Adminbus morale

[ABearInTheWoods]

Multiple outgoing admins (including at least one recent headmin) have expressed concern and annoyance and over all frustration bordering on burnout-causing at a trend in adminbus where it seems there are admins who only seek to rules lawyer any excuse to ban a player without regard to context of understanding of intention behind the rule. Often viewing the players actions exclusively in bad faith to do so.

The outgoing admins often describe this as creating what feels like an exhausting need to advocate on behalf of players in adminbus/asay against such bad faith interpretations.

What would you do to address banbot behavior among the admin team and if necessary, would you be willing to remove long standing admins from the team over conflicts in administration style? What would you do to manage morale among the remaining admins while you do?

[DrAmazing343]

I believe that while there is a pressing need to get problematic players on the right path again, we cannot allow ourselves to become banbots or to let our emotions rule over the spirit and the letter of the rules. During my onboarding, I was taught that above all else, keeping to the facts and being objective was the greatest responsibility within an admin's hands, and I still hold that belief close to my chest.

As a Headmin, I'd like to address worries such as these head-on, bringing admins to the Caves in order to speak with them about their administrative styles and beliefs in order to maintain relative cohesion amongst the admin team's actions. That is not to say that I would force each admin to be a copy of one another, or especially that I'd be trigger-happy with doing so, but I believe that transparency and fairness are some of the most admirable parts of /TG/, and if I had to re-trial or demote an admin that failed to uphold our principles of either, I would most certainly do so.

In regards to managing morale, I'd like to work on creating a positive team-based environment even moreso than we do now— I think we do a good job of impressing upon new admins that we're a team, and that we should rely upon one another, but I fear that some of us have forgotten to keep in touch and to support one another when times get rough. Above all else, the strength of the admin team is that we all have voices and minds, and can help each other out both in sharing the load of tickets as well as helping to keep one another in check when we've lost sight of the rehabilitative purposes of the punishments we mete out.

To double down on my last point, I'd like to encourage admins to think in terms of correction, rather than expulsion. Banning players permanently or for significant periods of time should only happen when a player fails to grasp or take responsibility for continued mistakes— while sometimes being lenient can feel difficult, or performative, it is an important step in helping our community to become better, rather than exclusionary. The hope is that so-called "problem players" will eventually iron out and play fairly and in good faith with their fellows, and we should hardly gun for banbotting behavior rather than trying to help them become better first and foremost.

[TheBibleMelts]

admins lawyer when they don't have full context. a situation stripped of nuance can only have an equal void of nuance applied when trying to make a ruling on it. supportmin pings should be as detailed as the most ideal adminhelp - and be posed in as neutral of a way as possible. problems should be unravelled to the source of the conflict/rulebreak and there should be a default stance of trying to justify the players actions, as opposed to make them seem less justified by bringing up theoretical hyperbole.

active leadership would help a lot with avoiding the conversations becoming burnout inducing. a lot of us will just spin our wheels on gray-area topics (which usually means we've put too much effort into them and should drop them anyway but i digress), and having a redname pop up to say that something sounds okay or not would go a long ways to nipping the issue in the bud.

i trust the team to believe that there's nobody who is truly banbot-minded, but the type of behavior you're describing is a sure sign of someone feeling embittered or burnt out - in which case they should be taken aside and asked what's going on.

we should sweat less petty gray-area issues overall and just rack it up to Shit Happens more often imo.

[RaveRadbury]

This is a team, first and foremost. No one superjannie is going to be able to cover it all and if that superjannie is also insufferable to work with they won't have the support they need to keep from being overwhelmed.

I have had no problems with dropping an announcement on admin conduct and following up with the people who I see specifically having that problem. I did it when I felt that there were admins who were expressing contempt for the playerbase and creating a toxic atmosphere.

This is a pretty straightforward HR thing, imo. After an initial engagement about the issue, in the wake of an incident, the next step would be demotion to trialmin. We'd want to offer support on engaging the team better if they are up for hearing it. After their trial period is over if they've been able to work themselves out we promote, otherwise we fail 'em. An admin note is made and if they relapse on this we boot 'em. The system might need a little tuning and maybe some more leniency, idk, if I were in headminbus I'd be asking for feedback on that.

Also BONERMASTER made a really cool post about the law not seeking to exist in a pure state but rather to be in service of people and society and that was cool I think about that a lot.

[Bmon]

I agree with TBM here.

Headmins carry weight behind their words, and being active in the adminbus and not being shy to speak up will avoid a lot of this.

The grey area discussions are where things really start to fall apart, I feel if there was a headmin more closely involved with those types of discussions it would avoid a lot of that resentment.

As for removing admins engaging in this sort of thing I don't think it's the best of ideas. I find it hard to believe admins are acting in bad faith when they are arguing for what they believe in and that shouldn't be punished unless it turns into shitflinging.

[DrAmazing343]

Also BONERMASTER made a really cool post about the law not seeking to exist in a pure state but rather to be in service of people and society and that was cool I think about that a lot.

This is one of my greatest tenets as well- to cite my own warrior-poet, Higgin has spoken to me at length about the idea and merits of Coproduction, which is a term referring to police getting the community actively involved in their own policing. The idea of a people under a set of rules working together as a team rather than as an "enforcer" and as "constituent" is very appealing to me, and part of what I seek to hold the highest within my term. I know it's never going to be able to be a 100% equal thing, but just the same as we should work with our players to ensure they're happy with our enforcement, so, too, should we work within the team in service of each other and the environment we're cultivating rather than for the rules themselves.

I also think about this a lot.

[Lacran]

Personally, first and foremost admins need to approach this with the goal to achieve compliance, that doesn't mean just removing people. Admins need to invest into reforming player behaviour not just punishing it.

There needs to be a clear message sent to admins and players that bad faith rule enforcement can and will be caught in appeals, ensuring when these issues are recognised the headmin words the removal so it's clear this is the precedent for all players.

Education is the most useful tool here, it empowers the playerbase to keep admins accountable for their own conduct.

Regarding the burnt out admins I can definitely empathize when you see terrible conduct and feel powerless to stop it. Ensuring channels for communication are open, welcoming and discrete between headmins is a good step, it may also be a good idea for headmins to be pre-emptive. If you see an admin getting concerned or upset by another admins conduct, reach out to them. Don't let it fester and wait for them to come to you.

Lastly, on a more fun note, help channel player-aligned admins energy into positive notes, it's not a solution in of itself, but it helps making people feel they're making the community a better place.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Rules exist to enhance the fun of the game for all of us. They do not exist to punish the guilty, nor are they a moral code. Rules and policy are, and should be interpreted as, a strictly utilitarian method of enhancing our game. Those who seek to punish others because they see it as the moral thing to do are taking a bad approach to rule enforcement.

I would say that there is never a good reason to ban someone you believe was acting in good faith, or otherwise didn't know they were breaking the rules. I want to be as lenient as possible to such players. Even players who intentionally break the rules, or act negligent in a way that breaks the rules, should be offered redemption.

Admins who screw up should be talked to, and if they are good admins then they will be receptive to this kind of correction, just like a player would after being talked to by an admin. If push comes to shove, and see the fault in their own behavior, then they don't have a place admining on /tg/.

I want to foster an environment in adminbus of healthy discussion, where admins are allowed to advise and discuss. I do not want admins to engage in degenerative arguing, or create an environment in which admins will boss others on how to handle internal appeals. If one admin has a question on how to deal with a problem, I want them to be comfortable stating their opinion, and have that opinion be received by a healthy atmosphere.

[TheRex9001]

I think the solution to admin bus morale and the admin lawyering is simply to have headmins who will step in if a conversation gets unhealthy.

If it is the same admin stirring stuff I would cave and give them a formal conduct warning (assuming us as headmins have had to step in on their conversations) whilst explaining to them that the atmosphere they are causing is harmful to the rest of the team. If this continuous to be a problem I would ask for them to be re-trained but if that fails there is only really one option left which would be de-adminning.

Our rules arent just there to punish players, if a rule would stop some cool roleplay it can be safely circumvented, this is important to keep in mind whilst adminning, rule 0 truly is king.

I think in the long run this is going to boost morale, and as long as you explain your actions and why you are stepping in it wont dampen morale (Unless you do it in a shitty way, just be respectful).

[ekaterina]

These "admins who only seek to rules lawyer any excuse to ban a player" are one of the central points of my platform and a big part of why I chose to run.

Naturally, I'd provide oversight to bans that are placed and overturn bad bans, and, if necessary, follow it up with an investigation of the banning admin.

Regularly overturning bad bans should reduce the incentive for bad admins to place them, knowing they'd just be overturned anyway, and setting good precedents should also guide enforcement in a more positive way.

I'd add conduct standards covering things like assuming good faith unless given reason not to. I might consider this to be common sense, but providing written clarity is always better than expecting common sense.

Following an adaptation period to give time to admins not living up to these standards to reform themselves, I would absolutely be willing to remove banbots from the admin roster, without hesitation. Having less admins, even if that means there being more points at which there are no admins online in a server, is better than having bad admins that actively detract from the game's quality.

As to the goodmins who are standing up for players, they need to know that their efforts are appreciated and they need relief. They need to be able to, instead of letting it reach the point of their own exhaustion, know when to step back and just let headmin review sort it out.

It's fascinating to see that essentially all the candidates who've spoken here so far (except Bmon, whom I think is part of the problem), are, to varying degrees, in agreement.

[Timberpoes]

This is something I've been tracking for as long as I've been an admin. Having admins that aren't afraid to place bans is both good and necessary.

When I first joined, the culture was strongly for escalating admin action. I was trained this way. I was trained to escalate punishments proportionately because a proportionate escalation better enables future admins to deal with a player again.

At some point that culture shifted. Some admins didn't feel comfortable escalating repeated minor issues from notes to bans. So they'd just note. Sometimes note serious issues too. The idea was we could totally trust future admins to read the player's entire history and just because a past admin under-enforced a rule previously doesn't mean you can look at it, go "I'd have week banned for that" and escalate your own ban accordingly.

But this created two different distinct new tiers of admins. Admins that rigourously under-enforce the rules because it's safe, easy, no conflict, they'll never have to deal with appeals and they can trick themselves into thinking that's a job well done. And the admins that whose sole task in life was to place the next permaban. Such a heavy burden they had to wear. The lesser admins just can't get the job done, so it all falls on them - such is their duty.

So, we get what I believe is the root cause. The most common thing I see that leads to the creation of an over-enforcing rules-lawyer type admin - Seeing a player repeatedly break the rules and get away with it via talkings to and minor wrist taps from under-enforcing admins.

These rules lawyer types that live for the ban? They're not trained. They never would have passed trial. They're what develops after the full game admin phase. A product of our admin team and parts of its internal culture.

This tends to happen to the strong and stubborn admin personality types that feel frustration that people are ruining the game. Anyone with a strong internal sense for what makes SS13 fun.

It can lead to a very strong anti-[that player] sentiment when the admin believes that player is anti-fun. They see a player that consistently impacts the fun of those around them, but in constantly and repeatedly minor ways. Where ordinarily they'd expect this player to be on the path to a permaban, they check their record and see 10 notes for the same behaviour in the past 2 months, along with assorted other notes for other not-so-serious issues. But nothing they feel they can escalate any meaningful ban over.

This leaves them in a difficult situation. Ordinarily we escalate from notes, to short duration bans, to longer duration bans, to permabans. Enough repeated minor issues can and does and I'd go far enough to say without evidence the player is improving should result in escalating up to permabans.

So my solution has two attack patterns. It's targetting both under-enforcement and over-enforcement of the rules.

Admins that don't feel comfortable escalating enforcement of the rules at a low and minor level create admins that over-compensate by enforcing the rules in a rigid and lawyerly way because they want a player they feel is consistently fucking up the experiences for everyone else gone.

So I'd personally teach the rule over-enforcers how to look at the totality of a player's history and escalate appropriately off that. Reminding them that just because a previous admin exercised their discretion to handle an incident with a lesser punishment, it doesn't tie their hands from looking back at the player's history. Taking into account they could (or should) have been handled differently and escalating their punishment on that approach is fine. You don't need to twist the rules, their intent or the the player's actions in a perverse way to "get the ban to stick".

And also I'd investigate the status of admins whose discretion was negatively impacting the enforcement of the rules. Find out why this is happening. Fear of appeals? Fear of headmins overturning things? Fear of community blacklash at enforcing a certain rule? Do they just not know the rules at all? Do they just disagree with some rules and this is their little protest? Or do they just lack the necessary critical thinking skills admins must have to effectively wield our discretion?

By hitting both sides, we can bring both extremes closer to the comfortable middle ground where enforcement is both effective and fair.

[xzero314]

I like to get adminbus opinions for every ticket I handle that goes past a simple response being required. I very rarely get unanimous sentiment on issues. I appreciate it when fellow admins challenge me to really lay out what my logic line is to make sure whatever note or ban Im about to place is legit. Or is even required at all.

I have also sparked some of these several hour long policy debates due to my questions to the bus.

I believe the solution is to be present and available in bus as a headmin to settle debates before they start stretching hours long and into hypotheticals. Even if that means stepping in before being pinged as a headmin.
This is not always achievable of course. I sleep like other humans do. From my experience participating in Bus, I think this to be the most simple and effective solution. Once the headmins weigh in, the debate is settled and everybody can move on with their day.

[Dax Dupont]

I think that admins should probably let headmins know with a ping or DM when they see two or more other admins getting into discussions too long or hostile so headmins can step in and deescalate. Sit down with both parties and try to make it clear at what point they should've stopped.

Additionally I think putting a focus on the spirit of the law during training might also help. What people think admins do is punish people and a lot of new admins kinda go in what that expectation that their job is mostly to deal with people breaking rules while the actual goal of being an admin is to provide a good gameplay and atmosphere for players. This also means sometimes letting things go if it isn't worth punishing a player over something.