Transparency & Double Standards 2: Electric Boogaloo

[stormeus]

Right, so the previous thread got locked, unlocked, and locked again, so here it is. Again.

I bet everyone is absolutely ecstatic about this.

Anyway here are the main points recapped for continued discussion that does not moan about specific staff nor point fingers between staff and players.


Double Standards
Points

• Staff members tend to be protective of specific groups, particularly any groups they are members of.
• Consequently the bias in group protection caused by their perspective as group members leads to them punishing enemies of said group more frequently than usual.
• Staff have no clear guidelines for handling situations and are supposed to act with their own judgement.
• Players perceive staff as not being held to a higher standard of operating within the rules.

Proposed Solutions

• Revision of rules to be more clear in wording and to encompass more situations
• Posting of all rules (incl. SAPD/FBI operations) in a public forum for everyone to see what is currently going on.
• Admins require more immediate and harsher punishments for infractions.
• ???

Counterpoints

• Human nature is to be closer to people you are affiliated with; bias is unavoidable.
• Said bias is consequently counteracted by a balance between cop/criminal admins and a number of admins spread across groups.
• What exactly is a double standard and how to fix it is otherwise dubious and has not been explained.

Transparency
Points

• [email protected] is completely opaque and considered to not be taken seriously due to lack of feedback.
• In-game reports sometimes feel like they are ignored due to lack of moderator feedback to the user.

Proposed Solutions

• A way of reporting staff through means other than email. (already under consideration according to Devin)
• Increase moderator feedback with in-game reports.
• Publish transparent guidelines for staff in a public forum

Counterpoints

• Not possible to please everyone in the case of a report: not taking action and informing the reporting player leads to the reporting player moaning about admins. Taking action leads to the reportee moaning about admins.
• Staff are not operating off of a readily made handbook and therefore there are no guidelines to publish.

[Kaze]

I liked how you set everything out, makes it easier for everyone to understand what trouble we are going through in the HQ department. Fingers crossed Devin does something about this.

Another problem is that SOME admins ban players for something that is not a rulebreak. A joke is a joke even if it is misunderstood by SOME admins. It does not say on the rules anywhere that I can get banned for a joke. In addition, admins should also ban with a proper reason. By this I mean instead of banning someone for 'Same goes for you..' you would ban them for 'Joking'

I would also like to add the mentality that some admins have in the unban request section. Even when the victim is right, the HQ basically bullys the victim into a corner, forcing them to apologize in order to get unbanned even if the victim is right. That's unacceptable. Not only is that an issue, the review dates are beginning to be a joke. I trust everyone in this community read my unban requests couple weeks back. 4 months for a joke, are you out of your f**king mind?

Some admins are also stubborn, I guarantee you this time tomorrow this topic will be locked because admins are too stubborn to realise their mistakes. 

To conclude this topic, making these topics wont change a thing. But the HQ need a dose of reality.

[jovanca]

i'm glad you made this and i support the solution part as a good idea to start solving the problem of double standards, although the double standards are not only preset in the relations between groups where staff is biased, but anyways that is a nice way to begin.

[murdoxix]

Maybe giving some parameters that describes which kind of punishment deserves the different types of rules breaking, to give more transparency on the punishment given. Anyway I don't think this is a very good idea, is just one I had; I'm sure there are better ones over there.

[Rusty]

Kaze's post.

Your post is a prime example of why topics get locked that others want to discuss without needing to bash others.  Do the bashing somewhere else not in this board or anywhere on the forum to be honest.  But I will highlight a few points from your post since you feel like you want a answer.

Joking or not with whatever you did if seen serious enough you can still be punished for it, just like if you were to say "YO ADMINS I GOT AIMBOT XD" I'd ban someone for it even if they thought it was hilarious to say it out in public as a joke.  Some people just take joking around to far. (not referring to you specifically)

Unbans on other players don't actually concern other players except the banning staff members, HQ and the banned player.  I've never seen bullying of someone to have them admit to their mistakes.  If we were in the wrong we'll admit it and apologize on their topic and unban.  (I recently did so on a false ban evading case)

Review dates are set by the handling HQ member, I personally give larger review periods to regular who have a somewhat expansive punishment history.  In most cases I'd deny them from coming back since leniency was something that was given ALOT in RS4 to player's of regular playing status. 

I could say the same for player's needing a dose of reality but I'm not going to derail the topic like the last one.

Double Standards
Points

• Staff members tend to be protective of specific groups, particularly any groups they are members of.
• Consequently the bias in group protection caused by their perspective as group members leads to them punishing enemies of said group more frequently than usual.
• Staff have no clear guidelines for handling situations and are supposed to act with their own judgement.
• Players perceive staff as not being held to a higher standard of operating within the rules.

1. Report Staff who are protecting one group from punishment when they deserve it just as much. 
3. We have something to go just not going to publish it, but we can also use our own heads and see how to deal with current situation.
4. Staff who aren't operating within the rules again can be reported they aren't immune from punishment.  Believe it or not we do punish staff members and has happened quite a few times these past months. 

Transparency
Points

• [email protected] is completely opaque and considered to not be taken seriously due to lack of feedback.
• In-game reports sometimes feel like they are ignored due to lack of moderator feedback to the user.

1. Read everyday by those who can access, matters discussed from sent emails done through our Skype group on what action to take if any.  We do get a hefty amount of bullshit emails that are sent in just to have a moan about something unrelated.
2. Any reports accepted in-game by staff, players are sent a message to inform that staff are looking into it.  Sure we can try get staff to direct a PM once report is dealt with (some do this already) just because no punishment was made public don't mean that he/she wasn't dealt with.  We don't need to punish player's with commands all the time.



Either keep on topic without trying to have a pot shot at others or this topic will go same way as the other.

[CharlieKasper]

Disclaimer - I have not representing SA:MP Admin team in anyway. I am just giving my own opinion on this. And I acknowledge the fact that there are things you can see but we can't just like things that we can see and you can't.

Maybe giving some parameters that describes which kind of punishment deserves the different types of rules breaking, to give more transparency on the punishment given. Anyway I don't think this is a very good idea, is just one I had; I'm sure there are better ones over there.

That's not possible.
Setting those parameters would mean we give the same punishments to
1. new players who know little about the server and have no punishment history.
2. new players who know little about the server but have a long punishment list already.
3. regulars who know about the server but have no punishment history.
4. regulars who know about the server but have long punishment history.
5. veterans who have complete knowledge of the server and its rules but have little to no punishment history
6. veterans who have complete knowledge of the server but just come to f**k around and have a massive giant ass punishment history.

See how long I made this list? That's not it. It will be massive if such a parameter is created. That is why admins are instructed to act on their own when giving punishments, not follow a set of guidelines. We are not robots, we can have a mind of our own, we can think what would be appropriate for whom. Having such a list would make our work much easier, but would annoy the shit out of everyone and you would complain that punishments are inappropriate.
Sure, obviously there are going to be some mistakes. But it's going to be better than acting like robots right?


Humans being an emotion being will obviously be biased. That's why we (or atleast I) can actually ask other admins to take actions when the reported person is connected to us. If I happen to take the only (available) admin online, and I take a report on someone I personally know, I try to gather as much feedback from other admins or HQ (over Skype) to take the best action possible. And from what I have seen, plenty of admins have had to punish their own group members. If they don't do that, instead of publicly bashing them and enraging yourself and them, talking to them in private or about them to HQ or reporting them would be much more productive.

Just clearing it out that staff members are NOT protective of any specific groups, its just that some groups rulebreak more than other groups. Some people say there are some admins who are completely unbiased, that would mean that the members these "protected" (as you call them) groups would be punished as much if they were really rulebreaking as much as members of other groups but the others groups are still punished more. Do the thinking.
If an admin really uses their commands to protect their group members, they should be reported and strictly punished if needed. I really hope that people don't think that HQ doesn't care about legit reports about admins sent to [email protected], cause that thought is absolutely ridiculous.

"•Staff have no clear guidelines for handling situations and are supposed to act with their own judgement."
That IS the guideline. We are not a bunch of robots, there needs to be diversity in the admin team. We take actions on how we think would be appropriate not "he's deathmatching? tempban." "he's driving over people? jail."
If we think it would be appropriate to talk with the person first, we do it. If we think it's necessary to punish the person, we do it. There would be a lot more (5x more?) red text on the screen if we were to follow a set of guidelines for handling situations.

"•Players perceive staff as not being held to a higher standard of operating within the rules."
I am not exactly sure what you mean by this but admins are taken because they follow the server rules very strictly, and those who fail to do that are spoken to and actions are taken against them if needed. I really hope you don't think reports on admins are ignored.


"•In-game reports sometimes feel like they are ignored due to lack of moderator feedback to the user."
We are not obliged to tell everything we do. Just recently I got a report and I dealt with the reported the player. I was immediately approached by the reporter if I punished the reported person. My reply was I took appropriate actions on that player. Reporter's reply? "I don't see any punishments?". Some players are absolutely determined to get the other people punished publicly. We can't tell everyone everything every time, we may be busy with something else.

There are punishments that you can't see at all, and if you are near them you can only guess that they were punished.
That's not it, we are not obliged to punish every guy rulebreaking. Sometimes we think that a simple chat with the guy would be a lot more productive. Trust me, people have managed to fix hackers by simply talking to them.

[Stivi]

We need rules to be made public, to everyone. Even the /help rules to be updated. Currently, people fight over "if u escape you must leave the vehicle" a lot. "pigs" thingy. And a lot more.


Cops don't get punished the same as civilians/criminals. Even if they do things much worse than a criminal.

Cops get cop-banned for DMing. Civilians get temp-banned for DMing.


TBH, I don't have a problem with /reporting a moderator/admin if there is a manager IG. I don't need to go write a long ass e-mail just for that. The e-mail is not even transparent, btw.

Making use of the "Developers answer" topic is much better. Multiple times I have posted my situation there, that actually happened and never got a reply. I'm not supposed to be an admin to know the result. But nor am I, and I'm not the only one, supposed to comply with an admin without knowing wtf I did wrong.
I do comply, then I use that topic. Well, used to, no one looks at it anymore.

[CharlieKasper]

We need rules to be made public, to everyone. Even the /help rules to be updated. Currently, people fight over "if u escape you must leave the vehicle" a lot. "pigs" thingy. And a lot more.


Cops don't get punished the same as civilians/criminals. Even if they do things much worse than a criminal.

Cops get cop-banned for DMing. Civilians get temp-banned for DMing.


TBH, I don't have a problem with /reporting a moderator/admin if there is a manager IG. I don't need to go write a long ass e-mail just for that. The e-mail is not even transparent, btw.

Making use of the "Developers answer" topic is much better. Multiple times I have posted my situation there, that actually happened and never got a reply. I'm not supposed to be an admin to know the result. But nor am I, and I'm not the only one, supposed to comply with an admin without knowing wtf I did wrong.
I do comply, then I use that topic. Well, used to, no one looks at it anymore.

The unwritten rules are just the derivatives of the rules written in /rules. If one is supposed to write all of them including the derivatives, the list is going to be huge. And therefore the new players won't even bother to read them. A few lines is going to be a lot easier than a paragraph.
The cop getting copbanned for dming and civilians getting tbanned for dming has definitely changed. I don't  see it happen nowadays. A copban is to remove the right of a player to become a cop if he abuses his rights, and it should be followed by a administrative punishment if needed.

As for reporting an admin, no other way than [email protected]. /report is only supposed to be used for reporting players for doing something wrong. If an admin misbehaves, he should be reported at [email protected]. It won't matter if you have a problem with it or not, but if you want your report to be taken into consideration, send the email.

When an admin tells you something, you comply; even if its wrong. After that, you can contact someone from HQ and ask them if it was right or wrong and the HQ will contact the admin if needed.

[Kaze]

Unbans on other players don't actually concern other players except the banning staff members, HQ and the banned player.  I've never seen bullying of someone to have them admit to their mistakes.  If we were in the wrong we'll admit it and apologize on their topic and unban.  (I recently did so on a false ban evading case)

80 percent of all unban requests results in a forced apology to be unbanned. But like you said..

Either keep on topic without trying to have a pot shot at others or this topic will go same way as the other.

[Kostas]

So we cant have a huge rule list because new players wouldn't read them.
But we are still being said that we have no common sense when we ask about rules and such...

Well I may be a complete idiot afterall, But I've been here for a while, and I know that this community has been running for 8 years... 8 years, that's almost half my life.
And we ask in 2014 for a topic with every rule arround here, and we are told that it is common sense and that new players wouldn't bother to read them?

Well even though I'd say that I have a pretty good "common sense", you guys make me feel like I don't, but let's say that I don't. I've been here since 2011 and I still have no clear view of many rules simply because everyone knows them his own way. So here is my solution.

Make a topic with every single rule in the server(SAPD and FBI aswell, infact they must be all of the ARPD rules, I want to know when I'm being abused by people who get free guns and can force me to do things, I have the right of a legal representative, so I want that representative to know the damn rules). Once you've done that, make a topic with the simple rules, which with addition of "common sense" do actually lead to the other topic.

So everyone can choose what to read? HUH???


Also about punishments, organised or not. First of all, I do not care of having a chat with 10x more red posts on it, /p is a spam already, let's add a little more, who cares? Also I do not mind if the list of "standars" would become huge, just like you said(who ever did) it will actually make your work easier, you are indeed not robots, but you, just like us, should follow a set of rules on how to operate... Also for the ones who would find this too complex, well no one asked you to get such a seat, you applied for it and you are free to leave I guess, or? Am I wrong? I so far have never wanted to become part of your "team", so I am biased, just like every human being. But do not forget, that we wanted to be "players" and you wanted to be "admins". We both wanted it, so why are you higher than us?

[[NP]Monte Montague]

Stormeus post

Very good points.

I specifically liked the Electric Boogaloo part. 

[Kessu]

If you follow few general thumb rules you shouldn't have any problems with the administration.

1) Don't shoot at anything unless you have a roleplay(ed) reason to do so.
2) Try not to insult/offend other players.
3) Don't abuse the scripts to gain advantage.

Those three rules pretty much cover all the rules there are, of course then there's (on some servers) say heli-killing etc, but generally those three thumb rules keeps you on the good side of the administration team.

[Kostas]

Also another good suggestion that i just came up with due to an IG matter ... Never pickup a report that you were present to... Unless you are the last one online for sure...

Also Kessu ... I was just told from an administrator that the situation really matters ... Well I do not see anythign being told about situation in your three rules...

[jovanca]

Also another good suggestion that i just came up with due to an IG matter ... Never pickup a report that you were present to... Unless you are the last one online for sure...

Also Kessu ... I was just told from an administrator that the situation really matters ... Well I do not see anythign being told about situation in your three rules...

not supported, admins are mostly not present to see a rulebreak, yet these rulebreaks should be handled - admin seeing a rulebreak is not the only evidence

[Rusty]

Staff will pick-up any report that comes in no matter if present or not, them being present makes them BETTER OFF to deal with it since they don't have to ask everything single person there what the hell happened.  Staff are told not to be bias but it's in human nature to be so, feel that report was handled badly?  Speak to HQ member online, type up forum PM explaining what happened or send in a email.  Either way we'll deal with it.

Most player's don't read the rules who join, if they did they wouldn't spawn at LSAP and attack the other player's who spawned there or the Staff member who is waiting to help them out.  No one likes to read they just want to get in-game and play.  Common sense applies when you enter a server that the most basic of rules apply.

If you want to read SAPD "rules" go to the ARPD Forum, they are in public view as it is.  Sub-division's like SWAT, ASID and Air Division are hidden and they don't even have "rules" to be frank just mere guidelines on what they should and shouldn't do.  Nothing that other player's need to see, if you think different then go ask the SAPD Division leaders to reveal them or [WS]Mike or CBFasi.