Over the last week on the CTRA forum two drivers where banned from driving on their servers. One of these drivers asked politely:
'why was I banned?'
CTRA response = Thread Closed
the second driver disagreed with the decision & wrote an appeal
CTRA response = Thread Closed
I am not trying to be funny here but you cant just ignore people like this I find it quite a rude & completely ignorant way of dealing with driver queries. At the very least I think these people deserve some kind of response.??
I would expect the admin/mods of all people to be behave like the mature adults they are & deal with people accordingly. You cannot just dismiss people like this it is pure arrogance.
I would to hear some honest opinions on this subject.
its pointless trying to put a honest and genuine point across on here as its seems everything is biased towards them (from my expericence). And trying to get them to admit a mistake when banning someone is a waste of time also again i talk from experience (although ive not been banned) lets just says they look after there own lol
What you see is a closed thread because there are procedures set in place to deal with questions like this. It's not up for public debate unless the driver wishes to post his or her license notes and links to the reports and not just replays.
We do however ask them to appeal and we can begin the process of either...
A. Changing our Decision
or
B. help the person to understand why he or she was banned.
these are done via PM and other private tools to help keep bashing and flaming to a minimum. We set up the appeal system so threads like ones you are asking about don't happen, hence the closure.
CTRA deal with driver queeries in private, not in public, as that only encourages flames and arguments especially as the subject a driver is banned over is usually one that at least one driver is not able to be reasonable over.
As for Barlin & Redline Racing's actions that is a seperate issue and we accepted the appology a long time ago, quite why Mr Barlin wants to repeat the same mistake I dont know?????
EDIT: I would like to point out that whilst we'll deal with a driver suffering from red mist in private (although usually only after the mist has settled and they approach us reasonably) we do post our findings publicly by making all report ID's viewable both on the server and on our web page. We dont publish driver dispute details here on the LFS forums or allow them to be discussed as it's against LFS forum regulations and we completely agree with the spirit of that regulation.
Discussing bans or penalties in public can only really be done with smallish numbers otherwise it tends to become a free for all, post after post, thread after thread slanging/harboured a grudge/my 2 pence nightmare.
With something as vast and as organised (i.e. they have a procedure for those situations) as the CTRA I'd have thought it would be best that anything like that is dicussed in private via PM's.
Just have to look at some of the Redline "I was banned.." threads or even the FM ovals ones or the people who ran the GTR's at As Nastional (can't remember who ran them) as an example when it's done in public. Ends up very nasty and not really about anything but people being horrible to each other.
I think you missed my point. There is a system in place to help them, if they fail to use that system it is not our fault and hence no answer. We have answered all appeals as quick as we can. I believe we have 1 on file ATM.
It's their servers and they can do what ever they like with them.
If you think you have been treated unfairly then a search of the forums would have given you a way to appeal.
When writing an appeal you should stay calm and before submitting really, REALLY, think about it for a while. Do you really have a case? Or are you just whining for the points? Keep it short and to the point.
That's what I did and, surprise surprise, my appeal went through.
About that one person who whined about the driver infront braking too early. THAT excuse gets a ban on our team servers. This is RACING not hotlapping!
Besides not all people have the same set nor skill so the braking point varies a lot.
A very important point to consider is that every decision is taken after reviewing replays. We see the driver inputs. We see the actions taken. This evidence is then used to back up the decisions made.
A second point to consider is that some people can hold their hands up, acknowledge they've done wrong, deal with it and learn. Others take a more negative attitude. We can't make people see their infringements if they close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears and shout "CTRA Sucks!"
There are systems in place to make sure that tough decisions are reviewed, to eliminate bias (e.g. racing admins can report incidents but not deal with them) and to make it as fair as possible. I believe we go far further to "police" our servers fairly than most. Every other game server I've admin-ed has had nothing like this level of process and consideration to keep the admin decisions objective and not subjective.
Well if people are banned they probably deserve it. The admins on CTRA are very objective in my opion. What I dont get is why do you wanna ask about it in public. It isnt your concern. They did something wrong or on purpose and there banned. Secondly no need to discuss someones ban in public. If you wanna debat this kinda stuff goto Sam or Becky through PM. I still dont get why people doing this public.
I would shame mine ass off if I was banned. I wouldnt make it public.
The think i miss in every single ban thread is the people who had to suffor from the guy who was banned. How about them, they had to put up with that $&^%$##!!%%^$hole. They lost points due to his actions. But we nag about the guy who is banned ??.
To me if you got banned on CTRA you seriously f..... up and should be banned. The standard of admins on CTRA is very high and are clean and fair. Case closed, no nore public nagging about a ban
As has been made clear by many, there is and always has been an appeals process in place. When threads have been closed, that has never been the end of the matter. We've simply moved the discussion out of this subforum and into the established appeals procedure. Reports and appeals have always been limited to the www.raceauthority.com site and not this subforum.
Today, I've completed coding the appeals process into the CTRA website. Any driver can appeal a decision against them, as they always could. Their appeal, and the appeal admin's conclusion, will now be visible on the report lookup function (found through MyCTRA or the login page).
We have always guaranteed, and continue to guarantee, full transparency in processing reports. The new procedure improves and enhances visibility of the existing system, but the appeal structure itself has not been changed.
Anyone considering an appeal will be presented with the following text. It is essential to read it and abide by it before filing an appeal. Failing to abide by these guidelines will not improve the status of the report in question:
* Appealing admin decisions: A driver may appeal against an admin decision by filing an appeal. Drivers should only appeal decisions by admins if they genuinely believe that the original admin decision is based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Appeals must make specific references to the points/events in the report and/or replay, highlighting where they believe the admins' error(s) have been made. Entering into an argument with admins will not result in a favourable appeal decision.
Further to your post Garph, and TomBarlins post above, I am obliged to pass comment in the interests of balance and fairness.
Tom makes a valid point, CTRA, who are in the fortunate position of having LFS forum moderators on their team, do tend to look after their own, if someone posts or bad mouths them, the threads get locked and/or cleaned out, and the posters get an infraction (as I expect I will get for this post, oh well).
It sometimes feels as though this is their forum, not the LFS public forums.
In contrast, seeing as you brought it up Garph, in the days when the Redline servers were getting bashed in the forums, over and over by the same people, posting the same crap about 'I got banned and I didn't do nuffin, WTF?', did the LFS moderators ever lock or clean a thread after one or two posts attacking Redline, or FM ? As you pointed out, the answer to that is no, they didn't they allowed the insults and bashing to continue, did we get any support from the forum moderators at all ? No. They look after their own and don't give a hoot about any one else, if your not on their team, then they hang you out to dry.
At one point, after the forums were full of 'bash redline posts' even one of the moderators decided to jump on the 'bash redline' bandwagon, in what seemed to be an attempt at getting rid of any servers that were busier than theirs or something, I don't know what was going through their minds, but it got to the point where I had to make a complaint to Victor in order to get it to stop.
For the record, despite Becky's post suggesting otherwise, Redline have NEVER apologized to the CTRA, as we have never done anything to apologize for, Barlin is no longer associated with Redline Racing so I don't know why our name is getting dragged in to this other than to take another pop at the team, which I object to.
Personally I don't consider the admins of the CTRA to be fair as has been suggested in this thread, TomBarlin had a run in with one of them when he used to be a member of Redline, and I was told that my entire team would be banned if Tom didn't apologize, is that fair in your book ?
More recently, one of my active team members was given an infraction on the forums, for casually criticizing another user, after all the abuse me and my servers had to put up with, with no repercussions for the posters, I find it laughable, it's one rule for the CTRA, and another rule for the rest.
No doubt, there will be those that disagree with this post, but chances are, they will have CTRA in front of their name...
Infract away, if you try hard enough, you can prbably ban my whole team from your precious forums without Victor noticing, our servers will still be busy, ho hum. (sorry, had to be said!)
btw, this is the CTRA section, so you can expect a few pro-CTRA admins around. You find moderators in all the league and event sections.. sometimes lots of them. Sometimes, it seems like everyone's a moderator.. so there's nothing wrong with me moderating in my area. All the CTRA admins are mods in this section. It's our section.
The PM regarding Andy ? I don't really know why you sent that to me in the first place, what takes place between you and Andy, is none of my concern really, the fact I declined to answer it however, should answer the question you asked me directly.
If you feel it would be contructive and fair to post it's contents, be my guest, I place a great deal of importance on fairness, which is why I made sure that none of your CTRA members were banned from my servers by the actions of another admin who shall remain nameless... You need to earn a ban on Redline, from either your disruptive driving, or disruptive attitude, which none of you have done on my servers, and so I lifted all the bans that were inappopriately placed on your licences, I consider that fair, unlike the threats of blanket bans across a whole team due to the actions of one member and which the rest of the team had nothing to do with, but thats just my point in hand, which led to my post, sorry if you can't see this from my point of view, but this is unavoidably due to the actions of others, my point of view.
Im not talking about moderators in your section of the forum, Im talking about global moderators that only look out for their own, you just try and find a post bad mouthing the CTRA (apart from this post perhaps) and see how many you find, then count the posts about redline or FM.
Is that really because no one complains about the CTRA ? or because the posts get deleted and the threads get locked ? Im sorry Sam, but it is what it is.
If anyone from the CTRA wants to join a redline server and actually earn a ban, I will be only to happy to oblidge, but as fairness and clean racing is all I care about, then until that happens, I stand by my statement that none of you will be banned from my servers.
Being fair is one thing, but I can not, and will not, forget the events of the past, and the treatment I received from *some* of the moderators of this forum, sorry.
Okies.. but you might want to let andy know that he's no longer racing for Redline, because in his PM he definitely seems to think he is. He told me he was, anyway.
Nope, sod it. We don't need any more bloody grief from a bunch of angry paranoid and bitter/twisted people. The thread's closed because I'm sick to the back teeth of the drama. We don't go looking for it, we're just running our servers in our way. We don't spite anyone else and we've never gone looking for crap.
If you don't like the CTRA, then don't come by. We don't need the grief.. we're busy doing our own thing, and we just don't care. Spare us the paranoid victimized crap.. we're numb.
Why are we even discussing an incident that happened before the CTRA was formed?
OK some facts:
A redline racing driver had an incident with an STCC driver on the STCC public server system. It was in my opinion, and the opinion of every body else who commented on the replay (quite a few people expert and otherwise) not deliberate but it was the fault of the STCC driver.
The redline driver deliberately revenged wrecked the STCC driver and then started abusing the STCC driver in public chat on the server.
I asked the redline driver to calm down and told the STCC driver not to reply in voice. The Redline driver did not calm down and so I imposed a 1 day ban to give him time to call off.
The next thing I know there's a forum thread abuot STCC looking after their own and "anonymously" posted support along the lines of 'yeah I noticed that too' plus 1 3rd party driver who'd been banned off the system for wrecking. The annonymous support was from Redline team members.
I then found other Redline drivers posting abuse on the server. 1 day bans followed.
It became apparant that a large number of STCC officials and drivers where banned from the Redline server, so we banned any Redline driver we saw on our servers too, petit perhaps, but more than bloody deserved.
We established contact with the Redline Team management to clear the issue, we received an explanation and what I thought to be an appology, but I understand that is now retracted.
I dont need an appology from Redline, but I would like the facts to be known and understood seeing as I have been slandered and attacked in this thread.
All i've ever tried to do for this community is give, most of what i've had in return is egg on my face.
Its no wonder then that you barely see me around here any more is it. It's incidents like this and the Mercury one that I just couldn't take any more.
It was, afterall, meant to be a hobby.
I come by here sometimes to check things are ok, and I still see this same old shit. I try to run things from afar without getting involved but I find the constant bickering and old war wounds too deap and soul destroying.
I produce what I personaly believe to be the best abuse complaint system of any online game, certainly the best i've personaly seen, and still I get threads about "How CTRA deal with driver queries".
Well i'm going to tell you how I actually deal with it, I give up. I'm too tired to be dealing with petit dramas. I just dont have the energy to defend myself any more, let alone to keep giving new things.
As far as I am concerned I am no longer an admin of the CTRA, I havnt been for a long time. I havnt been active in LFS for a couple of months now and still I get PM's and protests and emails from drivers who havent followed the published procedure.
As for my future involvement in sim racing i'm afraid it's either business or nothing. The fun long since got ripped out of it for me.
So please, next time you want to drag my name through the mud get your bloody facts right or **** off.
