Azande

In these incidents, I don't think anyone using these terms has maliciously used them as a way to insult someone's sexuality, or race. And I would say this issue is the least important out of all of the issue mentioned. This was originally going to include criticisms of the Admin and Lore Teams as well, but I've become quite tired and couldn't bring myself to do those as well, so the inclusion of any references to those are a bit of a holdover that I thought, for the most part, showed less of a 'Aurora has a racism/homophobia problem' and more of a 'these things are used to police players but not staff' - see the Paradox 'retard' screenshots for context.

Some of the screenshots do lack full context, which is why I encourage people to search the words and times to find the exact sections and come to their own conclusions. It is really difficult to make a nicely formatted forum post outlining discord incidents without having it be 1000 pages long due to how fast discord can move. I am glad you agree on LordFowl, and I think that issue is part of the reason why some concrete actions should be taken to regulate the Dev Team.

I've never had the pleasure of someone insulting me, let alone the staff members that have, get banned. This includes Abo calling me a cunt, Skull and Garn calling me fucking idiot many times, etc. I'm not particularly sour about those specific incidents, but the fact of the matter is that staff get away with being quite rude to players, while players do not get the same courtesy against staff.

Additional screenshots in which Skull clearly himself declares he is using his position to fiat permit misconduct from one group of people, not necessarily Developers but one of them did have an issue with the word faggot for quite some time.

Hello everyone. I am making a thread, I don't expect it to be super large, but I hope it does start a legitimate conversation about how Developers, Administrators, and Moderators treat players. When Aurora first started, staff had incredibly friendly relationships with most players, and seemed outwardly rather helpful and kind. I genuinely enjoyed engaging in the community, sharing thoughts and having discussions. Over the years however, I have noticed a turn towards a staff team that is rude, belligerent, demeaning, arrogant, spiteful, and mean-spirited. This is reflected in both the Admin, Dev and Lore teams in various ways. However, I only have the energy currently to address the Developer side of things. Developers A lot of this comes down to what I believe to be 'developer arrogance'. You can read some articles here about the issue: https://dev.to/lucagrandicelli/are-we-pretentious-and-arrogant-361l https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/06/12/this-is-the-absolute-worst-trait-in-a-software-engineer/#109216f91964 https://www.quora.com/Why-are-a-lot-of-programmers-so-arrogant My own partner is in the late stages of his computer science education, and I'm quite familiar with his social group's own developer arrogance as well, and I believe it has led to a severe behaviour pattern going all the way up to Skull132 and Arrow themselves. The following are issues I believe, and others I have spoke to believe, exist with developers; If a developer is capable, and liked enough by Skull or Arrow, they are essentially immune from being banned for anything short of major grief. We have seen so many developers that are toxic and publicly rude to players, whom are never punished. It is only when they begin to get as racey as suggesting racial inferiority (Nanako) or consistent bullying of other players (LordFowl/Pacmandevil) that they are either removed, or flee the community themselves. Developers get away with being so incredibly rude to non-developers and non-staff. They regularly insult and demean people that do not code, they call people retards, autists, stupid motherfuckers, dumbasses, etcetera, usually when the person is either making an argument about something they don't fully understand because they don't have all the information - it is okay to CORRECT people - it is not okay to bully, demean and insult them because they are wrong. Skull132 does this the most. Skull132 as Head Developer exists in a place of nigh un-touchability. He is the server host, and aside from Arrow - there is nobody capable of challenging his control over the server, but Arrow is equally a part of the developer problem. The result is this, a HeadDev that is incredibly rude, mean and insulting to players, quite often, that cannot be removed by anyone except his close colleague and friend who is complacent, overseeing a team of regularly rude and mean people, whom he (Skull132) has not impetus or desire to actually moderate regularly until they begin to draw mass public ire (LordFowl, Nanako), and even then - he usually just claims he resolved the issue and continues on with life. If ANY player talked in an ahelp to staff the way that Development staff regularly talk with players (referring to them as autists or retards or stupid or idiots), they would be either banned temporarily, or banned permanently. This same standard should be held for malicious insulting off-server, and on the development staff. Here are a selection of staff complaints in which developers were overly rude or mean, and not appropriately punished in a way a player would be: https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11647-staff-complaint-lord-fowl/ https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11585-staff-complaint-lord-fowl/ https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11404-staff-complaint-skull132/ https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11487-staff-complaint-lordfowl/ https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11058-staff-complaint-lordfowl/ https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/12887-staff-complaint-skull132/ https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/14373-an-essay-regarding-transparency-which-is-also-kind-of-a-staff-complaint-i-guess/ (This one is still active, but I doubt anything will occur). Reading through all of these complaints took time, and I personally suggest you take a look at all of the images and evidence shared, and then at the result of the complaints. They portray lots of rudeness, and then basically no punishment. I also wish to share the following screenshots regarding how developers behave and talk in the discord, some of these go back to 2018 - but ultimately, if players can be banned for having to much notes from years past, staff as a whole should be accountable to continuous and historic behaviour trends. In here, you will see Developers insulting people, not being properly punished for it, and when reported to their superior, completely ignored. Note: Because of Forum Formatting issues, the screenshots are in a spoiler at the bottom. Possible Solutions A clear, publicly available, code of conduct on top of the rules that Development Staff (and other staff) must adhere to, as clearly the rules are not enough. Violation of these should result in removal from the DevTeam, period. If players get banned for this conduct regularly, staff should also see punishments. Extend Moderator/Admin Authority to policing the Project, Suggestion and Github areas, for the sake of keeping Developers and Maintainers adherent to the rules. The Development Team has a unique little Kingdom in these three areas, where they are the law and are only really answerable to Skull132 or Arrow - this is no longer sufficient, and they should be accountable in all of these areas. Reduce Skull132's role, authority and position in Aurora. I am incredibly thankful for him having essentially created the Aurora community, and I respect his knowledge and thought processes greatly. However, he is regularly disrespectful to regular players, and even fellow staff, pretty frequently. I believe that the control over the server hosting stuff should be separated between the Dev and Admin Team. One Head Admin should be a 'Host' and one Head Developer should be a 'Host'. Prevent Administrators from also holding the rank of 'Maintainer'. This provides far too much job security, and as shown in MattAtlas' case in a complaint above and a screenshot below, only enables them to demean other people and not actually care about how they present themselves. Because they are a senior developer role, administration staff can't properly handle their conduct, and as mentioned before, HeadDevs have been reluctant to actually handle the conduct of Dev Staff. We should not be allowing the collection of high-ranking positions in staff teams. Establish a clear Administration Team policy of punishing Development Staff with bans, both discord and game and community, when they break the rules as much and as often as they do. I am not saying that any current Dev has been breaking them 24/7 recently, but we have experienced this in the past with LordFowl, and instead of ever being punished severely, he was allowed to remove himself from the community. Disclaimers and Disclosures I am not making this post out of spite, anger, or a desire for 'revenge', I am hoping to start a real public discussion on this issue because over the years I have spoken to numerous players that have shared these thoughts on the Development Team. I was recently (as of today), permabanned from Aurora for front-lining as Captain (complaint in dispute), so my ability to partake in the continued discussion of this issue may be hampered, but as long as I am able I will try to participate, and I hope others (including Development and Admin staff) will too. I am hoping this thread will not be instantly locked and archived away without a proper discussion being allowed, and I'm hoping this thread will not result in vitriol and insults being thrown my way. One of the screenshots provided lacks context, this is because the fast nature of discord makes some things hard to screenshot as a hole and I don't have the energy to edit, I am specifically referring the Skull - Boirealis screenshot, I encourage you to search for that section in the discord and read the previous conversation, where I was expressing (genuinely in a polite manner, while also thanking the Devs for their hard work), a dissatisfaction with how the Development Team does not really have a coordinated goal (this was Pre-NBT being a serious or actual thing). The reason I am sharing this screenshot is because it is a perfect example of Skull132's own personal arrogance and mismannered approach to interacting with people that may not know a lot about how development works. I stand by my belief that all community members, no matter how computer/code inept, do deserve to politely share their thoughts and not be belittled for it. Period.

1. Yes, whataboutism, because you never get punished for your bad behaviour. 2. Yes, I do, I've also been playing for five years, and play a dozen or more rounds a day almost every day (except for month breaks) for those five years. That is thousands of rounds, many of which are stressful or late at night. I have successfully appealed or staff complainted away most of my bans or warnings, and 98% of my warnings are from before 2019 to my knowledge. I would love to know how many of my notes are from 2019 and 2020, if you can show that I have a lot in the last year, then I will be happy to admit I have had an issue changing, but I don't believe that is the case, at all. 3. Columbo was with me for personal protection, and it is perfectly safe for me to order him to attack from a distance. I can stand an entire screen away from someone and safely utilize columbo, and I had him for a majority of the round. If I wanted to fight cultist, I would've taken a laser rifle or carbine for myself the entire time. I stuck with my energy pistol, which I only had to charge once the entire round, inside of the security lobby. Once, ONE TIME. I fired that little amount of shots. This entire ban is based on you not perceiving the situation properly.

BYOND Key: XanderDox Staff BYOND Key: Alberyk Game ID: Unknown Reason for complaint: Permabanned me without sufficient cause. Evidence/logs/etc: Additional remarks: 2. My History Alberyk is correct, I do have notes and warnings regarding frontlining as Captain. In the heat of the moment when half of your security team has died or become injured, it is hard not to rush to help them with your armour and firearm. However, my warnings and notes are all from a year or more ago. In fact, I am fairly certain my last warning regarding frontlining as Captain was issued in 2018. These are far in the past, and do not reflect a consistent pattern of behaviour at all. I play SS13 and Aurora daily, and pardon for a few months that I take for breaks - I have played a thousand, if not thousands of rounds of Aurora over my lifetime, if there was a pattern of behaviour, I would have hundreds of notes on this specific issue from the last two years. To my knowledge, I do not. 3. Alberyk's False Information Alberyk is wrong. Security was not fine, in fact - Security's warden was legless and in medical, a cadet turned into a mutineer and killed an officer and maimed the Warden, and the aforementioned officer was dead. This is where I first responded, I rushed to the scene of the active battle because security was losing, security losing against a murder cult mutiny = everyone dying, that is not a good thing. I'll also note, we were missing TWO OFFICER SLOTs at this time. I responded in two other incidents, the aforementioned cadet broke free from medical, and all of security rushed to detain them. I tailed behind, stayed behind them, and as soon as I saw the cadet was putting up a good fight, I ducked into maintenance, and then retreated to a safe distance to watch. In another incident, a dionae escaped, got a laser rifle, shot up the detective, and was shooting up officers. I went to assist, stood back until the dionae was properly down, and then I helped kill the nymphs. As a possible fourth incident, I was walking BY the kitchen when it was reported the chefs were causing issues. An Officer began tustling with them, went down, and I think I didn't even end up firing a shot here because the bartender stepped in and saved the officer. I just stood by and watched in case I was needed. Security resources were stretched extremely thin this entire round. By the time Alb had messaged me, things were starting to calm down - yes. But that does not mean I can just abandon direct monitoring of the situation. I want to be clear, I did not abandon my command duties to frontline, I was sticking near and behind security in all incidents except those where security were actively dying (one incident), and I provided regular announcement updates to crew, to the other command member via command channel, had the AI update central and always sent an update fax myself. I also helped deliver weapons to security a few times because the Warden was in Medical, and security needs weapons to fight a mutinous CULT. Tl;dr, Alberyk's ban reason is just false, and he is either lying purposefully, or truly just did not have a good capture on the stability of the round or security at the time. 4. Regarding Captains It is my personal belief that when the going gets tough, there is no reason for a captain with armour and a firearm, who is trained to use it, not to support their struggling security force against an active armed rebellion - especially when said Captain is taking the added precaution of remaining behind Security at a safe distance, and only engaging when officers start dying. I was not hit or harmed a single time this round, because I was careful, observant, and only engaged from a distance and only when absolutely required. Sitting at the cameras in the bridge all rounds would have accomplished the following: 1. Security would not have gotten laser rifles or live magazines. 2. Officer Breacher would have been murdered. 3. Warden Black would have been murdered. 4. I would not have been able to directly interact or RP with anyone, just giving occasional directions via the channels (which I was already doing on the move). 5. CCIA might have gotten one extra fluff 'we're still fighting the mutiny' report, beyond the two provided. Me directly engaging in the round by not hiding in the bridge the entire time did accomplish the following: 1. I got to roleplay dragging the very heavy Officer Breacher to robotics away from combat zones. 2. I got to directly interact and talk to other crew. 3. I was able to stay directly aware of most situations, while also staying at a safe distance from them. 4. I was able to dynamically support security by observing their ammunition and firearm needs, and thus provide direct and quick service to them. 5. I made myself a difficult, but still feasible target for the antagonists. It is not fun for a cultist, or any antag really, to have to breach through multiple doors, blastdoors, secure shutters and all just to reach a turtled Captain, whom by the time they are reached, probably has their OP Armour Hardsuit on, and their gun at the ready, if not prepared to teleport away. By being visible and out and about, I made myself a piece to be lost, and properly gave the antags an edge in their mission - while still considering my own safety, location and role. I believe this is a basic obligation of command - to be an accessible, but still difficult target, for antagnoists. Hiding in a bunker does NOT accomplish this. The Goal of this Complaint I wish to be un-permabanned, as I believe if I am in the wrong, this is still an extensive punishment, it should have been a whitelist strip. If determined to be in the right, I want to be un-permabanned, and have my command whitelist restored.

@TehFlaminTaco if you're working on this, should it be moved to projects? Owo

Put them in a code box.

I believe there is a way to save an active sprite as a .dmi? If so, all that would be required is launching a test server, spawning some naked generic xeno crew, having the AI hologram them and saving their sprite.

What can I say? Owen is basically universally loved across the entire server. His characters are iconic, he is always, always calm and collected and measured in his thoughts and arguments. He has filled this role and CCIA Leader before, and I think he did amazingly each time. Owen would be a great asset to the staff team in any measure, but his good nature and ability to seemingly never lose his cool makes him an unparalleled candidate for moderator. The hardest of +1's.

I imagine this would be implied due to Command being Command and thus having final say on all station operations. HoS or Captain could override as they are the other signing authorities.

Avowals are ass-hard to get because it is difficult to have 1. A head of your department you're familiar with and 2. A Captain you are familiar with, both on at one time. This will remedy that a bit by providing new people to seek out for help. Avowals used to require the signature of: 1. A Head of Staff 2. The Captain OR an IAA Now, IAA has been removed from the server and the avowal process. However, the description of the NT Liaison being able to secure contract extensions, and fluff legal paperwork, and responsible for talking to employees about their aspirations and experience make them sound like the perfect role to be able to provide an authorizing signature on an Avowal of Responsibility. Basically: give NT Liaison the ability to sign in place of Captains on avowal of responsibility, but not in place of the promoting Head of Staff. Additionally, give HOPs this as well, since their job is personnel management.

This is a suggestion for Medical, and encouraging CSIs to interact with them is not a bad thing. I didn't originally consider CSIs but we could give them a hybrid machine so they have their DNA scanner and a blood scanner in one.

Basically, blood testing takes two seconds - you take a syringe, inject one of the round start mass-spectrometers available in the department, and get your results. Or, for viruses, you scan the patient and it says 'VIRAL PATHOGEN DETECTED'. I don't think either of these are cool or RP-ee. My suggestion is to remove handheld spectrometers entirely (reagent scanners can stay I guess, or be merged into this) except as a product of science. To replace them, Biochemistry will be given a DNA Scanner machine like the CSI has, but this is only for sprites. This one will be labelled the 'Mass Spectrometer' , and require a vial of 15u (standard syringe) blood to give a proper read out. After 20-30 seconds, it will print out a report detailing all trace chemicals in the blood, and if a viral pathogen has been detected. If any known counter-agent to a poison is known as common medicine, it will also be listed on the sheet under 'Possible Treatments' (such as Dylovene to Sopoforic/Chloral Hydrate) This means doctors will have to interact with biochemists (the lab component of medical) for blood tests, and will no longer be able to instantly identify and counteract a poison in the blood (which basically makes poison useless on board).

P.S I will offer any competent coder that completes this and gets it merged into Aurora $50 in bribe money.

This is a counter suggestion to: I think having an entire mini-holodeck in medical for training would not get enough use, take up space, and be a bit silly. They also draw a lot of power and require a lot of mapping. Instead of this, I suggest simply giving all four medical OR Tables (Surgery 1, 2, Autopsy and Virology Autopsy) a 'Holo Training' feature, that can be interacted with via a UI or verbs/drop down menu. Once enabled, the holo training feature would allow you to select a holographic mannequin form of any species, and allow you to conduct surgeries on these while simulating actual vitals and responses to your work. A possible additional feature would be implementing it so when created, you can choose to spawn the holographic mannequin with pre-determined surgical issues like broken bones, lung damage, etc, to give a better live element to it. What would be required for this is: - Isolating generic holo-sprites for all crew species - Creating code to support all of this - Perhaps some new sprites for the OR tables when put into holo-mode so it looks cool.

@Garnascus you mentioned this the other day you should totally show this thread to CCIA.

I mentioned this to @Alberyk ages ago, and he approved it being done in chat at that time, but I don't know if his opinion has changed. IAA was replaced with NT Rep, IAA had the authority to sign injunctions (orders against certain conduct) in order to help them resolve complaints, investigations and audits. NT Rep was promised to be a combination of IAA, but with more freedom and leeway to roleplay, so I think this authority should be brought over formally in regs pages and the paperwork. As a note, NT Reps are still whitelisted head of staff players, and I believe they can be trusted to use this responsibly and within the oversight of station command.

Boop?

People that get assistants to sign waivers to be outright harmed like this get in trouble and so does the assistant. It is not logical to sign up knowing you will get shot and hurt, even if you are going to be treated.

Going to redirect this complaint to be solely at Tbear, in response to the others mentioned whom have clarified they were not actually involved in the decision.

I'll go on to say that I never encouraged Security to arrest Omen, I did not try to track him after this determination, and in my mind at worst he was in violation of a small regulation about misuse of confiscated equipment. It wasn't a priority mass-terrorism issue, it was a small 'wow I figured the mystery out guys!' moment, that honestly made me feel pretty cool cuz it was kinda like detective work. Only for me to get shat on with a warning just three minutes after.

My issue is two fold. This is not metagaming, and its policing the wording of a single sentence that I uttered once in the round. The evidence I had was conjecture and inductive-reasoning based. But it's 'shakiness', should've been punished ICly by the crew members involved, not OOCly by staff - because no metagaming, or any other rule break, occured. I genuinely took IC information and made an IC statement, in character as an AI that was connecting dots.

I'll respond to this, despite it being irrelevant as it's not related to the warning. Jackie Roberts broke into the bridge, and robbed the Captains Office. A few minutes later, she talked over the Command Channel, while holding traitor equipment and the beside the encryption keys she had just taken out of her headset to replace with the captain's. She caught my attention, purposefully, as I was the only person on the Command channel. When I jumped to them, they were holding a HephIndustries Banshee hardsuit, she entered the Medical lift, I locked it - and she took out an Energy Pistol that was also stolen from the captain's office. I informed Security of all of this, and for the next 15 minutes, they never searched her or arrested her. Zhang-Shen does not refuse orders unless danger is involved or it's a highly secure location (Head of Staff Office, Armoury, Engine, Vault, AI Core, etcetera). I let anyone into anywhere they ask to go into as long as they are crew, and not an active escaping criminal. You can confirm this by asking the various service and science crew members that I allow into various places every round as Zhang-Shen. No metagaming ever occured. Both antagonists called my direct attention to them, while they had either contraband/stolen items, or were wearing identifiable gear that allowed further inductive reasoning. I've been told ICly and OOCly many times that Zhang-Shen is a really good AI, and I've been enjoying playing them.