Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance

Deli

Hello everyone,

I’d like to propose the creation of an Oversight and Review Committee—a community-run body designed to provide independent oversight of the moderation team, and potentially other decision-making branches of the platform, if necessary.

The Problem:
Right now, there is no real way for community members to challenge or review moderation decisions, especially by anyone outside of the moderation team itself. This creates a closed system where actions, even if potentially unreasonable or inconsistent, go unchecked.

Without an independent mechanism for feedback or accountability, we risk eroding trust and alienating members who feel decisions are unfair or opaque.

The Solution: An Oversight and Review Committee
The Oversight and Review Committee would not act as a second layer of moderation, nor would it get involved in day-to-day enforcement. Instead, it would function as a periodic review panel that meets at set intervals (e.g., quarterly) to:

Review accumulated concerns from the community
Analyze larger trends or patterns in moderation actions
Discuss major incidents that may indicate deeper issues
Provide recommendations on improvements to transparency, communication, and fairness

This would create a constructive feedback loop rather than an adversarial relationship between moderators and the community.

Core Objectives of the Oversight and Review Committee:
Oversight & Evaluation: Look into recurring concerns or high-impact actions taken by moderation.

Balance & Accountability: Offer checks on decision-making power without interfering in active moderation.
Community Advocacy: Provide a structured way for community voices to be heard and reflected in governance.
Policy Feedback: Suggest changes to moderation practices or guidelines based on observed patterns.
Clarifying the Role:
The committee would not handle appeals or individual cases.

It would meet infrequently and intentionally, focusing only on larger issues or repeated complaints.
Its role is to identify and address systemic concerns, not to undermine the moderation team’s authority.

Benefits of This Structure:
Builds Trust: By showing that moderation is open to oversight and reflection, we reinforce faith in the system.

Encourages Accountability: Encourages moderators and admins to act with consistency and clarity, knowing there’s an external lens on major actions.

Fosters Community Involvement: Allows the broader community to have a voice in how the space is governed.
Improves Transparency: Even just the existence of the ORC can lead to clearer processes and communication.

Call to Action:
Let’s open the floor for feedback:

Would an Oversight and Review Committee be a valuable addition to our community structure?

How should members of such a group be selected?

What responsibilities and limitations should they have?

This proposal isn’t about creating conflict—it’s about making sure the structures we rely on to guide the community are fair, transparent, and accountable. Let’s work together to make this happen.

I’ll be honest—I’m not 100% sure yet how the selection process for members should look (probably an election by association and is must be able a subject of change), but from here on out, I’m open to suggestions and ideas from anyone who wants to help shape this constructively.

Consider this post to be part one—a starting point for what will hopefully become a more structured and practical addition to our community governance. Let’s build this together.

Please provide feedback to this idea

maudlin27

Given the description of the problem, it sounds like you may not be fully aware of how things currently operate - FAF essentially already has a review committee that has oversight of the mod team, which is elected by the FAF association.

You note as problems:

No way for community members to challenge moderation decisions - incorrect, appeals can be raised which are considered by at least 2 mods independent of the original decision, and which gives the person subject to sanction the chance to challenge the reasoning and provide additional evidence to support their case
No way for anyone outside of the mod team to review decisions - incorrect, the FAF board is able to review decisions by the mod team, and the president of the board has access rights to see mod discussions
Unreasonable or inconsistent actions go unchecked - Depends on whose perspective. Unsurprisingly most people who are banned think it is unreasonable they were subject to a ban. The person who reported them thinks it reasonable they were. The mod team's job is to assess as an independent party whether there's been a breach of the FAF rules.

You conclude that the aim is "about making sure the structures we rely on to guide the community are fair, transparent, and accountable". All three are currently the case. Re transparency the moderation team's spent significant time documenting their processes and sharing this with the board, along with still relatively detailed information on these publicly (but as I think your post demonstrates, there appears a lack of awareness of this structure). Changes to rules can be proposed to the FAF association/board to ensure the rules applied are fair. As for accountability, individual mods are accountable to the team lead, while the mod team and team lead are accountable to the FAF board.

IndexLibrorum

Hi there Deli,

I notice that this proposal does not discuss the existing methods by which the moderation team can be challenged or its workings changed. Oversight is already provided through the FAF Board, with which we frequently discuss issues and which holds the authority to intervene in moderation matters where needed. The Board, composed of elected representatives of the FAF community, exists to ensure accountability and balance across major operational areas—including moderation.

Furthermore, community-driven input exists through multiple channels:

Community members can suggest changes to the moderation rules, which are then discussed and evaluated within the FAF association.
Moderation decisions can be formally challenged through the appeal system, which allows for reconsideration by moderators who were not originally a part of the decision that lead to the ban.

Some of your suggestions, specifically those related to publicizing larger trends and patterns in moderation actions, have been identified by us as well as areas for improvement. To this end we are currently working on a structured way to provide quarterly reports to the board on the activity of the moderation team. It is likely that we will publish this data to the rest of the community as well.

Beyond reviewing concerns and analyzing trends, what do you concretely aim for this committee to do? You mention balance and accountability, and the ability to "offer checks on decision-making power without interfering in active moderation". How do you envision this? Is it your intention to allow this committee to revert decisions made by the moderation team, or will it strictly be tasked with feedback and review, as indicated by how you wrote that "the committee would not handle appeals or individual cases"?

The proposal suggests quarterly meetings and periodic reviews, but does not clarify what metrics would define success or improvement. Without a clear benefit beyond what the FAF Board already provides, the introduction of a new committee may add more complexity than value.

I understand that you are posting this proposal as a rough draft. I want to highlight several points that need clarification, as you work on completing your proposal.

You mention consistency and clarity as particular points that should be improved. The moderation team believes it is applying penalties consistently and fairly. What has led you to include these two points in particular?
You write that "even just the existence of the ORC can lead to clearer processes and communication". Why do you believe this is the case, and what is necessary for this to work?
The proposal acknowledges uncertainty around the selection process for committee members. Without a clear mechanism to ensure both neutrality and qualification, there's a risk that the committee could be perceived as biased, or driven more by popularity than competence. Have you got any thoughts on how to prevent any selection of committee members from turning into a popularity contest?

I am not convinced that the core suggestion of this proposal, that FAF would benefit from a new layer of governance beyond the FAF Board and existing community mechanisms is beneficial. If the concern is a perceived lack of transparency, perhaps a more efficient solution would be improving public documentation of moderation processes, including anonymized reports or summaries of major decisions and trends. To this end, we already have taken extensive steps to increase the accessibility of the appeal process and rule change proposal system, as well as made a lot of effort to clearly communicate the inner workings and protocols of the moderation team.

I look forward to a more fleshed out proposal that takes these considerations into account and answers the remaining questions.

Nuggets

@maudlin27 said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

Given the description of the problem, it sounds like you may not be fully aware of how things currently operate - FAF essentially already has a review committee that has oversight of the mod team, which is elected by the FAF association.

You note as problems:

No way for community members to challenge moderation decisions - incorrect, appeals can be raised which are considered by at least 2 mods independent of the original decision, and which gives the person subject to sanction the chance to challenge the reasoning and provide additional evidence to support their case

Yes, the appeal system in and of itself is fine (imo). However, es expressed by "countless" people I have talked to no-one agrees with the decision making on some specific topics / cases. So what exactly is my option? I can't talk to moderation team to think about it again, as it clearly already failed.
I'm not trying to say anybody can just go ahead and complain to a different team if the appeal doesn't work. But the problem is the Moderators are creating the rules, deciding how to implement them on the games and handling the reports and appeals.

No way for anyone outside of the mod team to review decisions - incorrect, the FAF board is able to review decisions by the mod team, and the president of the board has access rights to see mod discussions

Yes, and no-one wants to take this away from the board. However, I doubt the board actively does this, or even wants to do this. Not to mention that a player doesn't really know he has the option of notifying the board on this. If there is a team created for this exact scenario (and as said in the post, meets in a set interval) these things can be handled in a more clear way.
At least that's how I see it.

Unreasonable or inconsistent actions go unchecked - Depends on whose perspective. Unsurprisingly most people who are banned think it is unreasonable they were subject to a ban. The person who reported them thinks it reasonable they were. The mod team's job is to assess as an independent party whether there's been a breach of the FAF rules.

While you can say that it's mostly the people getting banned saying this, it's not necessarily true. Anyway, as I mentioned, the problem is that the mod team is the judge, jury and executioner with no ACTIVE oversight. -> if this is not the case, I am not aware of it, but feel free to correct me

You conclude that the aim is "about making sure the structures we rely on to guide the community are fair, transparent, and accountable". All three are currently the case. Re transparency the moderation team's spent significant time documenting their processes and sharing this with the board, along with still relatively detailed information on these publicly (but as I think your post demonstrates, there appears a lack of awareness of this structure). Changes to rules can be proposed to the FAF association/board to ensure the rules applied are fair. As for accountability, individual mods are accountable to the team lead, while the mod team and team lead are accountable to the FAF board.

Transparency is probably what FAF lacks the most - at least in the aspect of moderation. I'm sure this is not the intention but this is how it feels to the outside (as I've mentioned in my feedback to you).
As far as I stand, the goal here is not to revert some moderation decisions or bans, but "change" / improve them for the future / next time. Especially how some rules are implemented are currently (not just for me) a huge concern.

maudlin27

@Nuggets said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

So what exactly is my option? I can't talk to moderation team to think about it again, as it clearly already failed....I doubt the board actively does this, or even wants to do this. Not to mention that a player doesn't really know he has the option of notifying the board on this.

If a player doesn't know of that option, then that suggests the problem is awareness. For example you ask what is your option (where you disagree with a mod appeal decision) - if you think you've been treated unjustly you could contact a board member to raise your concerns.

You also state the board doesn't actively do this, but I'm aware of the board president doing this for some contentious cases that have been raised in recent months. I can't speak for the board or president as to whether they want to have the role, just as I don't think you can (unless the board has told you this). Clearly if the board and president say that while technically they have the power to do this they don't want to and want to delegate that power, then that changes things and there'd be more of a case for setting up a separate role for someone to do this. However, I fail to see how you solve the problem that people are unaware of the current escallation route for reviewing moderation actions by creating a new group of people to do that - either way players would need to be aware of the existence of the option for escallation.

the problem is that the mod team is the judge, jury and executioner with no ACTIVE oversight.

While a popular expression, in the UK as an example (and I suspect many other countries) it's common for judges to adjudicate between two parties, and decide on the penalty/action (i.e. in non-criminal cases). They also have an appeal system where say 3 judges will assess the decision of the first judge and rule on it. It's simply impractical for FAF to implement a jury system, and the proposal as currently phrased wouldn't change the concept of having someone who decides if a rule is broken and (if so) what the sanction is. I also don't see any benefit of separating out the 'executioner' role (i.e. the person that processes a ban once it's been decided what the ban is).

Re the active oversight point, the mod team are already subject to active oversight. Lack of awareness that such oversight takes place doesn't mean there's no active oversight - it's just that most people won't have visibility of such discussions because they're not taking place in public.

how some rules are implemented are currently (not just for me) a huge concern.

This proposal as currently described doesn't purport to address this. It's proposed solution is that a report will be done quarterly to "provide recommendations on improvements to transparency, communication and fairness". In contrast, if there was a concern that the mod team is incorrectly applying certain rules, then that feels like precisely the sort of scenario suitable for the board to review and assess with no need for a quarterly committee (unless, per my earlier comment, the board decides they don't want to act as an escallation point for the mod team). If it's not actually the mod team's enforcement of rules that is an issue but the rule itself, then this could be discussed by the FAF association.

Giebmasse

Appreciate the proposal draft. Also a bit shame seeing it as we've tried to address the mentioned problems as well as can be done with the means we have. Several of the mentioned key points are already in place too while we are also currently working on improving parts highlighted in the proposal, as mentioned by previous responses of moderation team members (perhaps these should be communicated better in some way?).

I would prefer a solution oriented approach, no beating around the bushes, so I'll perhaps be a bit more direct:
Do we have such a widespread problem or challenge on our hands that require this level of change?

From the team's POV, the experienced abrasions recently, which probably ignited this proposal, has been from a specific player segment in the community. Segment being higher rated players, most often playing in closer groups as well.
While this segment represents a small portion of the total volume of reports and actions we process, I'd question if there is a problem as wide-spread as the proposal actions would suggest is needed to be made.

It is also worth highlighting a few steps that could've been taken before this proposal, essentially using the existing "OCR" mechanism in place:

Contact me, as team lead I'm not hiding nor do I bite, besides our appeal systems and support tickets in place, I can be contacted and discussed with as a next step
If discussing with me is not enough, the board can also be contacted with if you still feel your issue has not been addressed or you have been treated wrong
(We realized now these parts were by mistake not clearly documented in the jan 2025 rewrite albeit being in place since the association, we will add this information to the documentation, our bad.)

I would therefore like to ask if we can't solve the experienced abrasions with more pin-point actions, that require less overhead from everyone, rather than this larger suggested committee work in the proposal, of which many parts are already in place with current systems. In other words, can you please elaborate further so we can get to the meat of the issue at hand and perhaps fix it with less work for everyone involved. If there is a need to go into specific cases, feel free to pm or we can setup a channel with the relevant parties.

We have strived to document our rules, policies and how the moderation in FAF works as well as we can, we welcome any input on how we can make this even clearer. Our latest larger effort on this was in the beginning of this year.

We've also involved the community when forming new rules/policies or changing older ones, something we don't intend to stop with.

Example with leaving games https://forum.faforever.com/topic/8372/faf-rules-on-leaving-games-have-your-say/1

As a general comment, the moderation team is currently trying to clear the backlog of reports which came due to DDoS and us being unable to access said reports during that time. Our time spent on this proposal preparation right now would be time away from processing said reports. I hope everyone understands if our answers on this topic are thus more delayed than perhaps expected due to that.

waffelzNoob

The problem might not be a lack of structure, but a lack of perceived accessibility and transparency. If people don't know how to appeal decisions, who to contact, or how moderation decisions are reviewed, then in practice, those systems might as well not exist for them. Saying "you can talk to the board" isn't helpful if that process isn’t clearly laid out, regularly reinforced, or seen as responsive. Similarly, internal oversight only matters if there’s external confidence in it.

Rather than setting up a new committee, it might be more effective to focus on improving the visibility and communication of existing systems. For example:
– Publish anonymized summaries of significant or contentious moderation decisions, including explanations of why a particular ruling was made.
– Share regular moderation activity reports publicly, not just to the board.
– Make escalation procedures clearer and more accessible.
– Consider having someone serve as a liaison or ombudsperson—someone neutral that people can approach with concerns that aren’t suited for the appeal system.

None of this requires changing the authority of the moderation team or creating more bureaucracy. It’s just about showing, clearly and consistently, that the systems already in place are being used fairly and responsibly.

magge

@waffelzNoob said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

If people don't know how to appeal decisions, who to contact, or how moderation decisions are reviewed, then in practice, those systems might as well not exist for them.

We could look into it, to redirect banned users to a dedicated "banned-page" where the information about "How to appeal and where", and "how are moderation decision made and reviewed" is written.

I think that idea came already up some long time ago, but with the DDoS and lot of other projects, it ended really far down the to-do list.

IndexLibrorum

@waffelzNoob said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

The problem might not be a lack of structure, but a lack of perceived accessibility and transparency. If people don't know how to appeal decisions, who to contact, or how moderation decisions are reviewed,

All of this is extensively documented on the FAF website (and here), which we frequently reference and guide people to when asked. At some point it becomes the responsibility of the user to get familiar with the relative information. Whether we've reached that point can be a matter to be discussed, but the information is available and accessible.

Nuggets

@IndexLibrorum said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

@waffelzNoob said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

The problem might not be a lack of structure, but a lack of perceived accessibility and transparency. If people don't know how to appeal decisions, who to contact, or how moderation decisions are reviewed,

All of this is extensively documented on the FAF website (and here), which we frequently reference and guide people to when asked. At some point it becomes the responsibility of the user to get familiar with the relative information. Whether we've reached that point can be a matter to be discussed, but the information is available and accessible.

Imo not really what he said. Yes, it is documented how to report, and what happens in theory. However, the lack of transparency of whats happening in practice is just not there.
I don't doubt you follow those steps, BUT from the outside perspective it just looks like the report / case gets "ping-ponged" between likeminded people and does not really change. Yes I know of cases where the ban got lowered or removed, but never have I seen the moderators say something like "yeah, true, ban was not warranted"

I think a big reason why this ORC was recommended was to have different people looking at these decisions.
To put it in clearer words: We, at least the people I know / interact with, feel like there is a huge lack of understanding as to how our "high" rated games go. I'm not trying to be elitist here, its just that (what we feel like) context is ignored or not understood.

BlackYps

I like the idea of having a "you have been banned, now what" page.
It's true that most of the information is already accessible, but the discussion shows that it's clearly not as well-known as it needs to be.
Currently, when you try to log in you see your ban duration and the reason for the ban. It's not immediately obvious how to proceed from there. If we link to a dedicated page we can compile all relevant information there. This should give people a clear path what their options for actions are now and should increase the trust that the system is well thought-out and working.
Information on that page should include:

link to rule page
link to explanation of the appeal process
explain that appealing can still make sense even if the ban is very short, because your moderation history is taken into account in future reports
explain that if people think there is an issue with the process, even after appealing, they can contact Giebmasse as the team lead or the board.
explain why individual decisions should not be discussed in public and clarify that discussing rules in general and proposing changes is still possible in public, preferably the forum.

@Nuggets said in Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance:

To put it in clearer words: We, at least the people I know / interact with, feel like there is a huge lack of understanding as to how our "high" rated games go. I'm not trying to be elitist here, its just that (what we feel like) context is ignored or not understood.

It makes sense to me that the moderation team does not completely revert decisions if they correctly apply the existing rules. It seems that part of this problem is that maybe the rules are not suitable for some high rated games, or maybe these people would like to have different rules? In this case it makes the most sense to have a discussion about these rules.

Proposal: Establishment of an Oversight and Review Committee to Support Fair Moderation and Governance

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