Summary:
- By adminning while playing you're poisoning the tree and by dealing with tickets you're taking the poisoned fruit.
- Matters that don't directly relate to the shift like spamming in OOC or IC in OOC are matters where you can safely admin up, mute them or mute OOC and deadmin back down.
- There is no need to be playing while adminned, as you ought not to be taking any tickets involving a shift you're participating in as a player.
- Using metaknowledge to act like you don't have metaknowledge is still using metaknowledge.
- Playing while adminned is giving yourself a distinct advantage over every other player in the shift.
- Intentionally acting in a way so that you don't benefit from your metaknowledge is just using your metaknowledge to avoid getting in trouble for having metaknowledge.
- You stop ahelp relays.
- We already yell at admins who are in adminbus while playing to stop reading it. If we don't trust admins to be in adminbus while playing, why do we trust them be adminned in game while playing?
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If you are participating in a shift,
you should not be handling tickets related to the shift full stop. If you're participating in the shift, every administrative decision you take is going to be tainted to some degree by the fact that you were participating in that shift as a player. Nabski's anecdote of "If I was playing then I would have an actual feel for the round" is the gold standard of ringing alarm bells, because they should not have been handling tickets if they were connected enough to the events that they "had an actual feel for them".
Playing in a shift while adminned is creating a poisoned tree. Any ahelp you personally take that involves a shift you were playing in is taking a fruit from the poisonous tree. You don't need to be adminned to deal with OOC in IC. If you see IC in OOC then that means you're directly related enough to the events of the shift that you shouldn't be handling it. Investigating any ticket relating to the conduct of players is going to involve you getting various levels of metaknowledge that nobody else in the shift is going to be privy to.
And whgat use is playing adminned if you shouldn't handle any tickets relating to the shift itself? Sure, admin up to mute OOC or OOC mute players or take very basic administrative action which does not involve you impacting the shift or the events of the shift in any way. But that is adminning up when you're playing while deadminned, not playing adminned permanently.
We have anecdotes from admins who admit they use their admin metaknowledge to avoid interactions with players so they'll never get into a situation where they're forced to confront their own metaknowledge. They pick roles to intentionally avoid people because they're adminned up. It also seems like it's commonly accepted to use your metaknowledge to allow yourself to intentionally "lose" air quotes so you can justify playing while adminning. That is not how the game is intended to be played. You are playing and using your admin metaknowledge to directly impact how the round is progressing. Players don't get the benefit of choosing when, where and how they die by picking which pieces of OOC metaknowledge about the shift they're going to act on or otherwise. When you're playing the shift as if you were a player, an admin should be no different to a player. They should play by the same rules and be held to the same standards, if not greater.
Choosing to change how you're playing the game to avoid your metaknowledge having an impact on your shift is biasing your play because of your metaknowledge. Two biases don't cancel eachother out, you're just biased in one direction because you chose to play adminned and biased in a different direction because you chose to change how you played either because of metaknowledge or simply because you have metaknowledge.
Choosing to actively use your metaknowledge to decide who you do and don't fight and who you do and don't lose fights to - Even if you decide "I have metaknowledge about everything so I won't fight back" is STILL using your metaknowledge.
And finally - Players also don't get a heads-up when they've been ahelped. Players who are playing while adminned do. I've seen player-admins
stay adminned while there are ahelps involving them and involving the shift that they're not allowed to handle due to involvement. Imagine players being able to read the responses ahelps people send about them as the shift is ongoing. It's a nutty argument to bring forward.
You also block ahelp relays and appear as if you're not playing when admins run an adminwho to see if any servers need coverage.
Once Hulk told Spookuni and me off for using prayers and/or ahelp tickets to chat about random shit while Spook was playing an offstation role in one shift. If that's not allowed, then by extension admins being adminned up to chat with thier buddies in asay while playing the shift should also be prohibited.
And finally, while adminning you're expected to be around the admin channels on the Discord. While playing, you're expected to not be around the admin channels on the Discord. I'm sure there's a really good reason we require admins to not be hanging around the admin channels - Especially adminbus - While playing.
