Bans related to metacomms

[Stan_Studnick]

This subject was posted in another thread but the posts were deleted and it was suggested to move the discussion here, so I'm doing that.

I really don't think people should cop an automatic permaban without question if they communicate outside the game. Really the focus in the rules seems to be about actual in-character information and not the actual act itself. That being said, new players who do violate this rule could be getting help or advice from an experienced player and honestly if both of them get banned then the rule flat-out needs to be changed or the policy of enforcement needs to be changed. (though the experienced player should at the very least ahelp about it to let the admins know, it's the polite and prudent thing to do) I mean how many of us have said something like "oh I have something to tell you after this round" to let somebody know something funny, infuriating, sad, etc has happened anyway? No IC information has been passed and it's for sure an OOC comment, but I'm sure some admins would happily ban somebody for that. I guess every time I and many others asked for an admin to come check out Basil on IRC we've used metacomms, and we all deserve bans under the strict no-nonsense rule policy.

I think there should be a punishment for somebody who does actually violate the spirit of the rule, and I think it should quickly escalate to a permaban if it happens, but there really shouldn't be one fresh off the bat.

[TechnoAlchemist]

As someone who was taught the game by friends in what I guess classifies as metacomms I understand what you mean.

I think that if you're going to teach a friend of yours the game, and you're going to use voice chat to explain the mechanics and basics (which is nigh impossible to do without getting extremely OOC) you should ahelp beforehand and explain what you're doing.

People have done this before and we've told them that it's okay, but not to share any information about the ongoing round to each other. Generally they've also been told to not use their communication to interact with any other player besides themselves too, that way nobody gets pulled into their interaction.

[whodaloo]

iirc if you ahelp 'i'm an experienced player helping out a friend don't ban us!' you're fine

and giving any, any weasel room for metacomms is a terrible idea.

[Saegrimr]

iirc if you ahelp 'i'm an experienced player helping out a friend don't ban us!' you're fine

and giving any, any weasel room for metacomms is a terrible idea.

Essentially this, and there are other circumstances we consider for things like this.
Are you helping your friend learn the controls? Telling him what all the numbers and shit mean for botany? Whatever, that's really not a big issue.

Ganging up with your friend to assault people? Light people on fire? Search out your dead friend in maint to clone him? Bust him out of the brig? Hunt down the antag that killed him?
Absolutely not, get out. You're well beyond the "teaching him mechanics" stage.

[NikNakFlak]

I really don't think people should cop an automatic permaban without question if they communicate outside the game. Really the focus in the rules seems to be about actual in-character information and not the actual act itself. That being said, new players who do violate this rule could be getting help or advice from an experienced player and honestly if both of them get banned then the rule flat-out needs to be changed or the policy of enforcement needs to be changed. (though the experienced player should at the very least ahelp about it to let the admins know, it's the polite and prudent thing to do)

It's in the rules not to do this and even stated in both the old rules and new rules to adminhelp first or else they are are probably going to get banned. Not reading the rules is not an excuse and it was said by multiple admins in the thread that spawned this topic.

I mean how many of us have said something like "oh I have something to tell you after this round" to let somebody know something funny, infuriating, sad, etc has happened anyway? No IC information has been passed and it's for sure an OOC comment, but I'm sure some admins would happily ban somebody for that. I guess every time I and many others asked for an admin to come check out Basil on IRC we've used metacomms, and we all deserve bans under the strict no-nonsense rule policy.

That's dumb comparing asking for an admin to investigate something and blatantly talking IC things to another player. Admins are not playing in the current round nor will they act upon the information to give themselves an IC advantage. It's obvious when players metacommunicate to give themselves an IC advantage because quite frankly, it's obvious. You usually don't see a metacommunication ban for players trying to teach each other, because most of the time, bans are not handed out for these infractions despite you thinking so.

You don't even understand the context of the thread that spawned this policy thread to begin with.
1) None of the three players involved in the ban were new, the accounts were old and they obviously knew how to play the game, no teaching was being done.
2) The first two people who were metacommunicating got into an issue with the bartender and obviously were using out of character means to find each other whenever they wandered off from each other.
3) The third person joined later after the first two got dunked and instantly tried instigating conflict with the bartender as well despite being a fresh joiner
4) They got banned for this, not for being new and trying to teach each other

[Stan_Studnick]

I think that if you're going to teach a friend of yours the game, and you're going to use voice chat to explain the mechanics and basics (which is nigh impossible to do without getting extremely OOC) you should ahelp beforehand and explain what you're doing.

iirc if you ahelp 'i'm an experienced player helping out a friend don't ban us!' you're fine

This point has been addressed, I read the rules and the clarification has been added. That's all I really wanted.

and giving any, any weasel room for metacomms is a terrible idea.

While I do agree with you to a point, I don't consider making the first offense to metacomms like, say, a week ban to be "giving any weasel room" at all. The behavior needs to be punished for sure.

Ganging up with your friend to assault people? Light people on fire? Search out your dead friend in maint to clone him? Bust him out of the brig? Hunt down the antag that killed him?

Obviously none of that would be remotely okay under any circumstances.

That's dumb comparing asking for an admin to investigate something and blatantly talking IC things to another player.

By the strict nature of the previous set of rules asking for an admin on IRC counts, and it wouldn't surprise me if some admin would have used that as pretext to ban because it is a technicality that can be abused. There have been obvious instances of admins abusing their position in the past.

You usually don't see a metacommunication ban for players trying to teach each other, because most of the time, bans are not handed out for these infractions despite you thinking so.

Two things:
"usually" is the concerning part. Why is it usually? Why not never?
I don't think bans are handed out for people ahelping while they teach somebody to play the game. I don't know why you're under the impression that I do, this thread is about making the rules clear and concise. Admins know where the line is, players are aware of an opportunity to bring people into the game and teach them accordingly, and finally legitimate cases are much more easily defined. Yes, I am fully aware that the usual instance of a permaban occurring when this rule is enforced is almost always a severe, and grievous violation of the rule and I fully agree with such punishment.

You don't even understand the context of the thread that spawned this policy thread to begin with.

We're not talking about their ban or if it's justified or not. You deleted the posts and said to take the discussion about bans related to metacomms to the policy board which I have done. I don't give a fuck about those three people or their ban, clearly they deserved the bans they received. All I wanted was the existing rule to be more precisely defined and with the new set of rules that has been done, if people want to discuss the severity the ban they can but I've accomplished my primary goal here.

[NikNakFlak]

I'm not sure if it's usually or never to be honest. We can't search up bans by reason right now or else we could just search for the key word "meta" and we would get an accurate answer to that.
That technicality has never been abused in the history of adminbus to ban someone, admins get deadminned for any number of reasons but no admin has ever banned someone for asking for an admin on IRC. It has been and always will be an ok thing to do and if no admins are online, we actually suggest players do this as sometimes the bots bug out in adminbus and the adminhelps do not get through.

[Saegrimr]

You usually don't see a metacommunication ban for players trying to teach each other, because most of the time, bans are not handed out for these infractions despite you thinking so.

Two things:
"usually" is the concerning part. Why is it usually? Why not never?

When the "teaching" part overextends. The student gets robusted somewhere for accidently punching a guy, teacher comes to the rescue. Teacher feels confident enough he should try cargo on his own or something, antag comes in and takes him out, student not knowing better complains he died again and teacher comes to fix it.

When we see this with zero IC communication, it certainly doesn't look good for them.

[Stan_Studnick]

Well, either way the concerning part for me was addressed. I really like the new rules, they were changed the same day I made the topic and I checked them when I made my second post here. I like how it focuses on IC information which is really what the rule's been about, and I think using that IC information in an inappropriate context has always been de facto banned but certain forms of it weren't covered by the rules. That's what the rule has always been there for in the first place (my comment about the spirit of the rule rather than the letter) and obviously some admin discretion has been allowed.

That same discretion, however, has an opportunity to be abused and even if it hasn't ever happened in the past doesn't necessarily mean it couldn't happen in the future. I think we can all agree that closing an avenue for such abuses to occur is a good thing and would serve to avoid unnecessary incidents that would require headmin intervention.

EDIT: I do think most admins here would be extremely accommodating to a teacher and student, maybe even sending both to centcom to learn in relative privacy before moving them to the station. Plus on lowpop Basil rounds I think if there was some roleplaying going on about how the new person(s) has been recently hired everyone would get involved. I can think of a few players specifically who would enjoy that, and when I've seen new people in departments I'm in I've made a point to steer my character toward them more often than not to give them tips and pointers.

[sirnat]

When I'm in teamspeak and tell my friend who joins my channel that I'm playing ss13 and they ask what server, I don't even tell them. I've seen unban appeals for people not talking when doing things together, so I don't even take a chance to play TG with friends lol. I think if you don't try to bring friends it's in your best interest just so you can avoid the heavy hit of "Oh you're talking out of game? Sorry we can't trust you. " *Permaban* and I've seen appeals where admins are straight up mean/not wanting to hear it for the new guys who get permad, just telling them to fuck off and play somewhere else for a while doesn't help at all.

[Cik]

i do think the newbie metacomm bans are too harsh. sure the rules are there if you look, but to a newbie who doesn't know the interface or that the wiki even exists it isn't exactly apparent. there's no MOTD that says "IF YOU'RE NEW, READ THE FUGGIN RULES" in big red text or anything.

or is there i don't read those

but yeah anyway if there isn't there should be, i've encountered 5 or so extremely new players in the last week or two, and all of them are at risk of being permab& if anyone helps them? seems silly.

oh and the adminhelp function isn't even easily found either, it probably took me weeks before i even learned it existed, so "just adminhelp" won't be an option for someone who's genuinely new to the interface for at least a little while.

[Stan_Studnick]

oh and the adminhelp function isn't even easily found either, it probably took me weeks before i even learned it existed, so "just adminhelp" won't be an option for someone who's genuinely new to the interface for at least a little while.

This is something that really sticks out for me. Most people who say that (myself included) have forgotten that the interface is really clunky sometimes and the tabs, buttons, and verbs aren't easily found. Honestly clicking on the "rules" button isn't easy because it's way at the top hidden among a bunch of other buttons nobody will ever use, and a simple link to the rule page in the MOTD is pretty standard fare for SS13 servers.

[CPTANT]

Why not just ban new players for a week the first time. That shows plenty that its taken serious.

Permaban them if they do it again.

[NikNakFlak]

I looked through every single metacommunication appeal on the forums located in the resolved forums and
Not a single one was 100% for the reason of zero tolerance on the rule. Either some sort of IC line was crossed through the use of out of game communications or it was used for an in-game advantage.
I found one that was by me that was harmless metacommunication but the ban was for them logging out to explain themselves because they couldn't be contacted in-game at the time.

Basically, the bans were placed for these reasons.

• Either some sort of line was crossed that the communication was not deemed harmless anymore upon teaching a new player and it had an impact on the round.
• The communication out of game was used maliciously for an obvious in-game advantage.
• Players were previously warned not to metacommunicate due to the infraction being mostly harmless to teach a new player and this warning was ignored.

These reasons are just pretty basic and general I guess but most of the appeals had some version of this, mostly the first reason.
The thing that was constant in every thread though was the players either hadn't read the rules or chose to ignore them.
That being said, I just checked and they aren't linked in the MOTD and only in the little tab at the top of the byond panel but still, it's not that hard to read them, especially since they were shortened down recently. The appeals weren't the best place to look to evaluate this because there were a few that were pretty vague with minimal posting but for the most part, we're pretty much spot on when it comes to this stuff.

Anything being said here is pretty invalid because every single case I've reviewed so far, hasn't been "Just some players harmlessly teaching each other". Each and every case was different in some ways and most often than not, something changed in the situation that it wasn't just harmless anymore and had some sort of impact on the round in a negative way. Just read the rules, adminhelp, and it won't be a problem. Out of all the appeals, if the cases were "mostly" harmless, the dudes were just told not to metacommunicate again and the bans were lifted pretty damn quickly.

[NikNakFlak]

Just got the rules added to the MOTD for this reason.

[Cik]

yeah, it's a good idea. if it helps even one sincere newbie not be B& it's probably worth the effort.

[Skorvold]

Newbie voice comms always lead to buttbuddy teams saving each other. I've never witnessed someone teach and separate meta info well enough.

[TechnoAlchemist]

Newbie voice comms always lead to buttbuddy teams saving each other. I've never witnessed someone teach and separate meta info well enough.

That's probably because if they're smart they won't be doing anything that would draw attention to them.

[Stan_Studnick]

I looked through every single metacommunication appeal on the forums located in the resolved forums and
Not a single one was 100% for the reason of zero tolerance on the rule.

Well that's good, not really necessary for you to do all that because this thread's primary objective was quickly accomplished, but thanks for the effort to clear things up.

Just got the rules added to the MOTD for this reason.

An additional thanks for this.

yeah, it's a good idea. if it helps even one sincere newbie not be B& it's probably worth the effort.

Which is what my real concern was all about, even though the thread this came from didn't have that.