Is throwing a pie grief?

[CPTANT]

I don't want to make this dumb thread but someone got noted for this. I want it to be perfectly clear if throwing a pie at someone is considered grief. I don't want this to hang in some dumb limbo because of a precedent.

01:02:30: Ticket Opened by-sightld2: You've been spoken to before about repeatedly griefing this exact person. There's no reason for you as an assistant to randomly pie anyone to begin with.
01:03:14: Reply from-ferrolocus: I threw a pie into someone's face how is that griefing
01:04:27: Reply from-sightld2: How is it not? What is it beyond screwing with someone? But again, you were already warned about doing this sort of thing, to the exact same person.
01:05:42: Reply from-ferrolocus: Are you not allowed to screw with someone? A pie to the face is the most basic thing, I've had pies randomly thrown in my face more times then I can count when did it become an issue?
01:06:47: Reply from-sightld2: The largest point, is that you've been told off for repeatedly doing this to the same target. Last time you got away with saying "How is two pranks in 20 minutes consistent." At this point, it very clearly is consistently, targetted griefing.
01:07:47: Reply from-ferrolocus: how is three pranks over the course of days consistant, targetted griefing?
01:08:15: Reply from-ferrolocus: especially when one of them is LITERALLY a pie to the face
01:09:07: Reply from-sightld2: Even then, that kind of minor grief is reserved for clowns. You're not a clown, your an assisstant, going out of your way to get a pie, and again, target the exact same player.

[iain0]

The admin mentioned in literally every line they say that part of the issue is "targeting the same person".

Like most things, context matters.

Pieing someone in a hallway, once, when nothing much is happening and the player isn't doing anything? Meh.
Pieing someone in front of nuclear ops / every time they get to 90% on the brain surgery operation / etc. Maybe get told to knock it off (or more for the nuke ops one, just random examples)

Pieing someone that you've been "spoken to before" for "griefing this exact person".... maybe on your way towards the server exit.

Probably worth mentioning this was on the MRP server too.

Personally think you've heard something 3rd party and jumped on the wrong end of worrying about it.


(Edit: Having now caught up on things in the wrong order I have no idea whats up with the actual ticket/issue, but I'm not sure policy needs to spawn out of this, it can only be super vague wishy washy stuff anyway that's already covered under the general rules and likely doesn't add much to this situation, and I still have no idea the specific context of this ticket or more broadly the situation between the two player parties involved, nor is reading their history likely to fill that in)

[Agux909]

The admin mentioned in literally every line they say that part of the issue is "targeting the same person".

Like most things, context matters.

Pieing someone in a hallway, once, when nothing much is happening and the player isn't doing anything? Meh.
Pieing someone in front of nuclear ops / every time they get to 90% on the brain surgery operation / etc. Maybe get told to knock it off (or more for the nuke ops one, just random examples)

Pieing someone that you've been "spoken to before" for "griefing this exact person".... maybe on your way towards the server exit.

Probably worth mentioning this was on the MRP server too.

Personally think you've heard something 3rd party and jumped on the wrong end of worrying about it.


(Edit: Having now caught up on things in the wrong order I have no idea whats up with the actual ticket/issue, but I'm not sure policy needs to spawn out of this, it can only be super vague wishy washy stuff anyway that's already covered under the general rules and likely doesn't add much to this situation, and I still have no idea the specific context of this ticket or more broadly the situation between the two player parties involved, nor is reading their history likely to fill that in)

The onus of the matter here isn't that it was or not the same player from a previous round. It's how admins define minor inconveniences as "grief". Sure, rule 1 + Precedent 4 say that going out of your way to harrass the same person or ruin their experience through multiple rounds is punishable.

But can you really put on a straight face and tell me that throwing a pie once that round is "going out of your way" to harrass someone? Pieing someone doesn't hurt them, it doesn't even stun them, it just knocks them down. Like an extinguisher wet floor.

It doesn't ruin anyone's rounds (unless the person is doing it repeatedly on the same round every few minutes), it doesn't impair them from doing their job or anything of the sort. You don't even have to go OUT OF YOUR WAY to get a pie, since there's at least one that can be found lying on a table in a public location on every map. The fact it's MRP is kind of irrelevant here, I don't even think HRP would note/ban for a pie to the face, even if you inconvenienced the same person a similar way in the previous round.

Minor silly things like this give life to the game in general, you can't always assume extreme malice out of every single non-positive interaction, more so when these don't affect someone for more than a couple of seconds.

[CPTANT]

The admin mentioned in literally every line they say that part of the issue is "targeting the same person".

Like most things, context matters.

Pieing someone in a hallway, once, when nothing much is happening and the player isn't doing anything? Meh.
Pieing someone in front of nuclear ops / every time they get to 90% on the brain surgery operation / etc. Maybe get told to knock it off (or more for the nuke ops one, just random examples)

Pieing someone that you've been "spoken to before" for "griefing this exact person".... maybe on your way towards the server exit.

Probably worth mentioning this was on the MRP server too.

Personally think you've heard something 3rd party and jumped on the wrong end of worrying about it.


(Edit: Having now caught up on things in the wrong order I have no idea whats up with the actual ticket/issue, but I'm not sure policy needs to spawn out of this, it can only be super vague wishy washy stuff anyway that's already covered under the general rules and likely doesn't add much to this situation, and I still have no idea the specific context of this ticket or more broadly the situation between the two player parties involved, nor is reading their history likely to fill that in)

Personally think you've heard something 3rd party and jumped on the wrong end of worrying about it.

I find your reply insinuating that there is some sort of fine line throwing a pie at someone just as worrying as the initial note to be honest.

Also the admin in question literally mentions:

that kind of minor grief is reserved for clowns

It's all dumb and it should be 100% clear that throwing a pie is not grief. Not on MRP, not on LRP, not "its meh" or "it depends on the context", it's just a damn pie.

[iain0]

Yup, doesn't seem to be the /main repeated point/ though (and none of us have the backstory there). Still not sure what you're expecting of a policy here. "Pieing is okay, except in certain situations where it obviously isn't". Like most things really.

Whatever's going on here seems quite specific to certain individuals rather than being a general issue. Not everything needs a special policy/rule for it (up next, when its acceptable to joke slip people and when it isn't!)

[CPTANT]

Yup, doesn't seem to be the /main repeated point/ though. Still not sure what you're expecting of a policy here. "Pieing is okay, except in certain situations where it obviously isn't". Like most things really.

Whatever's going on here seems quite specific to certain individuals rather than being a general issue. Not everything needs a special policy/rule for it (up next, when its acceptable to joke slip people and when it isn't!)

It doesn't matter who the individuals are, calling getting hit by a pie griefing is ridiculous in all context but one that somehow leads to immediate harm due to being on the ground.

[Epicgamer545]

Throwing a pie isn’t grief. It doesn’t permanently change the round for the player and it can be easy to resolve. They can easily recover by getting up from the ground and washing their face.

It’s only grief when you start beating them when they are on the ground. THAT’S grief. Punching them, the action itself, is grief. But doing it with the intention of funny is not.

Why should pie-ing be restricted to clowns? It’s like restricting bananas to clowns. That’s pure evil.

[Agux909]

Yup, doesn't seem to be the /main repeated point/ though (and none of us have the backstory there). Still not sure what you're expecting of a policy here. "Pieing is okay, except in certain situations where it obviously isn't". Like most things really.

Whatever's going on here seems quite specific to certain individuals rather than being a general issue. Not everything needs a special policy/rule for it (up next, when its acceptable to joke slip people and when it isn't!)

The admin here ruled this situation as "metagrudging" because, to them, apparently a single action of a pie to the face qualifies as grief, thus the player was "griefing" the other party, and so the admin was able to build a case of metagrudging for this twisted definition of "grief". So yeah this thread is important to help clarify this definition, so this doesn't repeat.

Whatever's going on here isn't "specific to this situation" because nothing out of the ordinary or super specific happened, and it was a purely IC minor incovenience (unless we lack context and the noted player DID continuosly harrass the other player repeatedly on the same round, beyond a single pie to the face)

Players should be encouraged to respond to more things ICly rather than freaking out and ahelping because what they expected to be a single player round with bots is suddenly taking a little of a detour. This is a good example of (hopefully not) the toxic culture that may or may not have been forming on Manuel. Some players go there cause they just don't want to have to deal with any inconvenience at all. The tighter rules makes them think they'll be shielded against ANY sort of negative interaction from non-antags.

This is crazy, admins should be reminding these kind of "hypersensitive" players that this is a social game and if they want to be left alone, then they should create their own servers and play on them alone.

[SkeletalElite]

In order to meta grudge someone, you have to be griefing them in the first place.

To call pieing someone metagrudging, you first need to justify that hitting the person with the pie was actually grief.

[Bepis]

Ahelping this just feels so soft, I really don't understand why it's a thing

[cybersaber101]

Clearly not you dunce, there's obviously way more context behind it since neither in my time, past and or present has anyone been noted for ONLY throwing a pie. It's almost insane that people would see things at face value. No need for a new rule or more policy.

[Farquaar]

This thread reads like a thinly veiled admin complaint, but this is such a no-brainer that headmins should have no issue ruling on it. Throwing a pie ain't "minor grief", chief.

[sinfulbliss]

Throwing a pie isn’t grief, regardless of your history with whoever you’re throwing it at. Throwing a pie at someone while they’re doing surgery isn’t grief either.

Nor should an admin ever be commanding a player never to throw a pie at X player ever again. It’s a harmless little animation that knocks you down for a split second, that note and bwoink was excessive.

[Nabski]

No.

[CPTANT]

Clearly not you dunce, there's obviously way more context behind it since neither in my time, past and or present has anyone been noted for ONLY throwing a pie. It's almost insane that people would see things at face value. No need for a new rule or more policy.

Read the ban appeal yourself then Einstein, tell me what the horrible context was that resulted in throwing a Pie being a form of grief.

[Screemonster]

Clearly not you dunce, there's obviously way more context behind it since neither in my time, past and or present has anyone been noted for ONLY throwing a pie. It's almost insane that people would see things at face value. No need for a new rule or more policy.

Read the ban appeal yourself then Einstein, tell me what the horrible context was that resulted in throwing a Pie being a form of grief.

Especially one that got the original note of "given a final warning for metagrudging", where if I saw a note like that on someone I'd assume it was something a lot more serious than "pick up pie" -> "the next person I see is bob" -> "I throw pie at bob"

[Misdoubtful]

I'm going to go on a stretch here and ignore the whole ticket thing and the premise of 'griefing people over multiple rounds' because this is SPECIFICALLY asking if throwing a pie is grief and this bit: 'Even then, that kind of minor grief is reserved for clowns. You're not a clown, your an assisstant'.

I've subscribed to the Goon way of defining grief since forever because its just so measurable and definable (See a few excerpts) ((Also TG doesn't really define it outside of the wiki glossary entry)):

TG GLOSSARY STUFF

Grief
A.K.A. Griefing/Griefer/Griffed/Griff/Griffon/Gruffer/Grover/Shitler/Chucklefuck/(Pulling a) Cuban Pete.

Intentionally ruining the game for others without the metagame pardon of being an antagonist.

Note that this is subjective and up to the admin's interpretation, not yours. Report this using adminhelp to keep the servers tidy!

GOON STUFF

This isn't limited to just killing people: dismembering, stripping, crippling, force-feeding, force-borging, uploading murder laws to the AI, setting up death traps, wrecking or depowering parts of the station, anything that explodes, lube smokes, placing radioactive flooring, etc. are all griefy. As a rule of thumb, if it's bad and takes more than 10 minutes for a normal player to fix, or you're intentionally creating an indiscriminate hazard (especially in a high-traffic area), it is covered by this rule.

Griefing is basically anything that removes or significantly hampers the ability of others to enjoy the game without a good reason to do so. Murdering or permanently imprisoning other players, forcing them to ingest toxic or game-changing substances, or destroying parts of the station - that sort of thing. If you're not sure if something is considered griefing or not, think of it this way: If someone else did it to you, how would you react?

There is a difference between grief and jerkery. Being a jerk to people is expected and almost necessary in this game - minor theft, facefarting, etc - basically stuff that either doesn't severely impact someone else's ability to enjoy the game, or is otherwise handleable with in-game resources like the security force. This is something of a moving target and probably the one where the 'different admins have different styles' bit will be the most relevant for. If it's a relatively calm round, the HoP hasn't vanished yet, and someone steals your ID, that's not so big a deal. If all hell is breaking loose, the round has been going on for more than 15 minutes so the HoP has vanished into the ether, and therefore you can't really replace your ID, then ID theft is a MASSIVE dick move and absolutely worth adminhelping for. Feel free to adminhelp if you really do think something isn't okay, but if we tell you 'this is something that should be handled ingame' then at least give it a try. Besides, bored sec officers rarely find ways to amuse themselves that the rest of the station would call 'useful'.

Where would pieing someone line up with the above?

Would it even line up with another servers serious efforts to define grief?

Is it intentionally ruining the game for others?

Is there a growing expectation that people not 'do jerkery' on the MRP servers?

What do you think?

[UristMcTerrible]

I don't believe so no. I also go by the goon reasonings of what is, and what isn't grief, and it certainly isn't. Like many people said already, the main issue was the fact it happened multiple times. However, I really don't think it counts as grief still. If it was things on the level of throwing pies at this one person, that happened over the course of a couple days, I honestly don't even think it was intentional. It's a little laughable this even got them a note imo.

[BeeSting12]

Throwing a pie is possibly the most minor form of grief I can think of. It takes 20 seconds to find a shower and wash it off, and maybe two seconds to recover from the stun. Adminhelping getting pied in the face is absolutely soft and we shouldn't encourage the type of player to adminhelp this to use the adminhelp function like that. I don't know Manuel's standards for what players are allowed to get away with in terms of minor IC crime, and I don't care to look. Maybe it's something notable for that reason, but not metagrudging imo.

If what he did was against Manuel's standards, then that's a different story, but as far as I'm concerned the first round's incident was dealt with ICly by him being shot to death and the second round shouldn't have even been an ahelpable offense. If we allow shit like this to be noted then it's just going to encourage players to adminhelp minor stuff with the expectation that other players are punished for barely inconveniencing them. I would consider what the appealer did metagrudge if it was a couple rounds in a row or round after round, but unless it got to the point it was round after round then I'd hardly consider it metagrudge. Seems like it was a couple isolated instances over the space of a couple days, and the "grief" was minor in the first place. In all honesty, I probably would've rejected such an adminhelp with the IC issue button.

[Locust]

In order to meta grudge someone, you have to be griefing them in the first place.

To call pieing someone metagrudging, you first need to justify that hitting the person with the pie was actually grief.

Person from the note here - eloquently put.

It's an obscenity that pieing someone, under any context, could be regarded as something worth admin intervention.

It's an obscenity that I'm effectively being threatened with a ban if I ever throw a pie into the face of certain players ever again. It's blatant admin favoritism if not something more insidious.

I'm not 100% on the history of this group of players because I'm pretty new to /tg/, but apparently they're so hated by the general community that the admins have taken to heavily penalizing anybody who so much as, well, throws a pie at them (see attachments, and see my appeal for full context on the specific incident - I'm not a metagrudger, I played three minor pranks that amounted to less then a minute of inconvenience over the course of a dozen or so rounds.)

[cybersaber101]

In order to meta grudge someone, you have to be griefing them in the first place.

To call pieing someone metagrudging, you first need to justify that hitting the person with the pie was actually grief.

Person from the note here - eloquently put.

It's an obscenity that pieing someone, under any context, could be regarded as something worth admin intervention.

It's an obscenity that I'm effectively being threatened with a ban if I ever throw a pie into the face of certain players ever again. It's blatant admin favoritism if not something more insidious.

I'm not 100% on the history of this group of players because I'm pretty new to /tg/, but apparently they're so hated by the general community that the admins have taken to heavily penalizing anybody who so much as, well, throws a pie at them (see attachments, and see my appeal for full context on the specific incident - I'm not a metagrudger, I played three minor pranks that amounted to less then a minute of inconvenience over the course of a dozen or so rounds.)

"general community" you mean a small minority of supremely bitter people? I'll say it again; small instances of minor inconvenience like slipping, pie throwing, shoving on their own won't go anywhere when someone ahelps at the moment with how policy is enforced by admins. Just as Hugs said tho, there can always be a more clear definition of what exactly grief means on TG.

[Agux909]

In order to meta grudge someone, you have to be griefing them in the first place.

To call pieing someone metagrudging, you first need to justify that hitting the person with the pie was actually grief.

Person from the note here - eloquently put.

It's an obscenity that pieing someone, under any context, could be regarded as something worth admin intervention.

It's an obscenity that I'm effectively being threatened with a ban if I ever throw a pie into the face of certain players ever again. It's blatant admin favoritism if not something more insidious.

I'm not 100% on the history of this group of players because I'm pretty new to /tg/, but apparently they're so hated by the general community that the admins have taken to heavily penalizing anybody who so much as, well, throws a pie at them (see attachments, and see my appeal for full context on the specific incident - I'm not a metagrudger, I played three minor pranks that amounted to less then a minute of inconvenience over the course of a dozen or so rounds.)

I encourage you to contact San (as he offered in the appeal) and actually try to get the note removed, specially now that this policy discussion can be taken into account parallely.

From reading again the ticket between you and sightl2d I find their responses and reasoning to be unnacceptable, and I can't see it as something done in good faith, specially not from an admin. Receiving an ahelp about a pie, and deciding to act upon it is already very iffy (I don't want to blame anyone about favoritism when there is no concrete proof about it, but it's true that it reeks)

I think they might just be over their head and lost a bit of their grasp on the spirit of the rules, and the only way to put their feet back on the ground is to at least attempt to have their final say overruled. This was a bad call and it can't stick, and they need to be told about it or it'll repeat.

And again, no, throwing a single pie to the face is not griefing, nor is it minor griefing, nor is it minuscule griefing.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Throwing a pie at someone causes no loss to them other than falling over for a second and possibly having to wash your face at a sink.

Calling throwing a custard pie at someone grief is like calling being rude to someone in the halls grief. If you want to swear, you should pick assistant.

[datorangebottle]

Throwing a pie is not grief until it very clearly is.

Let me elaborate further.
Are you running around in the hallways at random? Throwing a pie is not grief.
Are you running away from a very nearby murderboner/plasma fire? Throwing a pie is grief.

[Screemonster]

In order to meta grudge someone, you have to be griefing them in the first place.

To call pieing someone metagrudging, you first need to justify that hitting the person with the pie was actually grief.

Person from the note here - eloquently put.

It's an obscenity that pieing someone, under any context, could be regarded as something worth admin intervention.

It's an obscenity that I'm effectively being threatened with a ban if I ever throw a pie into the face of certain players ever again. It's blatant admin favoritism if not something more insidious.

I'm not 100% on the history of this group of players because I'm pretty new to /tg/, but apparently they're so hated by the general community that the admins have taken to heavily penalizing anybody who so much as, well, throws a pie at them (see attachments, and see my appeal for full context on the specific incident - I'm not a metagrudger, I played three minor pranks that amounted to less then a minute of inconvenience over the course of a dozen or so rounds.)

I'd be interested to see a statistical breakdown to see whether this group of players are genuinely more likely to get pied in the face than other players.

Pull logs for however many times each player has been hit by a pie on manual in the last month, normalise for rounds played, and see if anyone actually is getting pied more often than any other player, because "this group of players is picked on more often than any other group of players" and "this group of players are treated exactly the same as any other group of players but they're considerably more prone to whining about things that any other player would just let slide" are two completely different situations but if the only dataset you have is the number of times any given person hits F1 they're difficult to tell apart.

Indiscriminate minor grief that just happens to land on these guys is not metagrudge. If anything, it'd be metagaming to exclude them. Like, you're free to set off a drugs smoke bomb in the bar unless one of these dudes happens to be present?

As for pranks on HRP the last time I can remember noting someone for a prank was the time someone lubed the entrance to the train station on our map and like three people slipped clear across the platform and onto the electrified rails and even then it was a case of "that was fucking hilarious but don't make a habit of it"
I personally am a fan of the classic "leave a backpack full of monkey cubes and a mousetrap-triggered water bomb lying around in public so when someone gets curious and looks in the bag they get flooded with a horde of monkeys" trick

[NecromancerAnne]

Is this thread a note removal request in disguise?

[Agux909]

No it's a deadmin request in disguise.

[Misdoubtful]

Let's please not get this thread off topic and let the specifics of appeals or peanut thread convos leak into it.

This is what matters here:

I want it to be perfectly clear if throwing a pie at someone is considered grief.

Metagruding or whatever else wasn't really even originally brought up.

Pieing, maybe a lot of pieing? Pieing as a clown?

OP is looking to have a better understanding of if it's grief and what things WOULD MAKE it be griefy.

As Agux said:

The onus of the matter here isn't that it was or not the same player from a previous round. It's how admins define minor inconveniences as "grief".

I'm hoping more admins chime in publicly about their thought processes on that part. I like it when they are involved in these things for more than a few reasons, and this topic is RIPE for deeper discussion.

[Timberpoes]

I'm hoping more admins chime in publicly about their thought processes on that part. I like it when they are involved in these things for more than a few reasons, and this topic is RIPE for deeper discussion.

Quick, the Ocelotsignal! To the Catcave!

I always wing it when I admin - So all I can share are thought processes. Nothing concrete that you can base a policy on.

To me, I don't naturally categorise in terms of minor/neutral/major grief. Cuz the word itself is a bit meaningless. Like, I ask Google to define grief and I get

2.
informal
trouble or annoyance.

So yes, throwing a pie is grief by that definition. Because it's an annoyance. But the dictionary definition of grief is such a monumentally slack word to base any major rule or ruling on because... Well... Almost anything can be a trouble or an annoyance to anyone in a game like SS13.

I usually think in two parallel ways:
1. What would I expect a player to handle IC and what would I expect a player to handle OOC?
2. Was this valid for the "griefer" to do IC this shift?

I don't want to cover the obvious stuff like where the grief is minor and valid etc. We all know how those go. I want to look at two specific edge cases.

Some otherwise ahelpable grief may be IC valid due to some special situation or nuance of this shift and the actions of both players. That's the raw essence of SS13 and part of what makes the game like a giant rebooting TTRPG. If the griefer's actions are valid based on their IC reasoning, that's called roleplay and we could use more of it.

Some grief is not valid (i.e. players are just being FNR shitters) but is so minor that I would expect a player to try and resolve the matter using IC tools first. You shouldn't have to be a CQC Demigod in order to do your job. I'd be looking for the player to involve security, their coworkers, hire a bodyguard. The solution isn't **always** escalation. If things persisted despite that, then sometimes I step in.

I've done it before where I've told players that a conflict is getting very close to rule breaking in nature and they need to cut that shit out before I do it for them.

The goal of telling a player to handle this kind of stuff IC is because it's a form of roleplay, where you're asking the player to use the game world and the people in it to solve conflicts instead of relying on the admin team.

I want players to be able to get into conflicts IC and solve conflicts IC. This almost always involves some level of grief from one player to another. But major conflicts are what we have antags for and are where I solidly draw the line.

[Agux909]

As always Timber with the golden post. Exactly.

We shouldn't be looking at the literal definition of grief but at the definition of grief as perceived through the lens of the game and how admins should try to perceive what grief is when deciding to enforce the rules.

Being a dick is against the rules, but if we were to follow this definition literally, /tg/ would be a hugbox. Players can be dicks to some extent and it's actually encouraged to not be friendly all the time with your character when interacting with other ones. What kind of roleplaying game this would be otherwise?

So the same would go for the word grief in ss13 context. We may often do griefing as defined by a dictionary, just as how we can often be dicks to people as defined by a dictionary.

We care for the definition that matters when an admin is going to enforce the rules in the context of a roleplaying game in which good and bad stuff happens and is encouraged to happen, to measure how harmful and unreasonable an action from one player to another is getting that administrative action NEEDS TO BE TAKEN. That's the definition of grief we're looking to reach a consensus for here.

So no, in this context, to reiterate, pieing someone in the face is black and white, not grief. Even if you pied this person the previous round once, and also the previous one once, doing it again once this round, isn't grief, nor metagrudging.

It's just dicking around in a game where dicking around is what happens and should be allowed to some extent. Even in an HRP setting, I doubt anyone would get in trouble for doing this. Theater has people often inconveniencing each other in a story in which maybe it didn't make sense, but it made the audience laugh, so there you have it.

NOW RELATED TO THE NOTE AS TO NOT DERAIL THE POLICY AGAIN:

Spoiler:

Excluding X player from having a minor negative interaction with Y player is not what I see as an admin acting in good faith. You're strong arming a player to OOCly treat another player differently from the rest because... they can't handle the pressure of being inconvenienced from time to time in a game? Being inconvenienced mildly in a roleplaying game made them cry? It's ridiculous. Don't cater to this kind of player attitude, please.

[Farquaar]

Perhaps I might bring an analogy that I'd gathered from security guards I've spoken to IRL.

A good security guard enforces rules when it's necessary to prevent something bad from happening.
A bad security guard never enforces the rules and just lets bad things happen.
A terrible security guard is one that always enforces (his interpretation of) the rules without regard for their purpose or context.

Let's use an example of a building where there's a "NO RUNNING" sign.
1. A good guard sees a couple teenagers running through a crowded area, horsing around. He tells them to cut it out because someone might get hurt.
2. A bad guard sees a couple teenagers running through a crowded area, horsing around. He looks at his phone.
3. A terrible guard sees a couple teenagers running through an empty hall, probably late for something. He stops them, gives them a stern talking to, and tries to eject them from the building.

Part of common sense is understanding the purpose behind rules and applying them accordingly. Screwups happen when you ignore that purpose.

Applying this thought to SS13 griefing, an admin should understand the purpose behind anti-griefing rules.
Their purpose is:
- To maximize fun and minimize anti-fun
- To prevent people's experience from being ruined in unfun ways
- To prevent one player from having fun at the expense of everyone else
- et cetera.
Their purpose is not:
- To ensure no player ever gets inconvenienced
- To remove inter-player conflict
- To ensure that certain players or metagroups feel cool and well-liked
- et cetera

[Misdoubtful]

Being a dick is against the rules, but if we were to follow this definition literally, /tg/ would be a hugbox. Players can be dicks to some extent and it's actually encouraged to not be friendly all the time with your character when interacting with other ones. What kind of roleplaying game this would be otherwise?

You're a prime subject for this one.

Consider my Goon blurb above.

Consider the bit specifically about 'jerkery' as if they are those two separate things as Goon defines them.

Would you say that part of the issue is that some people might be blending or confusing the two in certain cases? That there may be people adverse to both concepts?

I've seen people bad talked in public spaces because they aren't playing 'nice polite characters' and I've even seen players that aren't playing 'nice polite characters' get targeted in policy threads for example.

[Agux909]

Being a dick is against the rules, but if we were to follow this definition literally, /tg/ would be a hugbox. Players can be dicks to some extent and it's actually encouraged to not be friendly all the time with your character when interacting with other ones. What kind of roleplaying game this would be otherwise?

You're a prime subject for this one.

Consider my Goon blurb above.

Consider the bit specifically about 'jerkery' as if they are those two separate things as Goon defines them.

Would you say that part of the issue is that some people might be blending or confusing the two in certain cases? That there may be people adverse to both concepts?

I've seen people bad talked in public spaces because they aren't playing 'nice polite characters' and I've even seen players that aren't playing 'nice polite characters' get targeted in policy threads for example.

I'd say that "jerkery" as it's defined in Goon is an accurate and a closer definition to label these kind of interactions, yes. And yeah people might be averse to this "jerkery" style of gameplay. But as I said before I think it's something natural that shouldn't be disencouraged within the flow of the game. It's the Yang to the "being polite" Ying, and as long as you're not intentionally ruining the game for the other person, as summed up on your post up there, it's unreasonable for someone to have this complete aversion to "jerkery" and immediately seek OOC retribution because of it. This is, simply put, their problem.
We're supposedly all adults roleplaying in a videogame in which we can somewhat feel the social impact of being trapped on a space station with multiple personalities of all kinds. Expecting everyone to play 'nice polite characters' is absurd and not at all what the game is about. It'd be also hella boring!
I've myself been there, and you too, probably. I've felt like trash sometimes because I had a bad day and on top of that, nothing was going as I would've like it to go on a round. What do you think I do when that happens? I just close the client and go do something else.

Bluntly put, if your feelings are being hurt too much for things that aren't physically ruining the game for you so much as just annoyances which you can solve roleplaying ICly, you're either a sensitive brat that shouldn't be in the community playing this game, you're extremely burnt out and need to take a break, or have some personal issues that you're pouring into this community, in which case you should stop and get some proper help.

Last thing, I think admins should know better than to actually fall for obvious things like this. If admins are being trained in a way that they end up perceiving nonantag IC minor interactions like a pie in the face to be seriously ruining the game for some players, and that this isn't an issue of that specific player being unable to adapt to the rigors of the game then, in my opinion, there's something really bad going on with the admintraining there...
Or maybe the admin just fucked up, you know.

[Misdoubtful]

We could always look to things like the wikipedia definition:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer

However I'd be interested in, and may collect, as many ways that other servers also look at it.

This is mostly because the most generic definitions coul
d imply that 90% of what people do in spaceman's is 'bad' grief but servers obviously don't look at it that way.

[BeeSting12]

Lets say, no one is actively hunting you with a pie every round. No one is actually "meta-grudging you."

But every single round, there are one or multiple instances of this exact kind of minor minor minor grief. From not just one person, but actually a sizeable number. Not a majority of the server by a long shot, but around 15 people do it to you. An unprovoked spray can attack here, a laser pointer there, vile things spoken in Dchat about you. You do not feel welcome. Are you expected as a player to let all of this minor grief slide?

I don't think that should be the case. And as an Admin, well I can't call a pie a rule 1 issue. I made a mistake in calling it meta-grudging because I misread you. I've amended this mistake and once again I apologize. I can't do either of those things. but I think it is within my ability, to ask these minor minor minor griefers to chill out before it does become excessive(Rule 1 issue) or consistent(Metagrudging/rule 7).

-snip-

Do you really think there should be precedent to ahelp things this minor in nature?

No, you shouldn't ahelp a pie being thrown your way. If the same person or several people have thrown pies at you several rounds in a row? Yeah. I think that's fair.

I'd like to respond to this here rather than in the ban appeal because I'm sure this would get deleted if I posted there.

The admin agrees there is no rule 1 violation. Pie throwing is not a rule 1 violation. The admin agrees there was no metagrudge. Throwing a pie at the same person twice across many rounds is not metagrudging. Where does the note come from then? The admin pretty much said that it is getting close to a rule break, so we'll go ahead and note it down. Do the police put a note on my traffic record that I'm getting close to speeding when I go 44 in a 45? Unless there is good proof that a player is doing this round after round to the same person each time, I would not note someone for metagrudging off of this. Doing it twice across a couple days doesn't even come close.

I don't even know where to start in addressing the part about players that happen to receive a lot of minor annoyances get immunity from them by the admins (Yes, I know that as of right now this note isn't endorsed by headmins or most other admins). It seems like locust threw the pie that broke the camel's back, and he shouldn't be noted for that. Giving notes because of this would essentially make the type of jerkery misdoubtful talked about against the rules. How am I supposed to know that a certain player has hit their maximum minor annoyance meter for the day? I don't, so I can't throw that pie unless I'm willing to take a gamble.

Players who feel they are entitled to play the game annoyance free should not feel welcome here, no offense to them. Without conflict between nonantagonists, antagonists can't go unnoticed. Jerkery and causing minor annoyances to each other is part of the game as a result because it would be boring otherwise. At the end of the day, there are a lot of players participating in jerkery toward each other, and I'd say it's pretty normal to be a "victim" of it once or more per round. Being a recognizable static namer may increase this number because it can become a meme, and like I said, unless it crosses firmly over into metagrudging, then I wouldn't give notes for something that, like I said, amounts to 30 seconds or less of annoyance per round.

I'm not a huge fan of giving this immunity to certain players because they complain about it. If they don't like it, they can randomname or play somewhere else. When I played very actively, I experienced this, and I wouldn't expect the server to change its playstyle because I don't want interruption to my bar RP or whatever. Note that the vile things spoken in deadchat are a separate issue. If it becomes OOC harassment then that has crossed the line and it is already against the rules.

[CPTANT]

I would actually really like writing down the difference between jerkery and grief like Goon has.

I completely agree with Beesting, noting people for stuff like pie throwing is the same as banning it, nobody is going to throw a pie again if they have been said that doing it again is a "pattern" and something they can get banned for if the only justification is that another player felt annoyed.

[Agux909]

We could always look to things like the wikipedia definition:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer

However I'd be interested in, and may collect, as many ways that other servers also look at it.

This is mostly because the most generic definitions coul
d imply that 90% of what people do in spaceman's is 'bad' grief but servers obviously don't look at it that way.

Yes. This works too. Sorry if I went on a bit of a tangent in my previous post (derailed again), but I've been needing to put that thought into words for a while, since I've interacted in the past with the kind of players that are averse to any inconvenience, misleading me and others first into thinking they were just acting their character (I was joyful), then proceeding to read their OOC venting about how they wanted to cry, and just being toxic to everyone (REALLY?)

I agree with you. Personally I think what could be done is to grab the definitions of jerkery and grief (taking it from goon, wiki and other servers) and add them as a rule 10 precedent.

It would read something like this:

RULE 10 Precedent 1
"Sometimes you will be inconvenienced, it's part of the social experience of the game. There is a difference between grief and jerkery:

Being a jerk to people is expected and almost necessary in this game- minor theft, face pieing, shoelace knotting, etc. - basically stuff that either doesn't severely impact someone else's ability to enjoy the game, or is otherwise handleable with in-game resources like the security force.
A griefer derives pleasure primarily, or exclusively, from the act of annoying other players, and intentionally seeks to ruin the game for others without the metagame pardon of being an antagonist- stunlocking someone repeatedly, cuffing them without reason, destroying their workspace, etc."

Maybe Rule 1 precedent 4 could be modified to better define what's considered grief instead of leaving it so vague, and also include the definition of jerkery and how it's different from grief.

[Misdoubtful]

Again I do really want to stress that I'm not really not trying to shine the spotlight on the ticket/appeal that spurred this on.

Plenty of interactions could have resulted in this happening, with or without a ticket/appeal even happening.

Grief is just a hazy term, and I can't help inciting conversation about whether there is a better way for everyone to be (more) on the same page about it.

It's totally fine that some people are looking for a server with less 'annoying interactions' (conflict), but I never want to see people expecting things from a server environment that may never be offered to them. That's just a let down hanging from a frayed rope.

[kayozz]

Just AHELP it.

[datorangebottle]

The admin agrees there is no rule 1 violation. Pie throwing is not a rule 1 violation. The admin agrees there was no metagrudge. Throwing a pie at the same person twice across many rounds is not metagrudging. Where does the note come from then? The admin pretty much said that it is getting close to a rule break, so we'll go ahead and note it down.

Based on what the admin said, it's a rule 7 note.

7. If you regularly come close to breaking the rules without actually breaking them, it will be treated as the rules being broken.

[BeeSting12]

The admin agrees there is no rule 1 violation. Pie throwing is not a rule 1 violation. The admin agrees there was no metagrudge. Throwing a pie at the same person twice across many rounds is not metagrudging. Where does the note come from then? The admin pretty much said that it is getting close to a rule break, so we'll go ahead and note it down.

Based on what the admin said, it's a rule 7 note.

7. If you regularly come close to breaking the rules without actually breaking them, it will be treated as the rules being broken.

Yes, but this says regularly coming close to breaking the rules. Two isolated rounds is not metagrudge, nor is it close to metagrudge, and I'd hardly consider it regular. It's most likely pure chance that he pied the same person twice. I really just find it to be bullshit that a player is just completely untouchable to him and he received a note all because of two pie throws. The admin can say that's not the reason all he wants, but that's what it boils down to.

Rule 7 is intended for people who consistently toe the line and manage to talk their way out of it in admin PMs each time. For instance, greytiding security every round, never to the point that any one instance would be bannable, but just close enough that if it happens often enough, it begins to be a consistent detriment to players experiences. Toeing the line and occasionally waging a greytide war is good and fun, but it can't be done every round, or even every other round, or even every day.

[datorangebottle]

I'm not trying to say the admin is right, just trying to clarify things for you because you seemed confused.

[BeeSting12]

I am confused, but only at how tf the admin can construe any of what happened as even nearing a rule break.

[Dax Dupont]

I am confused, but only at how tf the admin can construe any of what happened as even nearing a rule break.

Readmin Edward Sloan 2022.

Griefing can be a vague term and honestly in the ban case the player should've just been told to grow a pair.

Look at the impact of a player, is it really causing significant impact? Is it preventing a player from playing for a significant time? How many players is it impacting? Can it not be dealt with ic means?

[spookuni]

no