Announcement Update on LZ tags and Lethal Zone community

Due to an influx of people creating threads about this in General Discussion, we decided to explain what is going on with Lethal Zone tags.

The Lethal Zone community is shutting down, but their website remains active, with all the reports and appeals still accessible. Several approaches to handling their tags are being discussed internally, but each approach would involve a very different way of handling the appeal.

Update:

Fortress of Gamers, commonly known as FoG, has volunteered to inherit responsibility over all Lethal Zone (LZ-TRADE) tags. Over the next month or so, all LZ tags will be audited by FoG, and either dropped or converted to a FoG tag. After they finish at FoG, no LZ-TRADE tags will exist whatsoever.

Existing tags will be reviewed, and if not up to their evidence standards the tag will be removed. If FoG believes your case has enough evidence, you will be given either a BANNED BY FOG or FOG CAUTION tag depending on severity and individual circumstances. You will be allowed to appeal the decision here, through the normal partner community appeal procedure. If you have an LZ-TRADE tag of any kind, you are already in a queue for review by admins, so there is no point in appealing it.

Update 5 November 2017: All LZ CAUTION tags have been handled, and no profiles have this tag anymore.

Update 15 February 2018: Per a FoG admin's public reply, anyone can now appeal LZ-TRADE tags here, even if it's not yet converted to FoG: https://f-o-g.trade/appeals

For this reason, we ask that you wait until the best way forward is decided before submitting an appeal. We realize the nuisance of inability to appeal your tag is, but please understand this arrangement is only temporary, and you will have an opportunity to contest it. If you tried to appeal it now, it wouldn't get you a faster response, but your plea might get lost in the chaos.

If the community who tagged me is retired, why can't SteamRep itself just handle it?
With our limited appeals admins, we're barely able to keep up with our own appeals. One or more partner communities have offered to take responsibility for Lethal Zone's tags, inheriting all their appeals and archiving the evidence for us. For now, we're deciding where your appeal will go, and if you appeal to the wrong place your plea might get lost in the chaos.

Why can't I just submit a Legacy Ban appeal if the community is dead?

Generally, in cases where the evidence is still intact, and solid enough to hold up if it were a SteamRep tag, legacy appeals are rejected outright. Since everything at Lethal Zone is still available for review, any "legacy" appeals submitted would be rejected by policy, so opening those up would be pretty pointless.
Until further notice, please do not submit appeals for this to SteamRep and do not create threads in the General Discussion asking where/when to appeal LZ tags.

Please try to search prior to making a thread here - this link is 2 spots directly from the top.

https://forums.steamrep.com/threads/update-on-lz-tags-and-lethal-zone-community.161500/

I respectfully agree with you. It has been a number of months already, with the update thread being over a month old.

Threads merged to prevent issues of trying to find information regarding this.

Things are in progress - at this time as in moving along vs being discussed.
That is all the update I can give at this time.

Don't worry, can confirm things are moving forward quite fast now.

Just an update for all of you waiting:

• Fortress of Gamers (commonly known as FoG) has volunteered to inherit all of the Lethal Zone (LZ-TRADE) tags along with their documentation.
• Over the next month or so, all LZ tags will be audited by FoG, and either dropped or converted to a FoG tag. After they finish at FoG, no LZ-TRADE tags will exist whatsoever.
  
• If FoG believes your case has enough evidence, you will be given either a BANNED BY FOG or FOG CAUTION tag. If that happens, you will be allowed to appeal the decision with Fortress of Gamers here.
• If you have an LZ tag of any kind, no further action is required at this time. You are already in a queue for review by admins, so there is no point in appealing until/unless you receive a FoG tag.
• This announcement takes effect immediately, a sizable handful of LZ-TRADE tags have already been reviewed.

To everyone in this thread, I'm sorry for the long wait. In addition to staff consensus on the plan, we needed to sort out logistics, make sure that FoG was ready for the added workload, and make sure all of the evidence and documentation was accounted for.