or rejected. Our policy at SMD is to discuss moderation action only to those who need to know. Those who need to know are the rest of our staff and the person who posted the material.
Most content that needs moderation action is brought to our attention through community reports. The majority of these reports are genuine and have the intention of improving SMD. However, abuse of this function will not be tolerated, and will likely result in warnings issued and in some cases, the ability to report content will be revoked.
Warnings
Step 1 - Reported content
When a user or moderator comes across content they believe is violating our Terms of Service and Rules or should have moderation attention, our report function is utilised. You can report any thread, post, comment or Community Content by clicking the report button (generally located somewhere at the bottom of the content).
This brings the report into our moderation queue to be addressed.
Step 2 - Moderation decision
Once a moderator gets to a report, they'll assign themselves to the report to signal to our staff members they are currently handling it. The moderator will assess the reported content to determine whether it violates our rules. Part of this process is checking the context to clarify the situation and to determine if any other action needs to be taken.
If the assigned moderator determines that the content does violate our rules, a decision on what action to take must be made. All moderation action is highly dependent on how a user has behaved in the past. Many of our warnings have multiple tiers of points, each one assigned if the previous one has been issued. For example, if the user Magic Man has received a “Hostility/Flaming I” warning in the past (and it’s still active), the next time any content of theirs breaks Hostility/Flaming rules, they’ll be issued “Hostility/Flaming II”.
You can read more about our individual warnings, the points assigned and when they expire here: Forum Rules
Step 3 – Two-step moderation
If a moderator has decided that the appropriate action to take is a warning (warnings are always issued on violating content), the next step is getting approval from a second moderator. The assigned moderator will make a comment on the report, stating the rule broken, the warning to be issued and why. They’ll then notify the rest of moderation in our staff channels that a second moderator is needed to review the report and action suggested.
The second moderator will go through the same process as the first, evaluating the content and making their conclusion on whether any rules are broken, and what those are. Additionally, deciding what action they believe is the appropriate one to take. If they agree with the first moderator, approval will be granted (the second moderator will state why they agree in our documentation) and either moderator will carry out the agreed upon actions. If not, the second moderator will state why they disagree with the suggested actions and reasonings and list their own. This will then be escalated to Schine’s forum manager (DukeofRealms) to make a final decision.
Note 1: If a moderator believes content is violating Tier III rules, the content will be hidden from public listing “Under moderation review”. Tier III rules are serious violations and should under no circumstances be present on SMD.
Note 2: Only issuing warnings requires the two-step moderation process. Other moderation actions, e.g. moving, deleting (hiding from public), renaming, merging etc do not. In extreme cases, we may outright ban a user and automatically hide all their content before going through the warning process. Cases where this may happen: Spam bots, doxing, sexual harassment. This will only ever happen when content and the user’s ability to post needs to be immediately revoked. All immediate bans will be reviewed solely by the forum manager, and abuse of such feature will result in immediate and permanent removal.
Step 4 – Issued warning and receiving notification
When a user is issued a warning, they’ll be notified in two ways. The first is through our alert system, which will display the warning you received. The second way is by receiving a Private Message from a moderator. What this PM will state is the rule you broke, the warning issued, why moderation has come to this conclusion and information on how to appeal if you believe this is the incorrect action. If you do disagree with the action that’s been taken, please use the appeal function, moderators are not there to debate rules and warnings. If you want something to be clarified or have a question, we’ll be happy to address that in your PM.
Step 5 - Documentation
All moderation action must be explained and documented.
Uses for moderation history:
Bans
A ban prevents a user from being able to interact with most features on SMD (posting, commenting, uploading, sending messages etc). There are two types of bans, permanent and temporary. Temporary bans only restrict access for a certain period, like a week, two weeks, a month and so on. Permanent bans restrict a user’s account forever, unless the ban is manually revoked.
A user is automatically banned when reaching a certain warning point threshold. The time the user is banned depends on how many points are active on the account. To see how many points are needed for a ban, check our rules here: Forum Rules
In some rare cases, a ban will be manually awarded. This will only happen if we believe the account is a spam bot or an immediate restriction on the account must be made due to severe circumstances. Severe circumstances are generally repeated violations of Tier III rules after content has been put under moderation review but can be content that is inappropriate and very harmful (sexual harassment and spam doxing are good cases of this). Whether the situation is or is not a severe circumstance will be decided by Schine’s forum manager. The initial decision whether to take immediate action will be decided by moderation if Schine’s forum manager is not available at the time and will be later reviewed. All manual bans will still go through the normal moderation procedure, and the ban will be revoked (if warnings are assigned, an automatic ban may take its place). If after Schine’s forum manager and regular moderation procedure is completed and the conclusion is that the situation was not a severe circumstance, an apology will be issued, and investigation into the moderator responsible will be launched (in most cases, the moderator will be immediately suspended until the investigation has been completed).
Appeals
The appeal form can be found here: Moderation Appeal Application | StarMade Dock
We aim to have an appeal responded to within three days. However, this may take up to 2 weeks. If you don’t get a response within two weeks, send a message to a moderator or the forum manager.
When an appeal is submitted, it goes into appeal section of the moderator forum. Moderators will automatically be notified a new appeal has been submitted when they are on SMD through the alert system as well as a notification on the moderator channels. Moderators will vote on whether they think the appeal should be accepted or rejected and will provide reasonings for their decision (this is only available to moderation). A minimum majority of 3 votes are needed for an appeal to be decided, and a minimum of 4 votes are needed if the appeal decision is for rejection and two of those votes are from the moderators involved in the original warning.
Ties and delayed appeals (no action decided for two weeks), will be decided by the forum manager.
When a decision has been decided, the appealer will receive a response from an elected moderator that will inform them whether the appeal has been accepted or rejected and a brief explanation as to why (most likely a re-enforcement of the original reasons listed). This decision is final; the elected moderator is a messenger for the decision made by at minimum three moderators. They will not be debating our decision, and may provide further information or clarify if they believe it will help. The elected moderator has no obligation to reply; the message is merely a notification of the decision made through the appeal process.
Please note: The appeal form is not to be used if you disagree with our Terms of Service and Rules. This is to be only used if you believe the action taken does not correspond with our rules. Appeals which do not follow this will be rejected.
If you believe information was missed, or the appeal handled incorrectly, you can contact the forum manager (only after an appeal has been rejected).
Moderation Investigation
All reports on moderation conduct are investigated. In most cases, moderators will continue to fulfil their duties while we take a look at the report(s). Reports against individual moderators should be made in a Private Conversation with the forum manager. Public threads and posts are not appropriate; we do not support public trials, witch hunts and character assassinations. Content of this nature will be removed. Issues with individual moderators are handled internally, appropriate conduct is decided by Schine.
Discussion on our Terms of Service and Rules and moderation as a whole is permitted.
Deleted content (removed from public view)
There are two types of deletion, soft deletion and hard deletion. Soft deletion removes the content from being viewable by the public and will leave a placeholder stating the deletion and reason. The content has not been removed from our site; it is merely inaccessible to the public, this is the most common form of removing content.
Hard deletion is where the content is permanently removed from SMD, and cannot be recovered. Hard deletion can only be performed by administration, and is only used in severe cases.
If moderators believe no placeholder should be present, the thread will be moved to the moderator forum. In almost all cases, if content is missing, it has been moved to the moderator forum instead of hard deleted.
Common reasons for removing content:
What will happen if your content is deleted:
Reporting
As a moderation team, we can’t keep track of and monitor every thread and post on SMD. Our
community plays a massive role in helping us keep SMD a clean and welcoming environment. One of the ways community members can do this is by reporting.
When you report content, moderation is notified in two ways. The first way is in our moderation channels, a message will notify the team that a new report has been made that needs to be addressed. The second, is through our report manager in the moderation tools. A moderator will take a look at your report as soon as possible, the time it takes for us to get to a report depends on how much time moderators have that day or week and how many reports are currently in queue. We aim to have a report addressed within 24 hours, but could take longer.
Once moderation has gone through your report, you either get a notification that the report was accepted or rejected. Our policy at SMD is to discuss moderation action only to those who need to know. Those who need to know are the rest of our staff and the person who posted the material.
Most content that needs moderation action is brought to our attention through community reports. The majority of these reports are genuine and have the intention of improving SMD. However, abuse of this function will not be tolerated, and will likely result in warnings issued and in some cases, the ability to report content will be revoked.
Warnings
Step 1 - Reported content
When a user or moderator comes across content they believe is violating our Terms of Service and Rules or should have moderation attention, our report function is utilised. You can report any thread, post, comment or Community Content by clicking the report button (generally located somewhere at the bottom of the content).
This brings the report into our moderation queue to be addressed.
Step 2 - Moderation decision
Once a moderator gets to a report, they'll assign themselves to the report to signal to our staff members they are currently handling it. The moderator will assess the reported content to determine whether it violates our rules. Part of this process is checking the context to clarify the situation and to determine if any other action needs to be taken.
If the assigned moderator determines that the content does violate our rules, a decision on what action to take must be made. All moderation action is highly dependent on how a user has behaved in the past. Many of our warnings have multiple tiers of points, each one assigned if the previous one has been issued. For example, if the user Magic Man has received a “Hostility/Flaming I” warning in the past (and it’s still active), the next time any content of theirs breaks Hostility/Flaming rules, they’ll be issued “Hostility/Flaming II”.
You can read more about our individual warnings, the points assigned and when they expire here: Forum Rules
Step 3 – Two-step moderation
If a moderator has decided that the appropriate action to take is a warning (warnings are always issued on violating content), the next step is getting approval from a second moderator. The assigned moderator will make a comment on the report, stating the rule broken, the warning to be issued and why. They’ll then notify the rest of moderation in our staff channels that a second moderator is needed to review the report and action suggested.
The second moderator will go through the same process as the first, evaluating the content and making their conclusion on whether any rules are broken, and what those are. Additionally, deciding what action they believe is the appropriate one to take. If they agree with the first moderator, approval will be granted (the second moderator will state why they agree in our documentation) and either moderator will carry out the agreed upon actions. If not, the second moderator will state why they disagree with the suggested actions and reasonings and list their own. This will then be escalated to Schine’s forum manager (DukeofRealms) to make a final decision.
Note 1: If a moderator believes content is violating Tier III rules, the content will be hidden from public listing “Under moderation review”. Tier III rules are serious violations and should under no circumstances be present on SMD.
Note 2: Only issuing warnings requires the two-step moderation process. Other moderation actions, e.g. moving, deleting (hiding from public), renaming, merging etc do not. In extreme cases, we may outright ban a user and automatically hide all their content before going through the warning process. Cases where this may happen: Spam bots, doxing, sexual harassment. This will only ever happen when content and the user’s ability to post needs to be immediately revoked. All immediate bans will be reviewed solely by the forum manager, and abuse of such feature will result in immediate and permanent removal.
Step 4 – Issued warning and receiving notification
When a user is issued a warning, they’ll be notified in two ways. The first is through our alert system, which will display the warning you received. The second way is by receiving a Private Message from a moderator. What this PM will state is the rule you broke, the warning issued, why moderation has come to this conclusion and information on how to appeal if you believe this is the incorrect action. If you do disagree with the action that’s been taken, please use the appeal function, moderators are not there to debate rules and warnings. If you want something to be clarified or have a question, we’ll be happy to address that in your PM.
Step 5 - Documentation
All moderation action must be explained and documented.
Uses for moderation history:
- When mod actions are appealed, other staff members will review the violating content, the action issued and the reason the moderator specified.
- Applying the appropriate tier of warning points requires a moderator to be able to understand a users' past violations quickly.
- Peer review, to ensure we're moderating effectively and evenly, other staff members will from time to time look through each other’s moderation history.
Bans
A ban prevents a user from being able to interact with most features on SMD (posting, commenting, uploading, sending messages etc). There are two types of bans, permanent and temporary. Temporary bans only restrict access for a certain period, like a week, two weeks, a month and so on. Permanent bans restrict a user’s account forever, unless the ban is manually revoked.
A user is automatically banned when reaching a certain warning point threshold. The time the user is banned depends on how many points are active on the account. To see how many points are needed for a ban, check our rules here: Forum Rules
In some rare cases, a ban will be manually awarded. This will only happen if we believe the account is a spam bot or an immediate restriction on the account must be made due to severe circumstances. Severe circumstances are generally repeated violations of Tier III rules after content has been put under moderation review but can be content that is inappropriate and very harmful (sexual harassment and spam doxing are good cases of this). Whether the situation is or is not a severe circumstance will be decided by Schine’s forum manager. The initial decision whether to take immediate action will be decided by moderation if Schine’s forum manager is not available at the time and will be later reviewed. All manual bans will still go through the normal moderation procedure, and the ban will be revoked (if warnings are assigned, an automatic ban may take its place). If after Schine’s forum manager and regular moderation procedure is completed and the conclusion is that the situation was not a severe circumstance, an apology will be issued, and investigation into the moderator responsible will be launched (in most cases, the moderator will be immediately suspended until the investigation has been completed).
Appeals
The appeal form can be found here: Moderation Appeal Application | StarMade Dock
We aim to have an appeal responded to within three days. However, this may take up to 2 weeks. If you don’t get a response within two weeks, send a message to a moderator or the forum manager.
When an appeal is submitted, it goes into appeal section of the moderator forum. Moderators will automatically be notified a new appeal has been submitted when they are on SMD through the alert system as well as a notification on the moderator channels. Moderators will vote on whether they think the appeal should be accepted or rejected and will provide reasonings for their decision (this is only available to moderation). A minimum majority of 3 votes are needed for an appeal to be decided, and a minimum of 4 votes are needed if the appeal decision is for rejection and two of those votes are from the moderators involved in the original warning.
Ties and delayed appeals (no action decided for two weeks), will be decided by the forum manager.
When a decision has been decided, the appealer will receive a response from an elected moderator that will inform them whether the appeal has been accepted or rejected and a brief explanation as to why (most likely a re-enforcement of the original reasons listed). This decision is final; the elected moderator is a messenger for the decision made by at minimum three moderators. They will not be debating our decision, and may provide further information or clarify if they believe it will help. The elected moderator has no obligation to reply; the message is merely a notification of the decision made through the appeal process.
Please note: The appeal form is not to be used if you disagree with our Terms of Service and Rules. This is to be only used if you believe the action taken does not correspond with our rules. Appeals which do not follow this will be rejected.
If you believe information was missed, or the appeal handled incorrectly, you can contact the forum manager (only after an appeal has been rejected).
Moderation Investigation
All reports on moderation conduct are investigated. In most cases, moderators will continue to fulfil their duties while we take a look at the report(s). Reports against individual moderators should be made in a Private Conversation with the forum manager. Public threads and posts are not appropriate; we do not support public trials, witch hunts and character assassinations. Content of this nature will be removed. Issues with individual moderators are handled internally, appropriate conduct is decided by Schine.
Discussion on our Terms of Service and Rules and moderation as a whole is permitted.
Deleted content (removed from public view)
There are two types of deletion, soft deletion and hard deletion. Soft deletion removes the content from being viewable by the public and will leave a placeholder stating the deletion and reason. The content has not been removed from our site; it is merely inaccessible to the public, this is the most common form of removing content.
Hard deletion is where the content is permanently removed from SMD, and cannot be recovered. Hard deletion can only be performed by administration, and is only used in severe cases.
If moderators believe no placeholder should be present, the thread will be moved to the moderator forum. In almost all cases, if content is missing, it has been moved to the moderator forum instead of hard deleted.
Common reasons for removing content:
- Tier III and I content (not II)
- Under moderation review for Tier III or I content. If not found Tier III or I violations, will be undeleted.
- A moderated user (quite often a new user), needs to post five approved posts before receiving approval. If the post isn't up to the standards of communication we expect from our users (check the ToS), it will be deleted so it doesn't count towards the 5 approved post figure.
- Natural derailment (cleaning the thread)
- Specific thread rules in official threads. E.g. competitions, Q&A etc
- Illegal material
- At author's request
- Confidential information has been shared
- Very serious/harmful bugs. Security issues.
What will happen if your content is deleted:
- Brief reason why the content was removed will be put in the placeholder (publically viewable section where the content used to be).
- PM will be sent to the content creator, giving a quote of the content, link and reason why it was removed.
- [26th of March, 2018] Added "what will happen if your content is deleted" section. Brief reason in content placeholder and a PM sent to content creator.
Added: "Common reasons for removing content".
Added: Spam cleaner providing no reason for content deletion explanation.
Last edited by a moderator: