Process of Punishment [in the Tribunal]

It was also a pretty bad week for me connection wise.

That sucks. But your other four teammates probably don't appreciate you d/cing either. Considering that the wants of four players outweight your desire to play the game, guess where this is going.

I just, I cannot agree with a system that puts decisions like that in the hands of the players.

Ultimately, society and customs are decided by humans and their peers. This system is no different. If people don't appreciate you picking your boogers in front of them, they'll either let you know (hopefully politely) or they'll just avoid you. If people don't appreciate others calling them "dumb fking brazilian", they're going to report the offenders.

There are no hard and fast rules to how to conduct yourself in society. What may be fine in one city may be a (unwritten) criminal offense in another city. The same thing applies to different tiers of players in LoL. The best of the best can get away with trashtalking each other, because they're used to it, they know they're not dumb, and they kinda don't want to ban each other due to the rarity of such quality players xD Low tier players on the other hand probably won't take the same type of trashtalking.

Report abuse, AND Vote abuse, also compound my personal issues with the system.

These are valid concerns. There are multiple measures in place to help prevent these issues.

If someone is just spamming reports on random people who did nothing wrong, then when their Tribunal case comes up for review, people will see that said random people have done nothing wrong. Consequently, the people that made the reports will have their reports be valued less and less. It's just like the boy who kept on crying "wolf". If you abuse your privileges, eventually people will stop paying attention, and they might even revoke your privileges.

What measures are in place to stop someone from voting to punish someone simply because the voter was in a foul mood?

A person that ends up in the Tribunal requires a vast majority of "punish" votes to be warned/banned, and they need a profile case of at least a couple of games in X amount of time before they even show up in the Tribunal. If judges consistently vote against the final decision (as decided by all reviewers, including you), then they will lose Tribunal privileges.

Is there anything in place to ensure that the voters are completely unbiased in how they vote?

Not really, but when you think about it, that's where everyone starts. At the very least, to participate in judging other players in the Tribunal, you must not have been banned by the Tribunal for a period of time, and you must be summoner level 30, which means you've had enough experience to know what goes on in the game.

It's just a pomegranatety system in general.

It's a tradeoff. I'm pretty sure they don't want to have to pay an army of 300 moderators to do the job that thousands of players are willing to do for free. And since the players are the ones that decide who absolutely sucks to play with, there's some sense in utilizing the power of the masses. For more severe sentencing, Riot's player support specialists review the cases themselves personally before they hand out the punishment.


Oh, and there is actually a completely automated banning system called LeaverBuster. This system detects how many games you have left or AFK'd significantly in. If you afk/leave too many games, you get the banhammer. Simple as that.