Staff Complaint - WickedCybs

[Butterrobber202]

BYOND Key: Butterrobber202
Staff BYOND Key: WickedCybs
Game ID: cjN-cMHs
Reason for complaint: 

WickedCybs has informed my that my LOOC chatter is "distracting" and that my usage of LOOC does not fall in line with its purpose. I've been given a note over this and intend to contest it.

1. As far as I can tell, outside of its name declaring it a Local Out-of-Character channel, LOOC does not have any defined purpose set by the admin team, rules or wiki. With that in mind, I should not be noted/warned for "improper usage of LOOC" when LOOC does not have a proper usage. I can hardly be expected to follow rules or guidelines that do not exist. While I'm perfectly fine with listening to staff, if staff want to consider banning me for something as trivial as LOOC messages, I'd like the book thrown at me to be something myself and others can read. 

2. I was not being excessive. I shot small messages at around 4 groups of people that I can recall.

a. I said hi to a player I knew and exchanged around 4 messages with them.

b. Pointed out to a Hanger Tech/Borg that a Martian would probably know what America's flag looks like, since America still exists. Very short discussion and ended with Paradox Games quips.
c. Made a TTS bomb joke to a group. About a total of 2 messages from me, then comments on a player misclick that everyone was amused by.

d. Commented/Joked on a Officer's IC usage of "My Brother in Christ" converted to "My Officer in Law" by calling them a mall cop in the ancient spirit of SS13 Officers considering themselves THE LAW.

These were spread out of the course of around 30 minutes or so, I believe, as I was just observing as I listened to an online lecture and not paying attention to the time.

* As for it being distracting, players are capable of ignoring my messages, politely asking me to go elsewhere/shut up in LOOC, or disabling LOOC all together. I'm hardly an observer main, but observers should not just be excluded from local OOC communication unless they are actively being a dick or breaking IC in OOC. As the player population climbs, especially during events, everyone and their mothers are in LOOC chatting about anything from the paint on their bedroom walls to the political situation of the CRZ.

Evidence/logs/etc: I do not have the round logs for my usage of LOOC, as I had closed out of the game and moved on to other activities when WickedCybs DM'd me on discord. Here are the discord logs.
 

Spoiler

Additional remarks: None.

[WickedCybs]

2 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

As far as I can tell, outside of its name declaring it a Local Out-of-Character channel, LOOC does not have any defined purpose set by the admin team, rules or wiki. With that in mind, I should not be noted/warned for "improper usage of LOOC" when LOOC does not have a proper usage. I can hardly be expected to follow rules or guidelines that do not exist. While I'm perfectly fine with listening to staff, if staff want to consider banning me for something as trivial as LOOC messages, I'd like the book thrown at me to be something myself and others can read. 

"I shouldn't have been noted because there's no specific rule for this situation" is never and will never be consideration for not punishing somebody once they abuse something they've been told is a problem. I would have been more than happy to not leave a note and just advise you to stop, but I've had to talk to you before due to you distracting others and disrupting roleplay via spamming LOOC with your thoughts on antags and strategies. You should have known better by now due to this.

2 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

 I was not being excessive. I shot small messages at around 4 groups of people that I can recall.

I don't share your thoughts, here.

2 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

As for it being distracting, players are capable of ignoring my messages, politely asking me to go elsewhere/shut up in LOOC, or disabling LOOC all together. I'm hardly an observer main, but observers should not just be excluded from local OOC communication unless they are actively being a dick or breaking IC in OOC. As the player population climbs, especially during events, everyone and their mothers are in LOOC chatting about anything from the paint on their bedroom walls to the political situation of the CRZ.

Absolutely not. People shouldn't need to disable LOOC altogether or ignore you. We are not prioritizing ghosts over people actually playing the game. LOOC also does have a practical use for people to work out issues or resolve a problem, among other things. I don't care about minor chatter during downtime but this essentially all you were doing.

This should be all for me unless I'm asked for anything more.

[Butterrobber202]

8 hours ago, WickedCybs said:

"I shouldn't have been noted because there's no specific rule for this situation" is never and will never be consideration for not punishing somebody once they abuse something they've been told is a problem. I would have been more than happy to not leave a note and just advise you to stop, but I've had to talk to you before due to you distracting others and disrupting roleplay via spamming LOOC with your thoughts on antags and strategies. You should have known better by now due to this.

I understand that what staff say goes, but I do not believe that my usage of LOOC is wildly different than how others use LOOC. It feels as if I am being treated unfairly.

I am aware of being asked in the past, but I was not “spamming” by any definition of the word. I have adjusted for the previous warning already and don’t often use LOOC to talk strategy/mechanics unless I’m in the round, antagonist myself, or someone is clearly struggling with game mechanics. 

 

8 hours ago, WickedCybs said:

Absolutely not. People shouldn't need to disable LOOC altogether or ignore you. We are not prioritizing ghosts over people actually playing the game. LOOC also does have a practical use for people to work out issues or resolve a problem, among other things. I don't care about minor chatter during downtime but this essentially all you were doing.

I don’t understand how players are suddenly incapable of ignoring messages they are not the target of or do not wish to engage in. Or just politely saying they don’t want to talk. It takes less than 5 seconds. 
Minor chatter is a pretty common use for LOOC, and I do not see why I was noted for it, considering I received chatter back from atleast 3 out of the 4 groups I spoke too. 
 

By contesting the note, I simply want to have have a dialogue about if this behavior is due administrative action it received.

Outside of that, I also have no more to say on the matter.

[Roostercat]

Hi. Apologies for taking so long to actually respond to this one. There is no excuse for it besides myself just being occupied and forgetting entirely.

 

From what I can see, this whole deal is about overuse of LOOC. LOOC is primarily to be used for technical issues and questions, and from your examples as well as from some I have seen myself, you seem to like using it to make comments a lot. This in itself isn't usually bad, and is perfectly fine every once in a while. But you do it a LOT, which can and will start to disrupt roleplay. The best example I can think of this is whenever anyone has a meeting with most of the crew involved in a public place. If you've ever seen what LOOC turns into during stuff like that, then you probably know how it can be distracting. What you have done isn't quite on that level, but its still enough to be a distraction to those around you, and thus outside the bounds of what LOOC is for.

 

That being said, what all was done administration wise, was this just you being told not to do it so much and thats it? I don't believe this is something that warrants an actual punishment, since to my knowledge this has not been brought up before now.

[Butterrobber202]

Yeah. I’d just like the clarification for LOOC’s intended use to be put somewhere. I wouldn’t have been using it as I was had if we had a guideline somewhere. 

[WickedCybs]

3 hours ago, Roostercat said:

That being said, what all was done administration wise, was this just you being told not to do it so much and thats it? I don't believe this is something that warrants an actual punishment, since to my knowledge this has not been brought up before now.

It's not really unheard of for us to note or even ban people for spamming OOC channels. More importantly to me is that again, it was brought up before to Butter and the notes will show that. In a hypothetical where I didn't do this in the past, a note even on the first offense and after being told not do something is pretty much standard procedure. It's a summary of a ticket and nothing major in terms of punishment.

That said at this point I'm not sure if they even want the note removed or for there just to be guidelines. If it was just the latter then I'd say a complaint wasn't really an appropriate way to do it.

 

[Butterrobber202]

8 hours ago, WickedCybs said:

It's not really unheard of for us to note or even ban people for spamming OOC channels. More importantly to me is that again, it was brought up before to Butter and the notes will show that. In a hypothetical where I didn't do this in the past, a note even on the first offense and after being told not do something is pretty much standard procedure. It's a summary of a ticket and nothing major in terms of punishment.

That said at this point I'm not sure if they even want the note removed or for there just to be guidelines. If it was just the latter then I'd say a complaint wasn't really an appropriate way to do it.

I guess my complaint logic was that I was noted for misuse without a guideline in place, which made me feel it was more of a staff issue. I don't care about the warning itself, because I'm not intending to repeat the offense, I just wanted the ruling in a readable page rather than "LOOC is for X" unwritten rule.

Spamming is not what I was doing or warned for, since spamming is already against the rules. I was noted for not using LOOC for its unwritten intended purpose.

[WickedCybs]

3 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

Spamming is not what I was doing or warned for, since spamming is already against the rules. I was noted for not using LOOC for its unwritten intended purpose.

You absolutely were told the overuse was essentially spamming the chat, which was the main reason it couldn't be overlooked. I don't really appreciate you trying to rules-lawyer or lie to me and other staff when you get into even the smallest amount of trouble like this.

[Butterrobber202]

8 hours ago, WickedCybs said:

You absolutely were told the overuse was essentially spamming the chat, which was the main reason it couldn't be overlooked. I don't really appreciate you trying to rules-lawyer or lie to me and other staff when you get into even the smallest amount of trouble like this.

The wording and focus in the ticket, as I recall, was focused on me using LOOC for trivial matters outside the scope of its intent.

It’s been awhile and my only real desire is to see LOOC’s usage codified. I’m not looking to drag this complaint into things we don’t appreciate about one another. I’ll wait for rooster’s take on it, and that’ll be all.

[Roostercat]

Right, having looked at your notes, this is not the first time you have been noted for misuse of LOOC. Thus what the original purpose of the ticket was is now irrelevant to me, as you are doing something that you know full well you shouldn't be, whether or not it can be considered spamming. Mostly saying this to dispel the talk I'm starting to see about the true purpose of the ticket/ what rule was broken.

 

14 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

 

It’s been awhile and my only real desire is to see LOOC’s usage codified. I’m not looking to drag this complaint into things we don’t appreciate about one another. I’ll wait for rooster’s take on it, and that’ll be all.

This is more a thing to make a suggestion about, since what Cybs noted you for is more along the lines of misusing OOC after being talked to about it in the past. I don't think I can say its unfair to note you over this since you've been talked to about it before and know what the expectation is.

 

Overall, I do not see anything wrong with how Cybs handled this. It's something that has been brought up to you before and is something you are aware about expectation wise. I do agree that the rules on it should be clearer, but the kicker is that this isn't the first time. Unless I missed something, I am going to close this in 24 hours.

[Roostercat]

Archiving.