I don't think any of you realize how much these people actually do to keep this game and forum safe. I've seen moderators stay up all night long to make sure somebody was watching the game and that nothing bad was going to happen. Every time somebody says "mod abuse!", I just roll my eyes. There is such a sophisticated process that goes into each ban. In order for you to have been banned, so many things have to go wrong. They are very lenient and try to work with players.
Before anyone even gets banned, excluding any extreme cases, a formal warning is sent to the offender. If they fail to correct their behavior/actions, they will get banned. It always seems like those who cry mod abuse don't always share the full story. They will make things sound really dark and evil, but in order for them to even be in the situation they are/were in, they had to have blatantly ignored the moderation team reaching out to them letting them know that what they're doing isn't right.
Moderators reserve the right to kick, warn, restrict, and ban players. If you think you were affected wrongly by a moderator, reach out to TLOPO at their support email. A person on the head of the moderation team will personally review the actions of their moderators, sit down one of one with them and figure out what happened. If they disagree with that moderator's actions, they will lighten or remove bans. Keep in mind that they're all human too, and humans aren't perfect. No moderator on the team will purposely be trying to harm players or ban players. If there ever is a mod like that, they'll be fired without hesitation.
I feel horrible for staff like Stephen and MMDR for getting such backlash. I've worked first hand with MMDR in the past and know she takes her job very seriously. She is a team player who spends countless hours making sure nobody is harming others in-game, she also hears appeals and helps out players wherever she can.
The PF staff are never going to stop community members from voicing opinions, after all they are the community too! PF and TLOPO both are community members taking the time to run a service for the rest of the community to enjoy -- and they do a pretty darn good job at it!
After seeing all of these threads about mod abuse, I reached out to my former co-workers and asked them what the percentage of players was who were banned in-game. It's a shocking
0.13% of accounts that have had
any form of moderation review/infraction. Whether a moderator looked at their account, banned their account, kicked them, or even left a note on their profile for other staff to review. If there really was a lot of mod abuse, l would imagine that number would be a heck of a lot higher.
Toontown Rewritten's team revealed that
0.73% of accounts had any form of infraction.
From one community member to another,
enough already. You might not realize it, but claiming mod abuse when it's a justified case classifies as staff harassment. You're claiming that a moderator took the time out of their day to personally harm you, which is wrong. You're slandering their name and The TLOPO Team won't put up with that. If you want to go complain about something go to /r/complaints where you'll find a lot of other people who probably have much worse problems than a ban on a children's game.
As an insight, I have witnessed several cases where
an actual registered *** offender was playing on TLOPO trying to get
personal information from
kids. This problem is not imaginary, it is real. There is a good reason for why moderators exist. They're not here to annoy you, they're here to keep you safe and make sure people follow the rules.
tl;dr: The TLOPO Team and The PF Team are made up community members just like you. They have no reason to individually harass/ban any random player that shows up on the forums. Their jobs are to keep you safe and will not sleep without knowing everyone in this community is safe. Please lighten up already with this mod abuse nonsense. You're not doing anything but embarrassing yourself.
</end rant>