Notes: The Great Compromise

[conrad]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Hello!

There has been certain discussions about the perennial problem of how notes are perceived.

I myself in my short tenure had a note overturned, with the argument that a combination of the good faith of the person whose note I issue to combined with the fact the ban appeal is enough of a record of that (i.e.: accidentally exploiting a bug), was enough for me to lift the note.

The purpose of the note, initally, was to make future admins aware that the player knew about the bug, did it accidentally so that if they did it again in the future, those admins would know that, the second occurance, was not accidental. Were there evidence for the bug being exploited on purpose, that wouldn't be a note, that would be a ban.

This is an argument that I see a lot of admins and players taking instances on, usually opposed. Admins want to note, so that the culture of noting is fostered and they themselves can peruse records when a player gets bwoinked.

Players, however, usually have the instance that there are a lot of notes that are pointless, and serve no purpose other than staining their record.

Here's where I bring the solution: Minor rule breaks that warrant notes instead of bans, as well as notes that are kept as a general record, should have an expiry of 6 months. Only bans, and actual problematic rule breaks should stay forever.

The consideration here is that in 6 months, admins already see the notes faded away. Might as well remove them entirely, unless they are specifically problematic, and therefore worthy of being considered after such a long amount of time.

Here's my totally arbitrary list of rules that would, most of the time, have expiring notes upon breaking them:
Any rules besides 2, 6, 8, 9 and 11. I have not checked MRP and would appreciate an input on that. A reminder that bans for the unmentioned rules would remain as they are now.

I did not read the precedents for these so feel free to call me names and post what you think.

This serves two purposes:

It keeps the record neat and clean for admins;

It makes it so that players are not permanently marked for something they did that was minor.

Thoughts? Concerns?

Thank you for your attention!

[NamelessFairy]

1. Serious issues receive bans, minor issues receive notes
2. If only notes fade, then only minor issues will fade
3. Even minor issue notes remain for 6 months

You've made a mistake in point 1 here. Demonstrable malice, repeat offences and utterly abhorrent acts receive bans. (Some admins might draw different lines but I'm sure a lot get where I'm coming from here)
A player can get away with just a note for a lot of shitty behavior, not just stuff like OOC in IC like you suggested. Poor escalation, abuse of powers as security, destroying peoples projects and even flat out unjustified murder can all result in just a note in the admin feels that its not beneficial to overall server health to issue a ban. You will usually see bans not utilized for players with demonstrably good history or potentially if the situation seems accidental. So this means serious issues can receive notes, serious issues that received notes with the intent of ensuring those serious issues aren't repeat behavior. You can get away destroying the SM and ending the round once if you claim you've never done it before and your history supports that, you'll just have to sit through an admins explanation of how to set up the SM. If notes auto purge after 6 months all of a sudden you can do the same thing, ruin the round for everyone and get off with a slap on the wrist. Maybe next round you can overdose several medbay patients and claim you didn't know the thresholds. You need to realize we have extremely bad faith players who we can't just permaban because they work around loopholes in our enforcement, they're not stupid enough to miss the opportunities that note purges would provide them to inflict misery on players where possible. And if trying to memorize expired notes would be a conduct violation it'd be even harder to protect the community from malicious actors because they could just accuse the banning admin of memorizing notes and whoops now we have admins afraid to lay a finger on the people we all know are going to inflict misery but its suicide to attempt action.

[Cobby]

--
Can you give an example of a situation where a minor note, in which a ban wasn’t deserved, would be necessary 6+ months down the road? 8 months? 12?

--
First of all this isn’t the main issue IMO with keeping notes around forever. The main issue to me is after enough notes, players just become “dirty players,” and it’s supported by their massive note history, so they play into that and stop giving a shit about the rules. I know plenty of players like this who just leaned into being shitty because their account histories said “you are shitty” and that stays forever.

But to answer your question the reason is that it’s a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Headmins come and go, policies have more sticking power.

--
I would probably rather just an honest conversation, but if they really felt it was bad enough to note beyond that, I would rather the ban. Admins only issue bans when they’re pretty damn sure the player did something wrong — notes on the other hand they can slap on after essentially any ticket they feel like, so long as it’s factual. With a ban you get a fair appeal and the admin has to actually have a justification banning you. Notes need absolutely no justification aside from “it’s just record keeping, if it doesn’t happen again you don’t have to worry!”

1. Not off the top of my head if you want me to point to a specific incident, but I can very easily imagine very grey situations arising in which the admin decides not to ban them and it becomes relevant later. My immediate thought is things like innocuous metafriending that could later expose actual communication.
   The "which a ban wasnt deserved" is a bit silly because again I think if youd rather be banned in tandem with just taking a note than not eating a ban I think theres a serious problem here youre not addressing.
   _____
2. This is a player problem? I mean you can somewhat argue its a visual problem with how notes are viewed by the players, or that its an admin problem they are using innocuous notes from X months that arent relevant, but them continuing to cause trouble because they feel tarnished is definitely on them if they arent here voicing their concerns. This is not school, the admins do not have to coddle grown men acting like schoolboy delinquents who misbehave because there is a log they went to principals office.
   
   what is being suggested is not even a policy change though, its a decision to intentionally obfuscate data that you would like to blanket brush as irrelevant when there are other ways to approach the situation that dont involve deleting said data.
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3. Absurd. The only difference would be you can whinge about the length and have some power to complain about getting caught out for bad behavior.
   
   I can agree that it is a misuse of the system to note for things you arent actually trying to curb behavior on (bar dude ur epic notes), but I think that is easily solved by letting notes be appealable on the basis that they do not reflect anything substantial that an admin or the player can take away from. If you actually did the thing and it is something they want to curb you need to accept the idea you have to take the L on it, which is why that specific part about note appeals exists so you arent arguing every note forcing an admin to be on the forums just as much as they are ingame administratively.
   
   Where I start really rolling my eyes is the idea this can only be achieved through force banning to get notes and hard deleting them. It starts getting very suspicious when there are perfectly good alternatives that also dont obfuscate data via hard deleting points we dislike, yet we keep harping on that being THE solution.

[iwishforducks]

Where I start really rolling my eyes is the idea this can only be achieved through force banning to get notes and hard deleting them. It starts getting very suspicious when there are perfectly good alternatives that also dont obfuscate data via hard deleting points we dislike, yet we keep harping on that being THE solution.

me, vekter, and timber have been discussing about this: that hard deletion is not the answer, and we have listed a-many solutions. very dramatic to say that this is the only thing being harped in this thread. please don’t derail it

[Mice World]

I think notes should just automatically hide themselves from players after 100/200 hours played, with high severity notes being the exception. As for admins, old notes could be moved into a separate "archived notes" menu. This menu would act similar to the fade system but with an extra message reminding admins that these notes are indeed old and to prioritize using new/the lack of notes instead.

Example message: "Notes archived here are automatically hidden from players after X days. If possible, prioritize basing your judgement off modern notes".

This isn't to say admins can't use the old notes, but I feel this would reinforce the idea that old notes are mainly for record keeping.

Edit: I agree with wubli that playtime is more important than time passed, so I've changed the first part.

[wubli]

i wrote a bunch of shit and regretted it immediately because i am repeating other people in here but basically:

well the question becomes “why do admins need to keep this note” - if the note has no tangible effect on players and administration- as you have stated -, why keep them around? what purpose do these old notes serve?

we'd 100% benefit from explaining how notes work in the wiki if we haven't yet. i think every admin trainer teaches their candidate that older notes often don't really matter unless they show a consistent pattern. for example, it's not the same killing someone wrongfully, logging off, and repeating it in 6 months, than playing the game regularly and have two separate incidents of wrongful kill with a bunch of playtime in-between. the only reason why it's relevant that the first guy did it months ago is because they seemingly have only logged in to be dumb, while the other person made a mistake and proved they can play without making mistakes. this is why playtime matters more than actual time passed

ive seen many admins use notes as really petty ways to flex their ego/power over players whom dare try to appeal. in the past year i’ve seen way too many notes that had to get removed by headmins because of said Admin Bus.

can you drop names because this is a severe accusation. i don't keep up with all note appeals but if true, this is terrible. i'd like to think tg is one of the fairest servers administration-wise but obviously i don't read all ban appeals or read every admin-bus discussion, seems like a lot to say they're flexing their ego/power but if true then they should be put on blast

[iwishforducks]

i wrote a bunch of shit and regretted it immediately because i am repeating other people in here but basically:

i think despite me saying that 2beard is an inapplicable example, it's a good example of an inapplicable example. notes do not inherently stop those kinds of people. lots of people seem to think notes stop the next puppy killer or the inventor of the atomic bomb 2, when it's more of permanent bans + good admin management. thinking back to lucy cicerio or even reider meza whom would rack up notes like cotton candy at a theme park yet it didn't seem to stop their behavior. they hardly even lasted more than 6 months once they started getting notes

well the question becomes “why do admins need to keep this note” - if the note has no tangible effect on players and administration- as you have stated -, why keep them around? what purpose do these old notes serve?

we'd 100% benefit from explaining how notes work in the wiki if we haven't yet. i think every admin trainer teaches their candidate that older notes often don't really matter unless they show a consistent pattern. for example, it's not the same killing someone wrongfully, logging off, and repeating it in 6 months, than playing the game regularly and have two separate incidents of wrongful kill with a bunch of playtime in-between. the only reason why it's relevant that the first guy did it months ago is because they seemingly have only logged in to be dumb, while the other person made a mistake and proved they can play without making mistakes. this is why playtime matters more than actual time passed

pretty much a +1 to this: notes aren't really explained anywhere in a player facing way. fading notes on a criteria of playtime hours rather than time passed is definitely a step in the right direction. going to also soap box yet again that it should be both playtime hours AND time passed, as many people play way too many hours a day.

► Show Spoiler

ive seen many admins use notes as really petty ways to flex their ego/power over players whom dare try to appeal. in the past year i’ve seen way too many notes that had to get removed by headmins because of said Admin Bus.

can you drop names because this is a severe accusation. i don't keep up with all note appeals but if true, this is terrible. i'd like to think tg is one of the fairest servers administration-wise but obviously i don't read all ban appeals or read every admin-bus discussion, seems like a lot to say they're flexing their ego/power but if true then they should be put on blast

not the place to put said admins on blast here; there's better places to discuss this

[sinfulbliss]

1. Not off the top of my head if you want me to point to a specific incident, but I can very easily imagine very grey situations arising in which the admin decides not to ban them and it becomes relevant later. My immediate thought is things like innocuous metafriending that could later expose actual communication.

Metagaming gets secret notes so it’s an awfully specialized case. I’d be curious if you could give a single example, doesn’t need to be a specific real incident, but any actual example where a run-of-the-mill minor issue note would be necessary to stay after 6 months.

The "which a ban wasnt deserved" is a bit silly because again I think if youd rather be banned in tandem with just taking a note than not eating a ban I think theres a serious problem here youre not addressing.

Don’t really follow what the problem is. Obviously I would rather take a ban because I very rarely fuck up enough to do something banworthy, whereas it’s much easier to find myself running into notes over minor issues. So not only would I have less of them, but the ones I disagreed with would be legitimate bans which are way easier to appeal and get removed if you have a valid argument against them.
_____

This is a player problem? I mean you can somewhat argue its a visual problem with how notes are viewed by the players, or that its an admin problem they are using innocuous notes from X months that arent relevant, but them continuing to cause trouble because they feel tarnished is definitely on them if they arent here voicing their concerns. This is not school, the admins do not have to coddle grown men acting like schoolboy delinquents who misbehave because there is a log they went to principals office.

what is being suggested is not even a policy change though, its a decision to intentionally obfuscate data that you would like to blanket brush as irrelevant when there are other ways to approach the situation that dont involve deleting said data.

I’ve already given suggestions for approaches to handle it without deleting, I haven’t heard you give any though so it’s odd to mention this without proposing a solution alongside.

Continuing to cause trouble because their note histories mark them for death is simply human nature. If I got orbited and noted/banned for every little thing I did merely because I had a big note history, whereas other players could get away with far more without an investigation because they weren’t in the crosshairs, I’d be pretty pissed too! The suggestion isn’t coddling anyone, it’s giving people a chance to, through good behavior, restore their player history. Why is that such an appalling suggestion to you?
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[*]Absurd. The only difference would be you can whinge about the length and have some power to complain about getting caught out for bad behavior.

I can agree that it is a misuse of the system to note for things you arent actually trying to curb behavior on (bar dude ur epic notes), but I think that is easily solved by letting notes be appealable on the basis that they do not reflect anything substantial that an admin or the player can take away from. If you actually did the thing and it is something they want to curb you need to accept the idea you have to take the L on it, which is why that specific part about note appeals exists so you arent arguing every note forcing an admin to be on the forums just as much as they are ingame administratively.
[/list]

Again, still waiting for an example of a situation where you need a note to remain for 6 months. Even if it’s something like accidentally opening a plasma can and burning down toxins — if that happens 6 months later, who actually cares? Are you worried about some gigabrained semiannual griefer that waits for his notes to expire then meticulously repeats the minorly irritating behavior one round?

[Cobby]

me, vekter, and timber have been discussing about this: that hard deletion is not the answer, and we have listed a-many solutions. very dramatic to say that this is the only thing being harped in this thread. please don’t derail it

what... you took one quippy part of a post to argue a line that i didnt even make that EVERY person is arguing for hard deletion and then you claimed im derailing? trolling man. If you wanna disagree ok but the passive aggressive attitude isnt called for.

Metagaming gets secret notes so it’s an awfully specialized case. I’d be curious if you could give a single example, doesn’t need to be a specific real incident, but any actual example where a run-of-the-mill minor issue note would be necessary to stay after 6 months.

► Show Spoiler

Metafriending and metacomm are not the same thing, you can metafriend with someone without having direct comms outside the game. Only one of these cops you the perma.

Things like IC in OOC but they do it monthly would still be relevant, and it would be especially relevant if they have continual notes about it that didnt necessarily equate to a ban at the time. If I have to tell you to stop ic in ooc say a couple of times in "rapid" succession (say over the course of the first half of the year), then you wait until the later half of the year before doing it again, im not sure why you are owed a new slate. Now like 6 months down the line okayyyy.... but that okay is for you to still be banned just not scaled up as if they all happened together in a shorter time frame. Thats different than a true clean slate which is what deletion is suggesting.

Don’t really follow what the problem is. Obviously I would rather take a ban because I very rarely fuck up enough to do something banworthy, whereas it’s much easier to find myself running into notes over minor issues. So not only would I have less of them, but the ones I disagreed with would be legitimate bans which are way easier to appeal and get removed if you have a valid argument against them.

► Show Spoiler

So what would someone do in this new system, just let you get away with these "minor" offenses with no logging? The part where perhaps im not clueing in on is why are you finding yourself run into notes so often that this would be a concern for you?

Dont you think suggesting to tailor the system in a way that conveniently gives admins a less accurate history of you is a bit poor form too? The underpinning issue here is that youre either doing something to accrue notes or admins are noting you for things that they arent actually trying to curb behavior for. My guess is the former, so im not sure how the thought process ends up going "well just delete my old ones!" instead of taking the notes you get and avoid doing that behavior moving forward.

I’ve already given suggestions for approaches to handle it without deleting, I haven’t heard you give any though so it’s odd to mention this without proposing a solution alongside.

viewtopic.php?p=685231#p685231
viewtopic.php?p=685491#p685491

ive posted a few already on the very similarly-topic'd thread which you also posted in a few posts below on one of these, my apologies for not relaying the same suggestions here.

You wont hear me give anything towards the idea the actual note system needing to be changed though, that is intended. My suggestions are more based on how the data is presented so its less scary and more intuitive to how they should be properly used.

Continuing to cause trouble because their note histories mark them for death is simply human nature. If I got orbited and noted/banned for every little thing I did merely because I had a big note history, whereas other players could get away with far more without an investigation because they weren’t in the crosshairs, I’d be pretty pissed too! The suggestion isn’t coddling anyone, it’s giving people a chance to, through good behavior, restore their player history. Why is that such an appalling suggestion to you?

► Show Spoiler

It is not "human nature", there is no need to coddle players who behave like that. If your immediate thought is to do worse instead of do better, that is entirely on you and I dont think that approach gives me pity over a space videogame.

The suggestion does not make the individuals "better", it simply obfuscates their history in hopes the admin gives them more leeway or doesnt misuse the data they are provided.

You can skip the note deletion part, just have good behavior, and your past notes wont ever come into play. Im not appalled by players "restoring" their player history and i think the insinuation here is stinky, I just think you can do that thru other means than manipulating your existing history to pretend like youve done no wrong whatsoever.

Again, still waiting for an example of a situation where you need a note to remain for 6 months. Even if it’s something like accidentally opening a plasma can and burning down toxins — if that happens 6 months later, who actually cares? Are you worried about some gigabrained semiannual griefer that waits for his notes to expire then meticulously repeats the minorly irritating behavior one round?

► Show Spoiler

If I see you accidentally open up plasma cans 6+ montha ago a few times (all could be genuinely accidental) then months later I see that happen again with relative frequency I should be able to say "dude seriously" even if it happened months prior and have those instances involved in my decision tree of what admin actions should be done. Im not worried about some semi-annual grieffer as opposed to admins giving people who should know better free passes because their history doesnt actually reflect their history.

I think the IC in OOC one is the best illustration. If you have 1000s of rounds played and you long ago were warned to stop ICing in OOC, I dont think 6 months down the line that gives you the free pass to IC in OOC and no one can pull up that youve obviously been told to stop doing this before. Plasma can release can genuinely happen because of controls/lag/etc. but IC in OOC has to be done by typing and pressing send on a message.

Again thats not to say you should be punished as if you did these back to back, but yes you should expect the 15 minute timeout as opposed to having a chance of an admin going "wellllll since its your first (its not but I cant seethat) time..." which is where my gripe lies.

[Vekter]

Where I start really rolling my eyes is the idea this can only be achieved through force banning to get notes and hard deleting them. It starts getting very suspicious when there are perfectly good alternatives that also dont obfuscate data via hard deleting points we dislike, yet we keep harping on that being THE solution.

me, vekter, and timber have been discussing about this: that hard deletion is not the answer, and we have listed a-many solutions. very dramatic to say that this is the only thing being harped in this thread. please don’t derail it

I'm not sure why I'm included here; I do think deleting some notes after a certain period is a good thing but more serious matters (rule 8 or 11 violations, namely) should not be deleted.

[sinfulbliss]

Things like IC in OOC but they do it monthly would still be relevant, and it would be especially relevant if they have continual notes about it that didnt necessarily equate to a ban at the time [...] Now like 6 months down the line okayyyy.... but that okay is for you to still be banned just not scaled up as if they all happened together in a shorter time frame. Thats different than a true clean slate which is what deletion is suggesting.

Spoiler:

If we're assuming they're so minor that you can rack up several in a few months interval without a ban, then it seems to me they're minor enough to not really make a huge difference in how the admin should enforce a future IC OOC 6+ months down the road.

So what would someone do in this new system, just let you get away with these "minor" offenses with no logging? The part where perhaps im not clueing in on is why are you finding yourself run into notes so often that this would be a concern for you?

Dont you think suggesting to tailor the system in a way that conveniently gives admins a less accurate history of you is a bit poor form too? The underpinning issue here is that youre either doing something to accrue notes or admins are noting you for things that they arent actually trying to curb behavior for. My guess is the former, so im not sure how the thought process ends up going "well just delete my old ones!" instead of taking the notes you get and avoid doing that behavior moving forward.

Spoiler:

I think you're misunderstanding. I consider notes a necessary adminning tool. I run into a note every couple hundred hours on average, and often they're deserved. When I find them undeserved I appeal them. Occasionally there is grey area where I find them somewhat undeserved, but not enough to appeal since notes have to be egregious admin fuck-ups to get removed. Those grey area notes are the sort that bother me and I'd rather have just been bans. It'd be nice if they actually faded rather than loomed over for eternity, ready to "trigger" if something in a similar grey area comes around in a random round 8 months later.

And worse is what Vekter alluded to - that admins see players with notes and note them for things they wouldn't a clean player. Players with more notes literally get treated different just because they "have notes," so how can you with a straight face say it's just players wanting to "manipulate" their player history? Manipulate how exactly? By behaving for 6 months?

Minor notes going away after 6 months doesn't paint a "less accurate history" of you, on the contrary it paints a more accurate history of the current you. It says "This player hasn't had a single note or run-in with the rules in 6 months!"

It is not "human nature", there is no need to coddle players who behave like that. [...]

The suggestion does not make the individuals "better", it simply obfuscates their history in hopes the admin gives them more leeway or doesnt misuse the data they are provided.

You can skip the note deletion part, just have good behavior, and your past notes wont ever come into play. Im not appalled by players "restoring" their player history and i think the insinuation here is stinky, I just think you can do that thru other means than manipulating your existing history to pretend like youve done no wrong whatsoever.

Spoiler:

Perhaps leaning into it is bad, I agree with that. But they sure as hell will care less about their notes if they already have 30. 1 note added onto a clean history is something you'd care about more than one note added to 30, that's the "human nature" I was referring to and I think it's undeniable.

At the end of the day there is no way to "restore your player history through other means." Admin opens player panel. Admin sees history of all the times you fucked up. Admin now has opinion of you based on your mistake highlights. Unless they've played with you, in which case they have a more full understanding of your playstyle than a supportmin that only hops on the server to resolve tickets. There is a tangible difference between these two, I can say from experience of probably a hundred bwoinks and tickets over the years.

Again thats not to say you should be punished as if you did these back to back, but yes you should expect the 15 minute timeout as opposed to having a chance of an admin going "wellllll since its your first (its not but I cant seethat) time..." which is where my gripe lies.

Spoiler:

But do you see how unimportant that is? People are bringing up strong arguments and legitimate grievances in favor of expiring notes -- is the counterargument really "well... how will admins know to issue 15min bans to semiannual IC OOC"?

At the end of the day it boils down to this: If the note is truly for something minor, it reoccurring 6+ months later is not a big enough of an issue for it to require compounding punishment. If it's serious enough where you'd start to worry about needing a record several months and years into the future, then it should've been a ban! It's a catch-22.

[Lacran]

Sinful, you can be given notes for different rule breaches. You aren't going to get multiple notes over the same issue.

Notes are not only for minor things, notes can be given for rule breaks that have mitigating and complex circumstances, usually where the player is getting the benefit of the doubt.

If a players been noted due to benefit of the doubt it means they now forfeit good faith arguments and will likely cop a more serious ban.

[Cobby]

I'm not sure why I'm included here; I do think deleting some notes after a certain period is a good thing but more serious matters (rule 8 or 11 violations, namely) should not be deleted.

it was a goober post anyways dw

@sinful i think we are just going to have to agree2disagree here, i obviously dont think "You havent done this in 6 months good job" vs. "you havent done this ever (from what I can see)" is synonymous so we are talking from different frameworks. to be clear im obviously ok with being lenient, but i want that to be the admin making the decision and not the system obfuscating player history for the sake of forcing them into that position.

[wesoda25]

I think it's more an important for an admin to have a comprehensive understanding of a players history than to cater to people who want to keep their notes clean. We don't know what will or won't be relevant down the road and should trust future admins to use their discretion. Yes notes are a punishment, no they should not delete by default. It's a video game, deal with it.

[kieth4]

We welcome expiring notes being used alongside normal notes but the reality is that they're impossible to enforce amongst future terms so we cannot simply mandate them in such a way.

Where they are used we tend to be more hesitant about lifting them as they expire anyway in x months so having a note go "do not do this for 6 months" is fine.