The formal appeals process is to PM the Chief Moderator as described in the rules under
driving standards.
The moderators usually confer and reach a consensus before a report is published. So an appeal is only likely to be successful if either the moderators did not get a chance to confer (and if they had done a different ruling would have been made) or new information has come to light that was not available at the time the report was published.
In an effort to try to improve the consensus and hence make appeals less likely. I published a set of
penalty guidelines in an attempt to describe a set of scenarios for each type of incidents and the severity of penalties that could be awarded. In order to describe the scenarios I had to give them descriptive names that relate to the varying degrees of severity. Hence the terms "Contested Overtake", "Marginal Ambitious Overtake" and "Blatant Bad Rejoin" etc. I could have used any number of adjectives to describe the "Ridiculously Ambitious Overtake" scenario such as "Over Ambitious", "Ill Judged", "Inappropriate", "Crazy" or whatever. The important thing is does the description (The overtaking driver had not achieved any degree of overlap at turn-in. The overtaking driver WOULD have made the corner. Penalty for overtaking driver.) match the incident? Moreover do the set of scenarios cover most eventualities and are the associated penalties appropriate? These scenarios are reviewed by the moderators and updated as appropriate. There has not been a necessity to change the guidelines very often so they do appear to be fairly robust.
On the subject of the style of mod reports, this is very much down to the moderator (and how much time they have). I generally like to write in the third person (to make it less personal) and start with a description of the incident (so everyone agrees what actually happened). This is followed by a ruling describing the rationale and interpretation of the rules where necessary. This does take some time an practice to get right. Kruger Enge used to produce some outstanding reports but I know it took him a long time and he moderated quite a lot of races before he perfected his style. Just look at this
report (new moderators don't bother I don't want to scare you off!!!) an object lesson in moderating!
Finally the moderating team, Jack, Syd, Clive, Mike and Tim. I am very grateful to the moderators who give up their own time to organize the races, start the servers, review the incidents and produce race reports. Not only that, they provide servers and web space for no remuneration whatsoever. I couldn't wish for a better bunch of guys to work with. This was Mike's second report and I think he did very well in sorting out some contentious incidents. Thanks Mike, it will get easier, honest