Update What Do You Think About This Tribunal Section Update?

[Zwielicht]

As all of you are aware of, we've been focusing on re-working The Tribunal section. This is actually part of the work we're doing on the Trading Post because we want to ensure that we can properly handle disputes between traders and customers here should any arise.

Anyway, we've made an adjustment based on feedback I received on the other forum over the years, but couldn't implement due to red tape.

New "Active Tribunal" Notice
After a Tribunal thread is approved, the member the thread is started against will receive a notice informing them of the Tribunal thread. This notice also automatically does the following:

• It changes the user's title to "Active Tribunal".
• The user's ability to start and receive DMs will be removed. This is to address a common a problem I previously dealt with where the member would continue going to their DMs. The user will still be able to respond to DMs they already received, though. We had to allow this just so they can respond to the Tribunal notice if necessary.
• The user will not be able to edit their profile, change their avatar, edit their signature, or post new profile posts whilst the dispute is active.

This notice is deliberately meant to inconvenience the user until they deal with the Tribunal thread. Once the Tribunal thread has been dealt with, a moderator will expire the notice and the restrictions will be lifted. However, in the event that we forget to expire the notice, it'll automatically expire after 2 weeks as a Tribunal thread should not really take longer than that.

There is one other feature of this notice. I added in, but I'm personally not sure if it's too harsh and wouldn't mind hearing some feedback on it. So, when someone receives this notice, they can only interact with one section on OO: The Tribunal section.

This is what it looks like on a test account I sent the notice to.

Again, once it's expired, they can view all of the sections they could before.

The reason I think this may be too harsh is because just having a Tribunal thread started against you doesn't mean that you are in the wrong, just that another member has a dispute with "evidence" against you. We'll do our best to review evidence, but the evidence could turn out to be fabricated and we'll have only managed to severely inconvenienced an innocent member of the community.

 

[Dopious]

Everything above looks good to me, liked the section part, it would make them handle the case faster I think.

 

[polecat]

Seems good only thing could you add on if the person is found not in the wrong, could their negative post be removed from the forum?

 

[Zwielicht]

Seems good only thing could you add on if the person is found not in the wrong, could their negative post be removed from the forum?

Yeah, that can definitely be done in the event that the evidence turns out to be fabricated or there was an impersonator.

If it's a genuine issue that's resolved though, I'm still deciding on what to do in those cases.

 

[polecat]

Yeah, that can definitely be done in the event that the evidence turns out to be fabricated or there was an impersonator.

If it's a genuine issue that's resolved though, I'm still deciding on what to do in those cases.

Sounds good.

I heard from many people in the past when they blamed for something if it's not their fault, they still lose sales ortheir reputation is wrecked.

One of the things I found most odd about BHW is that for whatever reason someone always turns into the new enemy of the day or week or month or longer in a lot of occasions seems pretty unfair in regard to the person blamed for something.

 

[Zwielicht]

Sounds good.

I heard from many people in the past when they blamed for something if it's not their fault, they still lose sales ortheir reputation is wrecked.

One of the things I found most odd about BHW is that for whatever reason someone always turns into the new enemy of the day or week or month or longer in a lot of occasions seems pretty unfair in regard to the person blamed for something.

Do you remember what any of them said about how it affected their business? The only one I know is when the thread gets indexed and comes up in Google for their business' name.

That does give me an idea to address that one, though. I set it so that Tribunal threads aren't indexed in search engines.

We want that content searchable and viewable on this forum, but in those cases where someone didn't do anything wrong, we don't want their business getting affected or for a search result to appear weeks after the content was removed.

 

[polecat]

Do you remember what any of them said about how it affected their business? The only one I know is when the thread gets indexed and comes up in Google for their business' name.

That does give me an idea to address that one, though. I set it so that Tribunal threads aren't indexed in search engines.

We want that content searchable and viewable on this forum, but in those cases where someone didn't do anything wrong, we don't want their business getting affected or for a search result to appear weeks after the content was removed.

I can recall a few telling me whenever they tried to sell something, they would bring up the BHW post they would have to explain that it was not their fault to possible clients.

Not setting indexed is a good idea.

Some told me it cost them sales.

 

[roydan]

The reason I think this may be too harsh is because just having a Tribunal thread started against you doesn't mean that you are in the wrong, just that another member has a dispute with "evidence" against you. We'll do our best to review evidence, but the evidence could turn out to be fabricated and we'll have only managed to severely inconvenienced an innocent member of the community

I agree that this is too harsh, but it can be used by the mod that handles the dispute if the accused *or the accuser* start playing games instead of dealing with the dispute.

 

[Zwielicht]

I can recall a few telling me whenever they tried to sell something, they would bring up the BHW post they would have to explain that it was not their fault to possible clients.

Not setting indexed is a good idea.

Some told me it cost them sales.

Yeah, so leaving it live causes them issues as well.

I’d probably even argue that as long as they resolve it, we can remove it from public view. We need to keep the thread viewable to moderators in case this happens to one trader a lot (at that point, it’s a pattern).

I agree that this is too harsh, but it can be used by the mod that handles the dispute if the accused *or the accuser* start playing games instead of dealing with the dispute.

I was wondering if anyone else would think it’s too harsh.

I often prefer to make fewer aspects of a process manual so that the experience is consistent for everyone, but I think it’s worth considering scenarios where the forum has an active user who finds themselves in Tribunal. I’ll see what else can be done for this, though.

 

[roydan]

I often prefer to make fewer aspects of a process manual so that the experience is consistent for everyone, but I think it’s worth considering scenarios where the forum has an active user who finds themselves in Tribunal. I’ll see what else can be done for this, though.

I'm more worried about it being abusable than harsh. This can easily be used by the accuser to get back at the accused, so having it as a tool by the mod is better IMO.

 

[polecat]

Yeah, so leaving it live causes them issues as well.

I’d probably even argue that as long as they resolve it, we can remove it from public view. We need to keep the thread viewable to moderators in case this happens to one trader a lot (at that point, it’s a pattern).

I was wondering if anyone else would think it’s too harsh.

I often prefer to make fewer aspects of a process manual so that the experience is consistent for everyone, but I think it’s worth considering scenarios where the forum has an active user who finds themselves in Tribunal. I’ll see what else can be done for this, though.

That's perfect.

Only other thing I would add is that expecting people to reply within 24 hours is a bit extreme. To me when I know for fact most SEO people or firms is run by one person it does seem to me a bit extreme one day for example of where I live on mountain area ,that gives me internet not the best so sometimes my internet goes down for a day or few hours nothing major it does me sometimes reply quick.

I think three days to reply is fine no issue with that if a time period is required.

 

[Zwielicht]

I'm more worried about it being abusable than harsh. This can easily be used by the accuser to get back at the accused, so having it as a tool by the mod is better IMO.

You make a good point here. I’ve been looking into ways of making the process less abusable, but there will undoubtedly be some people who slip through.

I’ll see adjustments I can make to the restrictions from the notice and post an update at a later point.

That's perfect.

Only other thing I would add is that expecting people to reply within 24 hours is a bit extreme. To me when I know for fact most SEO people or firms is run by one person it does seem to me a bit extreme one day for example of where I live on mountain area ,that gives me internet not the best so sometimes my internet goes down for a day or few hours nothing major it does me sometimes reply quick.

I think three days to reply is fine no issue with that if a time period is required.

Not even just that, there are times someone isn’t even online when they’re given 24 hours to respond, so even that needs to be accounted for.

I’d be more comfortable giving someone 3 days to respond if we kept the current limitations, but the points @roydan raised about the potential for abuse would need to be addressed first.

Other than that, there’s something I can look into as far as giving them more time to a day to respond from the point they log in, although I’m going to refrain from mentioning exactly how that would work before the copy-cat lurkers we have decide they’re going to do the exact same thing like they have several times already this year.

 

[polecat]

You make a good point here. I’ve been looking into ways of making the process less abusable, but there will undoubtedly be some people who slip through.

I’ll see adjustments I can make to the restrictions from the notice and post an update at a later point.

Not even just that, there are times someone isn’t even online when they’re given 24 hours to respond, so even that needs to be accounted for.

I’d be more comfortable giving someone 3 days to respond if we kept the current limitations, but the points @roydan raised about the potential for abuse would need to be addressed first.

Other than that, there’s something I can look into as far as giving them more time to a day to respond from the point they log in, although I’m going to refrain from mentioning exactly how that would work before the copy-cat lurkers we have decide they’re going to do the exact same thing like they have several times already this year.

Yes three days is good.

I think abuse is too extreme against the person or mod or someone else but stopping that to me different issue overall.

 

[Aristocratic]

I added in, but I'm personally not sure if it's too harsh and wouldn't mind hearing some feedback on it. So, when someone receives this notice, they can only interact with one section on OO: The Tribunal section.

Good point. This way, members who really want to help will focus on resolving the issue, rather than playing games to buy more time and scam more members.

 

[payal23j]

There is nothing like HARSH for anyone, it's good to go for both seller and buyer. Love it.