CCIA Process Refactor

[Snakebittenn]

The current (absolute) state of the CCIA process, interviews and all, has always heavily incensed me. The current model, I feel, is insufficient. It is slow, and tiresome.
The ideal process should be the following.
The IR maker makes their IR. They give every detail they can here (without writing a novella, of course.) They name their limited allowance of witnesses.
This is where things change. The IR maker's job is, essentially, done. CCIA may contact them for some follow-up questions (either through Discord, the forums, or whatever other platform, but preferably Discord), but they do not take a followup interview unless necessary. CCIA will also contact the witnesses in the same manner. This is all IC, despite being on an OOC channel. The logs are captured and sent to Borealis, who will (somehow) format them for readability and post them in a channel in the CCIA staff discord section. If a person volunteers, they can take an on-station interview, but it would no longer be the main way of doing it.
This would additionally have the benefit of player comfort during an interview. You have many things to worry about in the current way it's done. Ghosts watching you, pissing off the agent somehow, and worst of all the fact that you cannot step away. A Discord interview could go 'uninterrupted' because there is no worry about 'there is a ninja, please leave CCIA', or generally the fact that rounds have a limited amount of time to go on.

[geeves]

As SnakeB and I discussed this in the serious_discussion chat: we decided to post on this together to keep it nice and compact.

In addition to their idea, I think it would make for a nice OOC policy if, on a case-by-case basis, it were checked whether an IR was threatened, or people were incited to write up an IR.

If such were found, and the CCIA Liasion deemed or 'malicious' or whatever, then the case would be thrown out and rendered null and void. The reason for doing so would be to prevent people from bullying players with IRs, which could carry real OOC consequences.

Naturally, this system can and likely will be abused a few times, which is why it's up to the liasion (or agent, not sure what the CCIA uses these days)'s discretion.

[The lancer]

Half of the reason people are in ccia are to actually play a ccia agent. If you just take it to the discord as a default, you remove the main appeal of the job, if there are any to begin with. Discord interviews are also less reliable, and can more easily be manipulated, which of course wouldn't be the norm, rather something to think about.

Using borealis is also not great, as ccia doesn't get that much of a technical support to start with. We only have arrow rarely coding WI things. This isn't to bash arrow by any means, as he's been very helpful already. It's just that if we had a consistent coder support for the WI, we could port everything there. Which brings me to the next point.

What takes time is not the scheduling of the interviews, or the interviews themselves. It is the mind numbing volume of dumb things that need to be done in order to log and process the IR. You need to juggle between the WI, the public IR forums and the internal ccia IR forums. You have to go find a bajillion different formats for logging, IC messages and all that. While the process can be finished in a reasonable timeframe, it gets tedious after so many IRs. It usually takes someone brave to go and devote time to log every IR that has been sitting there in one sweep.

You then have to wait for the admin liaisons to clear the IR. Arrow recently coded a WI thing where we can check for antags ourselves, but this does not solve the issues of let's say, the offender receiving an ooc punishment, which would render the IR unpersuadable. Liaisons themselves do have lives, and we usually have to wait for a while.

After going through all that, you need to find someone to take the IR. People do have jobs and lives, and taking an IR is kind of a long term commitment, unless you really put your back into it and go through everyone rapidly. Discord interviews would cut the time for that final stage, but honestly while that last stage is what everyone sees, it's the only stage where we get to do something that's not staring at the forums.

As for what geeves said, that is a whole different can of worms. How will the liaison do that? What stops an offender from going "he's bullying me"? If someone does something stupid in a round and gets reported, I believe they should face the consequences of their actions.

[UnknownMurder]

I am in favor this suggestion due to @Snakebittenn and @geeves's reasoning. I would also like to emphasize on this reasoning that we would like our conversation to be private ourselves and the CCIAA Agent away from prying ghost eyes. I know Lancer is not exactly the progressive kind of person but do keep in mind, when I was a CCIA Agent (and Duty Officer), doing a discord interview was an option and people did appreciate the efforts that we went for to please them, this was known as the phone call interview with follow up questions. If you really really really don't ever want to use forums for whatever the goddamn reason or excuse that you give us, at least give us the choice. 

Alternatively, you could also do "emails" on forums by using messages. Just type out your questions and an employee would respond back to you with answers. 

Edited June 26, 2020 by UnknownMurder
duplicate wording

[Snakebittenn]

17 hours ago, The lancer said:

Half of the reason people are in ccia are to actually play a ccia agent. If you just take it to the discord as a default, you remove the main appeal of the job, if there are any to begin with. Discord interviews are also less reliable, and can more easily be manipulated, which of course wouldn't be the norm, rather something to think about.

Discord interviews could be made optional if someone insists on speaking to an actual agent ingame. Asides from that, we could just schedule more events where agents could show up and have presence, or just ways for them to be onboard.

 

 

18 hours ago, The lancer said:

Using borealis is also not great, as ccia doesn't get that much of a technical support to start with. We only have arrow rarely coding WI things. This isn't to bash arrow by any means, as he's been very helpful already. It's just that if we had a consistent coder support for the WI, we could port everything there. Which brings me to the next point.

A not-impossible concern, really. It'd be possible if Arrow had the free time and inclination.

 

 

18 hours ago, The lancer said:

What takes time is not the scheduling of the interviews, or the interviews themselves. It is the mind numbing volume of dumb things that need to be done in order to log and process the IR. You need to juggle between the WI, the public IR forums and the internal ccia IR forums. You have to go find a bajillion different formats for logging, IC messages and all that. While the process can be finished in a reasonable timeframe, it gets tedious after so many IRs. It usually takes someone brave to go and devote time to log every IR that has been sitting there in one sweep.

There would be one place for logs, and one format for them. Wherever Borealis outputs them, in the format that it would.

 

 

18 hours ago, The lancer said:

You then have to wait for the admin liaisons to clear the IR. Arrow recently coded a WI thing where we can check for antags ourselves, but this does not solve the issues of let's say, the offender receiving an ooc punishment, which would render the IR unpersuadable. Liaisons themselves do have lives, and we usually have to wait for a while.

That's where the system would come in handy. You wouldn't have to find out via logs if someone got an OOC punishment or not, When CCIA has everyone cited submit their version of events over DMs or the WI or some type of shit, you can easily see if antaggery/OOC punishments were involved, because they'd just tell you. Like a player complaint.

 

18 hours ago, The lancer said:

After going through all that, you need to find someone to take the IR. People do have jobs and lives, and taking an IR is kind of a long term commitment, unless you really put your back into it and go through everyone rapidly. Discord interviews would cut the time for that final stage, but honestly while that last stage is what everyone sees, it's the only stage where we get to do something that's not staring at the forums.

Being that the information would be more readily available in a standardized format, it would be easier on the agents to want to take an IR, and it would be easier on us to actually want to go through with them. Currently you have to experience both 'please sit down for 20 uninterrupted minutes in an ingame interview' and 'please tell us about events that happened 5 months ago that you did not submit a summary of.'

[Cnaym]

1 hour ago, Snakebittenn said:

Discord interviews could be made optional if someone insists on speaking to an actual agent ingame.

That is always an option and done from time to time, I think the official wording was "in case of scheduling issues" or such. That being said, servers provide official logs which are worth a ton more than the screenshot fights of "he said, she said".

1 hour ago, Snakebittenn said:

That's where the system would come in handy. You wouldn't have to find out via logs if someone got an OOC punishment or not, When CCIA has everyone cited submit their version of events over DMs or the WI or some type of shit, you can easily see if antaggery/OOC punishments were involved, because they'd just tell you.

This would work with honest and quick responses. You usually don't get either. I don't remember who it was, but one CCIA member got told to "go fuck off" because a person involved got banned between liaison check and the agent contacting the player.

On 25/06/2020 at 00:51, geeves said:

In addition to their idea, I think it would make for a nice OOC policy if, on a case-by-case basis, it were checked whether an IR was threatened, or people were incited to write up an IR.

If such were found, and the CCIA Liasion deemed or 'malicious' or whatever, then the case would be thrown out and rendered null and void. The reason for doing so would be to prevent people from bullying players with IRs, which could carry real OOC consequences.

People are often times "asked" to write an IR by others in round. This is either due to another person just partly involved (but wants stuff to be investigated) or more often than not due to the fact that an affected player has no clue of IRs or the CCIA at all. There are rules in place against abusing IRs to get others in trouble, you can also appeal IR results, staff complaint the agent or player complaint the person who made the IR if you think it was OOC motivated. This however brings me to the big issue I saw with the CCIA during my time.

Limited supply of liaisons: You really only get to pick  from the admin pool due to having to review logs. This is a very limited resource.

Limited supply of agents: Timezone issues mostly, or the fact that frequently half of the CCIA on list doesn't even seem to play the game anymore. The usual fix is for people to take IRs at timezones which are hard to schedule for them, thus taking a lot more time to interview everyone involved.

Understanding how CCIA works: It's written down nowhere, this thread shows that even other staff do not know a lot about the process and the "behind the scenes". As far as I see it only admins do get to see all forums involved and possibly the logs / the WI side of things.

Understanding what CCIA does ICly: They are HR, they will be used to get others in trouble. This should mean having to explain the big dumb someone did and work as janitor for a weekend or visit a anti racism seminar. If people would focus on the fact that CCIA is there to provide RP and has little to no way of getting you into real trouble that would shift the entire process from everyone lying their asses off to "participating in interesting RP".

Punishment: A clearer display of what is done and why would go a long way. Currently the playerbase seems to think you delete characters left and right and there is nothing to be done about it, which is kinda funny because the head of staff forums already show that you do not do that. Maybe a more visible place is needed? Oddly enough your appeal forum is also rarely used, you get little to no staff complaints. Instead we had people "threaten" to quit at the mention of CCIA. Apart from that public image, the rest was pretty much working from my perspective before I left.

[Soultheif96]

To expand on the mind numbing process, I have to do this in an order:

1. Review the case and take it. (1-3 minutes.)

2. Draft it up in CCIA Forums (5 minutes.)

3. Get player/character names. (5-30

minutes.)

4. Contact via Discord/Byond/Forums (5-10 minutes.)

5. Schedule interviews real time (Don’t ask.)

6. Interviews (20 minutes each.)

7. Document the interviews and update forum post (5-10 minutes.)

8. Draw conclusions, follow-ups, consult peers (10-30 minutes for me specifically.)

9. Make final verdict (2 minutes.)

10. Inform all parties, including CCIA (20 minutes.)

These take a long time to fulfill thanks to bureaucracy that we must accomplish for sake of transparency and line of thought. You can pull up the agent’s file and read the entire post to get the idea of WTF happened and who is guilty.

Just saying my piece on CCIA’s operations and why it takes a while. Hope this helped.

[Arrow768]

The long term goal is to move the IRs from the forums to the WI, as the WI enables automatic validation / checks of quite a few things.
Some of the groundwork is currently being made (i.e. https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/9155 which links notes/warnings to the game_id amongst other things), but there is still a lot of work to do.

The key points of the planned system are:

• Automatic validation of the entered data (i.e. game id, char names, ckeys, ...)
• Automatic checks for administrative action (notes/warnings/bans)
• Player-Query for Antag interaction (we already have that to some extend)
• Automatic notification of the involved parties via ingame message.

With these improvements it should be possible to resolve IRs much quicker, as the data-entry is performed by the ir-submitter and a lot of admin-checks are automated away.
The only time when a admin-review would be necessary with this system in in case of the existence of notes/warnings and if someone has claimed "antag involvement" during their interview.

[UnknownMurder]

Bump. I see that the CCIA are still slow and Lancer just opened the recent IR for investigation. The oldest IR has not been responded or touched upon. 

Edited July 18, 2020 by UnknownMurder