Subject217

[subject217]

Hello, I'm running for headmin.

For those of you not familiar with me, I'm an AdminTrainer, I've been (mostly) actively adminning for around 10 months now. I mostly admin on Basil however I also show up sometimes on Sybil and occasionally Terry.
My primary motivation for running for headmin is that a couple of people I trust convinced me that I should do it. That being said, I will edit more information into this thread about my intentions and goals in a short time, I wanted to get this out there first. I'll also reply to every question asked of me in this thread and probably collect them in this OP post under a spoiler or something so it's easy to read through.

What I bring to the table

• ~10 months of active, recent admin experience, with no large gaps, adminning for hours almost every day for pretty much every week.
• Experience in suggesting new admins, selecting them, raising concerns about other people's suggestions, and training new admins.
• A level-headed and logical perspective on the game, balancing the concerns of all parties involved and trying to reach solutions that leave everyone content.
• Experience interacting with the community and making controversial changes from a coding perspective.
• Not being afraid to voice any concerns I have with other admins, and to do so in a respectful manner.

My intentions
Let me preface this by saying that anything I'd like to do is subject to the wills of the other people involved. As a headmin you can't just autonomously decide things and act on them yourself, you're part of a team, and that team is part of a larger team. That being said.

Find a solution, one way or another, to the killbaiting issue of escalation policy.
While it's still somewhat controversial, the general consensus that I've seen on escalation policy in its' current state, as well as my own opinion on how it goes down is that it goes something like this:

People who are bored start conflicts with people who are doing their own thing for the purpose of entertainment. This can be a lot of things, most commonly I'd say it's normally stealing things or breaking in to steal things. If the former group wins this conflict, then it's functionally just minor unprompted IC grief that the admins will ignore as not big enough an issue to deal with. If the latter group wins, the former retaliates, escalating the conflict usually to the point of violence. At this point, someone will end up dead. Under current escalation policy there is basically a rationale of "violence begets violence" regardless of why a conflict starts. If you're not comfortable with this your options are basically to beg for other people to help you, roll over and take whatever abuse you're given until it maybe reaches a point where you can ahelp it, or to never lose any IC fight. This is frustrating for people who don't play the game to primarily seek conflict with others.

Additionally, there are some somewhat nebulous distinctions to the current way that escalation policy is enforced that while of sound reason can be hard for a player to understand and I think could be improved on even if escalation policy doesn't see sweeping changes. I would say the primary culprit for this is the obligation to not permanently remove someone from the round via spacing or gibbing. Also, the idea of de-escalation is something that is completely ignored by the current escalation policy but is actually very important to how the rule is enforced. A lot of times two people who both enter a conflict will have a perception that the other person is the instigator or the one in the wrong, and they're justified in everything they'd do. And they don't understand that when people are split up, or a lot of time passes, or someone makes an attempt to mediate, the conflict does not always just continue as normal. So you will have people killing someone basically unprompted 30 minutes later even though the conflict is long over. There is also the concept of over-escalation which is really something that primarily exists in the heads of admins and will require a rewrite of parts of the existing policy to explain why this isn't okay. In general, I'd like to see a policy that is less lenient towards people who start shit for no reason (including stupid shit like "I wanted that thing I don't need").

Nobody wants to make the rules longer or more confusing or more lawyerable. But if nothing else, they should serve as a concise explanation of an admin's expectations for players on the server. The safety net for this is that we don't usually ban on the first offense, we make an effort to educate people about how they're breaking the rules and usually start with warnings so that they can learn from their mistakes more easily. This works really well, but I think that there's still value in improving the rules in these regards, and I still think that it's possible to fix without making the rules much longer or complex.

Edit: I wrote some more about escalation policy in the comments so I'm pasting it in here where it belongs.
I also think that the stupid examples from it like "If you think x killed you for taking your ID card, don't steal next round" should be removed because people just use these as an excuse to kill people. The other specifc thing is this line:

If you choose to retaliate with violence, you in turn have opened yourself up to violence. If you choose this route, do not expect admins to help you out if you die, even if you were not the original instigator.

It's very nebulous, yes, but if you are the actual instigator in a conflict that exists for no reason beyond your own entertainment, I don't believe you should have the protection that "if you choose to retaliate with violence" grants. If you are being an asshole people should be empowered to deal with you themselves, and at that point your "right to self defense" becomes sort of forfeit as far as I'm concerned.
I'm mostly focused on editing the existing policy as I believe it's a more attainable goal than starting from the ground up entirely. I've not seen anyone produce a result from the ground-up approach either.

Respectful enforcement of FNR rules.
This is an issue that I and others brought up with the current headmins at a few points in time and to their credit I think they have improved this compared to the state it was in around 3 ish months ago. I'd like to continue to enforce the FNR rules as they have. There are always individual circumstances where people are going to get burned on this and be upset, but it's important for both the people appealing and the admin being appealed to that FNR remains a respectful space where people can make their case and discuss it without threads being full of drama or insults. Policy threads are also relevant here. Mostly with policy threads I want to keep hostility out of them. The current headmins and other people with mod powers in FNR (Game Masters) have done an alright job of enforcing this in the past few months as far as I'm concerned, and again, I'd like to continue this.

I think those are the main things that I wanted to put emphasis on for a prospective headmin term. I could go into more detail about how I'd precisely like to change escalation policy, but it becomes a game of semantics, and in this sort of space I can't balance the concerns of other headmins or of the admins who enforce the rules as well, or particularly of the people who play the game frequently and don't read the forums.

A more consistent, straightforward way to get headmin input on policy threads.
This was an idea proposed by other candidates and I'm not going to pretend to own it, but I think this is important and it's something I'd very much like to see. Like a lot of players, I've made a number of policy threads, and I know exactly how frustrating it is when a policy thread basically just dies down and fades away even though the actual issue is still readily apparent. The only way I've ever gotten headmins to answer my policy threads is to ask them directly about it, usually repeatedly. Even now I find out that head admins had opinions on policy threads that I made and never decided to reply for reasons that are unknown to me. At the same time, policy threads can go on for a long ass time and often see a lot of developing discussion. With that in mind, the goal I'd like to set here is that every new policy thread gets a headmin opinion in it if not a consensus within 1 month of being made. Policy encompasses a wide variety of threads so it's not appropriate for everything, but where appropriate I'd also like to make sure to keep the Headmin Rulings wiki page up to date as an easily referable document. That potentially includes culling old rulings that have been made irrelevant by code changes or policy shifts.

I will try to keep this thread up-to-date as I write more things.

Replies to Candidate Debates
Choosing to deal with issues ICly or OOCly. viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21742

Spoiler:

Solving issues ICly is always nice, if it makes sense. There are two major bumps you run into doing this. One, if it's something that happens consistently between rounds or any recourse that can be taken against someone IC is not good enough, OOC solutions are the only solution. Two, you oftentimes are damaging immersion by doing this. There are obvious implications like giving people aheal revives as a solution to any IC fight where people die (which we do anyway sometimes) but also this sort of policy has wider reaching implications to the way that people on /tg/ station play in general. Most people here don't want to play on a server where everyone acts like a murder monkey, and trying to solve everything ICly would not help with that concern whatsoever.

Changing the current rotation of antags. viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21738

Spoiler:

This is something that was tinkered with a lot during Citrus/Rustled's term and it's mostly been untouched for the past term.

I'd like to run polling explicitly on how much people enjoy Blood Brothers. It's an antagonist that I know a lot of people have just turned off, so I'd like to run a poll to see if it should remain in the game, and make a decision based on that. Otherwise, I think Wizard is a bit too common during low-er pop, around 30 ish people. It's a very memey OOC game mode that has a very different pace compared to how Traitor usually goes, very centered on a single person oftentimes to the great expense of basically everyone else in the round.

The current admin recruiting process. viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21751

Spoiler:

Do you feel that this closed-doors invite-only process continues to be appropriate instead of a public & official applications system? If so, why?

There are no issues with it. Applications are a drama magnet and have a tendency to attract people who shouldn't be admins.

Do you feel that this creates a clique-like environment between admins or not?

No, it doesn't, and that's on the people who are choosing candidates and the headmins approving them. I can't think of a single candidate that fit this description in any way for ages.

If you think that it is not appropriate , how would you like to change the process of recruiting admin?

See above. Other servers wish they could pick and choose people from their existing player base, it's a luxury that /tg/ has. Watching applications for stuff like TGMC taught me a lot about this.

Will you put /tg/ station back on the hub? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21771

Spoiler:

There's no reason to put /tg/ station back on the hub, whatsoever. I wouldn't be opposed to the opposite happening for Terry, actually, as it's now garnering a much healthier population on a regular basis. Just taking a chance look at it when I was writing this post it's got 40 people on, which is not bad at all.

As a headmin would you change the nature of #tgs-leads, keep it the same, or remove it? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21767

Spoiler:

I think the vast majority of concern that admins have with #tgs-leads is that it's used to exclude them from conversations where their input is valuable, which has been the case on multiple occasions in the past. But I don't think the answer is to remove it entirely. I think the answer is to handle it correctly and rationally as a headmin and keep the bigger picture in mind, and the wishes and concerns of the admin team. That being said, I can absolutely understand why it's valuable to have a channel exclusively of former headmins when it comes to dealing with things like admin drama, wherein it obviously can't directly be discussed with the entire admin team.

General discussion on headmin transparency. viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21760

Spoiler:

It depends on what sort of transparency you're talking about. Transparency to admins from the headmins and transparency to players from the admins are two very different things. In the #tgs-leads thread I explained how I think that sort of thing should be used. All anyone seems to be talking about in this thread is #tgs-leads, so I'll paste my reply from that thread.

It's the post above this one, I cut it out of here for readability.

Beyond that, I think the headmins have a reasonable obligation to respect the privacy of people involved in incidents that not everyone is privy to. This needs to be balanced with oversight from the admin team, in that all we're going to get without specific explanations is vague and ambiguous ban notes, usually. Which partially have to be so ambiguous because they are shown to the person being banned. I've seen the same things in recent times that you have NikNak and I've felt the same frustration. Given that experience, I believe that I understand what is necessary as far as oversight from the admin team is concerned - i.e. explicit explanations of what happened and why to the greatest extent possible without compromising the privacy of the people involved.

How will you work with your fellow headmins when you disagree, especially if they are inactive or unreasonably stubborn? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21766

Spoiler:

You talk it out. Ultimately if there's a problem you're facing that needs to be addressed then you will reach a solution one way or another unless one party is irrationally stubborn. Even then, that's why there are 3 headmins and not 2, and you've also got a host to give input if need be.

If someone is inactive and it won't change for the better they should do the right thing and step down from the position. As a headmin you should be focused on what's good for the server, not yourself. If they just ghosted us and didn't accept any communication then they'd probably end up deadminned after a while and a lot of discussion with everyone involved and the host. If worse were to really come to worst and this was a completely unresolvable situation, it's only a maximum of 6 months, and you can try and do better for the next set of headmins with the host vote as well as your own advice for the new headmins.

How will you cooperate with the maintainers of the /tg/ station repo? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21762

Spoiler:

I'm quite familiar with how the development process for /tg/ station works on GitHub, having submitted a number of PRs there myself. I also talk frequently with a number of maintainers who are active in adminbus. I've generally found them to be very reasonable when it comes to discussing things like game balance or the impact of a feature. I don't think there is going to be another catgirl crisis during this headmin term, which was probably the worst codebase server split in quite a while, and even that managed to reach a mostly reasonable resolution.

What is your stance on giving players the ability to vote on features that are heavily criticized? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21746

Spoiler:

Polls are the headmins' domain almost always and are a valuable way to collect feedback. Otherwise, most of the maintainers and both headcoders are in adminbus and we talk to them quite frequently. Features are their concern. You can't make them do anything, all you can do is discuss things with them, and player feedback is a valuable tool to do so.

How would you feel about running short term tests of different rulesets, such as an MRP ruleset, like Hornygranny did? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21747

Spoiler:

I'd be interested but I think the best way to do it is on a separate server. It might be harder to garner pop that way but it seems a little silly from the perspective of someone who just logs onto the game and plays that the rules could suddenly be drastically different. At any rate, I think enough people would hop on for a weekend thing or something along those lines that pop wouldn't be a huge issue.

How did you feel about the community meetings? Would you continue them? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21789

Spoiler:

I attended both community meetings led by Nervere. The first one was a lot of code questions and specific people talking way too much. The second one was a lot of complaining about escalation policy with no actual ideas on how to solve it and specific people talking way too much.

I'm not opposed to continuing it but I'm really not a fan whatsoever of the current format. I'd really prefer to see something like people submitting questions ahead of time which are then brought up and discussed. As far as frequency, the amount that Nerv ended up doing (I believe he basically ended up going for one every two months) was fine, any more frequent than that and it's going to start getting stale. As for what sort of info should be discussed, I'm down to talk about pretty much anything directly related to the game, it's rules, or the community.

Would you support a public ban log or not, and why? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21757

Spoiler:

I think that /tg/ station has a culture of people who don't actually have any interest in the game itself and only exist here to hang on to the community and consume/produce drama. And like it or not ban logs are primarily enabling those people, at the expense of the people who are actually making the bans (and notes, although you don't explicitly mention notes here), as well as sometimes the people who are being banned. It's easy to talk about public shaming or things like that but I think a lot of people who are mostly good players are quite embarrassed and ashamed of the notes or bans that they managed to collect as is, and I don't think they'd want or need extra derision. And when I say "at the expense of the admins" I don't mean that accountability is a bad thing, I mean that there are a number of people whose only interest is to stir shit and make people argue and fight about non-issues and giving these people more tools is absolutely a big mistake.

On /tg/ station our accountability comes from the fact that if someone has a problem with their note or ban, they can appeal it publicly. They don't need other people to do so on their behalf. And lots of players who don't mind already talk about their bans. Lots of admins already talk about bans, especially when it's something noteworthy like a player everyone really disliked getting permabanned.

An easy comparison to make is /vg/ station, which does have public bans, but they also have a different ruleset and quite frankly a considerably different community compared to /tg/, which is what leads me to believe public bans are incompatible with /tg/ station.

I've yet to see someone make an argument to the contrary that I found compelling in this regard, but in the event that that were to happen I understand the benefits of public ban logs with regards to player understanding of the rules as well as transparency and oversight.

What is your ideal level of RP for /tg/ station? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21782

Spoiler:

My "ideal level of RP" is wholly irrelevant to /tg/ station.

/tg/ station is by and large a light roleplay server and that is what the majority of people come here for. There isn't really any changing this unless you want to fracture the community like Nervere says. The only thing that would maybe be helpful to the server right now would be to cut down the number of people engaging in very low/no RP behavior on things like grey tiding, especially in non assistant roles.

What's your favorite station map? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21805

Spoiler:

Delta is nice. It's like Metastation but you can actually hide things in highpop and it has the best Engineering of any map. Beyond that I think Pubby is a well designed map with a lot of unique flair.

Discussion on the state of the rules in general. viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21806

Spoiler:

I'm partially reiterating what I've said in a bunch of other threads, but I'll rewrite it on more general terms in here.

Our current ruleset and more particularly the enforcement of those rules is too light on the group of people who readily and intentionally make rounds worse for other people at no direct provocation solely for their own entertainment on a regular basis. This is the primary reason that I want to make changes to Escalation Policy, which I've discussed in my candidate thread as well as in Wubli's policy thread about it and don't particularly want to repeat here.

There are a number of different groups that play on /tg/ station and they all have different things about the game that they enjoy. This is fine, and we should do our best job to ensure that all of these groups can have a fun time playing here. One of the things that I love about /tg/ station and ss13 in general is the sheer breadth of the content. You can do so many different things that I've never seen in another video game, and they have a ton of depth and you can keep doing them for a long while and it's tremendously fun. There are still considerable portions of content on /tg/ station that I've barely even scratched the surface on in my ~3000 connections.

With that said, if your enjoyment of the game comes not from the game's content itself or engaging in positive interactions with other people, moreso that you find enjoyment from negative interactions with others, then you are a negative influence on /tg/ station as a whole. Some amount of negative interaction can spice things up, obviously. This is why we have antags, this is why we have escalation. But if this is literally all you do ever, then you should find another way to enjoy the game or you should go to a different server that is more suited for people with this competitive attitude. Currently I believe that the rules, particularly but not exclusively escalation policy, defend this sort of person and I think that the best thing I could do for /tg/ station during a headmin term would be to stop this in it's tracks.

I would go into more detail about escalation policy here but I don't want people to read my same block of text for the 3rd time so I'll spare you it.

Aside from that I think the other primary culprit of this is Silicon Policy. A lot of people play AI because they are waiting for an opportunity to be made rogue so they can destroy shit. In particular the way policy has defended people who intentionally interpret ambiguous laws in the most assholish way possible given no justification to do so is a sore point. I thought I wouldn't be linking a thread in here but I will. viewtopic.php?f=34&t=19052 I heavily disagreed with this ruling at the time and I still do. The person who was banned was by no means in the right, but the AI here was being a dick with zero justification to the point that it's functionally ban baiting. I didn't mention it at the time either, but silicon policy has a clause that states this:

Server Rule 1: "Don't be a dick out of character" applies for law interpretation. Act in good faith to not ruin a round for other players unprompted.

One could try to argue whether or not this was unprompted but in my opinion it's pretty clear. Additionally, in this case the issue wasn't directly law interpretation, it was order interpretation, given a law to follow all orders. Which doesn't lend any credence towards the AI in my opinion. The point of silicons is not killing people given any justification. The point of silicons and in my opinion where silicons shine the most is in interesting and creative law roleplay. But this case comes back to the same place as my point on escalation policy, which is that people who intentionally seek out negative interactions at every turn given no suitable justification to do so should be removed.

I realized I didn't go into enough detail about what's wrong with silicon policy. The issue is the encouraging of silicons to abuse any loophole they can find in their laws whatsoever, and partially just lax/nonexistent enforcement of existing rules. Silicons are always supposed to be moderated by Rule 1 when they exploit loopholes, but it's repeatedly been the case in the past that instead of the silicons getting in trouble for it the person who made the laws is the one who exclusively got in trouble for it. The point of that distinction (banning people who upload bad laws instead of the silicon for following them) is mostly intended for things that are blatantly bad like Antimov. An AI choosing to interpret ambiguous laws or orders in a way that is bad should not mean that the uploader gets banned.

Are there any config changes that you would like to make? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21777

Spoiler:

Slightly playing with fire by mentioning it but in a policy thread I made I think about 6 months ago I described a way to reconfigure the antag rep system to basically just be a more fair way to roll for antag. So if you hadn't rolled antag in a while, you'd be more likely to roll it than people who rolled it recently, and that's all it would do. I still think that's a good idea and if other people involved felt the same way I wouldn't mind reconfiguring it as such and bringing it back in that guise.

Otherwise as far as config edits go I'd like to see Nuke Ops not end on antagonist death again. The shuttle is always called as soon as possible anyways and the paranoia of not knowing if there are still operatives alive about to jump you or not was more exciting than always knowing that antags are alive. Additionally, midround antags are currently enabled in Cult, which is a mistake for the same reason Nuke Ops or Revs doesn't have them enabled. I'd also like to edit the minimum pop for Wizard from 20 to 25 or 30, for the reasons I discussed in your thread on the game mode rotation, which is coincidentally handled in the same config files.

Besides that everything is probably too controversial to change without a vote at the very least, or silly depreciated things like having an IC_PRINTING config when we don't have ICs anymore.

[tinodrima7020]

Do you plan on interacting with players like a human or will you forever do it for free and take your job very seriously.

[subject217]

I do interact with quite a lot of players on a regular basis, and I think that many people who aren't you and see me ingame on a regular basis can see that fairly clearly. I don't really have anything else to say in this regard other than that it feels unfounded to me for you to make this accusation.

[wesoda25]

I typed out a post but then it got deleted so to keep it short.

Subject is one of the most competent, level headed, and logical admins we have. Tinos claim is bullshit, if its a shot at his activity I literally saw him two days ago, and if its at his interactions thats bullshit too because he interacts with players. If headmin, I feel he’d embody the traits which made people love Kor (PS bring back the “no spawning megafauna rule”) and would be an incredible headmin. I bet even the people on forums who don’t play would have trouble finding issue with him.

PS inactivity in game isn’t even a bad thing as headmin, most usually are, and generally speaking it removes bias.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

TGstation admins have been working much more closely with the codebase since the ascension of oranges. Given that you often find yourself in conflict with him, will you be able to work with him as an admin and the head of the codebase?

I agree with basically all of your statements on the current escalation travesty, but do you have any specifics on the changes you will make to escalation? I understand you don’t want to get bogged down on minutiae, but this is an issue close to many voters, and a number of candidates also have very detailed complaints about escalation coupled with very airy and commitmentless declarations that they will do “something” about it, without elaboration.

[subject217]

TGstation admins have been working much more closely with the codebase since the ascension of oranges. Given that you often find yourself in conflict with him, will you be able to work with him as an admin and the head of the codebase?

I cooperate with oranges on a regular basis and I'm not at all opposed to talking to him as long as he's being reasonable, and I do so regularly.

I agree with basically all of your statements on the current escalation travesty, but do you have any specifics on the changes you will make to escalation? I understand you don’t want to get bogged down on minutiae, but this is an issue close to many voters, and a number of candidates also have very detailed complaints about escalation coupled with very airy and commitmentless declarations that they will do “something” about it, without elaboration.

I explicitly tried to explain this. I think de-escalation should be explained as a concept, and I think over-escalation should be explained briefly as well. I also think that the stupid examples from it like "If you think x killed you for taking your ID card, don't steal next round" should be removed because people just use these as an excuse to kill people. The other specifc thing is this line:

If you choose to retaliate with violence, you in turn have opened yourself up to violence. If you choose this route, do not expect admins to help you out if you die, even if you were not the original instigator.

It's very nebulous, yes, but if you are the actual instigator in a conflict that exists for no reason beyond your own entertainment, I don't believe you should have the protection that "if you choose to retaliate with violence" grants. If you are being an asshole people should be empowered to deal with you themselves, and at that point your "right to self defense" becomes sort of forfeit as far as I'm concerned.
I'm mostly focused on editing the existing policy as I believe it's a more attainable goal than starting from the ground up entirely. I've not seen anyone produce a result from the ground-up approach either.

[lmwevil]

you have been known to go on long rants when somebody disagrees with you, coming off quite hostile at the best of times - will you do better on this in the future if you got headmin?

[Tlaltecuhtli]

ben shapiro of the admin team

[subject217]

you have been known to go on long rants when somebody disagrees with you, coming off quite hostile at the best of times - will you do better on this in the future if you got headmin?

It's something of I've been cognizant of for a good while and it's something that I make a conscious effort to avoid at all times. It's important to treat people respectfully because at the end of the day this is a team. If all one does is shout at people all they'll accomplish is to make other people upset. I do make mistakes though, and all I can do is try to learn from them and do better in the future. Holding a position of authority over your co-workers (taking a little liberty here) is significantly different from simply being their acquaintance and how you interact with them has to change as well. Especially, criticizing them in a public space where other people are privy to it. There is zero value in an authority figure voicing personal criticism of their subordinate in a public space, and it feels more like a personal attack than honest concern. I've been irked by other people doing this in the past and it's something I am determined to be aware of and avoid. I would like to think that I am capable of treating the headmin position with the respect it deserves, and by extension treating the admin team with the respect they deserve as volunteers.

[Darkgenerallord]

the real problem with subject is that his midi game is very weak

[elyina]

My biggest issue with you subject, is that you get angry way too easily and turn hostile in any sort of debate or argument too frequently. The most worrisome instance that comes to mind is that during an instance I don't think we're supposed to talk about, when I disagreed with you, you restored to just calling me an asshole, dismissing anything I said and repeating the same thing over and over. You also seem very stubborn at times. I have a concern that you may make an emotional decision at some point.

[subject217]

I don't disagree. I don't want to repeat myself so all I can say is what I've already said to lmwevil. We did talk about that privately and I did apologize for it.

As far as emotional decisions go, I don't plan to make any major decisions without discussing it with the other headmins or with the admin team as a group. I've already explained my intention to act respectful and why I believe I can hold myself to it.

[Zarniwoop]

I haven't witnessed the temper so I can't speak on that but seems like they're willing to put forth the effort. Look at all those links to the debate. Being able to confront their flaws and be honest the way they have is a good quality. As someone with a similar temper, maybe reading up on laconic phrasing could help you pare down these rants.