Amendment to Tribunal to allow suspended members to appeal

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Amendment: Tribunal Accessible to Suspended Members
Proposer: Tacticalwithdrawal
Supporters: makanyane, the Black Prince
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As proposed by Carach, and as I think used to happen for a while some time back, I would like to change the status of suspended members so that they still have access to the Tribunal (and only the Tribunal) so that they may lodge an appeal.

Currently any such appeals have to either wait for the person's suspension to finish (which kinda defeats the purpose of appealing), or the person either gets someone else to post their appeal, or creates a second account to lodge the appeal (which then breaks other rules).

Default for permabanned members is no access - it will be up to the tribunal on a case by case basis to decide whether to allow it or not. This (as makanyane points out below) allows them to ignored the technical permabans (eg. spam accounts) and review real members who are permabanned, the presumption being that as if you manage to get yourself permabanned I'm not sure you deserve an appeal.

So, I would propose the change to Article 2 shown below:

Article 2 - Tribunal
To defend the democracy and freedom of TWC, and to ensure fair and just punishment towards those who violate the laws of TWC, a Tribunal shall be established

The purpose of the Tribunal is to provide those members of TWC who have been punished in the past by the Moderation Branch a place to request the reversal of their punishment. This is in no way a guarantee that the punishment will be removed, but every case presented will be reviewed by a panel of three judges.

Members who are suspended will retain write access to the Tribunal only and may use that access to lodge an appeal. If this right is abused it may be withdrawn for that member at the discretion of the Tribunal. Permabanned members have access at the discretion of the Tribunal.

Members may create a thread in the Tribunal Forum with the Case Number and the name of the appealling member. The Judges will study the case details in a private sub forum, and may request any additional information on the member from the Senior Moderators. The Judges will then post the majority decision in the original thread, and ask the Chief Moderator to remove any warnings if so required. The Judges are not tasked to decide the appropriateness or validity of a Forum Rule of Term of Service, and may only rule on whether the Term was correctly enforced and the punishment suitable for the offence.

Edit - change to permaban added

[makanyane]

Seems entirely logical, I support. As you say it removes the temptation for anyone feeling aggrieved to use a duplicate account and hence get themselves in even more trouble.

I think you probably have to leave perma-banned members exempt from proposal, unless you have a second condition that separates out those accounts perma-banned for posting porn / spam adverts etc. from infractions by previously genuine members.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

hmm, good point - I've changed it so that it is up to the Tribunal whether permambanned members have access or not, which allows them to default filter out all the technical (eg. duplicates, spamming) accounts.

[Garbarsardar]

Yep, this is needed.

[the Black Prince]

ok, yes, i'll support

[Shaun]

Yes, I support this fully.

[Tom Paine]

Supported 110%. Somehow.

[the Black Prince]

this is proposed by tactical, and supported by me makanyane and garbarsardar

last version supported published on march 14, can this go to a vote please?

[Tom Paine]

Actually it appears the present version has 2 supporters: Last edited by Tacticalwithdrawal : March 14, 2007 at 04:23 PM. and only you and I have posted since then.

[Mímirswell]

Members who are suspended will retain write access to the Tribunal only and may use that access to lodge an appeal. If this right is abused it may be withdrawn for that member at the discretion of the Tribunal. Permabanned members have access at the discretion of the Tribunal.

The latter should be at the discretion of Hex and doesn't need explicit mentioning. If Hex decide someone is a danger to site security; I don't want to cause a constitutional crisis if the Tribunal disagrees. For the most part, standard protocol should let most Indefinitely banned members have access but I would prefer flexibility in that matter.

[Søren]

I support the concept of it; however - this is something which should be moderation policy, not curial.

For this reason - I have suggested it in staff - and will now introduce it regardless.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

To be honest, I wasn't sure this shouldn't be a decision rather than a syntagma ammendment.

If we change it to a curtial decision can we move it to a vote?

Actually it appears the present version has 2 supporters: Last edited by Tacticalwithdrawal : March 14, 2007 at 04:23 PM. and only you and I have posted since then.

sorry - my incompetance. You, Shaun and Garb have also stated your support

[Søren]

To be honest, I wasn't sure this shouldn't be a decision rather than a syntagma ammendment.

If we change it to a curtial decision can we move it to a vote?

Suspended and Indefinitly Banned members now have default access to view and post in their own threads, in the Tribunal.

However, the staff will reserve the full right to remove this privelidge, if felt necessary.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

thanks for that, makes a whole lot of sense and will make the Tribunals job a lot easier.

We can probably close this thread now?

[scottishranger]

Closed as the proposal has been implemented.