Frances

Nah, the example of rainbow Tajarans wasn't a point on biology. I was just attempting to illustrate the kind of stuff players will do with Tajarans. Rai came covered in blue "body paint" a while ago, and we have a sometimes-pink Tajaran (through genetics) to this day. I'm also really not surprised, because, furries and their multicolored foxes. The problem with rebellious Tajarans, as I've stated, is that they would be shunned at large, realistically. However, on the station, I highly, highly doubt that any would give a damn, given the pack (kek) mentality that Tajarans have been displaying as of late, as well as many players' complete reluctance to discriminate on "moral" characters (and most Tajarans I've seen are, surprisingly, very moral. At least among themselves.) At this point, the next argument is on the utility of the lore, especially if it forces people into a playstyle that they don't like. But should we change Tajaran lore to make it furpile-land? Some might argue that yes, but I hope you can see why I'd personally be opposed to that. No problem, always glad to help!

You can hide homosexuality. You can hide a lot of things, such as being transgender as long as you can pass for the opposite sex. What you can't hide is a ridiculous hairdo. And it would be safe to assume you would be judged by the Tajaran community as a whole. It's like, if say, you were part of an overseas colony or mission during the age of exploration, and started wearing dresses as a man. Sure, the natives wouldn't give a damn, but your fellow Europeans would judge you. That's for the lore explanation. As for why this is hard-coded, it's Sue's decision. Ultimately, though, what Jackboot is saying (and what I think Sue fears) is that a noticeable amount of Tajaran players have done very silly things with the species, mostly appearance-wise. We've had blue and pink Tajarans, Tajarans that act in all sorts of ways that have little to do with their original lore, and so on. (And I suspect most of this is due to the "fursona" appeal, but don't quote me on it.) There's very few interesting narratives you can write for a Tajaran with weird hair (maybe they're a rebellious teenager? See, it sounds kinda silly), and a lot of terrible ones. So the restriction removes the potential for terrible ones, while... not getting rid of much else. (Have a good idea why a Tajaran would grow out his hair? Post it!) Another problem to consider is that a Tajaran going against his or her species' social norms would be shunned to great extents - think 1950s white America - while the on-server Tajaran population is extremely progressive and friendly (to other Tajarans), and probably wouldn't care much about enforcing the lore if it meant they could be the unique, welcoming and non-judgmental Tajarans. So it's not a biological restriction, but it basically goes this way: "No sane male Tajaran would grow out his hair. All male Tajarans on station are sane." Not my personal point of view, but trying to help clarify the purpose of the change. If I've gotten anything wrong feel free to correct me.

That wasn't really clear to me at all in your initial post, but now that I can understand what you meant it does make a lot more sense. I don't have any issues with Gollee either, for me this complaint was primarily about the rule. While I don't think it should have been enforced in this particular instance despite lack of any special clauses (this might be the very first case of somebody posting info that way? Idk), it's really not the end of the world if it was. It's more about situations like these in general, and I don't want to fault Gollee too much.

You're the second person to explain the argument constructively (and for those who are getting annoyed at the length of the complaint, I think it'd prolly be shorter if we could just focus on that). So anyway, thank you. My issue (it's been the same from the start) is that this way of thinking sort of overcomplicates things. I've been given a list of four people to PM (Doomberg, Gollee, Jenna and you), and it's hard for anyone to know who will be around (sometimes people go on leaves for weeks, or disappear for even short periods of time for no reason at all.) It would be much easier for me to simply post the information directly. (It'll need to be verified either way, so that particular detail is irrelevant.) And the argument against this (that other people will see non-mods posting and think they can post for anything as well) seems like a rather weak one, because 1. I think most people would be smart enough to see the difference between the info shared here and any random OOC post and 2. it takes half a second to delete an actual unwanted post.

I was paraphrasing Doomberg to show the issues I found with his post/judgement. Is it possible we might have misunderstood each other?

I've provided a rather lengthy explanation why I disagree with the enforcement of the rule in this specific case. I actually managed to have a rather civil discussion about it with Japak. And now I'm faced with this one-liner. What are you hoping to achieve by posting this? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I genuinely don't understand your aim.

What I'm getting from this: "The rules are the rules! We're enforcing the rules because we have the authority! I don't need to explain myself to you, and you have issues!" "Even if the rule accomplishes nothing in a particular case, it should be respected, damned be intents and effects!" "You're lucky you didn't face greater consequences!" "I'm not gonna address the last thing you said, but I'd very much like this to be over with!" I just can't spin any of those things any other way. I don't think anyone can. I'd very much like not to fight with you, I'd love for everyone to get along, and to not constantly be painted as "that subversive element who always disagrees with the rules", but... what the hell, man. Look at how you come off.

I would agree under normal and intelligent circumstances, but unfortunately I think time and again people have proven that those circumstances don't apply. They see a reply and forget what the post was about or whatever and still point and say "See? They did it." As for what prevents admins from doing that... nothing. But if the admins wanted to do it, they could anyway even without the rule, it would just mean they'd have to explain themselves each time instead of simply pointing to the rule and going "that's why, the end." Personally, I trust the admins/forum mods to make the right decisions regarding posts and the handling thereof. That said, people make mistakes, which is exactly why we have a separate section like this for fixing those mistakes. Like now. You believe Gollee made a mistake and here we are discussing it. This rule I don't see an issue with but only because we unfortunately have alot of newcomers who want to come and exploit whatever loopholes they can to troll and start big arguments. Everything you did, in my personal opinion, should be perfectly acceptable. Then again, if it was just people posting like you did with the intent you did, that rule wouldn't even exist. Hm. Maybe this is where our argument is fated to end, then. I personally don't think that any kind of non-admin reply should be prevented from existing in these forums. We're not a high-traffic, 5000 users/day community. I'd be very surprised if someone used that particular post to spawn OOC arguments just because an exception was given in another case, and in all likelihood, it's not going to happen. And if it did, it wouldn't be terribly hard to explain to that person why their post wasn't acceptable, in comparison to any valid ones they'd try to use as justification. So the question is, do we need to infringe on reasonable liberties to prevent potential unreasonableness? (And I'm not just speaking of my right to post, me posting that info there would make things easier for everyone involved.) I say no, others say yes. I don't think people "bending the rules because of conceded precedents" is as grave a threat as some people make it out to be, but in the end, y'all are in charge and I'm not.

Wouldn't you agree there's a clear difference between arguing and posting this kind of information, though? What prevents admins from just, you know, putting an end to any arguing while allowing this kind of post to stay? I'm questioning the validity of enforcing the rule in this particular case, you're doing nothing to explain why it should be enforced -_-

I think there's too much of a focus on punishing people ICly when their IC mistakes are due to simple lack of knowledge. There's no fun in spending an entire round being grilled by IAAs as a newbie because you attempted to give your character records and got them wrong. It's just intimidating and anti-fun. What happened, in this instance, is that the character got in trouble over bad records, got demoted, then threw a tantrum. Since the tantrum was rather ridiculous, I ahelped, in the hope that this could be resolved by the admins rather than station staff, as it was rather obvious the player was new and might've just been unsure what to do. The next round, they attempted to fix their record, while still unaware of the actual warden qualifications. I noticed this, and ahelped again to make sure the admins talked to them (and linked them to the wiki) before they got grilled by heads again. I don't think there's a need to force people to roleplay an hour of HR meetings because they haven't read an obscure wiki page. You show them the page, they update their records, and that's it. The mod involved (Japak) even agreed with me. Anyway, sorry about the tangent, but I felt this needed to be said.

See, I'd be willing to accept that as a justification not to lock the report. That's perfectly reasonable. Put things on hold, wait for confirmation from somebody in the actual staff, and then close the case. That's all I ever wanted, and what I was actually expecting to happen. I don't see why my post needs to be deleted, though. I'm not asking for it to be taken as word of god. I'm just asking for it not to be deleted.

1. I was playing the IAA mentioned in the report. 2. I was the one who ahelped about the issue. During two different rounds. 3. No, I can't see msay, however when a mod tells me that they've talked to a user I generally assume that they've talked to a user. I didn't really see the need to specify any of those details, because I assumed that anyone who was confused would simply ask me, and not delete my post while warning me about forum rules. However, when moderating a forum, it's usually best not to assume your posters are utterly retarded, as a default stance. Apologies for the sass.

man you're like the first person I've ever seen to get this excited about ss13 janitors and I feel like I really gotta commend that

Let's forget about the last part of this, because I don't see what makes this particular incident special, as far as "user reporting something admins said". Otherwise, we might as well delete all information about the admins which isn't communicated directly by them. The problem was that the post was OOC. As far as I know, the no-OOC rule was added to the IC complaints forum to prevent debate, such as people coming to say "oh my character did this because of this, and so he/she shouldn't have a complaint". I don't see how communicating basic info, such as: 1. the user being banned 2. the user being an antagonist 3. the user having been punished OOCly, can spark any kind of debate or confusion. And that's my problem with this. I know the information, I can report the information directly, and there's little to no reason why I shouldn't report the information. If you doubt it, just ask the mod concerned. Posting directly on the thread allows me to communicate this to the OP, to the target of the complaint, and to anyone looking at the complaint, whether they be a DO or just an onlooker. It's way more reliable than sending a PM to one of the heads of the DOs and hoping they put up the information themselves (and maybe to prove that point, the thread has been locked without an explanation.)

BYOND Key: forums Staff BYOND Key: forums Reason for complaint: Mindless enforcing of the rules Evidence/logs/etc: http://aurorastation.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=3967 , http://imgur.com/a/aHco4 Additional remarks: Fairly simple situation. A newbie got in trouble because of some age qualifications on the server yesterday, got demoted, and acted out as a result. They were talked to and essentially chastised/provided with guidance via admin-PM. Shortly after that, the HoP who was present during the round submitted an IC complaint about this player. I attempted to post on said complaint, via ((OOC brackets)), to explain that the incident had already been corrected by admins and was just the fault of a confused newbie (the character's bio had already been changed since then.) My post got promptly deleted for breaking the forum's "No OOC" rule. Follows this exchange of PMs between me and Gollee, where he asked me to submit a staff complaint if I wished to pursue the issue, so here we are. (Nothing against you, Gollee!) I believe the PMs explain fairly well my reasoning, and reason to disagree with Gollee's call. As a reply to his last point, I'd like to highlight that I was the one to contact admins to deal with the newbie's situation, and don't really see why we need to go through the DO head, then through the involved mods, just so the simplest OOC information can be made public. (I mean, unless you want to assume that regular users tend to lie for keks. I dunno.) The concerned IC complaint is also currently sitting locked without any explanation, other than my deleted post.

The issue is that driving off the road and down a cliff doesn't sound as interesting of a prospect as being able to have intelligent conversations with the admins (come on, they're not that bad)

-REMOVED

"Playfulness" is key. I see a lot of people just working along, doing their own thing. And while I'm sure most of these people have their own amazing stories and richly developed characters, they seldom do anything to enable others to let their own characters shine. Playing along is important. You need to give others opportunities to create their stories, not just expect others to do the same for you (as they rarely will, and when you do find people that actually set up situations for you, cherish and treasure them!)

We could keep healing the way it is, then reduce it if, say, past a threshold of 30 burn/30 brute. Even if we didn't, small injuries could be treated with bruise packs and ointments (which used to be easy to find, now I think they'd need to be added back to the new civilian area). There wouldn't be any more of a need to visit medical, unless you get moderately injured, which is what I think the goal of infections was anyway. (And I dunno who said "let's just make people who don't visit medical die" but it's... well... it's a really weird solution they implemented.)

I'm not here to dismiss your point. Or even disagree. Don't get me wrong. But just for the sake of contrast, consider the amount of people who play DnD. Now, compare them to the amount of people who roleplay realistic work environments. We're in a bit of a niche here, and this niche is made possible in part because we have all these wacky happenings to keep people interested and motivated. For most people, I'd argue the fun is really in the contrast. You get a bit of both realism and fantasy. Besides, in the end, we're all roleplaying jobs that we don't have, as characters we aren't, some 400 years into the future. We're constantly pushing our boundaries as it is, so I only see tossing in mad, gun-toting cosmonauts as an extra challenge.

As far as I'm informed, infections were added by Bay to stop people from shrugging off injuries and waiting for natural regen to kick in. The realistic option here would be to drastically reduce the speed of natural regen, or to prevent brute/burn past a certain threshold from healing without medical aid. In the end, however, if Baldy McEngineer fucks up hacking a door, gives themselves 40 points of burn, and decides to wait it out instead of visiting medbay, that's pretty much on them. I don't see why we need to force them to see medbay or die.

For me, roleplaying is simply what most people can agree on, and what makes the most people happy. I had a discussion about chucklefucking with Tenenza a while ago. We pretty much concluded that chucklefucking wasn't bad, or good. I know there's a few people that hate chucklefucking and OOC jokes, but most people don't care or seem to think the game would get boring without some occasional humor. At the same time, when it happens too much or too often, it starts being more detrimental than good for the game. Everything in moderation. It's hard to give a clear explanation of what "good roleplay" is because good roleplay is a little bit of everything.

There's no particular reason why the laws are numbered other than because they were originally written in as Asimov laws (and maybe for coding reasons), so I doubt there's any kind of hidden meaning behind them having numbers when they also explicitly state none precede over another. The best way to handle law conflicts is probably to try to break laws as little as possible. An AI that would follow all laws to the letter without room for interpretation would cause a lot of funny situations, such as locking up surgery to "protect" crewmembers from being harmed by a surgeon's scalpel (a thinking AI would be able to realize that the harm of the surgery was necessary to prevent the greater harm that would result should the surgery not be carried out.)

I agree with Brage. I don't want a list of bans to be published. However, when issues do come to light for a reason or another, I'd rather admins be clear and upfront about them than present us with the whole cloak and dagger business. (And I do think with proper empathy, you can present incidents for what they are without depicting people unfairly - but it takes a bit more effort than a banlist.)

I, for one, have no idea who the heck either of you are. I'm fairly certain most people in this thread are defending this issue based on server culture, but not on popularity. And either way, popularity isn't something that matters in these situations - opinions should be considered for the value they hold, not for the names attached to them (and I'm pretty sure admins try to be impartial when making their final decisions - they've often gone against the popular opinion in the past, when it didn't reflect the set mentality of the server.) Anyway, one thing I'd like to draw attention to (and that I might've wrongly explained in my first post as it didn't draw much attention) is that I don't think issues like these relate to a whitelist. Whitelists, in their essence, are there to make sure that the people who play these species have a general idea of their lore, and the way they work. If someone makes an OOC prank and you have an issue with that, it should probably be treated as a player-to-player incident, because it hardly relates to that player's ability to roleplay as an IPC. (Besides, I often see IPC players instigate situations that would be funny in an OOC way because of the species' general lack of inhibitions and human social norms.) (And yeah, in the end, if somebody is joking around and it bothers you because it's messing with your character, the easiest way to solve that problem would be to ask them to stop in LOOC. If they continued messing with you after that they'd clearly be in the wrong and you'd have grounds for a complaint, but the purpose of complaints is to solve issues and make sure everybody gets along, no?)