I have read what SOV has posted about this topic already but I do not fully agree with the reasoning. I think it's a very bad thing that the reports have become private now.
First off I do agree that nobody should be threatened because they reported someone and there is some tension / bad vibes towards players like 1pick and others that seem to mass report. I get that making the reports private protects those people and causes less issues in some forum threads.
But what I mostly see when people are called mini mods is that they excessively try to lock threads that shouldn't really be locked yet. Give non informative answers (saying something that has already been said and doesn't provide anything new, etc) and don't read all the posts in the threads because they feel pressured in answering as soon as possible. That is what I see in common with most people that are being called mini mods. What I don't always see (publically on the forums) is people being called out for reporting too many players. So I would say it's a misjudgment to make it private just for that reason.
The main reason I don't like it that player reports have become private is that it takes one of the information points you have as a player away. If i would get muted/banned the first thing I would do is check the player reports to see if someone reported me. This way I could know why I got banned and potentially learn from it. If they're private that's no longer possible. So the only thing you can do is message mods at that point and ask them. But I don't think it's super likely that you're gonna get a direct answer and you're most likely going to be referred to the ban appeak page. The issue with ban appeals as far as I can tell is that when you get denied the only thing you see is "denied". That's super uninformative. I could potentially msg wqlk or hamoka but even that's not a certainty to get a direct answer and most players can't even do that. So taking one of the few points of information every player does have away is a bad thing imo.
Another reason why I think it's essential that reports are public is so that everybody can check if it's faked evidence or real evidence. There have been times that staff were inattentive and banned the player that was reported when the evidence was faked. Talking about the daily motion guy. Now of course they immediately retracted their actions and apologized but having everybody being able to look at it just gives that more eyes able to spot if it's real or not.
Lastly I used the player reports to see what gets accepted and what gets denied. It's learning by example. Since the rules are vague here and there and common sense is different for everybody it's sometimes nice to see what does and does not get accepted. I can't do this anymore and I don't like it.
So what I would suggest is to make the reports public again but make them anonymized. So only staff can see who actually reported the guy. But we can still see the report itself. that way the players can still earn brownie points from staff and we still have useful information at our disposal.
First off I do agree that nobody should be threatened because they reported someone and there is some tension / bad vibes towards players like 1pick and others that seem to mass report. I get that making the reports private protects those people and causes less issues in some forum threads.
But what I mostly see when people are called mini mods is that they excessively try to lock threads that shouldn't really be locked yet. Give non informative answers (saying something that has already been said and doesn't provide anything new, etc) and don't read all the posts in the threads because they feel pressured in answering as soon as possible. That is what I see in common with most people that are being called mini mods. What I don't always see (publically on the forums) is people being called out for reporting too many players. So I would say it's a misjudgment to make it private just for that reason.
The main reason I don't like it that player reports have become private is that it takes one of the information points you have as a player away. If i would get muted/banned the first thing I would do is check the player reports to see if someone reported me. This way I could know why I got banned and potentially learn from it. If they're private that's no longer possible. So the only thing you can do is message mods at that point and ask them. But I don't think it's super likely that you're gonna get a direct answer and you're most likely going to be referred to the ban appeak page. The issue with ban appeals as far as I can tell is that when you get denied the only thing you see is "denied". That's super uninformative. I could potentially msg wqlk or hamoka but even that's not a certainty to get a direct answer and most players can't even do that. So taking one of the few points of information every player does have away is a bad thing imo.
Another reason why I think it's essential that reports are public is so that everybody can check if it's faked evidence or real evidence. There have been times that staff were inattentive and banned the player that was reported when the evidence was faked. Talking about the daily motion guy. Now of course they immediately retracted their actions and apologized but having everybody being able to look at it just gives that more eyes able to spot if it's real or not.
Lastly I used the player reports to see what gets accepted and what gets denied. It's learning by example. Since the rules are vague here and there and common sense is different for everybody it's sometimes nice to see what does and does not get accepted. I can't do this anymore and I don't like it.
So what I would suggest is to make the reports public again but make them anonymized. So only staff can see who actually reported the guy. But we can still see the report itself. that way the players can still earn brownie points from staff and we still have useful information at our disposal.