[San7890] EsotericSeaslug - Antagonist Ban

[EsotericSeaslug]

BYOND account: Esoteric Seaslug
Character name: Ira Steven Behr
Ban type: All Antagonist Roles
Ban length: 7 days
Ban reason: Banned from Roles: Abductor, Xenomorph, Blob, Blood Brother, Changeling, Cultist, Gangster, Heretic, Hivemind Host, Malf AI, Space Ninja, Operative, Syndicate Mutineer, Revolutionary, Revenant, Head Revolutionary, Sentient Disease, Spider, Syndicate, Traitor, Wizard for 7 days - On Terry (Round 184473), player joined as a Station Engineer and immediately went AFK (zero entries in logs). I checked the name and found that they were playing on Sybil (184472) as a Heretic. I believe this constitutes as an attempt at antagonist rolling, was unable to get the player in a ticket. Please appeal on the forums ( viewtopic.php?f=7&t=44 ) explaining your side of the story.
Time ban was placed: 2022-06-07 00:53:45
Server you were playing on when banned: Terry
Round ID in which ban was placed: Round 184473
Your side of the story: Hi there. Just to get it out of the way, while I think I am innocent of antagonist rolling, I still think some fault lies with me. While this is the first time I have been banned for antagonist rolling or anything of the sort, I have done this kind of stuff a few times as of recently. Although I would not consider it to be antagonist rolling, it still isn't a good thing to do. Now that that's settled, here's my side of the story: So, on both Sybil and Terry, there are two players who I find myself quite uncomfortable to be around. Although I am highly against metagrudging, I don't really feel impartial around these people. Such that, when I see their names in the game, I oftentimes just exit out immediately and try an alternate LRP server or Manuel. This is pretty much what happened in this instance, I won't name names here, but if anyone doubts what I'm saying, I could give some examples of behaviour I find quite difficult to be around if asked. I see how this could look like antagonist rolling, and I really should have informed an admin about it beforehand, again, that's completely on me. Now obviously it's suspicious, because I was then seen on a different server playing as a heretic. However, this was actually a mid-round antagonist assignment, and I had been playing for a good while before I got made an antagonist. I feel like if I had been trying to roll antagonist, I might have just stayed on Sybil and waited for midround there, or kept both servers open at the same time. Anyway, I do think I'm at fault for not communicating my issues with an admin beforehand. Furthermore, the more I think about my practice of switching servers to avoid players, the more I realize that that's not a good way to go about it. Simply put, it hurts everyone a little bit if you just leave servers like that, for any reason, so it would probably be a lot wiser to just do my best to ignore the players I dislike.
Why you think you should be unbanned: As explained above, I don't think this ban was correct. Was it fair? Probably... I'm not really sure on the policy of alternating servers, as it's a more difficult thing to parse in any ruleset, but I imagine there's at least a precedent against it. After finishing this appeal, I'll definitely go over the rules one more time. So yeah, I don't really mind being antagonist banned for seven days, I more so just wanted to give my side of the story here. I do think a one-seven day ban from the entire server would make more sense than a role ban based on my description, though. Although, I do think that I am able to do enough introspection to contribute more thoughtfully to the community in the future, and would also appreciate it if my ban note is at least fixed to better reflect what happened based on my perspective. No hard feelings either way.

[san7890]

Hey there,

Thanks for explaining your side of the story. I was unable to get to you since you were disconnected from both servers while I was looking into it (which is not really your fault, it's impossible to know when an admin will speak with you).

The reason why I was investigating it in the first place was because on Terry, you were a station engineer that stayed right on a potential spawnpoint. You didn't move or do anything that entire round. When I saw it on Sybil (which I caught right before the round ended), I believed it to be a case of antagonist rolling, but this seems to have been a bit more innocent than that. However, your behavior was still concerning. You took up a job slot and didn't do anything. This is pretty dickish behavior to people who may have wanted to play station engineer that round but couldn't. If I recall correctly, the rest of the department worked out fine that round, but it was just unfortunate to see you be disconnected and immobile in the SMES room.

I believed this fit one of the precedents to Rule One (found at https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules )

Regularly starting a round just to see if you are an antagonist (antag rolling) then exiting it (via any means) is not allowed. This also covers any attempts to maximize antagonist probability.

I would strongly advise AHELPing these sorts of things in the future. Although a Station Engineer isn't a real "critical" slot to the round like Heads of Staff or the AI- anyone can adminhelp and say "I'm sorry, but I don't feel like playing this round. Would you open up my slot?" and explain the situation from there. If you feel as if you are being metagrudged, please do AHELP in the future when another incident occurs, and we can take a look into it from there. I personally feel it would be beneficial to adminhelp if you feel you are being "grudged" against through rounds upon the next occurrence.

This part of your appeal made no sense to me:

and I had been playing for a good while before I got made an antagonist

since according to the logs for that round ( https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/syb ... 022/06/06/ ) and sorting for the very first time you connected:

Code: Select all

[2022-06-06 23:53:44.596] ACCESS: Login: EsotericSeaslug from -censored(ip/cid)- || BYOND v514.1584
-snip-
[2022-06-06 23:53:55.024] GAME: *no key*/(EsotericSeaslug) *no key*/(EsotericSeaslug) is no longer owning mob EsotericSeaslug(/mob/dead/new_player) (start area (8,174,1))
[2022-06-06 23:53:55.024] ACCESS: Mob Login: EsotericSeaslug/(John Joker) was assigned to a /mob/living/carbon/human
[2022-06-06 23:53:55.037] GAME: EsotericSeaslug/(John Joker) Client EsotericSeaslug/(John Joker) has taken ownership of mob John Joker(/mob/living/carbon/human) (Arrival Shuttle (23,76,13))
[2022-06-06 23:53:55.339] GAME: EsotericSeaslug/(John Joker) has gained antag datum Heretic(/datum/antagonist/heretic)
[2022-06-06 23:53:55.339] GAME: DYNAMIC: Injected a midround ruleset Heretic Smuggler.
[2022-06-06 23:53:55.339] GAME: DYNAMIC: EsotericSeaslug/(John Joker) joined the station, and was selected by the Heretic Smuggler ruleset.

it doesn't seem like you were playing at all. You got a midround role which is assigned when you join the station, not a spontaneous role given to you while on-station. If you could clarify that inconsistency, that would be well appreciated, but it's not entirely needed for the purposes of this appeal. You only have about 122 living hours of playtime on /tg/station servers, so I will grant you the benefit of the doubt as far as terminology is concerned.

The ban was for supposed antagonist rolling, and I missed the part where you got it mid-round. It would have still been rather suspect and I would have looked into it anyways (for taking up the job roll on Terry earlier), but if I didn't catch that right as the round was ending, I would have spoken to you. Just keep in mind how your actions may affect others, and when in doubt, you can do a regular adminhelp for genuine questions and put it in the ballpark of whoever is chaperoning the server at the time. I am glad that you have stated that you will think about your actions a bit more thoughtfully in the future, so I am going to downgrade the note to the following:

On Terry, immediately disconnected after taking up a Station Engineer slot and joined Sybil mid-round (and got a heretic midround roll). While initially thought to be antagonist rolling, states that they disconnected for personal reasons. Upon appeal, was informed that if they needed to disconnect (with the intention to play on another server) to AHELP beforehand. Was also cautioned that this behavior is suspicious for antagonist-rolling, and was told to ensure something like this shouldn't happen again.

I appended the "metagrudging" aspect to "personal reasons" since I do not really see it to be important to the note. I am also going to lift the ban in the next ten minutes from the submission of this post. If you disagree with any aspect, please do make a new reply. If you are finding that you are still banned from antagonist roles ten minutes after this post, please also do let us know.

Addendum: I have added the note and after a bit of clicking, the antagonist ban should now be lifted. Have a good rest of your day.

[EsotericSeaslug]

Wow, that was fast. I really appreciate the quick response, I thought it would take a few days. I'm just going to put this reply here to clarify some things which I explained poorly.

I would strongly advise AHELPing these sorts of things in the future. Although a Station Engineer isn't a real "critical" slot to the round like Heads of Staff or the AI- anyone can adminhelp and say "I'm sorry, but I don't feel like playing this round. Would you open up my slot?" and explain the situation from there. If you feel as if you are being metagrudged, please do AHELP in the future when another incident occurs, and we can take a look into it from there. I personally feel it would be beneficial to adminhelp if you feel you are being "grudged" against through rounds upon the next occurrence.

So, this is completely on me obviously, and now I'm feeling pretty bad about it. To be honest, I never considered that station engineer would ever be a limited role. I guess since it's always up when I enter the game, I assumed it didn't matter much if I left. Obviously, with a little bit of thinking, it is limited like every other role (I assume), so yeah, genuinely quite sorry about that. I will definitely ahelp this in the future (admittedly, I still get a bit anxious opening tickets, like I'm wasting people's time, but clearly that's not the case).

This part of your appeal made no sense to me:

I really have no idea what's going on here. I recall quite clearly playing for a good twenty-thirty minutes or so before the antagonist screen popped up. I imagine there's three possibilities here:
- Either, the logs are incorrect (which I doubt);
- Perhaps I was thinking of a different instance (Like I said in my appeal, I've done similar things a couple of times, full transparency);
- or thirdly, which seems most likely to me, is something happened with my power. Where I live, power has been going on and off quite sporadically for the past two weeks. Part of me wonders if my internet simply went out and I tried to join a different server to remedy my connection issues, as I have done that a few times in the past.

But, obviously I'm not in a very credible position right now, so I don't mind if you chock it up to my second assumption and adjust my note based on that. There is also the chance my terminology is just wrong here, like you said, which could be muddling up my explanation. If this is the case, I apologise.

As for the note, I don't disagree with it at all. Like I said, I really just wanted to clarify things more than anything else. Nevertheless, I quite appreciate the lifted ban.

[san7890]

So, this is completely on me obviously, and now I'm feeling pretty bad about it. To be honest, I never considered that station engineer would ever be a limited role. I guess since it's always up when I enter the game, I assumed it didn't matter much if I left. Obviously, with a little bit of thinking, it is limited like every other role (I assume), so yeah, genuinely quite sorry about that. I will definitely ahelp this in the future (admittedly, I still get a bit anxious opening tickets, like I'm wasting people's time, but clearly that's not the case).

It's typically not a limited role in the same sense a Head of Staff is, but it's just "dickish" to take said slot and do nothing with it is all. Admins connect to help with tickets- that is what they are there for, they would not connect otherwise.

I really have no idea what's going on here. I recall quite clearly playing for a good twenty-thirty minutes or so before the antagonist screen popped up. I imagine there's three possibilities here:
- Either, the logs are incorrect (which I doubt);
- Perhaps I was thinking of a different instance (Like I said in my appeal, I've done similar things a couple of times, full transparency);
- or thirdly, which seems most likely to me, is something happened with my power. Where I live, power has been going on and off quite sporadically for the past two weeks. Part of me wonders if my internet simply went out and I tried to join a different server to remedy my connection issues, as I have done that a few times in the past.

The second/third options are more likely to me, thanks for elaborating on that. I'm not going to press that any longer though, mistakes happen.

But, obviously I'm not in a very credible position right now, so I don't mind if you chock it up to my second assumption and adjust my note based on that. There is also the chance my terminology is just wrong here, like you said, which could be muddling up my explanation. If this is the case, I apologise.

As for the note, I don't disagree with it at all. Like I said, I really just wanted to clarify things more than anything else. Nevertheless, I quite appreciate the lifted ban.

I personally feel there is no sense altering the note to be "worse" after I have spoken with you about it. I just wanted to make sure you were referring to what I thought you were referring to, hence the line about "terminology". I'm glad you elaborated on your points.

As always, have a good rest of your day.