We are trying something new to see how this works! We know it can be hard to find the time and place to give feedback, so we are creating focused surveys to gather your opinions. This is on behalf of all staff, so players from any community are welcome to answer. Keep in mind we can only read your answers in languages that have staff members.

Right now, we want to hear what you think about the process of appealing bans. This is only for feedback about the ban appeal process, this is not the place to appeal your ban or give feedback about other staff-related things. If this works well, we will create surveys about other topics in the future.

Here is the survey link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfM73_aq34s4FtBPBjqiBZPWyVoKeWWDi5Vr4v51u_2WM7BoA/formResponse

This survey is open indefinitely, but we may close with advanced notice to open a new topic. If you have any questions or want to talk to staff about other things right now, feel free to send anyone a message or post in the Staff FAQ.

We've had some good feedback submitted so far! The survey will still be open for now, but I wanted to post about some common suggestions.

• A Ticket System: There were many suggestions for a system where players could put in a ticket about a ban appeal, question, suggestion, or other contact and receive a response from the next available staff member. This would improve response time and allow us to help players when we are available. We could put this together on the forums (BR has a thread for this) or possibly on discord, but we will have to find a bot and system that works well for us. In the future we would like to have a contact form like the support admins use, but unfortunately the admins are not able to add that to the forums right now.
  
  
• Multiple mods review appeals/evidence: Having a second (or third) opinion sounds fair to us. Even now, players may contact another staff member to explain the situation if they believe it is unfair - the mod may not always agree with you, but if they do, they can talk to the first mod directly. If we are able to implement a ticket system, we would try to find a way to include more than one staff member.
  
  At least on EN, we make sure to save all evidence where we can check in case of an appeal. For chat offenses we can usually tell you exactly what was said to earn the sanction. Unfortunately for hacking bans, we cannot share that evidence with players because it can be used by cheaters to avoid detection in the future.
  
  
• Put how to appeal on the ban screen: This has been suggested a few times, and it would make the process very easy for players. However, it would also encourage everyone to appeal their bans, just in case it somehow worked. I asked moderators about their appeal "success" rate, how often they came to an agreement to unban a player, and most said somewhere between <5% and almost never. We would prefer if players did not appeal their bans unless they genuinely believe they were following the rules.
  
  Update: I have been informed that there is already information on the ban screen. There is a big button that leads to this thread, which includes info about the rules and what to do if you want to discuss your ban. It is a little outdated so we would like to update it, but this suggestion pretty much already exists!
  
  
• Moderation Team Leaders: There were a lot of variations of this suggested. A long time ago there were Supermods, which were like mod managers, but this was canceled due to members abusing their position. If we had such leaders now, they would of course be held to a much higher standard and managed by Meli. This means it is her decision, so we will tell her of the idea, but it is not up for us to decide.
  
  
• A note on the Admin Contact Form: Moderators do not have access to these emails. They are checked by support admins who only handle account and fraises problems. They are not involved in the volunteer staff teams at all, so they cannot handle things like ban appeals and staff misconduct. Meli herself and the moderation team handle staff issues (we're well aware of the pros and cons of this, see previous point.)

If your specific suggestion was not included on this list, don't worry! We have read all of them. If we find time, we may reply if you left your username, or you are always welcome to message us first. We are also open to more feedback on these ideas via the survey.