Arbitrarily lift a bunch of QC/perma bans from years past at headmin discretion

[massa]

Yolo.

Don't even lift bans for creepy people/extremely hateful or people who did obscene/rule 8 stuff/evader alts. Looking at the public beans, excluding these instances would preclude the bulk of people/actions who you actually want to keep banned, and the bulk of work filtering out the 95% that should stay banned/just to look through. At that point, bans and blacklists are a few sentences long, then your choice: Would you just unban them if they just appealed?

Of course, it's all contingent upon them being chill and distancing from whatever happened originally. A lot of people over the years got themselves permabeaned for basically just tiding too hard, rules lawyering into oblivion, or burying themselves in an oppositional appeal. Most people make the mistake of doubling down on Spaceman Moments™, or just say fuck it and move on. It's a human flaw. It's like a sort of self-character-assassination/suicide that looks usually looks really bad. Players crucify themselves, though many permas are made to be appealed, then, years go by. It becomes a real tragedy.

It was either /tg/ or goonstation itself did a wholesale or blanket ban lift once, too, so it's not unprecedented or revolutionary per se for the hand to feed.

How many people would just not appeal a ban from 2+ years ago that they got for shove fighting and breaking too many windows, or line toeing, or just beefing really hard with an admin out of their human pride in a bwoink because they're already emotional? Perhaps something from a deadmin past that really did get out of hand? Maybe a player with a loooooong tenure blew up chem too many times during the greenshift era? But they'd play, and normally. I can think of quite a few people who always had a good time.

A dash of time always changes perspective and experience, and I remember many who weren't necessarily ever playing in "bad faith". /tg/ is old now, it/its repo is the headwaters of SS13, it's got a lot of history, and people change fast. But they have what could be called "pride" and move on, and it doesn't take that much pride to just decide not to go to court after you Spaceman Moment™'d yourself 3 years ago. Think like genpop, not an admin for that one. The worst thing that happens is a few people get banned again! Just refried beans. This wonderful pandora's box's potential is limited by how easy it is to reapply a ban and forget about it.

I was staring at the player counts at 9 PM, EST. Terry, the EU server, had 10 people, Sybil had 0. 9 PM EST. Something's up with that! It's not about chasing pop, I think there's a potential that's being paralyzed.
Or, as the great philosopher Lil Uzi Vert once said, "All my friends are dead."

[dragomagol]

I would be curious as to how many of those people would both notice that they were no longer banned and also have the desire to play here again. Taking into account the effort it would take cherrypicking bans to revoke, I get the impression that it wouldn't make much of a difference in our pop levels. Would love to know how it worked out for goon though.

[Justice12354]

Most of those people probably would not know they were unbanned, and they also probably do not want to return since they haven't appealed yet. Most permabans that last for longer than a year end up getting unbanned, so there's not much point in gambling, but that's a funny idea haha

[Jacquerel]

Unbanning arbitrary people who were banned for making the game worse to play isn't going to increase pop levels

[TheLoLSwat]

I'm also worried that the people wont hear about it and/or the ones that do are still banned despite being reformed and quality players and we dont see the pop or ever-evasive "roleplay quality" jump upfrom doing it.

If we are willing to entertain the idea, we should aim bigger as we have everything to gain and not too much to lose. Maybe all QC/perma bans 24 months and older can be mass uplifted, along with some huge discord announcement about new beginnings post-MSO. This has a better chance of making ripples that would actually reach those banned parties and encourage them to atleast poke their head in to.

[Maxipat]

I'm also worried that the people wont hear about it and/or the ones that do are still banned despite being reformed and quality players and we dont see the pop or ever-evasive "roleplay quality" jump upfrom doing it.

If we are willing to entertain the idea, we should aim bigger as we have everything to gain and not too much to lose. Maybe all QC/perma bans 24 months and older can be mass uplifted, along with some huge discord announcement about new beginnings post-MSO. This has a better chance of making ripples that would actually reach those banned parties and encourage them to atleast poke their head in to.

Most permas are for bigotry/nazi shit and evading, i dont really like idea of blanket lift on those, there are players i remember that were banned over 2 years ago and their presence would actually make me not play.

[Cobby]

"Everything to gain and nothing to lose" is a bit of a reach if you agree they deserved the ban. If they wanted to come here on good terms they would appeal, if they were given a free pass to basically grief again without having to evade they would most certainly take on the opportunity, and I dont think you could convince me their grieffing (especially if they have gotten better at being discrete) is a risk for the reward of a +1 on pop for a few rounds. The answer to "would you permaban if they appealed" would be no, because the point of the appeal is how they are apologizing and not the mere act of posting the appeal. If they CBA to say "sorry" and you just let that happen, then every other year people would suggest the exact same thing and no one has to have any accountability if they can just dance around servers every X time before tg's reset happens. Its not worth adding soap to the slope.

[NecromancerAnne]

I mean, there aren't that many instances where someone who was permabanned and honestly wanted to come back in good faith wouldn't have the means of doing so if there was reason to believe they have reformed.

If you are talking about the people permabanned/blacklisted because they actively were trying to undermine the wider community/local community, SS13 is entirely structured around trust. If you break that trust, more than just one server is going to not want you around. And the only way you are coming back into acceptance is to try and contribute constructively to the betterment of the wider community. And if you have demonstrated none of this, why would anyone, and I mean anyone, want to let you back in?

Those people are not numerous enough to repopulate the server. And if they have followers, they would do better for themselves by utilizing that to create a positive environment either of their own or somewhere willing to accept them.

How do you think Jackrip got unbanned?

[TheRex9001]

It is an idea. I’m curious to hear how it went on goon, but I doubt it’s going to work, first we’d need to review these, now I’m not sure how far back we’d go but every perma is a tall order, even assuming we did that, how many of them really even want to return but haven’t appealed? Not many of them I’d imagine. So we’d be trying to reach for people who sorta remember tg, want to be back, and don’t want to appeal, a pool of people who I’d think is pretty small. And even if we did all that, would we even want them back? I like pop but do we want a bunch of people who don’t want to appeal and thus can’t really show if they’ve grown? I’m just fairly skeptical to the idea and I don’t believe the downsides outweigh the upsides, even assuming this isn’t just pissing in the wind.

[RaveRadbury]

Good, thought-provoking suggestion.

I was thinking of something along these lines. If I ran the zoo I'd want to get the word out about us lifting or taking fresh looks at previous permas. I'd also prefer public appeals because it gives the community a chance to acclimate to the person.

From a data perspective it would be interesting to aggregate and categorize permas.

[massa]

This is why I implored you guys to think like genpop, instead of admins of the game who've been doing it for a while. Like the common Spaceman who is just dejected about it. It's easy to think in these terms as part of an organized apparatus you're involved in, it is as easy as just appealing, but genpop doesn't manage much on its own like that. People are disorganized particles that don't have the momentum of the adminbus. We know Spacemans are rambunctious creatures prone to questionable choices! We're playing a pretty wild, emotionally charged game. While it's a side thought - permas seem pretty extreme. Bans longer than a year never made sense to me besides the most extreme instances. I'd have a stake in something finite, long but unappealable. You guys yourselves say it, most permas come with a warm invitation to come back once the problem's settled.

For example: I got perma'd from yogstation for jumping a guy for his pinkie pie my little pony pAI projection and spacing him in 2015. That perma is still probably there lol. With love, who's going out of their way to appeal something like that? So, years down the river, maybe not every perma really matters. I'm in my late 20s now. If it was gone, if I found myself joining Yog today, I wouldn't cause problems. I'd be joining for SS13.

For the sake of doing it - I went through about 20 pages on the public list. For every 10 "evasion alt", sometimes even 20, there's maybe a ban that's actually a ban that's 3 sentences long. There are many chunks and sequences 2-3 pages long that are just "evader alt" top to bottom, That seriously makes this easier to chew on.

Another approach Lisa said is to actually do this blanket style, find some criteria (however you guys want it) and blanket lift them based off that. That makes it impersonal. She's right! Especially with a host change-over and newfound stability settling in nicely, It'd be an opportunity to sell a spring revival or changing of the guard, or just a second chance of sorts, or open palm. An announcement would be awesome, it would also set the tone, it doesn't have to be a big thing either, just a thing. I remember Timber or someone saying there were plenty of attempts to throw sgetti at a wall and see what sticks for Sybil. Could get sticky!

I think second chances are wonderful things. Part of being an admin is having mercy on the human, even if it's weird sometimes. Like I said, the 'negative potential' of this idea is curbed by how easy it is to just reban someone.

[Cobby]

The reason why it matters is because the long term solution of curating the playerbase to be of quality is more important than the short term allegedly low amount of pop from people who, again, cannot be bothered to apologize for the allegedly benign actions you seem to think they were doing. Frankly I think this discussion is very much "admin" coded if by admin you meant estranged to players, it isnt in the interest of any player to keep people justifiably banned from the game from coming in with no effort whatsoever. If you have gripes with particular bans, I think a more interesting discussion would be those instead or creating an avenue where you can advocate for people without being the person themselves (not something Id be interested in but at least it has a bit more accountability associated and lets people take a measure of responsibility if the person came back and did the exact same thing again, which encourages more good faith entries than "theyre my friend").

If "you" don't have the mental fortitude to even like completely pretend that you have some accountability to disrupting the game to the point you had to eat a ban that is indefinite (perma is a bit loaded i agree) X years ago, you havent exactly sold me on why I would want "you" to join back. For instance, do you think Yog feels like they missed out on your existence on their server for having you banned for X years? Idk about their pop situation but lets imagine its dire, do you think you or anyone else in a similar situation hit their top 10 or even top 100 as to why they are in that situation? Why have you not checked to see if Yog lets you in, or better yet lets imagine youre unbanned right now, why are you here and not on Yog? You are not providing a tangible solution to the problem you want to fix, and you are failing at drawing the lines to even make the proposal worth throwing at the wall imo. You dont put the tomato sauce, something completely unrelated to the cooking of the spaghetti, on the wall to see if the spaghetti sticks. Youre just making a mess.

I *could* understand bans that were only indefinite from the old policy where the people would eat permas to force a forum discussion, but a near blanket one needs to be actually convincing. A better idea would be suggesting players should be able to advocate on someones behalf so we arent just semi-blindly opening the floodgates and expecting admins to just fix the issues when they happen with immediacy. Now imagine the "I have the players at heart" troped individual arguing incessantly about rebanning them when they do act poorly which further delays their reban.

.

Then whats the point? It either is some great avenue of pop count or its a thought experiment that requires a lot of time and effort to realize for the sake of a few people who, if they really wanted, could just appeal OR its an avenue for people who shouldnt be back to come back. If its not any of those 3, what is it?

Im not sure hence why Im opposed to the request lol. There are definitely servers that would have no problem with you causing mischief to TG and not caring about having a place w them, SS13 is not a monolith nor does "larger" server mean anything if you can play the game just fine on a server that doesnt hit 70+. Also, are you doing like a blanket unban or are you underpinning the discussion with "someone has to curate this list to get the wheat from the chaff" with that someone not being most if not every person in this thread?

If you cannot sell why the change is actually good and youre just going to argue that this effectively does nothing when it does have a cost of someone having to curate the database AND have people on the server to monitor the influx of totally-good-individuals because we can supposedly just ban the bad actors again immediately with no consequences, then to me the default position should be uh no we shouldnt waste time with this. There ARE better ways to get pop if that is the elephant among us (Its been said as much hence why im even more opposed because it isnt a fix for that), and even by your own admission this doesnt fix that problem, with even the most generous take that only the sweetest angels unbanned play TG again and not do what every other people that dropped ss13 to get the position we have now is doing as well. The people who we think will benefit from this change can most definitely still appeal, if they dont want to then thats clear they dont really wanna play on the server to begin with and are content where they are, there is a water/horse problem here...

Again, if you guys have someone in mind you would like to see unbanned, I think a more interesting thought experiment is allowing for players to advocate on behalf of someone. If you wouldnt feel comfortable putting your reputation on the line to let this person come back, then im curious why youd be ok with just haphazardly letting them in to begin with at the headmins expense twofold (one for putting in the work to filter everyone so the person could be unbanned, another for having to deal with people upset they ultimately let this person get unbanned with no work who then proceeded to grief again).

[NecromancerAnne]

I wasn't addressing you specifically cobby I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was talking more to the OP. I'm not actually in support of this, I think the paths to rejoining are very plainly laid out and I never want to see anyone who has been legitimately blacklisted just arbitrarily unbanned for the sake of pop recovery. Anyone else who isn't blacklisted and would want to get unbanned has a pretty clear path to doing so as well, if they want.

[dendydoom]

engaging with the appeals process is less about doubling down and "proving you were right" and fighting the system or whatever (unless the admin is just straight up wrong. which happens and those admins btfo skill issue get good get overturned get re-trialled get demoted) but about showing that you have reflected on what happened and are willing to accept that there is an issue you now want to work to correct. our admins generally don't enjoy punishing people (the ones that do don't last long, they are policed and called out in the ivory tower and the few i have seen all either left or were removed)

i'm not really interested in doing that work for them. this is a social roleplaying game centered around a community. you must be willing and capable of participating in that community without harming it. if you have done this in the past and were banned for it, then the perfect first step is to show that you have thought about it and are willing to take responsibility for the part you played in what happened to cause you to be removed. coming back and saying "yeah i used to be a bit of a dickhead here is my old appeal (link to appeal where it's obvious the old admin standards won't hold up today and therefore aren't as valid) i am not like this anymore, i have grown up a bit and miss playing this game with this community and would appreciate a chance to show things are different now" will get you taken seriously and probably unbanned. i'm pretty damn sure of it. as much as we love to larp about the apellant and whatever, appeals are not a court case where the focus is on an adversarial context. it is not punishment vs. exoneration. they're an attempt at reconciliation because our community is based on users being able to trust each other to act with some level of accountability when engaging with the creative space that is our game. we have to be able to trust users to engage in good faith. when we can't trust them to do that, they are removed. not because we enjoy crushing people's hopes and dreams, but because it asks something of the rest of the players to put up with some guy ruining their game because "he's so funny dude lol look at him go hehe." there will always be people who balk at the very notion of quality control. but you can't have a community without it in some capacity. you just can't. i don't have a fancy metaphor or diatribe for this part. it's just true because i say it is. trust me. you cannot preserve community health if you abandon standards. some people will be mad at being held to those standards. even the very concept of standards existing. that doesn’t make the standards wrong.

if someone values rejoining the community, then this is not a lot to ask. any admin who positions themselves as scolding or correcting a player on moral grounds is kidding themselves. this game works because players communicate a mutual trust between each other to participate fairly. this seems like a pretty good way to immediately undermine that trust and turn unbans from quality control and building communal trust into nostalgia and arbitrary favouritism about who gets unbanned for being the special cool guy who played that one static big dick dan in 2014 who was soooo funny and epic before The Incident.

and this is totally, completely serious and unironic: if we are at a point where the only people feasibly sustaining the playercount needed for this game to operate are the ones that we removed for making the community a worse place for everyone in it, then we should shut the servers down and go do something more productive and worthwhile with our time. not everything lasts forever and it's better to go out with dignity than shamble around as a corpse reanimated by the dark magics of people who are emotionally trapped in the throes of adolescent angst and need an outlet for it. if the only growth path is to recycle known bad actors, we've already lost.

finally, the game is open source. we are one little clubhouse among many. people are not evil for not playing to our standard. it means they aren't a good fit for what we want our game to be and so we sent them home from the game store. they can very easily get their friends together and play the game on their own terms. way too much focus on building some monolithic gold standard professional enterprise community. years ago i used to host this game for my friends on an old laptop and we would meet and play it instead of d&d. it really is just that simple you can literally change the source code to be whatever type of ss13 you want and then run it on your own terms with your own rules and be master of your own destiny. don't let stuffy admins with coloured names and 30 discord roles convince you that this takes any skill whatsoever. it takes a bit of motivation and 10 minutes learning how to forward ports on your router.

i get what you're saying about people being intimidated by the appeals process though. i agree entirely. getting peanutted and turned into a spectacle because of a bad moment you had is pretty shit. wish i had a good answer for this. i do not. but for what it's worth i think they should try anyway. i really truly believe that if someone was banned under pretences that wouldn't be sustained now, or they have put themselves on the line to do what is right and take responsibility for what they did, then they will be taken seriously and admins will want to help them.

[Bepis]

I really don't think unbanning BeardBeard would be a good idea. If anything, remove forum blacklists for people so they can appeal again.

[RaveRadbury]

Institutions do forgiveness from time to time.

Libraries will have a day where you can bring your overdue books back without getting frowned at or fee'd.

The intimidation factor is real, especially if received in a way that came off like a heavy moral judgement (when it wasn't deserved).

[iain0]

Nah.

Second chances are a thing, there's a saying that goes around about second chances being free, and a lot of the time they are (though not always, depends what you did I guess).

But the idea of reviewing however many years worth of permabans that we have on file is alone just a path to burnout, and i'm not sold on a goal of just expiring old permas anyway. Appeal is fine, you'll probably get unbanned if it's been a while anyway.

I don't buy a connection to Sybil's pop either. I don't think a bunch of suddenly randomly unpermabanned people we found a reason to permaban once will all come fill sybil's population suddenly, nor does this sound particularly great a setup either. Sybil's pop is that it's below the minimum critical pop threshold ; that is, someone looks at sybil and goes "huh, 4 pop, nah i'll go play somewhere/something else", what sybil needs is a sustained burst of 20+ people, all the sybilites who want it restored, to play on there consistently for a period of time, then when someone looks at the browser and sees a playable pop they'll actually consider rejoining, and it snowballs the other way (until it hits supply/demand caps). EVEN IF unbanning people had any impact, that would just be people very slowly realising over years that they got unbanned and trickling in one by one to find a dead server and also leave never to return. And that's a big IF on them ever noticing, ever joining a dead pop server, and even being desirable to have as a player base to repopulate a server (setting its new meta probably).

So I guess not a fan of the workload, not a fan of the result, and not sold that it would help anything really anyway.

[massa]

It wouldn't be an immediate surge of booming growth on Sybil. What you'll probably see is a nice little flow in of people who come up front, then a trickle in over the course of a few weeks. Try out Terry. They'll stick their nose into Manny and be cargo techs or whatever. Hang out, have a few rounds, clean some blood. When Manny hits 90, which it does by its own right, us pigs might trot off down by the creek (Sybil) for some mud to leave the house cats to their more orderly space. It'll be a little ebb and flow probably. We know despite the DDoS right now, SS13 is actually booming. It's got a back flow from SS14. It's a strong game on its own that's growing, so there's no worries about the potential for new blood, especially as the only LRP server on the block.

A reaaallllyyy long expiration sounds even easier than reviewing! It'd also invite more recent beans to appeal who were outside of that longer window. Which, is like, what you guys want too. It'd send a sort of signal.

Appeals are ways easier to mentally endure if Bungo the clown isn't litigating the precise wording of his ban with 5 pages of logs to explain to you how he somehow IC escalated spacing 5 people, and is instead just saying, "I spaced 5 people and won't be doing that as a nonantag anymore."

[RaveRadbury]

But the idea of reviewing however many years worth of permabans that we have on file is alone just a path to burnout,

So I guess not a fan of the workload, not a fan of the result, and not sold that it would help anything really anyway.

This is a pretty empty assertion when you have no estimate of the actual numbers. Feel free to demand the opposition provide hard numbers, but don't lean on something like this.

[iain0]

But the idea of reviewing however many years worth of permabans that we have on file is alone just a path to burnout,

So I guess not a fan of the workload, not a fan of the result, and not sold that it would help anything really anyway.

This is a pretty empty assertion when you have no estimate of the actual numbers. Feel free to demand the opposition provide hard numbers, but don't lean on something like this.

I don't make a lot of assertions about the actual number, simply that there's probably "enough" to be quite a "chore". I guess you can dispute that without evidence.

But sure, there's some very rough public sources:

In the last 4 years (since april 2021) there have been 142 pages of 30 perma bans per page (https://statbus.space/bans/public). That's conservatively 141*30 = 4230. Even 5% (which is 1 or 2 per page) being not evasion/alts is a lot of paperwork to read and unban, and thats just the last 4 years. Given I'm not sold on the results the number doesn't really need specifics for my vote, just that its a non insignificant amount of work on top of my other concerns.

[Cobby]

I wasn't addressing you specifically cobby I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was talking more to the OP. I'm not actually in support of this, I think the paths to rejoining are very plainly laid out and I never want to see anyone who has been legitimately blacklisted just arbitrarily unbanned for the sake of pop recovery. Anyone else who isn't blacklisted and would want to get unbanned has a pretty clear path to doing so as well, if they want.

all g honeybee

This is a pretty empty assertion when you have no estimate of the actual numbers. Feel free to demand the opposition provide hard numbers, but don't lean on something like this.

No one on either side has given any hard numbers which just goes to show its not just a flip of the switch and suggests its more effort than even the value the opposition expects realistically, or else the pro users would have done so already like massa did with his last 10 piece. Even if that number itself is low, you have to get buyin to agree this person should be unbanned unless ur doing a blanket unban, and you havent actually explained the benefit in context of the problem it is trying to solve/improve. Massa at least stated the problem, but I dont think he actually hit on how this is beneficial to the playerbase numbers beyond "well if more people can play that must mean pop go up".

Institutions do forgiveness from time to time.

Libraries will have a day where you can bring your overdue books back without getting frowned at or fee'd.

The intimidation factor is real, especially if received in a way that came off like a heavy moral judgement (when it wasn't deserved).

I actually also disagree with the intimidation part a lil bit, unlike the people in this thread most banned individuals dont have access to the peanut section so wont ever see that until they get unbanned, by which point its moot for the purposes of deciding to appeal. In the olden days this isnt true but Im having a hard time believing people are just watching the forums post ban anymore than OP is watching yogs when he has self-reported he hasnt even bothered to log in to the actual game X years after. An appeal has to exist anyways before a peanut can exist for it (typically), most people arent scrounging the ban list for peanut-worthy reasons.

There is an innate level of I guess prostration when appealing but I wouldnt call that intimidating, and thats only if you actually know you deserved the ban. The reality is most people just cba to appeal because of lack of interest. I dont think I can point to an individual who has ever said "I would appeal but im scared of the admin", and I dont understand if youre already banned from the game what you would have to be scared about or intimidated of, hence why some people are quite jaded/rude postban without any remorse. I think the idea people are intimidated of a role with epower on a community they didnt have much buyin to follow the rules to begin with, especially on a more lax environment like LRP, is a bit hard to swallow for me.

Jails have parole, we have the appeal process. If you find our "jail" accomodating enough to never need parole, and our "jail" has no cost, idk why you would ask for them to be released on their behalf if they appear content with their "sentence" and they themselves havent thought parole was an appropriate action for them to pursue. I would like to argue how this is somehow the wiser decision than just piecemealing bans you particularly have distaste with or better yet just the actual logistics to your proposal with an emphasis on at what point do we get to allowably take issue with the people who made the suggestion.

Like can you explain in no uncertain terms what you would do about this if you had full dictator power with no balances to pushback on the idea, and would you hold yourself accountable if the plan caused ruined rounds or would you just go "how could we have anticipated this????" and just absolved yourself from any wrongdoing here because you personally werent causing the grieffing?

[massa]

There is an innate level of I guess prostration when appealing but I wouldnt call that intimidating, and thats only if you actually know you deserved the ban. The reality is most people just cba to appeal because of lack of interest. I dont think I can point to an individual who has ever said "I would appeal but im scared of the admin", and I dont understand if youre already banned from the game what you would have to be scared about or intimidated of, hence why some people are quite jaded/rude postban without any remorse. I think the idea people are intimidated of a role with epower on a community they didnt have much buyin to follow the rules to begin with, especially on a more lax environment like LRP, is a bit hard to swallow for me.

Jails have parole, we have the appeal process. If you find our "jail" accomodating enough to never need parole, and our "jail" has no cost, idk why you would ask for them to be released on their behalf if they appear content with their "sentence" and they themselves havent thought parole was an appropriate action for them to pursue. I would like to argue how this is somehow the wiser decision than just piecemealing bans you particularly have distaste with or better yet just the actual logistics to your proposal with an emphasis on at what point do we get to allowably take issue with the people who made the suggestion.

Like can you explain in no uncertain terms what you would do about this if you had full dictator power with no balances to pushback on the idea, and would you hold yourself accountable if the plan caused ruined rounds or would you just go "how could we have anticipated this????" and just absolved yourself from any wrongdoing here because you personally werent causing the grieffing?

my lore is I was an admin much longer than I was a maintainer, and even crazier was I played the game for years before becoming an admin (and on occassion play games with the person who initially BTFOd me from getting admin much sooner funny enough).

This is why I implored you to think like genpop and detach from your normal POV. That style of thinking might be pretty alien at this point, you've been at it for a while, right?

You're a paralegal in the county courthouse thinking "Huh, I don't hear much - I guess jail is pretty accommodating." As part of the circuit and part of the system, not the atomized, disorganized other side of it, so..! A lot of people have precluded the possibility, because they're the individual motions of particles lost in time, whereas this decision would come from the other side, a sweeping, universal decision with singular momentum. See the pinkie pie pAI example, or the fact people just forget after years. One side of the equation can very dramatically affect the other, but the other side is quite incapable.

In light of a new host and new stability and being big and old, a sweeping motion of conditional forgiveness, and gesture to appeal if people are at all interested and mean it, measured by headmins/host sounds a lot wiser than my - or anyone's - silly ass appealing and getting sent into resolved for a small handful of friends. I would get fucking smited, are you kidding? I - or anyone - would probably get blacklisted even if we were constructive about something like that. That'd suck the wind out of these sails. It has to be impersonal, not about anyone in particular, 'universal' *with conditions. The slammer sucks and this is an idea for /tg/station, and one that'd travel through birdvines.

[Cobby]

im really not vibing with the "just think like X" posts im not really sure what you mean. I do not need to think about how the banned people feel because they are second class to the PLAYERS who are here now who are trying to balance between appreciating the pop and having to deal with potential stinkers who would use the opportunity maliciously. I am not guaranteed their presence on the server even if they are super cute and good comparatively to the people who are playing right now even looking at it objectively through the "pop count go up" idea. This is how I would think as a normal player as well, if my following of the rules holds no weight because of the idea that I get a free unban if I can hurt the server externally enough to make you desperate for players, that most certainly wont breed a specific type of ugly. You have it backwards, my thought process as a player was how I got admin and maintainer aka the roles which gave credence to the longer term health of the game.

It is rude and dismissive that you keep suggesting my take is (bad/out of touch/etc.) because of the positions I have/had anymore than if I kept dismissing your post because youre a player and too dumb to see the long term effects of game health unlike an admin/maintainer would, which is a position ive never even considered holding in this thread. It's tribal and unhelpful when you could just argue the point on the merits which conveniently keep getting left out to yap about nothingness.

A gesture to appeal is not the same as the title of the thread. Im fine with that although I have even less of a clue as to the logistics of that. A sweeping unban is also not "arbitrarily...at headmin discretion" either so at this point im not really sure what youre wanting, or more importantly, the answer to the burning question which is why would i put in the work to do any of this? Whats the value youre wanting and do you have capacity to explain what work you think would need to be done to make this option a possibility AND remain in the realm of realism?

If the only reason for not letting these people have to go thru the appeal process is to market it to people you arent even sure we want back, you are far beyond the pale of selling the idea and need to seriously self-evaluate the thought process here.

I have read your final paragraph like 5 times now and have no clue what youre saying so I apologize if im talking past you, but what I think youre getting at is the idea has to go into near-absurdity so people will hear about it? I think if anything a suggestion like this would land you into blacklist territory far sooner than simply advocating for an individual with a well thought out argument, and neither of these are realistically ever going to have you smited or blacklisted UNLESS you start doing them so frivolously it starts highlighting that youre not actually advocating for the particular individuals.

[massa]

There's a certain element of 'yolo, fuck it, see what happens' to this idea that you aren't about, that I'm definitely selling here. It's why I lead with a big ass yolo. You're not out of touch, but you're with it and a lot of people aren't. Lots of people don't even into forums these days.

This is why I'm putting those fine details in the hands of the headmins. It's an unformed idea.

[Cobby]

i laughed you are a vibe and im here for it

[massa]

aw what a sweetiepoo i'm glad i appealed

[dendydoom]

This is why I implored you to think like genpop and detach from your normal POV. That style of thinking might be pretty alien at this point, you've been at it for a while, right?

You're a paralegal in the county courthouse thinking "Huh, I don't hear much - I guess jail is pretty accommodating." As part of the circuit and part of the system, not the atomized, disorganized other side of it, so..! A lot of people have precluded the possibility, because they're the individual motions of particles lost in time, whereas this decision would come from the other side, a sweeping, universal decision with singular momentum. See the pinkie pie pAI example, or the fact people just forget after years. One side of the equation can very dramatically affect the other, but the other side is quite incapable.

In light of a new host and new stability and being big and old, a sweeping motion of conditional forgiveness, and gesture to appeal if people are at all interested and mean it, measured by headmins/host sounds a lot wiser than my - or anyone's - silly ass appealing and getting sent into resolved for a small handful of friends. I would get fucking smited, are you kidding? I - or anyone - would probably get blacklisted even if we were constructive about something like that. That'd suck the wind out of these sails. It has to be impersonal, not about anyone in particular, 'universal' *with conditions. The slammer sucks and this is an idea for /tg/station, and one that'd travel through birdvines.

i have made a genuine effort to suppress my instant gut reaction and try to see it from this pov. it was your metaphors that convinced me, you write really nicely and this was very poetic.

i think the only way this could work realistically is to have an amnesty period where we say something like "for x weeks we are allowing private appeals where the headmins (or some rubber stamp committee the headmins put together) can go over old bans brought forward" (involving the original banning admin or not, if they're interested then great, if not then they can just sign off on it being taken over by ~the committee~) and we just kind of vibe check and have a chat with the person and make sure they aren't an obvious villain trying to leverage forgiveness to gain access to fuck the game up and piss everyone off again.

i really do think it's important that the first step comes from the player themselves. i don't think it's right to dig up their redemption arc for them. but we can make it as accessible as possible to make that first step. people have to take responsibility for their actions even when it's difficult. i don't consider it punitive to place responsibility in the hands of the person that did something, and in my view it's not right to place pressure on others to hand over forgiveness when they're not ready to. a good way to see if they're ready is to give someone an opportunity to demonstrate a capacity for taking accountability and undergoing personal growth as a result.

and like i said before i think the appeal should be about reconciliation. rebuilding trust by having someone capable of saying "yeah back when x happened i was in a rough spot/a bit of a nuisance/whatever and now i've had time to grow and would appreciate a chance at rebuilding that trust" rather than about like "ok so ermmm 9 years ago you opened a trit can on the shuttle before eorg for the 4th time, here is the entire log file, explain what happened!"

i think there are a lot of people who wouldn't make the cut for good reasons. both on our side and on theirs. some people lack self control and being here in this space does more harm to their wellbeing than it does to us when we try to manage their behaviour. it is also genuinely unfair in some cases to ask the playerbase at large to accept someone back that they have wholly rejected for good reason. if someone has burned every bridge possible, then unfortunately at the end of the day that's on them. but for the people that do make it back and genuinely have changed and genuinely want to demonstrate it, that would be nice to see.

[RaveRadbury]

Cobby posts always make a policy thread better.

This is a pretty empty assertion when you have no estimate of the actual numbers. Feel free to demand the opposition provide hard numbers, but don't lean on something like this.

No one on either side has given any hard numbers...

I think its an opportunity to put hard numbers together and I think those advocating for it should have an opportunity/challenge to do it. If I was running the zoo I'd table this thread with a request for the advocates to start crunching numbers. I think it could result in observations and reveal trends beyond the issue at hand. I want to say "This is interesting, I'll do it!" but I'm not sure if I can deliver on that rn especially solo. I could probably put some help into it as a group effort tho.

Institutions do forgiveness from time to time.

Libraries will have a day where you can bring your overdue books back without getting frowned at or fee'd.

The intimidation factor is real, especially if received in a way that came off like a heavy moral judgement (when it wasn't deserved).

I actually also disagree with the intimidation part a lil bit, unlike the people in this thread most banned individuals dont have access to the peanut section...

That people can be intimidated about returning their overdue library books to me says that it exists before the concept of peanuts even enter the equation. There have been times where the headmins have said "hand out fewer permas" because of the barrier to entry on forum appealing. One potential solution to this would be to offer banned players counsel which kind of happens informally these days and developing that further introduces an amount of overhead that, even if we had some sort of "player rep" (which I think we did in the past?), would still be challenging to justify the value of.

Like can you explain in no uncertain terms what you would do about this if you had full dictator power with no balances to pushback on the idea, and would you hold yourself accountable if the plan caused ruined rounds or would you just go "how could we have anticipated this????" and just absolved yourself from any wrongdoing here because you personally werent causing the grieffing?

Rounds can be ruined by people who are perma'd, through evading and even ddos. I'd have no problem taking responsibility but, having that said, I am sensitive to buy-in so I wouldn't force this on people who didn't want it. By nature I am not a forceful person, I feel more comfortable with persuasion. "Well we tried it and it didn't work, thank you to everyone who supported the idea and apologies to those affected negatively by it. I approved this so the failure is mine. I hope that anyone with hard feelings about this can continue to enjoy spending time here as this is cleaned up and sorted." I think saying "how could we have anticipated this????" is bad faith and ego protection. If the predictions were never raised that implies a large amount of speech/thought suppression and a lack of real discourse, which I would be pretty pissed off about having to work under.

[iain0]

We've had a brief chat about this and aren't interested in making any sweeping unbans.

Appeals are of course open as usual, and "time since" is often a factor in play in evaluating a player's option to second chance.




On a more "my take" level, interesting thread though, even if I wasn't sold ; most threads here are refinements or clarifications, this was an interesting idea to muse/read over out of the blue.