[Thunder12345] - Repeated failure to understand escalation policy resulting in innocent players being banned

[iamgoofball]

When and where this incident occured (Game Server, forums, Discord): Game Servers, 3 times, potentially more.
Byond account and character name OR Discord name: Iamgoofball, irrelevant
Admin: Thunder12345
ROUND ID HERE IF APPLICABLE:166207, 167280, 185136
Detailed summary:

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=29507
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=29630
viewtopic.php?p=644659

To clarify before anyone comes in with the "you can't admin complaint bans", please note that you are allowed to admin complaint bans provided the appeal for the ban was accepted. All three of these bans had their appeals accepted by head administrators.

There is a clear, undeniable pattern of Thunder12345 banning the victims of situations where players were trying to defend themselves playing the game. Not only that, but this is the second time in a row that Thunder has somehow missed critical logs of the people who were attacked in self defense succumbing to escalate what was a bog standard crit to a kill.

From the most recent ban:
viewtopic.php?p=644724#p644724


From the August 5th ban:
viewtopic.php?p=609641#p609641


Missing critical logs once is understandable. The expectation is that you learn from this mistake and not do it again. Trialmins make this mistake sometimes and it's understandable there. However, Thunder isn't a Trialmin. Nor are they a new admin. Nor are they learning from their mistakes.

There's clearly a pattern here of Thunder not properly investigating situations involving death and escalation and dropping incorrect and unjustified bans on users which then have to be cleaned up by the headmins who have to do the basic log diving that was expected of Thunder in the first place.

I contend that Thunder12345 should be knocked back down to Trial Admin until they can demonstrate competency with handling escalation cases and properly investigating situations they're looking into.

I would expect this kind of behavior from a new trialmin who's still learning the tools. Not from a person who's been a member of the team for six years.
viewtopic.php?p=155171#p155171

[oranges]

I think you're suffering from a data issue here where you're only seeing thunder's appealed bans.

This gives you the perception that they're not investigating, but it's more likely they're just placing a large number of bans, and henceforth have an elevated rate of appeals.

Without knowing the ratio of good to bad bans, this is basically a shot in the dark complaint, it could be quite ilkely that they're reading logs correctly 99.95% of hte time

[Tearling]

I think you're suffering from a data issue here where you're only seeing thunder's appealed bans.

This is irrelevant. The point being argued isn't that Thunder messes up a lot, it's that he has shown a consistent misunderstanding over self-defense.

An analogy for a player would be if a player only messed up and got banned once every 5k living hours but consistently got banned for the same thing every time, the player clearly hasn't shown any form of growth. The punishment for this, despite the living hours, would likely be a perma ban until they can get a vouch from another server saying "Yeah, they learned their lesson."

[Pandarsenic]

Someone who gets banned for the same thing every 5k hours and has no other warnings or notes is better than an easy 95% of the playerbase, especially if that thing is funny

[Timberpoes]

The headmin team has already had discussions with Thunder12345 covering this incident and others as a follow up to overturning the appeal.

I am tentatively closing this complaint under "the subject matter has already been handled before the complaint was made". If there is a change in that stance once the other two headmins get online we can always reopen this.

[Timberpoes]

We already have spoken to Thunder12345 as part of the recent appeal.

Past appeals
Any past appeals would have been handled by past terms. We do not feel they are recent or relevant enough to weigh into our decision making in any meaningful way.

We'll only be focusing on the celulamp appeal.

General due diligence as an admin
Thunder opted not to perform the usual due diligence. This is nothing newsworthy and it happens across all of our servers on a daily basis as part of handling seemingly straightforward matters.

This doesn't mean it's not actionable when taking shortcuts goes wrong. From our internal guide to rule enforcement:

Most situations require the admin to gain a full and unbiased understanding of a situation as possible. Only then can an admin apply the rules and their own accumulated sense of right and wrong from past experiences to a situation ... It is always on [the admin] to act with the most accurate information and understanding of a situation.

We consider appeals and complaints as part of this process.

Our conclusion
By Thunder12345 rejecting the appeal and the headmins overturning it and banning the ahelper instead, combined with the lack of proper investigation in this incident when we believe it was warranted either at the time or later on as part of the appeal, we will accept the complaint as a valid limited purely to the most recent appeal.

We are satisfied with the outcome of the talks we have already had and do not intend to take any further action.

Timberpoes: Accept complaint on most recent appeal, no further action
Mothblocks: Accept complaint on most recent appeal, no further action
Melbert: Accept complaint on most recent appeal, no further action