Frances

If there's no official lore stance on this (but there might be, I challenge Jackboot to go ahead and surprise me), then this might warrant actual discussion. There's one big obvious reason why everyone can't be skilled in everything on HRP - immersion. The whole point of HRP was to turn SS13 into a semi-realistic experience, and the 21 year old cargo tech who knows how to set up the singularity and perform brain surgery just kills that. You don't see it in any other roleplay medium, and when you do, these characters are deemed mary sues and everyone hates them (unless your whole universe is based around every character being super OP, in which case, well then.) IPCs obviously don't fall under that rule - station borgs can be proficient at everything because they could come with an infinity of subroutines adapted for every situation (well, let's say.) So in theory IPCs would have no obligation to be limited to certain skills or qualifications (and it would honestly make more sense considering they're basically AIs put on a humanoid chassis). However, this brings up another issue - game balance. Balance in LRP isn't terribly fussy on what people can and can't do - LRP servers let everyone do whatever the fuck they please, and power is mostly gated by ID access, equipment, and the players' relative skills with various SS13 mechanics. Is this balance different on HRP servers? That's what we'd need to establish. A character proficient in every area of the game (even with lore reasons) would indisputably be at a certain advantage over one restricted to specific fields of expertise. How important is this advantage, however, and is it big enough to enforce rules on IPCs not "knowing" how to do something outside their jobs? Non-engineer IPCs hacking doors is an issue that'd come to mind. I remember a while back admins had to put a ban on detective characters hacking doors because every detective had some reason in their backstory to know how to work with complex electronics, and it gave them a really big advantage on tracking down lawbreakers and troublemakers without needing to rely on anybody else. Are there any other issues like that we can think of that would arise from letting IPCs do whatever they want (as needed)?

I'm in agreement with this. Genetics as it currently stands brings a lot of headaches to HRP management, and the possibilities it brings for legitimate roleplay just don't seem to be worth the attached cost. For the people who are afraid of losing their characters, it'd be easy for them to keep the same background (or a relatively similar one) and fill them under a medical job with cloning + organ printing access (biologists). I'm not sure what "serious" roleplaying of a geneticist entails but I'm pretty sure turning people into telekinetic superheroes or angry green men isn't a major part of it. Anyway, we're getting kinda far away from the original purpose of this thread, so I'll leave it at that and save the rest of my ideas for the time an official discussion on this matter arises.

You bring up some good points - I don't want to see the actions taken against Tajarans going overboard. However, our lore team seems fairly reasonable, and even the current poll is evenly split between stripping Tajaran command ranks and simply monitoring them more heavily. I doubt in-universe restrictions will progress any further than that, nor do I think they need to be in order to make the race an enjoyable one for other players to experience. What I want to see is the terrible combination of an entitled and clique-based mindset be curbed, and I think this can be done without having major impacts on how reasonable Tajaran players roleplay. (You've also made me change my vote - after reflection, I don't think making a big push to show Tajarans they're not in charge in-universe is gonna get rid of the behavior problems. That's a different issue from the lore one altogether.)

Just one minor thing to point out (besides the fact that mechs and weapons aren't given out to anyone, so this example isn't entirely true). Anyway, yes, cargo has access to Ripleys, security has access to weapons, medbay has access to chemicals and syringe guns. All of this equipment is placed under heavy restrictions, though. You see a miner messing around with a Ripley? They're probably headed for a jobban. Security messing around with weapons? Definitive jobban. I might not mind geneticists being held to the same standard under some of the rationale described here, but this would basically mean they couldn't use their powers to mess around. And the way things are, right now, powers don't really have many consistent uses apart from making funny things happen (which is arguably the entire purpose of science). Also no no no please never give all of security x-ray vision on a HRP server, antags will just get shredded with that.

This happens when people are misinformed on an issue, or have poor knowledge/mastery of it. I believe most people here have had some kind of experience encountering Tajarans while playing on the server, so I'm less worried about the possibility of the majority opinion being an ignorant one.

We're speaking of removing Tajarans from command roles. I don't really see how this compares to barring other species from half of the possible station departments. Also, IPCs are about as much of a target for hacking as regular employees are a target for kidnapping and torture.

Food for thought, but don't we have forum mods to remove shitposting? If people really do bring completely inane points, they should be relatively easy to refute, and people trying to rile others up for the sake of flaming already seem to have their posts removed.

The problem is that player complaints can serve different purposes. Some are issue-based, and some are review-based. Assuming all parties are reasonable, there should be no need for outside intervention in "issue" complaints, but that prevents us from having "review" complaints, no? Anyway, I think a far better problem is that I don't trust the staff to handle complaints appropriately (and most other people who don't trust the staff have left, so I guess you can dismiss my point if you really wish). Doom claims the rule was added to get rid of "peanut gallerying", yet I've ironically seen more staff engage in low-content, "obvious" posts (basically telling the users they're bad without much basis other than their authority alone) than regular users have.

I can confirm that Safiya will be civil and nice to you if you find no issue with her. (That's pretty much how most Tajarans act, actually.) I've spoken to her on completely neutral grounds on a few characters and she was perfectly normal and decent. However, the moment any sort of issue or conflict arises is when things get ugly. And that's regardless of if they're in the right or not.

I was under the impression the brig was really there to put people for minor crimes or "discipline", kinda like how I imagine it goes when navy sailors are unruly on ships. It wouldn't make sense for it to be *too* accommodating for extended stays, especially when the station itself has a full catering service. This suggestion seems more suited for a full-on prison than a drunk tank (and if NT runs any penal colonies, they're not on the Aurora).

From my time in medical, I can back this up of Safiya Isra. She's acted in ridiculously childish and entitled ways, and I was under the impression she treated the station as her personal backyard. No specific quotes come to mind (it was really more a string of behavior), but somebody I know recently reported having seen her strip naked to take a nap on the brig desk while having tk. I'll see if I can get them to post into the thread or send me a statement.

My most recent mod application (a few months ago) was thrown out because "unnamed administrators" had "unnamed/controversial issues" with me. Other people have had their mod applications skipped or thrown out because of similar issues, without being as much as informed or given a chance to explain themselves, in some cases over clear misunderstandings or because a single member of staff passed a cursory judgement over the application. These are all situations which could be solved with more transparency and dialogue between staff and the community. The only reason why someone will even know they're not being considered for mod (or why) is if they're fortunate enough to get in contact with someone high enough in charge, and that person likes them enough to disclose the information (and even then you're not going to get names or detailed descriptions of what the issues are). I have publicly offered/requested for the people who raised objections against my mod application to discuss with me what the issues they had with my application were, only to be met by complete and total silence. (And this is before members of staff started to dislike me because I played funny characters and disagreed with them in their threads - lmao.) These are instances where these issues could have easily been solved if anything as simple as basic communication between involved parties had been established If anything, this goes to show we're not transparent enough. Hiding complaints and ban appeals isn't a service done to the people involved in them. It would be if staff were nicer, but at the time being staff are highly critical of anyone breaking any rules for any reason, and I honestly wouldn't feel comfortable seeing them handle any of my issues in complete secrecy. Edit: I just realized you're suggesting we hide bans completely from users, so that people don't know when other people have been banned. Err, I don't really want to spend five paragraphs explaining why I think this is bad, but the comparisons to 1984 come to mind.

Please tell me which information I have ignored and which points I have cherry-picked.

Let's recap from the very beginning. A person comes into medbay with a burn on their hand. We treat the burn. They return later with an infection. We treat the infection, give them spaceacillin, and send them on their way. They come back later with still an infection. We give them more spaceacillin, anti-tox. Keep them under observation for a while. The infection's still there. At this point, it's clear that the person is going to die if we don't get rid of the infection. And since regular treatment doesn't work, we choose, as doctors bent on preserving life, to take whatever measures we can to save the life of our patient (this is reasonable, yes?) Two things come from this - a liver transplant, and amputation of the infected limb, both of which had reasonable chances to halt the progress of the infection both in-universe and gameplay-wise. Yes, we were testing stuff (within reason), but if you're saying Aurora isn't a place to test things (within reason) you'd be making a pretty poor SS13 server. The bug was a phantom infection bug, which I've never encountered before but Halo claims to (and he plays in medical a lot). Once we both realized this and having exhausted our other options, we sent an ahelp to get some help from the admins. If you have any other suggestions as to why a mob could experience toxin damage from an infection after being fed copious amounts of spaceacillin, having their infected limb removed, and having their liver taken out and replaced, be my guest. I find it disheartening that you've been dismissing most of my arguments without as much as considering them. This is why I have an issue with your authority being final, because in the conversations we've had you don't seem to be willing to hear me out, which you've further proven judging by how you speak of me to others. As for refusing to accept staff judgements, I had a later conversation with Tenenza, who was able to provide a much better and clearer (as well as less confrontational) explanation as to why he had issues with me playing chucklefuck characters (which isn't fully related to this complaint). I ended up agreeing with him when seeing his point, which tbh was much better and convincing than the administration saying "you should know why this is bad because it's obvious, so I'm not going to explain it further". Saying I never agree with the staff is false. Saying I've had many run-ins and confrontations is not, though I think context does matter because I'm not blindly opposing you guys. Also not saying this to be cheeky, but it's a bit difficult for other people to express their views when a rule explicitly prevents them from posting in staff complaints.

Well, my initial problem was that you contacted me over what seemed like a serious issue to you, and then just stopped messaging (this happened after thirteen messages in the log I posted). I had to message you again to get you to keep talking to me, and I don't understand why an admin would drop their own adminPM against someone. I had no idea what you were going to do at that point, mind you - the only thing I understood was that an admin was mad at me, then stopped messaging me mid-conversation, so this was a little worrisome. Let me add that I feel like I tried to answer your points pretty directly. You also stated that you disliked me for "trying to make you reconsider what you thought", though. I believe I provided a reasonable explanation for the actions you were berating me for. I would expect you to further explain why you disagreed in full knowledge of the additional information I provided. The reason why I refused to accept your explanation (of my character's behavior being inappropriate) is because I believed you were in the wrong. Anyway, this seems like a pretty simple case of a user and an admin disagreeing. I was (and still am) under the impression that you attempted to punish us simply to pander to other players. A person was upset because they were held in surgery for 30 minutes as we attempted to save them - you berated me and Halo for causing this situation, although I have no idea how exactly we were responsible for this person having a bad time (feel free to explain here, though, if you want.) The Skrell surgeon was upset because we were making (verbal) jokes in the OR, instead of conforming to her idea of 100% serious hospital RP. I think you meant this for yourself and not me, no? No, I didn't drop anything. Several times I attempted to further my point on an issue, only to be met with a reply of "I'm tired and don't want to argue this". I wouldn't mind if this was a terribly long and circular conversation heading nowhere, but most of our exchanges can be summed up to "What you're doing is bad" / "Here's why I think what I'm doing isn't bad" / "I'm tired of arguing this". Okay, that's just... come on. I don't think you were being a douche on purpose but I don't really understand what you had in mind at that time. Halo and I (as doctors) tried to fix the toxin levels of a bugged character, trying out various things such as liver transplants and amputation of infected limbs. At the end, we realize that there's just no saving the guy and ask for him to be rejuvenated (as at this point it's an obvious bug). At that point you PM us both, accuse us of "fucking around" and basically sum up that person being pissed off as being our fault because we're useless. (I also find it funny that you claim the one surgeon that did literally nothing but sit around as both Halo and I tried various treatments "tried whereas we did not, thus annoying her".) I just don't understand why you still want to hold this against us - and when informed that the incidents happened due to a bug, you clearly stated you wouldn't apologize to me because you had no reason to believe me. Like... I don't get it. Is it really so hard to admit when you've made a mistake? Here are the relevant logs for discussion.

So basically you don't want people to be overtly racist, but if they're covertly racist you're going to make a player complaint about them. ayyyy

I linked five examples of arguably constructive input being met with the "don't post" rule. Can you link me to five shitposts?

can we actually get some ideas going on on how to get goon to give us their code tho

I've been part of this server's mod team for an entire year. During that whole time, not once did I see someone mention managing complaints and bans/unbans as being a pain. I don't think the flow of complaints/appeals nor their nature have changed since then. So what has?

okay so the question is how do we get goon to give us their code woo ideas go

Let me counter-argue with Exhibit A. A user writes a complaint asking for the wording of a warning to be changed. Rather than addressing his demand, three members of staff immediately begin to heavily chastise him for the actions that led to his warning - a warning he's not even contesting. At this point, I post to try to incite the staff to be a little more considerate with their replies. Soon after, I am met with this. (Do note this is one of the admins engaging in the dogpiling, and she's saying she'll intervene herself if she sees any staff issues arise.) Less than 24 hours after this, the new rule was up.

You're basically justifying your behavior by saying you're a volunteer, though. Like, I'm not sure how else to take it? I'm not asking you to go above and beyond the call of duty, and I understand wanting to be sassy with users who are being sassy to you (I've done it, it was fun), but what you're doing is just, kinda bad imo. You've thrown out valid points for the sake of being cheeky. This isn't about poking users who are already angered beyond redemption - this is about you driving them away and making them into the pissed off, "subversive" and "toxic" elements we're all starting to hear about recently. You're running the staff team of the server, which means you're here to garner the users' compliance in establishing order. There's three basic ways to do that: coercion, influence, and authority. I think it's clearly been proven that most people on the internet won't respect you without question simply because you have a shiny ☆Moderator☆ title (though you and a few other admins on here still seem to be trying without avail), so that leaves us with coercion and influence. What to do with these people? You can attempt to reason with them, or you can ban them. Eventually, it's going to come down to either (unless they just get bored first, which they might.) But coercion doesn't make you look very good, especially when you're leaving out influence while it's still a clearly open option. And you might say you don't care, but the community's users definitely will.

You're basically justifying your behavior by saying you're a volunteer, though. Like, I'm not sure how else to take it? I'm not asking you to go above and beyond the call of duty, and I understand wanting to be sassy with users who are being sassy to you (I've done it, it was fun), but what you're doing is just, kinda bad imo. You've thrown out valid points for the sake of being cheeky. This isn't about poking users who are already angered beyond redemption - this is about you driving them away and making them into the pissed off, "subversive" and "toxic" elements we're all starting to hear about recently. You're running the staff team of the server, which means you're here to garner the users' compliance in establishing order. There's three basic ways to do that: coercion, influence, and authority. I think it's clearly been proven that most people on the internet won't respect you without question simply because you have a shiny ☆Moderator☆ title (though you and a few other admins on here still seem to be trying without avail), so that leaves us with coercion and influence. What to do with these people? You can attempt to reason with them, or you can ban them. Eventually, it's going to come down to either (unless they just get bored first, which they might.) But coercion doesn't make you look very good, especially when you're leaving out influence while it's still a clearly open option. And you might say you don't care, but the community's users definitely will.

As some of you might've noticed, a new rule has recently been added to the complaints section of the forums. While the addition of new rules has rarely been a highly publicized or discussed affair, I would like to bring attention to this particular instance. While it seems relatively fair to assume the rule mentioned above (which extends not only to staff complaints but also ban/unban requests) was implemented to reduce the workload of admins when dealing with complaint threads, it raises an issue which significantly concerns me; namely, that you are no longer able to argue with/against server staff unless you have a personal stake in the argument. All staff, however, are still free to drop in on any threads they please. Let me explain in a few points why I believe this is a clear downgrade from the previous modus of "anyone may participate in complaints". Pros and cons of the situation before the rule: Pros: If a third party posts a valid argument, it can be brought up for consideration. It helps broaden the horizons of the mod team, which often functions like an echo chamber. If a third party posts an invalid argument, the staff has the ability to write up a rebuttal, proving further their understanding of the issue, and providing additional clarification on their stance. Cons: Staff may have to read more to process a thread, mostly due to disagreements making up conversation. Pros and cons of the situation after the rule: Pros: There's less stuff for staff to read. Cons: Staff can pretty much say and decide whatever. If a member of staff does something bad, the community is entirely reliant on another member of staff noticing this, and actively contesting it. Some valid arguments may be skipped entirely. Users are alone to defend themselves against the full contingent of staff. Now this is all fairly neutral on paper - the real factors deciding whether this change is a good or terrible one are all the external circumstances surrounding the current state of the complaints boards, and the administration team in general. And that's why this thread is here for us to discuss those. Personally, I think we're looking at a pretty big problem following the new rule. There's a really high mentality of "unity" among the staff; not only will you rarely see staff going against each other, but people have come under flak for simply disagreeing with the admins (and thus demonstrating "poor judgement".) The few staffmembers who have opposite viewpoints tend to only manifest them rarely, and instead opt for silence. Furthermore, this can be pretty fucking discouraging for users. When making a complaint, the other involved party is obviously going to side against you (otherwise there'd be no complaint or conflict in the first place). In a perfect world, the whole staff would be made up of perfectly rational logicians and complaints would get solved in a heartbeat as the ultimate truth gets immediately found out, but this is not the case. Staff sadly do make mistakes just like the rest of us, and I can already see how it'd majorly suck to make a complaint only to get dogpiled on by a group of staff making little effort to be attentive, while nobody is even defending you because they're not allowed to. Additionally, I'd like to point out that this rule has so far only been used to completely disregard (without any other justification) valid arguments from observers, or remove them from threads. As seen here, here, here, here, and here. Lastly, I just don't see the complaints boards as being the most intensive part of modding the server. We get maybe one big complaint a week (accounting for all the recent drama), and if that's enough to give you an aneurysm or put you off enough you'd consider stifling most forms of valid discussion just to make your job easier, you might be in the wrong line of internet volunteer work.

As some of you might've noticed, a new rule has recently been added to the complaints section of the forums. While the addition of new rules has rarely been a highly publicized or discussed affair, I would like to bring attention to this particular instance. While it seems relatively fair to assume the rule mentioned above (which extends not only to staff complaints but also ban/unban requests) was implemented to reduce the workload of admins when dealing with complaint threads, it raises an issue which significantly concerns me; namely, that you are no longer able to argue with/against server staff unless you have a personal stake in the argument. All staff, however, are still free to drop in on any threads they please. Let me explain in a few points why I believe this is a clear downgrade from the previous modus of "anyone may participate in complaints". Pros and cons of the situation before the rule: Pros: If a third party posts a valid argument, it can be brought up for consideration. It helps broaden the horizons of the mod team, which often functions like an echo chamber. If a third party posts an invalid argument, the staff has the ability to write up a rebuttal, proving further their understanding of the issue, and providing additional clarification on their stance. Cons: Staff may have to read more to process a thread, mostly due to disagreements making up conversation. Pros and cons of the situation after the rule: Pros: There's less stuff for staff to read. Cons: Staff can pretty much say and decide whatever. If a member of staff does something bad, the community is entirely reliant on another member of staff noticing this, and actively contesting it. Some valid arguments may be skipped entirely. Users are alone to defend themselves against the full contingent of staff. Now this is all fairly neutral on paper - the real factors deciding whether this change is a good or terrible one are all the external circumstances surrounding the current state of the complaints boards, and the administration team in general. And that's why this thread is here for us to discuss those. Personally, I think we're looking at a pretty big problem following the new rule. There's a really high mentality of "unity" among the staff; not only will you rarely see staff going against each other, but people have come under flak for simply disagreeing with the admins (and thus demonstrating "poor judgement".) The few staffmembers who have opposite viewpoints tend to only manifest them rarely, and instead opt for silence. Furthermore, this can be pretty fucking discouraging for users. When making a complaint, the other involved party is obviously going to side against you (otherwise there'd be no complaint or conflict in the first place). In a perfect world, the whole staff would be made up of perfectly rational logicians and complaints would get solved in a heartbeat as the ultimate truth gets immediately found out, but this is not the case. Staff sadly do make mistakes just like the rest of us, and I can already see how it'd majorly suck to make a complaint only to get dogpiled on by a group of staff making little effort to be attentive, while nobody is even defending you because they're not allowed to. Additionally, I'd like to point out that this rule has so far only been used to completely disregard (without any other justification) valid arguments from observers, or remove them from threads. As seen here, here, here, here, and here. Lastly, I just don't see the complaints boards as being the most intensive part of modding the server. We get maybe one big complaint a week (accounting for all the recent drama), and if that's enough to give you an aneurysm or put you off enough you'd consider stifling most forms of valid discussion just to make your job easier, you might be in the wrong line of internet volunteer work.