Bottom post of the previous page:
This is such a poor part of our policy.Warnings are (and should be) the chief mechanic for guiding player behavior.
Retreating from a ban or a warning because someone got their shit stuffed in makes very little sense for guiding rule compliance. Getting killed by someone seeking revenge doesn't inform you whether or not your initial interaction (i.e. what you did to deserve getting killed) was valid. As long as we maintain the idea that there is "purely valid" escalation where non-antags can murder each other without violating the rules, settling Ahelps with "Resolved IC" just means you're kicking the can down the road for players who broke the rules and got killed for it - so some other admin can sort it out when the player starts the same shit but cosmic karma doesn't get them killed AND the victims ahelp with a coherent story.
Of course it also skews IC behavior in a far broader and unhealthier way too - with playing accounting for which admins are logged on and the likelihood of getting the other person banned - when deciding how to escalate against someone griefing them. I say if someone has done something to make themselves valid to you, you should be able to act out revenge without fear of foreclosing a proper ruling on their behavior from Admins. And for the griefer it's better for them to know that their behavior crossed a line so they can distinguish between behavior that can result in them becoming "valid" versus behavior that could get them banned.
This should mostly apply to warnings (See Line #2), if someone crossed a line, admins need to let them know and not hold back because they got killed in the process of breaking the rules. The outcome is still the same but everyone benefits from clearer guidance. If there's a ban on the table then it seems ludicrous that we actually PUNISH people for role-playing and acting on their IC-motivations.
"Hi it looks like you acted appropriately on your IC motivations, therefore we've decided to punish you by removing the Griefer's dayban and instead letting your revenge - partially removing them from the game, not even accounting for cloning/ghost roles - suffice instead. If you would like to see rule-breakers actually punished for rule-breaking, next time consider just standing still and getting beat to death while you shout into the heavens for our intervention - thats how we like to see conflict play out on SS13."
Sounds pretty silly huh? It might make sense if we dropped shorter bans on people, but as it stands its just a sloppy way to reduce admin workload at the cost of murkier policy and skewing IC behavior.
