There aren't any invites this year. You have to qualify through the qualifiers.

I had some more thoughts while reading the thread, but I don't have the energy to write them all down at the moment. Maybe later.
But I just want to say that this conversation illustrates really well that the "don't leave unless the game is lost"-rule is far to hard to gauge in practice and leads to bad experiences for everyone.

@Crofis said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

Jip you have some really valid points, and i agree with you, it would not be nice for moderators to have to deal with extra work/flame due to general chat being sent after them, and public discussions like this can become uncivilized and ruin the image of FAF (although, if i have to be nitpicky, the 30k number seems a bit inflated, i really wish we had that many people, trust me).

That is the total number of members, see also an the information-resources channel. It has an invite link with a count:

I agree that we do not have 30K+ active users, and therefore the number may feel inflated . But that is where it originates from.

@Crofis said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

The current appeal is not a real appeal but more of a miss-input protection: "look guys, i think you wanted to punish a player with a nick similar to mine and you banned me instead".
Also, the reported player has no real chance to defend himself in any step of the process. Was i ever asked why i did what i did? No. Was my request for more details granted so we could discuss on those AND the context? No.

I can not find the official explanation of an appeal, but Maudlin described it as such in the association channel:

@maudlin27 said in FAF rules on leaving games - have your say:

Checking rating of the most active 5 mods, the lowest ranked player is c.1.4k (significantly above average which from memory is around 800 rating, even if not a 'pro'). The mod team also contains >2k rated players. In most cases, I expect the mod dealing with the report gets the judgement right, and the appeals process is there as a backup for the rare cases a mistake is made. To be rejected on appeal, that'd mean at least 4 people (the person reporting, the initial mod, and at least 2 other mods) have all come to an incorrect assessment. If you have a low rated mod judging whether a game is lost in a high rated game, then outside of the very clear cut scenarios (e.g. someone leaving at the start when nothing has happened and the departure means a near-certain team loss) they're also likely to consult with the wider mod team/higher rated mods.

Now, this is where it gets a little difficult again. Don't take anything personal. It's just how I perceive your post and I can be wrong.

Based on what you wrote it sounds like you feel the moderators did not interpret the game state correct and that the game state is the context that is miss interpret on whatever you were moderated for.

I feel like your post is full of assumptions. And by summarizing them, I also make a few assumptions that may be incorrect. But I feel like you assume that an appeal is processed by the same people, even though they are not. You assume that the moderator team does not have high rated players that understand the game state the way you do, even though the average rating of the moderator team is reasonably high.

I also feel like you assume that the moderator team has an infinite pool of time. I base that on for example:

@Crofis said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

Since the situation needed context to be taken into consideration, and context needed a certain understanding of the game, i thought that maybe some higher rated players, given their better knowledge, could maybe give an unbiased (and hopefully objective) breakdown of the situation in game if i presented them the case.

This is of course not true. These type of discussions are quite exhausting. Let alone if you have to clarify the view of the moderator team in all detail every single time. And even when you do receive that information you may still not agree, because as you write:

@Crofis said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

My goal was simple, either get evaluated by high rated players and know if i was wrong, or get an official explanation/motivation by the mods and if it made sense, know i was wrong.

It may still not make sense to you . Moderation is naturally subjective. It is okay if you do not agree with the conclusion. There are many different cultures and customs in this community and some rules may feel too strict or not strict enough because of that. The reported (or the reportee, if the reported gets away for that matter) and the moderation team do not have to come to a consensus. At the end of the day the moderation team does its best to provide nuance where necessary. There are various safe guards in play to prevent a moderator from taking off to space.

And, again from my point of view - do not take it personal. I also think you took a bad turn by still trying to get 'your way' by making a (forum?) post. As Brutus mentioned, there's a lot of nuance required for the moderation team to come to a conclusion. And the moderation team will never share all the information that is required to make that post of yours work.

For all we know you're a cold hearted asshole that swears all over, slows down the game, intentionally team kills and generally ruins games while you're making a post about how unfairly you were treated for leaving this game prematurely where you appear innocent. Just saying, I don't have that context. Nobody reading this does except the moderator team and yourself. And it's a good thing that we don't know. Because I'd like to take your input and interactions on face value. It makes life much, much easier.

What I would suggest you do next time is to just let it be. Be banned (or whatever you got) for the duration. And perhaps read up about the rules so that you're less likely to break them in the future. Remember: nobody needs to break the rules. It's always a choice. Especially because you're not perma banned for the first thing that you do. You get a warning, or a single day ban. There's a lot of leniency in play here.

And if anything - if you can't beat them then join them. The best way to understand the nuance in situations like these, and even grow as a person, is to become part of the 'problem' you perceive and try to fix it from the inside. That is a journey you'll remember for the rest of your life. I certainly do when I became the Game team lead - some things that happened really stuck to me in a way that helped me grow as a person. And as a nice financial bonus - to better manage certain situations that occur at my job.

Another thing to consider from my touchpoints with the mod team is the following:
Each case is an individual case. Especially with regards to punishment, it strongly depends on your moderation history. From first warning over last warning, from shirt ban to unlimited ban the range is huge. Many question come down to: Why do I get punished for this, but others aren't? These kind of questions lead to nowhere. The moderation will never reveal the history of a user to others and such a comparison of cases is usually pointless.

So it makes sense to discuss the rules itself if there is a greater demand, it makes very little sense to publicly discuss individual moderation actions.

This is a difficult text, I hope I get it right.

I agree with @BlackYps and @Exselsior , but at the same time I also disagree with their conclusions. You can discuss rules just fine. You can discuss hypotheticals just fine. You can even reach out to the moderator team just fine. They've seen the worse of this community, yet somehow they're not unreasonable. However, does one really feel the need to be able to do this in Aeolus and/or the general-chat on Discord? The only thing that happens at that point is that you introduce a lot of noise to the discussion. A lot of nuance that is necessary for that type of discussion is lost. You can't even find/reference the conversation later. But, while you do that you create a lot of headache for the moderator(s) that need to listen to another storm of often primarily nonsense and some half truths. Just to be called names when a moderator finally decides it is okay to protect their own sanity and shut it down.

My point is - in my experience you can discuss things just fine. Just do it in the association section of the forums. Or in your own Discord server that does not have an audience of 30k+. Or in a voice channel. Or in private messages with a group of people that you'd like to discuss it with. Then once you have your facts and arguments gathered then you can share that privately with the moderator team and discuss it with them directly.

The discussion of the rules - which is fundamental to the type of people that we expel and attract to the community - is not something to discuss in a place like the general chat. Or any other public channel in my point of view. And this matters especially if you have a role, as in being part of a team. To quote:

@Razana said in The State of FAF:

One aspect of the state of FAF community that I strongly dislike is the amount of friction publicly displayed between the different teams involved in FAF. Hang around the Discord long enough and you'll see long arguments between the coloured names over certain issues in or out of the game. Whether the issue is actually substantial or not, I can't tell.

And he's right I think. It's okay to disagree with things. It is okay to discuss that. But I think it's not okay to feel the need or require the ability to discuss your disagreements publicly with an audience of 30k+. In my point of view, when someone does that they're just damaging the image of FAForever. And the moderators should act on that.

I'm not a mod, but I can share some thoughts:
I believe that most public discussions of mod action would be started by people that justifiably got banned and it was not even some kind of gray-zone, but nevertheless explain how it was only their team's fault for making them do the things they did. And try to sway the public opinion by telling a loaded story full of omissions. Every once in a while someone like these pops up in discord anyway. I can totally understand that nobody wants to deal with these totally unproductive discussions and they are not healthy for the community either. I imagine that some of the drama gets removed when these people are funneled to a ticket system without any bystanders that they could try to persuade.

That said, I also find it a bit dumb that the rule also gets cited when someone tries to discuss hypothetical mod action i.e. if there is a rule breach by using a specific replay. There was no actual report, it was an attempt to better convey a point in a discussion about the rules in general. It also prevents constructive discussions about moderation quality or if a rule needs clarification when not just the banned person, but also many others do not understand the reason of a ban and feel it was out of line. This has happened as well.

So in conclusion I think the current rule about not discussing moderation decisions in public at all is not good enough and we need to find a way to be more lenient. At the same the people that ask for a better system need to also provide a solution how to prevent the issue that we will have at least one guy a week fanning drama in discord about his ban. And remarks like "if decisions seemed more "objectively right" rather than being ambiguous i believe less people would complain to mods team" are not addressing this problem with enough seriousness. As I said, people even do this if it's very clear that they have definitely broken the rules.

Signing up, 1807

It would be helpful if the author could upload the current folder zipped to a Google drive or somewhere.

@ZLO said in 413 Payload Too Large from POST https://api.faforever.com/mods/upload:

Can we come back to this? They can't solve the problem.
We need a clearer understanding of what the problem exactly is.
And what can be done.
and if they need to decrease the file size then how much it needs to be decreased?
They have tried 307MB (before compression). that is ~50% mod size decrease and it does not let them upload the file.
also tested 100MB (before compression) and it lets them upload the mod, but they can't decrease mod size this much.
When talking about file size limits pls mention if it is before or after compression pls.

What is the mod about?

If it is a unit mod then you can split them over several, smaller mods. You would need to enable them all manually of course, but it would be the easiest approach.