/tg/Station 13

In ban appeals.

It's getting kinda stupid admins dealing with bans that are up to the Triumvirate can abuse this locking privilege to get their snarky last words in.

If people are peanut posting they can and often do get their posts reported and deleted.

In short some new people aren't mature enough to just lock a thread and need to be sassy, which I think it's a misuse of this ability, and until they learn better interpersonal skills, this should be removed.

i mean hes not wrong

locking it to headmins/game masters functionally means that threads would only ever be locked when a headmin decided to mark it as resolved.

i know you can't read the logs, but quite frequently the resolved appeals are managed by game admins, so only letting headmins/absent GMs lock creates more work for them to handle resolved appeals.

if anything, this is something that specific people should be talked to about and not a blanket loss of permissions for all admins.

Which thread prompted this

wrong forum section pal the site and forums board is a bit north

Lazengann wrote:wrong forum section pal the site and forums board is a bit north

"...Over the next few weeks I'm going to be unifying the forum administration with the game administration team.

Meaning in game admins will have limited mod powers in the on topic sections, game masters will have global mod powers, and headmins will be forum admins..."

This is the talk-center for admin related policy as well (as far as I can tell) and thus belongs here.

Furthermore this isn't about the forums entirely, it's more about the abuse and misuse of this particular privilege by administrators regarding in game bans.

Admins who use their powers abusively to get the last 2 cents in before closing it should be feedbacked and/or complained about to the headmins since it can't be "officially" complainted in the subsection. I don't think the power needs to be revoked from admins since a thread might warrant locking.

PKPenguin321 wrote:Which thread prompted this

This https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20032

I strongly disagree with locking threads that have actual discussion: The reason ban appeals are in a public section are so players with experience and knowledge of the rules can add to the discussion rather than limiting to only admins. Locking a thread with discussion, especially after putting in the last word, is a major dick move.

Locking and moving topics in FNR is given to admins so they can resolve their ban appeals without requiring the three headmins or global mods to intervene on every single thread. It's not so you can lock a topic when too many people who disagree with you chime in.

I think the sole purpose of ban appeals being viewable by the players is so everyone can say "wow admin that's fucking stupid why did you do that"

or "wow admin you just fucking abused him and all your admin friends are agreeing with you, lets as a player base call you all fucking stupid"

or more rarely "lol wow dude you're a dumbass for releasing the singularity as a non-antag enjoy your ban"

tasteful posting pointing out the obvious to represent public opinion isn't peanut posting, it's community policing.

tbh

>limiting all admins who abuse permissions
>literally limiting the most trusted people on the server
>implicit that you can't trust your staff

just talk to the people who use it wrong, if they can't use their tools right why are they an admin

"...Over the next few weeks I'm going to be unifying the forum administration with the game administration team.

Meaning in game admins will have limited mod powers in the on topic sections, game masters will have global mod powers, and headmins will be forum admins..."

This never happened. All that happened is that people like Saegrimr lost their mod powers.

John_Oxford wrote:I think the sole purpose of ban appeals being viewable by the players is so everyone can say "wow admin that's fucking stupid why did you do that"

or "wow admin you just fucking abused him and all your admin friends are agreeing with you, lets as a player base call you all fucking stupid"

or more rarely "lol wow dude you're a dumbass for releasing the singularity as a non-antag enjoy your ban"

tasteful posting pointing out the obvious to represent public opinion isn't peanut posting, it's community policing.

>more rarely

Cobby wrote:Admins who use their powers abusively to get the last 2 cents in before closing it should be feedbacked and/or complained about to the headmins

The ideal thing to do is tell the headmins AND the offending admin.

Some headmins don't like telling people what they did wrong until it's too late. This defeats the purpose of making them stop what they're doing in that case. This is my personal experience, though.

subject217 wrote:locking it to headmins/game masters functionally means that threads would only ever be locked when a headmin decided to mark it as resolved.

This definitely should be the case for policy threads tbqh

Otherwise admins will just keep spamming "dumb policy thread, lock it" until it's locked and the policy stays unresolved and resurfaces later

Case in point, the "ban friendly antags" policy thread which was closed without being resolved because admins were spamming it

Grazyn wrote:

subject217 wrote:locking it to headmins/game masters functionally means that threads would only ever be locked when a headmin decided to mark it as resolved.

This definitely should be the case for policy threads tbqh

This is already the case for policy threads (well, game masters can't do it but yeah), same for admin complaints. You can see who has mod privileges by the "Moderator:" field underneath the forum heading.

Regardless, this thread does technically belong in Site and Wiki because Head Admins don't have control over what group gets moderator privileges where, just who is in the group. That said, MSO would most likely look to our point of view for this kind of request.

At this time I (personally) have no interest in restricting these permissions. Ban Appeals is not your debate and discussion forum for you to give your view of a ban, and I'm not going to remove permissions from an administrator for locking a thread that is veering into peanut post central.

If you want to discuss policy, there is Policy Discussion. If you want to discuss your particular grievance with a past ban, you can open a thread in General Chat/NTR Hut.

If you genuinely believe that an administrator has abused their forum privileges, you're welcome to forum PM the head admins about it with a complaint, though if you PM because "I wanted to peanut post in a ban appeal and the mean admin wouldn't let me" I'm going to laugh at you.

Please note that PKP is a global moderator, and so while he can still be complained about his admin-related mod actions, the headmins don't oversee his global mod actions and you would need to go to MSO if you had concerns about his actions as a global mod (i.e. deleting your General Discussion thread)

Arianya wrote:

Grazyn wrote:

subject217 wrote:locking it to headmins/game masters functionally means that threads would only ever be locked when a headmin decided to mark it as resolved.

This definitely should be the case for policy threads tbqh

This is already the case for policy threads (well, game masters can't do it but yeah), same for admin complaints. You can see who has mod privileges by the "Moderator:" field underneath the forum heading.

Good to know, because the "friendly antag" thread was locked without a headmin marking it as resolved, you may want to have a look at that

Grazyn wrote:

Arianya wrote:

Grazyn wrote:

subject217 wrote:locking it to headmins/game masters functionally means that threads would only ever be locked when a headmin decided to mark it as resolved.

This definitely should be the case for policy threads tbqh

This is already the case for policy threads (well, game masters can't do it but yeah), same for admin complaints. You can see who has mod privileges by the "Moderator:" field underneath the forum heading.

Good to know, because the "friendly antag" thread was locked without a headmin marking it as resolved, you may want to have a look at that

People can close the threads they themselves opened, regardless of moderator position.

Alright guys I'm locking this thread now





but seriously common folk (us) should be able to report admins who lock threads while active AND productive discussion is still going on
so admin team be like >strike 9999999999 now you're out

you can already do that

Arianya wrote:

Grazyn wrote:

Arianya wrote:

Grazyn wrote:

subject217 wrote:locking it to headmins/game masters functionally means that threads would only ever be locked when a headmin decided to mark it as resolved.

This definitely should be the case for policy threads tbqh

This is already the case for policy threads (well, game masters can't do it but yeah), same for admin complaints. You can see who has mod privileges by the "Moderator:" field underneath the forum heading.

Good to know, because the "friendly antag" thread was locked without a headmin marking it as resolved, you may want to have a look at that

People can close the threads they themselves opened, regardless of moderator position.

I can feel something wrong with that, especially if the OP is an admin. Example, admin opens a policy thread, raising a legitimate issue (let's say, it's something that can get you banned/warned or not depending on the admin). OP is on the "we should ban for it" team. People discuss it, but the discussion doesn't seem to be going where the OP wants (e.g. majority of admins against banning), so he locks it. Now headmins don't have to give a ruling on the issue and the OP/admin can keep banning/noting/harassing people for it.

I think that once the discussion gets going and it becomes clear that the issue exists and is worth resolving, headmins should still consider giving a ruling about it regardless of OP locking the thread.

If the problem is too many peanut posts then I really can't see why locking thread is a fair solution, preventing all players from posting whether they're allowed to or not because of some players violating peanut policy is stupid.

lmwevil wrote:tbh

>limiting all admins who abuse permissions
>literally limiting the most trusted people on the server
>implicit that you can't trust your staff

just talk to the people who use it wrong, if they can't use their tools right why are they an admin

But there's no actual way to complain officially outside of feedback which is not actionable and if the headmins were going to do this without prompting they would have already.

Nilons wrote:But there's no actual way to complain officially outside of feedback

and policy threads apparently

Nilons wrote: But there's no actual way to complain officially outside of feedback which is not actionable and if the headmins were going to do this without prompting they would have already.

As I specified you're welcome to PM the headmins with these complaints.

Arianya wrote:

Nilons wrote: But there's no actual way to complain officially outside of feedback which is not actionable and if the headmins were going to do this without prompting they would have already.

As I specified you're welcome to PM the headmins with these complaints.

Then please lay out your/other headmins criteria for what constitutes abuse of thread locking powers or some kind of guideline so that players know when to complain and admins know where to stop

just complain any time you feel they did it wrong, if they punished for complaining too much I would've been kicked out months ago

Lazengann wrote:just complain any time you feel they did it wrong, if they punished for complaining too much I would've been kicked out months ago

You shouldn't have to guess when an admin is abusing their power and admins should be trusted enough not to toe a hard line rule

Nilons wrote: You shouldn't have to guess when an admin is abusing their power and admins should be trusted enough not to toe a hard line rule

admins are trusted enough to not toe a hard line rule, it's why they are still admins and not banned

>have to guess when an admin is abusing their power
the headmins look at the forums so frequently that if they disagreed with the locking of a ban appeal thread because the admin was salty it'd be unlocked within the day
power abuse is really obvious and doesn't need hardline rules to see, it's simply if they act in bad faith

EDIT: nilons is saying 'please give me a bingo sheet to complain on deadminning admins who lock my appeals' - you'd be hardpressed to codify a proper ruleset that could apply to the very wide scale of appeals we have to deal with while not having players scream 'BAN POST HASTE HE TICKED BOX 523'.

lmwevil wrote:

Nilons wrote: You shouldn't have to guess when an admin is abusing their power and admins should be trusted enough not to toe a hard line rule

admins are trusted enough to not toe a hard line rule, it's why they are still admins and not banned

>have to guess when an admin is abusing their power
the headmins look at the forums so frequently that if they disagreed with the locking of a ban appeal thread because the admin was salty it'd be unlocked within the day
power abuse is really obvious and doesn't need hardline rules to see, it's simply if they act in bad faith

Yeah that would happen if they didn't already say they don't plan to and that if you have a problem with a thread being locked to pm them.

If the ban appeals aren't open to public discussion under the peanut policy then pull the trigger and outright ban nongamemasters or headmins from posting but this stuff where admins can't post unless it's relevant/under the peanut policy but have free reign to stop everyone from talking despite it being within the rules is at best a half measure

The problem isn't that they're lockable by admins

it's that some admins leave replies and then lock the thread that have snarky tone or comments that need responses.

If you're going to lock a thread leave only the following
Locking to prevent this thread spiralling out of control

DOn't put your own opinion in, don't respond to things people are going to do.

Just add the proviso that if you respond in detail to the thread you lose your ability to lock it.

I'll be real I wanted to post in the Buggy appeal but it was locked and thus I had to actually just PM people about ban information

itt repukan complains about everyone when its literally just specific people who have a problem

Game Admins should still be able to lock threads however the times they do so should really be limited to resolving their own appeals and when a thread ha clearly turned into a shitshow.

another rerun of "One person does something retarded and punishable so everyone has to be punished"

Change the channel please

Karp wrote:another rerun of "One person does something retarded and punishable so everyone has to be punished"

Change the channel please

Only Headmins/Gamemasters are allowed to touch the tv remote