[Admin Complaint][Kingtrin]LightBeast - Unprofessional behavior

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Karkinos
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 5:34 am
Byond Username: LightBeast

[Admin Complaint][Kingtrin]LightBeast - Unprofessional behavior

Post by Karkinos » #484193

Byond ckey: lightbeast
Character Name: John Armitage
Admin in qustion: Kingtrin
Evidence: There are chatlogs but I don't have them
Your side of the story: This is both complaint and a bit of feedback.

This happened after the end of a round in the OOC chat before the next round began. I was mad at an engineer from the previous round for ignoring orders and their actions wound up seriously hurting the marine team, some would consider to the point of griefing. In the OOC chat I told him if I saw him play engineer again I'd ziptie him and throw him in disposals. Kingtrin bwoops me during the next round as I'm trying to play and asks me if I've read rule 1, which he knows I have since I'm on this server a lot. Then he informs me that I was being a dick and metagrudging, and that's not allowed.

First, I don't know where "talking about metagrudging" crosses the line to actually metagrudging someone since I didn't actually ziptie this engineer and throw him in disposals. I was going about my round and so was he, but Kingtrin decided it was worth his time to sarcastically question me about some justified OOC anger. The only thing that's actually in the rules about metagrudging is in Rule 1 precedents, and it's not exactly clear whether being pissed off in chat one time at something a player did during the previous round qualifies as "metagrudging." Obviously that's an absurdly extreme interpretation of that rule that a lot of players would be guilty of breaking. All he had to do, if he was that concerned, was say "hey, I know it was chat but metagrudging is against the rules so please don't do that. There will be consequences if you do," which is a polite warning. I would've said "okay" and everyone could've gone about their game. That's what I would've done, and I think anybody else with a level head and understanding of the emotions that occur during this game.

Second, his insistence that I "broke rule 1" is yet another example of why having such a vague rule like "don't be a dick" is a terrible idea that will only cause problems, especially when you have admins like Kingtrin on your staff that will be very liberal in their interpretation of such a rule. From my perspective, the engineer that trolled us was the one being a dick and all I did was tell him off once in OOC chat during the next round, but again Kingtrin decides it's worth his and my time to PM me about it during the game and argue back and for for ten minutes before noting me. The player I directed the OOC chat to was even reported multiple times by others!

I know this server needs all the admins it can get, but in my opinion, Kingtrin's behavior doesn't fit with the server's philosophy at all. His handling of things is excessive and hypersensitive, and to be honest he reminds me of the power-tripping admins that cause problems on many other servers. He's also the only admin on this server I've seen act like that, and this isn't the only time I've seen him do it. He repeatedly gets worked up in chat about the most minor comments or anger and threatens to mute everyone, and I'm sure with how quickly he reacts to every little thing he perceives to be an infraction, there are others racking up lots of notes from him on their dreaded permanent record.

This server is different for many reasons, and the admins are a big part of that. There are plenty of servers with uptight trigger-happy staff that make players walk on eggshells over vague rules, and if you allow this type of moderation and bring on more admins like him, it will change the entire atmosphere of the server. I don't think anybody wants that. Kingtrin either needs to chill out or go be an admin where he can freely exercise his need for excessive control. I left the CM server for exactly this reason, and if this server becomes like them in their moderation, I won't play here either.

My last point is that the rules are way too vague and need to be defined better. I know they're still a work-in-progress and that it's impossible to have rules for every circumstance, but a general outline of what is acceptable and what is not i.e. cussing, anger in dead chat, arguing, etc.. would help clarify a lot of issues, for starters. Other things like "no server bashing" are still unwritten and I see warnings about them on a daily basis. Such things could easily be put in the rules as well. I've also seen people told by staff to go to the discord for discussing the game in the chat, which is bizarre. What else are you exactly going to do in dead chat? If you don't want people to talk about, of all things, the bloody game itself, then just don't even have dead chat at all. I would remind staff though that this can be a very frustrating game, and chat helps players to vent some of that whether it's by just being salty or talking with other players about what happened. When you have no outlet for that frustration, it makes things worse and can drive some players to lash out. Admins should be chill about chat as in 999 out of 1,000 cases, it doesn't matter at all and nobody cares after ten minutes. So long as you're not breaking a rule or being a serious asshole, racist, spamming, or whatever, admins shouldn't be micro-managing the chat; they have much more important things to do like spawning giant moth people.
We're all human, and vague rules cause nothing but problems. Please clarify them to help both your staff and your players have a better experience.
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Kingtrin
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:29 am
Byond Username: Kingtrin

Re: [Admin Complaint][Kingtrin]LightBeast - Unprofessional behavior

Post by Kingtrin » #484359

Our log parser is broken so I grabbed these manually from the raws. Here is the part I bwoinked you over.

OOC: LightBeast/(LightBeast) "NINO" start area (8, 8, 1)
OOC: LightBeast/(LightBeast) "If I ever see you play fucking engineer again I'm going to ziptie you and throw you in disposals" start area (8, 8, 1)
OOC: LightBeast/(LightBeast) "I promise, Nino Ljubek" start area (8, 8, 1)
OOC: LightBeast/(LightBeast) "You literally fucked the entire push and got lots of marines killed by ignoring orders" start area (8, 8, 1)
OOC: LightBeast/(LightBeast) "The tank got stuck and blocked like 10 marines that all died" start area (8, 8, 1)
OOC: LightBeast/(LightBeast) "and you were back at the fob with your plasma cutter building the 8th line of cades and playing with yourself" start area (8, 8, 1)

Now, our rules are intentionally left vague so that we can adapt them to the situation at hand. In this case rule 1 has some precedents relevant to this.

1.2 Unprovoked grief (occasionally known as greytiding), repeated cases of minor unprovoked grief and unprovoked grief targeted towards specific players or groups (i.e. metagrudging) fall under rule 1.
1.3 The intent of this rule is the preservation of human respect more than merely the removal of uncomfortable language.

If you threaten to unironically metagrudge someone then yes I'm considering that to be in violation of our rules. I don't know what servers you play on where you think its kosher to just straight up say shit like that but it doesn't fly anywhere that I have played. It is inherently disrespectful and toxic. Not only that but the overwhelming majority of metagrudge cases are from regular players being extremely angry at an individual. I would be stupid not to note your behavior. If you had actually metagrudged someone you would have caught a permanent ban.

Many players seem to think they deserve a verbal warning rather than a note. To which I respond with why the hell should we leave ourselves at a disadvantaged position. Notes are there so we know the record of behavior a player has. Intentionally not using the system is on a case-by-case basis and only happens when its a new player or someone who broke our rules but had extremely good justification. You threatened to metagrudge someone, so why should I write it off with a verbal warning?
Karkinos wrote:The player I directed the OOC chat to was even reported multiple times by others!
What the hell are you doing complaining in OOC about a situation you should have ahelped? I got on towards the end of that round and apparently you didn't bother to ahelp it at all until the next round. What exactly did you want from us at that point? You want to make more work for us because your too lazy? Miss me with that shit.
Karkinos wrote:I know this server needs all the admins it can get, but in my opinion, Kingtrin's behavior doesn't fit with the server's philosophy at all. His handling of things is excessive and hypersensitive, and to be honest he reminds me of the power-tripping admins that cause problems on many other servers.
The reason you pin this on me is because im one of the only admins who regularily bothers to step in and handle OOC/dchat conversation. To which I say the other admins actually don't crack down enough on the toxic discussions that happen. I'm ok with people venting in dchat over some FF. What I'm not ok with is when people get into an arguement over said FF and start shit talking to each other.
Karkinos wrote:Kingtrin either needs to chill out or go be an admin where he can freely exercise his need for excessive control. I left the CM server for exactly this reason, and if this server becomes like them in their moderation, I won't play here either.
If you can't restrain yourself from lashing out at other players and threatening to take matters into your own hands then yea I don't see why you should continue playing here.
Karkinos wrote:I've also seen people told by staff to go to the discord for discussing the game in the chat, which is bizarre. What else are you exactly going to do in dead chat? If you don't want people to talk about, of all things, the bloody game itself, then just don't even have dead chat at all.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Are you referring to #past-round-gallery? There is no rule against discussing the current round in dchat. Actually, thats the only place where we allow it.
Karkinos wrote:My last point is that the rules are way too vague and need to be defined better. I know they're still a work-in-progress and that it's impossible to have rules for every circumstance, but a general outline of what is acceptable and what is not i.e. cussing, anger in dead chat, arguing, etc.. would help clarify a lot of issues, for starters. Other things like "no server bashing" are still unwritten and I see warnings about them on a daily basis.
We're all human, and vague rules cause nothing but problems.
I'm not going to go into detail about why this is a flawed concept. I will say this: vague rules are a necessity when they need to be adapted to a large variety of different contexts. If the rules are too specific then you must go back to the rule 0 well each time you need to make a ruling on some case with unexpected context. This means that either rule 0 gets used for almost everything, or the rules become so unwieldly that nobody but the admins can comprehend them fully. The lesser of these 3 evils is to use vague rules with precedents. Specific rules should be kept to a minimum.

While I agree server bashing should be in our rules its one of those things thats so obvious it doesn't need a rule for us to take action. I'm not aware of anyone who has caught serious punishment for it as of yet.
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Urytion
Joined: Sat Dec 08, 2018 3:40 am
Byond Username: Urytion

Re: [Admin Complaint][Kingtrin]LightBeast - Unprofessional behavior

Post by Urytion » #484641

Alrighty. We seem to be getting a little heated, so I'm going to ask people to pop a chill pill. You're reporting a potential misconduct about an admin telling you off for being toxic, and you're being quite combative in your complaint. It doesn't exactly paint you in the best light. Kingtrin, you need to back down a little and maintain a professional attitude. Please.

Our rules are intentionally vague to prevent obnoxious rule lawyering, and to allow admins to respond to situations with a bit more flexibility. You can see it on some servers where admins will say "this isn't against the rules so I won't action it", even though the report is on some genuinely disruptive or griefy. Having Rule 1 being so broad allows us to respond to issues even if they aren't explicitly against the rules. I would much rather have this flexibility than strict rules.

Now into the actual meat of your complaint against Kingtrin:

First I just want to say that to me, this is thin, at best. You weren't really punished. You weren't banned, you weren't OOC muted. We note almost every interaction with a player that even has the slightest tone of negativity. From what I can see, Kingtrin acted fine.

On your first point, looking at the logs, you are very much downplaying your "talking about metagrudging". A more fair and accurate phrase would be "threatening to metagrudge". You even used the word "promise". You're openly saying that you intend to break the rules in an out of character chat. We'll take you at your word.

Second point. I've already gone over why we have intentionally vague rules so we'll leave it at that. You say this engineer trolled you. What were they doing that was so disruptive? From the information already presented, it seems all they did was not join the marine push and just built a large FOB. That's not trolling. That's building a large FOB. If you think it is trolling, make a player report. Whether it's an optimal strategy or not is not the issue.

On the rest of your report, in my opinion these complaints should really be kept to a single actionable issue (in this case that would be the perceived unprofessional behaviour and the note), but I suppose I'll address it. You're being incredibly combative and considering your note is for toxicity, I can fully see why it was applied if this is the tone you take with administration. You're trying to paint Kingtrin as some sort of tyrannical dictator admin. Man, I've been bwoinked on servers for not saluting, and you think Kingtrin is some sort of control freak for noting a player that's promising to break our server rules? If you have an opinion on our rules and the impact it has on our administration and the server culture, a ranting, somewhat toxic to the point of insulting complaint is not the place to do it. It would be the discussion forum, or the Discord.

Finally, what exactly do you want done about this? Do you want your note removed? Because again, the note means very very little. Do you want Kingtrin removed? Considering this is such a minor issue that hardly seems reasonable. What exactly was your end goal in creating this report?
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