[Slydria]

Alright, I'm going to broadly go over some of the concerns people have from my perspective:


GMs don't represent the community / GMs are not visibly active enough

I can't speak for the other GMs but I do agree that I at least have not active enough, especially lately.

I have my reasons, I'd say it's partly due to me wanting to do other things, partly because I've been doing this for a very long time, too long honestly (between both SL1 and SL2 I've moderated for over 10 years, I'm a bloody dinosaur at this point) and other more personal reasons I'd rather not divulge.

I apologize for that regardless and will make an effort to be more active when I can.


GMs are slow to deal with issues / slow to respond

While I'd say most of the time, this isn't the case. There are definitely exceptions and I think it's a fair assessment.

The reasons can vary, it may be that a situation is complicated and we need to ask multiple people about what happened who may or may not be available. It may be that we've been quite busy and the issue has been left at the wayside. It may be that only one of us really knows what's going on and are waiting on their input.

Excuses aside, situations can rarely slip by and that is entirely on us when it happens.


Lack of transparency / GMs aren't obligated to respond

I can think of a couple of reasons as to why you might not get a response to a ban thread or a report or whatever else, if it's not due to being preoccupied.

In some cases, particularly ones involving player harassment, we may be silent in hopes of protecting them.

Unfortunately, this feels like an increasing issue lately, I have heard stories of people pushed into silence due to fear of retaliation or being ostracized and others outright quitting due to being on the receiving end of harassment.

While historically, we've had a hands off approach to off game behavior, I don't think we can afford to be so idle about it now. Especially when it comes the reported or their friends harassing via messenger over reporting a player, that at the very least should be something actionable.


Another reason may be that we feel what you're trying to bring forth is completely off-base, intellectually dishonest or you are being incredibly rude.

We weren't born yesterday and we don't appreciate our time being wasted on frivolous cases or garbage behavior.

I understand this is not a good metric to outright ignore people but I am not infinitely patient, if you show me overt disrespect or lies, I will refuse to hear you out. Please be honest and respectful when you're putting yourself forth to GMs.


GM team could use some new members

Absolutely. I want more capable members who are willing to stick it out. Let me make no secret of this, if I felt there were several capable GMs who can carry the torch, I would resign and fall back to a more artistic role from now on. 

But as much as I'd like to elect some hopefuls, I don't actually know who is both capable and willing off the top of my head. Sure, part of which probably is due to my own inactivity.


Players / GMs don't have sufficient tools (e.g. insufficient access to game logs, no public outlet for reporting).

Agreed. We straight up do need our own logging tools for SL2. Only being able to make use of player logs is not efficent and is capable of being manipulated purposefully or otherwise to paint an out of context picture.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate those who have been taking records and using them to verify their cases but this has been a big problem for ages.

Thankfully, this is something we have brought up to Dev recently and he does plan on improving them but it may take some time due to how much work he has.

As for the public reporting forum idea, I am concerned it will not be a clean implementation. As mentioned before, I feel harassment is a growing issue and I think this kind of thing would paint a target on people's back; such as people who do report potentially being labelled a snitch and become excluded from groups as a consequence.