@BlackYps said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

@IndexLibrorum said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

You describe the exact approach we currently use to cover non-participant reports. Because we cannot cover each hypothetical, we've consistently phrased it as "we do not generally accept reports from people not participating in the game". Even with this type of phrasing we already frequently get attempts at rule-lawyering (for this and similar rules), where people argue that "well, it's not exactly against the rules as written, so you can't ban me", which is why we have to resort to these more general phrasings. But the situation you describe is the exact protocol we now adhere to.

I feel that it would make sense to spell out the reasoning of rules more explicitly in the rule page. Currently we have the rules that explain what is allowed or forbidden and we have moderators stepping around specific questions by saying "we don't generally do X", but if we leave the discourse at that it keeps being frustrating for both sides. As a player you don't get a clearcut answer, only vague statements that don't help you to gauge when you risk a ban. As a moderator you don't want to be too broad with your statements because some smartass will abuse the statement and find behaviour that should be punished but that would be against the wording of the moderator.

To be fair here, the players do absolutely know what risks a ban: breaking the rules on that page. Not being reported for it, (and that we do not proactively seek out, nor (generally) ban people based on the reports of those not in the game) does not change this. Technically, they are only "getting away" with it by virtue of not being reported by players in the game.

So it really wouldn't change anything to spell it out more, and as has been said previously by you and Index, spelling it out too broadly is unhelpful because we can't cover all edge cases, and it only invites a situation where a specific edge case hasn't been written down.

@BlackYps said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

If we instead spell out the reasonings and goals in the rule page, then it becomes clearer for everyone. We could add statements like "A report from a person not in the game will only be considered if it explains how the behaviour in the game is harmful for the community at large. Otherwise it will be discarded." This would also make it clearer what reasoning the mod team uses to interpret the rules.

I would think something similar to this, - i.e a statement to give a few examples, but specifically not be an exhaustive list around why we would sometimes do this, is reasonable to add, but i'm not entirely sure it will change much.