/tg/Station 13

[WARNING: OPINION]

Rules and policy draws a clear line on what is and what is not allowed. This is good in the sense that both players and admins have a concrete place to refer to when conflicts arise. It makes the administration of the game more consistent across different admins by setting clear boundaries.

On the other hand, it is a huge effort to maintain as we end up with a unwieldy encyclopedic wall of text that we cannot expect any casual user to read through. It is restrictive and encourages rules-lawyering that subverts the intent of the rules in favor of the letter.

I don't see this any other way.

What I mean is, you can't call for a removal of rule 0 at the same time demanding that we cut down on the quantity of rules we have. You can't demand that we have more clear cut rules while at the same time complain that having too many rules restricts player freedom too much. These demands are contradictory.

If you think I'm mistaken here I'd like to hear your argument.

But anyways, with regards to the poll above: If we want to talk about the extremes, which would you prefer more?

It will mean more work for the admins but I think having less comprehensive rules would be a good thing.

Of course that will only work so long as the admins are well trained and have a good sense of judgement, a comprehensive ruleset is as much a guard against bad players as it is against bad admins.

Before you vote, consider this.
Do you really want ME to make a judgement call on you?

More rules, less judgement calls.

Saegrimr wrote:Before you vote, consider this.
Do you really want ME to make a judgement call on you?

Yes, judge me like that Saeg, JUDGE ME

I'd rather leave out human error.
Write a wall of text, everything about it will be lawyered and debated over for the first month.
Eventually, you will come out with a rule set that everyone is equally unhappy with, thats the goal.

>over the first month

We're still doing it. It's going to be a never-ending effort.

Considering how favorably the "low rule" events have gone over with the general playerbase, I don't see why the clauses presented in each vote option are mutually exclusive.

Eaglendia wrote:Considering how favorably the "low rule" events have gone over with the general playerbase, I don't see why the clauses presented in each vote option are mutually exclusive.

The less rules you have the more you are leaving up to the admins' interpretation.

I don't understand how popularity affects this.

People trying to lawyer their way out of something is pretty shit.

"Well, clause A of section 91849012 says..."

I think it's better to have skeletal guidelines.

Scones wrote:I think it's better to have skeletal guidelines.

Wow 2 fucking spooky m8

oranges wrote:

Scones wrote:I think it's better to have skeletal guidelines.

Wow 2 fucking spooky m8

SHITPOST

This really should be a server poll. So lets make it so.

Eaglendia wrote:Considering how favorably the "low rule" events have gone over with the general playerbase, I don't see why the clauses presented in each vote option are mutually exclusive.

Is this sarcasm?
Or did the low rule events actually go over well with playerbase?

>A lengthy, comprehensive ruleset with admins making fewer judgement calls

I'd invite anyone who thinks this is possible to actually try to create a rule set that is lengthy, comprehensive, and that covers as many rulings and precedents and unique situations as possible. It's not possible. Player feedback when I did try was conflicting, ranging from 'we don't want subjective administration' all the way to 'yes I know my suggested rules are way too vague compared to yours but that's how it should be'. Which logically necessitates subjective admininistration. That and the fact that between the time I wrote up my first attempt at a rule rewrite and today, a half-dozen or so new precedents and rulings popped up.

So,

>Subjective administration is not avoidable. What can be done is to make players not suffer from subjective rulings they can not reasonably know about.

>It is impossible to list all the many precedents and rulings we have, yet these are essential to the server.

What I'm suggesting to counter these two problems is,

A basic 'low rules' style rule set. Players are expected to follow the spirit of these rules. Rule 0 will be a thing. They cover the basics, like rule 1, reasonable escalation/proportional retribution, no metagaming/comms, IC in OOC, no ERP and the like. Players making an honest attempt to follow the intent of these rules will be fine.

Then we have precedents and rulings. This is a formalized process of something that sometimes happened before. The system is changed so that for when a player does something that isn't an outright basic rules infraction or not explicitly stated to be against the basic rules, the player receives one (1) warning about the precedent/ruling being used. Admins take the time to make sure that the player understands the precedent and ruling and adds a note to that effect. If the player does the thing again, then admins can choose to progress to bans or use further warnings. This is entirely unique and specific to each player, players will have no obligation to know or care about a precedent/ruling being applied to someone else- if a precedent/ruling has to be applied to them, they have to be warned first.

This should sidestep the issue of having a billion precedents/rulings kept in old forum threads and in the heads of random admins. It shouldn't matter anymore if subjective admin rulings are being made, because if it's subjective and it's not explicitly a basic rules infraction, players will be guaranteed one chance to be informed of what it was.

Additionally, admins would hopefully log whatever their ruling/precedent was in a central area for players interested in reading them to read. Reading/writing this log would be entirely optional but would hopefully give an insight into the type of play style the (different) admins are encouraging.

Yes this is slightly open to abuse when people start by doing things not covered by low rules and getting away with their one free warning but we'll see. Admins can check account age/related accounts so players who are trying to use their warning get-out-of-jail card won't be too successful.

These ideas don't take into account the fact that with low rules there is far less admin intervention in the first place.
It's hard to have a strict ruleset with barebones rules so why have a strict ruleset at all.

In fact, administrating during those rounds has been easy, because now the only things that really get bwoinked over are obvious things everyone can agree on.

Low Rules is awesome, if somewhat a tad too chaotic.

If I'm completely honest (something I did not mention last night) is the nature of rule enforcement rather than the format.

It encourages oh X did Y therefore z before so I'm going to adminhelp or make a ban request, this goes double if you've been warned by a different admin for the same action or received a punishment for a similar occurrence. The lack of consistency across admins tends to make this problem worse.

What it boils down to at it's core is : If I get punished for something, I'm going to make damn sure someone else gets punished for the same thing or They're allowed to do it, So I'm going to do it .

Then whenever you ask "Oh so in X case can I do this?" and you're told yes, so you do it and then one specific piece of information is enough to cop you a ban anyway. Even if said piece of information is largely irrelevant and non-malicious.

I think there needs to be a small core set of rules that you need to break in order for it to be adminhelp-able and out of IC in the first place. These need to be clear cut except for exceptional circumstances. I know that is extremely difficult to do but an attempt at it would greatly benefit I feel.

A small core set of rules that are extremely clear cut is impossible unless you have many admins improvising rulings or if you do like Sticky did and simply not care about most adminhelps unless it's something everyone agrees was absolutely over the line.

It's also worth noting that the server as is runs on dozens of little precedents and rulings, none of which would be covered explicitly by a small set of rules. And some people may feel very strongly about these precedents, with newer players or even older players having no reasonable obligation to know of these little things if they're not written down.

imblyings wrote:A small core set of rules that are extremely clear cut is impossible unless you have many admins improvising rulings or if you do like Sticky did and simply not care about most adminhelps unless it's something everyone agrees was absolutely over the line.

It's also worth noting that the server as is runs on dozens of little precedents and rulings, none of which would be covered explicitly by a small set of rules. And some people may feel very strongly about these precedents, with newer players or even older players having no reasonable obligation to know of these little things if they're not written down.

I'm still learning about precedents and rules that have changed after coming back recently. Shit we used to ban for is now fine, shit we didn't ban for is now ban worthy.

It's super confusing and extremely difficult for a player to have some kind of guidelines on what they can and cannot do.

Hell If I knew I could just straight up laser someone for disobeying an order as I was told last night my Captain rounds would have been very different.

Abstaining because we have had judgement calls for ages and they are hardly ever used to offer mercy and pretty much always used to expand judgement and prohibition. Rule 0 is the sacred cow and most admins are wed to the mess it produces like pigs, the poll means very little.

Rule 0 ironically is the biggest agent of rule creep as more generally agreed upon rule 0 calls among the admins grow into basically always applied phantom rules which eventually get dragged into the official rules to be visible and fair in the slightest. It eventually boils down to having a vast labyrinthine set of rules with the added joy of the newest additions being unrecorded outside a few obscure forums posts. Sure this is how laws/rules develop over time but concrete rules at least become official before they are enforced.

The problem with rule zero is that it requires that all the admins are good, intelligent people, capable of sound logical decision making and judgment.

That unfortunately isn't the case.

And it requires that their rule zero judgements are scrutinised and the admin is held accountable to it.
This no longer happens because admins rarely want to take on their co-workers and the players can't peanut gallery anymore because either their posts get deleted for shit posting or the threads are locked as quickly as possible.


I would very much like to see a more free form rule set (in fact I'm drafting one up currently), but it would need to be coupled with a purge of the admin list

http://wiki.ss13.co/Rules

Take a look.

All of this is simply implying that most admins mostly follow the rules exactly.

When was the last time you banned someone and cited a specific rule? Aside from OOC in IC/IC in OOC everything boils down to "You're being an unreasonable dick."

Stickymayhem wrote:These ideas don't take into account the fact that with low rules there is far less admin intervention in the first place.
It's hard to have a strict ruleset with barebones rules so why have a strict ruleset at all.

In fact, administrating during those rounds has been easy, because now the only things that really get bwoinked over are obvious things everyone can agree on

I think too many people here are conflating "low number of rules" with "low strictness of rules." It's possible to reduce the number of rules, but rely on admin personal judgement to try to keep the playstyle the same. It's also possible to relax the strictness of rules so that the playstyle is more free and chaotic, with people not worrying so much about getting bwoinked over minor things. Your "low rule days" have been a mix of both, as far as I can tell, but the two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. If admins are allowed to set precedents involving very strict readings of "don't be a dick," then the resulting playstyle is not going to resemble your low rule days at all. That's what I'm most worried about here.

I think having less rules would be good. Honestly the only rule any game needs is the don't be a dick rule, most of the time ive seen that rules are there so the gods admins aren't the dicks.

A thought I had which I believe bears repeating.

More Rules=More Toeing-the-line.

My post wasn't actually a joke. Goon manages with minimal rules aka DON'T BE SHIT just fine.

I feel on the fence about which option to choose here.

I would love a return to our rulesets of 2~ years ago (I forget how long ago it was) where it was universally agreed that SHIT HAPPENED and to just get on with it, that Sec could kill traitors without jumping through a hundred hoops to not get banned and that not every single negative interaction on the station ended with admin intervention.
On the other hand, we seem to have admins come across with bad judgement calls under Rule 0 anyway, so a tighter rule set with precedents written down mean we have some documentation to show that something should or shouldn't be done, and it means it doesn't entirely rely upon potentially bad judgement calls.

Regarding low rules, I find it ironic I was ganged up on when suggesting this server is or should be similar to NOX in any way. Now everybody is all for it, it seems.