/tg/Station 13

BYOND account: Spicy fly

Character name: Mecha Five-Star

Ban type: Appearance Ban

Ban length: Permanent

Ban reason: Refused to change his name from "Mecha Five-Star." Was argumentative in adminhelps and does not appear to understand why this is a problem.

Time ban was placed: 5:08 PM May 6, 2020

Server you were playing on when banned: Manuel

Round ID in which ban was placed: 136457

Your side of the story: One of my first rounds playing Manuel, I had been using a character named Mecha Five-Star for a couple years now. Bgo messaged me at round start and told me to change my name because it was against the rules instead of just messaging me at the end of the round, where I would've kindly changed my name. We got into what I would call a light debate, argumentative would be pushing it, and I told him I wasn't going to change my name, I really just didn't want to be on that server anymore. Attachments included.

It’s been nearly two weeks and the silence is deafening.....

The admin who banned you hasnt logged into the forum for nearly a month now, but its strange no other admin answered yet.

Interesting, thanks for the info! Figured forum service was part of the gig.

I just read the Ban appeal rules, and it says:

8. If a thread goes for a week with no activity it will be resolved. If you don't want your thread to go unresolved because of a lack of response then notify admins for a response.

I guess you could try shooting bandit a PM, or any other admin since he hasnt been online here in a month

bandit was pinged regarding this, if they dont answer by the end of the week i will.

which race were you playing? mecha doesnt sound like a human name but its fine for lizardmen

I was human, although that’s not really relevant to the appeal. My main issue is the lack of enforcing consistency. My images of the Crew Manifest should bring some enlightenment in that regard. If other admins didn’t have an issue with it on Bagil or Sybil for 89 rounds then there’s a bigger issue at hand. Like I stated in my ahelps, if I can interact with admins and they don’t see an issue with my name prior to my experience with BGO, then it seems it’s more of an opinionated ruling.

spicy fly wrote:I was human, although that’s not really relevant to the appeal. My main issue is the lack of enforcing consistency. My images of the Crew Manifest should bring some enlightenment in that regard. If other admins didn’t have an issue with it on Bagil or Sybil for 89 rounds then there’s a bigger issue at hand. Like I stated in my ahelps, if I can interact with admins and they don’t see an issue with my name prior to my experience with BGO, then it seems it’s more of an opinionated ruling.

89 rounds really isn't a lot, and it's not justification for the name being okay. This kind of argument pops up frequently.

RaveRadbury wrote:

spicy fly wrote:I was human, although that’s not really relevant to the appeal. My main issue is the lack of enforcing consistency. My images of the Crew Manifest should bring some enlightenment in that regard. If other admins didn’t have an issue with it on Bagil or Sybil for 89 rounds then there’s a bigger issue at hand. Like I stated in my ahelps, if I can interact with admins and they don’t see an issue with my name prior to my experience with BGO, then it seems it’s more of an opinionated ruling.

89 rounds really isn't a lot, and it's not justification for the name being okay. This kind of argument pops up frequently.

My reference wasn’t aimed at justification, and this take is very shortsighted. The last sentence in my post is the issue. A permanent appearance ban for something seemingly trivial and opinionated. If you have multiple people in the server with names like “Gil Taintslip”, “Zero Machina”, etc. and a hyphen sounds your alarm there’s an issue. There’s a plethora of valid points that can be attributed to this argument, but my main issue is consistency and enforcing a rule that again is seemingly trivial and opinionated.

Also this appeal isn’t a matter of my ban being justified or not. It’s an appeal to be unbanned.

If we allow Behemoth, Nix, Zero Machina, Fluffy Fluf, Mike Mischief and Jack Huntington the Third, then Mecha Five-Star should be fine. Jack Huntington the Third actually is explicitly disallowed under current naming policy so not sure why bandit went after you instead of him.

BeeSting12 wrote:If we allow Behemoth, Nix, Zero Machina, Fluffy Fluf, Mike Mischief and Jack Huntington the Third, then Mecha Five-Star should be fine. Jack Huntington the Third actually is explicitly disallowed under current naming policy so not sure why bandit went after you instead of him.

There is a long, long running precedent that neither "Nobody caught me breaking the rules before now" nor "The admin missed someone else who was breaking the rules at the same time!" are defenses.


Also "Fluffy Fluf" is a moth name, which have caused issues in the past because the creator was too busy going "mothmothmothmoth" to think of an actual name policy so its a lawless wild west of bad joke names.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

BeeSting12 wrote:If we allow Behemoth, Nix, Zero Machina, Fluffy Fluf, Mike Mischief and Jack Huntington the Third, then Mecha Five-Star should be fine. Jack Huntington the Third actually is explicitly disallowed under current naming policy so not sure why bandit went after you instead of him.

There is a long, long running precedent that neither "Nobody caught me breaking the rules before now" nor "The admin missed someone else who was breaking the rules at the same time!" are defenses.


Also "Fluffy Fluf" is a moth name, which have caused issues in the past because the creator was too busy going "mothmothmothmoth" to think of an actual name policy so its a lawless wild west of bad joke names.

And neither are applicable here, see my response to Rave. Again im not proposing justification or attempting to argue that I didn’t break any rules because that’s redundant. I’m appearance banned for debating a very legitimate issue, and I wish to be unbanned. I know the rules and my main concern is the lack of consistency in enforcing this rule. Also insinuating i’ve been dodging the rule or shifting the attention towards others would be discrediting my entire point.

said this in adminbus but it's only fair to say it here, I'm recusing myself from this, for unrelated reasons

Mecha Five-Star is not the kind of name a human would have, its too strange. Much more fitting for something like a silicon. If you’re willing to agree to choose a more appropriate name in the future, I’m willing to lift this ban.

Coconutwarrior97 wrote:Mecha Five-Star is not the kind of name a human would have, its too strange. Much more fitting for something like a silicon. If you’re willing to agree to choose a more appropriate name in the future, I’m willing to lift this ban.

Agreed, in return for an example of what’s strange and what isn’t. It’s not that I wish to be argumentative, given the names on the server at the time, I simply don’t understand what is considered acceptable.

spicy fly wrote:

Coconutwarrior97 wrote:Mecha Five-Star is not the kind of name a human would have, its too strange. Much more fitting for something like a silicon. If you’re willing to agree to choose a more appropriate name in the future, I’m willing to lift this ban.

Agreed, in return for an example of what’s strange and what isn’t. It’s not that I wish to be argumentative, given the names on the server at the time, I simply don’t understand what is considered acceptable.

It has been agreeable between most admins that you are more than welcome to adminhelp or to post in discord tagging an admin to ask them if your name is appropriate.

Vekter wrote:

spicy fly wrote:

Coconutwarrior97 wrote:Mecha Five-Star is not the kind of name a human would have, its too strange. Much more fitting for something like a silicon. If you’re willing to agree to choose a more appropriate name in the future, I’m willing to lift this ban.

Agreed, in return for an example of what’s strange and what isn’t. It’s not that I wish to be argumentative, given the names on the server at the time, I simply don’t understand what is considered acceptable.

It has been agreeable between most admins that you are more than welcome to adminhelp or to post in discord tagging an admin to ask them if your name is appropriate.

Understood, but for the sake of simplicity given the names in the manifest, are all of those names valid examples of appropriate? (Aside from my own)

The names that beesting brought up are ones that I'd say violate the policy, notable exception begin the names of other races like moth/lizard which are a bit trickier. I'm not going to hunt people down, scrolling through the player list to see if I can nab someone for a bad name but if I notice them I will take action. Since you've agreed to choose a more appropriate name in the future I'll go ahead and unban you, and mark this resolved.