Reworking CCIA Incident Reports

[naut]

So recently I was part of a discussion talking about the status of in-character Incident Reports (IRs) done by CCIA staff, particularly regarding the way they were handled, how they apply, their process of information gathering/interviewing, and the roleplay element they contribute to, if any. I'd like to use this thread as feedback and discussion for potentially overhauling the way some IRs work, rather than shouting into the wind and complaining about problems.

Some suggestions from the masses (I don't necessarily support any of these but I just want to throw in what's been talked about so far):

• Denying IRs that clearly are of little consequence to anyone and seemingly don't deserve HR's time to investigate.
• Encouraging Discord interviews either through the relay or through Discord messaging. Current stigma is that Discord interviews are a "last resort" and discouraged.
• Being more transparent in punitive action given to individuals, even if it's only available OOCly.
• Making CCIA interviews less "boring" and more proactive discussions, possibly by involving multiple people in the same interview.

[Powder Miner]

I do have to disclaim a little: I haven't been involved in any IRs. But one moment that stuck out for me in my play recently was being involved in some rather fun rp involving workplace harassment and realizing: "The only reason this can exist and be fun is that everybody involved has tacitly chosen not to IR the situation."

And I think that's a huge shame. I actually on a conceptual level like IRs quite a bit - the idea that the corporate processes of HR decisionmaking are in-character and accessible is something quite unique to Aurora. I do really like the idea that escalation up to the company level is a potential continuation of RP - but I also have begun to take the view recently that IRs are actually ultimately more of a curb to RP than a continuation of it.

Coming from the perspective of someone who is not involved in the CCIA process, I think it looks to me like it is not clear whether IRs are an extension of IC conflict RP, OR whether they are an OOC means of curating the server atmosphere, handling things that are largely just out-of-line through semi-IC means rather than direct admin action. I think the result of this is that whether or not IRs are made primarily as a continuation of in-character conflict, they ultimately vanish into an invisible black hole of punishment. Entering this invisible black hole, most people don't know what to expect, except that there may be a possibility of character loss. Outside observers won't know what is going on, except that IRs can result in character loss, resulting in a lot of joking around or commenting on that exact possibility.

An IR might not result in character loss, and in fact by the looks of it very rarely does, but the process seems to be a source of a lot of anxiety and hours of an often unenjoyable process rather than being something that you might want to have a character involved in. And I suspect that the idea that you could want to get involved in an IR would come off as very silly to many players - is it not a punishment? But is it an IC punishment, or is it an OOC punishment? Should you as a player feel bad and that you have made a mistake if you get IR'd?

Making the results of this process a little more transparent seems desirable, to help IRs be visible continuations of conflict RP rather than an anxiety-inducing stop to it. I like ideas that make IRs more enjoyable and less difficult to participate in for everyone, including CCIA. But of course these are both things that are only really possible if the intention is indeed to have IC mechanisms for conflict continuation and resolution, rather than to more softly curb behaviors that run against the OOCly-desired server atmosphere. Of course, if it's a partially OOC punishment, then confidentiality and strictness make a lot of sense. But I think it should be more clear which one of these things an IR is supposed to be.

Edited Tuesday at 03:36 by Powder Miner

[Fluffy]

My opinion on IRs is almost completely negative, for the following reasons:

 

1) You can only lie to defend yourself or choose not to comment, at which point we might aswell hand out the logs if all I have to do is telling you what happened or just say "nuh huh I'm not talking" (which also means you know the person isn't innocent, otherwise why would I refuse to comment, I'd just tell you the truth). How this rule isn't an OOC-in-IC influence/consideration is anyone's guess, because to me it looks very much like it's breaking the OOC-IC separation if you can't even lie to protect your friend/boss/whatever. My suggestion on this: You can lie, but only to defend someone, aka you cannot lie to have someone punished, only to avoid your friend/colleage/boss being punished. If you get caught lying, you get punished for lying too, so it's not risk free, prisoner dilemma etc. etc.

2) The punishments are just boring, so there's no fun to be gained by them, for what I saw, it's either "you got a fine and some retraining" (noone cares), "you are demoted to play something you might not like to play and if you want your character back you better play it" (not only boring, but antithetical to an healthy environment to have someone forced to play something he doesn't want to, with a character hostage) (possibly I misunderstood and you just need to pretend you did that job for X time, but still not fun either way), or "we have just deleted your character, sorry" (this can be fun, depending on the circumstances, but I don't think it should be available outside of events and/or with the consent of the playing player to do so). My suggestion on this: I want the SCC to be more dystopic ICly and less fun police OOCly, demotions and deletions have to be agreed upon or spurred from canon events, introduce fun punishments like idk shock collars if you assault someone, that said person can trigger (with reason) if you try to do it again, loyalty implants, I don't know I'm just spitballing here, but fun things.

3) I remember someone (I think Bear?) once said something on the likes of "if we don't punish these things ICly we'd punish them OOCly", I don't think I can put into words how wrong it felt to read it to me, I don't think this tool/thing should be used to punish people, we have moderators for that, it should only be an extension of the gameplay fun, I think seeing it in the optic of "punishing people" is disheartening if not outright concerning, maybe I misremember something about this because I still feel incredolous by just re-reading this, but I am fairly convinced to remember this thing, that's the moment I changed my mind from CCIA as per current use/implementation just not being something I am interested in engaging with, to it being a detrimental factor for the server. My suggestion on this: Don't. IC only, for fun only.

4) Complete opacity, we do not know what happens with other characters IRs, I think this sealing makes them less interesting as we don't OOCly know what happens with them. My suggestion on this: Make the outcome (OOCly) known, ICly not known, like the report themselves, and the interviews and relevant documentation too.

5) Your trial happens secluded from all sights, and you can't participate in them, nor really be defended. You just give an interview answering some questions and you get an email later possibly saying your character is being deleted (see the point above). My suggestion on this: I heard a good argument (also from Bear) that doing a process kinda thing would be heavy on the CCIA team, and as much as I'd like them with lawyers and all, I understand his concerns/point on this, I'd however like to have it as an option for major crimes or similar, eg. combining it with my points above: "Yes, I am ok with my character being deleted for this, however I want a public trial" kinda thing, I think it's something that would both benefit in terms of canonicity (something canon to do), fun, and rare enough that it wouldn't be heavy on the CCIA team to do. I do not know the details and they can be discussed to see what would work for everyone, but some sort of trial option happening once in a while would be in my opinion a nice addition. Corporate lawyers also often exchange emails etc. for minor things, maybe have the option to have someone playing a lawyer character and negotiate etc. with CCIA (via the IR thread, pretend-be email)? That seems another possible avenue for this.

I possibly have other ideas, but that's what I can muster to remember about it at this time (6AM local time), if I recall more, I'll add them later.

[Carver]

As opacity goes, can’t you read the punishments on the web interface? Is that just a Command WL thing that I can read them there? I assume it’s something wholly OOC either way, but I’ve had no issues reading the outcomes more or less transparently there.

Generally, I like IRs. I remember when they were added, I remember why they were added (handling characters who act unreasonable for corporate personnel but who aren’t breaking server rules), and I’ve yet to really see any reason to change them. From my experience with a prior interview, I hadn’t assumed that discord interviews weren’t favoured, as the individual handling it told me that discord was entirely acceptable and without issue as a medium for it. I personally prefer said medium since it keeps observers out of the matter (I would not want to use the relay for that reason).

If discord is discouraged then I agree that it shouldn’t be. I also agree that, to an extent, things should be transparent - the web interface seems to handle this rather perfectly as-is, but perhaps it can be directed to a little more visibly. Otherwise, IRs are a very well-functioning system that I wouldn’t want to see changed. They serve an extremely important purpose in helping to keep characters behaving reasonably, at least canonically, and if more were subjectively thrown out as ‘inconsequential’ then I fear that the alternative would be character/player complaints.

[Owen]

5 hours ago, Carver said:

As opacity goes, can’t you read the punishments on the web interface? Is that just a Command WL thing that I can read them there?

Command WL is required to see the CCIA actions. I also believe that Command IC has access to read the resolved actions. 

[FlamingLily]

Having been in the discord discussion that triggered this post, and having defended the IR process a bit during it, I've had some time to think and have changed my mind.

 

To me, there is one huge issue with IRs that make their current situation unappealing. They don't feel like they're in character actions. They feel like a staff sit on a Gmod DarkRP server. Maybe that's harsh, but that's the impression I've come away with. You go to a secluded place on the map, give a testimony bound by many OOC rules (see: lying), wait a while for silent staff deliberations, and sometimes come away with a character being deleted, suspended, job changed, or something else that while sure, might be a story moment, most often just feels like an OOC penalty because it changes the way you play, usually in a way you don't like.

As it stands, I like the concept of having a way to report particularly egregious issues up to Corporate, to call in The Big Dogs, et cetera. I like the concept because the concept introduces the possibility for these being big story moments for characters, their narratives, their lives and experiences. Roleplay is fundamentally the collaborative creation of a bunch of narratives and character arcs, and having a serious punishment levied by corporate can easily be a defining story moment for a character. The problem is that an IR and its results aren't performed in a way to be a story moment. They're not designed in such a way to facilitate the story that the Offender's player is trying to tell, nor are they designed in such a way to have any storytelling involvement from any party. I've made an IR before, and thinking on it now, I think I regret doing it, because it shut down what otherwise might have been an interesting inter-character conflict (i mean, said other character also dying didn't help... R.I.P. Kei Nakai), but the point is that what might've been an interesting avenue for character development and storytelling turned into a few borderline OOC interviews over the span of a week and a week long suspension, just because it made the most sense for my character to make an IR at the time.

The fact that no parties involved have any sway in the matter at all (no, I don't agree that the interviews are sway in the matter) is, in my eyes, the main thing that turns an IR from a storytelling device into a pseudo-administrative action. I also believe there's a very real possibility of IRs being misinterpreted as being placed in the service of an OOC grudge against the offender's player (and not their character) (or, perhaps more worrying, the possibility of an IR actually being placed for a grudge). While I'll freely admit that misusing the IR system is probably pretty rare, I do think that the perception that it can be misused is maybe not as rare as it seems.

So how do we fix this? Personally, I think the writing's on the walls of this thread.

On 19/11/2024 at 14:36, Powder Miner said:

"The only reason this can exist and be fun is that everybody involved has tacitly chosen not to IR the situation."

People have fun when they agree OOCly. People tell compelling stories when they communicate about the direction of those stories. Communication, agreement, discussion, all of these are VITAL to a healthy roleplay environment, and these are what the IR system is lacking. It's unusual, if not frowned upon, to talk with the "other" side of an IR about that IR on an OOC level. It's especially non-standard to talk with the CCIA staff member OOCly about anything more than interview times. If we can figure out a way to bring that level of communication back into the IR process, to let people discuss the desired outcomes of their characters from the IR, I think that'll make IRs actually engaging as an avenue for character development and storytelling.

People don't like IRs because they don't like losing the control of their stories. That is, to me, the core of the issue. (All of this assumes that IRs are in character and a storytelling element, and not an OOC staff punishment. If they're an OOC staff punishment, I think it's been handled in a really poor way.)

I also agree with Fluffy, that the existing duality of punishments (those being purely roleplay/ignorable things like reprimands, retraining, fines, whatever, versus suspensions/demotions/terminations) aren't necessarily that engaging, and I think letting the involved parties talk about possible punishments would help to introduce some more interesting scenarios.

 

Also, to put it plainly, the fact that IRs aren't something anyone can see the results of just makes them a bit boring? I think making outcomes OOCly viewable would make things much more interesting, even just that by itself.

Edited Wednesday at 08:31 by FlamingLily
reworded some stuff

[Dreamix]

16 hours ago, Carver said:

As opacity goes, can’t you read the punishments on the web interface? Is that just a Command WL thing that I can read them there? I assume it’s something wholly OOC either way, but I’ve had no issues reading the outcomes more or less transparently there.

Being able to see only the outcomes is exactly the opposite of transparency (well, only worse would be if the outcomes weren't posted either). Someone opens up an IR, and maybe a week later, or two weeks, or a month later, the IR is closed and the resulting actions are posted in the web interface (maybe).

There's no insight into how the CCIAA have made their decisions, what arguments they have considered, who they interviewed, if they were biased towards or against someone, if they followed the IR process or rules (I don't think that's public either). The average player has no way to know any of that, and the outcomes may as well be decided by dice rolls. I know they're not just rolling dice and I trust they're doing their jobs properly, but it's the opposite to how admin/moderation staff work, and I put much more trust in admins/mods here.

 

On 19/11/2024 at 04:36, Powder Miner said:

But one moment that stuck out for me in my play recently was being involved in some rather fun rp involving workplace harassment and realizing: "The only reason this can exist and be fun is that everybody involved has tacitly chosen not to IR the situation."

I also very much agree with this, and I've had this exact thought a couple times in the past. Sure, IRs punishments start out small, like a reprimand or a mandatory training course, but it's still forcing someone to waste time on interviews, and putting them in the position of uncertainty wondering just how much in trouble they really are. And if there's multiple of these IRs, it's potentially removing a character, that someone has put many hours into developing.

 

I also agree with the other arguments listed in the thread. CCIAA are a OOC force, giving out OOC punishments, that the player is forced to pretend to engage with in a IC way. I've been in like 2 or 3 IRs, a long while ago, but they've not been a fun experience at all. Being forced to attend the interviews, and "roleplay" (which is basically just reading logs and telling what happened), knowing that I'm trouble and may lose the char (if I lie by accident or say something dumb), is not fun. The IR could maybe help develop a character arc, but the interviews are just plain stressful. I'd rather just talk to an admin about toning down my char or something.

I'm sorry if these thoughts read as pretty negative about CCIAA, but like, idk, most of they do is hand out punishments to player characters. I do wish CCIAA could have more positive impact, and more roles beyond just handling IRs.

 

-----------------

So, uh, as this is a suggestion thread, my suggestions are:

• Remove personal IR interviews entirely (where it's just one CCIAA/HRA agent and one player character).
• Maybe introduce interviews where both IR parties can talk to each other (the char that opened up the IR, and the other char that is the offender), moderated by the CCIAA/HRA agent. I think that would be fun roleplay, and would make it less about punishing someone and more about resolving issues between two characters.
• Make the whole process more transparent. Use the IR threads, where CCIAA would write who they interviewed, what were the conclusions from the interviews, what are the results of the IR, etc. There should be IC notes and OOC considerations.
• Add some meaningful functions to CCIAA/HRA that aren't about punishing characters. Out of ideas for this one atm.

Edited Wednesday at 11:12 by Dreamix

[greenjoe]

2 hours ago, Dreamix said:

Remove personal IR interviews entirely (where it's just one CCIAA/HRA agent and one player character).

With this, how would it be handled if there is something that needs to be said more privately to the agent, rather then right to the offender's face while they are in this group interview?

[Dreamix]

1 hour ago, greenjoe said:

With this, how would it be handled if there is something that needs to be said more privately to the agent, rather then right to the offender's face while they are in this group interview?

Group interviews wouldn't work for every type of IR, it was just one of the suggestions.

But the idea is that, most of the interviews that I've seen, and the ones I've participated in, are just a series of questions like "did this happen", "yeah", "and what did you do", "I did that", "...".

So why not cut that out? Just provide the logs or whatever, and write how your char would say what happened, or what they know. CCIAA need to check logs anyways to see if you're not lying to get someone else in trouble.

If you wanted to lie or something, you'd just request a personal interview, or say "my char would actually lie about this" when asked.

Edited Wednesday at 13:33 by Dreamix

[Powder Miner]

At the very least, if Carver is right and IRs really are a mechanism to curate the desired level of server believability, it really needs to be treated like it. If IRs are being promoted as a natural outcome for IC conflict, treated by many of the people filing and receiving IRs as a natural outcome for IC conflict, and even treated at least partially by CCIA as a natural outcome for conflict, then actually being a punitive mechanism means that a pipeline is created funneling natural and even beneficial conflict RP directly into a punishment mechanism. I really doubt that this is actually what ANYONE has in mind, especially given that IRs are a lot more onerous than quite a few more unambiguous forms of punishment. Would you rather receive an OOC note which is quick and directly communicative or an IC reprimand which is lengthy, takes a lot of effort, and is ambiguous about whether or not it’s even supposed to be a punishment?

[OolongCow]

I think there's a common misconception by people newer to the server that CCIA is meant to be the end-all be-all for conflict resolution and punishing someone, when that's not really the case. It's explicitly preferred for command to handle it in-round. CCIA exists to handle things command isn't able to, either due to the constraints of round length, or because of the severity of what happened. A perceived overreliance on CCIA is in part because command players feel like it's their only means to control people, mostly due to not having any punishment to leverage except fines (pointless if the other person doesn't feel like RPing that they care, since money is genuinely worthless and round-to-round) and suspension for a single shift (and usually not even a full one). I think that if command was given more levers, even if it's just leaving notes on their employment record similarly to how brig charges stick, there would be a lot fewer frivolous IRs.

[Lmwevil]

I think that CCIA should probably be removed, personally. I like it, but I think that people use ccia actions as an excuse to not be held accountable for rule breaking ooc actions, it's kinda hard to explain my perspective. I don't think it really adds much to the server these days. 

Furthermore: CCIA is also extremely toothless compared to the days where it'd actually fire people with 30+ canon charges on a character, there's 0 transparency to the process to anyone involved on an ooc level and that's also bad. 

EDIT: 
The whole thing with roleplaying is like, the fact you're playing characters and have a healthy ooc communication too, in order to not make it a toxic dynamic, even moreso if you have a position of power over someone else icly. 

Put it this way, someone you never roleplay with appears, they enact divine justice, but nobody knows oocly what happened unless they delve the web interface of being a command member, which would arguably be ic at that point due to the command wl requirement. 

The requirements of rationale and such are needed in player reports that the moderation team have to handle, and ccia is for some reason infinitely less transparent than the administration and that's b a d. 

[FlamingLily]

I know I've already commented on this and perhaps it's bad form to leave another comment but my previous one detailed why IRs aren't really working for what I see them as: that being the ultimate IC tool for conflict resolution/character development, but I kind of didn't address the elephant in the room.

Are IRs used as IC conflict resolution and do they operate as such? Or, are they used as OOC rule/tone/believably enforcement and operate as such?

 

To me, while I believe they should be the former... they're not. They feel far more like OOC judgements, as much has been pretty clearly stated in the thread thus far. And, as many people have stated, this is a bad thing. Instead of going on a longwinded textwall i'm just going to put my thoughts in dot points.

• An OOC judgement should never be framed as an IC one. Even if the intent of an IR is to be IC, they're clearly being interpreted by the users as OOC, and that alone signals that a change is necessary. Clear division between OOC and IC is ESSENTIAL to healthy RP, and the current IR scheme does not support that.
• They can technically be appealed, but the scheme feels half-baked. The dedicated CCIA appeals process is purely IC, which means you can't raise matters of procedure, et cetera (the procedure is also extremely obscured and unclear, anyhow). You CAN raise a staff complaint, if an OOC matter arises (and somehow, you learn of it), but this is leaving the realm of IRs entirely, now.
• CCIA is an entirely different team from the main moderation team. I don't mean this at all as an insult or a criticism against any members of CCIA or CCIA generally, and I certainly don't mean to imply CCIA is in any way misusing their power or anything. To me, there's just something weird about there being a completely adjacent staff team who work on a very similar topic area to the main staff team and yet share none of the policies and hierarchy etc. I will admit I don't really know how the staff teams are structured here but, I'm sure this point is at least somewhat applicable.

[Lmwevil]

To clarify what you said Flaminglily, we as moderators have literally 0 oversight or transparency on any ccia action. I believe only admins and head staff can see ccia channels, and they only talk to us to check if ooc action was done on a particular IR or if they believe ooc action would be more apt for a certain class of thing (doesn't happen often but there's precedent for particular types of things that really shouldn't be handled ic). Sometimes logs are requested, but mostly it's a closed system that the Moderation team has no interaction with.

Though to be fair the Moderation team has 0 interaction with any other team (lore ccia devs) formally outside of like rule or lore infractions, only admins have permission to spawn in items so and so forth so it's not really surprising, as we get 0 access to any tools outside of banning and notes. 

The Administration team may be far more integrated with CCIA and have a lot of oversight? I'm unsure, but CCIA probably have different methods compared to moderation, given that we have a very strict hierarchy (tmod, mod, secondary admin, primary admin, head staff, host) and CCIA are just (CCIA agent, CCIA lead, Admins(?) and Head Staff). I suppose if there was more transparency I'd be able to give a more clear answer as to how much integration we have, in general none though. Like for CCIA actions we as mods see the same stuff that command WL holders do, not any backend if there is any for reasoning or investigation etc. 


EDIT: 

I should say that Mods probably would take precedent over CCIA if there was a dispute over something like if something should be handled ic or ooc just because CCIA are more paperpushers than rule enforcers, and we have sole authority over OOC stuff which they have none over. 

Edited Thursday at 10:23 by Lmwevil