[TheUltraFish]

Just going to cut much of this out.
[/quote]

So ten minutes after you told me not to ask why my friend was muted, you gagged me for saying "there's a 90 second limit, you gagged us for 4 minutes" because in doing so I was questioning every decision you were making?
[/quote]


Staff are allowed to use staff discretion when facing many scenarios. If every situation had to be written down as a guideline with a step by step process, it would cause more chaos than it would fix. Travis explained his reasoning for gagging everyone for a round, in case if the reasoning was not clear in the video he presented. Even though it is in the rules to not gag everyone for over 90 seconds, he had already did that with his first gag all, after this when it happened again, Travis entered different territory where the rules/guidelines, don't necessarily specify on what to do next. As I have said, that particular guideline in the toxic trolling section, should probably go to staff guidelines however, we were not in toxic trolling specifically with those gag alls, we were more in mic spam territory which I believe we can all agree on that major mic spam occurred twice where all you could hear was the yelling.



So this is how things will proceed going forward. Travis will receive a warning as well as a talk on how just a short explanation on why people are gagged/banned/punished etc should be used rather than stonewalling them with basically the following:

"I'm staff and I say so."

Now, he was within the bounds of the rules in doing this however, the way he did it caused unneeded hostility where the aftermath can be found in his video as well as in this thread on the forums. That is taking from the interaction between the two of you in the first video as well as in the 2nd video. The "90 second rule" will be moved to the staff guidelines under the mic spam section and better explained. It being there will also to limit overzealous donors from doing so in the future. We have to remember this is a game and not a place to be rude to each for insignificant reasons. Which after watching both videos more than once, both sides are guilty of even if unintentionally.

[reina]

how just a short explanation on why people are gagged/banned/punished etc should be used rather than stonewalling them with basically the following:

"I'm staff and I say so."

That was the most frustrating part of this, so I appreciate that.

[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

A few points:
Donors should never be using gag *. That’s really all there is to it.
If there is a dispute about what a staff member is doing on server that dispute does not carry on after their actions in server. Rather, a report such as this is made about the action. Yet if you are not concerned about the gag * and are more concerned about getting a gag for continuing an argument inside the server then you’re out of footing.
Stonewalling is not effective, even a short reason makes the point and covers your ass. That being said while it will not make a popular staff member so long as you are within your bounds to handle the situation and have been warning the members then there reaches a point where it is not getting through. To continue a conversation on either side in server is inappropriate at that point.
I am surprised little has been said about a 4 minute gag all. I’ll leave it to that if the admin sees that as within the bounds of properly moderating.

[TheUltraFish]

Alright closing this thread after going off of what I said in my last statement. I have already talked to Travis and he understands where Reina was coming from with his two responses even if he was within the rules technically. He understands that he came across as stonewalling her and will adjust moving forward to using short responses to explain punishments. (Long responses tend to be picked a part word for word by trolls.)

As I also said, I will move and adjust the "90 second rule" so that things are more clear for staff in the future on how to use such things more effectively so this snafu in particular will be less likely to happen again.