Incident Reports - Why are videos required?

[UMC 22]

Yes, but you have to provide a video. I really cant understand this as presumably the admins have access to the replay so surely if you report the time in seconds the incident occurred it is easy for them to watch from as many angles as possible. Not everyone has the time or the means to provide a video so they dont bother which means one of RD's primary boasts about being a place for clean racing is irrelevant because the importance of getting every detail of a protest right is apparently more important than someone infringing the rules. The outcome of race 2 in group 3 last week could have been completely different if I had protested but my offer of details of 3 incidents was turned down unless I provided a video - rant over.

This was posted in the questionnaire thread. I felt that it deserved an answer so I will do so here to prevent the questionnaire becoming derailed.

We ask for video evidence of the incident being reported for the following reasons:

1) In the interest of fairness, every incident report is viewed by all staff members and the action taken (if any) is then discussed and decided upon. Not every staff member has every sim that RD supports, so replay files are no good. We need videos that can be embedded in forum posts.

2) As staff we give up a lot of our time to run RD. Reviewing incidents without the reporter providing a video would mean that we would have to find the replay file and download it, find the incident in question in a 20-80 minute race, record it as a video file, and then upload the video to the internet. That may only take 15-30 mins for a single incident, but given that there can be numerous reports for a single race it would quickly become completely prohibitive when added to our other duties.

3) If all someone has to do to report another driver is fire off a rant via PM, every man and his dog will start reporting even the tiniest amount of contact. Again, videoing and reviewing all these minor incidents would be prohibitive. By asking for videos (which may take 15-30 mins for a member to produce) it automatically weeds out the 'rage reports' that do not break our rules and do not need our attention.

And lets be fair here, given the amount of free time that RD staff dedicate to running the community, I really don't think that it's too much to ask for a member to spend 15-30 mins of their time to help us out... is it?

I hope this post adequately explains our policy.

 

[Steve O'Malley]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Ross.- looks like my post just cost you some more time.

We need videos that can be embedded in forum posts.

That's the bit I don't understand. I assumed an administrator associated with the particular game would be in possession of all the incidents from one race including the driver involved and the time in seconds. Then view them individually via the replay. This would only take a matter of minutes and every incident could be easily found by the time counter and viewed form as many angles as deemed necessary. Obviously the drivers competing would be bound by the admins decision - whether 1 or all members of staff made that decision.

I fully appreciate the amount of time spent by admins to keep the community running, I just thought my method would be quicker and easier for all concerned.

I also appreciate that you wouldnt want too many frivolous appeals and it could be run in a similar way to football appeals whereby if the appeal/incident was found to be pointless, the incident reporter was himself penalised - which would make people think twice before appealing.
However you blokes know what you are doing so im sure yu are currently using the best method. Thanks again.

 

[UMC 22]

Lol, don't worry Steve... taking a few minutes to write a post that clarifies things for our members isn't too much of hardship.

About the reviews, we do it as a team to ensure maximum fairness. It prevents any personal feelings that may exist between the staff member and the reporter/reported being involved in the final decision. It also ensures that our rules are applied in the same way across RD as a whole, rather than differently from club to club based on who manages it.