View Own Admin Notes verb/discord command

[Sniblet]

Currently, players can personally approach one of the two highest authorities on the server to ask them for permission to see their own notes. The process can be more convenient, more timely, less personal, and less intimidating than that, and I believe that would be a good thing. If I'm showing ignorance by saying this, I don't know what I don't know, sorry - help me understand if you can, please.

What I'm asking for:

• Players should be able to see their own notes using an in-game or discord command, divorced from staff consideration.
• Not all notes should be so visible to those who have them - for ban evasion suspects, for instance. There should be an option for admins to set "secret" notes that aren't seen by the player requesting them in this way. The secret toggle should be used sparingly so that most or all notes on most players are available to those players at their convenience.

Pros of being able to see our notes:

• We can see when a note has been placed on us that we believe to be badly mistaken, irrelevant, or incomplete. We can bring these up before they're used as evidence in later administrative action. And sometimes after.
• We can see admins keeping track of what we're doing, so we can remind ourselves of what not to do again.

Pros of being able to see our notes on command:

• Easier to find out how we're supposed to see our own notes (personally didn't know I could until today).
• No risk or fear of risk of headmins choosing to deny a note request.
• No risk or fear of risk of direct communication with headmins becoming hostile.
• No risk or fear of risk of "bothering" headmins.
• In a word, no social anxiety.
• Bots are much more timely than people (1s as opposed to 30m - 10h).
• Notes can be checked very regularly with the above eliminated, amplifying the positive uses of self-note checks. People who wouldn't or couldn't ask headmins feel less excluded and talked-about behind their backs.

Cons (AFAIK):

• Mitigated risk of notes that are intended to be secret being shown to players by mistake.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

I am not onboard with this.  
This will require additional work/time spent on a project that is not necessary while there is already tons of other more important things to do. 

You said it yourself, people can just approach the head admins to get their notes. There is no judgement and there is no reason to feel intimidated. This is extremely pointless to me. 
Notes aren't kept locked up in a vault, any one can just... ask. 

[Cnaym]

I had not played for a bit, asked for my notes so I can keep in mind what I had been bwoinked about and got them rather quickly. No need to change a woking system.

[Sniblet]

You may know the head administrators are approachable. Others, especially those with meaningful note records, likely do not.

If it's more good for the game than bad, it's not a bad change, is it? If it takes work to implement, that shouldn't break the deal. Delay it? Maybe.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Sniblet

[Garnascus]

So myself and alberyk will generally give out screenshots of notes to anyone who asks with the explicit stipulation that any notes you see are not up for debate. The reason being imagine you have 30 notes and you ask for screenshots to open up a staff complaint about each of them. Such a system is unsustainable and would be impossible to maintain due to the insane amount of work required. I think it is reasonable for players to want to see their notes because you want to know your "standing" in regards to "how close am i to being banned?". I think communication on how our punishment system works could alleviate most of these concerns if not all of them. I think assuming the player knows how it works they would have a good intuitive understanding of "how close am i to getting banned?". I will briefly explain that system below. 

While it is theoretically possible to be bwoinked for ancillary things (I need your testimony you are not in trouble) most people get bwoinked either because they have done something wrong or are suspected of having done something wrong. If the ahelp determines you did indeed do something wrong we need to examine your history. In the list i detail shortly assume the player is playing in reasonably good faith, not a malicious griefer and for some reason has a hard time following the rules. I will detail various staff actions and the reasoning behind them.

1st action. Note.

You have been told by a staff member explicitly not to do something. It may be exceedingly minor like calling an officer shitcurity(lrp terms) or it might be serious (you cut someones arm off during surgery by accident). In either case you will be informed what you did wrong and directed on how to proceed in the future (if it was an accident). Keep in mind it is possible to accrue A LOT of notes before you ever move up on the punishment scale. The reason being is we look for PATTERNS of behavior. If you call someone shitcurity, accidentally cut off someones arm learning medical or afk as a single slot role then all of these could receive a simple note because there is probably no real pattern of behavior we need to try to address.

2nd action. A Warning

This is our "bread and butter" because this one is actually visible to you as a player. You also have to read and acknowledge it before you can continue playing the game. A warning is placed when we notice in your note history that you have been told to not do a particular thing and have done it again. So maybe you called security officers shitcurity a few times and received some notes. You did it again and now you receive a warning. Again, like with notes it is technically possible to accrue a couple of warnings over various unrelated areas before you ever get temp banned. Most players including myself have a couple of these.

3rd action. The tempban

You done goofed now. You have called officer barney shitcurity once again despite a note and a warning telling you not to. You did not alter your behavior so we are faced with the unfortunate decision of barring you from the game server temporarily. The ban system asks us to set the ban time in "minutes". Why? Nobody knows but we keep it simple here. 99.9% of bans fall are either 1 day, 3 days or a full week. If you get a temp ban and you have a consistent pattern of the offending behavior your temp ban will be a little longer (up to a week) and if its more mild but still a pattern it might only be a day. As an example using LRP terms a third time here would probably just be a 24 hour ban. As with notes and warnings it is theoretically possible to accrue a couple of different temp bans related to various things. You will GENERALLY see a much smaller frequency of this occurring however. 

3.5 action. The jobban

Exactly the same logic as a temp ban except here the behavior is SPECIFICALLY relegated to a particular role. Maybe you have a consistent pattern of being supremely awful security? Brigging people for no reason, breaking peoples arms, using lethals on crew by "accident". Jobbans are exactly what they sound like and generally follow our punishment hierarchy logic. 

4th action. The permaban

Do not pass go. Do not collect 200$. You have a CONSISTENT pattern of the offending behavior now. You have TIME AND TIME AGAIN called officer barney shitcurity, you have broken the immersion of the round by joining as JOHN CENA and JOHN SEX and a handful of temp bans and warnings where not enough to stop you. All we can do at this point is permanently ban you from the community.

Important things to consider

1. I said at the start that this chart assumes an average player. A player not joining our server specifically to grief. If we identify you as a griefer you skip the line and go right to permaban land. It is NOT EASY to get this classification. You would have to join the server and spam the n word, detonate a bunch of max caps for the lulz or maybe you're just a lowly chef trying to make a living with other peoples shoes...

2. With regards to permabans there is still hope. You can appeal the permaban on our forums and briefly explain why you wont make the same mistakes again. The staff member who banned you will review it and if it is your first permaban almost always unban you. The first permaban is extremely easy to appeal and the second permaban is almost impossible to appeal. Our logic is that if you have gotten to the point of being permabanned and you can be assed to make an appeal then you might be able to play here and follow the rules. If we extended that olive branch to you once and you got permabanned AGAIN well....you're not coming back. We do not ever unban people and put them on "thin-ice". That is to say we do not unban people with the stipulation "if you mess up once you're permabanned again". It is a practice i forbid among the team because it sets people up for failure. 

3.This chart is generally regarded as a rule of thumb among staff, not written in stone. It is theoretically possible to "jump" punishment tiers but those are case by case example and require some more justification. The offending behavior has generally caused more harm to justify the increase. 

That was a lot and i dont blame you if you dont read any of it. The TLDR here is if you ever get "noted" a staff member has 99.9% of the time approached you and told you not to do something. Warnings are visible to the player as are bans (I think?). 

[Sniblet]

Thank you for laying out the punishment scale in detail - it has taught me some things - but I don't believe it's relevant here.

• If some asshat makes 30 staff complaints for every note on their record, that asshat was probably banned months ago, somewhere in the process of note-collection, just for being the type of asshat to make 30 staff complaints.
• If someone makes a staff complaint for each of the 5 genuinely mistaken/misleading notes on their record out of their 30, that's annoying. But it's also better to have the record straight.
• If the above doesn't matter, an automatic note popup can say "THESE ARE NOT UP FOR DEBATE." The advantage of being able to pull up a concrete record of your server ban health bar remains.
• I don't know where I can see my past warnings or bans without asking for them from a headmin.

The View Admin Notes system works on other servers. From my experience at Yogs, note appeals come in often, one at a time (I've never seen 30 at a time, even at View Admin Notes' introduction to Yogs), and most are rejected on the basis of "notes are not punishments, and are only invalid if false." Some are genuinely posted by people who understand notes' function, and are accepted. I, personally, received a tempban on Aurora in January with the help of a misleading note. I have never been banned on Yogs, but have successfully appealed two notes.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Sniblet

[Bear]

You can see your warnings in game and also on the web interface. Under administrative notes and warning verb in ooc I believe. Never been banned so I do not know if those show up there as well.

[Garnascus]

I was trying to explain why a player would ever want their notes to begin with and then i segued. I suppose if i am being honest i am not 100% against the idea of a "view notes" button. We've done things the same way for so long with a great deal of success though so i am resistant to change. I would need to be totally sure the benefits are there and i do not think i am. Like i have said 99.9% of the time when you get bwoinked by a staff member you get a note. Not a single note on anyone's account should be a surprise. 

[UponASeaOfStars]

Honestly, there's really no harm in adding it other than the dev budget required to do so, and it'd go a long way towards transparency.

[MattAtlas]

I will look into coding an implementation of this

[Lmwevil]

9 hours ago, Bear said:

You can see your warnings in game and also on the web interface. Under administrative notes and warning verb in ooc I believe. Never been banned so I do not know if those show up there as well.

i think warnings and notes are different, i believe staff note you and cannot be seen unless you ask, however actual warnings are different

[Evandorf]

I don’t believe this is necessary. Garn explained the existing system above and, assuming staff are following proper escalation, if you have a warning you can assume that either the act was egregious enough for an immediate warning or sufficient notes exist to warrant it. Warnings are visible to players and if you think a staff member is not following proper escalation then that would be a staff complaint. The staff member attached to the complaint reviews the notes and history and gives a second opinion/makes a determination on if it was warranted.

Many of the benefits you list are to provide  players who have anxiety contacting staff with an alternative but if someone is incapable of engaging with staff to simply ask for their notes I don’t see them going through the complaints process multiple times to correct perceived errors or misunderstandings. More likely this will be used by less anxious players for frivolous and/or pedantic complaints to change the wording of notes at best. At worst I can see notes, which are often subjective, being used in bad faith as a tool to overturn decisions or admin-shop for more favorable outcomes.

[Sniblet]

A note's wording matters. Again, I've been tempbanned over a misleading note. It's wrong to assume that notes are always perfectly accurate to what's happened and tell the full story, and when it fails in this it can be to the detriment of both players and staff. Even knowing that a note exists (staff don't always notify players when an interaction ends in a note - my note came from an interaction that I initiated) isn't knowing that it's accurate. A note that doesn't reflect what's happened is a bad note, can lead to punishments for things that haven't happened, and so warrants correction.

While it's wrong to say that current policy hides evidence by making players go all the way to the top to get what's been recorded about them, they sure make it more difficult than it needs to be. I don't see the benefit in making this difficult.

Someone who wants to make a frivolous string of complaints can politely ask a headmin for their notes and then go to the forum and scream abuses at staff until someone forum bans them.

Someone who's too scared of attracting the attention of the highest authorities of the server for a one on one interaction isn't necessarily scared of impersonally making a case for themselves on a public forum, especially if they get to see what they need to talk about beforehand.

Consider:

"I don't know what you have written down about me, but..."

vs

"While the note from 01-03-2022 says I was sarcastic in the ticket, I should say that that was never my intent and I had no idea I came off that way..."

Edited February 9, 2023 by Sniblet

[Evandorf]

I never assume notes are perfectly accurate. They are very subjective because it is rare that you can accurately gauge intent even if you are actively observing a situation. Notes are not meant to be objective proof but are mainly used to show trends in player behavior.

For example, if I am trying to determine the best action to take because someone was killed with little to no RP the exact details of previous incidents matter very little compared to their frequency and how many different members of staff have had to speak to them regarding the issue.

I believe making notes easily accessible, and therefore increasing the likelihood of having them be subject to complaint, is flawed because of their subjective nature and narrow focus. It’s better to leave complaints to warnings and bans as they usually occur after some amount of collective scrutiny and the pattern of the behavior proves the intent. 

[Peppermint]

Kind of agree with Garn. You can ask for your notes. If people are so worried and terrified over head staff (both of whom have a track record of generally being very lenient and encouraging us to give people chances) to the point you aren't comfortable, surely you'd also not be comfortable in assuming your grievances would be handled regardless? I feel at some point, people have to just accept that they need to talk to flks

I don't feel the massive influx of complaints we'd have to deal with would be worth it, when:

- Notes usually don't mean anything. Warnings come before and you can see these.
- Issues with them get cleared up very quickly - including the example you were talking about, Sniblet.
- There are already ways to get them sent to you.
- You can see when we know you are multikeying for evasion as everything gets thrown together in the database.
- It's nice to have a place to put things for staff, just for staff, in dealing with folks. Some people are very hostile and you can expect them to be rude, so noting that so we don't get the baby trials to deal with them is good. Some people are very positive and understanding, whilst others need a little more help in explanations - again, we can put it down there.

I'm just not sure where this lack of faith is coming from when you can, in real time, see changes going ahead as issues are raised. 

[Sniblet]

So the consensus, as I understand it, is that:

1. it's preferred to keep notes more difficult to access (but it's still easy, for most people),
2. because this means that players are only able to address potential admin issues after they've escalated,
3. and that's good because it saves on staff complaints.

Am I missing or misrepresenting anything?

Also, Peppermint, you seem to be overlooking the "secret notes" component.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Sniblet

[Zulu0009]

41 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

I don't feel the massive influx of complaints we'd have to deal with would be worth it, when:

- Notes usually don't mean anything. Warnings come before and you can see these.
- Issues with them get cleared up very quickly - including the example you were talking about, Sniblet.
- There are already ways to get them sent to you.
- You can see when we know you are multikeying for evasion as everything gets thrown together in the database.
- It's nice to have a place to put things for staff, just for staff, in dealing with folks. Some people are very hostile and you can expect them to be rude, so noting that so we don't get the baby trials to deal with them is good. Some people are very positive and understanding, whilst others need a little more help in explanations - again, we can put it down there.

I feel compelled to ask what the staff's position is on notes. Is it this one? Notes are a way to let other staff know of people's behaviors, usually don't mean anything? Why are they used as a justification of punishments, then, as in "you have several notes, which support this ban/tempban/etc."? I don't mean this offensively, I am genuinely unsure. On the point of notes already being available upon request, it is similar to the argument I have made before about staff complaints. It's a matter of ease of access. Having to ask a staff member for one's notes versus just seeing them oneself is a big difference, same as opening a staff complaint versus speaking to a staff member. I would also argue something that IRL I really wouldn't: if there's nothing wrong with player notes, why aren't we allowed to see them already (the "if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be afraid of being searched" thing)? Lastly, there is also the issue that a user might not even know they do have notes to see. Why would a user ask a staff member to see notes that they are not aware they have?

22 hours ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

This will require additional work/time spent on a project that is not necessary while there is already tons of other more important things to do. 

One could say the same thing about a lot of suggestions in this board of the forum, but they are still valid. If there is a suggestion about it, with people commenting on it and even MattAtlas working on a solution (thank you, by the way) then it seems important. I agree with Sniblet that being able to see one's notes is harmless, probably easy to implement (<--- clueless) and adds to Aurora's transparency.

[MattAtlas]

41 minutes ago, Zulu0009 said:

I feel compelled to ask what the staff's position is on notes. Is it this one? Notes are a way to let other staff know of people's behaviors, usually don't mean anything?

a note is the first thing done to a player when they break the rules and have no/little precedent of breaking rules

e.g if an officer hacks into engineering, they'd get told "don't do it again" and that comes with a note saying "spoke to this person about hacking airlocks", there is nothing more to them

after a note it could escalate either to another note, a warning or ban (info on this is in the rules) but that's up to the severity of the issue + attitude of the player + staff's subjective judgment

 

[Arrow768]

This topic has been discussed by @Alberyk, @Garnascus and me.

We believe that it can be useful to allow players to view most of their notes.
This will be part of a larger rework of the notes/warnings system, so there is no timetable on when this will be implemented.

Quite a few details of this system still have to be decided, but there are a few key points already:

• Notes that have been created until the "new" system is merged will not be visible.
  • This would require us to go through all the notes and classify them as "restricted" or not restricted. Which is not doable with a reasonable effort.
• The ability to make a staff complaint about notes will be restricted in some way.
  • It will most likely be restricted to only make a staff complaint about notes that are factually incorrect.
  • Details will be released once we are closer to a merge of the new implementation.
• There will most likely be the capability to add other notes aswell.
  • i.e. Lore Specific notes to formalize the lore note/warning process.

[UponASeaOfStars]

I'm aware my opinion doesn't really carry much weight here, but I think it's an important step to do something about old notes as well - which means either declassifying them so that the players in question can see them, or just delete them and give everyone a clean slate. (Probably the former, realistically.) The reason for this is simple: any notes created before the new system are still going to be notes, and will still be used as evidence against players. You might say 'oh, they're just notes, they don't matter', but if they're just notes and they don't matter, then they shouldn't be brought up in ban appeals or staff complaints. We can't have it both ways.

What I suggest to deal with this is simple: a blanket declassification of all notes, which currently fall into three categories:

• Frivolous notes (that probably shouldn't exist anyway),
• Non-frivolous notes (that the players have a right to see),
• And notes pertaining to active investigations - which comprise a very small portion of notes, few enough that it'd be entirely possible to just manually reclassify those specific notes.

The benefits of this are obvious: it lets players actually see their notes.

[Lmwevil]

1 minute ago, UponASeaOfStars said:

I'm aware my opinion doesn't really carry much weight here, but I think it's an important step to do something about old notes as well - which means either declassifying them so that the players in question can see them, or just delete them and give everyone a clean slate. (Probably the former, realistically.) The reason for this is simple: any notes created before the new system are still going to be notes, and will still be used as evidence against players. You might say 'oh, they're just notes, they don't matter', but if they're just notes and they don't matter, then they shouldn't be brought up in ban appeals or staff complaints. We can't have it both ways.

What I suggest to deal with this is simple: a blanket declassification of all notes, which currently fall into three categories:

• Frivolous notes (that probably shouldn't exist anyway),
• Non-frivolous notes (that the players have a right to see),
• And notes pertaining to active investigations - which comprise a very small portion of notes, few enough that it'd be entirely possible to just manually reclassify those specific notes.

The benefits of this are obvious: it lets players actually see their notes.

before I hear someone say "request your notes from staff", the vast majority of people will see 'Oh I can see my notes, oh there's nothing here I'm glad i'm doing so well on the server' then never know that they have hidden notes past X date 

[FlamingLily]

On 11/02/2023 at 08:48, Lmwevil said:

before I hear someone say "request your notes from staff", the vast majority of people will see 'Oh I can see my notes, oh there's nothing here I'm glad i'm doing so well on the server' then never know that they have hidden notes past X date 

Seems like a relatively easy issue to counter, just add:
"INFO: Administrator Notes applied prior to XX/XX/XX are not shown. Contact Head Administration to view." to the top of the window that shows your notes.

Sure it doesn't exactly counter the issue as it stands presently for notes prior to implementation of the new system, but I think it's good enough when you consider the manhours needed to manually sort all of them

[Arrow768]

This is still on the “implement it eventually list”