Scheveningen

I'm fine with this. I don't have an issue gating it behind the head of staff whitelist, though I'm starting to think at least it needs a better term than 'command whitelist' now. The only unfortunate thing about this is that we'll see a downtick of malf rounds, but seeing as how malf rounds have a tendency to miss more than they hit the mark for quality roleplay, I'd much rather have fewer malf rounds that have a higher effort value being put forward by AI players. Whether new or old to the role.

Both of those accomplish the same thing. One of them is just less convenient. Don't really see the point in doing anything other than the most convenient option.

Definitely a discretionary thing. Similar situations will pop up but with a specific department-centered lens. I.e., xenobio outbreak -> sci officer is the first to be yelled at to do something helpful about it. 1 major thing that makes me not really persuaded to like this change as much is the complete fracturing of communication between the various department officers and the 'actual' security department. It's extremely awkward to have to walk/use a PDA/risk using the common channel to report a mistake/failure that occurred or something similarly too sensitive to broadcast over the common channel, particularly if the expectation is that you're all supposedly on the same team. Instead, it seems more clear that the divisions driven between members of the security team are there intentionally, and likely to keep them that way in the short and long term. There is also an issue I see happening where the departmental officers will find themselves either intentionally or unintentionally left out of the loop of what the 'actual' security department is up to. Given the lack of a streamlined method of communication dedicated to the team unit, this is something I guarantee will happen.

@LorenLuke Please be courteous and do not hijack the topic to angle it into the direction of discussing staff accountability, which has very little to do with what is being actively discussed. That is not the subject of this thread, I do not appreciate you taking a very separate tangent away from what the original topic entails. I would encourage you to make a separate topic yourself in the Policy Suggestions subforum, alternatively you should open staff complaints against specific individuals. @Skull132 I personally don't want admins/mods to become soulless automatons. All I ask is they at least keep courtesy in mind in engagement of ideas/discussion just like any other community member should be held to the same guideline. You can mix being casual, relaxed while also cordial and nice at the same time without causing any issues or confusion. I don't want staff to moderate jokes, but obviously I don't want people who are shitposting with malicious intent to get nothing for their efforts either. It'd be a super tall order to not only expect staff to be professional but enforce the same, bland and boring standard upon the entirety of the playerbase, which would absolutely not go very well. I remember post-FFrances era moderators/admins ruling with the iron fist and suffice to say, it wasn't often very fun to have to deal with that. Re; Bad days. I'm a major proponent that such things exist and that sometimes people get a little mean or start venting over it. However I do believe that such people having a bad day should at least understand they have options to take a break and calm down. I know it isn't always as easy as that, but moderators/admins should at least attempt to ask the person who blew up to see what the context of what was happening, and why it happened, and how it could be prevented from happening again. Naturally, I think if people start using 'I had a bad day' as a common excuse, they should find themselves realizing that the 'bad day' excuse stops working the more overused it becomes over a period of time. Re; enforcement. I would at least think those two steps are the best initial steps towards a good direction. I am satisfied with staff feedback to this thread, since the first step to fixing a problem is recognizing it. If nobody has any specific ideas to post by next Wednesday, this can be locked up and processed.

I really wish I knew this. Sorry man, I fucked up here.

Re; Word policing. The intention of the initial thread or anything I've written after that is not to strictly ban the word "retard" or any such slur. If it came off as such; woops, my bad. I'll take responsibility for being unclear. If someone wishes to discuss the word in a context that isn't strictly name-calling or belittling an idea someone has, that's fine, but if it is within those guidelines, a mod/admin should be permitted to, under the pretense of investigating whether the comments are effectively harassing another individual or making them feel unwelcome, attempt to moderate that post if the post is reported. I am not going to again qualify when and where exactly it is appropriate within the rules to use a slur or an insult to express one's ideas, because I have already expressed my opinion in where I would personally take issue with it. It should be up to the enforcing staff member to figure out "how much" they should discipline the matter. I do not care whether a statement is offensive or not. An individual can drop "nigger" (sorry, sake of example) into a heated discussion because they were frustrated - and the only thing I would care about in that act of them doing that is the total derailment of the subject and the eventual, toxic result that happens anyone drops the N-word bomb. Someone could call me that and I would not care. I do not fit the criteria of what constitutes of that slur in the slightest. I am not offended by it, I don't fit in that box. The issue I take with it is that slur was used strictly to derail a conversation, rile people up, and get everyone angry at one another. Zelm can call me a retard all he likes too and I don't take issue with him attempting to apply a label to me that does not stick. The issue I take with it is that he demonstrates through attempting to apply labels to other people/their ideas that he intentionally distracts from discussing the subject matter and the merits of cracking down on derailment tactics and toxicity. As an example, of course, through which he so helpfully demonstrates my point there. Yes, I agree this is a two-way road. Nonetheless, equal amounts of responsibility should be levied onto the individuals who slur-bomb a thread simply to derail it because they don't want to discuss the relevant points in a conversation, and the individuals who were foolish enough to bite the bait and spin the subject onto attacking the guy who slur-bombed a thread. Nobody should care about the slurs and their moral use of them per se, because that in itself is a distraction from the original conversation. It is the fact of the matter that people, whether intentionally or not, use incendiary language to get an emotional response out of people so as to delay reaching a proper conclusion on an issue. This is why I said it is important to be mindful of your words. You do not need to give a shit about another person's feelings. Give a shit about the subject you're participating in, and the conclusion it reaches at its apex. This is a meta subject now, so self-referential that it is ridiculous. Anyway, I'm sure we both agree that too much incendiary language can be a case in itself to investigate, Skull, as you've said. So I won't touch more on how to handle that because you've already demonstrated there's a process as to how that's handled, so that is fine. Yes, I would love bot functions to be able to just hand an incendiary issue to the bot and then the bot hands it off to whichever mod or admin is immediately available.

I think you just successfully made your argument even less agreeable by doubling down and continuing to dig yourself into this grave. Very impressive.

"I'm gonna use a search engine to look up anytime someone has said a word regardless of context, just to goof on people and claim they're hypocrites." What happened to you saying you weren't gonna reply? Didn't you shut down and quit the discussion the moment I tried to dissect the reasoning as to why you were attributing ideas/concepts/actions as "retarded"? This suggestion is asking for reform. A reform to the rules and enforcement of those rules to ensure that the usage of slurs is minimized entirely so that it can facilitate for far more cordial and constructive conversation. You obviously don't care, however, you are not considering any other points but your own. This is the most ridiculous soapboxing I've ever seen, particularly because it doesn't even make sense from your perspective which you have still not even bothered to explain yet as to why you believe it is okay to attribute concepts/ideas/actions as "retarded" as your first choice instead of literally anything else. Are you so unimaginative?

I mean, I think the best way to deal with it, in my opinion, is that direct person-to-person insults should be punished immediately. If ideas are attacked and the language is incendiary, a mod can step in and tell the other person to chill out. If the poster refuses to chill out and continues using incendiary language, that is a rule violation in refusing to listen to moderation/admin staff. But that's assuming I would want to reach common ground with someone who quits the discussion as soon as their reasoning for using incendiary language was getting dissected.

The upside of this is that cargo no longer needs to send a technician into the warehouse alone and unarmed to deal with potential warehouse animals that randomly spawn. Instead, an officer can at least put up a fight as he gets mauled by a bear hiding in a crate.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Idk man. When you use a word it's within a very specific connotation because in the present, words don't tend to have any other definition besides what they have in their typical context. When you call an idea retarded, it creates the unsaid connotation that anyone who agrees with the idea is retarded. You may not have specifically said it and a person will undoubtedly use it as a defense when this gets brought up, but it doesn't resolve the issue of how others will think about when trying to consider your perspective and premise on an issue. This is generally why insulting positions with charged words such as "retarded" is generally a bad idea, because it does the exact opposite of helping people sympathize with your statement. If they already feel strongly about slurs against people, they are most likely not going to be able to imagine how you came to a conclusion in which you judge an idea as "retarded." Like, hypothetical question, right? How did you arrive to calling an idea retarded as a conclusion/premise? Without context it just sounds really bad. When there is context, well, it can vary from being only mildly justifiable to being something that just discredits anyone who holds a similar position on an issue, with similar disparaging language. And this is usually why people prefer not to use disparaging language, because it is a distraction. It is a puff of smoke. A firework crackle. It is noise without salient meaning. Language is a fickle thing. Some people subscribe to Occam's Razor and insists simplicity should be the way to go and not to think too hard on it. But it sort of ignores how some people participate in problem solving and attempting to account for different perspectives. Most of the time I only see people who want their way/the highway when it comes to them marching into a discussion insulting several ideas and disparaging anyone who holds them. I recently been trying to use Occam's Razor as a guideline when it's appropriate, but it's particularly not something that works in every situation, because it creates the opposite result of what I truly want: for everyone to think about what they say to each other. It's understandable to get upset when you feel threatened in some way... but I think too many people are 'tuned' as of late to respond very defensively to different viewpoints or even criticism. And often, defensiveness creates toxic responses. Toxic responses cause more defensiveness and toxic responses from that. It is a vicious, violent cycle that needs to stop.

Above "bad", that works. You can also open up a thesaurus to find other words to use if they seem too stale.

The idea is not to force consensus. The idea is to remove toxicity or to shrink into a non-influential amount, nothing more. That is the only conformity I care to pursue. You will be NJP'd/warned/fired from a job if you call a co-worker's idea "retarded" and a leadership figure witnesses or hears of it. The age of recording makes saying stupid/racist statements career or political suicide in real life. The stakes are far lower when you have the masque of internet anonymity. I'd rather have a "hugbox" where having a toxic tone and toxic way of addressing problems leads to dire consequences over others having the right to make the community a terrible place to exist in.

This is a short topic this time. Thanks to sseth, we've had an explosion of greytide flooding the various servers in the past week. Yes, some people are probably ill-prepared and really do not want to teach new players that much. It is an understandable sentiment, and not everyone is very selfless, because teaching players to do things can be quite draining. Coders can probably relate to this subject the most, but most people have been in the position where they're stuck on a particular step and don't know why a result isn't reproducing the way they want it to. Many programmers have had a "eureka!" moment through experiencing having to explain a problem to a person, often someone with no experience on it, and whilst explaining layman terms to them, they immediately run across the solution to the problem. This is actually a funny story in itself, worth a read even if you have no interest in coding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging Essentially, however, teaching isn't just a thing that only benefits the person being taught. If you can and you find a new player who seems lost, gently pull them aside for a fun lesson or several, especially if you struggle with the field you try to explain. You may come across the answer through trial and error by explaining in the most basic way what the general steps to performing a task are. Likewise, perspective is really amazing. If you feel like you know a lot about the game and have plenty of experience, sign up as a teacher for a round, seek out people in your department to show off your knowledge too. Keep it simple so that you don't have to explain any complexities. Likewise, while it's great to have pride as a teacher, be careful that it doesn't form into an academic's ego. That can cause problems if you don't keep it in check.

You can say an idea is bad without resorting to insults. It is not mincing words to not use insults to make your points. Other people will appreciate you being cordial and getting the same idea across than if you were to act like how a jerk talks to other people, and claim that your mean-spiritedness was only guided towards the ideas, not the person. Too many people abuse this line of logic, especially those that disagree with the premise and are trying to point out how it's wrong. You can argue ideas without calling someone or their idea "retarded." The option has always been there. I want this to be required now.

No. This is either a catch-all or nothing. There will be no more of this, "I can game the rules as much as I like, because I did a thing in bad faith that was clearly different from what the rules explicitly cover." I want no more of that. If you do not come here to make salient points respectfully and intelligently, X out and do not be here until you are in a better, non-insulting mood.

When I refer to rule 1, I mean "don't be a dick." We have too many situations where fights start and end and then grudges grow out of them because the punishment for being a jerk either over the discord or the forums. And the grudges cause additional arguments later down the line because one walks into another situation with an intrinsic negative bias that some dude said some stuff last time that somebody doesn't agree with. This isn't even happening because of the greytide we've had, it is just blowing up all of a sudden right now, but this has always been a problem. This is creating a stigma where both the discord and forums are unfriendly places to be. I've even heard staff members say the general discord is where they'd prefer not to be. There's another thing where staff members prefer to use verbal warnings to tell people to stop attempting to verbally lynch one another, often without success because people continue anyway, because what comes next after a verbal warning that is ignored is just a discord strike. The policies regarding such things should be reformed for first, second and third offenses, and we should push minimum tempbans on people. Right now, toxicity is a self-perpetuating cycle. It needs to get cracked down on, and I personally would like to see some changes. Server-wise: 1. Start handing out warnings that don't expire, minimum, for rule 1 violations. 2. If you accrue two 'don't be a dick' warnings within the course of 6 months, you should earn a weeklong tempban from the server. If you accrue 3, month-long ban. 3. Liberally mute OOC/LOOC/deadchat if it gets bad. Discord-wise: 0. Add a point-severity system for strikes. 1 is mild, 2 is bad, 3 is severe. This allows admins to contextually still use the system based on severity. 1. People who earn 1 strike should be moved to a 'muted' role for 12 hours. 2. People who have 2 active strikes should be moved to the 'muted' role for 3 days. 3. People who have 3 active strikes are automatically banned from the discord and must appeal it. 4. People who make fun of people in the muted role should also join the Cult of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. Forum-wise: 1. The system works fine as-is, but people need to report things and admins should slam down on rule 1 issues harder than most. I don't think the distinction between unfriendly snark and passive-aggressiveness should factor into a different decision, they should both be considered being a dick and punished the same. Telling someone that suicide is an option is obviously far more egregious and would warrant a 3-point strike Oh, and, I don't think point-strikes should apply retroactively. That would feel unfair.

I don't think it was 'just criticism,' do not get me wrong. I'm not completely ignorant that Burger is very capable of blowing things out of proportion, no doubt he's certainly done so here. But even a broken clock can be right at least twice a day. However, don't take too much away from that statement, because it is not so easily qualified in every situation. 1. At the start of this round, your character asked medical for blood bags. This request was odd, and the CMO even asked my character to keep an eye on yours, because it was a really odd request for an assistant to just immediately pipe up asking with. The captain also advised to keep an eye on Butterfill to top it off. We had at least reasonable cause to arrest for suspicious conduct, because that regulation is quite flexible in cases of requesting items that are normally crucial to the medical department in the event someone gets hurt. If a certain blood type is missing when it is needed, it could mean life or death for someone with IB. I insisted we wait and see. 2. Your character then, whether jokingly or not, used the common frequency to declare you were a vampire. I did not take it seriously, personally, but it was a huge pain to hold back the collars of the security personnel answering to my HOS. My character insisted that we wait, again. 3. Your character was spotted later entering the maintenance area near command with a blue toolbox, gas mask and insulated gloves (probable cause for suspicion, again). An officer was dispatched to check up there and see what was going on. Butterfill turned up on the opposite side of the station near engineering, still wearing the aforementioned items. My character insists the appearance was not enough and to wait for something absolutely damning. 4. Butterfill continues to utilize comms to make jokes about them being a vampire. They later enter the brig when my character finally decides we can at least handle the issue as comms abuse + suspicious conduct. 5. Warden finds syringes filled with blood in Butterfill's bag. My HOS tells them to get it forensically analyzed. We find out it's Butterfill's blood and we finally realize all that monitoring was a waste of time. A malf finally shows their hand because the player behind them was new, and tries to do mildly antaggy stuff. The round ends relatively without incident. I do not absolve Burger for being a dick. I have no intention of defending him in the case regarding his tone and I do not support his way of addressing issues, but it doesn't change your character behaved in an extremely weird, antagonistic behavior acting in ways that would obviously get security's attention as an antagonist action. And that is the issue that should be addressed, ultimately. I suggest getting other mods/admins to handle Burger regarding the behavior side of it if you feel so strongly about how he brings up issues to you, because it's definitely actionable in my opinion. Likewise, is it worth it to meltdown back at Burger when he does it to you? You're not better than him for doing that. If you didn't snark back at him, Burger would be the only person to blame here.

I think it'll be fine. The seth greytide will pass in another week. Plus, it'll only be testmerged, so we'll get good feedback out of it. Sec officers may or may not have to get gud in the meantime. New greytide should not be much of a challenge, I don't think.

Gonna put it out there that I was the HOS that round and it was pretty obvious that Garn was antag-baiting. Antag-baiting is when you deliberately attempt to get attention as if you were a specific antag type by deliberately pushing the limits of what you're allowed to do. Other servers have varying interpretations on how to deal with this, such as outright banning people who exhibit antag behavior as non-antag (and thus banning them for self-antagging), or they permit others to deal with them as if they were an antagonist (allowing anyone to be able to punish the individual only ICly for baiting as non-antag, as if they were committing antagonist acts). Given the fact Garn's position as a head administrator and his very inconsistent laissez faire attitude, it wasn't worth the trouble of doing anything more to his character. It's not worth a whitelist strip or worse because of the literal head admin's interpretation of the rules and what constitutes as acceptable, serious roleplay majorly differs from the actual playerbase. Also, wow, nice meltdown, Garn. You surely have your head screwed on tight. If Garn really did blow up after this, he's legitimately shitty for doing that. I don't understand how you can roleplay a low-importance, low-effort character yet get so angry at criticism about your low-effort roleplay as if you actually care. Please also stop using analogies like "poking at the bear" just because you're the head admin. Everyone already knows you're the head admin. You don't need to remind everyone what you're capable of.

sounds ok to me

Chipping in a bit, didn't you do a highlander at most 2 weeks ago, and at least 1 week ago? Because I was there to free Scotland during one of those rounds. While funny, I honestly think highlander should only be done during a vote rather than all of a sudden so that people who are already roleplaying don't have to contend with the person next to them instantly breaking character and then chopping people's heads off. I don't think the concern 'I was already roleplaying' should be dismissed in favor of doing a round-end highlander.

I don't think you should need sprites for this, even if the feature were being considered.

This is great.