Hey hey people, this is karp. Due to an unknown brain condition and tumor suddenly emerging I have decided to genuinely take a real shot at running despite realising the issues associated with running.
Ideally, these are the main things I'd want done/believe in:
1: A tightening around escalation policy to remove edge case scenarios that might still exist.
1.1: Ideally, this would mean the first thing I'd like to see done would be a logical expansion to the sec rules which may already be in escalation policy (You can't kill heads for demoting you for a good reason. Yes, the head of personnel giving you access without giving the head any warning is not a good reason to kill the chief engineer/CMO/rd over because they don't want you to potentially harm the crystal, ruin chemistry, or make bombs over but i can see the negative downsides to this so I'd be wary of adding onto escalation policy as is)
1.2: Said protections could extend to departmental defense within reason(e.g., you can't go to lethals when you've broken into a department unless someone in that department tries lethalling you. Stuns are fine and asking them to leave is fine but the second you do any sort of harm to them you give up any protections you get, the intruder can still disarm and stun though.), but I don't feel too strongly about that myself and even my first suggestion could backfire on our current escalation policy so I'm sorta spitballing ideas, as it is our escalation policy is nearly perfect and ideal short of a few fringe cases which REALLY showcase the issues.
2: Roleplay - Roleplay TENDS to be used as a buzzword for shutting down or countering discussions and an impossible thing to achieve to cry about, but I can genuinely see enough of a community appeal that it might be worth considering testing/debating it out on another server IF the other headmins/players vote in favour of it. I'm not sure what the foundations might be, but again, if it gets voted it likely will be moreso community oriented. I can see the issues with the server lacking population/administration/appeal and dying, which is why I might seem disconnected with the idea unless there's genuine community appeal towards it.
2.1: Yes, the server test thread I ran about did include the /vg/ roleplay test as an example and it may be the best way of gauging if people would give a shit(Poll it, craft slightly tighter rules that anyone can comment/give feedback on, and work with the playerbase's interests to see if people actually give a shit or if it's just a bad meme droned and whined on about by forums warriors and to end that argument)
3: Abuse - This is something that I've personally been irritated by and there is a policy thread about. Short of actual practical ingame abuse, we don't have any method of dealing with and reacting to the conduct of people with any other power(s), even if they may or may not be as bad or even potentially worse than ingame admin abuse. This has targeted and fucked over a lot of people. I'd like practical oversight in subcategories with forum admins/mods/maintainers/discord admins.
3.1: Before seperation memers start screaming at me or MSO starts questioning what i mean by that above: I'd practically assume MSO would be involved with any serious forum admin complaints with genuine power abuse(I'd assume MSO is already on this so it's probably practically useless and will only enable whiners to cry and waste his time... That's kinda because forum admins have so much power and only really trusted people have that rank), forum mods/discord mods being dealt by the headmins with forum mods giving MSO a potential override if he believes something is wrong with how it was dealt with, and maintainer complaints being dealt by our head coder oranges(No, a maintainer deleting your comment/denying your pr is not abuse). I have issues with the forum admin/maintainer sections primarily because it lacks any practical abuse examples outside of a small handful, but adding a public way to genuinely complain may be necessary if oranges/MSO believe it to not be a gigantic waste of time. I can only actually remember one or two incidents of maintainer complaints ever being posted to admin complaints, so I'm not sure if it's a major issue which is why I'd let oranges decide.
4:Administration and bans - This may be a popular or unpopular opinion, but I'd wager we'd have a lot less repeat bad behaviour players if admins helped set people towards a positive direction and acted more towards reforming rather than punishing people, though this is probably more an "What's my opinion on administration" Than practical policy change as any change is likely to have negative consequences that would dissuade it, maybe just encouraging a slight attitude shift in the admin team would be enough
4.1: Ironically, I'm the one in the admin forums who created a thread about revolving door permabans being an issue, I feel like that is just as much an issue as excessively brutal punishments that negatively impact players to the point of quitting/antagonizing the server and the adminstaff. I think we're too kind sometimes on some extreme case players who have multiple permabans due to the nature of said behaviour leading to them ruining the server for a while before they get banned again over breaking the rules. Optimally, if anything happened with either of said points we'd need to slightly encourage a mild alignment of belief within the admin team, which is both a good and a bad thing, we can avoid creating a disaster. Again, musings and not actual policy unless there's genuine appeal for it within the admin/server staff.
addendum:
I think the biggest issues with escalation policy come from enforcement 7/10, and the rest from edge case scenarios.
On the roleplay extra server argument: the biggest killer of any form of public test or new server is actual genuine appeal to both players and administrators.
I think the biggest accomplishment within the admin team over the last few years, which may or may not be hard to grasp without being within it, is the friendliness cooperativeness within the team. A more cooperative team functions better, produces better results, and is more likely to root out abuse. I agree there may be concerns of a friendly team fostering defensive attitudes towards admin abuse, but the alternative is a cutthroat team that is more hostile and willing to do actions that are likely going to be a net negative on the server(if a friend gets complainted zero action will be taken due to the more tribal mentality rather than a softer friendlier punishment, admins will either be really hostile to valid ban appeals by the players or hostile to the admin on valid bans, more general admin-admin misconduct and admin-player abuse happening and being ignored due to them being buddy buddy with the leads).