Sharing dispute resolutions with claimants

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:57 am #54692

While this is actually an element of actual justice systems, it is very hard to do with SS13 due to antags and such.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:55 am #54777

Something like "it's dealt with" should be mandatory.

On the other hand, it will trigger many people to start ahelping "what did you do to him" or something like that. But silence is quite frustrating, yes.

Post by **Thunder11** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 11:40 am #54779

The simplest solution, imo, would be for admins to wait until the end of the round, then let the ahelper know the outcome.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:13 pm #54781

Well then you would have to PM 10-30 people at the round end, which is less than ideal.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:36 pm #54790

Yes, Totara, we've all seen you berate anybody answering your adminhelps by constantly asking "So is he banned yet"

Sum Ting Wong · Thu Jan 01, 2015 3:53 pm

"It's been resolved" is fine. Admins who share more than a neutral response might spark arguments and take away time from dealing with other adminhelps. Some players who become irate try to use admin conclusions as a form of catharsis but that shouldn't be encouraged. Adminhelp needs to be more of a tool for removing griffins, not something to settle petty grievances(even though it's often both).

Aurx · Post by **Aurx** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 4:45 pm #54825

The issue with saying "it's been resolved" is that people can use basic reasoning skills to deduce likely outcomes.
If A gets a message saying their adminhelp about B has been resolved, and B just suddenly went braindead, A can be reasonably confident that B got banned.
If A gets a message saying their adminhelp about B has been resolved, and B is not braindead, A can be reasonably confident that B is not banned.
While this logic is clearly not airtight, I've personally seen people use "You said it was resolved and they weren't banned so CLEARLY they were antag" as justification for murder both when the murdered party was and was not an antag.

>Admins who share more than a neutral response might spark arguments and take away time from dealing with other adminhelps.
Firstly, just as many petty arguments spring up over "What do you MEAN you can't tell me?". Secondly, any administrator who gets too involved in petty arguments to handle actual issues needs to reassess priorities and/or to be reminded of the existence of the muting functions.

The more general issue with sharing resolution information relating to the round in progress is that information can be spread.
I've seen people offhandedly mentioning "Apparently he didn't get banned because he was antag" in deadchat leading to kill, search, "oh look an emag that means it was valid" murders by third parties.
I've seen people get cloned/golem'd/posibrain'd/plantman'd back into the round and beeline straight to murder/snitch on their aggressor using information from admin PMs.
I've seen people posting admin PM straight into OOC to dick over their murderer.
The worst I've ever seen come from refusing to provide said information during the round is a bit of irritation.

I do completely agree that anybody asking for the results of their adminhelp after the round's ended should be informed, though.

Sum Ting Wong · Thu Jan 01, 2015 5:53 pm

The problem of players coming to conclusions from OOC information or acting on it in an ongoing round can be completely independent of admin PM's though. "It's been resolved" can let the player know that their situation was looked at without explicitly telling them anything.
>any administrator who gets too involved in petty arguments to handle actual issues needs to reassess priorities and/or to be reminded of the existence of the muting functions.
They're not infallible. The longer you drag out a PM with a player the easier it becomes for them to learn something they wouldn't have otherwise.
>Player: So it's a nuke round right?
>Admin: How did you know this thirty seconds into the round?
>Player: I didn't, you just told me.
Etc.

Aurx · Post by **Aurx** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:01 pm #54842

"It's been resolved" explicitly tells the player that any administrative action that will be taken has been taken. It explicitly tells the player "If he's moving around now, he's not getting banned." It explicitly tells the player a great number of things if they're willing to read into it a little. Even the total time from original adminhelp to "It's been resolved" can provide information to a canny player.

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:04 pm #54844

A lot of the time people don't get 'it's been resolved' or 'looking into it'. It's pretty frustrating.

Sum Ting Wong · Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:30 pm

@Aurx

Are you arguing for full disclosure of admin decisions to the player here? A canny player can read into a lot of things and come to these conclusions even without anything said from a PM.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:17 pm #54872

Admins should at the very least let the complainant know whether or not they investigating their complaint, so he doesn't go away thinking "admins don't care about my problems, there's no point in trying". I cannot stress hard enough how important this is.

It's frustrating and disheartening to hear "because the admins won't do anything" when I ask someone to adminhelp a problem. A lot of things go unreported because of what I believe to be a lack of confidence in admins in general. It's a cultural problem we need to work on collectively.

Admins shouldn't have to explain all the details of a resolution the moment it's resolved due to metagame issues, but they should let the complainant he can adminhelp at the end of the round for more information. Most players are content with just knowing their problems are being considered, and there should be no issue with full disclosure after the round is finished.

Aurx · Post by **Aurx** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:32 pm #54878

Sum Ting Wong wrote:@Aurx

Are you arguing for full disclosure of admin decisions to the player here? A canny player can read into a lot of things and come to these conclusions even without anything said from a PM.

I'm arguing against disclosing admin decisions during the round in question, and for disclosing admin decisions after the round in question if the person who adminhelped so requests.

Just because a canny player can get information out of adminhelping, doesn't mean information control is pointless.

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:20 pm #54904

Ikarrus wrote:Admins should at the very least let the complainant know whether or not they investigating their complaint, so he doesn't go away thinking "admins don't care about my problems, there's no point in trying". I cannot stress hard enough how important this is.

It's frustrating and disheartening to hear "because the admins won't do anything" when I ask someone to adminhelp a problem. A lot of things go unreported because of what I believe to be a lack of confidence in admins in general. It's a cultural problem we need to work on collectively.

Admins shouldn't have to explain all the details of a resolution the moment it's resolved due to metagame issues, but they should let the complainant he can adminhelp at the end of the round for more information. Most players are content with just knowing their problems are being considered, and there should be no issue with full disclosure after the round is finished.

I feel that a lot of the "the admins won't do anything" comes from a mixture of toe-towing/greyarea stuff that players won't ahelp because the infraction itself was designed by the offending party to be such and the offending party not getting the punishment that the offended party thinks should have been applied.

Sum Ting Wong · Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:40 pm

Aurx wrote: I'm arguing against disclosing admin decisions during the round in question, and for disclosing admin decisions after the round in question if the person who adminhelped so requests.

Just because a canny player can get information out of adminhelping, doesn't mean information control is pointless.

Sorry, I thought you were baiting me into arguing for an ulterior point here. And I disagree, information control IS pointless in this instance. OOC, ghosting etc. are much better sources of information if a player wants to metagame.

If it became server policy that admins couldn't respond, or at the very least acknowledge player investigations during a round it would become a large source of misunderstandings. Many people would feel like they were being snubbed, which as Ikkarus pointed out would discourage players from using adminhelp at all. Communicating new policy to the playerbase is normally done by word of mouth, which is rocky enough as-is, but imagine if one day all admins suddenly stopped responding in PM's. It would be counterproductive.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:29 pm #54924

Ikarrus wrote:It's frustrating and disheartening to hear "because the admins won't do anything" when I ask someone to adminhelp a problem. A lot of things go unreported because of what I believe to be a lack of confidence in admins in general. It's a cultural problem we need to work on collectively.

Personally I always feel like it will backfire on me. There's almost never a situation where I didn't do ANYTHING wrong and got fucked by someone.

Or may be it's because it really is just me being shit. Dunno.

Post by **Vekter** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 5:39 am #54999

Delicious wrote:
Saegrimr wrote:Yes, Totara, we've all seen you berate anybody answering your adminhelps by constantly asking "So is he banned yet"
Try not to take it so personally. I was asking Vekter about the outcome of an adminhelp made about the previous round. I'd adminhelped at the end of the previous round and received no response. I didn't berate him, and I didn't ask "is he banned yet"? I asked what the outcome was, because I felt I had the right to know if it had been handled fairly. Here is proof.

Gonna be honest with you, it's seriously irritating. It makes us feel like you don't trust us to do our job.

kevinthezhang · Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:55 am

I used to be an admin on yog for a couple months, andI think its important to let people know that you're acting on an adminhelp. A simple "looking at it" is enough. Regarding informing people of investigation results, there could be something like a "round notes" page that admins can edit during the round(with adminhelp actions and stuff) and then at the end of the round players get the option to view it? I.e. "Kevinthezhang - Banned greyshirt mcfuckface for grief/nonantag murder/ERP"

Reimoo · Post by **Reimoo** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:01 am #55013

At the very least I would like a counter-response when I'm being ahelped against because even though I usually know when I'm in the wrong or not, getting questioned on my actions and not getting a "that's okay/not okay" is really uncomfortable. A lot of the time, at least in my experience, this is the conversation that happens:

"Why did you do that?"
"Because x and y and z."

And that's it. Even though I can tell when I'm in the clear after some time has passed, it's still really impersonal. One time I actually had to ask if I was in trouble or not.

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 1:52 pm #55038

There are two problems with telling people adminhelp results at the end of the round:

1. The short window of time before the server restarts is not NEARLY enough to do this...
2. especially with the amount of adminhelps that can come in for a given round.

It's irritating when I don't even get an "it's been resolved." It dissuades players from making FNR posts, even when they might be warranted, because of the lack of information / fear of looking stupid. It makes the administrator in question come off as lazy at best and unconcerned at worst. (If meta-ing adminhelps is a problem... start banning for it! Seriously, this should be fairly clear-cut.)

As for "the admins don't care" this seems to be a combination of, again, two things:

1) blatant banworthy behavior -- griefing, metagrudging, etc. -- either being ignored or, in the worst case, resulting in the reporter getting punished
2) admins having two views on when ahelps are wanted, with one side encouraging people to ahelp everything that miiiight possibly be bannable, just to be sure, and one side making snide remarks in OOC about people who adminhelp "too often"

EDIT: Another reason why it's generally a good thing to inform players when matters are resolved is that some players play without sound and other players multitask, it is a widely recognized bannable offense to ignore adminhelps, and it's nice to know when it's OK to turn on music / close the tab / go do something else without worrying that there's going to be another BWOINK! coming.

Post by **NikNakFlak** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:39 pm #55070

I usually don't tell what happens after I resolve an adminhelp. It really depends on what happened.
If it's a dispute between two players, both get riled up: This lead to that, etc etc. Then really, once you resolve the situation, because both parties believed to be justified even though one may or may not be, it wasn't a malicious fight, or at least the fight didn't start the way but may have escalated. Either way, I find it kind of rude to tell one party the outcome of another. It's like: "Yea, he got banned, he was bad." and that isn't always the case.

Where as, if it's a mistake by one player than ended up dicking over another. Like, legitimate mistake. I'm not going to say the outcome either.

On the other hand, malicious intent to dick over another player for no reason, I usually don't have a problem saying: "Yea, he was an asshole for no reason, He earned himself some time off" or something.

Quite frankly, huge blatant grief attempts in which the user earns a perma on the spot is sometimes even announced in OOC because there is nothing really personal about it.

It depends on the situation really, or the time of the adminhelp. Lots of factors. Anyone who says they are "Entitled" to know the outcome is wrong. It's a privacy thing.
As for saying "resolved" or at least letting the said player adminhelping that the situation has been handled with or without telling them what the outcome was, should be a given. Administration should always let the players they are bwoinking know that everything is fine and it has been taken care of because if they don't, it just leaves people hanging, waiting, un-sure. Sometimes, admins deal with a lot of adminhelps or a really lengthy investigation and forget to call it resolved. Sometimes, even if it's a small thing, admins forget. Only human.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:30 pm #55087

One could see this as a balancing act between privacy and transparency. Both are important in their own ways, it just depends on where our values lie as a community.

Personally, I put a lot of value on transparency. Players need to be able to trust admins do to what is best. And trust isn't something that is given simply because of your job title. Trust is built from good administration visible through transparency.

I'm going to assert that there is no reason why the resolution of a dispute should be withheld against a player after the round in question is over. I'd also really want admins to respond to claimants with an affirmation of investigation and resolution.

Stickymayhem · Post by **Stickymayhem** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:45 pm #55089

We have a shitton of admins online most of the day, many of whom are AFK or whatever.

I notice many admins, especially trialmins, seem a little timid in asking for assistance when the adminhelps start piling, resulting in more terse efficient resolving of them.

It's not horrible to use a stock "I'll look into it" kind of neutral response to ensure no OOC info is gleaned, but I'm honestly not one to personally go back with any information other than "It's been resolved." Maybe if it was a particularly bad case like creepiness or some really shitty kills but in general it feels way too similar to when my little sister used to gleefully ask my mum how long I'm being punished for whatever. It can come off a little sadistic to request the details of someone else's misfortune, even if they deserved it.

Aurx · Post by **Aurx** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 1:27 am #55176

Ikarrus wrote:Personally, I put a lot of value on transparency.

Did someone just say public logs?

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 2:10 am #55181

Yes, public logs would be awesome, but that doesn't beat basic communication between admins and players in-game.

mrpain · Post by **mrpain** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 4:45 am #55234

When I ahelp an issue, such as someone being potentially shit, I want acknowledgement that you have received my issue and that is has a resolution. You dont have to tell me what the resolution is, obviously sometimes you cant, but you can if you want. If I dont get that acknowledgement I'll just assume you were otherwise preoccupied with other issues and go to make a ban request that didnt need to be there in the first place.

I'm not asking for much, just confirmation that the issue has been dealt with.

Pybro · Post by **Pybro** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:15 pm #55344

Someone said earlier that the issue is people being able to deduce antag status and the like by even innocuous responses.
IE,
>I get dunked by some dude in maint unprovoked.
>adminhelp, WTF SOME SHITLER SCRUB JUTS MURDERIZIEEDED ME WTF BANNU HIM
>Admin checks, says he's looking into it.
What exactly can the admin say? If he says "Valid", then I know for a fact that the guy is an antagonist of some sort as there is no valid reason to randomly murder someone unless you are an antagonist. If he says "Thank you for adminhelping, we care about you having fun and wish to never have to hear you whine again as that would indicate you are maximizing fun", I can just ghost over to my murderer and check if he's braindead or not. If so, I can know that he wasn't an antag. But if he's still there, again, I can deduce that he is an antagonist.

Honestly, the only way I can see players feeling like they aren't being ignored is admins just giving a blanket "Know that I am looking into it, but also know that I may or may not be able to give you any further information".

This is of course at the discretion of the individual admin.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:15 am #55458

Post and pre-round are a good time to touch base with people who you helped as an admin, coding in something that reminds you who's adminhelps you responded to would be nice.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:43 am #55468

It's going to be difficult keeping track of everyone you helped in a given round, and a system just to keep track of that is excessive.

I think it's perfectly fine to simply ask them to adminhelp after the round is over should they want more information.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Sun Jan 04, 2015 2:56 am #55497

That works too as long as it is made clear doing so is totally fine. I know I felt skeezy doing that as a player or answering that question as an admin.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 11:01 pm #56324

What if bans made in a round were tracked displayed in the End of Round report?

Might be a bit like putting them in the stocks and throwing rotten fruit at them, but fuck it - little bit of public humiliation is small price to pay for being a shit AND it lets the good folk know that admins do actually do their job.

Vekter wrote:It makes us feel like you don't trust us to do our job.

What if we don't?
What if I was to tell you that throughout the years there have been several admins I've lost trust in?
A fancy title, a special font colour, and a bunch of powers doesn't suddenly make you a Paragon of Infallible Justice.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Wed Jan 07, 2015 4:36 am #56385

Public humilation is a terrible punishment and really not at all part of a well designed system.

Bans are handled back end because good players who make mistakes often are embarassed by them and legitimately want to put it behind them. Throwing bans in everyone's face is a shitty thing to do if you legitimately want people to reform and encourages people to be assholes, creating a more toxic community rather than a less toxic one.

And admins are indeed not avatars of trust. If you feel like players don't trust you, it means you are doing something wrong. Not in the sense that you are not trustworthy, but in the sense that every reputation is earned, if not deserved. You are doing something, or failing to do something, that causes people to mistrust you.

In this case SS13 has a pretty wonky system in regards to bans because it is ridiculously hard to make the system transparent while allowing people to be private. Currently people who are eternally shitters tend to be forced to out themselves with public ban appeals, but minor lapses are just time outs that the person can keep to themselves. Usually really janky players out themselves anyway.

If you feel unsure about the sitaution you can always admin-help at the end of the round. If you feel like the situation may not have been handled right click and save your logs to upload in the ban request thread you may need to make. If you talk it out (politely) with the admins they generally will be pretty cool about telling you what went down and from there you can request a ban. While the admins can pull logs from the server it is a real pain to just guess when things happened, and being able to copy and search for a line from your logs is a godsend. Sure, logs can be tampered with, but if they have the originals spotting it is stupidly easy, so really you are doing it so they can look stuff up.

One thing I noticed really is absent and may cause a lot of frustration is that there is a lack of restorative justice in SS13. While it is a law concept and not a concept about molding a community's behavior, there is no set policy on what to do to someone who got griffed hardcore. While someone smacking you twice and stealing something is easy enough to just say "resolved" to without overtly acting, once a player dies it really doesn't make sense to keep it secret if you banned the player, and because the death was improper it may not be a bad idea to make sure the person gets back into the round. Someone getting put in time out from the game for 45 minutes due to someone else breaking the rules never seems fair and never makes people feel good.

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:01 am #56427

dezzmont wrote: One thing I noticed really is absent and may cause a lot of frustration is that there is a lack of restorative justice in SS13. While it is a law concept and not a concept about molding a community's behavior, there is no set policy on what to do to someone who got griffed hardcore. While someone smacking you twice and stealing something is easy enough to just say "resolved" to without overtly acting, once a player dies it really doesn't make sense to keep it secret if you banned the player, and because the death was improper it may not be a bad idea to make sure the person gets back into the round. Someone getting put in time out from the game for 45 minutes due to someone else breaking the rules never seems fair and never makes people feel good.

Quote for wisdom.

Stickymayhem · Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:17 pm

I and most other admins do generally ensure that at the least, a body gets cloned, and at best they get priority in events.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:41 am #56659

Stickymayhem wrote:I and most other admins do generally ensure that at the least, a body gets cloned, and at best they get priority in events.

No doubt, it is an awesome idea many people do, but that is not the same as it being official policy, which I don't think it is.

Making it a part of resolving bans officially would I think mellow a ton of people out.

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 2:04 am #56699

dezzmont wrote:
Stickymayhem wrote:I and most other admins do generally ensure that at the least, a body gets cloned, and at best they get priority in events.
No doubt, it is an awesome idea many people do, but that is not the same as it being official policy, which I don't think it is.

Making it a part of resolving bans officially would I think mellow a ton of people out.

This can't really be a fixed policy anyway considering the infinite number of circumstances surrounding any event of griff. Time constraints, where the player died (or didn't), what has been done to/for that player since the griff etc all are taken into account when it is decided what if anything can be done for the offended player. You're right in that as a correctional term, it really doesn't mirror correctly in SS13 administration. We're crimes and punishments, not law and order.

Aurx · Post by **Aurx** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 3:06 am #56716

dezzmont wrote:
Stickymayhem wrote:I and most other admins do generally ensure that at the least, a body gets cloned, and at best they get priority in events.
No doubt, it is an awesome idea many people do, but that is not the same as it being official policy, which I don't think it is.

Making it a part of resolving bans officially would I think mellow a ton of people out.

How would restorative justice function without damaging current-round opacity?

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 4:19 am #56726

Aurx wrote:
dezzmont wrote:
Stickymayhem wrote:I and most other admins do generally ensure that at the least, a body gets cloned, and at best they get priority in events.
No doubt, it is an awesome idea many people do, but that is not the same as it being official policy, which I don't think it is.

Making it a part of resolving bans officially would I think mellow a ton of people out.
How would restorative justice function without damaging current-round opacity?

It wouldn't. You would have to allow the player to know the death was invalid. Meaning you can only really do it when someone was banned.

However it is also only really necessary in an extreme case, player removal from a round, in which case the meta knowledge gained from you NOT being restored to life is generally not helpful. You don't teleport some guy's shoes back to them when a clown trips you and takes them, but when some ass gibs a room with a bomb FNR 5 minutes into the round or the chef decides to try to make you into burgers because "He is roleplaying a psycho" (Both really clear cut ban cases) you don't really need to pretend that it may be valid at the expense of a player sitting out 30 minute of play because of something entirely out of their control and that is recognized universally as unfair.

cedarbridge wrote:
dezzmont wrote:
Stickymayhem wrote:I and most other admins do generally ensure that at the least, a body gets cloned, and at best they get priority in events.
No doubt, it is an awesome idea many people do, but that is not the same as it being official policy, which I don't think it is.

Making it a part of resolving bans officially would I think mellow a ton of people out.
This can't really be a fixed policy anyway considering the infinite number of circumstances surrounding any event of griff. Time constraints, where the player died (or didn't), what has been done to/for that player since the griff etc all are taken into account when it is decided what if anything can be done for the offended player. You're right in that as a correctional term, it really doesn't mirror correctly in SS13 administration. We're crimes and punishments, not law and order.

The rules have always been more of a play book. None of the rules are designed to tell you as an admin exactly what to do in a specific scenario, but what you should generally be doing and trying to accomplish, baring very specific common scenarios.

The tgstation rules page are more like guideline. In that most of the rules are literally guidelines of acceptable behavior rather than actual hard fast rules you do or do not follow with 100% certainty.