[Rejected] Need a better way of dealing with rdmers

I hardly believe admins will be given the ability to punish without proof. Admins do not just care about themselves, I don’t see any admin only come onto the servers just to support themselves. If you see that and believe it make a damn complaint. Admins are not investigators and never will be as punishing people for situations that you have no clue of may lead to a complaint and we do not want that. Admins try their best to keep rule breaks off the servers and cannot see everything.

 

You’ve been repeating the same thing over and over not understanding or even grasping the reasons as to why we cannot punish for what we cannot see.

But y’all USED to be able too!! And it worked better for the players!!!!

But y’all USED to be able too!! And it worked better for the players!!!!

No, we never did.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a voice but y’all

Shouldn’t have majority voice because y’all DONT UNDERSTAND. Your right idk know what goes on behind the scenes but once again I’ve been playing a year and the old method in which they did investigate is better for the people. Y’all are trying to say there never was a “different system”

But there was. EVERYONE I’ve asked in ttt server says there was. But every single admin (other than one) have told me it’s been the same way for years. This is false it most definitely used to be handled differently

When I was a regular I used to get so pissed off at admins who didn't investigate RDMs or freekills when I was freekilled, and I would have to spend 45 minutes editing a video, uploading it to Youtube, and making a player complaint instead of the admin just dealing with it in-game. I did this for ~3 years before I got admin. Trust me when I say that I feel your frustration. When I got admin I made a promise to myself to never let anyone else have to deal with the BS I had to deal with as a player. In fact, I debated this exact topic with the higher-ups a month after I received admin.

But now that I'm on the other side of the fence, I started to realize that things aren't as simple as they seem. "Investigating" situations often means checking logs and mediating between two players. However, logs often don't reveal the entire situation and mediation between two players can only do so much before you're forced to make assumptions and potentially punish someone who didn't deserve it. Whether or not admins investigated in the past is irrelevant. Thinking about it from our point of view, we'd have to make assumptions to punish players who may not have even deserved it. This is why admins can only punish for situations they saw. If an admin fucks up and punishes someone who didn't deserve it, they'd be punished themselves.

I get it. On other servers admins investigate and try to go beyond mediation to actually come up with a punishment. But at SG admins are held to a pretty high standard and actions do have consequences. While it's time-consuming, the most clear-cut way to get someone punished for continually rule-breaking is to whip out OBS, record, and make a player complaint. I'm sorry for that, but we've tried many ways to make it as easy as possible for you by having admins frequent Teamspeak, shoutbox, and Discord, as well as installing calladmin on our servers. Hopefully these options help you realize that there's a lot more involved than there may seem to be and we've tried to make this process as painless and accessible as possible.

Once again another admin telling me the same thing. ADMINS USED TO BE ABLE TO INVESTIGATE AND DERTEMINE PROPER PUNISHEMT. There at least tone admin that agrees with me I won’t put him on spot but stop trying to act like there never was a different way of doing things!!! THERE WAS! Just a few months ago

There was. Once again several players agree with me. I get it’s most likely not gonna happen but for heavens sake atop trying to tell me it’s ALWAYS been this way. It hasn’t...

Your frustration is understood by all of us, trust us on that. We've ALL been regular powerless players, so please do not claim that we don't understand. The protocol we follow is justifiable and pretty much set-in-stone. As said before, it is an "innocent until proven guilty" stance. Allow me to expand on this:

Someone is accused of hacking. Do we ban them outright, or do we take note and spectate them when available?

Someone is accused of freekilling on Jailbreak. Do we slay/kick/ban them outright, or do we take note and spectate them when available?

Someone is accused of RDM on TTT. Do we slay/kick/ban them outright, or do we take note and spectate them when available?

You are accused of hacking. Do you deserve to be banned outright, or should evidence be brought forward on that claim?

You are accused of freekilling. Do you deserve to be banned outright, or should evidence be brought forward on that claim?

You are accused of RDM. Do you deserve to be banned outright, or should evidence be brought forward on that claim?

The logs we have provide no context. Each admin only has 2 eyes (typically), and can only spectate one person at a time, per admin. As said before, we are not investigators. There are no crimes to forensically tear apart. We are basically cops on the beat, waiting for shots to be fired - and if the perpetrator gets away, we don't establish a crime scene with yellow tape and white chalk. That's not our job. If you have some form of evidence via a player complaint, our CA+ staff can investigate after the smoke clears - and deal justice when necessary.

But y’all USED to be able too!! And it worked better for the players!!!!

In the past (Like a year or two ago), Admins used to punish RDMs via hearsay from trusted regulars. Although this was efficient in a way in dealing with the usual new players who don't understand the rules, this was an issue.

Within the past year, we have been instructed to no longer abide by that protocol. That protocol itself was flawed and was never supposed to happen within TTT (To my knowledge).

Although I can see why you liked punishments via hearsay, there can always be a miscommunication issue between the players involved and admins doing their job, hence why we have a new way we moderate TTT.

The system worked not because of just logs. They would ask both sides of story’s and then back those story’s up with the story’s of witnesses. And I’m simple talking rdm which is a very common occurrence. Yes for things like hack claims those definitely need to be looked into more because the punishment is much more severe than a simple rdm. Once again I will say at least one admin agrees with me and several ttt players agree with me as well? I get y’all for some reason don’t want to go back to the old system but the players want it??*?? I’m done posting on this thread obviously the old system won’t be put back into place y’all arnt even considering it for a second even tho several players have agreed with me on the server and the only people not agreeing are the admins and wanna be admins so...

Well I guess that’s why it’s a suggestion. But I bet more players agree with me than don’t. Admins really just don’t understand because they either dont get rdmed because of there sg tag or they can just instantly slay who

Rdms them. Players DONT HAVE THAT OPTION. We used to get justice back

In the day now we don’t that simple??*?? If the higher ups don’t think The old system worked because they personally don’t have to deal with it they need to put them selves in the players shoes. Or come up with a better system than having to investigate or letting people go unpunished

youre acting like admins dont play on the server and are only there to police it. admins are undercover all the time and they get rdm'd too. even if they get rdm'd when tagged up the only reason they take immediate action is cause they saw what happened rather than take the word of a couple of individuals. again, like a few people have stated, you can always go to an admin by using admin chat and ask them to look out for someone thats rdming or ask them to help clarify a situation.

i understand the frustration, we all get rdm'd at some point. tho sometimes it is purely accidental and people dont realize at first and just claim rdm which im sure is one of the reasons admins cant go off hearsay anymore. at the end of the day, its a video game server not a court case and admins have protocol they must follow as stated by Caution and i believe some IA's. I get it, sure people might agree with you but you gotta understand the admin position on this as well. I hope this gets resolved where both sides are satisfied with the outcome.

I just want to point out that

[admins] would ask both sides of story’s and then back those story’s up with the story’s of witnesses.

is just no longer applicable in our community, nor was it ever the intention.

Who's to say one side of the story is better than the other? If Player-1 says "I was clearly RDM'd by Player-2" and Player-2 says "idk what he's talking about" - what do we do? Do we spend the next 5-10 minutes probing these players for the facts on something that happened probably 3-4 rounds ago by that time, hindering the gameplay of the accused, the accuser(s), and the admin(s)?

If 5 players agree that Player-2 is RDM'ing, and I just came online - what do I do? Do I just take their word? What if they just don't like the player?

You keep pointing out that it's basically only admins that agree on this, but isn't that proof that it's a justified rule? Do you really think we are all so corrupted, and we just want to make non-admins suffer? That there's some sort of conspiracy and that we like seeing people get away with breaking our rules?

I've never really been a fan of the whole 'this is how we used to do it' type of argument, because it's typically nothing more than anecdotal. My experiences playing in a server may be completely different from another person's, depending on an infinite amount of factors. Anecdotes don't really mean anything, which is why it's always good to reflect back on what's actually in writing and posted.

While I'm not dismissing that admins have, in the past, punished players for things they did not witness, I'm going to comment specifically from my eleven years or so of administrating the servers, managing servers, managing the community, and ultimately being the Generalissimo (from a factual standpoint, not an anecdotal one). There has never, to my knowledge, been any type of sanctioned policy where admins are allowed to just punish people based on nothing more than hearsay and circumstantial evidence. If someone can find some sort of written rule that says something to the contrary, please let me know. Even referencing the original 'Admin Rules' thread made back in 2009, there is nothing in there listing where that is allowed.

At some point in time, whether gradual or rapid, certain admins took it upon themselves to start punishing players based on the aforementioned. This led to an increase in admin complaints, to the point where it was rapidly becoming an onset issue: the juice of letting admins investigate is not worth the squeeze of breaking down the multitude of legitimate complaints that follow for admin misuse. If an admin uses their power in an incorrect manner, to include punishing a player that they have no idea on if an actual rule was broken or not, they are (and always have been) subject to punishment. Plenty of strikes have been issued for admins doing this. While we're not here to really investigate admins on if they knew the player committed an offense, if a complaint is submitted from the standpoint of the person being punished and it is clear there was no wrongdoing on their end, the admin is at fault - whether or not they were acting with honest intentions. Us stating 'stop doing this' is literally nothing more than a reminder that it shouldn't be happening in the first place.

I'm not going to go into hypothetical situations on why punishing off of hearsay is a bad idea; that's been outlined several times, and me repeating that isn't going to get the point across if it isn't already there. I will reiterate though that it has never, in the history of SG, ever been okay for admins to punish people based off of anything shy of concrete wrongdoing. I'm sure most of us have done it at some point in time or another (myself included), but that absolutely does not mean that it was the right thing to do, nor that it was an established policy.

This is not something that will be changed, as the bad outweighs the good...by far.