[bunniey]

So very recently there was a post regarding an issue that many felt rather strong about, whether or not they were vocal about it. It was rather hastily taken down (for three reasons, one of which wasn't relevant, as the was asking for a community discussion on the issue, one of which was being perpetuated by just two people on the long thread, and one of which wasn't true at all). 

This begs the question. Why was the community not aware of this issue, and what other issues are the community unaware of that they should probably know?

Many players know that a staff discord exists, and that that's where all the decisions happen. People don't know just how much goes on in there. Some don't know that they're likely playing together in a voice call at any given time, or that most anything you do that can be perceived as even slightly negative is being recorded and talked about and broken down. That's where the committees come in. Everyone knows the committees are an issue, but the true problem with the committees lies with the extreme bias found within. You're led to believe that most of the issues on the servers are resolved in a formulaic manner to do with staff guidelines. "X happens, Y is the punishment." This is true to an extent, but bias comes into play in a pretty extreme manner.

A major example of this is the unbanning of Aeth0r, and the unbanning of Laced. Aeth0r killed 8 people in a mass RDM session, and didn't make an unban request for nearly 6 months. This issue was heavily debated with a small amount of people calling for him to stay permabanned because he has been given so many chances. Though he had been sincere in his first unban request, it was denied and he submitted another a month later. The first was denied based on some very vocal staff deciding he should stay banned because he's had so many chances. Obviously he got unbanned a month later, but they decided his banning should last nearly six months. Laced, on the other hand, killed 11 people, and has been repeatedly banned throughout his being apart of this community. He made a shitpost unban request just over a month later, which got denied because it was a meme, and then posted one more and it was accepted in just two days, with staff welcoming him back with open arms. He's more liked, especially by staff, as he is friends with a lot of them, so it just happened the second he wanted it to, despite his transgressions being worse, and him having a longer history of toxicity in the community.

Just like the closure of the thread posted earlier, that situation establishes a very clear bias in the staffing team towards certain individuals and against certain actions. There is zero transparency, no one knows who voted, how they voted, or why they voted that way on any manner. No one knows who is for or against closure of any threads, it's just decided without warning sometimes, and with warning other times, that it's become too much. This is where being transparent comes in. Many issues could be resolved by the voting patterns and facts the staff hide away becoming more public. This would erase the constant complaint of a disconnect between the staff team and the playerbase, and would fix the issue of high profile bans always getting a lot of pushback because the staff team tends to hide certain facts (like the teaming ban with GCubed and Rylo) so the community can't come to any of their own conclusions, and it becomes much more sketchy. More transparency would also help when certain threads bringing certain issues to light being closed in a manner that many people agree seems more like the staff is shoving the issue in a closet and locking it, rather than actually considering it resolved.