Admin complaint - Ban, bryanr, and events in general

[silvernkell]

Admin(s) Key: bryanr
Your ckey (Byond username): Silvernkell
Your Discord name (if applicable): Rain Raptor

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): 2019 - 01 - 04

Nature of complaint: Misconduct/Feedback

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements): Was given a sudden ban for -

Was not given a time or place to explain this, and feel it was a bit heavy-handed.


Full description of events:
There was an event where the tesla turned into a bluespace-related honk demon related engine.
Was pulling a "clown goblin" with me from the engineering construction room which seemed to be creating them in order to take him up to the clown's room in some attempt to appease it. The event mob is passive until triggered hostile with attacks. The man in question walked up to me out of cargo and grabbed the clown demon in hold and began taking it away, and upgrading his hold on it.
My character is mute.
I disarmed him so he would drop the goblin and then pulled it back away from him, walking off in my hardsuit to the bridge main corridor. He decided to chase me, and upon reaching me, started hitting the goblin and also me.
Previous experience with the clown goblins in another round lead me to believe that will make them angry, and cause others to spawn and attack.
The man was also green.
I started trying to pull the goblin away but on being hit, I believed I was being attacked by another man with hulk, as there had been numerous on the station and the geneticists had already been dehulked like 4 times.
Thusly after taking hits between him and the clown goblin I started moving around, and hit the man back. I then stopped in the ensuing confusion as he no seemed to be circling around me, I stood there screaming, and doing nothing else, whilst he did a long call for help, the goblin smacked him again and he fell down. 
Blueshield came out and killed what was left of the goblin, to my character's horror.
I took the remains of the goblin (mask and shoes) and brought them back to the room which was creating the goblins and immediately saw and heard a floor cluwne appear. Assumed it was in response to the death of the clown goblin I'd had with me. 
I started to try and convey panic / a warning in character and then was rather suddenly banned.




In dialogue after finding the discord of the banning admin, I was told that the man was not a hulk. My panic and actions from being punched were borne almost entirely of the fact I thought he was hulked. He both appeared to be green and had a similar punching graphic, I'm guessing it's because he didn't have claws.
I would probably not have hit him back at all if I didn't come to this mistaken conclusion. I can only assume I'm blind as a bat or the man was a green skrell, or was mistakenly actually a hulk (not likely, I'd assume logs would state it too obviously to miss), or something event related happened such as the one where people turn red.
The only way I managed to get any dialogue to say this, was by looking on the discord. And sadly I feel like the opined response for most of my worries was that I was lying. I'm not omnipotent, can't see everything, and don't hang my life on the decision I make within 20 seconds on a game. So I apparently made a mistake in thinking the man was a hulk. Which is fair.

I was unaware of the "last warning" given, and I was not bwoinked and warned in the round, have a lot of hours of playtime, and can only remember something along the lines of being given a last warning possibly in the area of 2 months ago. Notes are very difficult for this, they do not take into account the simple fact that there would be a long period of time with many hours played during which I contributed to the round and acted completely within the rules, I would hope the amount of hours I've spent in game without harming anyone should speak for the fact I am not a griefer or metagrudger, nor was it my intention to self-antag and randomly attack somebody I had never seen before unprovoked.

As such I do not believe I can truthfully say that I broke the self-antagging rule.
I do however understand that my reciprocation went beyond acceptable due to the fact I thought the man was a hulk, which scared me when I was attacked.
This would more be along the lines of breaking Rule 4: Maintaining a Respectful Environment . Except, again, it was an honest mistake, brought about by being chased and attacked. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to this player who had to get surgery- but again, he attacked a mob that hit him back, doing a large portion of all the damage to him, as well. There is no way this cannot be considered as a self-inflicted consequence of the round event, which admins chose to create in order to create something different from the regular story.

Saying that I should have ahelped him attacking me first and just stood there and allowed a person I thought was a hulk to hit me, does not take into account that all of this happened over the course of a 20-30 second punch out and is not a good reasoning as to why a silent, sudden ban like this is valid. Nor does it take into account the idea of roleplay or of letting things happen that can be a story if as soon as something happened I always just stood there and began formulating an ahelp instead of doing anything in-game. 

It's also a large problem with what I hear from admins in general; you showed the spirit of rolling with the punches, because you want to see unusual circumstance and rp, and now you will be punished because being more sportsmanline and not ahelping first means you gave up the ability to be considered.
I'm being punished because instead of complaining about said events or people I roleplayed and tried to go with the spirit of fun other people were having, even though demon events is not my favourite type of RP. It's lighthearted but some people like that.
I am being punished for breaking the natural order of rounds and RPing. I am being punished for doing the very thing that the event is promoting. 

If unpredictability is not supposed to exist, please do not create round types intentionally causing more of it or egging people along to act that way. There is absolutely no way it can be said that creating a demon event with a floor cluwne in it, was not expected to hurt or inconvenience other people much more then my self defense ever did. A lot of the time these things seem to go too far, screw people's rounds over completely, but we're (The ones who attempt to actually go along with it) left being punished whilst certain others that want to avoid dealing with it just cryo, or spend their time talking to hellhound demons in places they should not even be in.
I am left questioning why I am the one being banned when everything was either a self-caused circumstance or a consequence of making such an event.


In the end, I feel like I am guilty until proven innocent because of unspecific, notes received a long time ago or when I first started playing. The note system is an extremely dangerous one in that it does not take into account time passed or how active a player is. The point of the notes system is to get people to improve and to identify things such as griefers. However if someone plays none-stop for days with nothing but good behaviour, proving they are not out to make others have a miserable experience and only have other people in mind, this won't be taken into account.
I already know after my last issue in this vein I stopped playing the same character much and improved, I have never had an issue with self antagging since, and have probably had a thousand or more hours between then and now.

The most I can say is that this was an unfortunate circumstance that inconvenienced someone to about the degree of 3-5 minutes, (as is wont to happen when admins choose to create a demon event!) to which I am sorry, but do not believe I should be banned for it given that I was not choosing to self antag, nor chasing this player down, being insulting or doing anything of the sort other then being mute. The only other thing I could think of other then my poor judgement in thinking the man was a hulk, would be that I took the clown goblin outside assuming nobody would hassle it. Perhaps that would be naiive but punishing people for the sins of others not being able to keep from clicking things would simply result in everyone being banned. And sometimes does on griefy shuttles.

Thanks for your time. This started as an appeal instead but felt that it raised a couple issues with events egging people on, and that I'm starting to see a trend of people being punished for RPing and others not, that had merit to be considered, and so moved it here for discussion. It is not my attention to attack the banning admin, but since I had this conversation with him and he did not seem convinced, I am afraid I am posting it here.

[BryanR]

First off I would like to apologize. Having given the situation more thought and reading your complaint has made me realize that I did handle the situation presently very heavy handed and it could've been much better handled if I had contacted you at first rather than simply placing the ban without allowing for your explanation of events.

I will admit that the decision I made came from your notes and even then after reflection it was the wrong decision 

Also I would like to say that I don't take this complaint as an attack against me in the slightest but rather as constructive criticism from which I can learn from and become better at the role that was given to me. Something I'd like to thank you for since criticism that is constructive can sometimes be very hard to come by.

Once more I do sincerely apologize with how I handled your particular situation as I definitely could've done so in a different manner and should have.

[silvernkell]

I don't really think an apology is necessary, as I can see why this happened, and your side of the story. I'm extremely glad that I had an opportunity to talk this through here, however!
And also glad that you do not feel like it's a direct attack. You spend your own time dealing with things like this and that's no small task, definitely not easy.

These confusions can happen and I do feel a little bad about being a cause of it.

Again, thanks for your response and time spent reading this whole thing.

[FreeStylaLT]

Greetings! I will be handling this Complaint.

I can see that there was an issue in the conduct of the Admin, in regards to a ban with a short-handed or otherwise lackluster investigation.

Considering the Admin in question has provided an apology and has explained what and how went wrong on their end, I would be willing to resolve this Complaint, with the natural expectation that BryanR has learned from this mistake and will try to reduce any potential lapses in judgement in the future.

As for your ban, seeing as it has been wrongfully placed, will be lifted.

If you are not comfortable with this resolution, feel free to reply here.

[silvernkell]

I'm perfectly comfortable with the resolution. Thank you.