BurgerBB Aurora Github Restriction/Ban

[Coalf]

BYOND Key: Coalf

Accused Players Byond Key: BurgerBB

Time of Act: Not a server thing, but I guess you could say the time on the PR

Reason for Ban:

So I wake up one morning, brew my coffee hop on discord the usual shitpost around on discord yada yada when I see Burger's post, refer to point number 1 in evidence.

Now I think "Haha he's joking" but then I ask him, other people ask him and he says he's completely serious, alrighty then so we're here.

To seriously get into this, for me the Devteam has been a rogue unmoderated element that is a mystery for most staff. We let them do their thing and all we expect from them is not to screw up too much, that happens however but we excuse it since bugs get fixed, mechanics get reworked it's all good.

The thing is, I as probably many other playeres presume this is all done as a token of goodwill, that not only do the devs want to fix and improve the game for themselves but to leave their handprint on it and make it more enjoyable for everyone.

Frankly what burger did is disgusting.

Changing one of the core mechanics of the game around to the point where eating vendor food shuts down your organs just because you didn't get enough people eating your ravioli is selfish, ugly and mean spirited.

Not only did this cause an upheal of deaths which administrative staff had to clean up, as the code was admittedly broken and just fucking murdered the shit out of people even if they ate only like 2 bread tubes.

It also did absolutely NOTHING to improve the chef situation as all that players did was either ration their vendor food better or click "Yes" on lunchboxes.

I was thinking "okay this kinda pisses me off, but he's a volunteer and not even a coder so he isn't as trained/experience" you know, shit happens I understand that, even during implementation sprinting gave you brain damage and that was something added by our senior coders.

But I honestly think the intent is important, not only was the PR bugged and in the end useless, but it was also created for completely selfish and selfabsorbed reasons.

I don't believe we should trust someone like that with our code.

Now there are quite a few outcomes for this:

A) BurgerBB gets banned/restricted from github OR BurgerBB is to be held under extra scrutiny and has to post every PR on the suggestion forum no matter how small.

B) The dev team gets a QC team which will serve to judge the impact of implemented mechanics on the game.

C) The dev team posts all their mechanical changes on the forums no matter how small.

D) We forbid contributors completely, only letting devs add code.

D) Burger says it was a joke and we forget about this. Except not really because at this point it's too late to say if it was actually a joke or if it's just backpeddaling.

Also it's not like a player complaint so I put it here, also it'll catch attention.

Evidence:

Post numero uno, this started the whole thang.

 

"Haha, good post-modernistic humor, oh wait he might be serious"

 

Second time, this time he talks about his cargo rework which he has open on github, his character also works in cargo. coincidink? No maas

 

Here I ask him again just to 100% confirm it wasn't a post-modernistic avant garde shitpost.

[Skull132]

As I alluded to in #server_moderators, the general answer to this complaint will be a "No".

But let's get into actual detail, shall we.

First, understand that any contributor is free to open PRs. The responsibility for actually accepting these PRs lies with the development team, and more specifically the Maintainers (Arrow atm) and myself. If anything, it was our fault that the PR was allowed to be accepted. Consider it a mistake. One which will be fixed in the next update coming a week from now. (The relatively short time frame for the update is also why I've not fully reverted the changes in question yet.) The two things I can offer with regards to this are promising that we will do better to scan for these PRs in the future, and that we are actively looking into ways of improving the community-to-developer communication on the subject of certain gameplay changes. Granted, the latter will take time.

Next, allow me to state that I do not care, nor do I think we should care, as to the reasons why someone makes a PR. This is a mentality that I have always pursued, in both administration and in development. I do not necessarily care why someone requests to implement certain changes: I only care about the effect these changes have on gameplay. Similarly to how the administration doesn't care about why someone submits a complaint about a rule's violation: if there's a rules violation reported, you are obligated to report it. Granted, there is the case of malicious nitpicking, but those kinds of things are usually handled as culminative things. And will most likely be handled similarly on Github: if someone keeps submitting shit PRs regularly, they may face penalization. But we are not at that point yet.

Third. All of the outcomes you listed, as a whole, are impractical and extreme. The amount of work required to implement and manage C is dumb, it will sap motivation from all of to devs to work on anything and we will see our dev team quit. Similarly, administration does not have to make a thread about every warning or ban issued. Much like instances of rule enforcement, all development changes are logged and are available for scrutiny if needed. If an error is detected, said change is reverted or amended. There is no need to change how this works.

D1 will see our development slow down again. And there is no practical difference to Burger being a dev or not on this count, due to what I outlined in the first paragraph: all contributor changes need to have the blessing of the development staff and maintainers.

B will require a lot of work for minimal outcome. For one, this error should have been seen before the green merge button was pressed. It was not, myself and Arrow made a mistake. Adding another high work-load component to the equation will not see errors like this stop happening. Further more, a QC team would not help detect issues with some of the more nuanced changes implemented, which have caused outcry in the past, as their effect in full, actual, day-to-day gameplay was revealed. Synthetic testing cannot uncover these ones.

A is in the category of cruel and unusual punishments, specially when you take into consideration what I stipulated in the first paragraph.

Now, ultimately, what outcome do I see coming from here?

Well, first, myself and the Dev team will fix our fuck-up in allowing this PR to get passed and will put better thought into what's being merged and what's not.

Second, the code in question will be reverted in the April update, which is in one week's time from now.

Third, as already posted, we are actively working on ways to improve community feedback on contentious PRs.

idno. This is pretty much all I can offer beyond repeating, "I'm sorry, we fucked up, it'll be reverted and we'll make sure that a similar situation doesn't arise in the future."

[Coalf]

Alright I get it was a fuckup, this post wasn't about the PR itself a lot of people misunderstood that.

The point was the intent, which you adressed and I think the way you adressed it is, stupid and shortsighted.

I accept when a mistake happens because someone wanted to balance the game or wanted to make the server as a whole better.

Like an engineer who delaminates the SM while trying to make it produce more power.

But someone who made a mistake because of completely selfish reasons.

Like an engineer who delaminates the SM because he was using it as a personal disposal bin. That I have a problem with.

You usually can't check on intent, but if someone is stupid enough to publicly admit they're messing with the code for an entire playerbase out of their own self-interest. Then honestly I don't think they should be let anywhere near the code.

I accept the judgement of the other policies, I didn't frankly care about them. But I want for Burger to be either held under higher scrutiny from now on or actually explain his intent as a whole in his PR's.

Admitting it was selfish on public discord is like a magician revealing all of his tricks, just stupid.

[LordFowl]

You usually can't check on intent, but if someone is stupid enough to publicly admit they're messing with the code for an entire playerbase out of their own self-interest. Then honestly I don't think they should be let anywhere near the code.

 

We are all "messing" with the code for an entire playerbase out of our own self-interest. We are all volunteer coders, and even if our goal is so noble as to make the game perfect and beautiful so everyone can have fun, our methods are more often than not shaped by our own interests and observations. You say that the post isn't about the PR itself, but I think that is not quite true. PRs made "selfishly" before did not merit similar complaints, because they do not merit similar complaints. The fact of the matter is that the PR itself was bad, and the community did more than hate it. We do not need to crucify the PR author as a scapegoat to remedy this - as I've said before the dev team is always looking for constructive feedback and suggestion on how to better organize our efforts. These past few incidents already have spurred the dev team to consider and undertake some changes to better facilitate community outreach. The dev team is by no means inflexible in these regards, so we do not need to resort to such base considerations as "repo-banning" someone that made a single bad PR.

[Bygonehero]

You usually can't check on intent, but if someone is stupid enough to publicly admit they're messing with the code for an entire playerbase out of their own self-interest. Then honestly I don't think they should be let anywhere near the code.

 

We are all "messing" with the code for an entire playerbase out of our own self-interest. We are all volunteer coders, and even if our goal is so noble as to make the game perfect and beautiful so everyone can have fun, our methods are more often than not shaped by our own interests and observations. You say that the post isn't about the PR itself, but I think that is not quite true. PRs made "selfishly" before did not merit similar complaints because they do not merit similar complaints. The fact of the matter is that the PR itself was bad, and the community did more than hate it. We do not need to crucify the PR author as a scapegoat to remedy this - as I've said before the dev team is always looking for constructive feedback and suggestion on how to better organize our efforts. These past few incidents already have spurred the dev team to consider and undertake some changes to better facilitate community outreach. The dev team is by no means inflexible in these regards, so we do not need to resort to such base considerations as "repo-banning" someone that made a single bad PR.

 

Yep, the more people who give input through git, or forums, the better. Burger has had hit and misses with their PRs, but they find things in the game that should be or could be and develop them. The reason why isn't really as important as the discussion about said change. It's through discussion that some of the best mechanics are made. Do you think any species dev pushed species PRs for purely selfless reasons? Even when it fits the lore, it's only to better fit their vision for their species in the game. That's what PR's do, and that's why a discussion about them is so important. They are a collective vision of how the game should be, and frankly, I would rather have more controversial PRs, as it gives impetus for the players to see someones vision of the game. Agree or disagree, the input is valued, as it allows a better compromise between all parties. Take, for example, the psych PR.

[Bauser]

The reason intent has not been a consideration in pushing PRs is that, historically, developers have always operated under the assumption that everyone making changes to the game is attempting to make the game better somehow. It has always been implicit in the work that developers put forward: the notion that the developers share the common desire of making the game more enjoyable. The problem Coalf has identified is that Burger willfully and admittedly made a major change which was designed to bend the game in his favor. It's malicious.

So while intent has never been a consideration in the past (as Skull points out, there has never been a need to consider intent), Burger's development philosophy ("How can I make this work for me?") suggests that it needs to be a consideration in the future.

[Skull132]

And right here we've illustrated just why I ignore intent as much as I am able to.

My personal view on this is as follows, for the sake of clarity: Burger was playing chef and recognized, that players do not regularly visit the chef. Instead they go for the quick grab of food. The interpolation from this is that the chef doesn't get much action due to the fact that it is easier to just get shit from the vending machines. This is, in fact, a very old realization. Having just played chef, he chose to do something about this. As a developer, generally, with issues like this, you have to ways to alter gameplay: with negative feedback, or positive feedback. Negative feedback is usually preferred, as it reduces the chance of power creep.

Now, believe it or not, probably every single developer has acted like this one time or another. The act of coding a change, motivated by anecdotal experiences, is nothing really new nor something to be afraid of. In my opinion.

Further, his changes were not malicious. They did not damage the game, the server, nor its population. All they did was implement a set of changes which included a heavy-handed negative feedback. And I do not believe it was done out of malicious intent (intent to harm the playerbase, the game experience, etcetera).

[Skull132]

Further more. If Burger were somehow malicious, he probably dedicated his time to put up this pull request, as an attempt to remedy his last one. I'm not saying it would be accepted, nor am I saying that it's good (because honestly I've not yet read it); but what I am saying that despite him not playing as chef anymore, he's still trying to take care of his changes and modify them to better fit purpose.

If he was malicious, he would have just not done this, specially considering that I have put up a PR implementing my version of the rework, which has been up for the better half of a week. (Again, more reason for him to just drop all of this.)

[Coalf]

Fair enough I guess.

Band Request resolved and stuff.

[alexpkeaton]

I just want to say that I appreciate Burger's contributions to the codebase. He's put a ton of effort into a PR that will show the psych some love with new mental medications.

I hope this thread doesn't dissuade Burger, or anyone, for that matter, from volunteering to improve the codebase. It's appreciated.

[Scheveningen]

I think maybe in the future it'd be a more intelligent move to simply criticize a contentious PR where it stands in regards to its flaws and etc, rather than asking the complete removal of a contributor's participation with the game development because they added one shit feature one time. And they memed on the OP because of the OP's reputation of bantering and jokingly busting people's balls, thus not taking the entire issue seriously as they could've; well, it's not exactly indicative of guilt, is it?

I put up a thread on this subject, even: (https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10700) and detailing only a little bit on what people can chip in to handle PRs that may be more trouble than they're worth. You can't say something is a problem that needs to be solved if it wasn't identified until way too late, because then you're just some bandwagon complainer repeating the same arguments as the last guy. That's what you look like, even if that isn't your intention, perspective is everything.

I think if people want to complain about upcoming or existing code features, they need to understand that to do so and be taken seriously, they need to take a bit of initiative and responsibility of their own while also understanding that maybe the guy they are complaining about is not exactly Space Hitler. I'm notorious for putting up complaints, even, and only two that I can think of have ever earned that moniker.

So really, just relax, even if the server's on fire. If you spend your energy expressing how mad you are over these subjects, you're kinda just showing how uncontrolled you're being. It's not wrong to be upset - well technically it is - but round-abouts are likely that it'll happen and sense won't immediately knock itself into you. I definitely think we could do with more constructive calls to action rather than inherently persecutive ones.

[Coalf]

I already said it was MAJORLY about the ADMITTED intent.

Skull already pointed who's fault it was and that they're going to take more precautionary steps since even small shit like this can completely flip turn the game upside down.

I know intent is hard to discern and that even the most selfish reason can lead to improving the game overall.

However even if this was a PR I agreed it, for example the IPC ressurection change, and Alberyk admitted in public after I asked him multiple times it's done purely because he "hates IPCs" I'd make this request about him.

I knew at the time the fucking PR was already getting reverted, I knew it was changed and everything holy canoli people this isn't about a bad PR for the most part.

I admit I should have probably made a player complaint instead.

[Skull132]

Let this sit while the head memes look this over. They did and have nothing to add.

Soo this is gonna get closed and archived.