Staff Complaint - WitchBells

[stev]

BYOND Key: Memescope McGee (don’t judge me I made the account like a week before montage parodies went out of style, shut upppppp)

Staff BYOND Key: WitchBells

Game ID: car-c0VY

Reason for complaint:

In the given round I was playing my Zhan Janitor character, Jrihrarmrra Baqazu (or the Zhanitor, for anyone familiar), much as I do most rounds I play him: I put down mousetraps on vents in mildly inconvenient places, obliviously and insistently did my job and cleaned regardless of what was happening around me, in an industrious sort of way. I was then bwoinked by WitchBells and was immediately told to stop placing mousetraps in the halls, then later in the ticket informed me my character’s poor fluency in Basic is in violation of the corporate regulations’ standard hiring requirements.

To me, all of these things sound fine from an OOC, administrative/rules-based perspective. It’s all IC conflict, I’m not harassing anyone or yelling slurs or violating major rules; it’s *intentional* that this character causes some IC conflict, it’s a lot of fun to play and I’ve had people enjoy the character being around to generate fun, low-stakes, non-antag conflict. My issue is that WitchBells’s rulings (that A: I need to stop putting down mousetraps as a janitor, and B: all characters must maintain *full* fluency in Basic regardless of position or history) seem to be arbitrary OOC administrative action over IC issues.

And to give extra context on the fluency issue and the character as a whole, this character has records that state that they’re essentially unpaid labour whose only real reward to working at all is health insurance for vital life-extending medical treatments for his terminal radiation sickness; this was approved by a CCIA member when consulting them about this, providing further justification for the character’s hiring being relatively lax on standards and for their poor Basic fluency, plus the fact that they are just a janitor on a non-existent minimum wage.

As it stands, I’m left very confused as to why I was bwoinked about this. To me, this just seems like IC conflict taken into OOC, where an IR or something like that would be much more appropriate.

 

Evidence/logs/etc:

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to grab the logs before the server restarted.

Aforementioned character records: Enrolled in the NanoTrasen Low-Income Employee Healthcare Initiative; the employee's healthcare expenses are covered by NanoTrasen Incorporated using funds drawn from the employee's salary without overdraft fees (excluding unforeseen medical complications).

Additional remarks:

[stev]

Bumping as it's been over 24 hours since posting, as per staff complaint board rules. 

[witchbells]

I stand by my judgement on your character's fluency. While I've been corrected by other staff members on the fluency issue itself, it revealed another problem within the problem - I've received multiple reports, both during that round and after you publicly posted this complaint about Jrihrarmrra in regards to you using the character's fluency as an excuse to purposefully mess with people., leading to the belief that you're using your characters fluency as an excuse. You claim that your character is fluent enough to pass entry tests, yet has trouble with simple commands like "stop" and "no" when the character's behavior inevitably infuriates people.

I have no intentions of recanting my judgement as of yet.

[stev]

So I really didn’t want to have to reply to this but I don’t really see any other option, as your response contains the exact same issue I made this complaint about: Whenever I asked questions or clarifications about what you were saying in the original ticket(s), you’d refuse to elaborate or clarify and then come back with a broader, harsher accusation than what the issue originally allegedly was, and I’ve still yet to receive any real explanation as to why any of what you’re accusing me of was A) problematic or B) even being addressed by you. This whole thing started out as you bwoinking me telling me to stop putting down mousetraps in halls, escalated into a fullblown investigation of whether my character was rules-breaking in his poor Basic fluency, and now it’s escalating to an accusation of me actively, purposefully, and maliciously designing and playing a character purely to fuck with people and piss other players off.

Not only this, but every instance of your accusations against me, inside and outside of the original tickets, has been nothing but vague, non-specific incidents which I can’t possibly explain or defend as A) I haven’t been told the specifics of the situation you’re talking about, B) you’ve refused to explain or elaborate on what I did that was wrong, C) you’ve refused to explain why the things I’m being told I did wrong are wrong, D) are so aggressively interrogative that I can’t form a coherent argument against it, and E) none of my points or defences are addressed beyond an outright refutation before moving onto the next accusation, meaning I don’t even know if me defending my actions worked or not before I’m being accused of something else.

As I seem to need to write this out in full again, despite me trying to explain this in the original ticket, I am not trying to OOCly upset people by cleaning their departments. When writing/playing this character I've intended him to mainly take a background role in most rounds, providing some fun IC conflict while playing around with some fun characterisation and exploring neat bits of the lore (namely the Quizosa nuclear strike). This character is a funny Zhan man who just wants to clean the station because that's his job, and that's a valid way to read the character if you don't want to go any deeper than that. If people choose to engage with the character some more, make an effort to get through to him or pick up on the tidbits of characterisation given through emotes, flavour text and items, they'll find a much more tragic figure who's essentially a slave to the corporation, trying to make some money to leave the remainder of his family when he eventually succumbs to his terminal illness. The point I'm trying to make here is that it's somewhat intentional that he's a bit annoying, that he causes some minor conflict with his insistence on cleaning every last thing, as that can be a great hook for fun roleplay if people choose to run with it.

Now, onto the actual specific content of your response itself; I’ll be breaking this down into parts to make it easier to follow and address.

14 hours ago, witchbells said:

I stand by my judgement on your character's fluency. While I've been corrected by other staff members on the fluency issue itself, it revealed another problem within the problem - I've received multiple reports, both during that round and after you publicly posted this complaint about Jrihrarmrra in regards to you using the character's fluency as an excuse to purposefully mess with people., leading to the belief that you're using your characters fluency as an excuse. You claim that your character is fluent enough to pass entry tests, yet has trouble with simple commands like "stop" and "no" when the character's behavior inevitably infuriates people.

I have no intentions of recanting my judgement as of yet.

Detailed response is spoilered for your convenience:

Spoiler

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I stand by my judgement on your character's fluency.

That you're not convinced your initial judgment is correct is irrelevant to this complaint, as again, you still refuse to explain why you think this. Leading with this continues to paint me in the wrong with no given reasoning or justification; you're making the assumption that I'm guilty without saying why and then saying it's my job to prove to you that I'm not acting in bad faith, something that's almost impossible to prove.

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While I've been corrected by other staff members on the fluency issue itself, (...)

This was written so offhandedly that it wasn't until after a night's destress and sleep that I even saw that you said I wasn't in the wrong here, as it's both prefaced by a statement that you stand by your judgment that I'm acting in violation of the rules and then lead right into accusing me of being a bad faith actor.

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(...) it [the accusation of poor fluency being a breach of rules] revealed another problem within the problem - I've received multiple reports, both during that round and after you publicly posted this complaint (...)

Yet again, you're providing zero evidence, explanation or argument for why I'm in the wrong or provided any examples whatsoever of me being in the wrong. The only reason I'm giving this weight is because somebody privately came to me of their own accord and gave me some constructive criticism on this character and some patterns in my play in general, which I've since responded to and tried to be mindful of, so I at least have some idea of what I'm doing that could annoy people.

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I've received multiple reports (...) in regards to you using the character's fluency as an excuse to purposefully mess with people., leading to the belief that you're using your characters fluency as an excuse.

This is the core of what's wrong with this reply. This whole thing has escalated from telling me to not put down so many mousetraps to a full-blown accusation of me being a malicious manipulator using my characters as a tool to harass other players. There is no justification, here or anywhere else, for making this kind of accusation against me here in public. If you believe I'm some kind of malicious harasser, here, in a public staff complaint about a minor ruling disagreement, isn't the place to make this accusation or inform others of this investigation; if you don't believe I'm a bad faith actor harassing people through characters, this can only be taken as an attempt to intimidate me. I don't appreciate this.

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You claim that your character is fluent enough to pass entry tests, yet has trouble with simple commands like "stop" and "no" when the character's behavior inevitably infuriates people.

This is the exact same accusation as before, which I now realise you've said other staff have already told you isn't a legitimate instance of rule-breaking behaviour. As I tried to explain during the original ticket(s), the character drives some low-stakes IC conflict - he's a (largely) industrious janitor who doesn't speak much Basic and is completely insistent on getting his job done, despite other employees telling him to not do his job for some reason; when people do make an effort to get through to him, they can and have changed his behaviour (e.g. a HoP on the round before the one this complaint is about got him to stop hiding the mousetraps, leading to more people avoiding them), which is something I tried using for my defence in the original ticket(s) but was, again, ignored and discarded in favour of more accusations. 

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I have no intentions of recanting my judgement as of yet.

Exact same thing as the first sentence. This is irrelevant and absurdly over-judgmental for a complaint about a goddamn janitor putting down too many mousetraps. This also frames this whole complaint with the idea that its purpose is for me to plead my innocence to you, which is just not what this is, especially given that you've already stated that other staff have informed you that the fluency ruling wasn't right.

tl;dr: This response is not only largely irrelevant, accusatory and inflammatory, but actively attempts to both undermine my complaint and get further administrative action taken against me while providing little to no response to my points, the complaint itself or my sincere and repeated requests for explanation as to why any of this is even happening.

Sorry about the length. This has been extremely stressful to deal with and write about, given the open hostility I'm being treated with.

[stev]

Bumping.

[witchbells]

On 08/02/2021 at 13:50, stev said:

you've said other staff have already told you isn't a legitimate instance of rule-breaking behaviour.

The other staffmembers have not told me that you, specifically, were not breaking the rules. They clarified the rules on fluency, which I still believe your character is breaking. I will try to elaborate.

 

On 08/02/2021 at 13:50, stev said:

I am not trying to OOCly upset people by cleaning their departments.

 

One would hope you weren't doing so intentionally, however, I've received multiple reports from people (who I have not revealed, and will continue to not reveal for their sakes, as is custom) who were very upset with your character's level of fluency that is, in your words, to provide "fun IC conflict." Regardless of your intentions, it is terribly convenient that your character can pass entry exams to work, yet does not understand simple requests like "stop doing that" - which is why I've gotten people who are very upset with the character, some of which have actually contacted you over it in the past. The crux of the issue is that if your character passes a basic fluency exam, characters should not have to put in effort to get your character to understand a simple "no." This leaves an impression of your character that is either not as fluent as you would have me believe, or that you are deliberately making the character dense in order to create conflict, which I reinforce, many people are not having as much fun with as you imagine.

[stev]

1 hour ago, witchbells said:

The other staffmembers have not told me that you, specifically, were not breaking the rules. They clarified the rules on fluency, which I still believe your character is breaking. I will try to elaborate.

One would hope you weren't doing so intentionally, however, I've received multiple reports from people (who I have not revealed, and will continue to not reveal for their sakes, as is custom) who were very upset with your character's level of fluency that is, in your words, to provide "fun IC conflict." Regardless of your intentions, it is terribly convenient that your character can pass entry exams to work, yet does not understand simple requests like "stop doing that" - which is why I've gotten people who are very upset with the character, some of which have actually contacted you over it in the past. The crux of the issue is that if your character passes a basic fluency exam, characters should not have to put in effort to get your character to understand a simple "no." This leaves an impression of your character that is either not as fluent as you would have me believe, or that you are deliberately making the character dense in order to create conflict, which I reinforce, many people are not having as much fun with as you imagine.

Right. I've tried to explain my motivations with the character so many times at this point and it's just not getting through. I've already written my view and justification of the way I've written and played the character, fluency and denseness included, so I'm not going to repeat myself over and over again with it. As I've said before, the character has a very poor level of fluency, with the bare minimum knowledge of where places are to clean, commands to clean, and other essentials for some less-than-minimum-wage Zhan janitor in a comically exploitative work contract.

Now, onto specific points:

 

1 hour ago, witchbells said:

The other staffmembers have not told me that you, specifically, were not breaking the rules. They clarified the rules on fluency, which I still believe your character is breaking.

On 08/02/2021 at 03:56, witchbells said:

While I've been corrected by other staff members on the fluency issue itself (...)

If that's the case, why did you say you were corrected on "the fluency issue"? This is contradictory and misleading, unless there's another fluency issue I haven't been made aware of.

 

1 hour ago, witchbells said:

(...) I've gotten people who are very upset with the character, some of which have actually contacted you over it in the past.

This is false. I've only ever had one person contact me with concerns/complaints about this character; it was spurred by the posting of this complaint; the criticism they gave about my playstyle was valid and constructive, and I've since tried to act on it (with my other characters). They also said they were not upset about the character and denied that they were acting as a witness for the purposes of this complaint. As they were also the only person (as far as I know/remember) to contact me with complaints or feedback about the character, I don't believe your claim that "some" of your witnesses have contacted me about it.

 

1 hour ago, witchbells said:

One would hope you weren't doing so intentionally, however (...) 

(...) [Your character is] not as fluent as you would have me believe, or that you are deliberately making the character dense in order to create conflict (...)

Also, this post keeps on the idea that I'm guilty and malicious until I can somehow prove a lack of bad intent on my own part. Please stop accusing me of getting all my kicks here out of making people have a bad time, there's no real evidence here for it and you're not engaging with my arguments that I'm not out to harass anyone beyond just saying "one would hope you're not a shithead, but you are." Everything you've written assumes I'm lying with malicious intent, which would be grounds for additional, more serious administrative action against me if this complaint is overturned (as per server rules, 5.d., "On Staff": If you are contacted by an admin, you are expected to reply, and communicate clearly and in good will. Failure to reply or disrespect towards admins may be grounds for a ban.) You've also only chosen to reply to two small, very specific parts of my own responses, with little address toward my main point beyond refuting all that I've said in my defence.

[Alberyk]

Myself and @MattAtlas will look into this complaint.

[witchbells]

On 10/02/2021 at 21:09, stev said:

If that's the case, why did you say you were corrected on "the fluency issue"?

Because I was corrected. It was mentioned for the sake of transparency.

 

On 10/02/2021 at 21:09, stev said:

This is false. I've only ever had one person contact me with concerns/complaints about this character; it was spurred by the posting of this complaint; the criticism they gave about my playstyle was valid and constructive, and I've since tried to act on it (with my other characters). They also said they were not upset about the character and denied that they were acting as a witness for the purposes of this complaint. As they were also the only person (as far as I know/remember) to contact me with complaints or feedback about the character, I don't believe your claim that "some" of your witnesses have contacted me about it.

I don't know what your intention is with this addition other than to argue semantics. It is true that I have been contacted by multiple people who have issues with your playstyle. I obviously have no way of accessing your discord messages to cross-check if any of these people were the same person. I have no comment on the fact that you have only been contacted by one person taking issue with the character so far.

 

I will reiterate my previous point. If your character has no issue with passing a fluency text in order to work on the station, then they should have no issue with basic commands.

[stev]

1 hour ago, witchbells said:

Because I was corrected. It was mentioned for the sake of transparency.

But as you've now said, the actual issue at hand wasn't corrected. If the clarification is neither about my case specifically nor relevant to the rules you believe I'm in violation of, why is it relevant at all? 

 

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I don't know what your intention is with this addition other than to argue semantics. It is true that I have been contacted by multiple people who have issues with your playstyle. I obviously have no way of accessing your discord messages to cross-check if any of these people were the same person. I have no comment on the fact that you have only been contacted by one person taking issue with the character so far.

The entire point of this addition is the bit you refuse to comment on, that none of your witnesses contacted me or spoke to me about their concerns or complaints. You're accusing me of knowingly and maliciously setting out to ruin other players' experience, yet you refuse to acknowledge that I have legitimately heard nothing substantially OOCly critical from any of the witnesses you say you're acting on behalf of and in the interests of. This isn't some unimportant minor detail that doesn't need comment; this is the difference between me just playing a character that you think skirts slightly close to the reasonable character rule versus accusations of me being a purposeful and malicious actor within the community, which, if it were true, could easily be interpreted to warrant a ban. And if you'd read my previous post(s) in full, you'd see that the one person who talked to me and gave criticism wasn't "taking issue" with the character,  they gave constructive criticism on my wider playstyle with a mention of this character as part of that criticism; this was again constructive criticism, not someone coming to me and saying I'm out of line for playing this character, and stated that they were not acting as one of your witnesses. 

 

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I will reiterate my previous point. If your character has no issue with passing a fluency text in order to work on the station, then they should have no issue with basic commands.

And I've responded to this point so, SO many times! I've addressed it in a number of ways across both the original tickets and almost every post in this entire thread, and you've STILL yet to acknowledge or actually address my responses! This entire complaint is has been me responding to you in depth and you choosing to ignore that I've done so, then go right back into insisting I'm wrong, or making yet more accusations against me without addressing or justifying any of the earlier accusations. This started out with mousetraps, and I still haven't even got a proper answer about why you think putting mousetraps on vents violates the server rules after a full week of this complaint and its resulting discussion. There's no bloody point in me even writing this at this point, as I know it's not gonna be meaningfully addressed beyond a flat denial or an accusation that I'm posting this in bad faith, and I'm starting to doubt there's any real point in replying here at all. Whatever, I've written this honestly and truthfully from my perspective here, so I'll post it. 

Edited February 14, 2021 by stev

[Alberyk]

Placing mousetraps is only really an ooc issue if it is not on the vents/areas where rats might show up like in the kitchen, unsure if we can really check if this happened in round.

Characters should have enough fluency in basic to understand how to do their jobs and follow/listen to orders given by command staff, this also includes knowing how to read in basic. Nursie did not leave any note in your record, so there is nothing really to fix in regards to that. We can't really find any evidence of malicious intent here as well, so no action will be taken in regards to this.

[stev]

On 17/02/2021 at 19:03, Alberyk said:

Placing mousetraps is only really an ooc issue if it is not on the vents/areas where rats might show up like in the kitchen, unsure if we can really check if this happened in round.

Characters should have enough fluency in basic to understand how to do their jobs and follow/listen to orders given by command staff, this also includes knowing how to read in basic. Nursie did not leave any note in your record, so there is nothing really to fix in regards to that. We can't really find any evidence of malicious intent here as well, so no action will be taken in regards to this.

Sorry for not replying for so long! Kept not getting round to it, my bad.

It's great to have this stuff properly laid out, thanks. 

If there's nothing more to sort out and no actual action is being taken against me, I guess you can close this complaint?

[Alberyk]

I will close this in around one day then.

[Alberyk]

Solved.