/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

NikNakFlak wrote:Bans threats are bad but so is being a shitter and hindering an inquiry. Nabski blew up in a bad way but all that was needed is oldman not being an egolord too. Both people are in the wrong here.

I think most of us are in agreement from this. The complaint is due to the fact that admins should be held to a higher standard and are expected to not ban people when they haven't broken any rules. Oldman being mean doesn't justify banning Oldman for being mean.

this is just the napkin ban again but CJS is less napkin

Oldman Robustin wrote:urpost

No I think you're not understanding HE WAS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT PROMPTED IT. No ulterior motive. I mean he literally asked just that with a quote to put it in perspective for you as to why he was asking, if he knew then he wouldn't of asked. As you ironically said to me earlier in the thread

You take things waaayyy too far there bro.

logs wrote: [2018-10-12 23:57:41.517] ADMINPRIVATE: PM: Nabski/(Gene Ball)->ForcefulCJS/(Oldman Robustin): (F) [Security] Oldman Robustin says, "Get patrolling, and be on the lookout for revolutionary behavior"
[2018-10-12 23:57:46.147] ADMINPRIVATE: PM: Nabski/(Gene Ball)->ForcefulCJS/(Oldman Robustin): was there something that prompted this

Did he forget to add the xoxo's and hearts? I'm not sure how this isn't a normal, investigative question unless you were still tilted about being memed over a meme station name so you couldn't see byond the transgression. I'm going to take a wild guess and say you were.

I expect players and admins to act on equal standards in ahelps. No one likes to be a punching bag for someone else, which is ironically the same argument between your thread on Nabski and Nabski's ban on you. I agree he shouldn't have acted that way, but don't agree nonadmins get a free pass to because they're not "held to a higher standard" whatever that's suppose to mean.

It's not "pretty weird" that i'm putting ALL the poor actions into perspective. It's misleading to imply this situation was not escalated into a heated, and abusive, result because of BOTH you and Nabski. Everyone else has already said what needs to be said about Nabski, but personally I find the situation quite poor between the both of you and I expect equal quality between people who share a common thread of being representatives of the server (veteran player who has contributed a lot and admin who is currently contributing a lot to our server).

Cobby wrote: personally I find the situation quite poor between the both of you and I expect equal quality between people who share a common thread of being representatives of the server (veteran player who has contributed a lot and admin who is currently contributing a lot to our server).

This, really. There's nothing wrong with nabski taking a break from the burnout either if that's what is needed. I expect conduct better, somehow, out of the two involved when I have very little expectations from this server.

I gave my reasons for the attitude, Nabski blowing off my Ahelp from the night before and then literally blowing off my legs that round was enough to have my eyes roll into orbit when I get chain-bwoinked by his inquiry into my statement. The irony is only heightened when I'm already at the top of the list of people who dislike metaknowledge in the Command Report and would be the first to try and fix it if I had a confirmed bug on my hands.

Normally I'm happy to identify code issues, and I don't usually give attitude to admins who reach out for my assistance.

Past round and interactions dont give you a free pass. He healed your legs after a dumb joke. Stop using these as excuses. Chain bwoinking isnt really notable at all, probably just bad form but not an uncommon way to type.

You are just as bad as nabski in this.

Also for the not against the rules crowd:
Let's imagine you're not sure why the captain started screaming revs you probably need to check if it's not metacomms or exploits.
We know it's the report now but that was only one of the possibilities before.
This could've been resolved by saying "command report".
Now if robustin in his in-game chat already listed the command report as a reason it would've been fine also. Not sure if that's the case or not.

Dax Dupont wrote:Also for the not against the rules crowd:
Let's imagine you're not sure why the captain started screaming revs you probably need to check if it's not metacomms or exploits.
We know it's the report now but that was only one of the possibilities before.
This could've been resolved by saying "command report".
Now if robustin in his in-game chat already listed the command report as a reason it would've been fine also. Not sure if that's the case or not.

Malkraz wrote:

Cobby wrote:Using a bug to influence your IC decisions pulls it into the OOC realm. Had this been with me I’d have banned you until the GitHub issue came since you weren’t going to explain it to me.

This reasoning is totally understandable, because the threat of ban is founded upon an actual rule violation and choosing not to defend himself against that suspicion doesn't do him any favors.
However, I believe whether or not he broke a rule by exploiting a bug is not a relevant discussion regarding this ban and complaint because by Nabski's own statements he was banned under Rules 0 and 6 "for refusing to respond".

Malkraz wrote:

NikNakFlak wrote:I don't know why you and others reference not answering an admin as "not covered by the rules."
I'm not saying nabski handled this the best, but that argument is just pants on really dumb.

Because it isn't. If you're being talked to about something bannable and you blow off the admin, expect to be banned for the thing that's bannable because you decided not to defend yourself, validating the idea that you did it. Nabski never once said that Oldman was being talked to about something that was going to potentially get him banned, only that he was banned because Nabski didn't like the way he responded.

You can't blow off admins in game period.

NikNakFlak, while I understand people can't just tell admins to "shut the fuck up", we're humans either way. That was quite rude of Nabski to Oldman, and there are lots of newmins policies about how to send ahelps and it seems he wasn't following them.

Do not use information gained outside of in character means

Command report = in-game knowledge /s (even if it's not true or used to not be true)
Nabski got mad with power.
Period.
It is time to get a headmin here, don't we think? Since this already has been discussed a lot and it isn't going nowhere (but circlejerk).

segundoblz wrote:NikNakFlak, while I understand people can't just tell admins to "shut the fuck up", we're humans either way. That was quite rude of Nabski to Oldman, and there are lots of newmins policies about how to send ahelps and it seems he wasn't following them.

Do not use information gained outside of in character means

Command report = in-game knowledge /s (even if it's not true or used to not be true)
Nabski got mad with power.
Period.
It is time to get a headmin here, don't we think? Since this already has been discussed a lot and it isn't going nowhere (but circlejerk).

He was not banned for meta.

NikNakFlak wrote:You can't blow off admins in game period.

When Pax was an admin people regularly blew him off in sec related ahelps because

A)He was more likely than not biased
B)He was overtly hostile in approaching certain people

I even told him to fuck off at one point and he didn't even act as immaturely as Nabski did in this case

leibniz wrote:

segundoblz wrote:NikNakFlak, while I understand people can't just tell admins to "shut the fuck up", we're humans either way. That was quite rude of Nabski to Oldman, and there are lots of newmins policies about how to send ahelps and it seems he wasn't following them.

Do not use information gained outside of in character means

Command report = in-game knowledge /s (even if it's not true or used to not be true)
Nabski got mad with power.
Period.
It is time to get a headmin here, don't we think? Since this already has been discussed a lot and it isn't going nowhere (but circlejerk).

He was not banned for meta.

No, he was banned because he didnt tickle Nabskers balls hard enough after they were a shit to him earlier. Why are we still discussing this mess of a ban?

Regardless of everything else, This does seem to reveal something for admins to keep in mind.

Sending a pm to a player makes a LOUD sound, while displaying a BIG text, sending chains of them kills the ability to see whats going on the round akin to spamming big embeds on discord. Admin to admin pms don't do this, the sound is quieter (iirc), can be muted, and there is no big ADMINISTRATOR PRIVATE MESSAGE header so its easy to forget how disruptive and rude a chain of them can be to players. (also all of what i said could be wrong now, its been forever since I've gotten an admin pm while not admin'ed up)

Thats not to say we should be demoting admins for sending more than x messages in x minutes, but its also not appropriate to ignore this fact, luckily there exists the middle ground of saying oh ya, this is something we should be keeping in mind.

I won't speak to the rest of the complaint, thats the headmin's job.

It would definitely be cool to get headmins in here because this has gone so far off the tracks. At this point in the thread I don't even remember what his stated ban reason is.

Was is based on violating a specific rule or a rule 0 ban because he didn't want to answer Nabski?

I of course don't have the power but wouldn't it make sense to lock the thread at this point and let headmins weigh in and Oldman/Nabski rebuttal? So much "I would have banned you for X, Y and Z" "I wouldn't have banned him at all".

WarbossLincoln wrote:It would definitely be cool to get headmins in here because this has gone so far off the tracks. At this point in the thread I don't even remember what his stated ban reason is.

Was is based on violating a specific rule or a rule 0 ban because he didn't want to answer Nabski?

I of course don't have the power but wouldn't it make sense to lock the thread at this point and let headmins weigh in and Oldman/Nabski rebuttal? So much "I would have banned you for X, Y and Z" "I wouldn't have banned him at all".

MOSTLY rule 6 for refusing to give an honest answer to a question. There was some amount of rule 0 I don't want to deal with your crap anymore, and it would have been much more rule zero if I had gone with a week length as I originally considered (I realized that the week length was my ego, and if was appealed would 100% end up lifted). I felt like severity-wise this was about as bad as intentional IC in OOC.

Here's my thoughts in general on ban lengths.

5-10 minutes. Take a short break and read the rules, we've likely linked them to you and this is your first offense on something. Typically IC in OOC. This is really just to send a message that "hey you're messing up and bans exist here".
60 minutes. Go sit out a round. You're doing something stupid but it isn't worth not getting to play this evening/today.
6-12 hours. I pretty much only will apply a ban of this length on the weekends in the morning so that people can still play later in the day. Typically used when someone has messed up, but they're realizing their mistakes and are stating so in the ahelp, it's like a downgraded dayban.
Day ban. Default length, typically applied for murder or things people have previously been warned on.
2-4 days. You've done something to cause mass murder.
Week ban. You've screwed up, ruined a bunch of people rounds, and have been warned for it before.
1 Month ban. I'm hoping that at the end of this you'll either come back a changed person, or won't come back.
6 Month ban. I've handed a few of these out. Typically used where it would be a perma, but as long as enough time has passed that you saying "hey I'm sorry I want to play again" would get you unbanned.

Jobbans: Job bans are almost always longer than a serverban, but used when you're having issues with a particular job. They are much more rarely handed out.
Typically handed out in week to month intervals. Only perma's I've done have been for ghostroles. I've done shorter duration job bans every now and then when I felt like it was worth more than a note, but less than a server ban.
Ghostroles: Getting revenge for your past life, griefing your teammates, leaving designated areas
Engineering: Intentionally fucking up the engine or repeated incompetence at it in a way that ruins peoples rounds. Especially for walking into it and having it delaminate. Maybe for if people refuse to stop roundstart blocking the AI in atmos.
Chemistry: Making mystery death pills, maybe some grenade fuckers, maybe chem powergaming. Pretty rare.
Science: too many bad bombs or bad xenobiology spawns, Typically from repeated behavior.
Assistant: 24/7 Greytide. I've never handed one of these out.
Security: Random searches, excessive timers, abuse of power. Rare to get this without having MANY MANY warnings on the topic.
Silicon: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Command: Going braindead roundstart and not saying anything. There's other reasons but I've never had to do it.

His actions weren't tied in any way to a job, so those are all out. His actions, for a first warning that this is not a tolerated behavior, which he is going to stand behind, didn't really ruin anyone's round. That put it in the somewhere between 5 minutes to a day range. Ultimately I felt like this wasn't a "minor" sure take a break then come back in five minutes kind of issue. If it was we would have resolved it in the first round. I also didn't feel like it was important enough to make someone sit out their entire play session. With those reasons I picked an hour.

Nabski wrote:

WarbossLincoln wrote:It would definitely be cool to get headmins in here because this has gone so far off the tracks. At this point in the thread I don't even remember what his stated ban reason is.

Was is based on violating a specific rule or a rule 0 ban because he didn't want to answer Nabski?

I of course don't have the power but wouldn't it make sense to lock the thread at this point and let headmins weigh in and Oldman/Nabski rebuttal? So much "I would have banned you for X, Y and Z" "I wouldn't have banned him at all".

MOSTLY rule 6 for refusing to give an honest answer to a question. There was some amount of rule 0 I don't want to deal with your crap anymore, and it would have been much more rule zero if I had gone with a week length as I originally considered (I realized that the week length was my ego, and if was appealed would 100% end up lifted). I felt like severity-wise this was about as bad as intentional IC in OOC.

Here's my thoughts in general on ban lengths.

5-10 minutes. Take a short break and read the rules, we've likely linked them to you and this is your first offense on something. Typically IC in OOC. This is really just to send a message that "hey you're messing up and bans exist here".
60 minutes. Go sit out a round. You're doing something stupid but it isn't worth not getting to play this evening/today.
6-12 hours. I pretty much only will apply a ban of this length on the weekends in the morning so that people can still play later in the day. Typically used when someone has messed up, but they're realizing their mistakes and are stating so in the ahelp, it's like a downgraded dayban.
Day ban. Default length, typically applied for murder or things people have previously been warned on.
2-4 days. You've done something to cause mass murder.
Week ban. You've screwed up, ruined a bunch of people rounds, and have been warned for it before.
1 Month ban. I'm hoping that at the end of this you'll either come back a changed person, or won't come back.
6 Month ban. I've handed a few of these out. Typically used where it would be a perma, but as long as enough time has passed that you saying "hey I'm sorry I want to play again" would get you unbanned.

Jobbans: Job bans are almost always longer than a serverban, but used when you're having issues with a particular job. They are much more rarely handed out.
Typically handed out in week to month intervals. Only perma's I've done have been for ghostroles. I've done shorter duration job bans every now and then when I felt like it was worth more than a note, but less than a server ban.
Ghostroles: Getting revenge for your past life, griefing your teammates, leaving designated areas
Engineering: Intentionally fucking up the engine or repeated incompetence at it in a way that ruins peoples rounds. Especially for walking into it and having it delaminate. Maybe for if people refuse to stop roundstart blocking the AI in atmos.
Chemistry: Making mystery death pills, maybe some grenade fuckers, maybe chem powergaming. Pretty rare.
Science: too many bad bombs or bad xenobiology spawns, Typically from repeated behavior.
Assistant: 24/7 Greytide. I've never handed one of these out.
Security: Random searches, excessive timers, abuse of power. Rare to get this without having MANY MANY warnings on the topic.
Silicon: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Command: Going braindead roundstart and not saying anything. There's other reasons but I've never had to do it.

His actions weren't tied in any way to a job, so those are all out. His actions, for a first warning that this is not a tolerated behavior, which he is going to stand behind, didn't really ruin anyone's round. That put it in the somewhere between 5 minutes to a day range. Ultimately I felt like this wasn't a "minor" sure take a break then come back in five minutes kind of issue. If it was we would have resolved it in the first round. I also didn't feel like it was important enough to make someone sit out their entire play session. With those reasons I picked an hour.

I'm just curious if you think you handled this exchange with him well and if you feel you made no mistakes or are not in the wrong in anyway? I do appreciate the way you toss out the logic you use when applying bans/bwoinks and shit which I don't really see as completely unfair at all, for the most part it seems actually reasonable and I'm surprised it comes from you at all. Still, do you think you handled this as best you can from your position?

ishortjr33 wrote: I'm just curious if you think you handled this exchange with him well and if you feel you made no mistakes or are not in the wrong in anyway? I do appreciate the way you toss out the logic you use when applying bans/bwoinks and shit which I don't really see as completely unfair at all, for the most part it seems actually reasonable and I'm surprised it comes from you at all. Still, do you think you handled this as best you can from your position?

This is the real question. Assume a letter grade of A+ and each thing is going to change the grade

I don't think I badly went outside acceptable admin conduct on the legs then aheal part. It was questionable, but ultimately didn't really impact the round and in terms of small personal joke at a small personal joke it was pretty good. (lost the +, but still A for the round)

I don't think that my applied punishment was too hard or unwarranted. (A)

I can see the point about chain bwoinking being negative to a player, and am SLIGHTLY trying to jam more in a single line. (B+)

I think I did decently at keeping a professional tone throughout the entire thing, I'm particularly happy with the first bit of the second round, less happy with the way I stated my ultimatum. (B)

I definitely fucked up by not telling the player he was going to be ghosted, but if I had done that first and he refused to cooperate that would have been an acceptable tool to use.(C)

I had TRIED to get advice from other admins before proceeding into round two, to some level of effectiveness. That was something that was brought up in a previous complaint so for that I'm grading myself up a little back to C+,which isn't so hot. It had a few major areas that needed improvement.

Nabski wrote:

ishortjr33 wrote: I'm just curious if you think you handled this exchange with him well and if you feel you made no mistakes or are not in the wrong in anyway? I do appreciate the way you toss out the logic you use when applying bans/bwoinks and shit which I don't really see as completely unfair at all, for the most part it seems actually reasonable and I'm surprised it comes from you at all. Still, do you think you handled this as best you can from your position?

This is the real question. Assume a letter grade of A+ and each thing is going to change the grade

I don't think I badly went outside acceptable admin conduct on the legs then aheal part. It was questionable, but ultimately didn't really impact the round and in terms of small personal joke at a small personal joke it was pretty good. (lost the +, but still A for the round)

I don't think that my applied punishment was too hard or unwarranted. (A)

I can see the point about chain bwoinking being negative to a player, and am SLIGHTLY trying to jam more in a single line. (B+)

I think I did decently at keeping a professional tone throughout the entire thing, I'm particularly happy with the first bit of the second round, less happy with the way I stated my ultimatum. (B)

I definitely fucked up by not telling the player he was going to be ghosted, but if I had done that first and he refused to cooperate that would have been an acceptable tool to use.(C)

I had TRIED to get advice from other admins before proceeding into round two, to some level of effectiveness. That was something that was brought up in a previous complaint so for that I'm grading myself up a little back to C+,which isn't so hot. It had a few major areas that needed improvement.

Like I said on discord, I appreciate that you somewhat admitted you were wrong. I still have no love for you but I think that's a big thing for you to do. Not that my opinion matters much but there's something gross about the fact that being wrong, admitting you're wrong is a REQUIREMENT for users conduct but such is not asked of the admins. Being allowed to argue your position into the ground without budging or admitting that you may have been problematic while telling the user "Just confess, all you have to do is confess, you don't seem sorry for you actions" is.. yeah it's disgusting. Anyways, it was big of you to somewhat admit it and I hope you two can hash out your differences and grow as both a user and an admin respectively.

Are headmins going to weight in on this or just leave it open for the rest of their jurisdiction?

They have already agreed upon a ruling and are now just ensuring conscientious with the wording/phrasing of the post.

Verdict: Uphold complaint, 3 day ban for Nabski.

There are a number of components to this complaint so ill try to address them in order

1. Leg thing
Not really actionable or relevant. Putting in a meme station name opens you up to minor admin memes in response, as long as they don't have a permanent negative impact on the round. It definitely wasn't the best joke but he healed you up before it made a big impact on the round so I don't think its a huge deal.

2. Watch for Revs
Not an unreasonable thing to bwoink someone about. The roundtype being secret is important to the functioning of the game so its important to know if someone is metagaming with a friend and/or using a bug to figure it out.

3. Ghosting
Robustin responded with a sarcastic snarky comment which kicks off this whole mess. Nabski responds by ghosting him.
I don't think that ghosting someone mid round when they haven't been established to have done anything wrong should ever be something an admin is doing. Players are expected to be patient while an admin investigates, I think admins should show players the same courtesy while they're in the middle of a hectic round. Players should still reply/cooperate when they are able, but nothing about this ahelp was urgent enough to warrant effectively killing a player without warning or discussion.
As such we have decided to give Nabski a 3 day ban for what was effectively an unwarranted kill. While 24hrs is the standard for that for players we felt that admins should be held to a higher standard than players, particularly when it comes to responsible use of their admin tools.

4. Chain bwoinks
Not really actionable but I figured I should mention it here. While that style of typing/sending messages is increasingly common with discord/chatroom style communities becoming more popular I'd ask that admins do their best to type out complete thoughts for their ahelps to avoid spamming the player's chatbox and the bwoink noise while they're trying to play. It also makes it easier for both parties to communicate if they can be fairly sure there aren't another 3 sentence fragments coming their way they have to wait for before replying.

5. ahelp conduct
Nabskis initial conduct is fine, however I had a problem with the ultimatum and the conduct surrounding it after Robustin continues to be uncooperative.
While admins shouldn't be expected to happily accept abuse, they should do their best to de-escalate the situation. We're not cops interrogating a criminal, I don't think we should be threatening people with bans via ultimatum because they're not cooperating right away. That sort of thing should be a last, not a first, resort.
That said, players shouldn't abuse admins or be completely uncooperative in ahelps and expect there not to be consequences to their actions. For that reason the 60 minute ban is fine in this case. We're just trying to make sure that everybody is having an enjoyable time and are following server rules. If people can refuse to cooperate or reply to ahelps without consequence there's no way for us to do so.

In the future I'd advise nabski be less aggressive in ahelps and attempt to communicate more with the player before jumping straight to threatening banning etc.


Sorry about the delay in responding to this, it was difficult to get all the headmins around at once to discuss and vote, as it seems it was a particularly busy week.

I'm just going to add on to this, since there seemed to be some debate about this.

If an admin is PMing you, you are expected to respond (and respond meaningfully). I don't care if you and that admin had a bitter breakup the week before, you can both remain civil for the duration of time it takes to handle a bwoink. If you are combative or just not responding after multiple attempts, the best you can possible expect is that whatever they're bwoinking about will be ruled against you as if you had no defence or factors in your favour.

In the unlikely circumstance that you believe an admin is asking about something they aren't entitled to (such as personal info outside of verifying age), you are free to refuse to answer, though you will most likely end up fighting it out on Ban Appeals/Admin Complaints, you will be in the right.