Hi all, Abbey here on behalf of the admin and moderating teams.

We'd like to announce right now that in the coming weeks we are planning on removing moderator badges across the entire site. We are not demoting moderators or getting rid of any systems, we are just removing the badge from visible areas next to player names. We hope that this will make the game a better place to be for both players and moderators, and hope that moderators and players can have a less tense relationship with one another.

Addressing Moderating Concerns

We would like to take this opportunity to address some concerns that players have raised with regards to the moderating system.

The anonymity of moderators within the modbox has now been in effect for over a year and over this time we have seen that this system has worked very well from behind the scenes. However, we do acknowledge that there has been some scepticism from various members over how this system actually works.

So for the sake of transparency and clarification, we'd like to give some insight to our moderating practices and how the system works for moderators and admins versus members.

Firstly, a PSA:
Moderators and admins are two very different roles on the site.

Admins are the group of staff who handle the game's functionality and features. They each have different roles, but they talk with each other on a daily basis about various things regarding running the game. Admins decide when rules should change, when changes to the game should be made, they are responsible for the coding and artwork coordination, and general behind-the-scenes stuff. The community admins work daily with the moderators whereas the non-community admins do not.

Moderators are volunteer members of the team who help us handle rule-breaking members. They are sometimes asked for input on various changes to how we moderate, rule changes, but ultimately have no control over the main parts of the game. They do not have the ability to change event bars, or add items to shops, or anything like that. Moderators are purely for moderating the forums, chat and players as a whole. They enforce the rules, and have no ability to edit the game in any way.

Anonymous Moderators
On the front-end of the modbox, we changed it so that members could no longer see specifically which moderator was handling their ticket.

This change was made primarily to cease some of the targeting that staff were seeing from members after having a decision made on their ticket that the member disagreed with. Additionally, if a moderator took some time to respond, they would sometimes start receiving PMs.

A lesser-known reason for why we changed the modbox to only show "Moderating Team" is because we felt as though it was dishonest of us to claim that one single person handled a ticket. This sometimes turned into a moderator being disliked because they were viewed as being the sole person who made a decision that someone didn't like, when in fact that decision likely had the input and support of multiple moderators and an admin.

Additionally, ANY response from a specific admin came with the support and input of every single member on the admin team, regardless of who actually claimed and handled that ticket.

Why do tickets take so long sometimes?
Firstly, the vast majority of tickets have at least a second opinion from another moderator or an admin. Moderators do not moderate and make decisions alone as a rule. Those that take longer to resolve often have the input of a large portion of the moderating team and sometimes multiple admins. This takes time for everyone to have a discussion, give their input, and ultimately come to a decision on what to do.

Just like players, moderators act under a specific ruleset, they are under constant supervision of admins and other moderators. Moderators have never banned a user for no reason - we always act on information or reports. If we believe we have made a mistake in our decisions, we will try to correct it and inform the player involved.

Why did X get punished, but Y didn't? Why did Z get banned for doing nothing?
Because we don't discuss player punishments publicly, the only time any information about reprimands comes out is from the player themselves. Sometimes a player disagrees with a decision we have made and will tell friends that they got a raw deal.

This is fine, we appreciate that everyone takes away a different account of what happened, but please be aware that there is always more to the story.

Additionally, if one player was punished for something but another player wasn't - we ask you to please trust that we handle all reports of rule-breaking behaviour fairly according to our terms of service and code of conduct. It is possible that they have received punishment, perhaps not the same as you because there were a different set of circumstances surrounding the event, or for a variety of other reasons.

If you witness a user breaking the rules, then we strongly advise you to report that behaviour to us. We rely very heavily on reports of rule-breaking behaviour - we encourage members to report anonymously when they come across this on the site.

Why don't you discuss player punishments publicly?
Logs of player punishments actually fall under "personal data" as of the GDPR of May 2018 so we legally cannot disclose any information about player punishment with other members.

We have always had this rule in place, however, so that is not the full reason. We dislike bringing up player punishments due to the subjectivity of what has happened to cause the punishment. Moderators have to rule on varying degrees of the same rule.

For instance, what exactly constitutes scamming? How can we tell this was a definite scam? Where do we draw the line on what is a scam and what is just a promise transaction that never went through due to various reasons? What effect does this scam have on the victims, and the economy as a whole?

Additionally, we prioritise the maintenance of a user's privacy - nobody should be privy to what happens as the result of a ticket other than the moderating team and that user.

We heard you don't use off-site evidence but there have been some times you have used it?
We don't use off-site evidence as a general rule because it is very easy to fake screenshots, or impersonate someone when we don't have the back-end information that Lioden provides to us. If there is concrete evidence that this person has definitely done something offsite (e.g. is selling Lioden items/lions for real money) and we can verify it on Lioden then we will happily take off-site evidence into account.

Moderating - moving forward
We want to continue being a great team who works together to moderate Lioden. We hope that removing the moderator paws from moderators will allow them to play the game normally, as a real member. They have been forced into the spotlight since day one and we'd like to offer them the opportunity to sit back and enjoy the game as a member once more.

However, this doesn't mean there are no longer mods. We will be ensuring that we keep a team fully stocked and raring to go so that any reports and tickets created by members are handled promptly and fairly.

We would respectfully ask that you don't message formerly listed mods about whether they are still a moderator or not as we believe they are entitled to their privacy with this change.

If you encounter an unfair ruling or something that isn't handled how you think it should be, we still encourage you to report your ticket to the support email (support@lioden.com) or Abbey (#1).

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If you have any transparency questions, or questions about how we moderate and why we make some decisions, please ask and we will try to answer in admin responses over the following few days. Please keep in mind we will not answer questions about specific cases.