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My thoughts: Most notes are just a brief factual record of an admin's interaction with a player. e.g: "Warned for X", "Told they're not allowed to Y", etc. The idea is just to have a record that they were warned for something, so if they do it again, we know they were warned previously. There's really no reason to hide notes like this from the player. They don't contain anything the player doesn't already know. Some notes are the admin's personal impression of a player. "Has a really bad attitude towards admins" for example. These sort of notes might have bad consequences if revealed to players. For example, even a positive note like "did well in an event character role, consider for future event char roles" could have a bad consequence (player acting entitled to play event characters) if revealed. Conversely, they could help a player reform their attitude. Notes like this should probably be visible or invisible on a case-by-case basis. A very small number of notes relate to ongoing investigations or unproven concerns, e.g. "suspected of metacommunication with player X". These notes probably shouldn't be revealed. We can't make past notes public unless the admin who wrote them agrees, or (in exceptional cases) a head of staff approves it. To do otherwise is to betray the trust of the original note-writing admin who wrote the note with the expectation it would be secret. My proposal (requires a PR): All players get a new verb, 'Show Admin Notes' in the OOC tab. This verb would only show notes specifically set as 'player visible'. All notes added BEFORE this PR is merged are INVISIBLE, unless the issuing admin (or a head of staff) goes back and manually changes them. All notes added AFTER this PR is merged are VISIBLE, unless the admin who is issuing the note chooses to make it an invisible note. After the PR is merged, some admins (such as myself) might choose to retroactively make every note they've ever issued visible. Other admins might selectively make past notes visible if they come up again during an appeal or whatnot. Some admins might choose to keep all their past issued notes secret. All admins will, going forward, decide whether a note should be player-visible or not when its issued. Impact of my proposal: Already issued notes remain invisible unless the issuing admin (or a head of staff) decides to make them visible. Notes issued in future are visible by default, but admins can still set them as invisible when issued, or by changing the note's setting later, if they wish to do so.

Beg pardon if this was already said, but I haven't seen it, and I felt as if this much needed to be pointed out: As someone who's been around with the Admin Staff since around early 2015, I can confirm that while we don't necessarily have a fixed policy on Notes (as we never really had fixed policy on most of anything), we've never shied away from sharing relevant Notes with the player they were written about; provided there was an actual reason to do so. This could include, but not be limited to: Ban Appeals/Admin Complaints where the exact content of a Note is relevant, usually when it describes a given event Requests for a change to a given Note should the person in question want to/prove that it is warranted Any given exceptional circumstance deemed legitimate enough after a player contacts a Head of Staff Now, this might seem extremely flexible, and to a degree, it's designed to be. Every Admin writes Notes differently and on a different tone (mine, for instance, tend to be clinical and somewhat standardized, whereas someone like Dumbumn's might be small essays with a full description of events), on different situations and with different levels of what constitutes something "noteworthy", with variation even within the same Admin depending on extraneous factors (e.g, no one's going to Note down a civilian for breaking into Security to take their guns if all of Security is dead and there's a Xenomorph/Terror Spoder infestation; remove the infestation and we very well just might). When it comes to revealing Notes, however, there's a point to be made that "secrecy for the sake of secrecy" is hardly the reason why those are hidden from players beyond the one they're relevant to (see above). Just a few off the top of my head: No one but the player in question has any actual reason to know the Notes of any other player. Like, at all. Those are Notes referring to things the Admins have found worthy enough to remember that apply only to this player. This, of course, only applies to the more radical "All Notes For Everyone" approach, but at the end of the day, it merely pushes the secrecy line one step forward, with the player now having to be the one to keep the Notes secret, unless they wish to see them go public. Additionally, this can very easily end up in a situation where a player's Notes affect the way that other people react to them, colouring their attitude and impression. This can be easily avoided by the player never revealing their Notes to anyone, which... well, see above for why all that does is gently nudge the goalposts. And how we already give people Notes if they have an actual reason to; Even with Notes being fully visible only to the relevant player, it should be noted that Notes are not an analogue to a criminal record. There's a good reason why we keep the Ban Appeals Accepted/Declined section public, because that is what ultimately ends up being a player's record. Notes, as the name implies, are often little more than footnotes kept in place to help the Admin staff make their decisions on any actual punishment/reward; On a more "selfish" perspective, as I'm sure most here are aware, SS13 has a rather active community on Reddit, which tends to veer towards the "less than civil", often with direct attacks on our server and its admin staff (and by often, read "mostly constantly over the past several years"). Considering that our Staff have been harassed, belittled, insulted and just out-and-out treated like complete shit, we can 100% see something like fully visible notes ending up giving even more ammunition to people who have been extremely vitriolic to us over far less. We'd rather not have our Admin staff think "How will this look like on the subreddit when I write it down?"; Semi-related to the above, Notes are often very, very informal, not at all like the Ban Reasons you often see on the Appeals section. While Alffd has noted on the associated PR that he doesn't think this will lead to a situation where people will want to appeal Notes, because the system would just make him outright ban instead of spending time Note'ing people down, the fact of the matter is, thousands upon thousands of Notes exist. If we allow Bans to be appealed, there's no real reason not to let Notes be appealed for the sake of fairness, and quite honestly, considering that Notes often refer to very, very specific incidents, allowing players to contest Notes would grind down Admin bureaucracy to a complete halt. Not to mention what Alffd said to begin with: it becomes easier to just ban someone than it is to potentially open up a door for a Note contention TL;DR: We already give people their exact Notes if they have an actual need for them, providing full transparency opens far more cans of worms than it solves problems

Personally I think this is a complete non-issue. People are just totally paranoid about notes and admins acting to 'get them'. Give those people access to some notes and they'll demand access to all notes. Give them access to all notes and they'll suspect admins are trashtalking them in asay/discord and demand access to that too or who knows what.

Even if notes were made public the admins would keep secret notes regardless. I am a huge advocate for transparency and I wish notes were public myself - but unfortunately some things have to be kept private in order for the admins to do their jobs. A halfway house would be to have public notes but with optional secret ones which the admins can use for confidential information. People can therefore look back over "official" warnings and the admins can still have their private notebook for confidential things. I don't think that would solve the distrust however. I have always been of the opinion that admin notes should be between the admin and the player in question, a note should be used for feedback which the player should have access to in order to take it on board as well as to provide context within ban appeals. If admins are writing things about players in their notes which are unsavoury then I would pose that they should act more professionally. I have personally experienced an admin telling me that my notes have stated that I have been spoken to about X on a number of occasions yet I could not recall any of those occasions at the time. Maybe my memory is just poor, but I think I would have remembered. As with most of these things. Making notes public would not be some magic bullet which would suddenly solve all division, distrust and discontent. The fundamental choice you have to make as a player is you either play under the framework that the staff put in place, fair or otherwise - or you don't. I'm also unsure as to why this thread like many others which criticise the staff becomes so hostile and standoffish. One page which can be interpreted wildly differently, applied to an uncountable number of varied scenarios and varies from easy things such as "don't touch SSDs" to incredibly nuanced issues like how much greytide one can get away with.

Disagree, because everytime we do anything thats not visible in the notes, or a player discovers they have an invisible one, they will go full badmin on us in PMs. My fear, is we are going to get a ton of note appeals, and then arguments about notes in ban appeals, and its going to make more work. So if I make a note like "talked to X about running around naked as captain, may not be captain material and require a headban." Am I going to get an appeal? An admin complaint? How does that work if its public and they know it exists? Will they demand any note that is invisible if another admin says "You have a previous note for this?" What are we getting into with this? Is this more work for me as an admin? Trust me, you have a great inventive for the answer to this to be "no." Probably more then half the reason for the "If this continues, ban them", is that its an inconvenience to everyone involved to actually ban someone, and deal with the appeal. So its essentially just kicking the can down the road and hoping the behaviour changes. If a note like that becomes greater then or equal to the inconvenience of banning, I am going to skip the note and just do the ban. I am not a super hero, I just want to run events and spessmen. If just banning without a complicated warning/note process is easier then dealing with notes, I am going for the bans. Sorry, I just don't want to have a two hour PM discussion about someones notes, or a "note appeal" on the forums, everytime I give a warning.

Same. Or I'll simply forget to add a note or not bother to because it was something so minor and they'll assume that I made it invisible. We already have a lot of bad faith assumptions and misinformation - this thread is a great example here - that people aren't going to assume the best at all. Players are already able to record any interactions they wish. Players are able to appeal or raise concerns with notes already, in which case I have shown them on quite a few occasions - although this has more been for peace of mind with the player, as the notes generally have been incredibly minor. We are in no way denying players the ability to record admin feedback and improve upon it. This is just completely untrue. I have state in a previous post I'm happy to hear people out, have done so in the past, and that there are means to do so that have been used in the past repeatedly. If you wish your concerns to be heard by the admins, then you need to give us the courtesy of also listening to us when we reply to them. Having to repeatedly make these points in the same thread is incredibly frustrating. It's incredibly disrespectful to the admins who are trying very hard to address these concerns and putting a fair bit of time and effort in to do so. The idea that there is "no means to review or dispute" these notes is completely untrue. I very much hope this is because you just didn't bother reading what I had said, rather than the possible alternatives to that. We require secret tracking of things like VPNs, ban evasion, Metagaming, bug exploitation and server crashing, etc, as has been now stated repeatedly. Of course we have to save information like this. It's incredibly naive to think otherwise. Overall this thread is showing me the problem here isn't that notes are private - it's false assumptions and incorrect information. While I've tried to clear a lot of this up, it's incredibly disappointing that people are continuing to repeat things that we've taken the time to address and show otherwise. I'll state again for hopefully the final time before the meeting: The admin complaints forum can be used for reviews or disputes of notes. You can contact admins to talk about your notes. Headmins might be happy to reveal your notes to you. We require information on ban evasion, metagaming, etc, to be secret, and this will not be changing.

Someone gets warned Admin makes invisible note Person goes to check notes Person sees note is not there Person demands to see the invisible note Person gets declined to see invisible note Person goes around saying "so and so is talking smack about me and I can't even defend myself because it's invisible!"

The team is not that big and we know each others approaches. We see each others notes, and we see all PMs during the round. We for sure know each others thoughts and preferences and we read the notes accordingly. Why did you not ahelp it the second round? Why do you think the notes would have any context? If we allow something rulebreaking, its certain that we took round context into consideration. We are constantly tweaking things behind the scenes to control round flow, there is a reason we ask players to ahelp before performing certain actions. Because we don't all agree with them, and they are not staff decisions or an official record. They are not even always complete. This is going to get Reeed at (Which fits with this topic) but I (alffd, not staff) take into account player reputation and response to PMs when I make a note. If the warden says "Thx" in IC, and I PM them about it, and their response is something along the lines of "I knew it the moment I typed it, I am so sorry, it just came out, things where chaotic and my hands just responded without me thinking about it." I am probably not going to write that down as a note. We all make mistakes, and they know its a problem. If their response was "Fine, but dude, its a game, lighten up.." Well... they are getting a note, and their response is getting copy/pasted into the note. The difference being, in the first case, player knew the rules, knew they made a mistake as soon as they did it, and explained why it happened." They get it, and if it happens again it was probably an accident but the admin who PMs them can decide. The second case, the player is willing to stop, but just to get me off their back in the conversation. They are probably going to do it again, as the "Its a game" remark tends to be a good indication they don't take the rules seriously. All the other admins on see this interaction (and we tend to work in groups due to timezones) and know it occured. They know if a note was placed afterwords as we all see it announced in the chat window. We know how each other handle these things. We know each other, and we are often on at the same time and deal with the same players who share our timezone. We have a bunch of context, and yes, we also ASAY about what you did behind your back, since we all see the PMs back and forth, we will interject with our opinions on ASAY. You were not just interacting with a single admin, the rest of us may or may not have been discussing it with the person who PMed you. Everyone has notes. (any other admin reading this, check spacemansparks notes, they are amazing, you will lol.)

Rereading my post I think I wasn't completely clear. The problem with this is that admins are basically working for free for us. Anything that gives them more work will reduce the poll of possible admins, leading to less admins and/or lower quality ones, and admins diverting time from old work to the new work that was added. Any new work we add should be valuable, at least as valuable as actually policing rounds and processing ban appeals, probably more valuable than that. I simply don't think public notes are valuable enough.

Some really silly characters doodles for my friend's hopefully not upcoming Rimworld video series. I regret being involved. Gurt Bug Tarantuwu Chad

Henk's point is, the whole point of having your own record of your own notes is for your own benefit, You can use it to reflect on your own behaviour and avoid making the same mistakes you've made prior and if you do manage to make the same mistakes then an admin can bring that up fairly and can even double down on the fact that they are now aware of their notes. The concerns about people screaming about hidden notes is strange in my opinion, If you warned them you should give them a note as well and if you give them a hidden note after warning them that just goes against the whole point of the note and warning, and you can still apply hidden notes for usage in cases of RDMing or tiding or just suspicious players, they'll have no clue as long as you don't bwoink or tell them. I'm not sure how the player would be aware a hidden note would be written on them unless the admin themself came out and told them directly. If you really worry about people requesting their hidden notes to be revealed then you can simply make a rule about prior notes being unrequestable. I see this as a win for everyone, admins can continue to make hidden notes and players can now keep track of the things they've been warned for or have gotten in trouble for and improve their character. Sure it might cause drama short term but it'll improve the server environment long term and for the players that actually care about the server and want to be a net positive they certainly will take their notes into account and take admin feedback very seriously and act upon it and their notes will just be a tool to help them. Denying players the ability to record admin feedback and improve upon it feels counter intuitive when the one of the points of appealing on the forum is ensuring the players learned from their mistakes before returning to the server, allowing players to see their notes helps support that exact same view. You will help them learn from their mistake by giving them a record of it, and to the point of worrying people will try to appeal their notes. I see nothing wrong with this, why would you want players to correct their incorrect notes if the appeal had merit? Admins are humans as well and sometimes things on the surface aren't as they appear. And if it doesn't have merit then there was no harm in clarifying why to the player. I understand adminning is a volunteer job and that you use up your own time to do it but I personally don't think it's a lot to hear someone out if they truly believe that a note given to them was unreasonable then I feel like they should be heard out as notes have weight on the actions of admins. We all just want to play a silly wacky space simulator with a community of close-knit friends, Nobody wants to worry about a note they had from a long time ago that they might not even remember biting themselves in the back when they make a mistake. Giving players a record of their notes allows them a little bit of breathing room when they know what they've done wrong and evaluated themselves.

Things I keep hearing a lot from the admins is that they fear that people will argue bans or such. Isn't that what an appeal is? If they go argue a decision in game you still have the power (see rules) to act on the responses. In large this will also make admins be more aware about how they treat people. And see how different other admins do it. Yes it's a large group with different approaches to the adminning. But see it as a player. One round I could do X, even ahelped it. Next round I do X and get perma banned. Yes I'm going to complain and argue. But now I can't access direct proof since the notes are hidden. Mostly trying to state here the big differences in adminning and how confusing it is for the players. And that they can't do anything "against" it currently. And I think that making notes open will help make this become more apparent as well thus making it easier to fix/improve. Honestly speaking I like the middle approach Kyet suggested. Just start new and leave the old behind.

I will keep this brief. At one side, you have the administration team, who manage the server, police the rules, and keep tabs on various things. And on the other side, you have the regular players. Some things should not be divulged to regular players. In most situations, it is necessary to have notes/internal actions kept a secret, both to make sure admins can do their job without fear of immediate reprisal and to keep the integrity of the server and the staff constant. This is not to say that admins aren't reprimanded when they do something wrong, though. But if notes were made public, well, there would be a plethora of complaints/flaming/etc about notes, and this would not be beneficial for the admin team and for the players alike. If notes were made public, admins would have to walk eggshells every second they take any action in-game, because god forbid a player does not agree with a certain note or punishment. This could result in staff members 'hesitating' to take certain actions at certain points in time, because they may feel like they do not have enough justification for a certain action, in case a player sees the note made of it. (The action in question can be a ban, or a note for deeper investigation, etc). This, in turn (the 'hesitating to take action' part), could lead to moderation that is too soft, and it will only make experiences worse for the admins and players. Less moderation/staff actions = more rulebreaking = more negative experiences for players = decrease in server reputation = bad. This is crude, I know, but you get the gist of it. I know this is 'just a game', but think of it this way: Let's say the police/intelligence agency made their 'intel' public, that would be a VERY bad idea, for multiple reasons. So would the idea of making notes public. The thing is, if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of. And even *if* you have a note or two, it doesn't automatically put you on a black list or whatever. Hell, even I have notes. (I put Sarin in pizzas around when I just started playing and I got one ban because I said a slur when I just started here) Do I mind the notes? No, why should I? I just play the game, stick to the rules, and enjoy the time I spend on the server. And if you really, *really* must know something about notes/an action taken against you, you can always PM a head of staff for more info, in private.

If an admin has admonished you for something in error, then you can make an admin complaint/Pm a headmin about that. I'm not sure why you would have to appeal notes from the past? Why would you need to appeal something weeks after it's happened? Just recently there was an admin complaint where an admin made an error in rule enforcement/warning and the corresponding note was fixed to reflect that correction. If you're waiting weeks after the fact to appeal a simple warning, then your memory will be unreliable anyways and won't help in terms of appealing that note. There are not lots of notes. Talk to a headmin. I think you're really overestimating the number of notes you have. The only reason you would have lots of notes is if you're a problem player, and if you are, you would know from multiple warnings and bans. The players that tend to accrue a lot of notes are players who are immature, lack impulse control, have anger issues, or are too self centered to play a cooperative RP game. You will know if you are one of these because you will be the constant target of admin PMs. Keep in mind that for non-problem players like those of you chiming in on this thread, notes are rare or non-existent. But having to face constant rules lawyering and note appeals from the players that actually get notes? That's not a can of worms we want to open. This is called optimizing for the common case. The vast majority of the time, a note appeal is not going to be productive, and for those instances where an admin has actually made a mistake, we already have the means for appealing that.

Now in favor of public notes so we can read Spacemanspark's notes

This is almost exactly what I said in my post at the bottom of page 1. So...agreed?

You can't have rules stating players are to respect admin judgments and be respectful to admins during discourse and wait to appeal such actions on the forums as appropriate and then immediately turn around and have admins judge and grade players on notes they have no means to review or dispute. If you want or demand the players to respect the admin decisions the admins have to respect the players enough to keep relevant information on how the players are tracked transparent. This argument of the need for secrets is simply false, if the information can't be shared with the relevant players it should not be saved at all. "Innocent people have nothing to fear" cuts both ways. If admins stand by all notes being appropriately applied and relevant why can't a player view them?

Was told to mirror PR concerns

I think if a person gets warned, in 99.9% of the time there is no need f.or invisible note, for example "1.3.37 69:69 pm was warned for attacking ssd", there is no real reason to make it invisible, imho. In rare cases, where admin wants to add a note with some sensitive info so it should be invisible, i see no problems with adding two notes, visible and invisible. If a person does not get a warning and a note is like "looks like a person is borderline selfantagging, keep an eye if such behavior continues", there is no problem with a note being invisible

This is blatantly false. You have access to the reason your application was rejected. There's no excuse to be posting misinformation in this case. Notes do not magically become irrelevant after a set amount of time. Admins use their own judgement as to how long ago a note doesn't become a big factor. Plenty of admins have had a lot of notes and bans in their past and made it in.

@necaladun By doing nothing wrong, I meant doing nothing wrong *on purpose*. I know accidents happen, and admins take things into account.

I highly encourage this if there is any problem or concern - but first of all it might be best to just chuck us a message. Often these things can be cleared up with just a quick, straightforward chat. This is especially easier if it's done when everything is fresh in memory. I'm really not interested however in showing someone all their notes for their curiosity so they can be nitpicked over. This is especially the case with notes that are incredibly subjective. Is player X "a bit too aggressive" in OOC? Were they not grieifing, but actually trolling? Does it really matter if they only hit the clown 22 times with a toolbox, rather than the 24 the note claims? We really have better things to do than have players argue all that with us. That's not however to say you can't dispute warnings, or discuss them with admins, to clarify situations or have the note rectified...but we're really not interesting in digging over things from potentially 6 years ago. I'm happy to discuss notes, bans, or just general concerns...or other video games etc...with anyone who PMs me - whether from the server or not. I can't guarantee we'll show you your notes, or show all of them, etc, but I can say I'll hear you out and try to address your concerns. I may be busy, IRL etc can be a bitch, but I'll at least try to direct you to someone who does have time to address your concerns. This will not ever happen, at all. We will not reveal sensitive information that players have trusted us with, nor will we make it known how we investigate or detect metagaming, ban evasion, etc. This is not worth discussing, because it won't happen. This is not the "end of the world", of course, but stopping ban evasion, metagaming, etc, is much more important than what is ultimately a few nitpicks over 0.1% of notes for 0.1% of players. PM an admin of your choice! Even our trialmins by now have a few dozen bans under their belt. If you have any problems with how they discuss it with you, or just want further clarification, feel free to drop me or another headmin a PM. I don't particularly mind if you come to me first either. Hell, we even have some lists around of what languages people know if you think it'd be clearer and more comfortable with another language than english - pm me or another admin to try to find someone of your language. We really don't like a peanut gallery chipping in or people getting a small snippet of it, and running wild with it. Also, ESPECIALLY if it's a recent ban, feelings may still be running a bit hot - it might be best to wait a day or two. There's a sweet spot between "too long ago to remember well" and "too recently to be objective". Yes...and no. Bwoinks and notes over accidents happen - if you welderbomb or release plasma or the singularity by accident, you might still get a note about it. This is more so we can note that you now know what not to do, and that if it repeats the next round (and another, and another...) then it's likely not an accident. This can be a very intimidating game to newcomers. How is a newbie to know that a toy lasertag gun is a toy when they just see red beams and white on their screen, or that a single hit with a hatchet isn't really that lethal? People shouldn't be afraid to be wrong sometimes, but they should learn from it (and not call the admins powertripping nazi-fags when pm'd about it.). We really do take into account the amount of time that has passed and how new you are at the time. If you ICd in OOCd and welderbombed and beat an SSD in your first 20ish hours of playing we really do not give a shit a few hundred hours of gameplay later.....assuming you have stopped. I'd like players to be able to do that for their own bans for sure. Not for other peoples however, as this I believe would lead to people being treated poorly. Warnings here really aren't anywhere near as "official" as Steam or the like, they very in severity heavily. It could be a "hey could you tone that down" to "seriously do not ever do that ever again". There really seems to be a lot of assumptions here that are incorrect, whether from misinformation, or bad-faith assumptions about the admins and how we operate. No admin app is denied simply "because of notes". Discussions are held about all candidates. For anyone to be banned rather than warned because of their notes, it's rarely one single note. There are plenty of cases of people with 10-20+ notes. If it is one single note, it's because of something directly relating to what you were just recently warned about, or it's a realllly bad offense. If you start to think of the admins in less of an "us vs them" mentality when it comes to players (of which admins also are), and more people who spend a lot of time PMing people to explain to them why you can't hit an SSD with a toolbox, that you're not to use racial abuse, ERP with Ian (yes, multiple times), etc, as well as trying to get a good RP atmosphere without a validhunting murderboning culture, then it will make a lot more sense why we do the things we do and the way we do. Yes, we make mistakes obviously, the appeals and admin complaints list many, many, of the mistakes over the years. We're human - if we're having a bad day we might be a bit harsher or grumpy or abrupt. But all in all, what bans come down to is - do we think this behavior will continue, and do we think this person makes the server a better place.

@Dinarzad Allow me to take your statement point by point then. Players are well aware when we warn them since we get confirmation that they understand the warning, any of you who have been warned know we expect a reply. There shouldn't be any bewilderment or confusion about notes unless the player forgets the warning in which case maybe they should write it down since we will almost always note it in their file if we do warn them. Receiving multiple warnings from the administration team should be a clear indicator of a player's downward spiral and be enough for them to think "Hey, maybe I should change my behavior and improve myself so I stop being warned by the staff and I don't get banned." Having access to their notes privately isn't going to help this unless you're speaking that it can jog their memory of past transgressions, at that point I refer you to the fact that if their memory is that poor about this maybe they should be keeping their own set of notes. Notes are not focused solely on punishment, it is a way for us to share information with each other regarding either administrative actions taken against the player or if we want to say something positive for other administrators to consider. All players are given ample opportunity to self-correct considering its incredible rare for first offenses to be banned, usually requiring individuals to make multiple offenses at the time or show an utter disregard for playing nice with others and following the rules. The inability to talk about bans publicly is mainly because individuals 9 out of 10 times will salt about their bans. They'll complain that the staff was too harsh or that they didn't do it and that the staff has an ax to grind against them. There really isn't much constructive to be gained about talking about a ban to the general public since they'll likely not know about the situation and only receive a story, more often than not, spun to make the individual complaining look like a victim and to rally support against badmins. Allowing players to do so and then just banning the individuals who do those actions really doesn't change anything, since the individuals who want to talk about their bans publicly are usually the ones who want to salt about it and the ones who don't realize "Hey, I fucked up and I really don't want to draw attention to this fuck up of mine." I know I personally wouldn't want to talk publicly about a ban if I ever received one since it isn't exactly something to write home about. As for stacking the deck, there are staff available to speak to them regarding their behavior if they honestly want to change, there's absolutely nothing preventing anyone from contacting us and asking "Hey, what can I do to be a better part of this community?" Saying that being able to see notes and discuss bans will suddenly have the community policing itself and take a weight off our shoulders as prevention instead of cure hasn't taken into account the variables of friends and, cliques people of like minded nature who will not only agree with the individual that the administrator is wrong but will also reinforce the bad behavior, hell it happens even without the discussion of bans and notes being made available and nothing will really change that aspect. As for players who have been banned for oopsies so to speak, if its just a singular oopsie incident there really isn't a lot of work involved in the appeal process, it only becomes an issue when multiple oopsies have occurred. At that point there really isn't an excuse for them not taking the opportunity to change their behavior if they've been banned/warned multiple times over the same oopsie or just general oopsies with multiple rule breaks. Once again, nothing is stopping the player from remembering or taking note of their own warnings. They don't need access to administrative notes regarding this. Its very clear to us if an individual doesn't remember or doesn't care, the latter usually from multiple notes over a steady period of time The excuse of, I don't remember, is rather flimsy to begin with since it is a rather memorable moment to have an administrator contact you. I remember when I was contacted THE VERY FIRST TIME over something that didn't mesh with the rules over a year ago. Not only do I remember the administrator that contacted me I remember the conversation we had as well as the contents of it and let me tell you, my memory can be quite awful, I'd forget my own birthday if it didn't actually serve a purpose. The only way I can think of players forgetting multiple times we've contacted them, which usually is the case before it leads to a ban, is if they've grown accustomed to it and simply don't care. That or they're living in a 30 First Dates scenario where they relive the same day over and over again because of memory issues. If I can remember something from well over a year ago, it really isn't a stretch to think the average person can remember a MONTH ago. As for individuals who say "Well Bryan, what about notes from several months ago? From half a year ago? A year ago? Am I expected to remember that?" Usually no, those don't get taken into consideration if there's a large block of time between notes or when your last note is from a long time ago. Its when players start accumulating a good amount of notes after that long period of time we'll start referencing that since it either indicates A) That person stopped playing for the block of time and that's why there're no notes or B) They've burned themselves out and stopped caring. Giving them the opportunity to look at their notes and saying "Well, you didn't look at your notes you had ample opportunity to change." well, they're not going to change regardless if they have their notes available to them. People who want to change will change regardless if they have access to their notes because they realize they've done wrong and they want to become a positive force for the community, to share in the fun and the laughs and are usually genuinely upset that their actions have impacted others in a negative way. People aren't going to magically want to start bettering themselves because they can see our notes and be reminded of their poor behavior at that time and making them public to everyone would just end up with players looking at other players notes and being shamed, even if they are good players now and had issues in the past, something There are people who will use it intentionally to shame or will bring it up in conversation not with the intention to do so but ultimately leading to that same outcome, something that I am vehemently against. After addressing these points I'll leave you with some others. There are notes that as stated before aren't administrative actions taken against the player but opinions of the administrative staff regarding behavior that may potentially be detrimental to the community or a potential rule break. Nothing is gained from players knowing these observations and it very much can be used to say "Hey, the administrative staff hates me! LOOK I HAVE PROOF! BADMIN SAID X ABOUT ME!" which is only a negative for us because then it makes us out to be the enemy. There are notes that contain information about other players, things that players have said to us that we don't wish to divulge because it can open up the floor to other players not trusting the individual or ostracizing the individual completely because they ran to Staff to "tattle" on them. Nothing productive will come of this and the fallout from these actions would just create more work for us and ruin the game for those people who actively help and try to keep the server a good place for others by bringing these things to our attention. It can place a barrier between the staff and the player base as some players are friends with staff and we have to do our duty as staff before being your friend. Nobody likes seeing something unflattering being said about them and it could negatively impact the relationships we have with those individuals in the community which would eventually end up in there being a divide. As Necaladun pointed out, we'd have players requesting alterations or removal of notes which could very well increase our workload since we'd have to investigate the legitimacy of the note itself on a case by case basis.

I've done this multiple times for people in the past when people have requested them, and have no issue doing so in the future if needed. However, this requires us to look over them, decide how necessary each thing is, edit out details we don't want, etc etc. Then we also might need to explain context - different admins have very different styles. Kyet writes entire essays in notes. Other admins are a lot more blunt. If I say a guy is being a bit of an asshole, that's nowhere near as serious as if someone like dumbdumn says they're an asshole (in which case they'd likely be worse than hitler). Other parts of context are how long ago the note was, and how experienced a player they were at the time. A byond account created today with 20mins on the server will get a warning for toolboxing an SSD. A player with over 1000 hours toolboxing an SSD would be very unlikely to get the same treatment. Unless there's a good reason to do this (such as a person disputing a warning in an admin complaint), then this really isn't worth our time, nor is something we want to generally encourage because of the waste of time. Some actual 'need to know' is needed, and there's no reason to set up a whole request system for this when a simple PM on discord can suffice. A vast number of our notes are simply "new player, attacked SSD, warned to read the rules." - simply a statement of the direct facts. When a ban comes up saying someone has been warned of something in the past, I have never seen a case where they haven't been warned in the past. In the end, warnings really are a courtesy, not a right. You are not entitled to be warned X number of times before being banned for breaking the rules. When we say someone has notes showing they've been warned in the past, it's to point out that they should know it is against the rules because they've been told so in the past. If I warn you not to attack an SSD, and it turns out I PM'd the wrong person entirely, you've still been warned, and thus should know it's against the rules. Perhaps we shouldn't warn people quite so often. They shouldn't need to see their notes for "a chance to self correct" if we've had to warn them repeatedly. The warnings should suffice, and be taken seriously. If you're forgetting how often you've been warned about something then there really is a problem. If you're getting repeatedly bwoinked and warned not to do something by admins, then that's a downward spiral. Additionally, if people are really concerned, they can also just keep notes themselves of whenever they're PM'd, or keep the logs of every byond session. I've looked into methods where we could have a 'public notes' where warnings etc are put down that players can review, but I don't think it's really worth the time and effort for something that is only an issue to a fraction of 1% of players. @Dinarzad making exaggerated "jokes" that portray the admins in a poor light, in a serious post about an issue is quite disrespectful to the people who have attempted to discuss this seriously and maturely, and insulting to the admins. Of course it got jumped on - we need to jump on misinformation that makes us look incredibly unfair ASAP before people run wild with it. Your wording isn't being "picked apart and subject to semantics". I called it outright bullshit, which is what it is. I don't want to derail this discussion with a back-and-forth about how you were "misinterpreted", so I'll leave you with one courtesy, which is a review of all your notes as it's very easy to do in your case. You have 0.

No, if it wasn't an accusation it simply put, is not an accusation. It was unintentionally misleading, perhaps, but it was never an accusation. It was interpreted as one but that doesn't change what it is. You can also misinterpret factual evidence and data, that doesn't change what a fact is or the data itself, it means the interpretation was flawed or the fact was presented erroneously (Which I have admitted to) it does not suddenly change what the fact was to fit that flawed interpretation. And none of this addresses my point, it serves to prove it even more. Everything said was reduced and boiled down to one single snippet, one "Sound bite" of my post that was easy to jump on. The exact same thing that Necaladun was just talking out against. One admitted error in my post and nothing else I said is addressed or referred to or evidently seems to even matter and you want to tell me that "You don't have to spend minutes carefully crafting a post"? Apparently I do need to, because in one fuck up in said post, and nothing else I have to say is going to be addressed and it's additionally gotten me called a liar, when a lie was never the intent. So yes. I apparently do need to be particularly precise and careful with my wording, since my wording is going to be picked apart and subject to semantics, instead of the point itself, even now that it's been clarified. This is again, exactly the point people have when they say they feel like they're walking on eggshells when dealing with administration. You have not acknowledged the point itself, you have instead fixated on a single error that was already addressed, dodged the issue that was being raised and doubled down on focus on me and how I failed to portray my argument properly (Which is already acknowledged and even apologized for at this point.) Instead of addressing the concern, you have chided me for making a mistake. So the mistake in presenting the argument negates the argument altogether, which is itself, a fallacy. Do you really not see why that kind of behavior makes people nervous to bring up any issues or anything that might be even vaguely controversial, let alone to make sure their notes are accurate? If this were a situation occuring in-game and going onto my notes, I would have no way of knowing the remark was misinterpreted, I would be unable to correct it and future admins would be working off erroneous information. This is what people mean, this is an example in motion of that entire argument.

A redraw!! UwU Damn, I remember at the round thinking to myself 'I need to draw up how this PDA message interaction could have been like' probably staying up most of the night because that's what I did back in college (actually I'm still up half the night now) and being super excited about the outcome because damn I'm starting to hit peak of my abilities. The composition, the mood, the everything was mwah perfect. But you know what, 2016 was a different time.

Again. It was never intended to be a verbatim quote of an actual incident. It was an exaggeration used to illustrate a point of view people have on not being able to see their notes and to be mildly funny. I am sorry if my attempt at humor has backfired that horribly, it wasn't intended to BE an actual example. But that reaction in and of itself, from multiple admins is a reason why so many people feel they're walking on eggshells. I made one comment that I DIDN'T carefully spend minutes crafting and that got misconstrued and it was immediately jumped upon and, in this case, got me called a liar. Is it really that hard to believe after that kind of reaction people get concerned what gets put into their notes and would like a chance to correct it?

Thank you for posting this, as there has been a lot of misinformation floating around here that needs to be cleared up. First of all, i have heard that asking for your notes will result in a permaban. This is utterly untrue. Notes may have information to do with suspected ban evasion, metagaming, antag fishing, etc. We require these to be secret to properly do our jobs. We will not be showing these. Other notes may not be written in a manner that we want the player to see, eg, "acted like a complete fuckwit as a captain.", or just "i have a bad feeling about this guy". I prefer admins leave blunt and honest notes about things rather than having to phrase it in a way that won't look bad when its posted on reddit. There are plenty of times we have shown notes to players. With at least 100k notes, determining whether or not to show players is done on a need to know basis. Even if we do show some, its entirerly our word that you're seeing them all. Same as for those other servers. We're also clearly not showing you everything said about you on the staff discord, host chat, or when we talked about you when ive met up irl with admins. I'm sure players won't dilvuge everything theyve ever said about admins to other players, friends, etc. Comparing this to the evidence in a criminal case or the like is insane. No one here is getting imprisoned. No one is on trial where notes are evidence to if they did or didn't commit a crime. Notes don't contain some smoking gun or evidence of a one armed man who actually committed the crime. If you get banned for breaking the rules then you either did it or not. If you didnt, post in an appeal that you didn't and we'll go log diving. Being warned or banned is purely at admin discretion. If you've ever been warned not to do something that's against the rules, you could have been banned. If you got a temp ban it could have been perma. If youve been pmd by an admin before and been told not to do (x) then its likely in a note. All the admin pms are also in the logs, as are all the attacks and says and mes etc. We don't like people discussing their bans because they lie, or leave out vital information (eg, people saying they were banned for powergaming, and leaving out thar they told the admin to fuck off and ban them already). Having to constantly correct people requires us to constantly monitor the discord. Thats a pretty big waste of time. We have better things to do, and discussion of bans has rarely been productive at all. If you want to discuss a ban, past or present, then you can message an admin. This is complete bullshit. That has never been said in any banning or warning. If im wrong, please let me know so i can tear the admin a new one. This is a perfect example of why we dont want people discussing bans. Because many people lack the maturity to discuss this properly without resorting to reductive reasoning, or in this case, absolute lies.

Why is it a problem if a player has access to positive notes, or to notes about things that aren't outright an issue but could evolve into one? Surely, some people will complain about their notes. I can see the concern over "more bureaucracy" having some merit, at least. But what Solessa said stands, even more so now. Knowing *what* wrong you've done, or even *if* you're doing something wrong, could be useful to adjust your playstyle or behaviour. Not everyone who breaks a rule is a shitter who wants to make things awful for everyone. I also don't understand at all the point behind banning discussion on past, expired bans. I really would like to see some sort of reasoning for it. What is the thought process behind this? Why is it an issue to discuss what actions can result in a ban? I understand not discussing current bans, if only because it can lead to pointless arguments, salt and other nasty stuff, but as long as it's in a civilized manner I fail to see an issue with discussing past bans.

I also agree. As I know some GAs like to stretch the truth then what actually happen. Seeing notes would at least have players peace of mind knowing correct information is being displayed for all GAs. This goes same for GAs who reads on those players notes, no more biased information.

"You did something bad, stop doing that." "Oh, okay what did I do?" "You don't need to know what, just stop doing it." Not being able to see your own notes leads to confusion and bewilderment. It's curbing another avenue for problem players to recognize a downward spiral and any chance for them to right that behavior. It focuses solely on the punishment for doing something wrong rather then giving that player a chance to self correct. The inability to talk about bans on discord in addition to not being able to see what you've been doing wrong, it's stacking the deck as much as possible into preventing a problem player from correcting his behavior BEFORE it comes to a head and requires a ban, instead of taking the "Ounce of Prevention" we've opted for multiple pounds of "Cure", it's ultimate more work to deal with all those ban appeals from people who had an oopsie then to give those people a means of self-correction before administrative intervention is needed. It's giving people the tools to solve their own problem before Admins have to. In addition, if a player has access to their own notes, they run out of excuses for continued misbehavior real fast. A player can't claim they didn't know something was a problem, when they had full access to see those notes and see that it WAS a problem, they could have seen it at any time and didn't care and continued to break rules and tow lines anyway, which helps lead to more open and shut cases, it's a more telling sign of someone's attitude as a player and whether or not they're any good for the server.

Super intense personal goals..

This is fine...

Human centipede, and this was only what I could see from where I was, 2nd from the right. God knows how many more

Just three of the minibars I've made in game. Hrm, should make more...