The purpose of this post is to propose a policy that headmins rule on ban appeals based on rules, and any reinterpretation or additions they think should be added should take effect at the time they are decided, and not be used to justify a ban. I consider rules to be as much if not more for protecting rule following players from bans as they are for banning shitters. If justification for bans doesn't come from the rules, then whether or not an action is bannable depends solely on who is in power at the moment. There would be no way to know whether or not an action would be allowed, except for knowing how the admins thought. What actions are bannable and which are not should be resolved by looking at the rules, as this will allow players to know which actions will get them banned and which are allowed. New headmins who seek to change things should do this by changing the rules, thus giving players warning about what is no longer allowed. Grey areas appearing is inevitable, but for actions that don't merit a rule 0 type response, the action should be make a solid ruling on it, even if the ruling invokes admin discretion, and let the player go with a warning. Players who repeatedly seek out loopholes can be dealt with through rule 7. I would consider making a new ruling to a player's benefit on a ban appeal to be OK, but punishing someone for actions that were allowed at the time should not be done.
The first ruling that bothered me was the reinterpretation of escalation. I won't argue that escalation policy as it is currently written is good. It's horrible. An escalation system that allows you to gib or otherwise permanently remove someone from the round for disarm spamming them to try to steal a tool is fundamentally flawed. But that is the way it is written. The key part of the rule states "If you are the instigator in a conflict and end up killing or severely impairing the round of the person you are fighting, you should make a reasonable effort to return them to life at least once or make amends, ONLY SEEKING ROUND REMOVAL IF THEY CONTINUE TO PURSUE YOU. THIS PROTECTION DOESN'T APPLY TO AN INSTIGATOR BEING KILLED." The rule clearly states that while the victims of a crime are safe from permanent round removal, the instigators receive no protection. In spite of this, multiple people have been banned for removing people from the round. Eskjjlj is one example, as was Spyroshark, assuming he had good reason to know the roboticist was coming for him. An example of how things ought to play out can be seen in Wesoda25's ban appeal. In it, he killed and spaced a man for destroying two Christmas trees. In the end, it was decided that this wouldn't be allowed in the future, but Wesoda25 wouldn't be punished, as he was acting in good faith. This is how the approach to round removal should be changed, not by making something retroactively bannable.
The second ruling is the major reinterpretation of rule 1.5, resulting in a ban. The point of this post isn't whether the headmins new definition of it is good or bad, but that it is too different from what is written to be considered interpretation or the spirit of the rule, and therefore shouldn't have applied to actions taking place in the past. This is the part of the headmins decision that is most important to this topic:
Rule 1.5 reads: "Players who attempt to break into the captain's office, head of personnel's office, or the bridge at or near roundstart for no legitimate reason put themselves at risk for being legitimately killed by the captain, heads of staff, or security." As the rule is very specific about the locations covered, captain's office, head of personnel's office, and the bridge, the people allowed to respond, captain, heads of staff, and security, and the incident required, I believe the rule is meant to be taken at a much more literal level, including the time frame limitation included for punishment, that is, none. From how the rule is worded, I believe the intent of it was to discourage shitters from breaking into the captain's office at roundstart while the captain is trying to secure the disk and do other important things by making it valid in a similar vein to killing pets and talking as a mime. Another issue I have with the time frame is that other rules would make anyone breaking in at round start valid, namely escalation and acting like an antag. While I believe the current escalation rules came after rule 1.5 and so wouldn't have been considered in it's creation, the rule that people acting like an antag can be treated like one is old. Anyone caught breaking into the locations listed could definitely be expected to be an antagonist. It doesn't make sense that a rule making people breaking into these specific places valid to these specific people would be limited to a time period already covered by another rule. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect anyone to interpret it in the way described by the headmins unless they were told ahead of time, and therefore they should have been ruled on it before banning someone for it.Nervere wrote:The reason why we have this protection in place for heads of staff and security is because there's always that round where some shitter hacks open some door in bridge or captain's quarters and all hell breaks loose. In situations like these, security needs the extra leeway to defend themselves and heads of staff from people breaking in. However, this same privilege granted to security does not carry over 15-20 minutes after the crime has happened, especially if the person has not acted antagonistic since then. Sure, the criminal is still open to full punishment - the factor of time does not change this. However, taking it upon yourself to stun + cremate them as soon as you find them is excessive behavior that stems from approaching the game from a validhunting mindset. Such an approach to the situation wasn't the right response and, dare I say, violated the spirit of the precedent.
In summary: I feel like headmins have been making retroactive ruling on ban appeals to the detriment of the server. Bans should result from rules that existed at the time of the initial ban, not major reinterpretations of the rules. The escalation and rule 1.5 bans are examples which I believe would damage the server if they become a pattern. I don't know the admins' side of this, but I would like to hear their response.
tl;dr: Admins rulings should take effect when they are made and should not be retroactive.
*edit: added clarification as to what time frame limitation referred to
