In what instances can you report power abuse? In what instances can you NOT report power abuse?
This word has been thrown around a lot lately, unfortunately. I've made this guide to help clear things up for everybody.

What is power abuse?
Power abuse is, in the simplest way put, the action of misusing a given privilege, usually by a person in power. In our case, we can refer to the people as the 'moderators', and we can refer to the 'privilege' as one of a few things:

-In-game moderator "~"
-Local forum administration
-Global forum administration

and we will go over what crosses the line to 'misusing' right now.



When can I report a person for power abuse?
To ask ourselves this, we must first understand a few helpful concepts.

BlakNWyte's First Principle of Abuse:
If a person does not have power to abuse, it can be impossible to report him for power abuse.

The first, and most basic of concepts, is that you cannot report a person for 'power abuse' if he has no power to abuse. By 'no power to abuse', we can imply that this person does not have one of the three privileges stated above (~, local mod, global mod).

BlakNWyte's Second Principle of Abuse:
If a person is not breaking a rule, he cannot be reported for power abuse. Rule, to be defined in applicable scenario (i.e. tournaments, specific forum boards, etc.)

The second concept is quite simple. You can't report someone if they are not breaking any rules. It gets tricky, however, because many can get confused at what rule breaking is.

The most common misconceptions are the use of power in private servers. As stonewall so eloquently put:


Another popular misconception is times when the moderator seems to be making an unfair judgement.


That is a very circumstantial judgement. Often times a player will claim that the moderator "just hates" him for no reason, but in reality the offender has broken a certain rule, or many rules in the past which would justify something like a mute in your case. However, there may be times when a moderator mutes for no reason, and you will have to make the best intuitive choice on whether to report him based on the given circumstances.



More common misconceptions will be added here at a later date.



BlakNWyte's Third Principle of Abuse:
If a person's powers are not aiding him in the rule breaking, he cannot be reported for power abuse.

Your first reaction might be, "wow, that's unfair. We can't report moderators when they break the rules?!" But read closely, I said you may not report for power abuse. You MAY however, report for anything else, because they are still breaking the rules, but it does not apply to the 'power abuse' category. Let me make an example.

Example A:
~Player A who is a moderator, is in Player B's tournament. The tournament is in progress.
~Player A, by his own volition, spams the word "LOL" over and over again, thus breaking the rule of No Spamming, explicitly stated in the beginning as a rule of the tournament.
~Player A may NOT be reported for power abuse, as Player A did NOT use his powers to aid him in the rule breaking. However, he MAY be reported for disrupting a tournament.

Example B:
~Player A, who is a moderator, sees a post made by Player B on a public forum board that he does not like.
~Player A begins to harshly verbally insult Player B on the thread.
~Player A may NOT be reported for power abuse, because he did NOT use his powers to help him break the rule. However, he MAY be reported for flaming another member.


suomynona's First Law of Abuse:
If you have a problem with a moderator abusing their power, tell the moderator first.

If they say "Well fuck you you're just a noob your opinion isn't worth anything I'm so 1337" then talk to me, so I can say "Well fuck you're just a moderator your opinion isn't worth anything I'm so cool waving my banhammer around and whacking you on the head with it moron."





You can see that reporting a moderator for power abuse is very circumstantial. It is not often that a moderator uses his powers to break rules, but you might notice that a moderator breaks other rules quite often. There is a very logical, psychological explanation for it. For, in the action of using his powers to break rules, he is going directly against his superiors who gave him the privilege. That would be severe grounds for dismissal of power, and all future opportunities at such a position. They understand this very well. However, when a moderator breaks a normal, everyday rule, there is not such harsh repercussions.

So the next time before you yell out "power abuse!", try to remember our rules that we went over to reach a more specific conclusion when faced with a misbehaving moderator.



Now post your comments, what you think about abusing power, and the likes.

If an in-game mod decides to mute another player who does not have any in-game powers simply because either the mod doesn't like the person for personal reasons or because his ideas conflict with the other person, is it power abuse?

I agree with your tl;dr post for the most part, it's pretty much a misuse of the word "power abuse."

They're referring to the flaming, primarily. It doesn't bother me too much when Chac turns around and starts flaming me. I just avoid all contact with the guy until he cools down.
I was never naive enough to report a mod for flaming and seriously expect something to be done about it.
EDIT: Well, once at a different forum, but they totally swept it under the rug.


A private server operator, or someone like an Smod? Both different situations I wager.
One is just a guy with his little server and I just can't wrap my mind around that being a big deal since you could simply go somewhere else. An Smod muting and kicking people from a static server or something is power abuse.

Note, and I want to clarify this. (aka I see it in your thread but please bold)


The owner of a private server can kick whoever he wants from his server, and doing such is not power abuse in any way.

AND unless he's kicking for a reason against the rules, such as racism, he can kick for whatever reason he wants.
Be that kick reason a personal grudge or something more relaxed, per se 'THIS SHIT MAKES ME BLOW MY LOAD.'


If you're kicked/muted from a private server, it's not rule breaking by that person. You can always go to another server, or for example, make your own.

That is a very circumstantial judgement. Often times a player will claim that the moderator "just hates" him for no reason, but in reality the offender has broken a certain rule, or many rules in the past which would justify something like a mute in your case.

I have been never abused by a mod, i know they are doing their job.
Only sometimes infracted by useless posts.

soo its like avwave who keeps kicking jake out of irc for no reson just gtfo or what a troll

does kickin people out of a public server simply because they dont like them power abuse?

Yes, that would be power abuse.

rachet....wish i had that power man

be prepared for the thunder when you call the lightning...... or something to that effect