Disciplinary Process

[Fellis]

When a rule breaking report is received by a Game Master (GM) or Admin (who are also GMs), they will post about the report in our developer-only moderation forum. A GM (typically the one who posted the report) will attempt to follow up the complaint by gathering in-game logs, any database information, and reaching out to the accused, to establish the basis of the case. As noted in the rules for making reports: any and all information you can provide -- screenshots of relevant chat logs, logs of in-game actions, and character ID numbers of involved and witnessing characters -- will be very helpful in this process. And yes, we are aware that discord screenshots can be easily faked. Once a report and all relevant documentation is posted, it will be reviewed by the development team as a whole for discussion.

Depending on the rules that were broken and the severity of actions taken, GMs may decide to apply a penalty. Generally, more significant penalties will be applied if a user has prior infractions and is demonstrating bad faith consideration of the rules. Community conduct violations are treated more seriously and will incur more serious penalties than breaking rules against in-game rules like alt abuse. In all cases, GM findings, rulings, and penalties are always documented internally by the team.

Possible penalties may include:

• Warnings against future behavior
• Preventing characters from performing any speech actions for a timeout period (ranging from days to weeks)
• Temporary disabling of specific characters involved in rulebreaking for a timeout period
• Temporary disabling of all of a user’s characters for a timeout period
• Temporary or permanent bans from the Discord or Forum
• Limits on the number of characters a user is allowed to play
• Permanent bans from the Nexus Clash site

If a penalty is applied to you, an email explaining it will be sent to the email address associated with your account. If you wish to appeal or question the penalty, please do so by replying to this email, which will put you in touch with an account that all admins can access. Also, do not assume that any one specific GM was behind your penalty - judgments are based on the facts of the case and the consensus of the development team.

Also, an important point of Nexus Clash moderation policy is that it is the actions of the accused, not the actual or claimed feelings of the accuser, that will be used to determine any moderation. For example, we might receive a report from Player A that they feel their characters are being singled out for hunting and raiding by the characters of Player B... only to discover that sifting through B’s actions and patterns shows that B isn’t killing A’s characters any more frequently than B kills anyone else. Do not assume any other player was responsible for your penalty, it is YOUR actions that are important.

Moderation Disclosure Policy

The extent to which moderation actions are announced to the community is dependent on the nature of the offense. For example:

• At the most discreet: When someone reports a possible infraction to a GM, the team will deal with it via our procedure. Upon conclusion of the process, the person who reported the incident will be told privately that the report was looked into, and whether or not action was taken, without discussing specifics.
• At the most public: When a player has committed a serious enough infraction as to be permanently banned, this will be announced publicly on the general discord and our forum, along with the general nature of the infraction(s) leading to the ban.

Depending on the nature of the offense, anything between these two extremes may or may not be made public when action is taken. GMs may, at their discretion, discuss discipline actions publicly. While GMs rarely want to "Name and Shame" in any instance, they are not bound to secrecy with regard to discussing punishments. However any such disclosure is typically discussed within the development team first. (As an aside: dealing with rule enforcement is absolutely the worst part about being a GM and nobody with that role wants to focus on it, or cause drama. Keep reports in PMs and don't vilify players who have broken rules, it helps absolutely nobody.)

If someone who has been disciplined publicly speaks about the disciplinary action, GMs may weigh in on it from their perspective. If an issue has been widespread enough to be public knowledge, it is usually necessary for the punishment imposed to be public as well. This will generally be via a post in the forums. If anything has been made public and a decision is reversed on appeal, the results of the appeal will also be publicized.

Other notes/FAQ

• Please appeal a penalty if you do not agree! Nobody on the development team joined to be an expert judge, and we have been wrong before. For any level of punishment, an appeal explaining any circumstances or requesting more information may be made to a GM. This appeal may be made by contacting multiple admins by emailing [email protected], or via PMs on the Forums or Discord. This should be a good-faith appeal and explanation of behavior, not arguments of rule interpretation.

• Self-reporting rule violations is absolutely an option, and is quite common. We all make mistakes, and bringing it to the attention of a GM after you realize is far more likely to result in a warning or minor penalty.