This is a thought I've had kicking around in my mind for the last month or so, making all permanent role bans show up on https://tgstation13.org/tgdb/publicbans.php. Permanent Role Bans encompass any job bans, any antagonist bans, and bans from stuff like OOC and AHELPs that do not have any expiration date. Here's a why I think it's a good idea:
The very first reason is that all permanent role bans, if the player wants to get it lifted, must be appealed. All ban appeals are public, and all ban appeals must include the reason for the ban. There is no "waiting out" a permanent ban, if you want it gone, you have to make the reason for it public in your appeal of that ban. I don't see why we should not make it public from the start, because that ties into a few positive outcomes.
- Player Transparency. While other servers resent making logs and several other forms of administrative action public, /tg/ seems to have always prioritized sharing as much information as reasonably possible (without leaking personal information you would not want publicly accessible, like CIDs and IP addresses).
- Policy Failures and Successes: While admins are easily able to look through all the notes and bans and find "problem parts" in our current policy- players are only restricted to knowing what happens at the absolute highest level of punishment (without relevant appeal). Having this information more broadly accessible (with accompanying reason for the ban, and the problematic behavior that required the ban) does provide benefit in that more minds are able to gather this information and apply it in future discussion.
- Role Ban Frequency: Role bans are not trivial when it comes to routine administrative action. They are regularly applied when necessary. There's nothing trivial about the nature of a role ban either, it is indeed a ban.
- Good Neighborship: Smaller servers/other ss13 servers do employ liberal usage of functions like https://centcom.melonmesa.com/, which allows you to look up any bans (server or role) from a collection of larger ss13 servers. It's a good utility, and if there's pertinent information about a problematic player, it's a good idea to disseminate it.
This is indeed plausible, and I do indeed see people in the modern times retain knowledge that someone can not be an antagonist (I recall after one player, Maskenary's first appeal of their antagonist ban viewtopic.php?p=651349#p651349, it was a very common topic leveraged to "dunk" on them when people weren't a fan of their playstyle). They made their ban reason and information public, and I don't doubt some people who are in-the-loop on forums stuff may have secretly applied that train-of-thought in game. It's unprovable, but it's not a conclusion without logic.Wouldn't people be able to "meta" that someone's antagonist banned? Like, you know their ckey, know their static, read the publicbans, and you know precisely what type of antagonist they can not be?
However, this fails to keep one thing in mind. What use is there in knowing if someone is an antagonist or not? Maybe you know not to grab the guy when you're starting up a cult for fear that they become a mindless husk when they get offered up to ghosts? Do you immediately buddy up with them every single shift because you know they can't be bad? If so, how does that ever have an impact on the progression of a round? I might be failing to see something key here, so input is appreciated.
With my current outlook on this though, I don't see this as a complete-blocking barrier.
Firstly, players in good administrative standing request permanent server bans all the time! Just look at the ban appeals forum for "requested", and you'll see. Since it's a requested action, all an admin needs to say is "Requested by player." (could add more if requested by player, but you don't need more than that in essence).This would expose a lot of role bans applied to good faith players by-request.
Secondly, they still have to appeal it. It'll be public that they were role-banned for a while when they reveal the reason for the ban in the appeal.
Thirdly, it allows average joes a key insight: What is so critically un-fun in our current game that people are willing to eat a permanent ban so they never have to touch it again? This concept applies to a lot, and I think having that data be fully accessible (rather than just shuffled around admin channels sometimes) has some intrinsic value to it.
Permanent Role Bans should be accessible publically, much like how we make Permanent Server Bans accessible. From a technical standpoint, I was told it's trivial to amend the publicbans page to include these bans, I just want to hear your thoughts on this.