/tg/Station 13

Byond account and character name: Ohnopigeons - Some drone
Banning admin: changelingrain
Ban reason and length: I don't have the original ban message anymore, it was effectively something like "banned for pointing spam"
"15 Minutes While overlays were broken, spammed point as a drone. As a reason, gave "But I died from broken overlays". This is not an appropriate reason to make the problem worse. Expired" Thank you Ausops.

Time ban was placed (including time zone):4/4/17 around 2:40 PM EST
Your side of the story: Overlays across the entire game stopped removing themselves so things like pointing arrows would stay permanently. As a drone I started filling the hallways and the emergency shuttle with an arrow on each tile because
a) I thought it was funny
b) Arrows are the floor and walls are ultimately inconsequential to gameplay, especially as the round was nearing its end
c) Other people had already done it
d) It was also a means to attract attention to this bug/issue so that a fix might be expedited, however marginally
Why you think you should be unbanned: Seeing as the ban length is incredibly short this is mostly about the note and the circumstances and policy that resulted in the ban. The bug was a fairly serious one, and I've reported as such in github, however the seriousness stems from effects from flashes/flashbangs (which people were also abusing at the time) and not from memes like arrow pointing.

As the shuttle was getting to Centcomm cedar AdminPM'd me to stop, which was a moot point as I had already filled the shuttle with point arrows and had already stopped for that reason. I argued against cedar with a single reply when changelingrain stepped in for some reason, and we had a short argument there, to which changelingrain stopped replying and then banned me shortly after.

As far as I can see, nothing I did was against drone policy, and in the adminPM conversation the fact that I was a drone was never even brought up. I had already stopped by the time AdminPMs came in and as far as I can tell this ban was the result of me daring to backtalk to the admins in the first place.

if you try to log in with your banned account to the server youll get the ban reason displayed

I'm not banned anymore since the ban was short and the reason message doesn't show. I was planning on keeping the window open for the message but I relogged so that I could get the server revision for the bug report.

It was a 15 min ban.

ohnopigeons wrote:Seeing as the ban length is incredibly short this is mostly about the note and the circumstances and policy that resulted in the ban.

Wise Man PKPenguin321 wrote:Half of the reason to even appeal a ban is so you don't get a shitty note about something that you weren't even really guilty for that will be used against you in future ban rulings.

2017-04-04 18:31:58
changelingrain
Server
15 Minutes While overlays were broken, spammed point as a drone. As a reason, gave "But I died from broken overlays". This is not an appropriate reason to make the problem worse. Expired

2017-04-04 18:46:58

I was in the round mentioned.

I am.not aware if it was you, but all drones were shitting up the shuttle and hallways with brpe, pointing and making sparks. The reason I ahelped you in the first place was because you instantly rushed to the shuttle to spam the shit out of it too.

The way the drone rules are set you are not supposed to interact with beings directly or indirectly. You knew the beings would have the broken overlays, and decided to carry on.

D&B wrote:I was in the round mentioned.

I am.not aware if it was you, but all drones were shitting up the shuttle and hallways with brpe, pointing and making sparks. The reason I ahelped you in the first place was because you instantly rushed to the shuttle to spam the shit out of it too.

The way the drone rules are set you are not supposed to interact with beings directly or indirectly. You knew the beings would have the broken overlays, and decided to carry on.

Players have broken overlays. Important distinction only in the most technical of senses and not really relevant to the appeal.

Wiki wrote:1. You may not involve yourself in the matters of another being, even if such matters conflict with Law Two or Law Three, unless the other being is another Drone.
2. You may not harm any being, regardless of intent or circumstance.
3. Your goals are to build, maintain, repair, improve, and power to the best of your abilities, You must never actively work against these goals.

Github wrote:"\n<big><span class='warning'>DO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE ROUND AS A DRONE OR YOU WILL BE DRONE BANNED</span></big>\n"+\
"<span class='notify'>Drones are a ghost role that are allowed to fix the station and build things. Interfering with the round as a drone is against the rules.</span>\n"+\
"<span class='notify'>Actions that constitute interference include, but are not limited to:</span>\n"+\
"<span class='notify'> - Interacting with round critical objects (IDs, weapons, contraband, powersinks, bombs, etc.)</span>\n"+\
"<span class='notify'> - Interacting with living beings (communication, attacking, healing, etc.)</span>\n"+\
"<span class='notify'> - Interacting with non-living beings (dragging bodies, looting bodies, etc.)</span>\n"+\
"<span class='warning'>These rules are at admin discretion and will be heavily enforced.</span>\n"+\
"<span class='warning'><u>If you do not have the regular drone laws, follow your laws to the best of your ability.</u></span>"

Arrow pointing does not interfere with beings. You could say that it "indirectly" intereferes or interacts with beings but so does any amounts of "build, maintain, repair, improve, and power to the best of your abilities", which contradicts the entire existence of drones. The "indirect" argument is really flimsy and not applicable.

Lets stop posting until Joan actually replies ta

When timers are broken and point overlays don't go away, is the correct course of action to spam point to cover every tile in a pointer that won't go away?
You being a drone isn't actually relevant; the main reason for the ban, which may have been unclear, was that you didn't just go "Oh, I'll stop then."

I'd also like to note that we know what the issue is with pointers/etc not going away, so spamming them really just annoys other players rather than making coders pay attention to the bug.

ChangelingRain wrote:When timers are broken and point overlays don't go away, is the correct course of action to spam point to cover every tile in a pointer that won't go away?

Yes, I unironically thought so. Hence why I was arguing back in the Admin PMs.

ChangelingRain wrote:You being a drone isn't actually relevant; the main reason for the ban, which may have been unclear, was that you didn't just go "Oh, I'll stop then."

I did stop, although I had stopped before the AdminPM from cedarbridge came in. The reason why I didn't say those words was because I believed that I had done nothing wrong with the actions I had taken, and was seeking a clarified explanation as to what I had done was wrong from your points of view.

ChangelingRain wrote:I'd also like to note that we know what the issue is with pointers/etc not going away

I was not aware of this, could you point me to the issue on github? I didn't find one and if there's a duplicate of my report I'd like to remove my recently added one.

ChangelingRain wrote:so spamming them really just annoys other players rather than making coders pay attention to the bug.

I disagree. Which what I said in the last PM before you banned me. I could elaborate if you'd like.

ohnopigeons wrote:As a drone I started filling the hallways and the emergency shuttle with an arrow on each tile because
c) Other people had already done it

I just want to comment on this line in particular

If you're in a riot and someone throws a rock through a window, and you do the same to a different window, you don't get off because someone else did the same thing

Someone is going to miss my point and obsess over how I'm equating property damage to a bug in SS13 but that's not what I'm saying - don't cite "other people were doing it" as a defense as to your actions, for all you know every single other person doing it was also punished

Again, this isn't about the severity of this incident or anything like that, just don't use that defense, it immediately makes your position look worse

ohnopigeons wrote:

ChangelingRain wrote:You being a drone isn't actually relevant; the main reason for the ban, which may have been unclear, was that you didn't just go "Oh, I'll stop then."

I did stop, although I had stopped before the AdminPM from cedarbridge came in. The reason why I didn't say those words was because I believed that I had done nothing wrong with the actions I had taken, and was seeking a clarified explanation as to what I had done was wrong from your points of view.

As I understood it at the time, the reason it took so long for somebody to boink you was because your first drone shell had been smashed and you ran straight into a second shell to run back onto the shuttle.

I think this is fine lifting, assuming OP understands what they did wrong. This could have been handled with a slap on the wrist PM "hey please don't do that it makes lag worse" but looks like it escalated to a ban because of poor communication on both sides. Ahelp logs might be nice.

OP, you understand that your role as a drone was irrelevant, and that you got in trouble because you were deliberately putting more strain on the already dying timer system, right?

PKPenguin321 wrote:OP, you understand that your role as a drone was irrelevant, and that you got in trouble because you were deliberately putting more strain on the already dying timer system, right?

No, this is the first time I'm aware of this. Was the timer system under strain? I thought it simply stopped functioning instead of being overburdened.

ohnopigeons wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:OP, you understand that your role as a drone was irrelevant, and that you got in trouble because you were deliberately putting more strain on the already dying timer system, right?

No, this is the first time I'm aware of this. Was the timer system under strain? I thought it simply stopped functioning instead of being overburdened.

When things start breaking and not working, continuing to break them generally puts more strain. A coder can correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was nothing wrong with doing it, I doubt a resident coder/admin would have banned you for it.

It is from my understanding of timers, that as they are inherently asynchronous, there shouldn't be an effect or any strain on performance, especially as the server wasn't showing any symptoms of lag at all. Please correct me if I am wrong.

ohnopigeons wrote:It is from my understanding of timers, that as they are inherently asynchronous, there shouldn't be an effect or any strain on performance, especially as the server wasn't showing any symptoms of lag at all. Please correct me if I am wrong.

What timers/the timer system does is it puts the strain on a subsystem that can, and will, slow down if overloaded instead of causing lag that players will notice, instead of putting the strain on byond's inbuilt stuff, which has no such limits and will thus cause "lag" that players can notice.

Effectively, timers(like a bunch of other stuff) make lag unnoticable by delaying stuff until they can run, unless they're so overloaded that this happens.

I've spent more time than I'd like to admit crawling through the relevant portions of the code and had my fill of spaghetti. I have a rough understanding of how the timer subsystem works but not enough to make a complete case without consulting the architect of that subsystem and the overarching MC, which is quite overboard if it's for the sole purpose of a note appeal. And while I still don't quite agree that my actions had anything more than a marginal effect, even in the circumstances, I've seen that the timer subsystem is already being actively and continuously worked on. As such I will refrain from engaging in abuses involving the timer subsystem in the foreseeable future. Will that do?

ohnopigeons wrote:I've spent more time than I'd like to admit crawling through the relevant portions of the code and had my fill of spaghetti. I have a rough understanding of how the timer subsystem works but not enough to make a complete case without consulting the architect of that subsystem and the overarching MC, which is quite overboard if it's for the sole purpose of a note appeal. And while I still don't quite agree that my actions had anything more than a marginal effect, even in the circumstances, I've seen that the timer subsystem is already being actively and continuously worked on. As such I will refrain from engaging in abuses involving the timer subsystem in the foreseeable future. Will that do?

Anon Amendment.

Refrain from any sort of bug abuse. You knew that shit was busted, and went around exploiting that to put an overlay on every tile. A relatively harmless bug, but don't exploit that shit AT ALL. If you find one, make an issue about it, or just ask in coderbus if they know. This one is known.

pkp seems right

This is also the first time at least this year, where we've forced a player to dig into the code as penance just so a note can be lifted, it's like an OOC gulag or something. I'll lift it.