Kluys

[quantum99]

 

Admin: Kluys

 

Complaint: A little background first. I'm pretty new to SS13 and to Paradise, been playing a little over a week and been enjoying it a lot, especially learning the different jobs and how to make things, particularly the stuff that's in the code and not on the wiki.

 

So basically what happened was that I was banned for 24 hours by Kluys while messing about doing what I thought was a harmless experiment. I want to push the issue of the ban aside though as although I felt it unnecessary I don't want to cloud the issue with an appeal against such a short ban. I've been playing as a civilian for the past few rounds, while I go exploring and try get to and into different areas. On this occasion I was learning to setup a remotely activated welder bomb, which I was going to use to get into the mining area. I purposely detonated it in the maintenance corridor with nobody around but the area suddenly lost pressure (not entirely sure why but probably a bad position). So I run out of the area and then get a message from Kluys asking why I did it, It takes me a moment to write back that I was experimenting and trying to get into mining and then a few seconds later he bans/kicks me from the server.

 

Feeling I'd not exactly had the chance to defend myself I contacted him via PM over BYOND and tried to explain that I've read the rules (neat llama) and while it might broadly fall under 4/5 there wasn't actually any ill intent behind it, so would he reconsider it? He more or less said, then repeated that I should be grateful it was only 24 hours. After some sparse response the conversation ended when he silently blocked me rather than just saying the conversation was over.

 

Ok, So granted that I'm not faultless in this, because I screwed up by accidentally causing a decompression. My issues are these.

 

[1] I think banning was a little heavy-handed given that the malfunction caused was a bit of atmos trouble (It didn't seem that bad but I was only about for about a minute or two after it so "citation needed").

 

[2] The speed of judgement was way too fast. It just strikes me that the admin message came up about the welder bomb, he saw the atmospheric trouble, then got impatient after all of one message from me, assumed it was griefing and silenced me. This all happened so quickly that I barely had the time to write the one reply that I did while in game.

 

[3] The actual level of consideration given. Summary judgement and execution is not cool, if you have the time to make the judgement call then surely you have enough time to find out all the relevant facts. I was denied the opportunity at the time and in the subsequent PM conversation, in which he fobbed me off with some generic slogan that ignored the specific issues. In essence I should be grateful he didn't wield his power more severely over this minor incident.

 

I think there was good OOC and reasonable IC motive for my character to be experimenting and when people experiment, accidents happen and that's what this was. When I first started about a week ago I didn't know what being SSD was and so I took advantage of someone who was SSD. I got told by an admin not to do this and found out why, they engaged me, were understanding and I learned my lesson and became a better player. Kluys I wish you'd have been more willing to adopt this approach with me as it would have produced the same effect without producing the bitter feeling that you couldn't be bothered to deal with this properly.

 

Cheers,

 

Quantum99

 

[ZomgPonies]

 

I'll address point 3. Contacting admins privately on BYOND chat or through any other medium (including forum PMs) to discuss bans is a big no-no. There's a reason we have ban appeals, there's a reason we have admin complaint sub-forums. I myself tend to arbitrarily block people who poke me about bans via BYOND chat as standard.

 

I'll let the Headmins review the rest of the complaint.

 

[Kluys]

 

You don't seem to understand the issue here, under NO circumstance is blowing up a weldertank to get into areas acceptable. I noticed you rigging a fueltank in maint and just blow it straight to bits.

 

It may have been an "experiment" it may have been to get into an area but as you were not an antag at this point does that make it acceptable. No it does not.

I said it once and ill say it again. Be happy it was just a dayban.

 

[quantum99]

 

While I get the need for you guys to hold the records for stuff so that you can tell exactly what went on, I'm not sure I see an issue with me PMing him under the circumstances as I've not seen anything to say that it's forbidden. In-fact the rules more or less suggest that you should do it.

 

1. Listen to the admins.

...

Arguing with an admin over ingame pm's will get you nowhere. If needs be take it to a private chat and let them get to it whenever they get the chance. If it is done so in game you are likely just annoying them and taking their attention away from admining the server.

 

If he wanted to ignore me that's fine but it might have been better to say he couldn't discuss it via PM rather than leave it hanging. I went seeking resolution unban or not but it's hard to sort things out professionally when the other party refuses to come to the table. Since point [3] was not about my supposed indiscretion I don't consider it addressed.

 

Kluys, you've fed me the same line 3 times now, I get it, your position is I should be grateful. I acknowledge this, that you have said it, that I have heard it, that I understand it and most importantly that it does not bear repeating any more. Now that the generic script is out of the way can we please discuss this properly rather than throwing slogans at each other?

 

I would say that I do comprehend the issue. An action must be proportional to the role being played, which is to say that it IS acceptable to blow a fuel tank for access when you're the antag because there is a good IC reason for it. I think there are other types of characters who also have motive to do this sort of thing, pyromaniacs for example (no, this is not the I'M MAD argument) My character was a bungling thief trying to get access to an out of the way area. If it were truly the case that under NO circumstances is it acceptable then why do the mechanics for it even exist and why is it not explicitly stated in the rules?

 

Cheers,

 

Quantum99

 

[Crom]

 

I wish to clarify some points for you.

 

It is stated in the rules. Namely in this case the major offender would be no self antagging. You stating that you are a thief, means that you have self antagged. The actions you chose were antagonistic. You need to figure out where the line is divided on this. Stealing is antagonistic. Destroying the station just to get to a part of the station that you cannot even begin to open up the next series of doors is... ill thought out and antagonistic. Using a welder tank rigged up just to get past two window frames and a grill is... rather extreme. There sounds like there was no plan to extend your life in space, to remove the next levels of glass and grill beyond that. To deal with the obvious response of security and crew that you have now prompted. We would likely antag ban an antagonist with this lack of forethought as well.

 

[Kluys]

 

Right I'm just going too explain a bit and let another admin handle this because I feel like hitting any more nails on the head will at some point puncture my skull

 

pyromaniacs for example (no, this is not the I'M MAD argument)

But pyromaniacs and random thieves who blow holes in a damn spacestation ARE mad.

and why is it not explicitly stated in the rules?

"5. Keep the station intact for everyone else to use."

and why is it not explicitly stated in the rules? (again)

"7. Self-Antagging"

and why is it not explicitly stated in the rules? (again)(again)

"Most rules are common sense and it would therefore be impossible to list all the things you could do to get yourself banned."

Arguing with an admin over ingame pm's will get you nowhere. If needs be take it to a private chat and let them get to it whenever they get the chance. If it is done so in game you are likely just annoying them and taking their attention away from admining the server.

in all other situations create an appeal in the allocated section of the forums.

 

[quantum99]

 

Crom:

 

The self-antag rule allows for petty crimes. I was breaking into mining to check the lockers and any other containers, not The Vault or the Research Director's office. This surely comes under petty crime. It was done in a secluded area that was purposely meant not to attract attention. In an area I believed to be deserted, because the miners generally go off mining. The area I detonated it in was not adjacent to a grill or window so I believed the only damage was going to be to the door and surrounding walls.

 

Kluys:

 

I'm sorry to trouble you with actually having to spend more than 2 minutes on this.

 

Pyromania is arguably a sort of madness but being a thief is not, unless you're from the the Victorian school of thought on criminality, which is now considered wildly outdated. The station suffered what appeared to be minor damage and that only happened because of an unintended side-effect. Had I intended to blow a hole out into space that would have been MAD, instead it was only assumed that is what I was trying to do because you didn't want to spend the time to find out otherwise. I wasn't purposely blowing up a crowd of people or attacking a critical system. That should have been pretty obvious.

 

in all other situations create an appeal in the allocated section of the forums.

 

I would have done this immediately if you had stated you were busy but since you responded to the PM you were clearly available to discuss. Leaving the conversation hanging afterwards was ambiguous, telling me to deal with it on the forums is not.

 

[DeletedUser]

 

a harmless experiment.

 

On this occasion I was learning to setup a remotely activated welder bomb, which I was going to use to get into the mining area. I purposely detonated it in the maintenance corridor with nobody around but the area suddenly lost pressure (not entirely sure why but probably a bad position).

 

How is detonating a makeshift explosive to break into a secure area, causing a hull breach in the process harmless?

 

When I first started about a week ago I didn't know what being SSD was and so I took advantage of someone who was SSD. I got told by an admin not to do this and found out why, they engaged me, were understanding and I learned my lesson and became a better player.

 

You were previously warned and told to read the rules...

 

I've read the rules (neat llama)

 

..which you did. You were previously warned about your behaviour, and now you have deliberately broken the rules that you have proven to know.

 

Ok, So granted that I'm not faultless in this, because I screwed up by accidentally causing a decompression. My issues are these.

 

 

As you admited here.

 

I was experimenting and trying to get into mining

 

For such experiments you have plenty of empty servers open, and even we are hosting a test server (You should still at least try to notify the admins about your intentions via ahelp first). You can even setup and host your own private server.

A live populated server is no place for such tests, unless you do it on the toxin test chamber or an empty/abandoned place in space like the asteroid or the delerict.

 

[1] I think banning was a little heavy-handed given that the malfunction caused was a bit of atmos trouble (It didn't seem that bad but I was only about for about a minute or two after it so "citation needed").

 

 

You caused a hull breach in a mainetance tunnel. These tunnels lack air alarms or atmos vents, therefore making atmos issues more difficult to detect and fix for the engineering team. They also lack any firelocks or emergency lights, so anybody could enter the tunnel, launching himself into the void and causing the despresurization to spread even more.

 

[2] The speed of judgement was way too fast. It just strikes me that the admin message came up about the welder bomb, he saw the atmospheric trouble, then got impatient after all of one message from me, assumed it was griefing and silenced me. This all happened so quickly that I barely had the time to write the one reply that I did while in game.

 

 

Here are the statistics about the playercount of our server http://www.ss13.se/servers/1/Paradise%20Station/

At this time, the average playercount of this week is 58 players, with a peak of 112 players. The speed of judgement is a requirement under these conditions. And Kluys did NOT assume you were griefing, for reasons i will explain next.

 

[3] The actual level of consideration given. Summary judgement and execution is not cool, if you have the time to make the judgement call then surely you have enough time to find out all the relevant facts. I was denied the opportunity at the time and in the subsequent PM conversation, in which he fobbed me off with some generic slogan that ignored the specific issues.

 

 

Kluys took the time to gather all the relevant information. Which are, mainly, the damage you caused, your intent (malicious or not, being the main deciding factor), your ban history and player notes.

 

In essence I should be grateful he didn't wield his power more severely over this minor incident.

 

 

You proved to have read the rules, and you deliberately broke then, in this case it was probably because of mere ignorance or bad judgement rather than malice. Even then, the standart punishment for these actions (keeping in mind that you had a previous warning) would be a temporary ban from 3 to 7 days. This ban would be permanent if the admin assumed you were griefing with a malicious intent.

 

Kluys I wish you'd have been more willing to adopt this approach with me as it would have produced the same effect without producing the bitter feeling that you couldn't be bothered to deal with this properly.

 

 

What about the feeling a welderbomber produces on the engineers and, in this case, the miners and cargo workers? Not speaking of the admins.

 

pyromaniacs for example (no, this is not the I'M MAD argument) My character was a bungling thief trying to get access to an out of the way area.

 

Pyromania and kleptomania are mental disorders by definition.

 

If it were truly the case that under NO circumstances is it acceptable then why do the mechanics for it even exist and why is it not explicitly stated in the rules?

 

 

What Kluys said. And it is allowed under the right circumstances, it is also true that an antagonist would probably choose to not use welderbombs, as they are a messy and unpredictable tactic. Ahelping to ask for permission before doing something questionable (such as detonating a weldertank to break into an area) also helps.

 

The self-antag rule allows for petty crimes. I was breaking into mining to check the lockers and any other containers, not The Vault or the Research Director's office. This surely comes under petty crime.

 

Using explosives and causing a hull breach, however, is not. That would fall under sabotage.

 

The station suffered what appeared to be minor damage and that only happened because of an unintended side-effect.

 

Hence why your ban was only 24h long instead of the standart 3-7 days long.

 

I wasn't purposely blowing up a crowd of people or attacking a critical system. That should have been pretty obvious.

 

 

This would be punished with a permanent ban, as it is blatant griefing with malicious intent.

 

[quantum99]

 

what I thought was a harmless experiment

 

Your quote cut off the important preceding part of that statement. I thought it was harmless, I was clarifying my intent, not making a statement of fact.

 

Yes, I did read the rules after that incident because it was a genuine mistake. I didn't know any better and without reading the rules and looking stuff up I had no chance of knowing what some random acronym like SSD meant. I purposely cited that incident as a good example of where a bit of understanding went a long way. You're now saying that I deliberately broke the rules, well let me stop you there because no I did not you're 100% wrong. It wasn't deliberate at all and that's precisely my point and why I have been banging on and on about intent this whole time. I thought that it was within the rules, I still think the rules in their pure form allow for welder bombs to be used within reason, which I've seen done by antags and security when fighting the blob, though possibly they ahelped in those cases?

 

I picked the maintenance tunnel because I thought it was secluded, not because of the air alarm and fire door factors, which I completely failed to take into consideration. Again this was not deliberate it was just an unintended consequence. I probably will setup a private server to play about on at some point, that's a good idea. I'm still new to BYOND itself so naturally that will take a bit more time for me to sort out.

 

I presume you've been talking to Kluys privately to know he spent more time behind the scenes looking at that information, I can't get anything out of guy so I'll take your word on it. He spent less than a minute talking to me in game and had chance to be clear out of game but was not. There are multiple admins a few incidents per round and I don't believe that an admin is constantly tied up all of the time by such a small player base. I think what happened is he wanted to make a quick judgement and get back to playing, without offering me the chance to explain. This leads to an environment where you're punishing ignorance of the game rather than wilful malice. Difference is driving off griefers is good, driving off people who are not yet good players is bad.

 

What about the feeling a welderbomber produces on the engineers and, in this case, the miners and cargo workers? Not speaking of the admins.

 

Well..those are characters in a game, they go "Oh something happened, I'll go do my job and fix it". Not justifying random carnage here but hey it's something for them to do. I was on about real people feeling bitter because someone couldn't be bothered to give them a few minutes and hear them out. Pyromania and kleptomania are indeed both mental disorders but people set fires who are not pyromaniacs and people steal things who are not kleptomaniacs, doing these things does not immediately mean you have a mental disorder ergo the "I AM MAD" argument is not automatically applicable in cases when people do these things, which is why I wasn't using that to justify petty theft.

 

Obviously I know to ahelp about such things in future now. I still maintain it would have been better for Kluys to have spent a little more time talking to me before enacting the ban rather than having to spend ages clearing everything up after the fact. Would a few extra minutes in-game to clarify exactly what the situation was, really have broken everything? The answer is no, it wouldn't have. Even now I'm being told I deliberately broke the rules, which is the very thing I've laboured to clarify that I didn't do on purpose. You can't half-listen or not listen at all to someone and condemn them on what you decide to fill in the blanks with.

 

[Kluys]

 

We are trying to explain to you that you DELIBERATELY blew up a welder tank, which is bad.

Would you please just understand that.

Robbing a place is fine unless its secure or goes too far, as soon as you rob a place by blowing up a fueltank you are by definition, in this game, for our admins, going too far.

 

[quantum99]

Yes, I deliberately blew up the welding tank but I didn't do it with the express intention of breaking the rules. I thought it was within them, which clearly it is not.

[DeletedUser]

 

Yes, i understand that you broke the rules because of ignorance and not malice. But the thing is.. this is the second time you did that. The first time you just got a warning, and you were told to read the rules. After that one would expect you to actually look stuff up before trying to screw around again. If you scroll up to the top, you will see a "wiki" button, I advise you to have it open all the time the first months of playing.

 

Once again, you were not banned for griefing, you were banned because you wouldn't learn otherwise. Hence why the ban is so short, and will expire soon.

 

Also, you maybe don't need this at the time, but this is a very helpful guide, despite the language used: http://www.ss13.eu/wiki/index.php/Guide ... iding_bans

 

[quantum99]

 

Thanks,

 

I have been doing some reading since that first incident, mainly the rules, the wiki the code and the forum but there's a lot of it and it takes time to absorb all of it but I am slowly getting there (I still can't do chem properly at all without the wiki yet :?). I have read that particular "guide" before and it genuinely made me laugh out loud, whoever wrote that has got a pretty damn warped sense of humour.

 

I wish we'd had this whole conversation from the start because at least now I feel like all the factors have been considered, rather than the whole thing being a snap judgement followed by being ignored. That was what got me and that is ultimately what this thread is about. I'm striving to be a better player as I'm sure many others are too, so I don't think it is unreasonable for me to ask Kluys to strive be a better admin by being just a little bit more judicious and giving people a few extra minutes to explain themselves to him when things crop up. I can't imagine anyone wants every incident to turn into a protracted forum exchange if it could be cleared up in a few minutes.

 

Cheers,

 

Quantum99

 

[ZomgPonies]

 

You broke the rules, inadvertantly or not. The ban duration was appropriate (even generous) for the rulebreaking in question. The admin was not disrespectful to you.

 

Complaint closed.

 

[ZomgPonies]

 

And a forum PM from the plaintiff:

 

"With all due respect the issue was not resolved. The focus of the thread was shifted entirely on to what I did wrong and since it was productive to tackle it, we tackled it. But I'm the one complaining about Kluys and this is not a ban appeal. nobody has really explained why he couldn't have taken the time to handle it properly. The mere fact I had to rehash several points during this thread would seem to indicate that people are prone to not reading what was actually said and instead lazily skimming over it before they replied. You were the only one to even acknowledge the numbered points."

 

And my reply:

 

"He had all the facts he needed, you would've gotten the ban anyways. Nothing he did was wrong, or was contrary to our rules and policies. If you're STILL not satisfied with the way you were handled, then I suggest you find another server to play on."

 

Case is CLOSED. Man up and deal with it.

 

[ZomgPonies]

 

And because some people just have a hard time with simple words, another private message:

 

"Think about it, I wasn't happy before this reply and you haven't said anything new apart from "man up" (oh my god, that's what chicks trying to manipulate their boyfriends say). So given that you haven't addressed the issue and none of the other admins got close to tackling the issue, then yes I'm not satisified because nobody has made any relevant points to change my mind. You're not a democracy, fine yeah I get that, the admins are in charge, yup also get that. You have a forum where you claim you're open to criticism and that you'll handle it fairly, well that part I don't get. You're all clearly not open to criticism, you're not willing to be intellectually honest about dealing with it and clearly spending more than a few minutes focusing on one thing is too much to ask.

 

We're gonna clash horribly all the time, I'm willing to grow, you're all not. Which is a damn shame because you really do have one of the best SS13 servers going and I've really enjoyed playing here. So even though I know that..

 

"If you're STILL not satisfied with the way you were handled, then I suggest you find another server to play on."

 

is another lazy generic catchphrase that the admins throw around when they can't be fucked to engage someone. I will actually be taking you up on that offer and not returning. Nevertheless I do wish you and this server the best in future. I'm sure you'll be glad to have me out of your hair

 

Later,

 

Quantum99"

 

FIEW, glad -that's- over with.