tl;dr : Less policy makes admins' jobs harder for political reasons.
I see several admins and players wanting to have a policy, which consists of no other policies besides 'don't be a dick' and maybe rule zero. The intended result is that action will be more swift, that one entity can make all the big decisions, to make things speedy and efficient. However, the people wanting this, I believe, don't take into account player pressure/politics/etc, or don't care. While it would indeed be fast, admins would actually lose power, because of politics. It would also function on subjective rulings, rather then objective. 'Don't be a dick' is subjective because who defines what a dick is? Is stealing something dickish enough to warrant admin action? Murder? Shitting in OOC? Metafriending? Shitcurity? Greytiding? Fucking with people? Anti-antaging things like atmos? Metagaming? Everyone has their own unique opinion on what constitutes where 'the line' is drawn. 'Don't suicide bomb' used to be objective, as doing it would net a ban as a nonantag. Now is it subjective and causes headaches. 'Don't metagame' is also -very- subjective, and I don't need to explain why.
Policy is more then just rules for players to follow. It is a tool an admin uses to ensure that misguided players are converted to good players, that shitlers are expelled, and to make the players happy by doing the preceding two. Policy allows admins to have an established basis to apply a punishment to a problem player, that most players will, at the minimum, recognize that they broke the rule. Without policy, admins must be much more subjective, which will make players resentful, paranoid, and un-trusting of the administration (much more then right now). It also opens up potential power abuse, when the players' fears are sound.
An admin, in my mind,(forgive me for this dumb analogy) should strive to be Good instead of Lawful. Policy is Law, player happiness, order, and integrity of the server is Good. An admin will find it very hard to be Good over Lawful if there is no policy to back their claims that the person is in fact detrimental to the playerbase. The ban/warning/note/etc will be contested by others who believe the admin is abusing their power, by both player, and admin. Without policy, it is very hard for an admin who means well to be just.
If we do have strong, well written, and clear policies, then all players will know what is expected of them, and most players will accept when another player has rightfully broken the rules and been punished for it. There will always be complainers and such, but I imagine there will be less, as "admin is abusing his powers by banning this guy unfairly" won't show up a lot if the ban is actually justified, because there is a policy backing the admin's decision to remove the player, and that the policy is objective.
For an example, another admin asked me what to do, when a player is knocked out, but not dead, sees another player drag them to maintenance and kill them. The player did not see them at all while conscious. The player is cloned, then outs his murderer/goes to robust him, using knowledge he acquired while he passed out to determine the person. The admin asked me if they should do anything to them. Here is the problem.
There is technically no policy against knowing what happens while knocked out (NOT DEAD).
The following below assumes that the admin assumes that using that information IC is not good. As there is no established policy, it is hard to be Good over Lawful. 'Punish' can range from asking them to stop, adding a note, or banning them.
The admin has limited options, most of which will result in a poor outcome for the admin, and justice won't be served, assuming the admin thinks that using that metaknowledge is bad, which I would agree. The admin could,
- Punish the metagamer under rule zero, or one - Those are very weak policies and punishments are unlikely to stick if the punished contests the ban publicly.
- Punish the metagamer under an extension of the 'Don't use dead knowledge IC' - This is very debatable, as you're not technically dead, and the game allows you to see what's going on, with names and all.
- Punish the metagamer under 'No metagaming' - This is possibly the second weakest policy, as it is very, very subjective, and faces the same problems as rule zero or one.
- Ask a Headmin to create a policy which disallows knowing what happens while KO'd - More policy is seen as a bad thing to some players and some admins. This also takes a lot of time, assumes the headmins all agree that such a policy is needed, and the metagamer will get away unless he was punished, carrying the above problems, unless they are retroactively punished, which carries it's own problems. The result is slow, and the metagamer is likely to get away at least once, which is not Good.
- Do nothing - The metagamer harms the server, the admin doesn't 'lose' anything but is unjust, and is a failure in my eyes.
Please note that I don't necessarily want 'more' policy (it's inevitable that some things will need to be added, however, chiefly the unspoken rules). I want 'better' policy. Some rules/policies like no metagaming and AI policy are doomed to be subjective, with the only alternative being a really big lawbook of policy, which helps but is off-putting to some.
Here's a rundown of how I think most of the main policy strength is.
- Admins may disregard any of these rules at their discretion when they feel its in the best interest of the current round/server/playerbase at large.
- Very weak, makes players afraid.
- Very weak, rule is ignored often due to 'acceptable dickery'.
- Very weak, what is playing to win? Everyone has their own opinion.
- Fairly strong, is enforced, some disagreements.
- Strong, used to be stronger but still acceptable.
- Very weak, nobody has the same idea of what metagaming is.
- Strong, ban is quickly lifted, contesting (someone else's ban) is unheard of.
- Moderate, in decline lately due to LELFANNYALLCAPSNAMES.
- Our strongest policy, with good reason.
- Fairly weak, admins are still fallable, and players can post on the forums to have it looked at again, contradicting the rule. I consider this just and disagree with the rule.
- Very weak, where is the line drawn?
CDB, in his recent jobban thread, argues that he is banned on grounds of subjectivity, IE 'he is a shit player/he's poison to the server/etc', rather then objectivity, such as breaking a policy which is objective, IE 'you broke rule X, you're jobbanned for Y days/forever'. I am neutral on CDB's ban, but he does have a point. There is no strong policy that he can be punished for, only rule zero/one, which is weak and subjective, so it causes strife from players who disagree. This happens every time an admin uses rule one or zero.
Usednapkin, when he was previously appealing his permaban, argued that the administration does not wish to unban him on grounds of subjectivity. His permaban was appealed after a shitstorm. He is now a good player.
Oldman Robustin, when he was banned (a lot) because of alledged metagaming. Metagame policy is a very weak policy, and subjective at that too. Shitstorm after shitstorm until his past was forgiven.
I'm not saying any of these people deserve to be banned or not, but there have been cases of bans I feel were justified being contested due to weak policy. I will not name anyone, but it is a problem. With a strong policy, those bans may or may not have occurred, especially Oldman's, which is good if you believe that those bans were unjust.
I do not think getting rid of policies and replacing them with one will solve anything, rather, it will make much, much more problems ahead. I'd like to hear what you think. Again, I am neutral on those past bans(I'm not even involved for most of them). Having all of our policies strong and clear will both allow admins more power to protect the server, and protect players from abusive admins, as we have policies too (they're weak too!).
