[I actually don't even know at this point] Unprofessionalism

[bandit]

preface: weeeooooo weeeeeoooo here come the drama sirens
post-preface: I'm sure something or other in here is going to be used as evidence against my character but fuck it, it's not as if that sort of thing isn't already happening. I also don't expect anything to come of this, per se, but I'm not overly impressed with the situation in general.

So a couple of days ago it was posted on the forums that admin candidates were being taken on, and lollerderby candidated me one round. At first I thought it was a meme thing, but I got access to adminbus and related tools, and at least one other person who'd been candidated before and who IMO would be a quite reasonable choice was told no because "we have enough candidates already" so I figured it was at least somewhat serious. As far as I know I don't catastrophically fuck up and I handle things professionally, except making a note without asking first (I didn't know you had to, and it seemed noteworthy d as far as I know no one removed it) and maybe choosing a less-than-ideal candidate for a certain event type thing. I also look at my notes because let's be honest, anyone in the same situation would do the same thing, and almost all of them were from 2013 (the year I started playing and was also kind of a shit IRL too), with the ones from 2015 either being genuine fuckups or positive notes. I ask for feedback a number of times or if there's anything I could be doing differently and am told, more or less, "you're doing fine," by both of the admintrainers I'd interacted with (lollerderby and shaps). At least one other admin (HBL, I think) says they'd be cool with candidating me again when I'm online. I don't have logs of any of this because I didn't know I'd have any reason to keep logs.

So it's New Year's Day, I don't have work and am not really doing much so I ask to be candidated, I'm told that the admins on can't play a whole round. Fair enough, although this was the second time I'd heard this and I start to suspect I'm being bullshitted, I have no real proof. I log into IRC and am told that HG apparently says I'm either "unstable" or "deranged." Given that this is the first time I've heard of this I ask for clarification and get nothing. Later on today I still don't have shit going on so I log in and ask for candidate, then I am told by Shaps that I can't be candidated anymore because of my opinions on lizards and ERP. This comes as a bit of a surprise because I wasn't told anything of the like before. At this point my internet crashes (which means I don't have logs of the above) so I log back in and am like "wtf" and am told this:

-- Administrator private message --
Admin PM from-TechnoAlchemist: yeah shaps is a literal ree ree and canidated people for bad time zones so they cut loose some canidates , also the rushed trial promotions were stupid. tbh shaps doesn't know what they're doing and i'm sorry you got caught in this mess

-- Administrator private message --
Admin PM from-TechnoAlchemist: I'm not lying to you, we kept one (2?) canidates and i guess you were the fan least favorite.

Nothing has changed since yesterday to keep me from being able to recognize obvious bullshit, so I say as much and then get told:

-- Administrator private message --
Admin PM from-KorPhaeron: One the headmins said not to candidate you that is the truth I dunno what anyone else told you

then, about a second later:

-- Administrator private message --
Admin PM from-Shaps: Truth be told I haven't been involved much with following the stuff on the forums, but HG was the first person to bring up the stuff with lizards and ERP. I wasn't paying attention with it before, but I agreed with him that how you handled yourself there wasn't the greatest. I'm sorry I wasn't really paying attention with it, but you were loller's candidate to begin with so I figured he would be the one to talk to you

It's not exactly a secret that I've been against ERP being unbanned since we-all-know-who proceeded to push the line for weeks/months in increasingly brazen and nonstop ways, and that I've been one of the main people posting logs to support my case. (I stopped because people seemed to find it old and because it was December and I have better shit to do during the holidays than look up lizard shit, but the last I checked it had proceeded to plantperson vine/tentacle sex. It also appears that several people have either joined or become active again solely to ERP -- it used to be just two people ERPing constantly, now it's approaching double digits. I genuinely do believe that people just don't realize how bad it's gotten.) I've had a thread in the policy discussion forums about the unbanning for at least several weeks now, if not months, in which I've made my stance clear that this is really not the sort of thing that this server should be supporting or known for. This isn't some fringe opinion -- it was the majority opinion before ERP was unbanned for reasons I'm still not convinced weren't some meme, the polls on the matter have been pretty split, and a lot of admins, including admins I would say I generally don't agree with on policy decisions (Stickymayhem comes to mind) share this opinion.

(This is a tangent, but I don't know where else to put the fact that HG literally just became headmin a few days ago.)

The only other argument related to this that I can think of is that I say rude things about lizards sometimes on the radio. I don't quite see where this is an issue. If you code a race that is restricted from command positions for fluff reasons of speciesism, this is inevitably going to be the RP result. I'm sure I've made rude remarks over the radio about the clown and/or mime a thousand times, yet I still play clown and mime; I don't fuck with lizards' rounds for no reason as a non-antag and I don't start lynch mobs over the radio as some have been known to do.

More importantly, you'd be hard-pressed to find players who don't shit-talk lizards, including admins. You can literally go into any day of the logs and find numerous examples of this, but I'll just choose the last day public logs were recorded so people don't accuse me of cherry-picking. There's a lot I left out (and it was a bitch to search because one of the op teams chose a certain last name that day) but here is a sampling:

[01:11:18]SAY: Rick Deckard/Kingwest : KILL ALL LIZARDS
[03:05:07]SAY: ChurchGrimm/(Larry Burger) has made a priority announcement: This is CO Burger speaking, I want those fucking lizards killed and their tails taken. OOORAH!
[03:38:41]SAY: Daniel Young/Blaze0223 : No lizards in my bar
[07:46:24]SAY: Ghost/Ausops : fucking degenerate lizards at it again
[17:32:38]SAY: Jennie Fisher/Whoisthere : FUCKING LIZARDS EVERYWHERE
[22:27:24]SAY: Sarah Hooker/Anonmare : AI I'm allergic to Lizards
[23:34:50]SAY: Ghost/Dr. Aura : They're shit tier lizards.
[23:48:40]SAY: Larry Spankenhiemer/Man_Shroom : Shouldn't care about lizards anyway
[01:31:04]SAY: Asia Rodgers/Redblaze3000 : Remove liggers
[12:11:42]SAY: P.A.R.U./Yakumo Chen : Liggers are not human and thus not to be trusted
[13:57:39]SAY: Sean Iseman/Murazor : A reminder that liggers are scum

This one gets its own section because it happened literally while all the above was happening:

OOC: TechnoAlchemist: i dont listen to bad players lmao
OOC: TechnoAlchemist: but yeah kill all lizards 2k16

tl;dr / the complaint part of the complaint: The guidelines for admins -- which I've read, given that I was expected to -- are very clear that if players are expected not to lie to admins, admins are also expected not to lie to players, unless there are extenuating reasons such as suspected metacomms. They also say that professionalism is expected of admins. I don't see evidence of either going on here, and I really don't think this sort of bullshitting and double standards are in line with those rules, especially when that's the exact accusation being made against me, nor is this runaround of telling people 4 different stories, 3 of which might be complete bullshit and none of which are the whole story or anything that could be improved upon. This kind of thing is the exact reason that formal applications and guidelines exist, but if they're there just to be ignored there's hardly any point having them.

[TechnoAlchemist]

i wasnt lying i was just saying what i thought

that last part wasn't directed at you smh

I actually do hate lizards.

[bandit]

I'm not saying it was directed at me, I'm just saying that telling someone "admins are expected not to shit-talk lizards" literally minutes before a second admin shit-talks lizards is pretty close to the exact definition of a double standard.

[bandit]

I'm not sure whether you're referring to my calling the person who said I was banned for exile implanting lizards a liar (which is true, given that I... wasn't banned for that, nor have I ever done it), or to my using the common figure of speech "putting the lie to," but either way it's silly. So is the distinction that "it's not over the radio, it's in person!" So is the claim making rude remarks about or tabling lizards is equivalent to grief. (If it was Mekhi Anderson has a case for banning the entire server for griefing.)

[bandit]

You're missing the part where I play lizard characters regularly (usually as miner, I just like the idea of a lizard miner for some reason) and don't say any shit about lizards that almost literally the entire rest of the server aren't saying, including admins. Fuck, it's tame compared to some -- the "Donald Trump" rounds that happen semi-frequent come to mind. When you sign up as a lizard player you sign up for some good-natured ribbing, just as how when you sign up as the clown you sign up for people shitting on you or when you sign up as AI you sign up to be blamed for everything constantly.

As for the coding, I really don't see how that's relevant to anything. I had an idea and decided to code it, and it got merged. I also coded features that let you put corgis on meat spikes and shoot a target shaped like the clown. And most of the regular lizard players liked the idea when I posted a feedback thread about it, so I really don't see your point.

Basically, this entire lizard thing is so on-its-face stupid that I suspect this, too, is an excuse and there's some other real reason I'm not being told, either on the many occasions when I asked for feedback or now.

[bandit]

Your statement was "If someone wants to join us, we include them in." I actually don't give a shit about whether I'm included in the lizard metaclique beyond RP reasons, but I stand by my opinion that this is overstating things, and I stated an anecdotal opinion, that I'm sure many people on the server could back up if they so chose, that this was not exactly true. (I could have provided more specific examples, but I'd just gotten back from New Year's and honestly there is only so much lizard nonsense one can take in a day.) You proceeded to cherry-pick a lot of instances of my making comments (relevantly, not as my lizard character) that are the same shit everyone else on the server says, about as frequently.

(Hilariously enough, including you, from 12/19 i.e. literally the next day I checked: [00:40:45]SAY: Rance Ransu/DrPillzRedux : AI, GAS THE LIGGERS!!! [00:41:38]SAY: Rance Ransu/DrPillzRedux : SEC KILLING ME FOR HITTING A LIGGER!!! [00:41:44]SAY: Rance Ransu/DrPillzRedux : IRONICALLY TIDE SEC!!! [00:41:56]SAY: Rance Ransu/DrPillzRedux : RAID SEC NOW!!! [00:41:59]SAY: Rance Ransu/DrPillzRedux : RISE UP!!! etc)

Then you gloated about how I "lied in an admin complaint" as if I DDoSed the server or something. If there's a better way of addressing this, I'd sure love to know what it is. See: this whole thing being very stupid.

[bandit]

Except that's not what I said at all. But this has well passed the point of derailing the thread.

[Tsaricide]

Sink or swim is a terrible idea paprika.

The point of tempmins is so that there is someone around to guide and teach them during the round so they have a better understanding of how to act.

I was active in a couple rounds where bgo was adminned and I noticed nothing wrong with the way they handled themselves.

[bandit]

To be clear my complaint isn't about being un-candidated, which is what it is and I'm sure there are things I could have done better (I remember a round or two I may have been too passive and/or I may have been a little overzealous with centcom messages and the like.) It's about the way the whole thing was handled, which came off really unprofessional and honestly kind of insulting - like, we're (hopefully) all adults here, we can be honest with each other instead of back channeling and evading, and if someone asks for feedback it's not to say "asspats pls" but to get, like, feedback.

[Shaps-cloud]

This whole thing is the result of a massive breakdown in communications between several people. Lollerderby was the one to initially candidate you, and as a result I haven't really been paying attention to what else is going on with you since I figured if loller was cool with you being candidated, you must be good. I candidated you for a little while until I heard from someone else that hg was against you being candidated, which took me a bit off guard, so I talked to him and then loller about it (separately), and basically gathered that hg wasn't happy with how you were acting and loller was indifferent/still in favor of candidating you potentially.

That was a few nights ago, fast forward to tonight where you ask to be candidated while me and hg are on the server, and I decide to go with what hg said and deny candidating you, parroting hg's feelings without really fully understanding the situation. From there, a bunch of the other admins chime in, and you're left confused with a bunch of different explanations that don't really add up, because everyone was giving you different explanations, but none of the people explaining it fully understand what's going on (least of all me).

I panicked and basically appealed to hg's authority and did what he said to do rather than make an informed decision or just admit that I didn't know what was going on, since I wasn't sure if we were still candidating you or not. Ultimately it's up to loller and I can't speak for him on this, and I shouldn't have tried to make up an answer myself/go with someone else's answer when it's not really my place to make that call. I don't know where we go from here, but I apologize for not giving you a better answer, and I also apologize for not coming to you with these concerns directly before, rather than dropping them on you as a reason not to candidate you.

[bandit]

OK, look, folks, sorry to mini-mod but this is getting farther and farther away from the complaint at hand in favor of the 100th iteration of "should we lizard y/n"?

[lollerderby]

This pretty much just seems like a massive miscommunication, exacerbated by admins like technoalchemist shitposting in admin-pms despite being uninvolved and clueless.

I don't even know what lizards/erp have to do with this. All I was told is to not candidate you because you were "deranged", which I had been planning on ignoring anyway since I didn't consider it meaningful feedback.

EDIT: 2. If you are not an admin or directly involved with the complaint (You are the guy who was banned, you saw what happened, you were his victim, etc.) then do not post in the complaint.

[bandit]

Thanks for responding, both of you, it's appreciated. That said... none of this exactly clears up any confusion. (Doesn't help that all of this is second- or third-hand.)

As for the "deranged" stuff, given that this is all very second-hand and vague (it'd be cool if it weren't) I really don't know what to say to that except that any sane person would dismiss it. The lizard stuff I feel like I have already explained as thoroughly as possible.

[lollerderby]

I don't really think any admins (with the possible exception of technoalchemist) intended to mislead you or behave unprofessionally; they were doing their best with the limited information they had.

I asked hg for clarification and he told me this:

<hg|work> their behavior in the ligger thread, their reponse to the situation in general
<hg|work> the whole situation in which they were accusing someone of metagrudging them a while back
<hg|work> they seem totally normal most of the time, but when something goes wrong bgo fucking flips

[TechnoAlchemist]

I didn't intend to mislead bandit, I was there for their candidacy if you would recall.

There was a clear consensus that they were making mistakes and a few of the admins even said they didn't think they were a good fit. I wasn't aware there was more than that behind it. I'm not malicious.

[bandit]

OK, yeah, these are specifics (even if they're secondhand specifics), this is cool. That said, the whole "making mistakes" and "clear consensus" part, like... what mistakes are we talking? What consensus? So far the only uninvolved person who's said this, at least here, is An0n3 (deleted post) who by his own admission doesn't really play anymore. Whatever breakdown in communication is happening seems to still be happening because I'm still hearing like three different things from four different people.

As far as the metagrudging thing, that happened two years ago, maybe over two. Two years ago I was shit, now I am less shit. The trajectory of my notes backs this up.

[TechnoAlchemist]

I honestly don't remember the specifics. It really wasn't a concern of mine

[Docprofsmith]

I honestly don't remember the specifics. It really wasn't a concern of mine

Why comment on something like that in such a negative manner if it's none of your concern?

[lollerderby]

Well this "clear consensus" was nowhere to be found when I asked #adminbus, and this is the first I'm hearing of it although I guess it might have been a momentary thing where the other admins were so eager to agree with hornygranny that it seemed like there was a consensus.

HG was the only one I recall expressing concern to shaps and I, and even that wasn't as a result of bgobandit's actual administration.

[bandit]

Cool. So uh. What happens now?

[Tsaricide]

Cool. So uh. What happens now?

Everyone ignores HG because he's unstable and deranged.

[lollerderby]

I'm willing to carry on, for now at least. I think this complaint has served it's purpose.