Admin Complaint Against Nerfection

[PluviaMachina]

Admin Key: nerfection
Your ckey: Pluvia Machina
Your Discord name: (N/A)

Date of incident: 5/4/2024

ROUND ID: 40162

Nature of complaint:
Abuse of Power, Clarification Required, Unprofessionalism & Poor Judgement

Links to all relevant ban appeals for any bans related to this complaint:

Brief description:

I am an inexperienced SS13 player who was banned for breaking Rule 6 on first offense. I admitted the mistake and swore not to do it again. Nerfection acknowledged my confession and praised my ability to make friends in the server, but kept the ban in place anyway because he disagrees with my side of the story and adamantly believes I'm feigning ignorance when I'm actually telling the truth. I just want to move on.

Full description of events:

Let me make one thing very clear first: Everything I am telling you is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing besides the truth, all to the best of my recollection of what happened. Absolutely nothing I'm saying in this document is dishonest nor malicious in any conceivable way, despite Nerfection's belief in the opposite. I want that to be understood before we continue.

At the time of my banishment, I had been playing Space Station 13 for about a week, and had been playing on Paradise Station for only a few days. I wanted to try SS13 out after seeing funny videos about it on YouTube. My experience with the game is therefore limited; I am a "noob" in every sense of the word.

Fortunately, my presence in Paradise Station has been well-received and I've made friends in the server. I've been having a great time with everyone, we have played in good faith, and we've all been very friendly & respectful to each other until Nerfection banned me.

During the round of 40162, I was a janitor and was eventually misled by a moth name Duke (forgot his full name) into becoming a "mindslave". For the record: I have never heard nor have seen gameplay of this "mindslave" antagonist scenario before this event, and it was the second time I've ever been in an antagonist role. When you combine this with my overall inexperience with SS13, it is patently disingenuous to claim that I completely grasped what I was getting myself into, even with the notification message telling me what I had to do as a mindslave.

Furthermore, the warning message said "You are now completely loyal to Duke. You must lay down your life your life to protect him and assist in his goals at any cost. Your current objectives: Objective #1: Obey every order from and protect Duke, the Assistant". In hindsight, this is a very clear message, but nevertheless, it is inarguable that nowhere in this message (and nowhere I've been able to find in Paradise Station's server rules) does it say what will happen if you don't obey the rules & instructions--this server has no concrete penal code and it desperately needs one.

Consequently, and especially as a new player, this lack of specificity on what would happen if I didn't 100% adhere to the instructions gave me the impression that I didn't have to obey these instructions strictly. In fact, I honestly thought Duke would force my character to explode or otherwise instantly die if I disobeyed an order, and that (like any whistleblower situation) I could be rewarded & protected by the innocents for revealing who was my slave master.

If the warning message instead had a clause saying "You will be banned if you disobey Duke" or the less harsh alternative "Duke will kill you instantly if you disobey him", I certainly would not have disobeyed Duke. But since there was no such clause, I naturally assumed that I had more freedom than I did. After all, SS13 is literally just a video game; it shouldn't be taken too seriously, as Rule 2 already implies.

Following the enslavement, Duke instructed me to assassinate any commanding officer. This didn't sound very hard in my head, but once I tried to shoot the Head of Personnel through bulletproof glass that my dumb & inexperienced ass couldn't see, I was completely embarrassed by the failure, felt bad about trying to kill an innocent, and impulsively called out Duke as my slave master. That's it. No malice, no humiliation, only embarrassment from performing a colossal failure as an inexperienced SS13 player in front of multiple people. It was a mistake that I am more than willing to admit to, and already have admitted to more than twice now.

Nerfection contacted me at the end of the round about the situation. I tried to explain to him that I had no malicious intent in calling out Duke, but he didn't believe me. He quickly assumed I was deliberately playing stupid and just using inexperience as an excuse, so he banned me. This is automatically an abuse of power because you're banning a user on the first offense, and is an example of poor judgement because he's hastily assuming the user is being dishonest in his/her explanations.

I tried reexplaining my side of the story in more detail via my ban appeal. In it, I cited Rule 6, apologized for breaking the rule, agreed with the premise of its creation, and swore to never break it again (by way of making myself ineligible for future antagonist role selection). This is a clear indication that I have confessed to breaking the rule, understood why it's wrong, and that I am willing to learn from it & move on.

Nerfection denied my appeal, and is his response, incriminated himself:

• He acknowledged that I confessed to breaking the rules, which means he read my apology and my recognition that what I did was wrong. He also congratulated me on making friends in the server. Therefore, his decision to uphold the ban anyway is another abuse of power, his additional claim that I haven't learned anything is a blatant contradiction, and his positive remarks about me recognizing my mistakes & making friends were actually backhanded compliments.
• He revealed that one of the major factors in his decision to ban me was that the round was ending, implying he didn't want to keep people waiting, and so he escalated my punishment to a ban. It is unprofessional to hasten disciplinary action because a moderator lacks the patience to resolve the situation fairly.
• He revealed that he doesn't see anything wrong with banning a user on the first offense nor with being strict on new users. This proves poor judgement.
• He continued to accuse me of feigning ignorance, being evasive, using my inexperience as an excuse. His failure to recognize when a user is being honest further proves a poor sense of judgement.
• He mocked me by saying I can still talk the Discord server, even though I don't have permission to access the Discord invitation, presumably due to being in-game banned. Yet more unprofessionalism, or in the best case: ignorance of his own.

These actions are unbecoming of a server moderator and I implore Nerfection to rectify & learn from these mistakes just as I have to my own. We've both done something wrong here, so it's not fair for only one of us to suffer the consequences.

At the end of the day, all I want to do is move on from this hiccup, get back to playing with friends in the Paradise Station server again, and have fun with my new understanding of the rules. But Nerfection's abuses of power, refusal to accept my apology, and his persistent delusion that I am constantly lying to him is stopping that from happening. I never thought I'd have to explain all of this in such elaborate detail over something that shouldn't be controversial, but my hand has nonetheless been forced.

I politely ask for my ban to be lifted so we can bury the hatchet and get back on the right foot.

[necaladun]

Hi there,

 

It seems in this case that Nerfection did not believe you, due to the nature of the message and circumstances.

8 hours ago, PluviaMachina said:

. He quickly assumed I was deliberately playing stupid and just using inexperience as an excuse, so he banned me. This is automatically an abuse of power because you're banning a user on the first offense, and is an example of poor judgement because he's hastily assuming the user is being dishonest in his/her explanations.

To call this an abuse of power seems completely off the mark, and it being a first offense has nothing to do with it being abusive or not. He clearly believed you were lying about this, and that in itself gives even more reason to ban someone - it shows they are not co-operating with the staff. Lying to staff like this is indeed grounds for a ban, whether it is the first offense or dozenth.

You are the first person, out of hundreds, who has claimed to have read the message but thought somehow it is optional. It seems reasonable to me for Nerfection to believe this is not the case, although with your expansion and admission of your complete inability to grasp how a role-playing game works and what instructions like this, I am leaning towards your being ignorant rather than malicious here. 

However, Nerfecton's actions here are in no way an abuse of any power - it seems to be done with entirely good intentions, and the appeal refused because he did not believe you.

Not believing you is not abusing his power. 

I suggest you write an appeal that is more convincing, rather than accusing other people of malice. 

 

8 hours ago, PluviaMachina said:

We've both done something wrong here, so it's not fair for only one of us to suffer the consequences.

Nerfection may have been mistaken here, but this is quite an understandable mistake if it is one, as you are the first person to have misunderstood these directions I've known of. The idea he should have to suffer consequences for this, because you also did for disobeying an incredibly clear instruction that hundreds of others have been able to only speaks towards your incompetence.

 

8 hours ago, PluviaMachina said:

politely ask for my ban to be lifted so we can bury the hatchet and get back on the right foot.

That will require an appeal. This is a complaint about admin conduct. No misconduct has happened here - Nerfection not believing your story is not an abuse of power at all, thus the complaint has no merit and can be resolved.

I advise you explain yourself and your thinking much better in an appeal.