How to File a Formal Complaint against PAFOA Forum Staff

If you feel that you have been on the receiving end of unwarranted action by PAFOA Forum Staff either by mistake, or maliciously, this post will describe the process by which you may report it. The hope is that by creating an open and official process for dealing with mistakes and oversteps, staff and members alike will benefit.

The process will work like this:

1. Anyone may file a complaint about PAFOA Forum staff through the PAFOA contact form.
2. Complaints will be received by forum administrators.
3. If the complaint is accepted, forum administrators will notify the staff members involved that a complaint has been filed.
4. Administrators and three staff members not involved in the complaint will be assigned the task of looking into the complaint for validity.
5. The staff member against whom the complaint is filed will be given the opportunity to comment, after which the assigned staff members will review said comments, any comments made by the individual in the initial complaint report, the thread/discussion in question, etc.
6. The three staff members will report their findings back to the admins for final consideration.
7. The result of the complaint will be logged for future reference.
8. The reporter will be notified of the response by forum administrators.

Please note that not every report will be accepted for processing by administrators due to potential abuse. Some reasons a report may not be accepted for official processing:

• Vague Complaints: If your complaint does not reference a specific action, it will not be processed. We can not look into a complaint that a moderator "seems like a jerk."
• Third Party Complaints: Rarely is all of the information about a specific incident available to the outside observer. As such it is up to the people directly involved in an incident to file a complaint.
• Duplicate or repeated Complaints: If the issue has already been filed, or the issue is filed again due to the filer not being happy with the result of the first complaint, it will be ignored.
• Uncivil Complaints: We encourage anyone who is filing a complaint to take a few minutes and take a deep breath before doing so. Complaints riddled with profanity and anger will be discarded. Sadly, many of the reports we get are like this.
• Complaints about Warnings: For every infraction, moderators have the option of giving a warning which carries no punishment. Please check carefully to make sure you were actually given an infraction as we will not process complaints about warnings since they have no negative effect.
• Old Incidents: Unfortunately we can't accept reports of incidents that occurred more than 30 days before the reporting.

Things to expect from this process:

1. It should be expected that it could take at least 24 hours to handle a complaint. Everyone here is a volunteer with a pretty big workload, a day job, and a personal life to boot. While this may not be ideal, it is what it is.
2. As such, if you received a 1 day ban it may be over before the complaint process is completed. That doesn't mean you shouldn't file one however.
3. Except in extreme cases or a history of valid complaints, it is unlikely the forum moderator will be removed based on a single complaint. I mention this only so that expectations are realistic.

Lastly, please try to provide these pieces of information in your complaint so we can do our job:

1. The rough date/time of the incident.
2. Any back story that may not be immediately apparent to someone who was not directly involved.
3. The link to the thread where the issue occurred (if possible.)

Click here to file a Complaint