Frances

But it was not meant to represent concentration camps.

Okay, I just want to start by looking at that statement alone because that's the easiest thing to do for this complaint right now. What exactly were you trying to say/represent by posting "Arbeit Macht Frei" in OOC?

If people want to talk about Hitler on general comms, I don't think they should be stopped from doing so (maybe because IC comms tend to be fairly tame.) But if admins ask you to stop talking about Hitler in OOC, you... should probably stop talking about Hitler in OOC. And like... we can take a look at the stuff you posted, if you want. If you're going to claim that it isn't Nazi-related, I mean. You posted the lyrics to a marching song of the Wehrmacht, said you wished you were in the SS, and I guess there's nothing technically negative with the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei", except for this minor instance: But hey, it's just German culture things, right?

Honestly, my biggest advice, even more than good admin execution, is to get a few good players onboard that already have an idea what they want to make of the event. Nations is pretty much like a large-scale RP-rev. And one issue RP-rev often encounters is that players are too passive - heads are afraid to act like assholes, or no players are willing to revolt. It often just takes a single instigator to get the whole station to follow a movement. People might not really know what to do, but if they see others start to build forts and gather resources, they'll probably think it's a good idea and start to do it too. Even better when departments get their own survivalist leaders, all Walking Dead-style.

We ran a "survival" nations event once, it was fun. Aurora was cut off from the world due to most of Biesel being destroyed by a zombie plague and NT/Centcom being destroyed. We did a timeskip of a few days every hour or so, and admins went around dirtying up the station, breaking lights, and spawning random thrash to give it that good post-apocalypse feel. iirc, people actually got really into it, and some departments had fortified bases and fought for resources and such. Just throwing some ideas out there, dunno if you could end up using any of this stuff.

Superflat would allow us to do more. Worldpainting plus the most recent set of creative tools (I dunno what people use these days, worldedit, voxelsniper, or whatever), but I don't know if these exist as plugins, nor if anyone from here has the expertise and patience to use them effectively. Default biomes are probably not very interesting for making "alien" planets, as they just look very "vanilla-minecraft". I don't know how exactly we'd go at making alien landscapes, but I figured it'd be pretty easy to build stuff like the Odin or Biesel cities on superflat.

Wouldn't the easiest way to set this up be to start a new superflat world/server on creative, and restrict the building to whitelist-only to prevent grief? Mystcraft would also be a good plugin to create new maps on the same world, as well as produce specific types of terrain without having to paint it.

I feel like nations is a gamemode that plays best as an event. People get hyped for it, they actually want to play and they put a lot of effort into it. If it became part of the regular gamemode rotation, I'm too afraid it could easily become stale. It's basically an even more chaotic RP-rev (since all departments have the potential to get mad at each other), and it can go terribly wrong if half-assed. If anything, I think I'd simply like to see admins run more nation events (and maybe more events in general? I miss colony.)

It wasn't exactly "resolved", but Doomberg posted an official stance and that's pretty much where the complaint is at. People have since come in to explain why exactly they agree or disagree with me, and I've been trying to provide explanations.

No, I'm mad I got PMed over the silliest of things. Tish was also aggressive from the get-go.

Despite the lack of an announced punishment (I have no idea if I got a note, though notes aren't necessarily punishments), the fact Tish contacted me in a fairly aggressive manner (along with the specific explanation he gave early on) made it seem like this was a very important issue to deal with for him. I've known Tish to be impartial, so I also don't think he was saying this just because he hates me. The presence or absence of a punishment has nothing to do with it - I made this complain to bring attention that I was boinked very aggressively by an admin for making a harmless joke.

I did not make any jokes about Tishina, nor did I participate in the LOOC banter that he described (save for the "do you want to come talk with us in LOOC" comment.)

I mean, if it's something that personally annoys you, feel free to make a player complaint? I wouldn't mind discussing it there.

How is that relevant to the complaint at hand?

I do understand that a lot of people on here don't seem to agree with me on that joke. There's not much I can do about it, and it's honestly a bit frustrating because it is an "agree to disagree" situation, but it led to an admin boinking me (and potentially boinking more people) over something I don't think is deserving of a boink. I've honestly done what I can, though - I've given a fair shot at explaining myself, and if the staff are still insistent on disagreeing I won't demand they change for me, I'll just move my business elsewhere. Thank you on attempting to be more civil, btw.

I don't understand why everyone is claiming what I did was not an obvious joke. Y'all are basically saying a person creating over 300 copies of the same character to play on a HRP server seems like a believable premise to any newcomer to the HRP genre.

I legitimately thought you were pissed at me for asking LividCake a question (or at the very least for the overly polite and exaggerated way in which I did, which would've limit made sense.) I did not attempt to "hide" anything in this complaint, but if you were to post the logs of the jokes that were made in LOOC, people could observe that: 1. These jokes were made in complete spontaneity by unrelated onlookers, and I did not provoke them myself 2. I don't believe any of them were targeted at you since your name never came up (though my memory is a bit hazy on that, so feel free to correct me) 3. They were another very, very obvious attempt at humor/satire, involving regular players such as Hivefleetchicken, and amounted to the equivalent of "the staff tell me I have to RP and won't even let me toolbox the clown, they're such nazis, right?" I mean, I'm sorry if you took offense to that, and I agree that my "well, want to join us since nobody seems to have issues with my past comment" was a bit biting, though considering the way you opened your PMs over something that should not even have been an issue I feel like it was fairly well deserved. Anyway, these were more jokes that were obviously inoffensive, but considering you already got mad at me for joking that I had over 300 characters I guess that was to be expected. I understand your intent to protect players, and I fully agree with it, but I don't think there was anyone to be protected from this. And again no, my argument still consists of "who's going to believe a random LOOC person claiming they have over 300 identical characters and base their entire SS13 HRP experience on that without questioning anything?" But there's not much I can do to prove that, since that argument mostly relies on common sense, and you guys don't seem to care.

Hm. Well, maybe as a last addition since you're bringing up users being familiar with the rules, not once did I mention anything about an actual rule. Or server stance. Or admins. I guess I didn't highlight that and now it might be a bit too late, but it's yet something else to consider.

Wouldn't you be better off examining Tish's conduct alone? The question isn't "was he as bad as X", the question is "was what he has done bad". Then yes, you have the right to throw my complaint out on the grounds of your personal belief that somebody could actually believe that a person would've created 300 of the same character to play a game, though to express myself in full honesty, I don't know who the fuck would actually believe that. I would've liked for more people to comment on this, but if it's multiple admins' as well as the headmin's opinion, there's not much I can do. So I give up. As a last question, though, how would you turn this joke into something acceptable?

So, wait, you're obviously portraying the approach as bad, yet when I complain that your staff is still engaging in it... it isn't? There was already an exaggeration: the fact that nobody sane would create 300 identical characters, nor that any mod would let this happen. I would argue that that statement would leave little to misinterpretation. What do you think?

Ad hominem is bad when it's not relevant to the argument at hand. You're saying that because I was once rude to users, I have no right to criticize other admins for being rude to users, which is simply false. If you can find a way to explain why my actions from a year ago are relevant to Tishina's actions now, then I'll be glad to talk more about this. In the meantime, I don't understand why I'm going under personal scrutiny in my own complaint against somebody else - if you're mad at me for something I did, there's other places and means to deal with it. (Furthermore, I'd argue that calling someone a knobhead when they're being a knobhead isn't exactly a bad form of ad hominem, as irrelevant as that thread is now.) Back to the joke, what exactly makes it so that when you think "being voltage is bannable" isn't a believable statement, it isn't, but when I think "I had to make 300 identical characters because of rules on permadeath" isn't, it is? Isn't a user being banned for simply existing about as ridiculous a premise as the one of a user creating the same character 300 times to circumvent a rule?

Yes. I don't really care what happens to me, but I believe that as a whole, players should not be boinked for making what is basically clear and inoffensive jokes. (Again, I'll bring the amount of joking that goes in OOC regarding both the server rules and gameplay mechanics as something which does not seem to bother the admins significantly.) The purpose of this complaint is to bring attention to this problem, as I really don't understand why my joke would be singled out as something bad while I hardly believe anyone could take it seriously, or receive any harmful effects from it. Where did I resort to ad hominem? You're also being downright hostile and I don't feel very comfortable with this. I have been on the defensive due to the way this situation is being handled, yes, but I believe I've tried my best to explain myself in a relatively straightforward fashion and you guys aren't reacting very maturely.

If you could link to the thread this quote came from, then you'd at least give people the chance to see that it was that person's third (?) ban appeal, in which they repeatedly insulted the staff while demanding whatever ridiculous thing. The proper term isn't exactly apples to oranges, but... it's a different magnitude, is it not? (Edit: This was the full post, for consideration.) Anyway. I don't think you'll be able to stick a hypocrisy charge, because I never said I was blameless of this. It's the general attitude I was brought into the staff team with, and it's the one I've seen go continuously enforced through the year and a half I've spent here. I'm sorry if I didn't know I wasn't allowed to change my mind about it, or that me personally partaking in the "not being nice to users" movement made it so that I could never criticize anyone from doing the same thing ever again (though if you want to prove I've done bad as well, I'd pick a much better example than throwing a few insults at somebody who was already being a downright cock.) I'm not trying to have a pissing match here, though your "allow me to pretend your post isn't shit" jab leads me to believe you might. And, in full honesty, come on? Don't resort to ad hominem, just look at the issue as it is. Are you really calling me pretending to have over 300 characters a misleading joke?

Hm. Well, I don't really agree that this situation was PM-worthy. I made a statement to the fact that character deaths were always permanent on the server, which caused me to create over 300 characters which all happened to be identical copies of each other - I don't understand how anyone could possibly take that seriously. But what if we assume they did? Because I remember coming on Aurora, more than a year ago, with only the general knowledge that LRP servers favored randomizing character names every round as to avoid metabuddying. I thought the concept of permadeath for complex, roleplayed characters was sorta interesting and sorta hardcore, so I inquired in OOC as to whether that was the case (and rather quickly got a clear explanation). Point of that is, if someone was actually unsure about HRP's stance on character death, I'm fairly sure they'd find a way to acquire information from a more reliable source than a passing and somewhat ridiculous comment a random person made in LOOC. And if the person involved here had expressed genuine confusion, a simple "nah, I'm just fucking with you" would've dispelled any doubts. Because really, do you expect a person to make 300 copies of the same character to arbitrarily circumvent some extreme rule? That seems like a pretty humorous and fictitious situation to me. And I mean, I've seen admins joke about stuff all the time. There's countless "banned" jokes and sometimes it can be pretty hard to get a proper answer out of OOC about a question, yet nobody seems to bat an eyelid at that. It's the internet, and I'm not a kindergarten teacher feeding her students false information about the world or anything terrible like that. If the server's administration has to protect its users from common jokes, I'd say the amount of faith they have in them is disappointing.

@Garnascus I've always been a relatively aloof person on here. I tend to rely on moderate amounts of shitposting to drive my point from time to time (though not nearly as badly as some people do), but I'd like to think in the end I'm always down for having a honest discussion. It is true that there have been tensions between the staff and I lately, and I can guess they're mostly due to the fact that I sometimes like to play bald characters and basically chucklefuck - however, short of being asked to tone down my act twice (and a recent jobban which was a dumb experience imo) there hasn't really been any communication. I really wouldn't mind if admins tried to talk to me more, and if they outright asked me to stop playing non-serious characters I'd be down with that, but my experience has been more about a few arbitrary reprimands here and there along with being treated like a second-class citizen (though I'm not sure if everyone has to face that these days, but I can assume most staff's reactions whenever I post in this forum is "oh, dear, not another complaint by Frances") So, yeah, I wish people were nicer to each other, and you make a good point, but as a whole what I'm looking to discuss with these complaints is the underlying issues of reprimands being doled out over silly things, and in ways that are probably exaggerated. I wasn't particularly patient with Tishina, but I can 100% assure you that it was because the way he contacted me wasn't particularly fun, and I (along with what I assume to be a lot of people) would've reacted the same way regardless of who the involved admin was or whatever history the two parties may have. However, unless I'm being targeted in particular for admin intervention (which I don't believe to be the case), then this remains a problem because it's something that other users could encounter, and I don't want anyone to get boinked because they attempted to crack what was obviously a joke (and immediately being accused of trying to troll players in a shitty way for their own amusement). Edit: For the most part I try to remain direct and matter-of-fact in my dealings, but I'd be lying if I said my most recent experiences with the staff didn't somewhat piss me off, and I think anyone reasonable enough should be able to understand why. People are rude, dismissive, they're not very good at communicating, the administration's stance on certain issues has been outright puzzling, and so on.