For some reason, people have been beating the drum on this for the last few days. I don't know what suddenly caused this mass consciousness shift since I hadn't heard any complaints for over the last few years, but everyone's going a bit bug-eyed over the whole "player-who-wasn't-involved-in-the-incident submitting a post telling the ban appellate to request headmin review" post. Ever since I became an admin, it was always assumed/presumed that the player would either petition for review
or concede with the admin's point and eat the note/ban/whatever had occurred. Ever since I became a Trial Admin in early December of 2021, that was the system as far as I understood it.
Now, people are automatically defaulting to "OH HEADMINS SHOULD
KNOW THAT EVERY APPEAL NEEDS A REVIEW" or maybe something more toned down than like "A Headmin should know when to intercede in an appeal..." This is a confusing though process for me, and I just want to field more opinion on this.
I'm going to leave my personal opinion in this spoiler. If you think that my opinion will somehow sway yours in some extreme manner, make your post and then crack this open. If you want to dispute my opinion, then please do so.
► Show Spoiler
I'm not made of magic. I'm an elected official with no credentials beyond whatever people saw in me. I don't know how precisely how much discourse should happen before both parties can eventually reach a mutual conclusion, or at what point I should step in to say something. I like the format of "asking" for a review because then I know that the party has ceded their point-making and I'm not going to get railroaded with new facts two days after I have to comb through every God-damn ticket and log to reconstruct the story. Of course, I do not mind reviewing tickets and logs, but it would be an administrative drain to have to do that AND be able to pick apart from context when I should step in.
I also don't feel like mentioning this in a ban appeal is a peanut, but I can see how it can be seen as irritating? Not sure on this.
Anyways, what are your perceptions on this issue? How do you want the appeals that unfurl in front of you (or maybe even your own eventual appeal) to play out in regard to appealing to the higher authority? Keep in mind that expectations set here might remain for the rest of the term (if any are picked) or could persist much long into the future (as long as future terms want to keep it up for).