Official stance on crowd mentality

[Cupax3]

Salutations!

Following a precedent case of crowd mentality in a recent Manuel round, I'd like to ask for a Headmin stance on crowd mentality and how it affects punishment of the individual.
Please note that the round in question (137998) was only used as an example and should not be the focus of the discussion, neither in terms if the punishment is justified or if punishment was warranted at all.

To go further into detail, in real life crowd mentality is a serious factor to decide on how police (as an example) act and punish if faced with it during a riot.
The general strategy is to isolate the leaders and break up the riot rather than going after an individual in the crowd. Once a human is part of a bigger collective, it gets easier to step over boundaries and break rules because one is no longer acting as an individual. This effect is treated as a punishment-reducing circumstance should it be prosecuted for non-leaders.

More material on the topic:
YOUTUBE: Herding Behavior: How following the crowd leads us astray
YOUTUBE: Wendover Productions; How to Stop a Riot

My question, then, is: Will crowd mentality on /tg/station generally be taken into account for punishments and, if so, will it have a positive or negative effect on the punishment?

[wesoda25]

You should be asking whether extenuating circumstances, such as the game being unplayable, excuse certain smaller rule breaks. If we permit mob mentality, places like bagil will become a war zone.

[Man_Shroom]

Crowd mentality should be taken into consideration by IC security officers when they handle arresting a horde of greytiders and decide who was the worse offender and who was just there.

It shouldnt be used for OOC policy and admin decisions. How would crowd mentality from IC riots even affect how you OOC play the game? This is the definition of IC issue.

[Cobby]

your life is not negatively impacted if you cant play ss13 for a day compared to being arrested and having that appear on your name for the rest of your life.

police also have to be conscious of resources when handling a potentially violent situation. Admins, as gods IC and behind computer screens OOC, do not. If you did pose a physical threat you would not be playing on the server regardless.

[cacogen]

crowd wisdom

[Coconutwarrior97]

In these situations punishments for breaking rules will be applied as normal. Individuals are not going to be given leniency or a pass just because everyone was doing something.

Headmin votes:
Coconutwarrior97: Yes.
Phuzzylodgik: Yes.
TWATICUS: Yes.