(Misdoubtful) A Lesson in Subtlety

[Kendrickorium]

When and where this incident occured (Game Server, forums, Discord): Forums
Byond account and character name OR Discord name: Kendrickorium
Admin: Misdoubtful
ROUND ID HERE IF APPLICABLE:

relevant thread:

viewtopic.php?f=83&t=34643

relevant textbox:



I'm absolutely fine with you having your fun pictures thread, I was expressing my opinion(many people do this on forums) that without context it's extremely boring.

What I'm NOT fine with is seeing possibly the most fucking passive aggressive "helpful suggestion" to the participants of the players club i've ever witnessed on the internet

clearly brought on by my post, the headmin thats been missing all term put on their Headadmin Forum Power Big Pants to do what, exactly?
tell me that if i continued to post meanie posts that i would be "cruising for a bruising"?
what kind of passive aggressive fucking threat is this?
how exactly do you decide what comments cause a person to be "cruising for a bruising"?
if I politely continued expressing my opinion that screen shots from a videogame without context are fucking BORING, would you continue giving out passive aggressive warning boxes or would you ban me?
show me exactly where politely stating an opposing opinion or thought is "creating a bad atmosphere" or "turning a civil thread into an uncivil one"?

this has to be the most digg fucking admin shit ive ever seen in ss13 as a whole, ever
its the kind of shit i expect to see in a letter from a HOA about a mailbox being too close to the curb.
and please dont pull the "oh it was just a harmless warning to posters, teehee"



tldr: I believe misdoubtful used their admin powers to bully me out of a thread by using a very thinly veiled threat and to ultimately censor someone(me) who very calmly and politely stated an opinion that they didn't like.


forums are for discussion, and if you want a fucking circlejerk thread without the possibility of someone coming in and "creating a bad atmosphere", go make your own forum.
if you don't like what someone has to say in a thread, you can tell them to politely fuck off as a poster without using your headmin forum mod powers to bully someone out of even responding to defend themselves.

[Misdoubtful]

You are making the assumption this was directed at you specifically, it was not, if you broke the rules you would have received a warning for it, and again you did not. You were at no point specifically targeted, and forum admins have made similar correction course posts in threads before I have. Where is the conduct issue here, and where is the rule break?

This was a general reminder to everyone of the players club rules before the thread devolved into something would be breaking the rules.

The forums are also very separate and removed from in game admining, as is discord admining.

For clarity the only current active forum admins are also the current headmins, and we have all been doing it throughout the term.

Resorting to venting your frustrations here and choosing to be the victim of absolutely nothing isn't going to accomplish anything.

[Timberpoes]

I'm absolutely fine with you having your fun pictures thread, I was expressing my opinion(many people do this on forums) that without context it's extremely boring.

What I'm NOT fine with is seeing possibly the most fucking passive aggressive "helpful suggestion" to the participants of the players club i've ever witnessed on the internet

clearly brought on by my post, the headmin thats been missing all term put on their Headadmin Forum Power Big Pants to do what, exactly?

I will in the pursuit of openness and transparency say that Misdoubtful's message was prompted by your post, but it wasn't targetted at you; it was targetted at everyone.

This is something Arm has done in the past as a Forum Moderator. I think I've even done it, too. The most recent example of this that jumps to mind was during the counting posts forum arc. Arm would do generalised warnings that may only be immediately relevant to one person in the one thread he posts, but address a trend across multiple threads and multiple posters in general.

I was asked to try and dig up some times this has been done in the past, but they're all in the Player's Club which MSO has disabled search indexing for so it's harder to find. So you'll just have to take my word for it.

tell me that if i continued to post meanie posts that i would be "cruising for a bruising"?
what kind of passive aggressive fucking threat is this?
how exactly do you decide what comments cause a person to be "cruising for a bruising"?
if I politely continued expressing my opinion that screen shots from a videogame without context are fucking BORING, would you continue giving out passive aggressive warning boxes or would you ban me?
show me exactly where politely stating an opposing opinion or thought is "creating a bad atmosphere" or "turning a civil thread into an uncivil one"?

When Misdoubtful posted that, how I understood it was that they would be keeping in mind the forum rules within the intent for which they were drafted, alongside the Player's Club specific rules. Any formal warning or ban would of course need to be based on the forum rules. Misdoubtful's mod message doesn't represent a change to the forum rules.

Naturally, under the "cruising for a bruising" doctrine I'm sure Misdoubful would be making sure that any administrative action they took would be done in a proportionate and fair manner, with appropriate opportunities to appeal any warnings or bans issued. And of course the kind of open dialogue about rules, policy and enforcement that tgstation prides itself upon.

Okay, c'mon. Let's be fair. I get what you're saying here, but I don't think there's any point tone policing the way we all speak. A number of my own posts are also oozing with my own warped and twisted personality, and I'd hate to have to police myself more for fear of upheld complaints because I'm being a little too sassy with people. Even more so, we have some absolute bombastic personalities within the community and tone policing them too hard may just ruin a lot of the fun we all get to have here.

Ultimately, I think it's safe to say Misdoubtful's mod message in general represents a headmin using their community leadership position to try and curate a space they enjoy and that other people might enjoy being a part of. That isn't against the rules or against conduct. I mean, fuck; the ability to shape the community through our leadership position is one of the scant few perks that actually comes with the burdens of leadership.

this has to be the most digg fucking admin shit ive ever seen in ss13 as a whole, ever
its the kind of shit i expect to see in a letter from a HOA about a mailbox being too close to the curb.
and please dont pull the "oh it was just a harmless warning to posters, teehee"

tldr: I believe misdoubtful used their admin powers to bully me out of a thread by using a very thinly veiled threat and to ultimately censor someone(me) who very calmly and politely stated an opinion that they didn't like.

forums are for discussion, and if you want a fucking circlejerk thread without the possibility of someone coming in and "creating a bad atmosphere", go make your own forum.
if you don't like what someone has to say in a thread, you can tell them to politely fuck off as a poster without using your headmin forum mod powers to bully someone out of even responding to defend themselves.

This seems like a bit of a vent. But without a conduct or rule break of some sort, this doesn't really match up to complaint severity. Disliking an admin's decision isn't enough, there has to be some greater element to it. A breach of conduct, an admin incorrectly exercising their discretion, breaking a rule. That sort of thing.

This isn't to say you can't express dissatisfaction. Many unsuccessful complaint threads end with an invitation to go to the admin's feedback page. It is meant to be a place for genuine and honest feedback, whether it is positive or negative. It is a much more open forum for players and indeed other admins to express frustration, annoyance or otherwise put their views forwards where no other place is suitable for it.

This is Misdoubtful's feedback thread.

[Misdoubtful]

Also noting and bolding the portions of the Players Club rules I made sure I was in line with based on the precedents they set:

► Show Spoiler

Added a rule to the Player's Club
There is an expected level of civility in posting here. Going out of your way to stir up drama and/or otherwise make things unpleasant for everyone may result in getting kicked out of the Player's Club.
A bit of info on the spirit of the rule and background:

The Player's Club is a replacement of the Hut, a space that was only accessible to registered users which had an auto-delete feature. It was used for peanut discussions and shitposting. If a user was particularly problematic they might find themselves "Confined to the Shed" which only allowed them to make hutposts. The hut was difficult to moderate because there was a general sentiment of "it's the hut, the posts will be gone in a few days". That in combination with toxic people being locked there produced an especially unpleasant environment that resulted in people leaving the community. The hut was closed shortly after one of those incidents.

The Player's Club has been an attempt to recapture some of the joys of the hut while also reducing the bad atmosphere that turned users away. The activity requirement is a part of this: there were issues with people who never actually played but would find the time to show up on the forums and stir shit. Being forced to post in the hut was punishment-related, therefore posting in the club is privilege-related. It should strive to be better and have value in its exclusivity.

The Player's Club is about community discussion and commentary. Peanuts are an opportunity to discuss our system and express criticism of the administration or the appellant. They aren't inherently about conflict and they shouldn't turn into knock-down drag-out fights. Engaging in that kind of toxicity or encouraging it isn't good for the people involved and definitely isn't good for the community at-large.

Added a rule to the Player's Club, but really it's more of a reminder on the global rules.
This is a pretty casual subforum, and some goofy, low effort threads are going to crop up and that's cool, but for example, a counting thread shouldn't breach the low effort thread it was made in. When the shitposts escape their thread they derail others and turn into contentless spam.
Player's Club is a really fun subforum that allows both low effort and high effort posting, and this enforcement is necessary to ensure we don't drown out quality discussion while we goof off. If I see a trend where a forum joke is getting out of hand and spilling into other threads, I will make a temporary stickied announcement before bonking people, likely warning -> ban escalation. Hopefully this gives people fair notice to not get swept away with a trend.

(Note: this is not a change in enforcement, this is just me moving the counting 1-2-3s announcement into this post formally since the craze has died down)

Just because the Players Club and the forums in general have had some lax enforcement as of late (we've been doing our best to deal with it all among other things that fall under our purview while we lack any set in stone forum admins, dealing with many things behind closed doors outside of the game itself, and all of the Headmins at the moment have life's), doesn't suddenly make things that would put people into an escalating situation where they could be cruising for a bruising okay.

You don't have to like my choice of phrases nor like me making the choice to make sure everyone knew and remembered the expectations in that thread (and in general) before it had even the slightest chance of derailing, became dead due to off topic commentary, or whatever else someone could spin it as. I don't placate people, coddle them, or beat around the bush instead of being real with them and down to earth about things. Its a sign of general respect for the people around me, and I'm not about to reconstruct my entire life in order to have a personality that anyone would specifically find appealing.

I'm not anyone's mom here, nor am I some Americanized customer service agent. Let alone the whole bit of, y'know, tone not existing on the Internet in general unless someone takes the time to indicate it, right?

Sure maybe I could have instead waited for the thread to already be derailed, and then warn people or announce things, would that have been preferred here?

Would being incredibly vague and pulling the rope tight to trip people have been better?

Would getting a warning out of the blue if things actually became an issue have worked best?

I made the announcement with clear expectations of what could be expected down the road for people in general and what needed to happen as things go with this sort of stuff (and as a general reminder for the Players Club in general really), before bonking people, as is the precedent set by people like Arm. I'd rather be trying to set people up so they don't end up in a situation where they have to get bonked/warned/noted in general, which is exactly what I did here.

Whatever you have to say on this it probably would have been better in my feedback don't you think? Or maybe: put together, left to sit for 24 hours, and then DM'd to me on Discord with an open mind so we could have an actual conversation about it instead of dealing with things in the heat of the moment, yeah?

[kieth4]

Hia, just so I'm sure this complaint is based on the general warning that was placed in the thread due to the tone?

[Kendrickorium]

hey guys I appreciate the responses, we can go ahead and lock this

I forgot for 10 minutes that this is a spaceman game on the internet and I don't really care this much

[kieth4]

are you fucking serious you made me read (skim) that then say that you don't care? I actually wish you the worst. Locked (I am full of rage)