/tg/Station 13

Nobody has the right to turn the servers off and deny the community their place to play, ever, period.

We clearly recognise that in normal circumstances it's not allowable for administrators to ruin the round with interference, and indeed a safe space was even carved out for april fools.

The only situation where it's allowable is for good technical reasons.

This server is paid for by the community, it's run by the community and that fact should be respected by the people we elected as guardians for that community.

It doesn't even matter that it was only 3 or 4 hours, they don't have the right and they shouldn't have done it.

I would like an explanation of the events of yesterday and for whichever headadmin did it to explain why they felt they had the right to do this? I don't believe this should either be an acceptable thing to do and it should be made into stone and policy and enforced as such.

I lost two hours of byond membership time I feel robbed

Nilons wrote:I lost two hours of byond membership time I feel robbed

Your post devalues the seriousness of the situation, you should not have posted it.

In all seriousness yeah oranges is right. The servers are crowdfunded. You shouldn't be fucking with them like that.

This isn't Lifeweb.

oranges wrote:

Nilons wrote:I lost two hours of byond membership time I feel robbed

Your post devalues the seriousness of the situation, you should not have posted it.

I genuinely lost 2 hours of play time that I payed money for, albeit not to the server I dunno why you're bashing people supporting your claim

i heard it was MSO who did it, but i really dont see the problem with the servers being down for like, 2 hours

Your monetary investment in byond has nothing to do with your time on our servers, please do not post about it further or I will request an admin deletes your post.

This isn't about time spent on byond subscriptions, it's about the fact that the servers are paid for by the community to be kept up and playable and in good condition, it's not acceptable to shut them down except to improve their standards of availability, the headmins acted in my opinion beyond their own bounds here in shutting the servers down and denying the community access to them without a good reason. Bounds that I will admit we have never ever defined, nor should we need to really.

So we should have a good clear discussion about where people feel the border lies and if they think headadmins are entitled to this power just because it's april fools day.

I don't think the power to do this should exist or be available to anyone at all, and the person responsible should apologise and then we should move on and try to avoid it in the future.

iamgoofball wrote:i heard it was MSO who did it, but i really dont see the problem with the servers being down for like, 2 hours

They don't have the right to shut down the servers, not even MSO imo, they do not pay for them, the cost is shared among the community. It's only reasonable to have the servers down for technical maintenance reasons.

That should be clarified

edit: removed the and set in stone bit, it's too final to be useful.

I know most people are going to think this is just overreacting, but I think we seriously need to consider the limits of a headmins power, even if we don't explicitly say what those are. So consider this my weighted opinion as the person responsible for electing the headadmins and as a long time community member who cares deeply about the health of the community.

I thought it was a pretty good video game prank

I don't think it's a big enough deal to lock this from happening ever again, mso hosts the server and gave the green light by working with us to perfect the video game prank, setting the website to say it's jesus day

I disagree with your opinion obviously, and appealing to MSO as the authority doesn't work either, he doesn't pay for the servers, he just has the responsiblity of topping up the donations should they ever fall below the actual cost.

Once again I don't think that's enough of a responsibility to give him the right to deny access to the thing our community is built around for no good technical reason.

oranges wrote:I disagree with your opinion obviously, and appealing to MSO as the authority doesn't work either, he doesn't pay for the servers, he just has the responsiblity of topping up the donations should they ever fall below the actual cost.

Once again I don't think that's enough of a responsibility to give him the right to deny access to the thing our community is built around for no good technical reason.

His servers his say, if he's willing to risk potential player loss and thus less donations for the server I see no issue

Armhulen wrote:

oranges wrote:I disagree with your opinion obviously, and appealing to MSO as the authority doesn't work either, he doesn't pay for the servers, he just has the responsiblity of topping up the donations should they ever fall below the actual cost.

Once again I don't think that's enough of a responsibility to give him the right to deny access to the thing our community is built around for no good technical reason.

His servers his say, if he's willing to risk potential player loss and thus less donations for the server I see no issue

They're not his servers, they belong to the community, they ceased being "anyones" servers when SoS handed hosting resposibility over to An0n3, marking a maturing of community moment in our history.

That you willingly admit that there could be potential player loss from the situation and yet still don’t see how it could have been an issue is slightly astounding, as a head admin you should be looking to continue the community's growth and not drive away players. I'd hope you would take the responsibility more seriously than that.

not saying shutting them off is good or not but if you don't want potential player loss at all why even celebrate april fool's? someone out there WILL get offended/annoyed/mad no matter what, if you don't want ANY potential loss from a holiday don't celebrate it at all.

edit: hell some people will get more mad that admins are trashing their rounds on bagil than not being able to play their favorite/whatever server for three hours, refuge zone existing or not.

The headadmin team was understanding of that point which was why they explicitly disallowed too much admin interference on sybil, giving those who wanted a place to play free of the usual mess.

That they simultaneously recognised that and then also removed people's ability to play at all is just part of the general confusion about the whole thing. It honestly seems like they knew it was wrong but then went ahead and did it anyway for the digg upvotes I guess?

and what do you think will make people more mad?

1) not being able to play at all as part of the community you spent the last x years in.

2) being able to play but being interrupted on basil?

I know which would make me more mad, and only one of them lead to a policy thread.

oranges wrote:

Armhulen wrote:

oranges wrote:I disagree with your opinion obviously, and appealing to MSO as the authority doesn't work either, he doesn't pay for the servers, he just has the responsiblity of topping up the donations should they ever fall below the actual cost.

Once again I don't think that's enough of a responsibility to give him the right to deny access to the thing our community is built around for no good technical reason.

His servers his say, if he's willing to risk potential player loss and thus less donations for the server I see no issue

They're not his servers, they belong to the community, they ceased being "anyones" servers when SoS handed hosting resposibility over to An0n3, marking a maturing of community moment in our history.

That you willingly admit that there could be potential player loss from the situation and yet still don’t see how it could have been an issue is slightly astounding, as a head admin you should be looking to continue the community's growth and not drive away players. I'd hope you would take the responsibility more seriously than that.

No I agree and I want a healthy community, I don't think three hours would lose many players because quitting forever after a three hour downtime seems irrational, not a great trait for the community.

Too long is a problem yeah

The patreon donations do not go to the admins for admining the server.

Would it have been any different if the admins had added a wildcard ban^* banning everybody from the server? Same effect and outcome.
^{*Ignoring the fact that wildcard bans doesn't exist yet.}

I get your point about the community funded aspect, but if we're agreeing that there is a difference between taking the server down for maintenance and taking it down for no reason, then we are in fact agreeing that there is a line, and I just can't agree that a single 4 hour event done to celebrate a holiday as a meme to another holiday crosses that line.

The premise is good, but the example needs some work.

MrStonedOne wrote:The patreon donations do not go to the admins for admining the server.

Quite right, they go towards keeping the servers up and running

MrStonedOne wrote: I get your point about the community funded aspect, but if we're agreeing that there is a difference between taking the server down for maintenance and taking it down for no reason, then we are in fact agreeing that there is a line, and I just can't agree that a single 4 hour event done to celebrate a holiday as a meme to another holiday crosses that line.

Then we fundamentally disagree on what the definition of a line is, either there is a line and they crossed it, or there isn't a line there and they didn't cross it, it doesn't matter how far across the line they went, just that they did.

I'm not asking you or anyone to hang them out to dry or stab them with knives or something, all they have to do is apologise and make an effort not to do it again in recognition of the line being there.

I don't even disagree with the premise necessarily but this is the most entitled shit I've ever heard. it's a video game server, and they have the "right" to do whatever they want with it. other people using it is a privilege, not a right.

My biggest issue with it was I was having a good round for once and I thought the server crashed but no it was just some jackass who thinks he's funny.

this is stupider than getting mad at the post office for closing down on christmas

bandit wrote:I don't even disagree with the premise necessarily but this is the most entitled shit I've ever heard. it's a video game server, and they have the "right" to do whatever they want with it. other people using it is a privilege, not a right.

So either it's very entitled or you agree with the premise, pick a side.

It's not entitled to expect people who are only appointed to a temporary role to have some accountability in not removing the one thing I'm fucking here for or the reason I fucking donate money in the first place.

if anything the people being entitled are the ones who are fucking with servers for no good reason other than 'they think they can because they got promoted for six months'

oranges wrote:So either it's very entitled or you agree with the premise, pick a side.

It's not entitled to expect people who are only appointed to a temporary role to have some accountability in not removing the one thing I'm fucking here for or the reason I fucking donate money in the first place.

if anything the people being entitled are the ones who are fucking with servers for no good reason.

my side is "I think it's mildly lame to shut down the server but it's not my right to have 24/7 access to spessmens"

pubby wrote:this is stupider than getting mad at the post office for closing down on christmas

Was there a good technical reason for this? Like say, not being able to afford staff wages, or having staff to cover the date?

bandit wrote:

oranges wrote:So either it's very entitled or you agree with the premise, pick a side.

It's not entitled to expect people who are only appointed to a temporary role to have some accountability in not removing the one thing I'm fucking here for or the reason I fucking donate money in the first place.

if anything the people being entitled are the ones who are fucking with servers for no good reason.

my side is "I think it's mildly lame to shut down the server but it's not my right to have 24/7 access to spessmens"

Nobody has the right to 24/7 access, that's not the point and it's infeasible, the point is, the headadmins don't, or shouldn't have the right to stop access for reasons that are not technical and the person responsible should apologise and commit to not doing it again. The intent is what matters here, not the outcome.

sure it doesn't really matter on a large scale and a few hours are a few hours but it's still dumb and unnecessary, and definitely represents bad faith

Sadly this will end up going as "it's just a game stop being mad go do something else" or "just a joke xD" and nothing will happen. Turning the servers down for no reason like that it's just plain stupid.

Armhulen wrote:I thought it was a pretty good video game prank

Haha yeah dude the ol' "hey everybody stop playing the game you came here to play and instead get in discord voice and pay attention to ME!!!" haha fun for everybody haha

oranges wrote: Then we fundamentally disagree on what the definition of a line is.

No, we fundamentally disagree on what "a" is. I said we agree that there is a line. That some downtimes are more valid than others, never that we agreed where that line is. You seemed attached to the word "technical" for how you define where that line is, but your premise of a community funded server doesn't lend to your premise that the line for acceptable downtime ends strictly on the word "technical".

The headmins manage the operations of the game server and its community, from configs, to updates, to pr merging, to admins, to policy, to who can and can not be in this community. To put it another way, home depot is beholden to shareholders, but that doesn't keep home depot from deciding to close on thanksgiving and christmas. That didn't keep the incoming new store manager of the home depot i worked at for stint from shutting the store down for a day so all of his new employee could meet him and and partake in games where we threw pies at him or tried to dunk him in a tank by hitting a target.

Like it or not, the headmins manage this community, and so this is a call they get to make, and just like with homedepot, until it gets to the point where it affects the profits player counts^* in any lasting and material way, your alarm is premature.
^{*Insert metric here}

I don't think the analogy is perfect since team building is a perfectly valid reason to shut down a store and I don't see how it applies to stopping the server for a joke.

Either way it appears we fundamentally disagree about what the headadmins can do

A key part of april fools, as I've said multiple times, is to enforce a lack of self-entitlement. People take a very dumb game very seriously, to the extent that massive rage and drama occurs over minutia.

This is not minutia. This is beating you over the head with the idea that you shouldn't be taking a chaotic, fundamentally silly, free to play game as seriously as many people do.

You have missed this point and this thread looks like an embarrassing tantrum.

I was asleep at the time, so the downtime didn't affect me, but I take bandit's stance.
I don't expect to be able to play spacemans 24/7, downtime is a given at some point.
The downtime just wasn't very funny, though.

I don't think Ihave missed the point

April fools is about pranks that are funny, it has nothing to do with some moral point about taking ss13 seriously which you appear to have backported as reasoning.

I can not take ss13 seriously and still be annoyed that the headadmins overstepped their bounds by turning off the server for a prank that a lot of people didn't find very funny at all. They totally missed the mark.

Further more it's pretty rude of you to show up and claim I'm having a tantrum for having a reasoned debate about where we draw the line of headmin power, someone of your status should avoid throwing stones in glass houses.

Maybe tantrum is the wrong word, but your op is as self-entitled as any "Fuck the devs" digg post on paid games.

It was a few hours. The joke was funny to me so it's entirely subjective, and if anything I should be annoyed because april fools is the one day a year I can go nuts, but I'm not, because it was absolutely in the spirit of things to do a dumb bible reading on Easter morning as an April Fools meme.

It's one day a year, and a few hours out of that one day a year. No one is entitled to play their free space game. Even if you don't want to do something else, I'm sure there are dozens of games you can play instead to tide you over.

Reducing the importance of a round of SS13 is a good thing. People need to take the game less seriously and you've gone in the complete opposite direction, missing the point entirely.

Chill out.

I did play other games, in fact I didn't play ss13 most of the day.

Sure no one is entitled to their space game.

That is totally missing the point being debated.

The point is the headadmins are not entitled to deny everyone the access to the game at once for no good reason, not that people couldn't access ss13 for 3 hours out of 24.

Any self entitlement I might feel is the self entitlement to have head administrators who respect their own limits when it comes to a community that they are only a member of.

Any other day of the year I'd agree, but april fools is the day when those boundaries are pushed, or ignored entirely. As long as everything goes back to normal, there's no issue.

If anything that happens on april fools is truly so offensive, then you may as well skip playing that day.

Whether you agree with that or not, that's been the tradition, and turning the servers off for a few hours is no more offensive than giving terbs admin or meteor crashing every round.

Well that is your opinion but in mine it's a more egregious abuse, especially given that the head admin team had already decided to make sybil free from easter memes, which indicates they knew that the usual antics are not fun for every single person and gave them a space to wait it out.

It's never has been and never ever should be tradition to turn the servers off for any reasons other than technical as far as I am concerned.

Any line in the sand that gets set is completely meaningless and arbitrary. The community doesn't own the servers in any way even if they donate the money to pay for them. Some company owns the servers. They sell those servers' processing as a product. MSO purchases said product. Where the money comes from is meaningless to the company that provides the service. People in the community may feel they're entitled to access because they donated money to MSO to pay for the server, but that doesn't give them any actual say. We could agree on a policy, but if MSO decided "screw that I'm going to do what I want", then there's absolutely nothing any of us could do about it other than stop donating and leave. That's entirely possible and if MSO started acting in bad faith that would likely happen, but we are in no way entitled any access to anything.

I think that if the headmins think its funny to take the server down they should get their humour centers checked, but its not a big deal like oranges makes out

I think oranges makes a good point here. Noone's entitled to 2d spessmans but the server's paid for by the community and making it go down for a dumb prank isn't all that funny. If the host would like to refund all donations and pay gfor it himself then this would be fine.

i also think its dumb to whine over the loss of 2d spessmans for a couple hours but its perfectly valid to be unhappy with your money to be wasted in this manner.

did arm even give people tokens for killing their antag since it was admin failure and not code failure

Alright, I figured it out. We give people daybans for taking someone out of the round for twenty minuted right? Okay so the headmins took a hundred people out of the round for two hours. As a result they should be banned for a hundred days.

BeeSting12 wrote:i also think its dumb to whine over the loss of 2d spessmans for a couple hours but its perfectly valid to be unhappy with your money to be wasted in this manner.

not to mention making the rest of the admin team look like a bunch of immature middle schoolers.

I suppose an explanation of the situation is warranted. First off, I want to say that I do not believe there is any express written authority that stopped me or the other headmins from turning off the server: so no rules were broken on that regard. Second, the question of whether or not the headmins should be allowed to do something like this is a moral question, there I suppose there is some leeway since this action happened on a day such as april fools. Still, I have to ask myself: how much leeway is too much? It's really my personal opinion that we should not be allowed to do something like this out of respect for the server since the only thing it would have done is just cause drama and make people mad, all while giving us the pleasure of a laugh. Perhaps we did not break any rule or law but I think it is in the servers best interest to not do something like that since we are not beholden to any authority except the player base when we mess up, and even then it is only through elections and public opinion. As such, I think we should take it upon ourselves as headmins to lead by example and prevent stuff like this from happening.

As for what exactly happened:
From what I can remember, there were a few messages from Arm that look back and missed saying that he was going to turn off the server for April Fools Day. Unfortunately, I missed each one of those messages because I was more concerned with other matters and didn't read the messages in #headminbus. All I really intended to do for the day was to open up #admin-auditorium to players, which I did. After that, Arm shut the server down at around 8:00PM EST I believe. At first I was in shock and laughed and went along with it: as you can see from my posts. I had two exams that I had to study for on Monday (yesterday) so I didn't stick around very much, so I shut off discord not thinking about what would happen next. However, my phone fucking light the fuck up with notifications and I started to feel like this was wrong. Around 10:30 PM EST, I made this message after I had been barraged with messages by players:



From what I can tell, the server would have been off all day if I didn't make a message. There was a long discussion afterward that had me flip-flopping between turning the server back on and off. I really didn't want to deal with the shit since I was studying for two exams that I had on monday so I wasn't really in the mood for this type of stuff. We ended up voting an hour later to turn the server back on.

I don't think I'm resolved of any blame here, I think the server going down is my fault as well but I think the server would have been down all day if I did not do anything. I probably should have done something sooner in retrospect so I blame myself for this incident.

Either way, I personally do not think we should have done this just out of respect for the player base. I do not want to seem like a hypocrite for all the professionalism that I tout and I want to show that here.

I mean, that boils down to like. A Dollar per donator, each. Every four hours.

It's pretty funny to me that everyone keeps using the term "the community" when it's pretty likely oranges is by far the largest contributor to the upkeep and we'd be in trouble if he didn't donate (unless I'm mistaken)

Anyways I think the OP comes off as incredibly entitled and whiney but the point is valid, turning off the servers for a joke was a mistake and I'm floored it happened at all

The admin team has a bad enough reputation for ruining April fools day and this year it went from "you can't play because of garbage button spam" to literally "you can't play"

I don't really think its entitlement to be pissed off when something youre paying to keep running is turned off as a dumb joke. It's like if directtv turned off their services on april fools day as a joke

I think the real biggest oopsie here was saying Sybil would be shennanigans free and then turning it off anyways "as a prank bro"

Headmins were elected by the community, they represent the community (players, admins and host, because coders don't have a say on server matters) and they make decisions on the behalf of the community. Since there is no way for the community to express their personal preference over every single matter, delegates such as headmins are needed. They decided that this joke was funny and we must accept it, those who felt wronged and betrayed can use the one weapon we all have, as a community: don't vote for them at the next election and vote someone else instead.

Representatives all around the world fail and mess up all the time, but remember, their power comes directly from us. We are free to give it, and to take it away.

Does "I won't shut down the servers" really need to be in the candidate threads