Former president Donald Trump imprisoned over sharing screenshots of nuclear disks over social media platform Discord

[iwishforducks]

Bottom post of the previous page:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34876

https://tgstation13.org/tgdb/publicbans.php

edit: new appeal viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34908

[Fren256]

Can someone start talking about starsector this thread has long been drained of anything productive related to a difficult situation.

BRO HAVE YOU SEEN FLESH AND BLOOD?

It's my favourite thing right now. It's a TCG with a much lower monetary barrier of entry than Magic the Gathering and has a much more active, back and forth fueled combat gameplay.

I played it once all day and although it felt wonky cos I had never played it I managed to win a game against a friend of mine who is a TCG streamer and YouTuber. Felt good.

F&B is my favourite thing rn fr

Have you seen Keyforge? Its buy one deck for 6 bucks (maybe some tokens but you can use paper imma be real) and then you play, each deck contains random Cards in 3 factions and you cant mix cards from different decks, a lotta fun

Speaking of deck builders, there's this game called Friends vs Friends that combines first person shooting and deck-building. You use different types of cards in 1v1 or 2v2 matches that give you buffs, debuffs the opponent(s) or even random attributes that can turn the tide of the round, like completely changing the map. It has its balance issues and the playerbase is not that big, but it is incredibly fun, especially with friends.

Oh, and all of the playable characters are anthropomorphic animals.

[Bepis]

Personally, I'm on that Perfect Heist 2 grind

There's no levels, I just like the game

[MooCow12]

Speaking of deck builders, there's this game called Friends vs Friends that combines first person shooting and deck-building.

Rounds is also fun

[conrad]

Can someone start talking about starsector this thread has long been drained of anything productive related to a difficult situation.

BRO HAVE YOU SEEN FLESH AND BLOOD?

It's my favourite thing right now. It's a TCG with a much lower monetary barrier of entry than Magic the Gathering and has a much more active, back and forth fueled combat gameplay.

I played it once all day and although it felt wonky cos I had never played it I managed to win a game against a friend of mine who is a TCG streamer and YouTuber. Felt good.

F&B is my favourite thing rn fr

Have you seen Keyforge? Its buy one deck for 6 bucks (maybe some tokens but you can use paper imma be real) and then you play, each deck contains random Cards in 3 factions and you cant mix cards from different decks, a lotta fun

I have, but I'mma be real, I did not like the aesthetic.

I'm not even a weeaboo and I LOVED the F&B aesthetic. Check out the hero of the semi-deck the store gave me (they do these giveaways to new players, as is tradition with cardboard crack) (spoiler 'cos big images)

Spoiler:

(yes I was highway phoneposting)

Cool as shit. I My friend brought a tier 1 Kassai deck. This is Kassai and her weapons

Spoiler:

It just looks cool :3

[AsbestosSniffer]

"Please keep the thread on topic and don't go on tangents"

"Starsector?"

[Kendrickorium]

The people defending this should should seriously get investigated. It was straight up metacomms. It's like defending a murder case because it was only third degree and you met them once. Get your shit together guys! I don't care if they were a healslut to you in medbay that one time!

"OPPOSING THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS SCAAAREEEE MEEEEEEE"

[MooCow12]

Threads going off topic is the apparent norm, back when i started using the forums even admins were doing it while the actual people moderating the forums to keep stuff on topic have been overwhelmed and probably gave up.

Way back during the athath peanut threads where people kept gravel posting and there was apparently just a single forum min dealing with it all


Now look how far forum quality has dropped, we are in the mud but are we happy where we are

[Kendrickorium]

Can someone start talking about starsector this thread has long been drained of anything productive related to a difficult situation.

I started a new run not too long ago, since now 99 percent of mods have been updated and bug free for the new version
I still have Vayra's stuff in there though, and it hasnt been "officially updated" for several versions now
it adds a lot of shit other modders can use to fuck with the bounty system, which makes for much more interesting play, as now instead of just "go to this system and kill bad guy" you now have the bad guys actively moving through the sector, you have to catch them, chat it up with them, etc

I actually had to to tone down the graphics mod because of all the crazy shit that happens in some fights, the graphicslib mod makes the game even prettier than base version

heres a seth video for anyone interested (key included)
officially i do not not condone piracy, but I promise all of you this is a game where you will play it for a few hours and then WANT to give the dev money

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acqpulP ... hTzeentach[/youtube]

[Kendrickorium]

FUCKING WHY DOESNT IT WORK

[Kendrickorium]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/acqpulP1hLo?si=bql0UEYfLz-nKpO-
[/youtube]

[Kendrickorium]

I HATE THIS SHIT SOMEONE HELP ME

[Kendrickorium]

[youtube]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/acqpulP1h ... YfLz-nKpO-" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/youtube]

[Fren256]

Speaking of deck builders, there's this game called Friends vs Friends that combines first person shooting and deck-building.

Rounds is also fun

Didn't the devs say they don't plan to make updates anymore though?

[dendydoom]

[youtube]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/acqpulP1h ... YfLz-nKpO-" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/youtube]

jesus christ kendrick...



i can't sit here and watch you struggle any longer...

[kinnebian]

I HATE THIS SHIT SOMEONE HELP ME

lol

[conrad]

FUCKING WHY DOESNT IT WORK

It has to be the dub dub dub link on web, not mobile, on the watch path, with only the ?v query param

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acqpulP1hLo

Anything else and you're shoving a square peg on a round hole.

[conrad]

Why the fuck did I write dub dub dub instead of www

[Kendrickorium]

FUCKING WHY DOESNT IT WORK

It has to be the dub dub dub link on web, not mobile, on the watch path, with only the ?v query param

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acqpulP1hLo

Anything else and you're shoving a square peg on a round hole.

how do i get the direct link, it keeps giving me the channel video link if that makes sense

[Kendrickorium]

[youtube]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/acqpulP1h ... YfLz-nKpO-" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/youtube]

jesus christ kendrick...



i can't sit here and watch you struggle any longer...

thank you it feels so good to see a great big STARSECTOR BANNER in the forum

[conrad]

FUCKING WHY DOESNT IT WORK

It has to be the dub dub dub link on web, not mobile, on the watch path, with only the ?v query param

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acqpulP1hLo

Anything else and you're shoving a square peg on a round hole.

how do i get the direct link, it keeps giving me the channel video link if that makes sense

I got no idea. If I go to sseth's channel, right click the starsector video and "copy link address", it's still the same "/watch?v=acqpulP1hLo" path. Every other route I tried on a brower leads to the same.

Somehow you found the unhappy path.

[EmpressMaia]

I have a tummy ache

[Timberpoes]

Putting the arse in Starsector.

[Pepper]

Don't wanna ruin your fanfiction but, Pepper isn't in either the Manuelcord, or the formerly nuked discord.

Great. Prove they're not in some other discord metacomming.

I'm an open book. Here's every discord server I'm in. I'll also break down every single one.
- skyrat (i have zero messages in this server)
- boatbomber discord (public server)
- blackpantslegion aux (everyone in here is 40 and talks about battletech)
- corporate mercs discord (public server)
- tgstation (nefarious metaclique)
- an abandoned server that has had zero posts in it since 2018


Ok, dirk! your turn!

[TheBibleMelts]

guys please don't reveal personal information to win an internet argument, you know some neckbeard is filling his database somewhere.

[blackdav123]

guys are there any good newer RTS games I used to play some as a kid and I really wish there was something popular more recent than starcraft 2

[Pepper]

guys please don't reveal personal information to win an internet argument, you know some neckbeard is filling his database somewhere.

it's only a neckbeard database when the admins aren't the ones doing it guys....

[TheBibleMelts]

guys please don't reveal personal information to win an internet argument, you know some neckbeard is filling his database somewhere.

it's only a neckbeard database when the admins aren't the ones doing it guys....

said nobody ever in the history of time

[TheBibleMelts]

*scratches neckbeard*

[Pepper]

said nobody ever in the history of time

fr tho. you guys just banned someone for a post they made 9 months prior i don't think you're in any position to be making gaffs about people digging up/keeping dirt on others

[iwishforducks]

the thing that confuses me is that the investigation had been going on for months apparently. most of the responsibility was miskiethpoes, i think. im just confused as to why the bans were placed by Cheshify. I guess he was just leading the investigation? but then why is this falling upon the responsibility of the upcoming term? gives me the impression the upcoming term wanted to get it off of their plate quickly (i dont blame them, this shit sucks)

what confused me further was xemo seemed a bit thrown off by the swift decisions but was also the most willing to be transparent.

anyhow, directly responding to timberpoes because he’s the only respectable person in this thread worth responding to at this point:

we can all agree that we don’t want metacomming ruining rounds. it can also be a pain in the ass to find out for sure if folks are metacomming. however, you will find that trying to stomp out metacomming with a zero tolerance policy will achieve less- if not, no more- than having sensible heads screwed on. if you’re truly trying to achieve a scare and further stop metacomming, you would make an @everyone announcement explaining the situation and put something on the rules wiki about unmoderated discords. just one of these actions would go much further than the Secret Police Zero Tolerance policy you’ve got going on.

here’s some more food for thought: i get it, you can’t share a lot of the information. that’s perfectly reasonable. one of the things you have to realize, though, is that in order for Secret Actions to not be scrutinized is that you need trust in the community. so if there’s just ONE bad ban/appeal, all of the sudden trust begins to fizzle.

i sympathize that this investigation was in no way easy. but to be perfectly blunt timber, many people disliked how this appeal was handled. no matter how much book throwing you do at us, something you gotta realize is: i kind of fucking do not care about the rules. my entire evaluation of this has been “are they ruining rounds?” and surely you cannot suggest that posting Space Cat ruined anybody’s round. is there a slippery slope of posting space cat? yes. it’s something that’s worthy of getting a talking to. but a perma-ban-come-back-in-6-months? no, lol. im glad xemo was able to turn that around but it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. i always knew you were a by-the-books kinda guy, timber, but your response still managed to squeeze out most of the respect i had for you.

so now it comes circling back to this. if this is one of the people that got permanently banned… then were the people who got temporarily banned simply in the discord? lol? im not seriously suggesting this, i am merely explaining how trust can easily muddy the waters of these Secret investigations. oh god… you guys seriously didn’t do this? right? RIGHT?

[conrad]

said nobody ever in the history of time

fr tho. you guys just banned someone for a post they made 9 months prior i don't think you're in any position to be making gaffs about people digging up/keeping dirt on others

That is an incredibly naive purview. tbm's 100% right, and what he said has been true for the last, uh, however many years the internet has existed.

E: Actually, let's get a touch personal. I don't wanna know any or your personal details and don't trust any of you as far as I can throw you.

[Pepper]

That is an incredibly naive purview. tbm's 100% right, and what he said has been true for the last, uh, however many years the internet has existed.

E: Actually, let's get a touch personal. I don't wanna know any or your personal details and don't trust any of you as far as I can throw you.

speaking from experience here - admins can and will dig up literally anything they can to get someone banned if they hate you well enough

[Thranos]

What even lead to this? Was there an undercover operation going on? Do we have spies in more metacomming servers? Do we have honeypots?

Now this isn't something I can prove, but the story which has been being told behind the scenes is thus:
Someone in the discord server got pissy at someone else (an ex allegedly) and invited Bmon in to blow the whole place open. Bmon documented shit, the salty guy documented shit, and member(s) of the server documented shit and turned themselves into the admins after realizing Bmon was in there. Admins were apparently given access to the server at some point to pick it apart after everything got blown wide open.

Anyways. If you banned every single player who ever did any level of metacomm ever, you'd have to ban easily half of TG players. If you banned people for "aiding and abetting" it, it would hit 90%+. Chesh included. That's all I have to say on the topic at this time.

[MooCow12]

Paint club

[conrad]

That is an incredibly naive purview. tbm's 100% right, and what he said has been true for the last, uh, however many years the internet has existed.

E: Actually, let's get a touch personal. I don't wanna know any or your personal details and don't trust any of you as far as I can throw you.

speaking from experience here - admins can and will dig up literally anything they can to get someone banned if they hate you well enough

"Literally any information dug up to get someone banned" is always in game, from the game logs, stored in the tg database. When things like these bans happen happen, it's because we got shoved information we shouldn't don't want to know but it turns out to be irrefutable evidence of rule breaking.

I am very anal about this because I keep asking questions about really old shit since there's no tg admin introduction booklet explaining past dramas and when someone mentions something I don't know I go and ask. It's very annoying, yes, and I don't intent to stop.

[MooCow12]

Arnt admins able to decide what cases to tackle like dont the rules say its up to their uh descretion and awhile ago someone tried to admin complaint after an admin didnt punish another player idk i forgot it was awhile ago

[conrad]

Arnt admins able to decide what cases to tackle like dont the rules say its up to their uh descretion and awhile ago someone tried to admin complaint after an admin didnt punish another player idk i forgot it was awhile ago

Everything written here is 100% correct. The issue is if they DO decide to handle it and wilfully ignore a rule to the detriment of the round. There's gonna be like 20 admins looking at logs to point and, well, not laugh. It's never fun.

Don't get me wrong, being an admin is fun, we get to spawn 3 ghost controlled imovable rods and see which one gets the most kills.

[Pepper]

always in game, from the game logs, stored in the tg database.

Rule 9 exists in it's current form precisely because this is not the case

[conrad]

always in game, from the game logs, stored in the tg database.

Rule 9 exists in it's current form precisely because this is not the case

Someone on the discord going "I'll be 18 in [X amount of time]" for whatever reason is not "literally any information dug up to get someone banned". Pick a lane and stick to it.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Arnt admins able to decide what cases to tackle like dont the rules say its up to their uh descretion and awhile ago someone tried to admin complaint after an admin didnt punish another player idk i forgot it was awhile ago

Well yeah, but, I think if they just banned some people but not others, people would have cried foul about the admin team playing favorites or picking and choosing. So the choice was really ban everybody in the discord (In accord with the level of their violations) or ban nobody.

They couldn't really ignore the whole thing once it was shown to them, this is certified rule 2 breaking. So the mass banning was the correct choice.

I just think the one ban being peanutted should have been met with a 1-month, not 6-month+vouch.

[Cobby]

I didnt parse thru all 4 pages but just looking at the first bit...

Is this REALLY metacomms? Its not really actively trying to communicate locations/actions/etc.

Purely from the appeal linked and the screenshots posted it looks like really bad forms of IC in OOC, but i wouldnt really ever call that metacomming unless they are actively trying to orchestrate IC actions through OOC. It seems like something id find on a r/ss13 post-round.

IC in OOC (or vice-versa) isnt exclusive to the "OOC" channel in the game, its literally sending in-character information to out-of-character locations (including a discord). That is wholely separated from the idea of metacomms which is actively communication and using that communication to orchestrate IC actions. Im not really sure why metacommunication is even being brought up unless there was evidence not posted, we all know what that particular rule (and its appropriate punishment) is actually trying to curb and this isnt it.

This particular appeal seems like an obvious "dont do it again" and move forward. Honestly an extremely poor ban in the vacuum im posting in.

[Timberpoes]

the thing that confuses me is that the investigation had been going on for months apparently. most of the responsibility was miskiethpoes, i think. im just confused as to why the bans were placed by Cheshify. I guess he was just leading the investigation? but then why is this falling upon the responsibility of the upcoming term? gives me the impression the upcoming term wanted to get it off of their plate quickly (i dont blame them, this shit sucks)

what confused me further was xemo seemed a bit thrown off by the swift decisions but was also the most willing to be transparent.

This wasn't a headmin-team level investigation. As you know, our admin team is pretty much autonomous on a day-to-day basis. A bunch of Manuel admins including Chesh had been investigating metacomms and metafriending issues on-and-off for a bunch of this term. I can see Chesh creating the newest discussion thread on Manuel metagangs 24th July, but there was one before that which ended inconclusively. When everyone found the evidence, they investigated it and numerous bans were placed off of it.

The headmin-ivory-tower investigation that led to the ban wave itself was based on the leaked logs and took like 3-4 days or something, the elects were all at this for 6-7 hours straight for a couple of days and spent the weekend downtime trying to get all their metaphorical ducks lined up in a neat row. And multiple hours per day since going over this all over again and again.

The current headmin team has been happy to give the elects this opportunity to take on a major piece of work we'd've had to do otherwise, and I'm sure they'll learn and grow as headmins from these experiences.

anyhow, directly responding to timberpoes because he’s the only respectable person in this thread worth responding to at this point:

we can all agree that we don’t want metacomming ruining rounds. it can also be a pain in the ass to find out for sure if folks are metacomming. however, you will find that trying to stomp out metacomming with a zero tolerance policy will achieve less- if not, no more- than having sensible heads screwed on. if you’re truly trying to achieve a scare and further stop metacomming, you would make an @everyone announcement explaining the situation and put something on the rules wiki about unmoderated discords. just one of these actions would go much further than the Secret Police Zero Tolerance policy you’ve got going on.

I don't really care about players joining unmoderated Discords. That's just one person's peanut on it. It's a skill issue if people are around metacommers and don't force it to stop or leave, then someone fucks up and drama happens and people start getting reported.

This also isn't about scaring anyone. A person getting caught doing any sort of metacomms and being permabanned is going to be upheld by basically every headmin team ever. Handling it any differently is admin discretion, not obligation.

Some of the people banned aren't going to appeal it instantly. A bunch are all rushing off to other servers to get vouches or find anything they can leverage to get their way back onto our servers. Because a bunch have no real defense. All they can do is try not to get caught breaking the rules elsewhere and hope that we'll give them another chance here in the future.

A bunch others have temp bans and notes instead, explained below more.

here’s some more food for thought: i get it, you can’t share a lot of the information. that’s perfectly reasonable. one of the things you have to realize, though, is that in order for Secret Actions to not be scrutinized is that you need trust in the community. so if there’s just ONE bad ban/appeal, all of the sudden trust begins to fizzle.

i sympathize that this investigation was in no way easy. but to be perfectly blunt timber, many people disliked how this appeal was handled. no matter how much book throwing you do at us, something you gotta realize is: i kind of fucking do not care about the rules. my entire evaluation of this has been “are they ruining rounds?” and surely you cannot suggest that posting Space Cat ruined anybody’s round. is there a slippery slope of posting space cat? yes. it’s something that’s worthy of getting a talking to. but a perma-ban-come-back-in-6-months? no, lol. im glad xemo was able to turn that around but it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. i always knew you were a by-the-books kinda guy, timber, but your response still managed to squeeze out most of the respect i had for you.

I don't really care how this appeal was handled, in the sense that the only way to mishandle it would be via a conduct breach. It has every grounds to be instantly denied with a "come back whenever you get a vouch" tagged onto the end. We do not tolerate metacomms. It utterly destroys the point of the game.

Even the most minor stuff like "Oh, they only showed a picture of them with a cat" isn't representative of what they did in reality. Through OOC channels they shared their location and their status with third parties. And those third parties can just as easily pass that information on to other people. Once you pass that information on to groups of others, the chances of it getting shared again grow exponentially. The choice to not wait until round end to share information is a veritable Pandora's Box that you have no control over anymore once opened.

So there is no acceptable level of metacomm, no amount of innocent sharing of benign in-round information being allowable. Through their actions they told everyone reading that Discord their location and status. Maybe they didn't mean to, and maybe nothing bad came of it, but by choosing to reveal in-round information in OOC channels they're not playing by the same rules as everyone else is. It is, to put it bluntly, a form of actual cheating.

so now it comes circling back to this. if this is one of the people that got permanently banned… then were the people who got temporarily banned simply in the discord? lol? im not seriously suggesting this, i am merely explaining how trust can easily muddy the waters of these Secret investigations. oh god… you guys seriously didn’t do this? right? RIGHT?

Things were spaced in three tiers. People that were in the Discord but appeared to just be passive observers were given notes. In a contrast to how we usually handle unconfirmed-but-suspected involvement in metacomms these aren't secret notes or watchlists either. Just normal notes: "Part of an external Discord with friends where there were multiple instances of metacomms. Did not appear to be involved, however the player should be cautious about participating in communities that break the rules."

People that didn't appear to be metacomming but knowing participated in conversations where metacomms was taking place were given temporary short bans of between 1 and 2 weeks. People that only had a single instance of minor metacomms were also given short bans of between 1 and 2 weeks. The server owner got a similar severity ban for this as well, because although they sometimes asked people to cut it out, they didn't do much to prevent it or keep it off their server.

Anyone that had multiple instances of any severity were given permanent bans. I actually don't think they perma'd anyone without at least 2 examples of sharing in-round information externally, from what I can tell. Could be wrong though, I have brain worms now.

[conrad]

Things were spaced in three tiers. People that were in the Discord but appeared to just be passive observers were given notes. In a contrast to how we usually handle unconfirmed-but-suspected involvement in metacomms these aren't secret notes or watchlists either. Just normal notes: "Part of an external Discord with friends where there were multiple instances of metacomms. Did not appear to be involved, however the player should be cautious about participating in communities that break the rules."

People that didn't appear to be metacomming but knowing participated in conversations where metacomms was taking place were given temporary short bans of between 1 and 2 weeks. People that only had a single instance of minor metacomms were also given short bans of between 1 and 2 weeks. The server owner got a similar severity ban for this as well, because although they sometimes asked people to cut it out, they didn't do much to prevent it or keep it off their server.

Anyone that had multiple instances of any severity were given permanent bans. I actually don't think they perma'd anyone without at least 2 examples of sharing in-round information externally, from what I can tell. Could be wrong though, I have brain worms now.

If anyone needs any more transparency than that, find something made of glass and look through it. You got ban durations based on criteria. I checked these today, as I had the same concern of "Was there even a criteria for banning these people?".

[Pepper]

Someone on the discord going "I'll be 18 in [X amount of time]" for whatever reason is not "literally any information dug up to get someone banned". Pick a lane and stick to it.

Allow me to enlighten you.

Several years ago I was banned as a result of a months long blood feud I had unwittingly engaged with one admin in specific. This specific admin and I had been tangentially aware of eachother previously and I knew him to have something of a checkered past (associating with doxing groups, encouraging the postings of peoples faces and personal info to win internet arguments). After bringing this up to the headmin team at the time what transpired was a months long shit smearing contest. At some point I was eventually placed on the secret watchlist for "admin disrespect" with the intention of poisoning the well to sour any interaction I had with admins ingame, no matter how uninvolved with the situation they might be. All the while I was gaslit repeatedly by the incoming headmin team that nothing was going on. Eventually their "months long investigation" culiminated in a sizable dossier on me being dropped cold turkey in adminbus that contained a good chunk of my previous internet footprint. After several admins combed through the info collected I was banned under rule 9 for making what was essentially a "I'm 14 and what is this" joke years ago. The 'basic logic' at play was to maliciously take my joke as a statement of fact and do the math. If I was 14 then, then I was (gasp) 17 years old at the time (I was not a minor when this transpired). Initially, I was told my only recourse was to post proof of my age (ID) on the forums. It was only after several days fighting this back and forth that MSO stepped in after seeing what I can only imagine he interpreted as an intentional misuse of rule enforcement to settle a score with someone they didn't like. Once it became apparent that the Rule 9 ban wasn't going to stick, the now two remaining headmins opted to fabricate the idea that I had tried to kill myself over the initial ban, which prompted MSO to place a Rule 0 immediately after lifting the Rule 9. At that point, I was tired - and not fully in on the loop of why the Rule 0 was being placed yet - so I just ate the ban and walked away for a few months. Nobody was punished in any meaningful way for the whole ordeal.

It wasn't until the following headmin term that Rule 9 was amended to prevent further witch hunts like that (and another, similar incident) going forward. "Don't ask, don't tell."

Just because this one loophole was closed doesn't mean another won't be abused in the future. The reason there's no rulebook on this kind of thing is because all of the people involved either walked away from /tg/ with a pat on the back or are still your current jannie buddies. So, my lane that I have stuck to is this: Even though this was years ago the culture of the admin team hasn't changed a damn bit and I know full well that the possibility of some absolutely psycho shit going down again is well within the realm of possibility.

[iwishforducks]

This wasn't a headmin-team level investigation. As you know, our admin team is pretty much autonomous on a day-to-day basis. A bunch of Manuel admins including Chesh had been investigating metacomms and metafriending issues on-and-off for a bunch of this term. I can see Chesh creating the newest discussion thread on Manuel metagangs 24th July, but there was one before that which ended inconclusively. When everyone found the evidence, they investigated it and numerous bans were placed off of it.

The headmin-ivory-tower investigation that led to the ban wave itself was based on the leaked logs and took like 3-4 days or something, the elects were all at this for 6-7 hours straight for a couple of days and spent the weekend downtime trying to get all their metaphorical ducks lined up in a neat row. And multiple hours per day since going over this all over again and again.

The current headmin team has been happy to give the elects this opportunity to take on a major piece of work we'd've had to do otherwise, and I'm sure they'll learn and grow as headmins from these experiences.

this makes much more sense in my head now, i was just confused as it seemed like it had been pushed onto the oncoming headmin-term.

This also isn't about scaring anyone. A person getting caught doing any sort of metacomms and being permabanned is going to be upheld by basically every headmin team ever. Handling it any differently is admin discretion, not obligation.

Even the most minor stuff like "Oh, they only showed a picture of them with a cat" isn't representative of what they did in reality. Through OOC channels they shared their location and their status with third parties. And those third parties can just as easily pass that information on to other people. Once you pass that information on to groups of others, the chances of it getting shared again grow exponentially. The choice to not wait until round end to share information is a veritable Pandora's Box that you have no control over anymore once opened.

So there is no acceptable level of metacomm, no amount of innocent sharing of benign in-round information being allowable. Through their actions they told everyone reading that Discord their location and status. Maybe they didn't mean to, and maybe nothing bad came of it, but by choosing to reveal in-round information in OOC channels they're not playing by the same rules as everyone else is. It is, to put it bluntly, a form of actual cheating.

snipped a bit out, hope you don't mind that.

nobody here is suggesting that they should have posted the space cat picture. i agree with you that it's just not acceptable. i agree that there is a lot of information you can get out of benign screenshots like that. but, realistically here, what good is this information when it's 2 minutes before a round ends, in a space ruin that chooses a random location to spawn? god bless, even if you wanted to find her from that screenshot you realistically would not be able to in 2 minutes.

i agree that the admin team shouldn't allow it to slip, but is the solution really to perma-ban-vouch? like, realistically here, what good does that accomplish? in my opinion, treating this as the same level as actual cheating undermines the problem that actual cheating brings.

Things were spaced in three tiers. People that were in the Discord but appeared to just be passive observers were given notes. In a contrast to how we usually handle unconfirmed-but-suspected involvement in metacomms these aren't secret notes or watchlists either. Just normal notes: "Part of an external Discord with friends where there were multiple instances of metacomms. Did not appear to be involved, however the player should be cautious about participating in communities that break the rules."

People that didn't appear to be metacomming but knowing participated in conversations where metacomms was taking place were given temporary short bans of between 1 and 2 weeks. People that only had a single instance of minor metacomms were also given short bans of between 1 and 2 weeks. The server owner got a similar severity ban for this as well, because although they sometimes asked people to cut it out, they didn't do much to prevent it or keep it off their server.

Anyone that had multiple instances of any severity were given permanent bans. I actually don't think they perma'd anyone without at least 2 examples of sharing in-round information externally, from what I can tell. Could be wrong though, I have brain worms now.

this is a very sensible way of handling it. im still confused as to what puts this person in the highest tiers of punishment, though. would their two screenshots not count as only an "instance of minor metacomms"? they were only about 15 minutes apart, from the same round.

[conrad]

Thank you for sharing. My thoughts on this:

It wasn't until the following headmin term that Rule 9 was amended to prevent further witch hunts like that (and another, similar incident) going forward. "Don't ask, don't tell."

Will all due respect, this is anecdotal. I understand reading this probably makes you angry (I'd be angry to be called anecdotal), but it's one case, and a big rule change came of it for the better. I'm sorry that this happened to you tho, that sucks.

This however leads me to:

Even though this was years ago the culture of the admin team hasn't changed a damn bit and I know full well that the possibility of some absolutely psycho shit going down again is well within the realm of possibility.

I take offense to that. You have no idea just how anal I am. And I'm not the only one. The culture is nothing like what you just described.

[Pepper]

I take offense to that. You have no idea just how anal I am. And I'm not the only one. The culture is nothing like what you just described.

It's exactly how I described - what I said was the truth, you can't just say 'no' and pretend it didn't happen or doesn't have very bad implications. Anyone and everyone who has ever made meaningful effort to help against this kind of thing has either walked away burnt out and jaded or become downright vilified by their peers. The kind of good rule change you seem to like did not come without sacrifice. You're a good example as to why. The fact that you're willing to boil down a months long campaign of gaslighting conducted by multiple members of staff as 'anecdotal' means that you lack the character to speak up when someone, even if it's just one person, is being wronged. The fact of the matter is that while it may be a particularly extreme example, it's anything but anecdotal. In fact, it's indicative of the tolerance the admin team has for shit behavior, if it was allowed to unfold the way it did in the first place.


also, Timerpoes: Nobody is arguing that sky13th should be allowed to post those images. It's just that the punishment is way too severe for what amounted to virtually no round compromising info.

[Jacquerel]

I take offense to that. You have no idea just how anal I am. And I'm not the only one. The culture is nothing like what you just described.

It's exactly how I described - what I said was the truth, you can't just say 'no' and pretend it didn't happen or doesn't have very bad implications. Anyone and everyone who has ever made meaningful effort to help against this kind of thing has either walked away burnt out and jaded or become downright vilified by their peers. The kind of good rule change you seem to like did not come without sacrifice. You're a good example as to why. The fact that you're willing to boil down a months long campaign of gaslighting conducted by multiple members of staff as 'anecdotal' means that you lack the character to speak up when someone, even if it's just one person, is being wronged. The fact of the matter is that while it may be a particularly extreme example, it's anything but anecdotal. In fact, it's indicative of the tolerance the admin team has for shit behavior, if it was allowed to unfold the way it did in the first place.

idk if you know the difference between the words "is" and "was" but while im sorry something bad happened to you a while ago, the idea that this means that you have any particularly insightful view of how things are now doesn't really add up

[dendydoom]

snip

that is really awful. for what it's worth i'm sorry you had to go through that. you have no reason to believe me (and i understand why you wouldn't) but i have not witnessed any conduct like this in my time or during this investigation and if i ever see anything like it i would not stand for it.

[Capsandi]

Oh good the thread is back on topic

Were there deleted posts on page 3? I was asleep and its all so incomprehensible. I remember the forums(or at least another phpbb forum) having little deletion notes when people deleted their own posts or optionally when moderation happened.

I miss admin blood feuds we should bring them back the peanuts were so funny when the admin started losing ground.

[Timberpoes]

I think we lost the deletion notes with the last forum update. I'll ask Riggle about it, he may be able to bring them back.

[Edit] Riggle has been asked.