[MrAlphonzo] - 3 month ban for chat EORG

[GAMING]

BYOND account: Banana Harm Intent
Character name: Ricky Morty
Ban type: Server
Ban length: 3 months
Ban reason: "When I make several loud announcements not to spam and do it anyways, the ban is going to be long."
Time ban was placed: 12/3/20 1:51 AM
Server you were playing on when banned: Sybil
Round ID in which ban was placed: 152062
Your side of the story: During an especially chaotic round, multiple people were sincerely spamming the trollface ascii but most people were just PDAing it. I replied to a few people with the trollface, since a PDA message is the only IC way to send it to someone, since it's a computer. Towards the end of the shift, I got into a fight in cargo as the round ended due to revs, and during the End of Round Grief (EORG) a few people, AI included, pasted the trollface. Seeing as the round was over I said it myself too. Suddenly my game freezes and I'm banned for 3 months without having any interaction from an admin. I really don't know what happened. Going off the clues I believe MrAlphonzo just mass banned anyone he assumed was being disruptive. I didn't receive any sort of admin notice, and even log diving I only see an empty/censored notice log. I suspect the notice might have just been visible to people late joining. If it was not that I just missed it in the heat of the fight I was having in cargo (also potentially buried in attacks/messages).

Why you think you should be unbanned:My slightly annoying gimmick was lumped in with genuinely disruptive behavior. I also never received an admin notice and the ban seems more emotional rather than a more objective or quantified response. I understand the contentions with putting trollface in the chat, and if that was the issue I am sorry. However I seem to be the victim of group punishment as far as I'm aware. But ultimately I did not know about or see the admin notice, my bad gamers

[MrAlphonzo]

[2020-12-13 01:49:44.517] ADMIN: Announce: MrAlphonzo/(Nailah Wolf) : ATTENTION!
-
- Please make sure your in-character name follows our naming policy, which can be found here: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... ead#unread and here https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules#Rule_3_Precedents !
-
- Refrain from using OOC terms in-character such as "antag", "admin", "lag", etc.!
-
- DO NOT unicode character (trollfaces, other big text drawings, etc.) spam under any circumstances, in any channels (IC, OOC, deadchat.)
-
- If you are playing a head of staff role and you do not wish to play as that role or continue playing as that role, send an ahelp instead of just committing suicide!
-
- Sybil has a problem with players violating all of the rules above and future violations will be punished harsher than usual.

[2020-12-13 01:51:50.106] ADMINPRIVATE: MrAlphonzo/(Nailah Wolf) has created a temporary 3 months server ban for Banana Harm Intent. Reason: When I make several loud announcements not to spam and do it anyways, the ban is going to be long.

This appeal is denied.

[GAMING]

I reaffirm that I sincerely did not see the notice, again specifically was this visible only for people in the lobby? Regardless the ban is unfair as the incident you applied the ban for was during the end of round "grief is valid" period over a precedent you stated in a means that was not visible, especially in a situation where chat is moving rapidly. This situation would have been handled better with admin communication, rather than an immediate ban.

[MrAlphonzo]

I reaffirm that I sincerely did not see the notice, again specifically was this visible only for people in the lobby? Regardless the ban is unfair as the incident you applied the ban for was during the end of round "grief is valid" period over a precedent you stated in a means that was not visible, especially in a situation where chat is moving rapidly. This situation would have been handled better with admin communication, rather than an immediate ban.

Admin announcements are visible to all players.

[GAMING]

Where exactly? Clearly it wasn't visible to the majority of players, especially ones in combat, without repeating myself my other points still stand regardless.

[MrAlphonzo]

Where exactly? Clearly it wasn't visible to the majority of players, especially ones in combat, without repeating myself my other points still stand regardless.

It would have show up in your chatbox. The announcement was large enough to take up nearly the entirety of the chat box in its normal size.

[GAMING]

Again, this message was not clearly visible to me and seemingly to the rest of the server since there were multiple people hit by your non-interaction blanket ban.

I have a few ideas as to why I did not see it (chat tab "New Tab" not showing admin notices, combat focus, attack logs on screen, twitch chat levels of activity on radio, and actual spam from others). Regardless, during a normal round, let alone one with chat box clearing messages like https://i.imgur.com/NKgnHzC.png it's very easy to miss even large messages.

But regardless of all that; my point still stands that this ban isn't justifiable over an incident that happened after the round had ended. Let alone a ban this severe over something so milquetoast. Especially considering the factors used to justify this ban were the actions of others, not myself.

[MrAlphonzo]

Looking through the three minutes of logs between me making the announcement and you getting banned, not only was chat very tame up until the last 30 seconds when everyone started acting like a caveman, but ontop of the announcement there were people discussing, specifically, trollface spamming being bannable in OOC and I was discussing how this specific issue has been a problem on sybil for quite some time.

Hilariously enough, you spammed trollfaces multiple times in the logs, so even if the spamming was the reason you missed the announcement, that would make it your own fault.

Another fun fact, I actually made the announcement right before you got into that fight towards the end of the round. Now, if it was in the middle of the fight, you missing it would be understandable cause your chat would've had its fair share of combat logs, but that isn't what happened.

So, to sum up your defense

1. You missed the announcement because your chat didn't display it (That is impossible, announcements are coded to be seen by every single person.)

2. You missed the announcement because you were in a fight. (The announcement happened right before your fight.)

3. You missed the announcement because of a spam chain that you started. (That is your own fault.)

4. You thought it was okay to break the rules because you saw other people breaking the rules. (This is stupid.)

5. You may have broken what was already a well established rule but you were not aware of a crackdown because of the spam (Which was your own fault.) (This is also stupid.)

Denied.

[bobbahbrown]

1. You missed the announcement because your chat didn't display it (That is impossible, announcements are coded to be seen by every single person.)

i would like to clarify that this is possible. we currently are tracking a bug for this.

happy holidays,
bobbah 'bee' brown

[MrAlphonzo]

1. You missed the announcement because your chat didn't display it (That is impossible, announcements are coded to be seen by every single person.)

i would like to clarify that this is possible. we currently are tracking a bug for this.

happy holidays,
bobbah 'bee' brown

All my experiences with that issue is that, as far as I can tell, it is server-side. IE when my ahelp vanishes, it vanished for both me and the person it was being sent to. I have seen this happen consistently.

I very clearly saw the announcement in new chat, and as far as I can tell if chat eats one message, it eats that message for everybody on the server.

[bobbahbrown]

1. You missed the announcement because your chat didn't display it (That is impossible, announcements are coded to be seen by every single person.)

i would like to clarify that this is possible. we currently are tracking a bug for this.

happy holidays,
bobbah 'bee' brown

All my experiences with that issue is that, as far as I can tell, it is server-side. IE when my ahelp vanishes, it vanished for both me and the person it was being sent to. I have seen this happen consistently.

I very clearly saw the announcement in new chat, and as far as I can tell if chat eats one message, it eats that message for everybody on the server.

Based on the experience from several users on the bug report (that I linked) this is seemingly not the behavior of this bug for the majority of users. I have included your experience there on your behalf for further attempts to triage this bug.

I do not wish to derail this discussion any further, but I just wanted to clarify that your experiences do not seem to be the reported behavior of that bug.

best wishes,
bobbah 'bee' brown

[Tlaltecuhtli]

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 34&t=27989 is a precedent for the same issue, can you explain why this deserves a 90 day ban instead of 1 and why not remove it when there is clear proof of the fact he could have not seen it? *edited part moved to peanut thread*

[oranges]

there's absolutely no way the OP is operating in good faith, No doubt in my mind they saw the message.

[MrAlphonzo]

I tested it on sybil and admin notices do in fact pop up for all players online on the server, as well as for people joining the server.

Now, I'm no statistician, but the chances that the server ate both the announcement and the admin notice for you simultaneously and ONLY for you are pretty slim.

[Togopal]

there's absolutely no way the OP is operating in good faith, No doubt in my mind they saw the message.

That and they do this and things similar to this every round when admins aren't online, they have to be aware of the rules considering they told me I was metagrudging them one time IC.

[GAMING]

Responding to MrAlphonzo

Points 1 (announcement didn't display) and 2 (might have missed announcement because of gameplay/fighting) are very much valid in this case. Point 1 especially being true as I had not even seen my ban message, my game instead crashed and then closed. In fact I've had similar situations with different messages like chats, and even ahelps not going through or not being rendered in the new chat. As bobbahbrown had said, it is in fact a known issue with the codebase for messages to be dropped clientside and serverside. Point 3 (I started the shitposting when the round ended) is likely false since players that round were using ascii without interaction with me. Points 4 and 5 though are non-sequiturs.

About the fight, it lasted longer than logs would entail as the first half of it was specifically me dodging a stunprod wielding person. Something which reasonable keeps my eyes away from the chat window but not produce many logs. Regardless, I still hold I sincerely did not see the notice and again, this specific round I did not even see a ban message. Consider this, why would I see the notice and then deliberately set myself up to be banned? If I wanted to be banned, I would have trollfaced the moment the notice was sent. But specifically the incident happened a considerable amount of time after the notice as well as after the round had ended. I suspect that many other players that shift did not see the message considering how many people still got caught in your mass ban.

Ultimately this severe ban (3 months) is being justified by the misbehavior of other people and seems emotionally motivated. I understand the contentions with my actions, however specifically this ban is overkill and exacerbated by the actions of others and not me. The offending incident itself even occurring during the end of round grief period making it even harder to justify.

[MrAlphonzo]

Now, I'm no statistician, but the chances that the server ate both the announcement and the admin notice for you simultaneously and ONLY for you are pretty slim.

You've already been banned/noted 3 times prior, specifically for ascii spam. When the unicode spamming started at the end of the round, you started spamming immediately after only one face got posted.

Maybe you'll learn something this time.

[GAMING]

I have not been banned for "spam" until now, I've been noted by AIIA (a note I was going to appeal) for saying "8 == D" in chat, the context being someone else saying penis a lot and I figured "eight equals equal D" wasn't pushing the limits of IC since numbers and a few symbols are commonly used icly ("20u + 30u == some chem"). The other incident was a somewhat egregious episode with Vekter that I also planned to appeal. Essentially he banned me mid ahelp, very internet-litigiously, over another issue I was having with an actual confirmed and banned metagamer because I used the trollface once in deadchat.

At this point however, it's essentially clear that your ban isn't very rational or objective. Again, I reinforce I understand wrongdoings done, but the justifications for this 3 month ban are turning entirely postfix. Not only this but again and again your language implies this ban is very emotionally motivated "Hopefully you'll learn something", "[This/you're] ..stupid", ect. Continuing, you're trying to spread the scope of the argument beyond the incident to make a trollface during the EORG period seem worse than it was. Conflating my points again, the incident in question happened after the round had ended. Not only that but the wording used "spam" would lead readers to believe I was effectively wiping the chat window clean, I was not. Possibly most importantly, I did not see the notice and that round I already had missing messages, notably the ban.

[MrAlphonzo]

Banned from the server for 2 days - Sent massive walls of emojis to multiple PDAs throughout the round, causing their recipients' clients to lag and in some cases disconnect.

Banned from the server for 10 minutes - ASCII in deadchat

Put unicode emojis in the station name and sent dumb allied chat messages. Told to stop doing both.

Warned - Asked not to send long bits of meme text to other stations.

lol

[MrAlphonzo]

Lowered to 1 week.

[GAMING]

Based MrAlphonzo

[Coconutwarrior97]

While we understand ascii spam has become an issue, we believe a three month ban is beyond excessive. We've taken the time to talk with MrAlphonzo and as shown above he has reduced the ban time to something more appropriate given your note history.
Going forward, we've decided that posting ascii which is disruptive to the round is punishable by default with a half day ban. This is in order to reduce the occurrence of it.

Headmin Votes
Coconutwarrior97: Yes, three months is way too much considering when someone admits to metacomming we typically ban them for a monthish.
Domitius: Yes.
Naloac: Yes.