Shockpoint - Uncompromising blanket enforcement.

[Birdtalon]

Admin(s) Key: Shockpoint
Your ckey (Byond username): Birdtalon
Your Discord name (if applicable): Birdtalon

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): 2018-11-12T07:50:52 (From server log)

Nature of complaint:

Uncompromising stance taken in which I believe constitutes an unreasonable approach to rule enforcement.

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements):

 

Taken from this unban appeal and relating to this comment.

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[2018-11-12T07:50:52] ADMIN: Announce: Shockpoint/() : Anyone generating more than three attack logs on the shuttle will be slapped with a three day server ban. This is the only warning you will receive.

Full description of events:

I was not involved in this incident but I do make a habit of regularly browsing the unban appeals. I have read the guidelines for making an admin complaint and I do not believe that one has to be related or involved in order to make a complaint. However please correct me if I am wrong.

I will preface this by saying that I don't believe I have ever spoken to Shockpoint, so this complaint is by no way motivated by anything other than a belief that the style of administrating in this particular incident is poor and would like a comment on it. I also have had no contact with LordBannan with regards to his appealed ban and this complaint is not motivated by a will to see his ban modified, that is his business to solve.

The crux of the matter for me is the following; the announcement which Shockpoint made (above) takes into account no regard of context, history, intent, motive or any of the usual factors which should be, and usually are, taken into account when considering administrative action. I believe that applying a sentence without regards for context brings the level of the administration down somewhat and reflects poorly on the staff.

Also; the fact that an admin is able to arbitrarily decide that "three attack logs" constitutes shuttle grief seems unreasonable to me. The rules are built around an understanding between the staff and the community that we all agree to play in a certain way and get along. It is my belief that changing this understanding on the fly will always lead to confusion and differences between how an admin and a player interpret the rules at any one time.

In my opinion reading this, the announcement comes across as laziness and unwillingness to deal with incidents as well as shows a lack of understanding to what could potentially happen to individual players. One could for example easily generate three attack logs with a piece of paper while on the shuttle as easily as with a surgical saw - however I'd hope you agree that they would not both deserve a ban for shuttle grief.

Essentially from this complaint I would like to know if this kind of "blanket ultimatum" administration is acceptable on Paradise. As I said earlier, I have had no experience with Shockpoint's administration other than seeing this one incident - which I hope isn't a regular occurrence. However I believe it holds enough significance to myself and the interests of the playerbase to begin a civil discussion.

Thank you for your time.

[Allfd]

I don't know anything about the situation, but do wish to provide some administrative context as what shockpoint seems to have done is something I have often considered myself.

End of round is a disaster as an admin, a number of things  happen all at once.
 

1. Once round ends, much of the information you need to determine what occurred in the round is gone forever.  We are left with only what was logged.
2. Things that happened earlier in the round get ahelped, things that would have been easy to investigate had they been reported promptly are now difficult to address.
3. You cram 50 players into a shuttle, for 3 minutes with little ability for intervention, people are setting off chem grenades, someone just let out 60 diona nymphs.   Some antag gets beaten to death by some random idiot, not for being an antag, just RDM.  They are ahelping, you are trying to track down the botanist who did the nymph thing, and oh, those chem grenades were space drugs.
4. You don't actually have time to PM anyone before the server restarts

If things start getting out of control, and in the larger sense they have been going that way for a while on the shuttle, I think the rule makes sense.  If you are not an antag, you should not be generating attack logs on the shuttle.  It is currently an absolute nightmare to deal with.

I would be in favor of a temporary policy statement codifying 3 hits is an auto ban, either 72 hours or a perma-ban.

Things that happen on the shuttle can't be investigated, we don't have time to read notes, or PM the person or gather context.  We should probably be clamping down harder, its just hard to do without banning without PMs, which we try to avoid.

I would rather someone stick around to talk next round, or just ban them without a PM as opposed to holding up 100 other players by delaying the restart. 

 

The reasons listed above are further complicated by the fact that if they don't stick around, the next round it is very difficult to ban them, as the ban system only works reliably for people who were in the game for the round the ban is applied in.

 

If people don't want to get banned for trivial things on the shuttle, everyone needs to start chilling out on the shuttle. 

 

People cross over the shuttle grief line way too often, and it makes it very difficult to figure out what is going on in the chaos.  Without addressing the larger point of unilateral interpretations, I feel it is safe to assume that the full context would justify Shockpoint's actions,  as dealing with shuttle grief is a nightmare.  During peak times, we usually have multiple instances of shuttle grief, and have to let most of it slide as we go after those actually killing people.  This leads to more grief as the perception that it is OK to grief on the shuttle gains traction, leading to more instances of things we should intervene in but can't due to time constraints.


I would support a policy of banning first and asking questions later for shuttle grief that was directly observed by an admin, as opposed to through an ahelp.  It has gotten that bad.

 

[Birdtalon]

Hi Alffd,

Thank you for replying to my complaint. I understand a lot of the points you raise; however I will try to address them here in response.

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Once round ends, much of the information you need to determine what occurred in the round is gone forever.  We are left with only what was logged.

Is this potentially something which can be dealt with through code? If it's an issue then now is a time to brainstorm some ideas to make it easier for admins to deal with genuine shuttle grief.

56 minutes ago, Allfd said:

Things that happen on the shuttle can't be investigated, we don't have time to read notes, or PM the person or gather context.  We should probably be clamping down harder, its just hard to do without banning without PMs, which we try to avoid.

Great, I absolutely support this for genuine grief. If someone releases a gold slime on the shuttle, space drugs etc - this is one of the easiest and most explicit rules to follow so cracking down harder is nothing I can complain about.

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The reasons listed above are further complicated by the fact that if they don't stick around, the next round it is very difficult to ban them, as the ban system only works reliably for people who were in the game for the round the ban is applied in.

If this is an issue then it needs to be looked at from a code perspective. Something I've always been happy to help with. Admins rarely talk about how the tools work for them (or not) so us contributors rarely touch any admin tools. I'm one of the few modern non-admin contributors that's done anything with trying to improve admin tools with the ticket system and even then getting feedback is rare.

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If people don't want to get banned for trivial things on the shuttle, everyone needs to start chilling out on the shuttle. 

That's fair enough. However my issue with a blanket statement such as that which Shockpoint issued in this circumstance and a "ban first ask questions later" policy gives players no freedom to defend themselves. Antags have free reign to kill anyone they want to on the shuttle on pain of an OOC ban for anyone who intervened. Would security be exempt or included from this? Would the person being attacked be excluded? Both of these questions require time to answer which you say is lacking at the end of a round. Does this mean someone being killed just has to let themselves die because defending themselves risks a ban when they weren't doing anything wrong?

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 I would support a policy of banning first and asking questions later for shuttle grief that was directly observed by an admin, as opposed to through an ahelp.  It has gotten that bad.

I would say if this is a potential route to go down then it needs to be explicitly changed in the rules to state this. At the moment the clause dealing with shuttle grief is

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While the Escape Shuttle is in transit, Shuttle Grief is not allowed. Attacking people on the shuttle for any reason other than self-defense may lead to a Ban for Shuttle Griefing, with the exception of Antagonists completing their objectives. Violence is allowed once the shuttle has docked and end round statistics are displayed;

Shockpoint's announcement in this particular case makes no mention of self defence whatsoever. 

[necaladun]

38 minutes ago, Allfd said:

If people don't want to get banned for trivial things on the shuttle, everyone needs to start chilling out on the shuttle. 

This is really the crux of it - it is simply solved by not clicking on people for a few minutes. 

Alffd sums up the rest of why shuttle grief is an annoying issue as it is, but I'd just like to re-iterate how the timing can be awful. Trying to PM multiple players in a few minutes is just awful - you have to keep track of 3 different conversations, 3 different incidents/logs, all on a time limit. Some people won't message back at all, some will ask questions/require a conversation, etc. Hopefully nothing else will happen in this time you need to stop, or at least investigate. 

This could all simply be solved by people not acting like 5 year olds hyped up on caffeine for just a few minutes. Even without actual attack logs, people are constantly pushing boundaries - slipping on peels, breaking into the bridge, and in general acting in a manner to piss other people off for their own amusement.

In general a "3 attack logs" rule would be a bad one, but having some rounds where peace is heavily enforced on the shuttle is a good thing. I normally go with a dayban, then escalate it with a second announcement and two day ban if it's getting bad.

 

Oh you replied while I'm writing, let me get a few points if I can:

6 minutes ago, Birdtalon said:

Is this potentially something which can be dealt with through code? If it's an issue then now is a time to brainstorm some ideas to make it easier for admins to deal with genuine shuttle grief.

Code is fine, the issue is reading and parsing all the logs, while talking to people about them and trying to parse context. If we're doing it next round, then we have to remember who is who and who did what, and hope they're logged in. 

8 minutes ago, Birdtalon said:

If this is an issue then it needs to be looked at from a code perspective. Something I've always been happy to help with. Admins rarely talk about how the tools work for them (or not) so us contributors rarely touch any admin tools. I'm one of the few modern non-admin contributors that's done anything with trying to improve admin tools with the ticket system and even then getting feedback is rare.

Will make a post on admin forums for feedback collection and that and pass it on.

In general, it's hard to know what admin tools could be better without seeing them. Newer mins might be best to talk to - I'm more set in my ways and used to having to download the -entire days logs- in a txt file just to read 1 attack log, so to me these "modern" tools just seem a blessing. 

9 minutes ago, Birdtalon said:

policy gives players no freedom to defend themselves

 

11 minutes ago, Birdtalon said:

Shockpoint's announcement in this particular case makes no mention of self defence whatsoever. 

To defend themselves violently. Running away is really a good option, especially when it's a crowded shuttle. If said announcement has been made, just run until they fall SSD.

Part of the reason for this is it's impossible to easily tell what is and isn't self defence, as per the context problems above, but also appropriate self defence. It often takes multiple messages back and forth between players to get an idea of the context, and then a few more messages to explain why it was excessive of them to beat someone half to death because they were hit by a banana once. 

The simplest solution here is to just...not. There's no real need to hugely defend yourself OOCly either - if you are beaten to death, the round ends in a few minutes anyway. 

 

Really, this whole situation isn't optimal. Every case should be investigated through logs, discussed with the players involved, as well as any witnesses. We should go over the persons previous notes and bans, all the facts, then make a judgement call. If that takes say, 5 minutes for each case, then 6 people hitting someone on the shuttle might take up a half hour of the admins time. This...just isn't workable. Ultimately I'd like every case to get maximal admin attention, but the real life situation is a balancing act. When it comes to things like shuttle grief, I'm all for cracking down on the general attitude of RDM. 

[Birdtalon]

Thank you for your response Necaladun, I have read it and I completely understand your point of view. I do still believe that this particular case was heavy handed. But I feel that we could discuss this until the cows come home as they say. I am glad to have got some well thought out responses. You may consider this resolved if you wish.