[Peoplearestrange] <Athaleon Yates> Ban Appeal

[Boomaloon]

BYOND account: <Boomaloon>
Character name: <Athaleon Yates>

Ban type: <Server>

Ban length: <1 MONTH>

Ban reason: <As previously warned you have used \"powergame\" tactics to try to \"win\" the game, including and not limited to stealing sec equipment as other roles, using emotes to talk around mutes, valid hunt antags as non sec roles, metaknowledge AI laws. This is far from the spirit of the game and we suggest you spend sometime reminding yourself that this isnt a game that needs to be won to be enjoyed. Failure to heed this warning upon your return may lead to a permanent ban.>

Time ban was placed: <2019-10-26 22:45:29>

Server you were playing on when banned: <Terry>

Round ID in which ban was placed: <122279>

Your side of the story: <(playing as CMO) Alright, at first the admin contacted me cause I used emotes to talk. I did so unintentionally I had the ability to speak, I just left it selected on 'me' rather than 'say' (bottom right of screen). unsure what he meant by powergame, sec was fucked and every sec officer was pretty much dead. I found a baton and took it for self defense? don't know why that needs explaining. I never broke into any department for the whole shift. Again, I am unsure what he means by valid hunting; there were two instances that I had contact with syndicate or syndicate item: 1st I was in maintenance looking for injured and found a DEAD body on the ground with a pile of shit next to it, within said pile there was an ENERGY cake, naturally I searched the nearby satchel and within its contents I found a PDA that had messages to other member of the crew ASKING TO BUY ROMEROL; if he is referring to this its seems a far fetch from valid hunting (buy the way the lad, unga, who the messages were sent to ended up killing me anyway) am I supposed to turn a blind eye to something as blatant as that? I digress, right after I found that evidence I went to try and find a sec headset so that I could TELL them I had found said messages and to watch out for him. after receiving no response, I no longer chased that lead and let it drop. The second time I had a run in (with what I presume was some kind of baddy) was when a lad was LITERALLY killing anyone and everyone at random in medbay so I chased him down and killed him, thereafter he rose back up from the dead and I didn't see him afterwards (presumably some kind of self revive. Regarding the metaknowledge comment, I never was even near the ai upload OR chambers for the whole round so I can only assume he was speaking out of context of the round and through my admin notes; that being said, did that admin even bother to read the timestamps on those notes? it seems very doubtful. They span over months and at least a month or more since present.>

Why you think you should be unbanned: <I've only joined recently(within a year I believe), and I've tried my hardest to understand rules (as there are many do's and don'ts) and have generally stopped all the misunderstandings aside from the occasional accidental emote chat or ick ock, through misclickin. if you look at my notes its been quite a while since I have received any and many games between my last note and present. genuinely still trying to learn many things but there are many pitfalls. reading the Admin notes out of context and ignoring timestamps does cast it In a bad light, and under such pretext I don't blame anyone for thinkin that way about me, but I think I've genuinely improved and are of benefit to any server (not that i'm pro, I just do me job)>

References of good conduct: <um unfortunately I didnt spend too much time getting familiar with peoples byond account names in game but i suppose ratman jones, and Lola knack are good ones? they probably have changed their names by now.. and perhaps prosper finlay? i've spent much time on event hall so maybe regulars there might remember me. >

[peoplearestrange]

Hi there, thank you for taking the time to fill out the ban appeal correctly.

Firstly I want to state this ban was for the compound issues rather than specifically this one event, the sum total of your notes and from observation, in how you play the game. I'll try to be as clear as possible using notes and logs where possible.
To address this first I want to put the relevant previous notes :

Spoiler:

2019-07-08 20:17:31 | Events | Jimmius
Uploading more powergame laws roundstart nonhumaning syndies. This is your final warning

2019-07-07 21:09:09 | Events | Phuzzylodgik
Warned - repeatedly uploaded "[ALL THE ANTAGS] are no longer to be considered human OR part of the crew. They are to be eliminated at all cost with respect to the first three laws." laws at roundstart.

2019-07-02 02:48:34 | Bagil | Qbmax32
As captain, found an assistants prints on a damaged door, and immediately assumed he was a traitor and ordered his death, also said they were hunting around in maintence on purpose to look for antagonists. Asked to be more careful with how they use their powers as captain.

The valid hunting was from these previous notes, I hadn't noticed you do it in the time I watched you, but it was a busy round. I did however notice you somehow have two laser guns and enter the sec post in medical and blast open the sec locker to get more sec equipment. The main note I'd like to highlight is the last one, clearly stating for the admin at the time, "This is your final warning".

From the logs we can see you were stung with a mute sting:

Spoiler:

[2019-10-26 22:13:52.418] ATTACK: USER/(Dave Smith) has stung Boomaloon/(Athaleon Yates) with mute sting (NEWHP: 100) (Command Hallway (95, 126, 2))

and then a few minutes later after talking, when the mute sting starts you talking with emotes:

Spoiler:

[2019-10-26 22:17:45.859] EMOTE: 22:17:45.859] EMOTE: Boomaloon/(Athaleon Yates) hm (Head of Personnel's Office (96, 132, 2))
[2019-10-26 22:17:54.166] EMOTE: 22:17:54.166] EMOTE: Boomaloon/(Athaleon Yates) yeah (Head of Personnel's Office (95, 132, 2))
[2019-10-26 22:17:57.980] EMOTE: 22:17:57.980] EMOTE: Boomaloon/(Athaleon Yates) its maybe the bartender (Head of Personnel's Office (95, 132, 2))
[2019-10-26 22:18:02.180] EMOTE: 22:18:02.180] EMOTE: Boomaloon/(Athaleon Yates) on the table (Head of Personnel's Office (95, 132, 2))

For me thats a huge no no. You're using game mechanics to purposely avoid the way the game is intended to be played.

Ultimately this game isn't about winning at all costs, its a game of (supposedly) roleplay and story, mixed with odd situations and detailed mechanics. You can't go around pushing each mechanic and exploit to the very edge in order for you to "win", because if we all played it that way it be a very silent and dull game of who can click the best. And I think you need to understand that before you can play again.

Also please don't call me he... at least try and use they if you don't know...

[Boomaloon]

While your points are valid, if you look at the logs just before I was using me chat I attempted to show the lack of a microphone on the security cameras which would suggest, if you were paying attention, that I was unaware as that I actually couldn’t speak with the say chat. There have been instances in the past where whole servers have had to speak with me instead of chat for short periods because to the say function breaking. I wasn’t trying to ‘win’ anything. This also being said it seems you have again missed my point in which I was talking about the gaps of time in between admin notes. All of the notes you displayed were within a 5 day period and 3 months prior to today. It seems you are implicating that I have not changed my ways, whereas I am saying I have as I haven’t received any admin notes in relation to any of the aforementioned notes posted 3 months ago. I would also like to mentioned that a whole month does seem a bit ludicrous for anything done accidentally in this round. Also, you mentioned I broke into a sec locker, while I did do this this was in the medical department AND it was to get the message out to the sec department about the traitor pda messages, if this was the armory I’d understand but at that point in the match the station was falling to pieces through the actions of traitors. So again, a bit confused as to why this is so frowned upon given the situation.

PS didn’t know you were a girl. I’ve not ever had interaction with you before and I don’t judge off of profile pics, apologies for the assumption.

[peoplearestrange]

You are correct that you previously used an emote correctly before. But I'm not sure how you're saying you continued to speak like that accidentally. If you're playing with hot keys the M and the T key are pretty far apart, and if you're playing without hotkeys the bar changes back to say " after each use. Im not sure how you really excuse that?

As far as the notes go I admit they were a few months ago and that given you haven't had any other notes in the meantime I shall assume you've been playing fine, though to me a last warning should at least stand for awhile. Though I again can see that you hadn't repeated the said offence and appear to have changed that aspect.

The main issue again, which is shown with the CMO laser situation, is you feel like every situation must be remedied by your hand, if you're a CMO, run the medical department. Sure keep criminals out or get security to stand guard. If you want to hunt criminals, play security. The game isn't "antags vs crew" its a roleplaying game, forfil your role and play within that confine. Because ultimately when you play like that then you need to cooperate with other departments and cooperation and diverse roles is what makes the game an interesting multiplayer game, rather than being a lonewolf against the world.

I'll be willing to shorten the ban if you can understand the point im trying to get across. I can see you're willing to change and you've been polite and calm in your appeal and I respect that, so lets move forward.

P.s. thats really fine, it was more of a note than anything to worry about.

[Cobby]

There's a box on the bottom right where it used to just say "Chat" that can now be used to turn it to "Me" mode, which does the same thing as chat (pre-populate the command bar with Me ")

[peoplearestrange]

There's a box on the bottom right where it used to just say "Chat" that can now be used to turn it to "Me" mode, which does the same thing as chat (pre-populate the command bar with Me ")

Hmmm, this is actually new to me, I did not realise this was possible.

In light of this, it is possible that it was a mistake, however there isn't anyway for me to tell given that you did still effectively get around a game mechanic to spoil a mechanic for a ling I think a punishment is still fitting. However I will reduce the ban length to 2 week from now on good faith.

[Reyn]

There's a box on the bottom right where it used to just say "Chat" that can now be used to turn it to "Me" mode, which does the same thing as chat (pre-populate the command bar with Me ")

Hmmm, this is actually new to me, I did not realise this was possible.

In light of this, it is possible that it was a mistake, however there isn't anyway for me to tell given that you did still effectively get around a game mechanic to spoil a mechanic for a ling I think a punishment is still fitting. However I will reduce the ban length to 2 week from now on good faith.

Hol up. Heya, One of the lings from that round.

I had wind from one of the other lings that the mute sting occurred, and that the guy INTENTIONALLY swapped to emotes to get around it through the hivemind. That shit isn't ok, as it violates multiple rules. Not to mention it lead to the ling being found out much earlier than they should've been.

Someone could easily realize they're meing instead of talking after a sting if they look at chat, and stop. They didn't. Sorry to bother. I also was one of the original ahelpers, so, I'm involved here.

However, In all fairness, I cannot access the logs for the round stated, so... I can't say much more

[Booktower]

Round ID was actually 122392
Parsed-logs
Statbus

[peoplearestrange]

Round ID was actually 122392
Parsed-logs
Statbus

No it wasn't? If you search for their CKey they weren't even playing in that round. I assume this is for another thread?

[peoplearestrange]

The original appealer hasn't replied to my terms at all... I'll leave this open for another week then close due to inactivity.

[NecromancerAnne]

I'm gonna take a step in for a moment to kind of speak to maybe having a massive reassessment of this ban and also the reasons for why this ban was placed. The incident with emoting out what they were saying has already been addressed but the fact that this was worth only two weeks is quite startling given the considerable lack of similar notes for similar behaviour in this incident.

I'm going to break this down bit by bit.

Excessive Powergaming/Stealing Security Equipment:
We do not ban people for specifically excessive powergaming. We in fact have always largely encouraged powergaming culture-wise or made it harder through code changes rather than ever handling it from an administrative perspective. The only thing we handle generally from an admin side is exploit abuse and extreme metagaming to the point of making the game unfun, which falls under pre-emptively placing hurdles for antags (like hiding HVT's or uploading valid laws to the AI roundstart, which Boomaloon has notes for already), most everything else that would be deemed too powerful if combined is entirely in the domain of our open source codebase.

The only times I would argue banning someone who powergames excessively is if they either are playing specific roles to obtain a specific powergame pattern they use to gain an advantage not afforded to other roles to then go play other roles (AKA playing say bartender only for the shotgun they have and then going and becoming a sec officer every round), which would probably be a warning followed by a week role ban from both roles if the behaviour persists. If it's pre-emptive hurdles, again, role bans are largely the appropriate response here. If it's excessive tiding to achieve this powergame setup (say, stealing that same shotgun I mentioned in order to have this powerful weapon every round despite being an assistant or engineer and otherwise not needing it and inconveniencing the bartender as a result), that falls under a rule 1 and also under the headmin ruling of inconveniencing someone for no reason, especially if you escalate against the person seeking retribution for it. It also causes problems with potentially metable behaviour, and hence why it is a good idea to discourage it.

I think more clarification needs to be sought for the sake of where in this specific round Boomaloon was doing anything that an average player would face a similar punishment for if they did this. If this is from over the course of several rounds, then I see absolutely no signposting of this in their notes, no warnings, and no previous bans that would accumulate into such a lengthy ban as this. The only ones that would count are the AI uploads, which he has no previous notes for in about 3 months and no ban manifested fro mthat. If he had been uploading this as the CMO (which was his role for this round), I can definitely see acting on that but only for that. He didn't do it, so it has no relevance.

Head roles are afforded some greater measure of taking upon themselves means for self defense, and even come roundstart with a few self-defense weaponry. The HoP, Captain and Head of Security have personal firearms and batons (HoS has also the entire armory at his disposal and is actually allowed to valid to his hearts content if he can justify why he's shooting someone since he has authority for executions and on the spot executions), the CMO, CE and RD have batons. All get flashes for protection from silicons and additional self defense from carbons (HoS has even more than this). They're significant targets due to their departmental power. A stun baton in the hands of a CMO is not entirely a massive leap up from what they already have (arguably it's stronger but that's another argument entirely). Drawing conclusions as to whether someone is an antag or not due to the presence of antagonist items (or derivatives of antag items, which the energy cake is due to being made from an energy sword as part of the recipe) has usually been fair game and not a problem. Especially for people in positions of authority to make those decisions.

If he was looting brig for weapons as a CMO or taking guns for himself every round without solid justification, then there would be more of an argument for this case but as the CMO already has personal defense weapons and in fact can manufacturer some of the strongest in the game in his own department, I think this is definitely a super, super weak justification and we do not ever punish people for gaining more personal power either from happenstance, in response to a threat to their own safety or simply from their own department just because they can, because accruing personal power is in large part in the spirit of our ruleset and largely where most of the game's actual per-round progression lies. One could even argue it is the majority of the gameplay. Either way, this needed more signposting in his notes, and likely isn't worth more than a slap on the wrist before moving into more significant punishments.

Therefore, this reason in his ban needs some hefty justification to back if you're going to rule 0 someone on it, because as it stands this is purely in the rule 0 territory for it being a 2 week ban given the time shaved off the ban length.

Validhunting as Non-Security
This entirely depends on how you're validhunting and how you justify why you're doing it and how thoroughly your evidence is, but the only note I can see from Boomaloon that deals with this is some previous notes from three or so months ago:

2019-07-02 02:48:34 qbmax32 Bagil - As captain, found an assistants prints on a damaged door, and immediately assumed he was a traitor and ordered his death, also said they were hunting around in maintence on purpose to look for antagonists. Asked to be more careful with how they use their powers as captain.

And this one, from six or so months ago:

2019-05-12 11:51:59 kiteme Sybil - Killed someone on the shuttle as a non antag because they thought they were killing people. Warned to be more mindful on the shuttle.

The first note is slightly relevant and definitely is excessive, but it is as a member of security. The captain has authority over security matters as they are the ultimate authority on the station, and his judgements are to be accepted (or disagreed with in a mutiny). This means that this note is only relevant for when he IS in a security role and/or how he goes about justifying his validhunting (that is to say, jumping to conclusions like that about someone is probably too extreme compared to just going 'his prints are here, arrest him to see if he knows what happened'). The earlier note is a case of misinformation and not relevant.

We do not at all stop people from validhunting on this server as a non-security role and this is a joke of a justification for banning someone. If someone is, without a doubt, 100% valid, you can valid them. HoPcurity is a meme literally because by our rules he's actually totally allowed to do that (but step into the armory at your own risk), but he's mocked rather than administratively punished because most HoPcurity players are kind of powergaming all access rather than playing the role. And, also, security can tell him no and he can have his powers stripped of him because he's suddenly a security risk and he just has to suck shit. We don't dictate how people play their roles and what they choose to do so long as;
1. It's not disruptive
AKA excessively griefy greytiding, like stealing department valuable equipment every round, which falls under rule 1 precendent 4.

2. Otherwise permissive in the role itself
HoP is a high security head and the second hand of the captain next to the HoS, so it's actually pretty okay from most standpoints compared to the hobo with a shotgun I mentioned previously even if that guy isn't going to get in trouble if it's not all he does every round, and even then he can just make a maint musket to never disrupt anyone and never have to face administrative ire.

3. Only used to fight the people who they are allowed to fight.
That is, within the bounds of escalation and up to reasonable escalation limits AKA no gibbing unless you can justifiably permakill them. Or pointed at a known antagonist in which case it's all.

This would have to be either a case of them getting it wrong so often it's obviously a loose justification for them to actively grief people, or it doesn't stand at all. ESPECIALLY as a head role, who have a whole lot of authority about who is or isn't allowed in their department and in many cases are allowed to lethally defend themselves if their life is threatened within their department or just in general. If he chose to seek out an antagonist to valid them as the CMO, we cannot tell him no. We are a LowRP server and those kinds of restrictions are entirely the domain of much higher roleplay standards.

Valid-o-Tron Laws
I've personally have seen Athaleon doing this and I definitely did not like the behaviour at the time, and took IC means of curbing it, but given he did not touch the AI's laws once this round, you should not be using these notes as justification for an unrelated ban and if this is all you're relying on for this ban, it is completely unfounded and excessive. He hasn't any similar notes in the span of 3 months, which means he's either not been noted for it in this period of time or he's not been doing this kind of behaviour since the previous incident which occurred. There aren't even any actual bans before your specific ban, PAS, which is absolutely the biggest red flag here. We only ever escalate this far if we signpost this behaviour with smaller punishments, and to go up to a two week ban is quite simply absolutely astonishing given the lack of justification for the month ban to begin with. The specific case of the emote speech could very well warrant a note of it's own, but I wouldn't ban someone for first offense unless it was truly flagrant. Maybe a day ban. But to have it be worth two weeks is quite incredulous.

Conclusion
This ban sets a very, very bad standard for our administrative conduct if this kind of a ban can come completely out of left field despite apparent improvement in the behaviour of the player, given the time between his various notes and the lack of notes and even bans, which usually are far more indicative of a player unwilling to change. His note history says that he's actually improving, and hasn't done anything excessive to even warrant a ban itself. Jimmius likely left that final warning as a proceeding before either a role ban or a day ban, but since he's unable to provide context for that, it is merely speculation. Definitely not the kind of thing to leap from no bans period to a month ban then down to a two week ban with a threatened perma through vague justification as 'I guess he gamed too hard this round and touched a weapon as a headrole'.

[Jimmius]

Jimmius likely left that final warning as a proceeding before either a role ban or a day ban, but since he's unable to provide context for that, it is merely speculation.

My note here was less about "powergaming" in general, and more a final warning before he started getting bans for uploading laws nonhuman-ing all possible antags and telling the AI to kill them. There was a period where he would upload the same copypaste law roundstart as RD/Captain/whatever, and upon seeing that the conversation and note that phuzzy had with him previously had no effect, I went with a more strongly worded note, trying to make it clear that I would stop noting and start banning if I saw him uploading that law again.
I think the note here has some relevenace because it is an example of meta/powergaming taken to a round disrupting degree, but my "final warning" was specifically about the niche behavior of roundstart AI laws, not "if you powergame i will ban you".

[peoplearestrange]

Spoiler:

I'm gonna take a step in for a moment to kind of speak to maybe having a massive reassessment of this ban and also the reasons for why this ban was placed. The incident with emoting out what they were saying has already been addressed but the fact that this was worth only two weeks is quite startling given the considerable lack of similar notes for similar behaviour in this incident.

I'm going to break this down bit by bit.

Excessive Powergaming/Stealing Security Equipment:
We do not ban people for specifically excessive powergaming. We in fact have always largely encouraged powergaming culture-wise or made it harder through code changes rather than ever handling it from an administrative perspective. The only thing we handle generally from an admin side is exploit abuse and extreme metagaming to the point of making the game unfun, which falls under pre-emptively placing hurdles for antags (like hiding HVT's or uploading valid laws to the AI roundstart, which Boomaloon has notes for already), most everything else that would be deemed too powerful if combined is entirely in the domain of our open source codebase.

The only times I would argue banning someone who powergames excessively is if they either are playing specific roles to obtain a specific powergame pattern they use to gain an advantage not afforded to other roles to then go play other roles (AKA playing say bartender only for the shotgun they have and then going and becoming a sec officer every round), which would probably be a warning followed by a week role ban from both roles if the behaviour persists. If it's pre-emptive hurdles, again, role bans are largely the appropriate response here. If it's excessive tiding to achieve this powergame setup (say, stealing that same shotgun I mentioned in order to have this powerful weapon every round despite being an assistant or engineer and otherwise not needing it and inconveniencing the bartender as a result), that falls under a rule 1 and also under the headmin ruling of inconveniencing someone for no reason, especially if you escalate against the person seeking retribution for it. It also causes problems with potentially metable behaviour, and hence why it is a good idea to discourage it.

I think more clarification needs to be sought for the sake of where in this specific round Boomaloon was doing anything that an average player would face a similar punishment for if they did this. If this is from over the course of several rounds, then I see absolutely no signposting of this in their notes, no warnings, and no previous bans that would accumulate into such a lengthy ban as this. The only ones that would count are the AI uploads, which he has no previous notes for in about 3 months and no ban manifested fro mthat. If he had been uploading this as the CMO (which was his role for this round), I can definitely see acting on that but only for that. He didn't do it, so it has no relevance.

Head roles are afforded some greater measure of taking upon themselves means for self defense, and even come roundstart with a few self-defense weaponry. The HoP, Captain and Head of Security have personal firearms and batons (HoS has also the entire armory at his disposal and is actually allowed to valid to his hearts content if he can justify why he's shooting someone since he has authority for executions and on the spot executions), the CMO, CE and RD have batons. All get flashes for protection from silicons and additional self defense from carbons (HoS has even more than this). They're significant targets due to their departmental power. A stun baton in the hands of a CMO is not entirely a massive leap up from what they already have (arguably it's stronger but that's another argument entirely). Drawing conclusions as to whether someone is an antag or not due to the presence of antagonist items (or derivatives of antag items, which the energy cake is due to being made from an energy sword as part of the recipe) has usually been fair game and not a problem. Especially for people in positions of authority to make those decisions.

If he was looting brig for weapons as a CMO or taking guns for himself every round without solid justification, then there would be more of an argument for this case but as the CMO already has personal defense weapons and in fact can manufacturer some of the strongest in the game in his own department, I think this is definitely a super, super weak justification and we do not ever punish people for gaining more personal power either from happenstance, in response to a threat to their own safety or simply from their own department just because they can, because accruing personal power is in large part in the spirit of our ruleset and largely where most of the game's actual per-round progression lies. One could even argue it is the majority of the gameplay. Either way, this needed more signposting in his notes, and likely isn't worth more than a slap on the wrist before moving into more significant punishments.

Therefore, this reason in his ban needs some hefty justification to back if you're going to rule 0 someone on it, because as it stands this is purely in the rule 0 territory for it being a 2 week ban given the time shaved off the ban length.

Validhunting as Non-Security
This entirely depends on how you're validhunting and how you justify why you're doing it and how thoroughly your evidence is, but the only note I can see from Boomaloon that deals with this is some previous notes from three or so months ago:

2019-07-02 02:48:34 qbmax32 Bagil - As captain, found an assistants prints on a damaged door, and immediately assumed he was a traitor and ordered his death, also said they were hunting around in maintence on purpose to look for antagonists. Asked to be more careful with how they use their powers as captain.

And this one, from six or so months ago:

2019-05-12 11:51:59 kiteme Sybil - Killed someone on the shuttle as a non antag because they thought they were killing people. Warned to be more mindful on the shuttle.

The first note is slightly relevant and definitely is excessive, but it is as a member of security. The captain has authority over security matters as they are the ultimate authority on the station, and his judgements are to be accepted (or disagreed with in a mutiny). This means that this note is only relevant for when he IS in a security role and/or how he goes about justifying his validhunting (that is to say, jumping to conclusions like that about someone is probably too extreme compared to just going 'his prints are here, arrest him to see if he knows what happened'). The earlier note is a case of misinformation and not relevant.

We do not at all stop people from validhunting on this server as a non-security role and this is a joke of a justification for banning someone. If someone is, without a doubt, 100% valid, you can valid them. HoPcurity is a meme literally because by our rules he's actually totally allowed to do that (but step into the armory at your own risk), but he's mocked rather than administratively punished because most HoPcurity players are kind of powergaming all access rather than playing the role. And, also, security can tell him no and he can have his powers stripped of him because he's suddenly a security risk and he just has to suck shit. We don't dictate how people play their roles and what they choose to do so long as;
1. It's not disruptive
AKA excessively griefy greytiding, like stealing department valuable equipment every round, which falls under rule 1 precendent 4.

2. Otherwise permissive in the role itself
HoP is a high security head and the second hand of the captain next to the HoS, so it's actually pretty okay from most standpoints compared to the hobo with a shotgun I mentioned previously even if that guy isn't going to get in trouble if it's not all he does every round, and even then he can just make a maint musket to never disrupt anyone and never have to face administrative ire.

3. Only used to fight the people who they are allowed to fight.
That is, within the bounds of escalation and up to reasonable escalation limits AKA no gibbing unless you can justifiably permakill them. Or pointed at a known antagonist in which case it's all.

This would have to be either a case of them getting it wrong so often it's obviously a loose justification for them to actively grief people, or it doesn't stand at all. ESPECIALLY as a head role, who have a whole lot of authority about who is or isn't allowed in their department and in many cases are allowed to lethally defend themselves if their life is threatened within their department or just in general. If he chose to seek out an antagonist to valid them as the CMO, we cannot tell him no. We are a LowRP server and those kinds of restrictions are entirely the domain of much higher roleplay standards.

Valid-o-Tron Laws
I've personally have seen Athaleon doing this and I definitely did not like the behaviour at the time, and took IC means of curbing it, but given he did not touch the AI's laws once this round, you should not be using these notes as justification for an unrelated ban and if this is all you're relying on for this ban, it is completely unfounded and excessive. He hasn't any similar notes in the span of 3 months, which means he's either not been noted for it in this period of time or he's not been doing this kind of behaviour since the previous incident which occurred. There aren't even any actual bans before your specific ban, PAS, which is absolutely the biggest red flag here. We only ever escalate this far if we signpost this behaviour with smaller punishments, and to go up to a two week ban is quite simply absolutely astonishing given the lack of justification for the month ban to begin with. The specific case of the emote speech could very well warrant a note of it's own, but I wouldn't ban someone for first offense unless it was truly flagrant. Maybe a day ban. But to have it be worth two weeks is quite incredulous.

Conclusion
This ban sets a very, very bad standard for our administrative conduct if this kind of a ban can come completely out of left field despite apparent improvement in the behaviour of the player, given the time between his various notes and the lack of notes and even bans, which usually are far more indicative of a player unwilling to change. His note history says that he's actually improving, and hasn't done anything excessive to even warrant a ban itself. Jimmius likely left that final warning as a proceeding before either a role ban or a day ban, but since he's unable to provide context for that, it is merely speculation. Definitely not the kind of thing to leap from no bans period to a month ban then down to a two week ban with a threatened perma through vague justification as 'I guess he gamed too hard this round and touched a weapon as a headrole'.

There's a lot to unpack here and I'm away on work until tomorrow. From briefly scanning thought this:
1. You're missing context a lot of the time and reading into to the exact wording of some of the rules to pick apart what you assume to be what happened.
2. This isn't actually to do with the ban itself. You don't actually clarify a rule, you make suggestions on how the community currently interprets the rules. Hell a lot of this is plain opinion and boarding on peanuts.

The rest I'll spend a good day reading through and analyzing before I come to a way I can official reply to this. For this I'll leave the appeal open for a further few days, even though the original appealer has yet to reply

[Lazengann]

words

7. If you regularly come close to breaking the rules without actually breaking them, it will be treated as the rules being broken.

[Reyn]

While your points are valid, if you look at the logs just before I was using me chat I attempted to show the lack of a microphone on the security cameras which would suggest, if you were paying attention, that I was unaware as that I actually couldn’t speak with the say chat. There have been instances in the past where whole servers have had to speak with me instead of chat for short periods because to the say function breaking. I wasn’t trying to ‘win’ anything. This also being said it seems you have again missed my point in which I was talking about the gaps of time in between admin notes. All of the notes you displayed were within a 5 day period and 3 months prior to today. It seems you are implicating that I have not changed my ways, whereas I am saying I have as I haven’t received any admin notes in relation to any of the aforementioned notes posted 3 months ago. I would also like to mentioned that a whole month does seem a bit ludicrous for anything done accidentally in this round. Also, you mentioned I broke into a sec locker, while I did do this this was in the medical department AND it was to get the message out to the sec department about the traitor pda messages, if this was the armory I’d understand but at that point in the match the station was falling to pieces through the actions of traitors. So again, a bit confused as to why this is so frowned upon given the situation.

Once again, as of being involved in that round, I'll say a few things about this reply.


if you look at the logs just before I was using me chat I attempted to show the lack of a microphone on the security cameras which would suggest, if you were paying attention, that I was unaware as that I actually couldn’t speak with the say chat.

That is not an excuse to explicitly say multiple things through me chat without it being something mimed out or such. if you're not using hotkeys, you can swap between talk and me easily, and talk and me are on different keys in keybind mode

Additionally, Sec cameras, while not having audio, don't EXPLICITLY need it. There's a general channel and a command channel on the radio. USE THEM if the radios are up, or send a PDA message if you don't want to make yourself a target. Hell, the sec officer in your department which is assigned to your department can hear your radio channel. I didn't see you talking about this stuff over common radio, which, in all honesty, would actually be better than just telling sec alone.


There have been instances in the past where whole servers have had to speak with me instead of chat for short periods because to the say function breaking.

As of being there for that round, and that incident, I was pretty sure comms WERE up, and that the speak function WAS working. Unless you were deaf stinged, you could probably hear coworkers, or the medibot, or anyone on the radio if the radios were working, talking. Thus, this point is irrelevant to the situation.


anything done accidentally in this round.

This was not accidental, at least by the account of my fellow ling. As soon as your sting kicked in, they noticed you IMMEDIATELY start talking in me emotes. And, as of the fact I was using ling speak, once again, the say command was not broken.

Also, you mentioned I broke into a sec locker, while I did do this this was in the medical department AND it was to get the message out to the sec department about the traitor pda messages, if this was the armory I’d understand but at that point in the match the station was falling to pieces through the actions of traitors.

You are the CMO, you have command radio, common radio, and medical radio. You could tell the captain and HOS to tell sec, or tell everyone that there was a problem. You don't need a hotline to sec radio directly, and breaking into a locker for that gear, which also includes body armor and a sec hud, is often a sign of a validhunt or someone who's a bit paranoid. While that isn't a red flag in of itself, that being combined with other signs of powergame and meta shows potential intent, not to mention, while it isn't a recent record, the admins, with your notes, are noting that you've done similar things in the past, meaning that it's not out of character for you to do such things from their point of view.

If this is a peanut post, please delete it, otherwise, that's my response to the situation.

[peoplearestrange]

I'll be partially replying to the long post as I feel a lot of it doesnt need explaining due to nuances of the round happening at the time, the rest of the player based opnion on them, the notes surrounding them and the lack of any further response from the actual appealer.

Whilst I accept heads of staff are given the leeway to manage security in their department this is not what I saw, I saw someone using a head role to gain purposeful selfish advantages to valid hunt. The use of items and play style wasn't of a medical head running their department, healing the wounded, working on experiments, working on surgery, brining the dead back to life etc etc, it was one of "I get a hypospray so I can keep myself going for longer whilst I run around the maintenance shafts."
Obviously this on its own isn't a concern as a single detail, but thats not what this was about, this was multiple small bits here and there, the general way they played and whats expected from the game and therefore its players.

I'm not looking to make "examples" of players Im looking to change or remove the players who constantly bring down the rest of the game, and in the long run, drag the rest of the player base with them. There's no point having a server with a general "feel" to it if we ignore that. There are already low RP servers, there are already high RP servers, we look to balance between the too and the players effect a lot of this balance (because ultimately its a MOSTLY player driven game).

There is a huge difference in what we engcourage as a general feel (experimentation, make people laugh, do interesting things, make stories, roleplay) and what it can be misunderstood as (winning the game, powergaming, murderboning, valid hunting). However all of this is basiclly not really warrented here for a ban appeal, this is all mostly policy discussion.

As was previously said by Lazengann: 7. If you regularly come close to breaking the rules without actually breaking them, it will be treated as the rules being broken.
This isnt about an individual rule being broken, though there are those that were broken that did ultimately effect the round negatively for other players, this is about the player and their behavior.

I hope that covers most things. If not please feel free to PM me on discord or the forums.
I will be locking this thread unless the ban appealer wishes to reopen this to continue the original ban appeal