If the ban doesn't fit, you must acquit.

[iamgoofball]

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=36046

This user was banned incorrectly for hellfoam grenades because of a bug identified in the ban appeal with how grenade logging works. They were completely innocent.

Instead of their ban being removed and an apology, their ban was "only" reduced to a day and a permanent note left on the account because the admin just pivoted the ban to some other bullshit reason that wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.

This is some bullshit. The ban was founded on literally incorrect evidence. Throw it all out and give this person a clean record. The admin's failure to do due diligence should not be rewarded. This should be the policy going forward for situations like this, as rare as it is.

[Vekter]

I'm not sure policy discussion is the right place for this.

I'll say that we do regularly note people who make insane EORG stuff if it ends up getting used before the end of the round, even if they're not the one who actually ends up doing it. I'm not sure this is as much "pivoting for a bullshit reason" as it is "reducing the severity of the ban/note because the circumstances changed". A criminal doesn't automatically get out of a theft charge if it turns out they actually stole something different than what the cops thought they stole, they just get a lesser charge.

[MooCow12]

That analogy doesnt really work in this instance since goof doesnt believe having an eorg grenade on the shuttle is wrong, in other words not a criminal to begin with.

[DrAmazing343]

The grenade on the shuttle for EORG prep is kinda lame, but not illegal, yes.

It IS illegal if it goes off before EORG.

In this occasion, the war crime device went off before EORG. This merits a punishment regardless of the circumstance, even if the possession on its lonesome wasn’t noteworthy.

[PapaMichael]

100% yeah, the admin made a substantial (yet reasonable) mistake, and made a player dig through logs and type out an appeal (and led to the guy who detonated the nades being perma'd for alting, something that was not noticed before the appeal)
the least you can do is throw a dog a bone in this situation
(unclear there's general policy to be made here though)

[Vekter]

100% yeah, the admin made a substantial (yet reasonable) mistake, and made a player dig through logs and type out an appeal (and led to the guy who detonated the nades being perma'd for alting, something that was not noticed before the appeal)
the least you can do is throw a dog a bone in this situation
(unclear there's general policy to be made here though)

I don't necessarily believe this is the case here because the admin's mistake was 100% honest. The only person really at blame as far as that goes is whoever coded the logging to begin with.

They didn't "make" the player go dig through logs, the player did that because they knew they were innocent. That's why we have an appeals system.

We don't give players special treatment if an appeal is successful.

[iwishforducks]

i think this particular case is just an admin mistake. appealer didn't actually get any chance to talk to the admin after they decided on the 1 day. it's also kind of dumb because they had the hellfoam grenades in their bag and they got robbed of them... by a 1 day old evading griefer. i think the issue is deeper than "they should have just dropped the case after getting logs wrong" because the logs were also just straight up wrong themselves...

edit: dendy is right the appealer accepted the 1 day lol i completely overlooked that

[dendydoom]

hello,

the OP here is a little confusing but the basis of discussion should be around this idea of "If the ban doesn't fit, you must acquit." perhaps it would help if goof were to elaborate on a specific policy addition or change so that the discussion can focus on policy. if the thread becomes a secondary peanut to a resolved appeal then it is unlikely to be very productive.

the player accepted the resolution offered by the admin and it was an amicable conclusion, our involvement was never requested. in this regard it is a closed matter.

[iamgoofball]

This is some bullshit. The ban was founded on literally incorrect evidence. Throw it all out and give this person a clean record. The admin's failure to do due diligence should not be rewarded. This should be the policy going forward for situations like this, as rare as it is.

to clarify from the OP:

[Timberpoes]

the player accepted the resolution offered by the admin and it was an amicable conclusion, our involvement was never requested. in this regard it is a closed matter.

Whether your involvement was requested or not is an irrelevance as to whether the matter is closed. The only thing that matters is whether the headmins support it or not. Refusal to get involved as a headmin is 100% complete and unequivocal support for the outcome without asterisk.

However, choosing non-intervention and non-interaction with appeals that have any element of controversy may sometimes cause policy posts to pop up.

Sometimes the winning move is to have interacted with the appeal regardless of request, putting headmin team thoughts down on elements of controversy to explain, expand and clarify why a certain outcome was acceptable.

[MooCow12]

Since we are on the topic , cant any mass killing weapon like a mech with tesla cannons or just simply high damage weapon (mech related or not) get you in trouble for bringing it on the shuttle and someone manages to steal it and then everyone on the shuttle gets skill issue'd to death?

Any powerful weapon can be a liability on the shuttle especially if the crew at the time are prone to inaction


On the flip side
There are realistic scenarios where hellfoam could be viable on the evac shuttle since almost all of them have compartmentalized rooms allowing the purification of all parties in a single room, just like station's atmospherics allows the ai to flood plasma into distro with the justification that it could be useful to purify individual rooms.

[Istoprocent1]

Completely agree with goof.

The full liability should rest on the shoulders of the one that activates the destructive device rather than on the one who made it - something something free will. If the activator is not identified, then nobody gets held accountable and it becomes a code issue to be fixed. If I recall correctly there was also a headmin ruling about randomly signalling in hopes of blowing something up. Without turning it into a peanut - the man was asked to provide evidence, he did, it turned out he was right, there is no reason to punish him for something out of his control.

[dendydoom]

the player accepted the resolution offered by the admin and it was an amicable conclusion, our involvement was never requested. in this regard it is a closed matter.

Whether your involvement was requested or not is an irrelevance as to whether the matter is closed. The only thing that matters is whether the headmins support it or not. Refusal to get involved as a headmin is 100% complete and unequivocal support for the outcome without asterisk.

However, choosing non-intervention and non-interaction with appeals that have any element of controversy may sometimes cause policy posts to pop up.

Sometimes the winning move is to have interacted with the appeal regardless of request, putting headmin team thoughts down on elements of controversy to explain, expand and clarify why a certain outcome was acceptable.

for sure. i know that my implicit approval is tacked onto anything that i allow to happen under my purview.

i know that for every headmin it's different. in discussions such as this, from the privileged position of greater authority i most often prefer to lead from the back. i'm always lurking around to correct falsehoods or gently nudge the discussion back on topic in a way that i think would be most beneficial for the discussion to be productive in allowing for the possibility of the outcome the participants want, but i generally don't like to be the loudest voice in the room because i want to hear others compelled to speak their own thoughts and display their own critical thinking. this method has been effective not only in generating more diverse and thoughtful conversations, but has oftentimes given me enough to think about that i had not first considered that it has swayed my opinion on things that i initially felt quite adamant about. this is why i'm often quiet or at least brief about what i say in the opening parts of these discussions.

with that out of the way, if it's my thoughts that are being asked for, i shall gladly share them in the context of the appeal that sparked this thread.

firstly, i think it would be entirely untenable to enforce the initial ban length/reason under any condition after it was found to be predicated on faulty logs that were proven to be untrue. therefore, the options left to the admin would be to either re-assess the situation in light of this new context, or drop it entirely. even if the player refused the subsequent assessment, it should absolutely not mean that the admin goes "okay fine" and maintains the original ban length. i would have stepped in if this were the case, and if the decision of the appealing player was made based on believing otherwise, then i extend the offer here and now to re-open this. they can PM me on the forums or message me or any other headmin on discord.

my approval is only made consciously insofar as i have great respect for a fair and judicial process of appeal, where it is not ruled on how loud the conversation around it is, but rather that it's being applied fairly and equally so that people both loud and quiet are offered the same recourse. in this sense, i found nothing in the admin's methods that broke conduct or the appeal process. if the admin who has ownership of the ban is conducting themselves appropriately and the player accepts the resolution as fair on their own, then this to me is an acceptable outcome.

if i were to actively pass judgement on the situation itself, i would need to investigate it to the same level i would if i were the admin in question, understanding the full context through logs and discussions. i find it very difficult to generalize things without regard for the details. this is why headmin review is important to me. every appeal is offered this equally. i have little desire to interject without full knowledge based on my own investigation of the situation. i'm not going to spend my time fully investigating the situation present in an appeal unless it's asked of me through headmin review. in this case, as i mentioned before, my involvement before review is to ensure that the process is fairly applied and does not break conduct.

secondly, i'm extremely wary of generalized, sweeping policy which enforces a single outcome regardless of the nuance of the situation. in that same vein, i'm also against this mindset being used against players in the way of writing and enforcing rules/policy which make no attempt to consider the context and nuance. again, i am not the type of person who can easily overlook the small details to generalize a situation to make it easier to deal with, it's just not how my brain is wired.

[Higgin]

-snip-

This is some bullshit. The ban was founded on literally incorrect evidence. Throw it all out and give this person a clean record. The admin's failure to do due diligence should not be rewarded. This should be the policy going forward for situations like this, as rare as it is.

► Show Spoiler

not to put it too tritely - in the context of the appeal at issue, this reads as
>minor spelling error
>your ban: invalid

Okay, ban reduced to merely a day and note changed to reflect the new information we have:

Manufactured two hellfire grenades which were stolen by someone else and activated on the emergency shuttle via signaller, sometimes its best to save the super WMD weapons for just when you're an antag

Apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks to the other admins who helped look through and find the logging issue here

i see an apology there

this was the reply after the resolution, which the player found agreeable, and which still responds to a behavior that wrongly (even if inadvertently) hurt other characters and messed up players' rounds before EORG.

they were not completely innocent, and this isn't double jeopardy - this is part of the process of finding and working through an arcane kink in how logs reflect a situation that in most cases the admin involved does not see take place directly. as Vekter's said a good faith mistake - and the appeals process working as intended.

this isn't some stupidly litigious-ass system where you get to skate on rulebreaks or your part as an accessory to them due to procedural errors - it's a negotiation between player, banning admin, and the larger administration under the rules to correct problematic behavior that screws with our common expectations and makes the game less fun.

sometimes that means that even if you didn't do the thing exactly alleged in the original sanction, whatever it is, setting it straight means copping to still having done something you shouldn't.

this sucks and should be minimized where possible because at best it wastes everyone's time, energy, and ability to enjoy the game if an incorrect sanction was sloppily or carelessly applied up front. a blanket policy of blinding ourselves to what actually happened in a situation when it was misread in good faith, however, courts more harm than good - and the appeals process remediates that harm which is going to occur at times because of the nature of investigation and follow-up in a complicated game and messy round.

tl;dr: ex post facto digging stuff up to justify a wrongful ban is bad, but correcting the wrongful parts of a ban made in good faith sometimes involves admitting that there are still rulebreaks/bad behaviors there in need of being addressed.

in rare situations where this happens, a blanket policy of acquittal is probably more likely to preserve those bad behaviors than administrative carelessness, which Feedback and Complaints are there to bear on directly (and which the successful appeal in this case also probably serves as a lesson to the responsible admin, a public comment on their conduct, and a way to now hopefully improve the logging to reduce the risk of mis-ID in the future.)

just because you didn't kill the person doesn't mean you didn't make and act carelessly with the tools used to do so. it's not double jeopardy, and a procedural error doesn't mean we want to see more of that happening in future rounds just as much as we don't want to see incorrect bans or notes let fly.

the appeals process here addressed both, and a blanket acquittal policy would foil at least one. not a good idea here.

[TheRex9001]

I don't really agree with this being policy, the case-by-case mentality should ideally be upheld. In reference to complaints about being banned for bringing stuff to eorg and someone else setting it off its usually ruled under "Do not facilitate player deaths for poor IC reasoning. Distributing bombs or other similarly destructive items can leave you responsible for how they are used if not cleared with an admin first. Each unjustified kill is normally met with a 24-hour ban.", a common example is bringing a TTV to the shuttle and then getting shoved and someone sets it off.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Isnt it generally already the case that the more effort you go to try and stop your eorg devices being used, the less trouble you get in when shithead 13 manages to activate them anyway?

Like if you're holding a ttv in your hands and joey grey shoves you and activates it, that's different to if you had it in a locked welded cupboard marked "do not open, explosive"