johntgwillard - Tiders don't get free stuff

[johnfulpwillard]

Hello, I am JohnFulpWillard, you likely recognize me because I am a Maintainer, however I do have opinions on the servers itself and I am taking the opportunity here to offer them.
My time spent on TGstation has been mostly spent on Sybil, so my perspective of the servers will be coming from there.

I've considered running the past 2 headmin elections, but didn't end up running either. I finally decided that I may as well make an attempt, otherwise I'm just leaving my ideas unspoken.

Things I would like to change

1. Assistants no longer get maints

Assistants have been given access to Maintenance, which has been a net negative to all servers. There is an existing Head of Personnel job that can grant Maints access to people who need it for gimmicks, but I do not believe that the 'Unemployed' should have straight access to the wirings and inner workings of the station. The expectation I wish to set is for people to ask the HoP for access, or play a job that comes with responsibilities if they wish to have the upsides of it.
As headmin, I will push to have assistant maintenance access completely removed in the config. This had been tested in the past in other people's terms, and this time I wish to make it a permanent addition.

Things I would support, but would not push for personally

- Removing Felinids. They are a bland species, already attainable through the DNA Infuser in Genetics, that offer no positive value to a round. If another headmin were to push for a removal of Felinids, I would not stop them.
- Adding more OOC terms to the filter. It's always nice to make the game feel more immersive, and this is one of the largest contributors to that.
- Greenlighting adding Mentors, I think they are fine for regular players to be able to privately answer the questions of another player, without having to go through the process of becoming an Admin.
- I would host vote Goof.

Things I would not support

- Splitting MRP and LRP more than it already has been, the servers all coming together for these special events is one of the best parts of TG, and I do not wish to take that away.

[TheRex9001]

Besides the assistants loosing maint access, do we any other reason to vote for you? Do you have anything else you want to accomplish as headmin and try to push for?

[johnfulpwillard]

Besides the assistants loosing maint access, do we any other reason to vote for you? Do you have anything else you want to accomplish as headmin and try to push for?

My main goal is the assistants maints access, I am running as a single-issue candidate this term. The rest of my plan is to cooperate as well as I can with other headmins & everyone else to ensure the term goes well, allowing them to put their ideas forward and help them get them through.
My opinions on many things are not strong, I am more interested in supporting the people who do have high interest/strong opinion in topics that spring about frequently and discuss in their own threads, than to pick fights holding stances that I don't mind either way.

[NecromancerAnne]

If your only concern is one issue, how can you be so sure you will be able to accomplish that goal despite the presence of two other headmins who may oppose your decision?

If they do oppose this decision, what value is there in what effectively amounts to a yesman? Is there not more value in a candidate with a stronger overall drive towards improving our server? This is in the sense that a single concern being only one of many considerations that may come up during the term.

How much have you actually interacted with our administration since becoming a maintainer? I'm sure, given your position, you've found yourself having to talk to members of the team.

How does this differentiate between your expectations of /tg/station and your main haunt, Fulpstation?

[johnfulpwillard]

how can you be so sure you will be able to accomplish that goal despite the presence of two other headmins who may oppose your decision?

My main goal will always be trying to get the config change, and yes it will be unfortunate if the 2 other headmins contest me on that and block it, but just like literally anyone else who declares an intent to do something, I am remaining optimistic that I can get it through.

If they do oppose this decision, what value is there in what effectively amounts to a yesman?

At the end of the day, I do have my own opinions, and while I haven't written many of them down (honestly, I wasn't really inspired when I wrote this post), I am not there to rubber stamp everything for them, but rather my goal is to make it go as smoothly as possible, acting like an extra voice to do so, but even so my goal is to not simply be walked over, I'm still going to be involving myself with headmin affairs and giving my own opinions, otherwise there's no point in having 3 of us.
I can't say it's a good platform to say "just trust my opinions" when I have so few listed, it is something people should consider if they think about voting me.

How much have you actually interacted with our administration since becoming a maintainer?

I don't know how to really calculate my interactions with admins, I like to lurk admin channels/adminsay/forums and really only comment when I think I have something to add to the conversation, or help in technical issue tickets/reports.

How does this differentiate between your expectations of /tg/station and your main haunt, Fulpstation?

This is something I haven't actually put much thought into, the last time I was part of any team on Fulp was 16 months ago and, to be honest with you, I don't remember a single thing during it. Sorry I can't give a proper answer.

[The Wrench]

In your opinion, what are the actual benefits of removing maintenance access? Who does it benefit and how will it make TG better overall?

[johnfulpwillard]

In your opinion, what are the actual benefits of removing maintenance access? Who does it benefit and how will it make TG better overall?

- Assistants are not a job, yet they get much easier access to every department through maintenance, many of them only requiring one hacked door or broken windoor. Compare this to Medical Doctor, Scientist, Shaft Miner, etc. who put in a lot more work than Assistants, yet do not get this type of benefit.
- Job expectations. When you join a job, you are expected to perform at least the basic duties. Joining as an Engineer and refusing to set the Supermatter up is obviously bad, but it is something worth doing when the benefits are getting insulated gloves, a skillchip, and access. This is a good example of duties and abilities, and I do not believe Assistants fall under this category.
- The Head of Personnel, their job is to manage access onto the station. If Assistants join as a gimmick job, they should be seeking out the access they need to do so, rather than be given it from the very start.
- Maintenance access does nothing to help Assistants assist, it just allows you to ghost the station more than it helps.
- Server culture. This is a very hard argument to make, and is obviously up for interpretation, but I believe that giving Assistants free stuff further encourages more people to play Assistants, and 25% of the entire server being Assistants leads to boredom and eventually greytiding.

[Turbonerd]

You could open a PR that removes the config if you aren't successful. Honestly I don't see the point in its existence.

[NecromancerAnne]

Let's suggest a hypothetical, since i don't think it is terribly much of a stretch if you believe that tiding into departments via maint is at all a concern presently.

Let's say assistants just open passages into maintenance via tunneling into the walls, since they cannot use the doors and nobody is necessarily controlling occupation within maintenance actively. What is your feelings about this possibility?

[johnfulpwillard]

Let's suggest a hypothetical, since i don't think it is terribly much of a stretch if you believe that tiding into departments via maint is at all a concern presently.

Let's say assistants just open passages into maintenance via tunneling into the walls, since they cannot use the doors and nobody is necessarily controlling occupation within maintenance actively. What is your feelings about this possibility?

I think that is fine, how the players act within reason is their own personal business. I just believe that giving them this access is just encouraging behavior that we should not be expecting from an Unemployed job, so I see it as a net-negative for the servers.
It's more work they have to do, that opens them up to escalation from Security or Engineering personnel, which I think is fine.

[Somepan]

- Job expectations. When you join a job, you are expected to perform at least the basic duties. Joining as an Engineer and refusing to set the Supermatter up is obviously bad, but it is something worth doing when the benefits are getting insulated gloves, a skillchip, and access. This is a good example of duties and abilities, and I do not believe Assistants fall under this category.

So you want to remove the job which has trully 0 expectations ? So people will be forced to play jobs they don't want to perform, and they end up hogging the job slots ?

Also engineering is a pretty poor example, most people who pick engi don't set up the SM, because usually it takes very little labor, is repetitive, and most engis think "another engi will do it" (even in case where they are alone, in which case they only do it after station has run out of power). Can we expect that you would push for job responsabilities to be enforced more harshly for all jobs ?

- The Head of Personnel, their job is to manage access onto the station. If Assistants join as a gimmick job, they should be seeking out the access they need to do so, rather than be given it from the very start.

So you're making assistants less worth to pick, (because maint access is their only plus compared to most other jobs) and you expect them to be job content for HOP ? People tend to change jobs when they have a reason to do so, why would someone pick assistant then immediatly change to another job, when they could've been that job roundstart ?

- Maintenance access does nothing to help Assistants assist, it just allows you to ghost the station more than it helps.

What about stations that have aggresive critters, in such cases scouring the maintenance for that sweet loot helps sec, because you're killing critters for them, and yes i know it's an edge case, but it still exists.

-snip- and 25% of the entire server being Assistants leads to boredom and eventually greytiding.

How does people playing assistant instead of another job lead to boredom ?
As for the greytiding, yes people who grief are over represented in assistants, but so are they for other jobs, notable example are paramedics or engis, you're not going to prevent people from greytiding/griefing/whatever you want to call it by making on of the jobs affected less enticing to play. People are just going to move to other jobs where they'll take the slots, do the bare minimum that's forced by rules if there's such recquirements, and do the same things they would've done as assistants.

I firmly believed that your idea is inherently flawed, imo the issue isn't "assistant is enticing to play", the issue is "being a cunt is funnier than doing job content". I think removing maintenance access from assistants will change nothing but inconvinience people who play assistant because it's a job without any goal and that's relaxing to some extent.

Another question, while you try to push for other policy/config change that would go in the way of greytiders, and if yes, what would they be ?

-snip-
It's more work they have to do, that opens them up to escalation from Security or Engineering personnel, which I think is fine.

While yes from a rules side of things that would open them to escalation it's not going to happen in practice.
Most people who play sec learn very fast not to go too hard against tiders because it's pointless, at worst you end up preventing petty thief which leads into a round long escalation that ends when they ahelp, if they do.
I've exclusivly been on terry so i may be biased but in my own experience (i know, annecdotal) it's just easier for sec to ignore tiders as long as they don't stand in their way than get into arresting them, and then potentially having to fight against them who escal, and then ahelp about, if they ahelp.

[Timonk]

how do you claim to have any idea about the culture in tg when you are honestly not that active playing on the server? you were connected to 550 rounds since 2019. we could probably cut that number in half because you have a recent trend of joining rounds, observing for 2-10 minutes then disconnecting. scrubby backs me up that you are not interested in observing as of recent. scrubby also tells me that you spend most of your time here playing.
how about we check how many times you played assistant in recent times? 4 times since the start of 2022.
is this just some kind of personal vendetta against assistants? you seem to not be interested in anything else, except maybe push mentors and delete felinids for some reason.

i hold no doubt of your knowledge about fulp, or your coding abilities. but should you really be an admin here?

[johnfulpwillard]

So you want to remove the job which has trully 0 expectations ? So people will be forced to play jobs they don't want to perform, and they end up hogging the job slots ?

I am not removing the job nor changing the expectations. I've said I am removing their maints access, I do not see why a job with no responsibility/expectation should be given the ability to restricted areas.

Also engineering is a pretty poor example, most people who pick engi don't set up the SM, because usually it takes very little labor, is repetitive, and most engis think "another engi will do it" (even in case where they are alone, in which case they only do it after station has run out of power). Can we expect that you would push for job responsabilities to be enforced more harshly for all jobs ?

This would be something I would like to change, however I can't really say I see it happen much. Any time we were running low on power (from my playtime on Sybil), there has never been any Engineers on board. It is obviously my personal view, but for the small percentage of rounds that do have non-antag Engineers who refuse to set up any sort of power, then you clearly should not be playing Engineer. This goes for any job, bare essentials have to be done for a station to function at all, it should be an expectation that you at least make an attempt.

So you're making assistants less worth to pick, (because maint access is their only plus compared to most other jobs) and you expect them to be job content for HOP ? People tend to change jobs when they have a reason to do so, why would someone pick assistant then immediatly change to another job, when they could've been that job roundstart ?

I am making assistants less worth to pick because they should not have any positives to picking. It's the one job that is not supposed to have a pro side, it's the last resort/gimmick/unemployed job.

What about stations that have aggresive critters, in such cases scouring the maintenance for that sweet loot helps sec, because you're killing critters for them, and yes i know it's an edge case, but it still exists.

I guess they can go ask for maints access from the HoP. I don't see why this would change the round.

How does people playing assistant instead of another job lead to boredom ?
As for the greytiding, yes people who grief are over represented in assistants, but so are they for other jobs, notable example are paramedics or engis, you're not going to prevent people from greytiding/griefing/whatever you want to call it by making on of the jobs affected less enticing to play. People are just going to move to other jobs where they'll take the slots, do the bare minimum that's forced by rules if there's such recquirements, and do the same things they would've done as assistants.

I firmly believed that your idea is inherently flawed, imo the issue isn't "assistant is enticing to play", the issue is "being a cunt is funnier than doing job content". I think removing maintenance access from assistants will change nothing but inconvinience people who play assistant because it's a job without any goal and that's relaxing to some extent.

Another question, while you try to push for other policy/config change that would go in the way of greytiders, and if yes, what would they be ?

Assistant is a job with the purpose that it has no job content, their content is supposed to be aiding others. Their maints access inherently goes against this and instead encourages them to just remain on their own for a round. The reason there are so many greytiders is because they have access to nothing and do not care for anyone. That is the argument I am trying to get at. Assistants should not be a job people "main"., like they would paramedic/engineer/etc.

If the opportunity arose I would push for better anti-greytiding policy, it would depend on what is being proposed and what the other headmins think, obviously.

While yes from a rules side of things that would open them to escalation it's not going to happen in practice.
Most people who play sec learn very fast not to go too hard against tiders because it's pointless, at worst you end up preventing petty thief which leads into a round long escalation that ends when they ahelp, if they do.
I've exclusivly been on terry so i may be biased but in my own experience (i know, annecdotal) it's just easier for sec to ignore tiders as long as they don't stand in their way than get into arresting them, and then potentially having to fight against them who escal, and then ahelp about, if they ahelp.

It is a very big shame that security is scared of arresting people, it really is something I would like to see change. Assistants losing maints access is just one way I hope I can get that changed. It is a minor part that will help in the long run I believe.

how do you claim to have any idea about the culture in tg when you are honestly not that active playing on the server? you were connected to 550 rounds since 2019. we could probably cut that number in half because you have a recent trend of joining rounds, observing for 2-10 minutes then disconnecting. scrubby backs me up that you are not interested in observing as of recent. scrubby also tells me that you spend most of your time here playing.
how about we check how many times you played assistant in recent times? 4 times since the start of 2022.
is this just some kind of personal vendetta against assistants? you seem to not be interested in anything else, except maybe push mentors and delete felinids for some reason.

i hold no doubt of your knowledge about fulp, or your coding abilities. but should you really be an admin here?

My recent trend of joining rounds is just logging on for quick debugging or verifying things. I do not play Assistant because I obviously do not enjoy the lack of content and other open job slots to sign up as instead. I also generally play during lowpop hours when there are many job positions that need to be filled, and I prefer actually helping the station. Obviously much of my opinion would come to seeing discussions, policy threads, stories, and personal observations.
I also find bringing up fulp very distasteful- many current-day admins on TG are frequent players if not staff on other downstreams such as Skyrat, and I am tired of people trying to point out my relation to Fulp while no one else seems to get this same treatment. Leave the two servers separate please.

[Timonk]

I also find bringing up fulp very distasteful- many current-day admins on TG are frequent players if not staff on other downstreams such as Skyrat, and I am tired of people trying to point out my relation to Fulp while no one else seems to get this same treatment. Leave the two servers separate please.

i dont see anyone else running around with skyrat in their name either

[Timonk]

also you dont play assistant and yet you claim to know whats best for them?

[johnfulpwillard]

At this point I think you are derailing from what the point of the thread is. Fulp in my name does not stand for Fulpstation, and I am not claiming to know what is best for "them" (Again, I do not think assistant "mains" should exist), I'm saying I believe the server as a whole would be best if they did not have maints access.

[Unsane]

I trust this man

[Timonk]

At this point I think you are derailing from what the point of the thread is. Fulp in my name does not stand for Fulpstation, and I am not claiming to know what is best for "them" (Again, I do not think assistant "mains" should exist), I'm saying I believe the server as a whole would be best if they did not have maints access.

you will not banish all the "assistant mains" to the shadow realm by taking away their maint access. they will either not care, line up at HoP or just go engineer instead. your platform is "i hate assistants lets take away their maint access, other than that i will just cooperate i guess."
do you really think your chances of winning are high with that platform? if you really want only that, why not make a policy discussion or something of the sorts?

[johnfulpwillard]

you will not banish all the "assistant mains" to the shadow realm by taking away their maint access. they will either not care, line up at HoP or just go engineer instead. your platform is "i hate assistants lets take away their maint access, other than that i will just cooperate i guess."
do you really think your chances of winning are high with that platform? if you really want only that, why not make a policy discussion or something of the sorts?

If they line up the HoP line for maintenance access then that is their prerogative, if they take Engineer then they are assuming the bare essential expectations from them. My platform is not "I hate assistants", it is "I think Assistants as a job and the server as a whole is better if they do not have access to this", and this has been tried in the past but never stuck. My goal is to make sure this time it stays longer than just "as a test for fun".
I do not understand why you are just asking the same questions repeatedly, expecting me to answer any differently.

[Timonk]

and this has been tried in the past but never stuck.

I wonder why. Maybe because it's more of an annoyance to assistants than an actual policy or quality of life improvement? You yourself admit it's more like an additional hurdle for assistants to cross than anything else. There's plenty of ways to circumvent this.

[TheLoLSwat]

If this doesn’t pan out, I hope to see the assistant idea tried some other way. I know I expressed this but I wanted to get it down somewhere on forums

Good luck king

[saprasam]

how do you plan to deal with the inevitable circumvention of people just smashing through every maint airlock, or worse yet picking jobs only to do nothing in them? if people are actively inconvenienced by changes like these, they won't bother interacting with the system and will instead circumvent it.

[oranges]

how do you plan to deal with the inevitable circumvention of people just smashing through every maint airlock, or worse yet picking jobs only to do nothing in them? if people are actively inconvenienced by changes like these, they won't bother interacting with the system and will instead circumvent it.

this is an age old question that arises any time developers change things and the reality is people do eventually adjust their behaviours, no protest lasts forever.

[Timonk]

how do you plan to deal with the inevitable circumvention of people just smashing through every maint airlock, or worse yet picking jobs only to do nothing in them? if people are actively inconvenienced by changes like these, they won't bother interacting with the system and will instead circumvent it.

this is an age old question that arises any time developers change things and the reality is people do eventually adjust their behaviours, no protest lasts forever.

I think it will be a mix of queueing in line for hop, asking the ai for emergency access immediately and/or smashing walls/hacking doors to where you want to get. It's literally just an inconvenience made to be circumvented. This will not stop assistants from running around in maint.

[dirk_mcblade]

Judge a headmin candidate not by his platform, or even his friends, but rather by his enemies. His mental handicap as a coder notwithstanding johntgwillard is a solid top five pick.

[Lacran]

A lot of your arguments seem to be around making assistant less enjoyable for players.

Considering that you don't feel assistant really has it's own identity and you want to restrict their creative freedoms further what would your stance be if you had the option to remove assistant outright?

If you were against it what do you believe an assistants role should be that wouldn't be better served by playing a different role?

[johnfulpwillard]

Considering that you don't feel assistant really has it's own identity and you want to restrict their creative freedoms further what would your stance be if you had the option to remove assistant outright?

If you were against it what do you believe an assistants role should be that wouldn't be better served by playing a different role?

I would be against removing Assistants outright- they have its place as the Unemployed and Overflow job slots. It's also just generally good to have a beginner-friendly job with the purpose of being able to go around and ask people if they need help, which we do not expect from people playing any other job.

[nukularpower]

Imo the maint change would surely be a benefit to antags looking for privacy, at least, and it might even encourage a HOP to like, keep records of access given, in case of future crimes - fully support that change myself.

DIfferent sort of question I'm just curious about: I may be mistaken but afaik you are the guy that runs Fulpstation, right? If not please disregard this but- do you feel being a TG headmin would cause any conflict there? Would it perhaps encourage porting Helios station and especially bloodsuckers to base TG if you were to be elected here? Its long been sad to me that TG is like, the only server without some form of vampire antag, and bloodsucker is the best one i've tried personally. I know being a headmin is not necessarily related to coding stuff but afaik you are a big time contributor too, so just curious how that would pan out, or if it would matter at all.

Thanks!

[johnfulpwillard]

I am not related to Fulpstation at all. I was a mod there about 16 months ago and made PRs there.

Though even if I was, Heliostation and Bloodsuckers are code stuff that I am unable to change, and there are coding-related reasons why those were never added in both here and here