Appealing Moderator Actions

[Reverie]

Would you allow your community to appeal moderation actions? Let's say that a moderator has edited a post, banned someone, perhaps deleted a topic of the users, and the user did not agree with the actions that were taken.

How would you handle this as an administrator or even a moderator?

 

[dahLabdo]

I am still new to Xenforo but can you revert moderator changes on this forum software?

If you are able to revert changes, that might change my action depending on what has occurred. If I hire someone as a staff member, they are to be trusted by me and I trust their choices and also frame of mind behind actions they take.

To be fair, I will investigate fully with complete impartiality to both parties. I will formulate a response to the person involved with my findings and go from there. If I deem it not an appropriate action, I will deal with that either by making amends or reverting whatever was done to them. Regardless if the action is stuck or reverted, there will be a detailed formulation of why this was chosen.

I will debrief the team member, either outcome. I think it's important to trust your stuff and allow them the freedom to do their position but also you need to respect the members, sometimes mistakes happen. We are all human.

 

[Cory]

If a user was banned without my, the owner, consent then I would probably allow a user to appeal so I can be 100% sure if they deserve to be unbanned or remain banned for their actions. I'm sure that if I hired moderators I can trust that they would make the right decisions, but I would take such things up with the administrator. The owner should have the final say in a user's account status, in my opinion.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I'd take a look at what lead to the ban in the first place. If there wasn't a good reason for the moderator to ban the person, I'd talk to the moderator and lift the ban but keep a close eye on the member. I'd also keep an eye out on the moderator to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's one thing to disagree with a member's post, it's another thing if the member was breaking a rule.

 

[Reverie]

I am still new to Xenforo but can you revert moderator changes on this forum software?

If you are able to revert changes, that might change my action depending on what has occurred. If I hire someone as a staff member, they are to be trusted by me and I trust their choices and also frame of mind behind actions they take.

To be fair, I will investigate fully with complete impartiality to both parties. I will formulate a response to the person involved with my findings and go from there. If I deem it not an appropriate action, I will deal with that either by making amends or reverting whatever was done to them. Regardless if the action is stuck or reverted, there will be a detailed formulation of why this was chosen.

I will debrief the team member, either outcome. I think it's important to trust your stuff and allow them the freedom to do their position but also you need to respect the members, sometimes mistakes happen. We are all human.

Sometimes posts can not be returned or undeleted - depends. I know on another software deleted posts went to a trash can but never were fully deleted. Not sure if that is capable on here. A ban or a warning can be changed though.

 

[dahLabdo]

Sometimes posts can not be returned or undeleted - depends. I know on another software deleted posts went to a trash can but never were fully deleted. Not sure if that is capable on here. A ban or a warning can be changed though.

Thank you for confirming.

 

[Arantor]

So here's my hot take: I don't ever give moderators the ability to do anything that I as admin can't undo. The moderator deletes posts? Fine, but it'll go either to a trash area or however the relevant software does it as a soft delete until I can decide if I'm keeping it or not. Bans I don't generally give out to anyone but actual admins.

The only one that's a bit on the fence is merging; it's possible to merge topics and be pretty destructive with it in a way that's annoyingly hard to undo again, but it *is* possible. I generally haven't had to act in a way to undo this at scale but if in doubt I have backups and can restore the post->topic relationship that way if I have to.