/tg/Station 13

Recently somebody asked me about setting up a role to ban people from voice chat on discord who were abusing it with mic spam or something along those lines.

This got me thinking. When should somebody who is abusing a tool be preventing from using that tool, and when should they instead be punished for not being able to avoid abusing the tool.

Be it appearance/job bans or discord mutes or something else.

This is slightly different from complimenting server bans with longer role bans, in that it's still a punish vs a method of preventing the abuse.

I am of the belief that good faith actors should generally be able to play the game (or in your example, use Discord) without worrying they're going to be banned. Might seem fairly obvious when said out loud, but it's something I take very seriously.

I tend to dish out things like appearance bans if someone regularly has abused their abilities, but if they don't really appear to be a bad faith actor otherwise. For example, I regularly see people who play completely normally, but who regularly have garbage names. These people are generally good faith actors, and have not abused their privileges to play, and are free to continue. I take this same approach to things like OOC bans--a lot of people say some dumb shit OOC, but play within boundaries.

When someone is a general bad faith actor, that's when it becomes fine to escalate. People who have crap names and crap play tend to get punished for their overarching play, with their name being in the note.

Okay kinda back in my head is the thought that a ton of our alternate bans are really kinda just straight up worse than full bans. If someone can't behave themselves as an assistant, for example, assistant bans almost never help. I always see these as:

1. They don't play the job enough so no punishment was doled out (this is kinda on admins for jobbanning someone from a job they don't play a lot
2. They stop playing. The funny part about this is that they may not have stopped playing if they were just given a normal ban, since you're taking away a big hook they had for logging in
3. They do it as another job. The assistant ban i'm referencing ended like this where they were shit on other roles. in this case a full ban would have been cutting to the chase

And so on and so forth. We should simply be providing time outs for people being shitty, and make our rules around shitty things people do.

So with all that in mind, VC mutes make sense as a timed thing as that matches the functionality of a ban and I personally don't like the alternate ways of banning someone besides MAYBE OOC. And that's simply because some people are just awful at OOC and that's some kinda skill issue

Soft bans are attempts to reform/guide a player. It's tough to get better at following/understanding rules when you're not exposed to them.

Full bans are for where the above has failed, or the rule break is so bad that full ban is the most justified choice.

Where the line is drawn between either is arbitrary.

Moderators should exercise best judgment to draw their own lines based on facts presented before them & their own investigation.

Me personally? Want to see human element. Understanding. Vow to do better. Spark of hope. Gives power to snort line like cocaine off hooker's back.

Timberpoes wrote:snip

yeah one of the biggest things is about the person understanding they did something wrong, usually if they do and they have a decent record admins can give mercy in the form of a note instead of a ban, and that works well. Something something it's a game we're all trying to have fun and people make mistakes

Have noted things would have banned for where player genuinely seemed to understand. Human element present. No line to draw, just mutual understanding. Or social engineering.

Still have faith in people regardless. Little to lose, much to gain.

Have also banned things would have noted for where player beligerent asshole, lacking understanding, lacking empathy. Human element missing. Line drawn in blood. Theirs, not mine. Still snorted it.

I think specific bans are best when someone displays an inability to use a set of tools they're given responsibly (i.e. security's metaprotections and weapons, silicons' access and invulnerabilities, etc.), or at the very least not to the detriment of others. If the behaviour continues after they've had the tools taken away, or returns as soon as they get them back, then it shows a lack of either care or learning.

A lack of care is easy to treat harshly. A lack of learning is a little more difficult.

We try to give people a reasonable number of chances if they at least appear to be improving/understanding in some regard, or are able to act responsibly in another role. But if they keep falling into pitfalls, at some point you can't keep giving chances to people who are negatively impacting the experience of others.

I think both are valid and useful tools depending on the situation. Things like assistant bans are basically there as a reformist method of saying "go find some other value in the game outside of griefing as an assistant" and I have seen some genuine success stories come out of this, and failures too. I think the same can be useful for people who specifically exploit and abuse particular mechanics they're very familiar with. If the only joy you find in SS13 is in the maximized exploitation of virology mechanics to the detriment of the server, with continuous line toeing behaviour as a result, a virology/medbay ban may force you to find other areas of the game to enjoy. If they can't find that and end up leaving, then it was probably a good litmus test for what their ongoing behaviour would have looked like anyway.

There is also generalized behaviour that should result in community wide bans of course. One thing I think I've changed my mind on is manuel having separate bans. I argued for this originally, but I think ultimately it's good that we've settled on a "If you can't follow the rules there then you can't play here either" mindset and this is true for certain kinds of abusing roles like security.

In the end it comes down to whether they can be reformed or not. Total removal is equivalent to just punishment and threat, while rolebans are meant to encourage learning, experience and improving your behaviour over time. We've seen both succeed and both fail, but both are necessary tools in the admin repertoire.

I am fully for pushing players to reform as opposed to full banning them. There are a lot of admins in the community that are like this and give multiple chances using notes and such to encourage people to improve. They encourage good behaviour and these admins are universally loved for being able to see multiple sides of a story. There is a direct opposite to this with admins who ban (which is fully justified) over allow players to reform.

I'm a heavy believer of reform myself and think we should use soft bans to help people get better but we should be realistic about the bans. Assistant shitter6969 is more likely to change if we give him an assistant ban and say "appeal in 2 weeks with good behaviour" opposed to an "appeal in 6 months with good behaviour" Of course, if he gets unbanned and does it again we can move to harsher measures but my point is that some leniency will go a long way. People are more willing to improve if you are reasonable with your demands.

Another thing I would love to see is more admins talking to people about the mistakes they make. Let's say for example someone says 'u' once having never done it before. Some admins will instantly leave a note for this even if the player is understanding of their mistake and promise to not do it again. Notes like this lead to resentment when simply speaking to the player was more than likely to make them both stop and thing "wow, what a nice guy admin just telling me not to do it again".

I want hard bans to be a thing for when there is no other avenue to deal with people and soft bans to be used as much as possible.

When you don't want to kick someone out but they aren't improving their behavior you have to limit the undesirable behavior and hope that they can either learn from watching the people around them or mature in some other way on their own.

I'd much rather have granular limits set rather than getting a full boot for one thing. A lot of people seem to agree with that sentiment, I've heard that kind of argument with MRP and LRP bans being separate.

Rather have a 3 strikes your out type of situation

some players just got Poor Impulse Control and aren't inherently malicious, and we should acknowledge this and tailor punishments based on this