most policy issue threads are personal problems, not policy

[massa]

This subforum is currently uniquely pocked with people who think their birthright is managing the behaviors of other humans like them, seemingly in light of the headmin elections.

Rule 1 is already a comprehensive rule to catch consistent bad faith action and actors, there are quite a few threads up in here that are realistically just the logical limit of "ided" posts.

The admins have the wherewithal (most of them) and "power" to resolve issues that are a problem and always had it, rhetoric around these parts is sounding as weird as it traditionally has, with that out of touch, top-heavy-power-structure, 2023 flavor. most of these issues and threads seem like people with a personal problem, mostly against an attitude or flavor of person more than anything, and have managed to secure enough "power" to affect change in the system. feeling empowered, or worse, 'charged with the duty' of maintaining order, burger king manager energy runs rampant. this is an ideological arms race between hallway monitors and chaos no one wants to be between, and it's reaching apexes.

Black-ink-on-white-paper will never reflect the very gray table it rests upon, no matter how many caveats carved out for it. it was already getting a bit cringe years ago, please let it rest and let the game speak for itself and play itself because that is how it's designed. weird people who don't play, don't recognize even a drop of fallibility in the human element, micromanaging people like my own personal guilt complex is exhausting. this is a game, be less interpersonally exhausting with what are largely personal problems - and rest assured, that bwoink is an interpersonal problem.

Why give credence to opinions from people universally detested by the layperson(player)? because their name has been purple for a while? In this thread we can find admins discussing bwoinking botanists for growing holy melons. This one is just another exhausting and utter non-issue in the orbit of revs, then there's this nasty fucker of a thread, which is probably the most egregious one active. Happily take yourself to the closed policy subforum for thus, ad nauseam. it feels like enough time away from the game and you just start getting constant visits from the good idea fairy or something, but can we just stop? what a shit, suffocating environment lmfao. No one wants this energy breathing down their neck, it's uncomfortable and they fuck off because you start getting into situations where if you don't just die you get banned.

Unequivocally, since this forum is about changing policy and we're all about that black ink:

Stop changing policy, or really even considering changing policy, off of most of these threads. Someone can ham up a LOT of drama and white noise about a complete and total non-issue. What more, an admin themselves? The rules and game already provide the majority of the time. Policy changes are shifting dramatically into the realm of RP and personal opinion, where they used to be a light weight skeleton to keep the game functional and honest. Too many unique niches, non-issues, and personal feelings towards certain behaviors are dominating this space and the changes that precipitate from it, and they're not for the better.

Simply put, people's opinions are tiring, policy is largely genuinely and deeply fine. Admins already have the power to deal with bad faith and always have. I AM suggesting a change: stop changing policy and giving credence to weird niches. Declining to do anything is a deliberate choice, and it is a valid one under many circumstances.

Reorient policy to aim towards making rules and bending their enforcement around personal player agency, and less about unique instances of behavior. Behavior, bad faith, and what precipitates these kinds of players is already resolved swiftly. Simply put, we don't need more fucking policy or niche caveats.

Otherwise, dying is dying, losing is losing, admins have always done their best to maintain order and things so the server felt something like a crew trying to keep their station afloat in a wild, comical setting. The rules and policy were fine as they were and have just gotten more lame as people feel micromanaged by code and policy, which is just force. aren't we all big boys and girls here?

[CPTANT]

Rule 1 isn't flawless either, it is repeatedly abused to punish any behaviour the admin doesn't like. There was this nice post about the difference between being a dick and dickery, but some people just don't like non-antag IC conflict and will fish for any reason to punish it.

[sinfulbliss]

Agree with everything here. I hope headmins or admins in general take this post to heart because it encapsulates a big shift that has been happening for a couple years now in how the game is administrated, and it's worth stopping to talk about in reflection.

Admins are, more and more, intervening in smaller and smaller IC conflicts and micromanaging player behavior. In 2020 you wouldn't dream of an admin bwoinking someone over a single firelocking. The tradeoff for a little extra IC grief was a whole lot less OOC headaches - in tickets, in the forums, and (now in 2023) in Discord bwoinks.

To make matters worse the practice of punishing both players after an ahelp is quite popular now, as if the goal is to maximize micromanagement instead of conflict resolution. It leaves both parties unhappy and wondering why they bothered getting admins involved in the first place. If you could choose to be unhappy IC or unhappy OOC, it's probably best to choose IC since the world resets in 30-60 minutes.

Policy threads, I agree, since 2021 are trending more and more into the realm of "personal opinion" and "playstyle" as opposed to the previously hard-lined "what is allowed/disallowed," the latter of which creates less of a shitstorm because the issues are self-contained and explicit, specific and targeted, whereas these feel like broad sorts of MRP-civilizing-crusades, and less like correcting concrete policy issues.

Keep in mind 99% of players don't read policy threads, and admins won't bother enforcing policies that they disagree with, particularly if they're so vague that the range of interpretation has a minimum at "no tangible change in enforcement."

[Redrover1760]

Too much policy. Too much bloat. Not enough clear grounds and wiggle room in policies for people to have options on how to handle situations. Too much micromanagement and low ability to make decisions. Getting bwoinked for letting antags free. Getting bwoinked for not validhunting. Getting bwoinked for chilling in the bar instead of responding to minor crime #77.

Too much rule anxiety. No fun to be had. It's exhausting, I hate it. Policies should either be textbook common sense restatements of the rules or common sense. They shouldn't be a full on new thing that isn't in the rules unless absolutely necessary.

Anyways I'm gonna go ahead and have less fun playing tg cause of hoards of niche policies and nonsense trying to pen in players to be perfect and boring ss13 crewmembers with as little deviation as possible, instead of just telling players to not be a dick and move on.

Its the primary reason I've avoided manuel for so long, but I suppose that sybil's playerbase have gotten so boring with 0 concept of any amount of fun or roleplay that I decided to play some at least. Manuel felt only a little better, but sec are just as line toey and terrible although I guess I got unlucky with Jeff as HoS so rip.

[conrad]

people's opinions are tiring

I'm tired boss. Dog tired.

[kinnebian]

theres a problem here but at the end of the day micromanaging people on a forum doesnt solve it
just make the goals to include new rules stricter and not just if something wouldnt hurt to add

[kieth4]

I think the issue with these kind of things is that it's a term by term basis. This term seems to want to raise the amount of micromanagement across servers by implementing more rules to get ppl to game a certain way which is their vision of the game (which isn't inheritently a bad thing even though I largely disagree with it) and the rule and policy changes support this, last term was a hands off approach to everything and more ic issue focused. (***this is my perspective don't murder me over it)

The best way to address this is to vote for candidates who allign with your views because that's the only way to make changes. Everyone has a different view of how the game is played. The rules and how they're implemented change every 6 months and you've just gotta ride through it most of the time

[Vekter]

I think this happens from time to time, but most of the more recent ones have been just trying to clarify or simplify rules, which I'm definitely for.

I just think we need a rule that says, "If you have an active ban appeal, you cannot make a policy discussion thread related to the topic of that appeal". I see that happen far more often than it should.

It's definitely not "most". There's 8 threads open right now (not counting this one) and none of them really scream "I'm mad a rule didn't cover something that impacted me". I can say that my two threads (rulings cleanup and clarification on faking revolutions) are born out of wanting more clarity in our rules and fewer gray areas.

[dendydoom]

I think the issue with these kind of things is that it's a term by term basis.

yea, massively agree. i wouldn't call it an "issue", rather just the fact that if you see the headmins active a lot, asking for lots of input, making lots of tweaks and changes in a very visible way, then this definitely builds up a fatigue in the players who are in its orbit. everyone has very strong feelings and is very protective about their space game, i can respect and understand this sentiment.

if it puts you at ease at all, when i engage in these discussions i'm not looking to "remove" the players i don't like to obtain my own pure vision of the game. i like that people enjoy different aspects of the game and bring out different parts of it through their own style and input with their characters. i cannot imagine a worse hell than hanging out on a server of dendys because i only made the game hospitable to my personal tastes. i would kill them all.

[Misdoubtful]

I've been meaning to try drafting up templates that people could use.

The sorts of points and questions in them would hopefully help people to distinguish if something is very viable as a policy proposal/ discussion.

But then again: how much is this is an actual problem?

[wesoda25]

But then again: how much is this is an actual problem?

It's not. there's always gonna be people happy to waste their time endlessly debating policy (saying this as a fellow time waster), you can't make them not do that, everyone has that random thing or two that they care about. the winning move is to just ignore stuff - if a change is enacted that affects your playstyle (90% wont) you'll find out from warnings and notes. i dont think this thread has a purpose beyond venting

[Autisme]

A big issue I dont see mentioned with "letting admins do there thing" would be consistency.

While I agree letting admins police as they see fit instead of a bibels worth of rules would be great. headmins have a vision of how they want to be and to have that vision trickle down so its consistantly enforced is rather difficult if you want as few and least constraining rules as possible. It also would just generaly suck if certain acts gets you banned based on the admin that looked at it occure, which is also frustrating to play around.

[Higgin]

generally good points

The problem with closing this stuff off from discussion and being dispositionally conservative about the rules is that it lets people smuggle in a lot of inconsistent, personal, and peevish tendencies otherwise unexamined. Being uncritical about it is how you get a few years down the line with no idea why what the fuck you're doing isn't working and feels bad.

You're engaging in part of that criticism yourself here and proposing a change, but it's a change that would make it harder for you to do what you're doing.

A few shitty bans and out-of-pocket calls get highly visible and overturned on appeal. A few people float ideas which receive a range of feedback and criticism, but as far as I'm aware, most of this term's rulings have been either A) clarification or B) "it's fine, leave it alone."

I get that it sucks to feel the pull to always be engaged with it and feel like your game is in the crosshairs. The price of keeping it from getting taken out back and put down silently or by inches is unfortunately speaking up for it.

Unfortunately as you say, a lot of the policy proposed has been towards more prescribing and limiting player behavior. In one setting (generally LRP) this is anathema, but to point to your most "egregious" example, I don't think anyone really disagrees that getting tided and up to softly self-antagged in your department every round because security is chasing the actual designated badman is any fun if you're trying to do the job.

It doesn't mean you make security obliged by policy to arrest tiders, but it does draw out that there is a felt reason for people who wish that they would that has its place in player experience.

Then the conversation becomes about to what degree and to what limits people can push each other's boundaries there, and if it should differ between servers, what the point of those different servers even is, etc...



Like, I'm terminally policy- and admin-brained in part because it's part of what I do for a living. I know I'm not the most credible person to be defending this stuff, but I would rather it be going discussed than undiscussed.

If you wanted to reduce the overhead on changes happening within the forums and staff chats for average players, it might help to have a player-facing referendum or consultation period on changes rather than have them settled by headmin call at the end of the thread. That'd slow the pace, put people more on the same page about what changes do happen, and leave this as it should be understood - as a forum - but not as a deciding body you feel like you have to babysit or see LRP/MRP/whatever get ripped away overnight.

[Higgin]

A big issue I dont see mentioned with "letting admins do there thing" would be consistency.

While I agree letting admins police as they see fit instead of a bibels worth of rules would be great. headmins have a vision of how they want to be and to have that vision trickle down so its consistantly enforced is rather difficult if you want as few and least constraining rules as possible. It also would just generaly suck if certain acts gets you banned based on the admin that looked at it occure, which is also frustrating to play around.

Yeah, this is a great point. Inconsistent enforcement and admin-shopping are ass.

It's not something you can easily fix because like the OP says, it's not black and white. Admins deal with messy, interlocking situations with imperfect knowledge. They make a lot of policy at the point of delivery because the headmin team isn't always there to be doing direct accountability. Everyone's DnD table runs a bit differently.

That's not bad in tabletops, where you can choose to leave the table, but it is for setting consistent expectations for fair play across the whole game. That's what headmins are trying to do, I think, but it's hard to square with the reality of what we call "street-level bureaucracy" in the business.

Having consistent values and norms helps a lot. I like to think that's what we're helping get at here.

[oranges]

the irony here is that op's post is itself a personal problem

[dendydoom]

the tradeoff is that if you want admins to listen to nuance and fully unpack a situation to try and resolve it with respect to all of its intricate moving parts then you'll also have to accept that one person analysing a complex situation will sometimes come to a different conclusion than another observer. to have fully consistent enforcement we either need to pay an ombudsman to verify and rubberstamp every admin action (we already sort of do this with headmins, but it's only utilized when someone asks for it through appeals or complaints) or we only reference the rules and make rulings to the letter, disregarding nuance that could make the ruling more complicated so that we can have consistency across stratified situations.

there is no perfect solution in a game this open ended and complex. at some point it ultimately defers to someone's "feeling" on right and wrong informed by their experience and knowledge of the game and admin procedures.

[Jacquerel]

im surprised this thread is still open because its only call to action is "close this subforum" which obviously isnt going to happen

[Fikou]

im surprised this thread is still open because its only call to action is "close this subforum" which obviously isnt going to happen

[TheBibleMelts]

hey there, i don't think we're currently interested in closing the policy discussion subforum at this time. this is way to broad of a complaint to do anything with, and i would advise simply becoming active in the discussions of policy change proposals that you have a differing opinion on.