Less secrecy about admin actions, please

[Guest]

well the people who take lore too seriously tend to be more autistic than the general population

You wot m8?

 

Several of you were wondering why Cassie's fiasco with the Apartments server and the log-spreading was stamped out and that player was removed from the community, and the answer is exactly as I've outlined. I can say without a doubt that had the precedent set there been allowed to continue, a lot of good players who made simple mistakes would not be playing any more. Being "transparent" in that manner encourages humiliation in the court of public opinion and ostracized players will simply leave. If you think cliques are bad now, encouraging more transparency would exponentially inflate the problem.

I really agree with most what you've said here, especially on people not being able to see their own flaws, but I think you've done a false equivalence here. How does a post stating that person has been dealt with and how compare to a bunch of friends laughing or leaking ERP logs? The two are not comparable and Cassie's fiasco is really not an example of why announcing staff action is bad, it's an example of why not including people in the process of punishing them is bad.

I mean, humiliating people is bad, yes. But are players really so spineless and narcissistic that others announcing their mistakes counts as an act of humiliation? Why is it suddenly others' fault that player is incapable of taking their own punishment stoically.

I mean, fuck... I had my own attempt at ERP exposed in front of the entire server. Did I get punished? Yes. Am I still here? Yes. I may be arrogant in expect others to conform to my standards, but hell, people taking things seriously is their own problem.

[Frances]

I agree with Brage. I don't want a list of bans to be published.

However, when issues do come to light for a reason or another, I'd rather admins be clear and upfront about them than present us with the whole cloak and dagger business. (And I do think with proper empathy, you can present incidents for what they are without depicting people unfairly - but it takes a bit more effort than a banlist.)

[EvilBrage]

How does a post stating that person has been dealt with and how compare to a bunch of friends laughing or leaking ERP logs? The two are not comparable and Cassie's fiasco is really not an example of why announcing staff action is bad, it's an example of why not including people in the process of punishing them is bad.

 

You've missed the parallel that Cassie was essentially the staff of her server; presumably, she published the logs, had her laugh, and then banned the individuals involved (unless she didn't ban them - that wasn't terribly clear.) That is a punitive style of leadership, as opposed to our own server's corrective style of leadership, ergo the comparison.

 

I mean, humiliating people is bad, yes. But are players really so spineless and narcissistic that others announcing their mistakes counts as an act of humiliation? Why is it suddenly others' fault that player is incapable of taking their own punishment stoically.

 

Apparently they're so gullible that we have OOC turned off for votes and they're so impatient that we have a mandatory 2 hour waiting period before a crew transfer can be called. It's not that they are these things, but we put policies into place to account for all possibilities. If someone's vote is swayed by OOC, we don't want that happening, so we disable OOC.

[Guest]

You've missed the parallel that Cassie was essentially the staff of her server; presumably, she published the logs, had her laugh, and then banned the individuals involved (unless she didn't ban them - that wasn't terribly clear.) That is a punitive style of leadership, as opposed to our own server's corrective style of leadership, ergo the comparison.

This is factually incorrect. It was just a small privately hosted server for all Aurora individuals or otherwise to hang out. It was completelly unregulated and people took advantage of it. What was she suppose to do? Tell people not to do something they already knew they weren't allowed to? What was the punitive action taken? They weren't banned, no. Hell, even the reading of logs (which I participated in) wasn't done out of malice or punishment but simple attempt at entertainment at other's ERP.

I don't blame skull for labeling it "a trap" under this circumstance, but that was simply incorrect. People were never told to ERP or guaranteed full privacy.

 

Apparently they're so gullible that we have OOC turned off for votes and they're so impatient that we have a mandatory 2 hour waiting period before a crew transfer can be called. It's not that they are these things, but we put policies into place to account for all possibilities. If someone's vote is swayed by OOC, we don't want that happening, so we disable OOC.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe people are so bored or clueless that they are not sure what they want to play. Just look at the votes during the vote period, it's usually that half of the server wants extended and the other half just piles up on whatever's the biggest opponent to it. The vote's still swayed, yet we somehow suddenly don't take it as player's lack of agency, but choice.

With that in mind, why even is people saying; Rev could be fun! Let's all vote Rev! a bad thing.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

My question is now this. What information would you get out of knowing that someone was banned for previous incidents and then having silly fun as a CE, that you would not get out of the two threads I linked?

 

Okay, so that entire thread is all together more than I'm going to read. From what I skimmed, though, the important bits are in the top where you're talking about how you're going to start handing out job bans. The rest, while informative in other respects, doesn't appear relevant to our discussion.

But here's the thing: "what I've done" is orders of magnitude more powerful than "what I plan to do". It's generally the case that there is a divide between what is intended and what is actually done, and almost everything I know about rules and such on Aurora falls into the former category. I'm sure if I'd done more of the kinds of things that get people into trouble I'd have a better idea of how things work, but that's not really my style.

What's less interesting than what I can't get out of memos, however, is what I can get out of that single datum about jackboot.

1) Admins actually apply job bans.

Didn't think that was obvious? It isn't if you've never been job banned or spoken to someone who has on the topic, you'll only know the admins say they're going to.

2) Small offenses become more serious as you accrue a history of such behavior

It's another "seems obvious" one, but seeing it in action is the difference between assuming and knowing.

3) Goofing off in an ICly inappropriate way is not acceptable behavior if you're in a whitelisted position

Maybe it's not just for whitelisted positions, can't tell from this one datum, though given my general experience on aurora I'd guess the non-whitelist positions are given considerably more lenience.

So not a whole lot of information by itself, but placed in context (it's important!) with similar data you can get an idea the different levels of what is and isn't acceptable and how reliably it's actually dealt with. And while you may not want people to see that you don't always deal with everything... right now the default is to almost never see that you deal with anything.

And if this sounds like I'm being aggressively mistrustful of the server staff... I'm not. If I thought you were all a bunch of liars and incompetents I wouldn't be asking for transparency, I'd be finding a new server. But that doesn't translate directly into knowing what is and is not acceptable.

 

In shifting to a more open structure, you're also shifting the results of bans and other punitive actions from a constructive attempt to conform the individual into an acceptable persona to interact with others on the server (or in severe cases, removing them entirely if they're unable or unwilling to conform) into a destructive form of action, in which we are taking action to punish and humiliate the player rather than reform them - believe it or not, it kills communities.

When I first became an administrator for another gaming server and elected to browse through the staff-only forums designated for discussing individual player behavior and punishment for specific events, I was frankly appalled at how many players I knew personally had done things that were very malicious and selfish - but without that knowledge, they seemed sociable and kind enough individuals to play with, which leads me to my point.

Nobody is perfect; everyone will have an embarrassing moment, and when yours comes, how do you want the staff to react?

 

And what's so destructive and humiliating about other people finding out you made a mistake? Or even that you were being a huge dickbag, though to be honest "other people finding out" is sorta one of the downsides to being a dickbag. The purpose of admin intervention, whether as a simple talk or actual punitive action, isn't to cause distress (I hope!), but rather to educate players as to what is acceptable and to remove those who refuse to comply with those standards. In what way does secrecy serve either of those purposes?

 

Apparently they're so gullible that we have OOC turned off for votes and they're so impatient that we have a mandatory 2 hour waiting period before a crew transfer can be called. It's not that they are these things, but we put policies into place to account for all possibilities. If someone's vote is swayed by OOC, we don't want that happening, so we disable OOC.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe people are so bored or clueless that they are not sure what they want to play. Just look at the votes during the vote period, it's usually that half of the server wants extended and the other half just piles up on whatever's the biggest opponent to it. The vote's still swayed, yet we somehow suddenly don't take it as player's lack of agency, but choice.

With that in mind, why even is people saying; Rev could be fun! Let's all vote Rev! a bad thing.

 

I'm reasonably certain that the reason people aren't allowed to influence votes isn't because the players are all sheeple, but rather because people's attempts to influence votes used to turned OOC into a massive screamfest.

[Guest]

Nobody is perfect; everyone will have an embarrassing moment, and when yours comes, how do you want the staff to react?

And what's so destructive and humiliating about other people finding out you made a mistake? Or even that you were being a huge dickbag, though to be honest "other people finding out" is sorta one of the downsides to being a dickbag. The purpose of admin intervention, whether as a simple talk or actual punitive action, isn't to cause distress (I hope!), but rather to educate players as to what is acceptable and to remove those who refuse to comply with those standards. In what way does secrecy serve either of those purposes?

 

Apparently they're so gullible that we have OOC turned off for votes and they're so impatient that we have a mandatory 2 hour waiting period before a crew transfer can be called. It's not that they are these things, but we put policies into place to account for all possibilities. If someone's vote is swayed by OOC, we don't want that happening, so we disable OOC.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe people are so bored or clueless that they are not sure what they want to play. Just look at the votes during the vote period, it's usually that half of the server wants extended and the other half just piles up on whatever's the biggest opponent to it. The vote's still swayed, yet we somehow suddenly don't take it as player's lack of agency, but choice.

With that in mind, why even is people saying; Rev could be fun! Let's all vote Rev! a bad thing.

 

I'm reasonably certain that the reason people aren't allowed to influence votes isn't because the players are all sheeple, but rather because people's attempts to influence votes used to turned OOC into a massive screamfest.

Pretty much, but Brage seems to think there is a lot of violent peer-pressure and bullying happening in OOC during round votes. Honestly, it just boils down to people being bored. The majority of the playerbase is actually composed of decent people, which I think is guarantee enough that very little hurt can come out of this.

But, to clarify, the reason Brage's comparison has been a false equivilance is because circumstance and the level of the act differ wildly. One is, as he says, an admin taking out logs and laughing at them with her friends. The other, is other people finding out a person has been punished by the admins for a spacific act. The tangential point is that both people who fucked up were humiliated. But honestly, if they are ashamed of getting banned to the extent where it feels like public humiliation, I don't think they should be part of an SS13 community, or any online community at that matter.

It's just not healthy for all people involved that this level of protection is given to the playerbase.

[EvilBrage]

Pretty much, but Brage seems to think there is a lot of violent peer-pressure and bullying happening in OOC during round votes. Honestly, it just boils down to people being bored. The majority of the playerbase is actually composed of decent people, which I think is guarantee enough that very little hurt can come out of this.

I don't think I made my metaphor clear enough, let me try to explain in a different way; guardrails. Guardrails are not built because the government assumes you're an ignoramus who would drive off a cliff at the first provocation, but rather in case such an event were to take place. We disable votes during OOC in case someone tries to influence the vote. We have people of many different ages playing on this server, and while I agree that most of them are decent people who are able to take criticism from the community in a constructive manner, administrations should always be somewhat discretionary in their disciplinary actions in case this is not true of the individual in question. Removing guardrails because "most people won't drive off" is silly.

 

But, to clarify, the reason Brage's comparison has been a false equivilance is because circumstance and the level of the act differ wildly. One is, as he says, an admin taking out logs and laughing at them with her friends. The other, is other people finding out a person has been punished by the admins for a spacific act. The tangential point is that both people who fucked up were humiliated. But honestly, if they are ashamed of getting banned to the extent where it feels like public humiliation, I don't think they should be part of an SS13 community, or any online community at that matter.

It's just not healthy for all people involved that this level of protection is given to the playerbase.

To specify who "should" and "should not" be involved with online communities isn't something we decide. That is simply one opinion of many. What any staff needs to establish is a set of rules and procedures that apply to everyone equally while preserving the atmosphere and tone that the server wishes to convey; in my experience, a system of semi-secrecy is necessary (and optimal) for handling these sorts of things. To say otherwise is questioning the integrity, impartiality, and/or rationality of the staff themselves, which is perfectly okay, mind you - but the system itself is solid.

[Frances]

We have people of many different ages playing on this server, and while I agree that most of them are decent people who are able to take criticism from the community in a constructive manner, administrations should always be somewhat discretionary in their disciplinary actions in case this is not true of the individual in question. Removing guardrails because "most people won't drive off" is silly.

The issue is that driving off the road and down a cliff doesn't sound as interesting of a prospect as being able to have intelligent conversations with the admins (come on, they're not that bad)