1 dismissal No "any ban means whitelist strip"; switch to "3 strikes youre out"

[Marlon P.]

Any ban, including a 24 hour ban, results in a full removal of your command whitelist. Even if a behavior has no immediate tie in with command behavior.

The server has always had a problem retaining adequate numbers of Command players. Lowering command retention over a zero-tolerance policy is detrimental to the server.

Switching from a zero tolerance policy to a 3 strike system retains a punishment for repeat behavior. Repeat behavior we would want to see addressed via a reapplication by the player.

But a one-shot ban - regardless of its duration or severity- leading to a Command strip is not utilitarian.

Transparency: happened to me once.

[Alberyk]

Three strikes of what exactly? Ban, notes, warnings, or all of them?

[Arrow768]

My concern here is that a ban generally does not come out of nowhere.
In most cases it is escalated from note to warning and then finally to a day ban.
Usually the things you are noted for also need to be related to each other. (So usually you arnt banned if you get noted for 3 different things)

At that point you already had your 3 strikes.

With that said, we expect our command (and AI players) to uphold a certain standard.
If you get a ban, you need to screw up repeatedly and/or quite severely.
At which point it is questionable if you are fit to hold the whitelist.

At the end of the day getting a command whitelist is not difficult.
Afaik that is run with a "easy to gain, easy to loose" attitude.

[Marlon P.]

17 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

Three strikes of what exactly? Ban, notes, warnings, or all of them?

Sorry,

Warnings and/or 24hr or less bans.

16 minutes ago, Arrow768 said:

With that said, we expect our command (and AI players) to uphold a certain standard.

Any standard comes with problems. Command has always been a sparse roster. Is zero-tolerance deterrence more important than filled command slots?

18 minutes ago, Arrow768 said:

At the end of the day getting a command whitelist is not difficult.

It is a whole process. I can't speak for others however. Just what i see and personally feel. The elements of reapplying are:

The social aspect of being seen reapplying after being banned.

Filling out all the questions.

Being monitored for an entire week.

Having people unload all their opinions about you in the application comments.

It is not easy to get, but it is easy to lose.

20 minutes ago, Arrow768 said:

At that point you already had your 3 strikes.

My concern is its a hard requirement. If circumstances are set in a way that I, for example, ban you for a reason that isnt related to your command play then then it is either the admin doesnt ban you at all (not ideal) or more likely bans you anyway with that additional, second punishment.

There is no discretion. A strike policy at least creates a window of time for behavior to improve.

If not 3 strikes, than any form of discretionary allowance in what form the punishment takes.

The current result of zero-tolerance deterrence continues to be more detrimental to the server than beneficial.

[Lucaken]

Nah. I trust the staff to apply bans with justification, and I also trust players to push for the reverting of those punishments if they find it was not. That the entire process is not always clear is something that should be worked upon (I don't think it's ever written anywhere that you lose your whitelist with any ban), but the suggestion to give more strikes is absurd without changing the process that already works.

I can't count how many times 'whitelists should filter it' is used as an argument as to why we shouldn't nerf/retcon abilities that come with certain whitelists. And it's a point I support - the general population of both players and whitelistees shouldn't have to suffer because a few players couldn't live up to the responsibilities of said whitelist. I'd also hate to experience someone making a bannable offense three times before they finally get their whitelist taken away - it just encourages people to play less responsibly. Not to mention, the note-warning-ban system already presupposes that a player commits previously punished behaviour before they are banned in any way. In a sense, there is already a three-strikes system in place, it's just interlinked with the general warning system. As it should be.

[KingOfThePing]

22 minutes ago, Lucaken said:

I don't think it's ever written anywhere that you lose your whitelist with any ban

You literally acknowledge this when applying 

[Lucaken]

10 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You literally acknowledge this when applying 

I just checked, and yeah, it does in both the AI and Command rules/format, but not the alien one. Perhaps a line could be added there, just a 'do you understand it may be stripped following administritive action'. Apart from that, yeah, it's transparent enough.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Lucaken

[KingOfThePing]

Oh, I thought we were only talking about AI/Command, my bad. I agree with you, it should just be added to every application format. 

[Alberyk]

Alien whitelists are not usually removed due to bans.

[Lucaken]

And I just realized this post only relates to Command whitelists - that is my bad. I hold the personal opinion that it should be the case for alien whitelists as well, but that is not relevant here. Either way, apart from that one point about nerfs/retcons, I stand by everything else.

[Marlon P.]

56 minutes ago, Lucaken said:

I hold the personal opinion that it should be the case for alien whitelists

Losing all your whitelists because of. 24hr ban would be catastrophic. It would take 2 months to recover from a single 24hr ban if you apply and receive every whitelist every single week.

1 hour ago, Lucaken said:

Nah. I trust the staff to apply bans with justification,

There is no discretion allowed by admins. Ive seen 24hr ban appeals where the admin expresses regret in the command whitelist being stripped along with the ban.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Marlon P.

[Lucaken]

You can simply lose the whitelist which was attributed to the ban. That is to say, if you act irresponsibly as a Unathi several times, get a 24h ban on playing the species as a result, you simply have to apply under Unathi again while keeping all your other whitelists. That is how I see the system working out, anyway, as none of it is in place.

As for your other example - yes, sometimes admins get something wrong and an appeal goes through. I agree in those cases, where the admin agrees to revert it, the whitelist should be given back. But that's a different point than the one you proposed in this thread.

[DatSamTho]

2 hours ago, Lucaken said:

You can simply lose the whitelist which was attributed to the ban. That is to say, if you act irresponsibly as a Unathi several times, get a 24h ban on playing the species as a result, you simply have to apply under Unathi again while keeping all your other whitelists. That is how I see the system working out, anyway, as none of it is in place.

That is essentially how it works, well, mostly. If you play as a species while disregarding the lore, you may have your whitelist removed, at the discretion of the lore devs. Since it's not really something that an admin might know about (You can hardly expect them to know all the ins and outs of every species), it's hard to have a system for it, aside from a case to case basis.

[Arrow768]

Voting for dismissal for the reasons stated above.

You only risk loosing your AI / Command whitelist if you get banned.

The species whitelists are generally unrelated to bans.