/tg/Station 13

This board has been getting dangerously stale - I don't even need to read the appeal (holy fuck it's big) to know this is the fresh meat our peanut posting community needs.

viewtopic.php?p=617536#p617536

I don't often disagree with Hulk, but one point I do pick a bone with.

Hulkamania's Ticket wrote: Yes but were you personally inconvenienced by this or are you just playing player-admin? I appreciate the gumption, but unless the person directly involved in the situation thinks it was ahelpable I don't really see the reason for me to investigate.

Hulkamania's Ban Appeal Response wrote: I have always had a personal philosophy that someone who is not directly involved in a situation should not be ahelping about said situation (obviously there are exceptions, but this is a general rule of mine).

I believe this philosophy is how servers develop negative cultural issues.

I'm going a bit into admin politics, but the decision on whether a rule has been broken and should be dealt with OOC is one for administrators to take, not for players. By making an ahelp, an uninvolved player is not "playing player-admin" - They're asking an admin to be a neutral party and investigate the matter. They're delegating that responsibility to the admin team to investgate because we've got all the necessary information. Part of an admin's raison d'etre is to investigate potential-rule-break ahelps fairly and impartially.

You can't rely on people involved to ahelp rule breaks against them, even when it's in their own interests to do so.

Players not ahelping problems sometimes leads to an arms race. Like developing cultural shift we have currently developing on Manuel between a few players. Antag gets validhunted, doesn't ahelp. Gears up harder next time to combat validhunters. Sec powergames to keep up. Crew powergames to keep up. At some point antag gets caught with masses of gamer gear and gets executed. Ahelps this. Nothing happens because none of the other stuff was documented and the behaviour is now culturally normalised. Now we have a shitty cultural shift developing. Sometimes these issues can be caught and resolved thanks to uninvolved parties ahelping to highlight things the admin team may have missed.

If a player feels they see a situation that breaks the rules then whether they're involved or not they should feel comfortable ahelping it. They should feel confident that an admin will investigate it fully. And they should be confident that the admin is a true neutral party who'll decide what's in the best interests of the server AFTER investigating rather than before.

Discovering a rule has been broken does not mean admins must do something about it. Rule 0. Admin discretion. But it's nice to know as a player that the admins are going to investigate before ruling your ahelp ticket without merit.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:37 pm

Hulkamania's Ticket wrote: Yes but were you personally inconvenienced by this or are you just playing player-admin? I appreciate the gumption, but unless the person directly involved in the situation thinks it was ahelpable I don't really see the reason for me to investigate.

Hulkamania's Ban Appeal Response wrote: I have always had a personal philosophy that someone who is not directly involved in a situation should not be ahelping about said situation (obviously there are exceptions, but this is a general rule of mine).

I believe this philosophy is how servers develop negative cultural issues.

This post is spot-on tbh

Stuff not getting addressed because it's never looked at because nobody brought it up is how low-level grief becomes normalized, and then mid-level grief becomes normalized, and so on.

(Bonus round: Some stuff, by definition, NEVER affects you personally, but is explicitly against the rules, like heads of staff antag rolling and logging out at round start if they don't get it)

Ahelping stuff that doesnt/didnt affect you is cringe, but sometimes you gotta take one for the server and cringe yourself.

Hulkamania's Ticket wrote: Yes but were you personally inconvenienced by this or are you just playing player-admin? I appreciate the gumption, but unless the person directly involved in the situation thinks it was ahelpable I don't really see the reason for me to investigate.

I agree with this part in the context of an escalation disagreement between two players, neither of them being you. If the clown is okay with being toolboxxed to death by the roboticist for slipping him, then I don't see why an unrelated engineer should be able to adminhelp and get the roboticist banned. If the clown isn't okay with it, then there's reason to ban the roboticist, otherwise let the situation go as it's a waste of time to ban someone for something that those directly affected didn't even get angry over.

There's plenty of actions other players can take that won't directly affect you but should still be reported though. For instance, immersion ruining stuff such as OOC in IC/IC in OOC, suicide as a head of staff, engineers changing out atmos's pipes so the AI can't mess with it at the start of the round, warden hiding the armory round start, et cetera. While admins should be looking for this stuff, they can't see everything and should be appreciative of players assisting them in finding these behaviors to make the server a better place.

Overall it would've wasted a lot less of everyone's time if hulk had rejected his second ticket and skipped the three day ban for a salty and blatantly sarcastic ticket.

FINALLY A PEANUT

not only do i disagree with hulk's philosophy here, but this was a complete petty ban. 3 days for this shit lol what a joke

Can I get a TL;DR?

The philosophy has nothing to do with the ban.

I investigated the incident in question anyway, and tried to get in contact with the guy but logs alone weren't enough for me to feel confident he did enough wrong to even warrant a note.

He got banned because he was acting like a twat and told me he was going to break a rule just because he was mad.

Hiuk no uou cant opst in your own peanrujt reality will dstinatigrate

I think he felt this wasn't behaviour becoming of Manuel but wasn't sure if it was worthy of adminhelping or not. So when he did try to adminhelp it and was made to feel ashamed for doing so he got pissed and tried to get another admin involved knowing full well it likely wouldn't help. He felt if he was up front about "admin shopping" they wouldn't hold it against him. If he had a better idea of what is and isn't worthy of being adminhelped or wasn't the type of personality to react overly negatively to someone in authority making them feel foolish this wouldn't have happened.

cacogen wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:01 am I think he felt this wasn't behaviour becoming of Manuel but wasn't sure if it was worthy of adminhelping or not. So when he did try to adminhelp it and was made to feel ashamed for doing so he got pissed and tried to get another admin involved knowing full well it likely wouldn't help. He felt if he was up front about "admin shopping" they wouldn't hold it against him. If he had a better idea of what is and isn't worthy of being adminhelped or wasn't the type of personality to react overly negatively to someone in authority making them feel foolish this wouldn't have happened.

No, I genuinely knew full well that the other admin couldn't do anything. It was literally just a spiteful and sarcastic thing, a metaphorical middle finger to an admin had basically spent the entire time telling me that trying to do the right thing was actually something bad ("playing player-admin"). I'd thought that by saying "Okay well time to do a thing that we both know is against the rules :^)" it'd be pretty obvious I don't ACTUALLY intend to do that.

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:32 am No, I genuinely knew full well that the other admin couldn't do anything. It was literally just a spiteful and sarcastic thing, a metaphorical middle finger to an admin had basically spent the entire time telling me that trying to do the right thing was actually something bad ("playing player-admin"). I'd thought that by saying "Okay well time to do a thing that we both know is against the rules :^)" it'd be pretty obvious I don't ACTUALLY intend to do that.

Merely pretending.

You know this fast breaking peanut is good because both admin and applicant are posting in it

MrAlphonzo wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:38 am Merely pretending.

XivilaiAnaxes wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:40 am You know this fast breaking peanut is good because both admin and applicant are posting in it

I mean if he's going to come in here to insult me, I'm at least going to correct people when they're wrong about my intentions, and offer some memes. I may as well try and get SOME enjoyment out of this shitshow of mismanagement.

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:32 am I'd thought that by saying "Okay well time to do a thing that we both know is against the rules :^)" it'd be pretty obvious I don't ACTUALLY intend to do that.

important life lesson: always expect to be taken at face value

"but mr admin wtf i didnt ACTUALLY mean i was going to adminshop when i said i was going to adminshop this is wrong!!"

I agree with hulk that you could probably stand to take a break and think about what the game means to you and how to avoid getting annoyed enough that you "flip a middle finger" in a manner that gets you banned.
As for the supposed hostility, I think it's telling that both players and members of staff commenting here have either agreed with hulk or argued over the philosophical element, rather than that claim about hostility.

Also, as a free pro tip: saying "hard to really care about the opinion of an admin", full stop, doesn't matter what else you put after that, is probably something that may land you in trouble when it comes to an admin telling you that you should or should not do something.

It's a little unfortunate to see that ahelp go that way, hulk himself gave me a peptalk about how to conduct myself and avoid being accusatory/insinuating anything, and that was definitely not something he followed here. This is a situation solved before it ever becomes a problem. Don't say anything beyond some specifics like asking who they were and 'hey, I'll look into it, they logged out, thanks'.

Basically, don't give people an in to make a problem out of a situation that doesn't need to be one to begin with, you'll get people who will just end up making a fool out of themselves because of your mishandling (I know this because I've fallen into that trap plenty of times). Not everyone is especially good at handling their emotions, and certainly if someone seems to be making light of a problem they think is important. Being dismissive about something while you hold all the cards to deal with it can be really demoralizing about the state of administrative dealings. That's probably why I also think slapping them with a 3 day ban for what is effectively a botched ahelp is not just shaky, but comes off as almost baiting them into it.

Hulkamania wrote:That leads me to: My personal philosophy regarding ahelps is exactly that, personal. I told you as much during the conversation that due to our server rules and the way things are laid out, different admins have different interpretations of how each individual rule should be handled. I have always had a personal philosophy that someone who is not directly involved in a situation should not be ahelping about said situation (obviously there are exceptions, but this is a general rule of mine).

This part I think isn't the right mindset for any admin or what they should be telling the player. Players shouldn't be afraid to ahelp, but admins are not beholden to take someone outside of the situation's take for granted. Log diving, asking a few of the people affected whether they were okay with it and then leaving it as is can be good enough. But someone thought to check in and see if it was okay.

Technically, antag rolling and roundstart suiciding isn't a problem for players, but you should still ahelp it, since admins are sometimes not as keenly aware to that behaviour that players can be, since they tend to find the end results over multiple rounds. Maybe there was some act of grief, and the people affected don't know what happened or drew some false conclusion that made things worse, but as a ghost you do know, because you witnessed it with your broader amount of context. Are you not in the right to ahelp? If these are the exceptions hulk means, doesn't that seem a bit confusing?

This simply further muddies the waters as to when it is or isn't appropriate to ahelp, and when players are confused they'll probably simply just not do so whatsoever. Even if it means more on the admins plate, a proactive community engaging with its referees is a far better alternative to one scared to even approach admins for fear of being labelled as a complainer. The people who take it to an excessive degree do exist, but they're not nearly as common as those just hoping to get some clarification as to whether whatever they saw was what they thought they saw and wanted you, the admin, to know about it. Even if you dismiss the situation, you don't let the player know this beyond 'It's been handled'.

(Just so you know this isn't condoning just outright telling admins you're breaking the rules but more that I think the punishment is unfair for what happened.)

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:32 am No, I genuinely knew full well that the other admin couldn't do anything. It was literally just a spiteful and sarcastic thing, a metaphorical middle finger to an admin had basically spent the entire time telling me that trying to do the right thing was actually something bad ("playing player-admin"). I'd thought that by saying "Okay well time to do a thing that we both know is against the rules :^)" it'd be pretty obvious I don't ACTUALLY intend to do that.

I get it. And maybe it was a griefer from one of the other servers. But if all they did was break windows your adminhelp looks a little excessive.

It's best the admins look at the situation and figure out if it needs actioning. Even if it seems like ahelping is an overreaction.

The admin team are here to mediate problems, not create them. If an ahelp is petty but not malicious, who cares? That's why we have admins. They can make that judgment call because that's what the entire team is trained to do and has the tools to do.

We are supposed to be a neutral party. The admin team is in service to the players. We volunteer our time to make the servers a better place for the benefit of everyone.

Outcomes like this don't make the servers a better place. They just create tensions between players and admins. They make players second guess ahelping. It's very us vs them.

When you hold all the power, your words have far more meaning and impact. It is exceptionally important to reflect on this.

I think on another time, another day and with another approach to this matter, it would not have ended up in any sort of confrontation.

And that's what makes this unfortunate. It was a pointless ban for a pointless disagreement that never should have gotten that far.

But it happened and my hope is that both parties reflect on it so something like this doesn't happen again.

Admin telling us to not ahelp if we aren't involved, not poggers.

I don't care about the ban itself, encouraging the player to not ahelp however? That's just messed up man. I know for a fact people already don't ahelp rulebreaking behaviour which breeds even more bad behaviour. An admin should be encouraging players to ahelp more not less. I can't even imagine being dismissed like that in an ahelp, I would most likely feel like my opinion doesn't matter and would not ahelp again for a while. Shits fucked man.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:28 pm It's best the admins look at the situation and figure out if it needs actioning. Even if it seems like ahelping is an overreaction.

I did you massive chumbis I don't know how many times I can restate this.

instead of telling the player in the ahelp or literally any other time other than on their public ban appeal the true reason why you banned them, you stuck with the "gotcha" ban where you knew that they were just being stupid in the moment. i dont know why you're so hell bent on making this person feel stupid.

fuccin owned lmao

Hulkamania wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 5:23 pm

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:28 pm It's best the admins look at the situation and figure out if it needs actioning. Even if it seems like ahelping is an overreaction.

I did you massive chumbis I don't know how many times I can restate this.

That was specifically in response to

cacogen wrote:I get it. And maybe it was a griefer from one of the other servers. But if all they did was break windows your adminhelp looks a little excessive.

but I didn't quote because I posted just below them.

If a player gets the feeling something is up, I'd prefer them to ahelp instead of worrying about whether they're over-reacting or not.

chat shit get banged

General Thrax wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:33 pm chat shit get banged

lmao(JUST GOT A RING AT MY DOOR!)

I honestly don't understand why you wouldn't want players reporting rule breaks they see, even if they're not directly effected by the breaks. admins aren't omnipresent and sometimes need potential problems pointed out to them. they may be too busy talking to george melons and telling him not to randomly beat people to death to notice that don keedix has stolen the armory and gunned down the warden as a nonantag.

Farquaar wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:11 pm Hiuk no uou cant opst in your own peanrujt reality will dstinatigrate

Best post in the thread appears criminally underrated. Very sad many such cases! Have a (you) my friend.
It perfectly combines a humorous misspelling of words with a well thought out critique of people involved in an appeal posting in that appeal's peanut thread.
At least, from my lurker perspective posting in one's own peanut never seems to end well.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:28 pm It's best the admins look at the situation and figure out if it needs actioning. Even if it seems like ahelping is an overreaction.

I agree. There have definitely been times where I've adminhelped something I thought was a genuine issue only to be made to feel stupid for doing so when I haven't received a response or the admin didn't explain whether they did anything about it. Ghost role spawners getting griefed, for example. I still don't know if that's against the rules, because the admin didn't respond.

play stupid games, win stupid prizes as the redditors would say. dudes entire appeal replies is oj Simpson's "if i did it"