This topic was largely inspired by epicmafia.com/topic/16463 in case you want some background. To quickly summarize, I was suspended for 12 hours without being asked for my side of the case for something that was highly debatable and imo not worth any punishment. That topic brought up several issues which need to be addressed.

1) As EM is now there are no formally written rules which describe what constituents as cheating, trolling or undesirable behavior in general. Rules need to be created and they need to be made available to the public.

Things to consider:

Metagaming and to what extent is it acceptable What is trolling? How do you deal with suicides? What are proper punishments for varying acts? Is "neg-bombing" allowed or is it an abuse of power?

2) Unilateral powers of the mods. As of now there is nothing a player can do if they have been unjustly punished aside from complain. This is in conjunction with the previous points makes EM more oligarchical than democratic and holds Lucid and the mods as the supreme rulers. Issues such as consistency of punishment, fairness and so forth come up.

The solidarity of the mods are also a problem. In the link above you see something very interesting. Germ, the one who suspended me was very dismissive of the generous amounts of writing I made to clearly express my case; they seemed only interested in what would defend their position. That is a players vs mods where mods have to cover up and help each other regardless of the truth.

How were the mods picked? I do not remember any sort of voting process. If it was a matter of friendship and likability we have another problem, even if it was Lucids decision.

3) Bullying and meanness. If you look at the game in question you will see an onslaught of rude and angry comments directed toward me. If you look at the forum topic you will see this as well especially in the beginning. And furthermore this is the internet where people suddenly have big balls cause of the safety/anonymity. The issue of cyber bullying is a serious one. It is present in EM somewhat and it needs to be addressed. To me, this single issue is more important than any of the other ones and ties directly into the rules. Do we want to accept cyber bullying behavior? As it is we punish people for trolling but not for being cruel to another human being. Imo we ought to have a rule and a harsh corresponding punishment for offenders. Such ways of acting are simply unjustifiable.

I would like this topic to get stickyed so we can get these issues really noticed and completely resolved.