Frances

Oh, okay. That's really my bad, then. Glad we could clear it up!

I want to add something - which I don't necessarily see as "piling up on Sierra" but rather as the continuation of the previous issues I talked about. As Sierra reacts in an aggressive and confrontational manner whenever my name comes up in something (and this isn't new, it's happened ever since a complaint against TheFurry, if not maybe before), it seems obvious that she's got some grudge against me, or at least harbors some negative personal feelings that have been tainting her responses to various incidents. I've tried sending her a PM to offer her to have a chat about the whole thing. Basically, give her a chance to discuss what pisses her off and see if we can clear things up. She read the PM, and refused to send a reply, even if only to state that she didn't believe there were any problems, or that she wasn't interested in talking to me about it more (which I'm assuming she's not gonna do as it's been a few days since that, now.) Despite that, she's still posted in my mod application thread with the same accusatory tone. Granted, she didn't say much, but this seems to show she has no interest in solving the issue with me despite us having no personal contact yet whatsoever. :\ Also you guys need to stop accusing anybody with the same opinion of being part of a clique. There's a bunch of people disapproving of my mod app and I'm not trying to call them members of a conspiracy.

Sierra's argument is a time-sensitive one, though. From what I garner she was basically saying that I was close to a permaban right now (which isn't true, unless I misunderstood in which case this is a little ridiculous.) What happened in the summer is that some senior admins basically observed me for a few weeks, letting apprehension build up (with Viking's jobban being a random incident in the middle), then I was slapped a whitelist strip and a timeban literally on the same day, with somebody coming back months later to retroactively tell me I was "close to being permabanned" for it. Anyway, that's all things I've already made an effort to clarify, and I realize this doesn't really get to the meat of the issue, so I wanted to try a different approach. If I were to be made mod, what would be the main concerns or fears that would preoccupy you?

For the sake of coding and balance, this could simply be a regular (small) item. That way, it's still possible to hide it in a pocket, or plant it in a person's bag or labcoat, but isn't as impossible to detect as, say, a hidden changeling sting. Oh, yeah, what about being able to disguise bugs into various junk/misc items, such as pens and lighters?

Approved

That's not true, though. I know when I got that jobban and 3-day ban and it was not today or recently.

This was several months ago. I believe I've explained the circumstances of these events multiple times, and that anyone actually following the debate surrounding this application should be aware of them at this point. No?

What are these multiple incidents?

No, just keep doing your best if you actually believe in what I said.

Oh, yeah, I just wanted to say that although I don't know if Delta would make a good mod for Aurora, I think the idea of not giving him a trial at all seems kinda silly. Unless there's already some preconceived, set-in-stone reason why it's 100% certain you people don't want him as a mod at this time. Like, he's modded on CM before, it might actually be worth seeing how he mods on here before going "nope, Delta can't handle anything ever". Because I've noticed the way people behave as regular users and as mods can be vastly different, almost to a shocking point. The worst that could happen is that he'd call somebody else a fuckboy again. If he does, he can just be removed, no?

Yeah, you're not alone. It's sorta weird to even see those logs as I've interacted with Killerhurtz a bit in the lore chat and they seem like a very positive/cheerful person, yet they come out as really bossy in what you posted. I've also talked to Thundy and she says that she was encouraged to take the same authoritative attitude when talking to people in PMs, and it's something I've noticed trials doing (won't give any names as I don't recall who it was but at least a third trialmod did something similar this week, in OOC I think.) I don't think it's necessarily the fault of the trials as much as the current mods/admins teaching them to do business like that, but it's something that bugs me about the way Aurora staff behaves. There's absolutely no need to be bossy or be like "you've been warned" or "I'll let you off this time" rather than politely request the user be careful about whatever they did - especially with something that seems as mild as mentioning underwear theft in deadchat or LOOC.

And this is where I (personally) feel like the current system is failing. During the solid 1-2 months that I spent playing joke characters, I wasn't as much as stopped once (save for that incident where we played criminal chemists and OD'd on extended - and given how much of a dick Viking ended up being during the whole conversation I don't feel really guilty about getting jobbanned.) Anything besides that? I was never informed of. The note, the warning? No idea how I got them or what they were about. Staff got in touch with me a few times, but it was always for ridiculous stuff, like telling someone a joke in LOOC, or trying to actually break my leg to roleplay it having been caught in a bear trap. Then the discussion with Tenenza happened, we had a talk about my chucklefuck characters being excessive, and that was the end of that. That's also the point at which I learned that my head whitelist had been stripped, because nobody had actually told me when it happened. If anybody, and I do mean literally anybody from the staff had come down at any point during those two months and held the conversation that Tenenza held with me, the problem could've been solved weeks before. This isn't because I was trying to "test you guys" or "wanted a good answer", I genuinely had no idea there even was a problem. I just saw staff act like assholes over petty things, and that was pretty much the end of it on my end. And that's something I've seen happen pretty regularly. Techno's been banned for his aggressive conduct, yet nobody ever confronted him about it or tried to have a genuine talk with him to tell him he was being a dick to people. Cassie was supposedly banned (or almost-banned) for her abrasive conduct, yet you guys didn't make any effort to engage in dialogue with her before the big incident that led to her being banned. Halo played chucklefuck characters for months on a daily basis, and hilariously enough, was never banned (or really even punished) for it until yesterday, for no special reason, when you could've pulled him aside pretty much anytime months ago and asked him to stop doing that. Issues are left to fester for God-knows-how-long, and honest communication with users is pretty much non-existent. Heck, I've seen several mods/admins claim that they don't even have to inform users when they've been warned or given notes. How do you expect users to change their behavior to meet your standards when you can't even communicate what these standards are? And this is a real problem. Some of the staff are treating this like some kind of game, where instead of trying to solve issues, the objective is to accumulate a record against rulebreaking/disliked users to remove them from the server. The staff don't seem genuinely concerned with solving issues, they seem concerned with giving X person X amount of notes so they can apply a ban. I know this, because it's the game we were playing when I was on staff. It wasn't any different then, it isn't any different now, and from what I've been able to see of how the current round of trials is being handled, it won't be any different in the future.

I'm honestly surprised. I didn't know I was this close to being permabanned.

I actually talked to Sue about that and can kinda understand her explanation (even though I don't agree with how she's handling things). When we did most of our silly events last year Aurora was apparently a much more serious place (I did not notice this myself and don't know if I want to say that's true). I actually think that fun, lighthearted events are still needed from time to time to make HRP interesting (it's a pacing thing), but Sue seems to be complaining there's too much non-serious stuff and that we should thus taking steps to discourage it at the moment (if there really is that would kinda make sense, but it's hard to say if we started goofing off more or if we've just gotten more people who dislike silly altogether and would prefer Aurora to be Hypatia). I was hoping Skull would've posted at some point to sum up this thread's issues but he hasn't yet, so I'm gonna try my best to write a summary of what I understand with where we've gotten. I see this complaint as two separate issues (ignoring the stuff with Halo who got permabanned). One of them is that I played a character who engaged in some memetic variations (such as saying the word "dank" and asking people about videogames once, which yes, is out-of-left-field silly). The other issue is that I played a syndicate op who was absurdly cheerful and easygoing, and tried to merrily recruit people to the syndicate cause. I believe and fully accept that the combination of these two concepts, together, created something that turned out to be too silly and lacking substance for people to really accept. I had my justifications for being "Halo the dank agent" (I wanted to mess with the nuke ops who already thought I was Halo, and it only played a small part of my character), but I underestimated the effect it'd have on people's initial reaction to me and that's honestly my bad. I still don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a syndicate op being cheerful, cracking jokes about everything and trying to recruit others to the syndicate cause in a very lighthearted and non-serious manner, especially if the other operatives of the round are on-board with the act. This is an opinion I'm holding on to considering we have other roundtypes such as Wizard, which are based around the same kind of sillyness, and that a majority of players have engaged or organized such events themselves (hint: Thunderdome) and still seem to be happy to have them from time to time. The addition of memes proved to be too much and I have no problem recognizing that. If I ever do end up playing joke characters again under any circumstances, I'll just refrain from using memes as they don't seem to be getting a very good reception at the moment Do note that I didn't deny using memes at any point during this complaint - rather, I tried to argue against the accusations that my character was solely based around memes, which he was not. But people have argued that he said stuff like "dank lmao fam" all round long (he did not), that he kept mentioning videogames (I still disagree on the seriousness of the mention of one videogame as "immersion-breaking", but if it really gives you that bad of an impression then alright), and that him saying "haha" or laughing a lot is a meme (okay, I plain don't understand that one.) Anyway, this is a bunch of stuff I would have liked to establish for sure before getting to the meat of the argument (as it's difficult to make progress when working on a flawed base) but we just never really managed to head there. So these are my full explanations regarding what I've been able to understand from this complaint. I hope you find them reasonable and mostly agree with me.

I like silly things when they happen every once in a while. I think the issue most people have is when silly things are a constant factor, or pretty much canon. Adding clown as a job slot would mean you'd have to deal with a clown every round, and if you wanted to have "serious ar-pee" you'd have to ignore the clown. Having clown ops that pop up once in a blue moon, in comparison, is mostly harmless.

we have w i z a r d s

This isn't some huge project; it'd mostly take interested devs (and pretty much any contributor) to take 30 minutes out of their day to think of some random interesting facts and bring them to Jackboot. I think there might be some work to be done in deciding which facts would be the most crucial to introduce people to, but again that's mostly a day's work, pretty far from overhauling all of the species and factions' fluff. And I actually think this is more important than fleshing out lore (which should be done, but all in its time). You gotta get the lore to the people, if you want them to start caring about it. Currently, there's not really any easy way to stay in touch with the lore or be introduced to it, short of going on the wiki or reading newscasters. (Both of which involve essentially opening a book and reading for a while, which isn't necessarily the best form of pacing for some people.)

Don't panic! Two more days until your Skrell quarantine ends, and as long as nobody can prove that you have destroyed the server by then (or started any Tajaran orgies) I will be glad to accept your application.

As we've discussed Skrell changes together in the lore chat I trust you must be pretty informed on them. As such I'll be glad to accept this.

I remember you! We just had a small overhaul of Skrell lore. Can you simply read the quickstart guide that has been posted (or just the list of changes at the bottom, if you like) and tell me if you're okay with it? If you are, we can get this application accepted right away.

I have updated the wiki article for the Skrell. This doesn't mean the wiki page still isn't a mess, but simply that you shouldn't run into canon conflicts anymore if you wish to make a Skrell using info from the wiki. A list of the changes can be found here (though it might be a bit hard to read). This also means that Skrell applications are once again open.

I don't believe I did anything to act as if I was part of a clique, and I'm rather confused by these accusations seeing as I have never interacted with most of these people out of the game besides Halo.

You're calling yourselves the Memelord Mafia now? Seriously? This has become some sort of clan? And you wonder why people are starting to have an issue with you lot. You might be taking this a bit too seriously. I believe some people have started throwing accusations that a group of disjointed people formed a "memelord clan" or something of the like for sharing similar opinions. Other people are simply making fun of it.

Maybe. Will you call me Frances instead of FFrances if I do?

"What do you expect me to do, ROLEPLAY? What kind of server do you think this is?' The whole point of my character that round is that he was absurd and nonchalant. He laughed about recruiting people for an anti-NT terrorist organization right on a NT station, he laughed about getting lost in space and meeting his likely and eventual doom, and he laughed about getting his lungs destroyed (while coughing a lot, and still trying to get help and complaining about the pain - heaven forbid someone try to inject a bit of humor in a tense situation, people never do that irl.) Anyway, you say you don't have a problem with silly stuff (you did say you want to bring clowns back to HRP), but you have a problem with memes. Memes like using the word dank or mentioning runescape (which I'm still iffy to concede on given the number of times people discussed old games just like that on extended rounds). But how was my character's reaction memetic? He tried to get medical help, which he was denied. He repeatedly called attention to his condition, even after people refused to help him. And then he made a joke about it. Oh. It was silly, and somewhat absurd, yes. But what's your actual argument at this point? Did you change your mind, and do you have an issue with joke characters existing altogether, then? If not, what is the issue with a joke character making a joke about the fact that they're wounded? (While still fully acknowledging that they are, mind you.)