Overview
I’m not usually the one writing long forum posts like this, but in light of recent situations in which users including (myself)
were banned from the discord and main server, I felt it was finally time to raise the issue of a lack of communication from staff in regards to punishments.
This post isn’t and shouldn’t be seen as an attack on staff, I get along with a lot of staff members over the 9 years I’ve been a member of the community, but
instead to raise awareness of the lack of transparency from staff and contradicting statements. Because of staff actions, trust in the entire staff team (especially senior management/admins) has been lost by the player base. If you want an active player base, you need a competent staff team that doesn’t have bias towards one player than another.
Evidently, this post has been rushed and does not go into the details that I would like it to.
Ban Evidence
When banning a player for more than 24 hours, staff members must make a ban topic with evidence for the ban within 24 hours of the ban.
HelloMiners Community Rules - #9 by Luc
This rule has rarely been followed by staff, and currently there is no punishment for staff who do not post a ban topic for users banned
on the server within 24 hours. There are plenty of examples of this, the most recently being Adam_123 (Ban #4247 - HelloMiners)
who has yet to receive a ban topic within 24 hours, despite being banned almost a month ago. Users who do not receive ban evidence should
be unbanned. I’ve bought up this particular ban with Satan multiple times, who said he’d post it in the weekend which has still not been posted - and that was weeks ago.
Another example would be when Oza was jailed without explanation - I could go on all day about these incidents.
Inconsistency
One of the discord server rules is that users may be banned if they are banned from the main server. This is the reason 4K was banned, but I believe it was months before other players like NYC and GBT were banned, and being one of the most active discord users I still see Kidg7 in chat.
Today’s Incident
Context
So those active on the discord server may be aware that myself and Albinary were recently muted (i’m sure he’ll reply with his version of the story, but I believe muting both of us was justified - just the lack of communication wasn’t), and shortly after banned for the duration of our mute (24 hours) on the discord server.
For some context for what happened, binary posted a dumbed down version of instructions for a molotov cocktail that were not entirely accurate, and could be compared to how to make a bomb recipe being “1. have a shell 2. have gunpowder”, as well as redacted screenshot in which ChatGPT explained how to make meth, which was showing only key words that are all in the dictionary and not specially
relevant to the meth production process, as well as saying something along the lines of “the european commission website posts meth recipes”. After a message in which Somthicc asked for the full unredacted image, I then (stupidly) posted a similar image
with a link to the aforementioned Europa website.
Punishment
After being muted, I then created a thread in the forums channel where I pinged both Satan and Luna, and binary followed by creating two threads in the General Channel. Neither staff member responded to the ping, but binary was then banned at around noon BST for evading his mute. This is because permissions on the discord server have been incorrectly configured by the incompetent staff team (sorry for this, but saying ‘you’ll work on it’ isn’t helpful in the slightest.). For the following rest of the day until around 9PM BST I then continued posting in the help channels and department channels, without staff confrontation. I pointed this out in front of thendil on the HM classic server, where he removed my department roles which i then readded, continuing to bypass the mute. Later, I was banned by Thendil, with my ban reason in the discord server not being set. I still have yet to understand why I was banned around 9 hours later than Binary, despite being the one who created the initial thread - a clear representation of Thendil’s bias towards banning Binary.
Lack of staff communication
So far not a single admin has reached out to either of us, instead interacting through Thendil who is only a moderator. I’ve attached my correspondence with Thendil below, which did not occur until after the ban - I received no warning about the mute. I believe I received a message at the initial time of the mute at around 2am, but this message was deleted by the time I got to it.
This is similar to previous server bans, in which friends of mine have been banned from HM but have not been able to reach out to senior management about
their ban reason directly, instead resorting to communicating through Nico - who is amazing, but he’s a tech not a PR spokesperson. This isn’t an attack on Thendil or any other staff, but I’ve decided to include this to show how difficult it is to communicate with staff outside of the server.
I’ve attached a screenshot sent to me by a member of the community in which Binary has requested the reason for his warning, being ignored by staff. The vast majority of the senior management team on HM aren’t even active anymore, and clearly do not have the time commitments required to administrate a server. I would love for these staff members to step down from their roles which is unlikely to happen, but again this isn’t an attack you’re all great players and have heavily contributed to the community. Failure to act on any of this will result in the player base decreasing further, with recently some of the most active players like 4K being banned.
Staff, please step up your game.
