On the position of headmin and host.

[callanrockslol]

Bottom post of the previous page:

As everyone knows there's a few changes going on, headmin elections and a transition to a new host and crowdfunded hosting.

This is going rather smoothly, but a bunch of issues have come up, especially as to the degree of the autonomy of the admin team and Anons position on how its managed and his potential administrative duties.


I think that after the fracas that lead us to the path of a new host we need to get things set in stone regarding all of this.

[Steelpoint]

Honestly the reason why I like to sneak up on the Captains position if I can (When the Cap's Dead and HoP is MIA) is simply to get rid of that grey area in executions/perma, since if I'm the HoS and Acting Captain I can just do whatever I need to do in order to do my job.

[bandit]

I thought it was that HoS was last because he generally had the most shit to do out of all the heads, and the HoP was first because after the initial flood of assistants/clowns/mimes he had the least. So next in line would be the CMO, then RD, then the CE, then finally the HoS.

[Ikarrus]

I was the one that wrote the HoS's place in the line of succession on the wiki. I did it to discourage HoSs from grabbing Captain, but it's by no means against server rules to do so. It's just an IC guideline.

[oranges]

Public logs = no. up to me. the community

[Timbrewolf]

/vg/ has public logs because they need to them to facilitate ban requests and appeals.

Unlike us they communicate mostly through anonymous general threads on 4chan, so players need that to expedite any kind of out-of-game requests of the admin staff. We don't have that situation so, like every other SS13 server, we don't offer our logs to the public.

Here when anyone wants to bring up a claim of shittery against another player and no admins were present we have them make a thread in our FNR forum. If they haven't logged the situation themselves (though most players already do) we can go dive through the register pretty quickly and find the relevant information. It's a much better system than providing public logs to the players and then having them post complaints in generals threads hoping an admin sees them.

The argument for public logs is that it'll give the players more transparency into what adminbus does and allow them to keep tabs on eachother better.

The argument against public logs is that our community is mostly fueled by spite and will use the logs to harass eachother. That a certain amount of anonymity people enjoy playing here will be lost if everything they do and say ICly is a matter of public record. That hours and hours of people's time will get wasted in the name of people stitching together ban requests for players they don't like over situations they weren't there for and are removed from their context.

I would sooner refurbish and revive the admin observer role and find a few people in the community I could enlist to help me police the admins for abuse (and trust not to start expunging details and humiliating anecdotes of players they don't like) than I would turn everything that happens here into something everyone could browse and read and share whether they were present or not.

Ultimately I don't think having another avenue for transparency will actually change people's minds, if /vg/ is any example people will continue to sling the same shit and act just as awful and biased no matter how much evidence they're provided to the contrary. I think people want to be upset and hold grudges. Rather than alleviate that tension in the community public logs will just give people more ammunition to misconstrue and act like spoiled brats over.

We already do so many more things than any other server to bring the playerbase into the decision making process and show them as much of our workings as is feasible. To ask for even more is really ungrateful and I promise you it's something I will continue to stonewall as long I'm able to. If what we offer you now is not enough for you, you're frankly shit out of luck. You can go play on /vg/ where they have public logs, but no public elections and no static forums to air complaints with specific admins or issue other feedback. You can go play on Goon or Bay or Hippie or wherever else where they have neither public logs nor elected headmins and often when it comes to policy they just tell you how it is or what is changing and don't give a fuck what you think about it.

You have it really good here, and it's really shitty to act like you're entitled to more when you just plain aren't. When giving you more actively fucks up the system and adds more workload to an already overstressed portion of the machine.

[oranges]

You really don't think very highly of the community do you?

Perhaps if you had more of a chance to interact with people other than via ban requests and appeals and random singulo threads you might actually find that the majority of them are just here to play the game and have fun.

[Sometinyprick]

/vg/ has public logs because they need to them to facilitate ban requests and appeals.

Unlike us they communicate mostly through anonymous general threads on 4chan, so players need that to expedite any kind of out-of-game requests of the admin staff. We don't have that situation so, like every other SS13 server, we don't offer our logs to the public.

Here when anyone wants to bring up a claim of shittery against another player and no admins were present we have them make a thread in our FNR forum. If they haven't logged the situation themselves (though most players already do) we can go dive through the register pretty quickly and find the relevant information. It's a much better system than providing public logs to the players and then having them post complaints in generals threads hoping an admin sees them.

The argument for public logs is that it'll give the players more transparency into what adminbus does and allow them to keep tabs on eachother better.

The argument against public logs is that our community is mostly fueled by spite and will use the logs to harass eachother. That a certain amount of anonymity people enjoy playing here will be lost if everything they do and say ICly is a matter of public record. That hours and hours of people's time will get wasted in the name of people stitching together ban requests for players they don't like over situations they weren't there for and are removed from their context.

I would sooner refurbish and revive the admin observer role and find a few people in the community I could enlist to help me police the admins for abuse (and trust not to start expunging details and humiliating anecdotes of players they don't like) than I would turn everything that happens here into something everyone could browse and read and share whether they were present or not.

Ultimately I don't think having another avenue for transparency will actually change people's minds, if /vg/ is any example people will continue to sling the same shit and act just as awful and biased no matter how much evidence they're provided to the contrary. I think people want to be upset and hold grudges. Rather than alleviate that tension in the community public logs will just give people more ammunition to misconstrue and act like spoiled brats over.

We already do so many more things than any other server to bring the playerbase into the decision making process and show them as much of our workings as is feasible. To ask for even more is really ungrateful and I promise you it's something I will continue to stonewall as long I'm able to. If what we offer you now is not enough for you, you're frankly shit out of luck. You can go play on /vg/ where they have public logs, but no public elections and no static forums to air complaints with specific admins or issue other feedback. You can go play on Goon or Bay or Hippie or wherever else where they have neither public logs nor elected headmins and often when it comes to policy they just tell you how it is or what is changing and don't give a fuck what you think about it.

You have it really good here, and it's really shitty to act like you're entitled to more when you just plain aren't. When giving you more actively fucks up the system and adds more workload to an already overstressed portion of the machine.

Although this has already been discussed in #adminbus I know but I'm just going to bring up a few points corresponding to what you have said. Again I would like to highlight my main points here are the fact decisions like this should be up to whoever is elected to be a headmin.

1. What everyone else does is not what we should do, as a server for a while now things have been focused on a democratic process which basically no other server does. I'm not saying you should enforce either decision one way or another but just leave it up to the head admins who are democratically elected. As you've said you want to let them run the server so why not let them?

2. Public logs of player interactions don't have to be necessary if they are going to cause huge problems, as I will explain below.

3. Just to expand on that argument it provides trust between players and admins, It negates any claim of admins showing favoritism, hatred and abuse towards any particular player, misconceptions on what actually happened in certain situations i.e "I was banned for punching X when he started the fight! Admins said I was banbating what a load of shit!" to "Looks like you stole all of his items called him a fuckface and dared him to attack you then succumbed when you hit critical" and claims of admin abuse going unnoticed or being "covered up"

4.Public logs can either be filtered to avoid showing ckeys or we could just have player logs unavaliable. Or better yet ban people who consistently wish to bring up out of context and unneeded ban requests. In any case there is no need for a toxic minority to ruin things for the majority. Also I don't think the majority of people here are fueled by spite, I just don't think that' true at all and in some ways insulting to the people that play here.

5. It's certainly an alternative, if they were elected by the community and were of course present and allowed to talk about how admins interact with people to the players.

6. /vg/ lacks the hundreds of posts we have about certain admin, I read the thread and to compare us with them only shows how much more drama we have than they do. I see at best an off handed comment about how X admin is shitty or a log post of admins "circlejerking" which is either ignored or challenged. Furthermore these "spoiled brats" are nothing but the vocal minority.

7. People don't want to play on goon hippie vg or bay. They want to play here, the reason they do is because they are allowed to have a say on who makes the policy and they have a voice in how the server is run. Again It's not asking you to actually go implement them it's asking that the decision be left up to the people who were elected by the community that plays here. It's not ungrateful to ask for decisions to be left up to the people they elect.

8. The people who play on the server and pay for it's upkeep are entitled to this and it's not in the least bit shitty to ask that the people they elect are given the power to make these decisions rather than yourself. Hell when easily the favourite head admin is not running again over misgivings about you being able to simply overrule them on decisions like this maybe it's an indicator that you should just step back a bit? There will be three headmins one the players elect, one the admins elect and one you elect or choose they represent the community as a whole the people who play, the people who make sure it's not a total shit fest and the person who looks after the server itself why not just let them decide how things are done?

In the end it's your opinion being forced here, It would be equally terrible if you just said yes we must have public logs without letting anyone else decide on it but yourself, which is exactly the reason you made the server crowdfunded so you couldn't say "Well I pay for this server so this how things should be" that exact reason.

tl;dr
Let the people who are elected decide what happens, not yourself.

EDIT: Oh well it seems the points I'm making are just being ignored by yourself again.

[lumipharon]

If notes had to be re-hidden because of the pot stirring an whinging that causes, good luck if full logs came out.

Serious question, other then the vague idea of transparency, those that want public logs, in what ways do you think they will be of benefit?

[Sometinyprick]

If notes had to be re-hidden because of the pot stirring an whinging that causes, good luck if full logs came out.

Serious question, other then the vague idea of transparency, those that want public logs, in what ways do you think they will be of benefit?

You could read what I said.

[Alex Crimson]

If the issue is that players will pour through the logs and cherry pick information in some stupid effort to attack other players, then why not just add a rule to the Ban Appeal/Request forums that states users must be involved in the incident to post? Pretty sure we already have that rule anyways. Admins are always there to double check, and the logs will be public so you cannot really take information out of context if its available to everyone.

Id say we give it a month long trail run. See how things go. I believe that is what the headmins did regarding the ERP ban, correct?

[oranges]

I don't care either way I just think it should be up to the headmins you know.

[AdenAbrafo]

There is no point in arguing about public logs. I respect the current host entirely and appreciate what he is trying to do but arguing about public logs with him is completely pointless. It will either end up as a dead discussion or it will end with 'I know what's best even if you guys don't like it.' We just have to accept that he thinks he knows what's best and how the server should be run just because he won a popularity contest decided by people he doesn't even like.

Normally I'd try to be more civil and bring legitimate rational points to the table but all legitimate rational points have already been brought up and they've all been ignored. The servers crowdfunded so that you don't have dictatorial power over anything but you're already forgetting that apparently.

Spoiler:

and it's pretty hilarious that you're calling others entitled when you literally had credentials for hosting the server handed over to you because SoS quit and when this is, y'know, just a goddamn video game server
and when errorage is literally contributing more to the patreon than you

[Timbrewolf]

There's no clearer precedent that it's a horrible fucking idea than what occurred when we made people's notes public.

[Ikarrus]

Public notes were different though. People were just uneasy about what they perceived to be a permanent record that's just there to be used against them.

[Timbrewolf]

If you want to avoid having your notes used against you you should stop doing things that are worth being added to your notes.

[Sometinyprick]

If you want to avoid having your notes used against you you should stop doing things that are worth being added to your notes.

The notes being appealed were usually vague ones from years ago by admins who are no longer around. There was no huge drama rather more a large amount of people being given access to something kept relatively hidden over the years and therefore some of them are bound to take issue and it all happened at once.

[Timbrewolf]

Most of what I saw and handled was people asking for legitimate notes to be removed because it happened a long time ago or they apologized for it.

It doesn't matter how sorry you were after-the-fact when you unleashed the singulo as an Asimov AI. That probably affected whatever ban you did or didn't receive for it, but that note needs to stay there. So admins can know down the road if you do it again, or fuck around and cause harm as an asimov silicon, that this is something that has happened before.

You're also completely ignoring that some folks were comparing their notes to see who had the worst or most. Turning how shitty you've been in the past and what you've gotten away with as a point of pride? Yeah nah that's terrible.

[Sometinyprick]

Then tell them that, and let them deal with it, and them taking pride in being shitty just allows us to reflect back on that sentiment if they ever have to appeal a ban.

[lumipharon]

If notes had to be re-hidden because of the pot stirring an whinging that causes, good luck if full logs came out.

Serious question, other then the vague idea of transparency, those that want public logs, in what ways do you think they will be of benefit?

You could read what I said.

I did. I wasn't talking only to you.

[Sometinyprick]

If notes had to be re-hidden because of the pot stirring an whinging that causes, good luck if full logs came out.

Serious question, other then the vague idea of transparency, those that want public logs, in what ways do you think they will be of benefit?

You could read what I said.

I did. I wasn't talking only to you.

You asked people for reasons as to why public logs are a good thing, which I had provided but you seemingly ignored them. If you want to make a point about them you have to at the very least challenge the arguments which other people give.

[peoplearestrange]

Right so I'm going to throw my view (and a few others I should imagine) on public logs and notes.
They're a bad idea, here's why:

Notes aren't purely used as a permanent record against a person involving bans/warnings etc, they can be generally useful notes as a heads up to admins. For example, they might warn an admin that giving this person a hostile mob will likely cause them to run amock and not actually follow the RP that the GM had in mind. Now this ISN'T a negative as such agaisnt the player, its not going to effect a ban discussion or anything like that, but can shape the way events go.
Notes are also extremely important in catching ban evaders and meta-comming. Allowing an evader or a metacommer to know the admins are on to them is nothing but a bad idea. You're just going to make an admins job even harder than it already is (and it really isn't the walk in the park that I expected it to be upon becoming a candidate).

Now public logs are even more of a nit picky situation, how much information is too much? Does the admin talk get included or just the actions? Not ALL actions are shown in game at the time and some things aren't logged at all, which could cause further misinformation.
Lets give an example, say an player gets killed by a hostile mob that an admin spawned for an event, the intent wasn't actually to have the mob hurt anyone at the time, but the admin was in the middle of adding a ckey to the mob to make it sentient. So the admin heals the player and they go on their way with a "sorry" pm. All's well. Untill you look at the logs out of context, now it seems like a admin spawned a mob to fuck over one player who they healed afterwards. This looks like favouritism, a prank, or anything other than the mistake that it was. Now you've got to the point where admins have to explain EVERY action they take in asay for the sake of the logs JUST IN CASE someone nit picks through the logs.
Now worse still, suppose that a player has it out for an admin, because simply they dont like them (not everyone gets along with everyone and thats sometimes just simply a personality clash). Now a player can trawl through the logs and nit pick EVERY single little mistake that admin makes in order to fuck them over.

What I'm implying is sometimes some things are better left tidied away. In the same way as you dont say every single truth to everyone you meet. You don't walk into a bar and look around and say "ugly, fat, weird, creepy, I don't like the way you drink, you have a mole on your cheek" to everyone you bump into. Even the people who we care about and are 'honest' to we don't tell them every single thought that pops into our head, because god dammit, I wouldnt want the same in return. I'm flawed, Im a person, I make mistakes.


Not sure if anyone will read all that.
Also in terms of notes, can't the players just ASK to see? Then its an admin decision and can be made on a case by case base.

[AdenAbrafo]

It seems to me like your stance against public logs is just because you don't want egg on yours or anyone else's face, which is perfectly understandable because admins shouldn't be expected to be perfect all the time but then again administration shouldn't be supporting the habit of sweeping mistakes under the rug because they don't want to look bad.
The benefits public logs bring outweigh what minor problems they might bring up. If someone is nitpicking the logs to make someone look bad it's going to be previous obvious and that person will be called out for being an idiot. Any mistaken cases of admin abuse can be cleaned up on the forums quickly. If the only other reason is because you say bad things about players then that's not a reason. Either stop talking about people or don't it doesn't really matter. The convenience that comes with public logs shouldn't just be pushed aside because some people don't want other people to be stupid and assume stupid stuff.

[peoplearestrange]

My point is that people will talk behind peoples back, they always do, if logs are public and admins are afraid of being accused of being called out over anything then they'll use something else, like IRC, and then when that becomes public, Steam chat or skype or whatever, it won't stop people all its going to do is inconvenience people who already spend a lot of there spare time for quite a lot of stress.

Its also hardly like there's some big conspiracy or that admins aren't accountable for their actions already. I mean other admins have been deadmined for their actions, the community even managed to kick out the original sever owner. Who is this really benefiting and why is it even needed? Are you all so paranoid to think the admins are collectively working against players simply because they dont like them?

It's also starting to sound like that age old "if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to fear" argument. Which is just ridiculous, EVERYONE has done something wrong, none of us are innocent, but its all a sliding scale. People are used to being publicly open, we still (relatively) like our privacy, heck you're sitting behind a relatively anonymous username on a forum, I don't even know what country you are from. My point is WHY does everything need to be public and open?

[Alex Crimson]

Its also hardly like there's some big conspiracy or that admins aren't accountable for their actions already. I mean other admins have been deadmined for their actions, the community even managed to kick out the original sever owner. Who is this really benefiting and why is it even needed? Are you all so paranoid to think the admins are collectively working against players simply because they dont like them?

Nice bias

[AdenAbrafo]

You miss the entire reason why most people want public logs in your post. I don't care if admins want to talk shit about people, go do it. Public logs aren't to stop that. Influencing server policy almost solely because you want a convenient place to talk shit without being exposed is ridiculous and terrible.
Public logs aren't to catch admins who abuse their powers, though if the question comes whether they do abuse their power it can be easily checked with public logs. They are to easily solve problems and make things easier for everyone.

[peoplearestrange]

You miss the entire reason why most people want public logs in your post. I don't care if admins want to talk shit about people, go do it. Public logs aren't to stop that. Influencing server policy almost solely because you want a convenient place to talk shit without being exposed is ridiculous and terrible.
Public logs aren't to catch admins who abuse their powers, though if the question comes whether they do abuse their power it can be easily checked with public logs. They are to easily solve problems and make things easier for everyone.

What problems are they there to solve? You talk so vague, I think you just like the idea of public logs rather than the actual use of them. What problems aren't being solved or dealt with whilst logs are private? Give me some examples at least.

Nice bias

I say this as someone who (like everyone here) wasn't an admin and was just a player for the longest time and then became an admin and saw "the other side" and noticed none of the bullshit everyone talked about. Everyone acts like its some cult you have to be sworn in on, like some kinda blood oath or some shit.

But I suppose you are right, we do all hate you, even me. :V

[AdenAbrafo]

You miss the entire reason why most people want public logs in your post. I don't care if admins want to talk shit about people, go do it. Public logs aren't to stop that. Influencing server policy almost solely because you want a convenient place to talk shit without being exposed is ridiculous and terrible.
Public logs aren't to catch admins who abuse their powers, though if the question comes whether they do abuse their power it can be easily checked with public logs. They are to easily solve problems and make things easier for everyone.

They are to make things easier. Please give me one reason why logs should be private that isn't just wanting to be able to talk about people OOC conveniently.

[Saegrimr]

Please give me one reason why logs should be private that isn't just wanting to be able to talk about people OOC conveniently.

Does "Keep an eye on these two, might be metagaming." count as talking about people OOC conveniently? If so, what doesn't count as that? Why even have asay?

[oranges]

I don't care if asay is hidden, I want attack and round chat/pda/ooc logs, possibly also the interaction log

[QuartzCrystal]

I don't care if asay is hidden, I want attack and round chat/pda/ooc logs, possibly also the interaction log

Why though?

[TheNightingale]

How else do you expect people to watch secret ERP in Patient Room B?

[QuartzCrystal]

How else do you expect people to watch secret ERP in Patient Room B?

The same way people always have, ghosting and observing.

[TheNightingale]

B-but I want to ERP in Patient Room A at the same time! I can't ghost and ERP at the same time...
... unless I do it in deadchat! Genius!

[Scones]

B-but I want to ERP in Patient Room A at the same time! I can't ghost and ERP at the same time...
... unless I do it in deadchat! Genius!

Become an admin, erp in patient room A with say and B with dsay

I don't care if asay is hidden, I want attack and round chat/pda/ooc logs, possibly also the interaction log

I've been leaning towards opposition to logs, but if they were purely chat/pda/ooc+attack logs, with ip/ckey/adminlog/asay pruned, I really fail to see the harm they could cause. It might be worth a trial run, at least, at some point. I know there will be self-appointed FNR police/lawyers who spend their time going through logs 24/7 but hey, no problem, right?

To summarize: I wouldn't mind logs if they were configured in such a way that allowed for people to build their FNR cases, not try and pile shit onto admins for their grand deadmin expose

[oranges]

I don't care if asay is hidden, I want attack and round chat/pda/ooc logs, possibly also the interaction log

Why though?

So I don't have to wait for an admin to get the logs when I make my case, I can make my case myself and also refresh my memory about what happened so I don't misremember what happened and look like I'm lying

Why fight something that makes your life easier?

[peoplearestrange]

Because I honestly believe it'll make life harder and not easier.

Another example would be people using "evidence" of someone meta-hating them. People can build a case from nothing purely based on their paranoia, I've seen it happen from an admin point of view.

Or to put it another way "If enough data is collected, a board of inquiry can prove anything." Replace board of inquiry with person.

[QuartzCrystal]

I don't care if asay is hidden, I want attack and round chat/pda/ooc logs, possibly also the interaction log

Why though?

So I don't have to wait for an admin to get the logs when I make my case, I can make my case myself and also refresh my memory about what happened so I don't misremember what happened and look like I'm lying

Why fight something that makes your life easier?

By your case you mean appealing a ban, correct? If you were griff'd and making a ban request you could just save logs yourself.

Honestly, for the reason of making public logs is to make it so people can make better ban appeals you may have just swayed me oranges. In fact, I'm pretty sure you just did. All this talk about "abuse of power" has turned me off this whole discussion and I feel silly that I didn't even consider this argument before.

[oranges]

Yes, it would be primarily for use in appealing bans, the primary use case I am thinking of is longer term bans where I no longer remember what happened or the circumstances around my ban.

Having the logs to refresh my memory would be extremely useful.

[QuartzCrystal]

Yes, it would be primarily for use in appealing bans, the primary use case I am thinking of is longer term bans where I no longer remember what happened or the circumstances around my ban.

Having the logs to refresh my memory would be extremely useful.

Agreed. There's too many "Hi my ban reason is "plasma griffon" and I don't remember what happened, but I'm sorry OK?" which sounds horribly disingenuous and doesn't help their chances of being unbanned even though there's not much different they could do.