A WARNING for all - More 'rules' than you can easily find

[Frank_Hawk]

Alright then, if you say my suggestion was unnecessary, nevermind it

I think your suggestion is vaild Bundy and while Cyril's points are also vaild - people make errors, including admins and managers. It would be useful for both to admins and players to have a reliable source of information which is accessible to both. Afterall, we are all striving for the same which is to stay inside the rules and their categorisations.

[Kojak]

Alright then, if you say my suggestion was unnecessary, nevermind it

It would be useful to summarise the various interpretations of the rules as stated in the Developer's Answers thread, it will take a while but I'll get that done. It won't be for every answer given, but for whatever seems to be causing confusion or appears ambiguous.

[Cyril]

I didn't say it was unnescessary, but while general information about situations may be useful, each case and scenario are unique.
Even if you summarize everything that was posted here, I doubt it'll change anything since everyone has his own view and way to play.

To know if what you are doing is against the rules or not, your best friend is common sense.
Rules are just the base. Each time you are going to do something and you are unsure of if it's allowed or not, you may read the basic rules and ask yourself if any of your future actions is going to be against one (or multiple) rules. If you couldn't find any answer, you can search by keywords on the forum or ask an admin+

[Gandalf]

My apologies, I ment that the clarifications of the rules in the developers topic should be added to the rules.
That way the administration team has something stronger to rely on. (For example: Jack Rosso's recent ban)

Both the punishment and ban of Jack_Rosso were fully warranted within the current rules. There is no need to extend them for that.

[JDC]

The Argonath rules are simple, but effective. Therefore, they can apply to an enormous variety of situations without the need to extend them into a rulebook, the situations in question being easily determinable by common sense.

[Abraham]

The rules are limited and anyone with common sense can understand what is or what is not allowed.

The Argonath rules are simple, but effective. Therefore, they can apply to an enormous variety of situations without the need to extend them into a rulebook, the situations in question being easily determinable by common sense.

"Common sense" does NOT abide and is NOT a valid reason not to elucidate the rules. (Btw, I googled that last word, figured "clarify" wouldn't cut it.)

The fact that this topic has been "actively" posted in since 2008 is proof enough.
(Above sentances are what common f**king sense actually is.)

I'm going to squeeze this little quote in 'ere and highlight some words so I can really get my point across.

For those arriving from other servers the style of Argonath which is skin-based rahter than character-based is often confusing. The possibility to one moment play a Jimmy Hendrix type, then change skin to a businessman and next play a police officer to conclude the day as granny is odd for those who were forced elsewhere to assume a single character and stay with it.

It would be useful to summarise the various interpretations of the rules as stated in the Developer's Answers thread, it will take a while but I'll get that done. It won't be for every answer given, but for whatever seems to be causing confusion or appears ambiguous.

Thank you, long live common sense.

[Gandalf]

The topic was opened for the purpose it still serves. As questions have been asked more than once, they have been answered more than once.

[Kirgiz]

- Common sense

An example of why common sense is not a valid excuse to interpret rules:

Did you know that gravity greatly depends on the size of the object, therefore larger planets have stronger gravity?

Physicist: Duh, common sense!

It's a case of "your mileage may vary", everyone will never interpret one thing the same way.

[Mikal]

What about all the orange men and blue men that spawnkill eachother CONSTANTLY in 'roleplay' robbery situations in banks and such? Not that they are really roleplay, as the aim of the criminals isn't to rob the bank and get away, but to stand in the bank, call 911 and alert the cops they are robbing it, then wait for them all to turn up in the shitloads and spawn kill them all, people never really get punished for that, but what can you expect people to do? Wait for the cops to be able to move so they can kill you all?

[Pandalink]

Does it say in the rules that, as an example, "cops on a cop bike that are shooting a vehicle" are the only exception to the "no driver driveby" rule?
Because.. that's completely nonsensical without some kind of explanation, and is just one of many examples of the rules being able to be interpreted in wildly different ways (by players and admins alike).

Also, you say that the dev answer thread has "no new rules", but developer interpretations of the base rules are what admins are meant to follow on the server and thus are rules. A new player would have to read through that entire dev answer thread or face several weeks/months of trial and error with multiple punishments incurred for breaking rules that they didn't even know existed.

[Cyril]

Does it say in the rules that, as an example, "cops on a cop bike that are shooting a vehicle" are the only exception to the "no driver driveby" rule?
Because.. that's completely nonsensical without some kind of explanation, and is just one of many examples of the rules being able to be interpreted in wildly different ways (by players and admins alike).

Also, you say that the dev answer thread has "no new rules", but developer interpretations of the base rules are what admins are meant to follow on the server and thus are rules. A new player would have to read through that entire dev answer thread or face several weeks/months of trial and error with multiple punishments incurred for breaking rules that they didn't even know existed.

You can't drive by as driver from any other vehicle anyway

[[WS]Jacob]

What about all the orange men and blue men that spawnkill eachother CONSTANTLY in 'roleplay' robbery situations in banks and such? Not that they are really roleplay, as the aim of the criminals isn't to rob the bank and get away, but to stand in the bank, call 911 and alert the cops they are robbing it, then wait for them all to turn up in the shitloads and spawn kill them all, people never really get punished for that, but what can you expect people to do? Wait for the cops to be able to move so they can kill you all?

I think I can speak for most FBI agents when I say we are fed up with the lack of roleplay in these situations even when we attempt to make contact it is obvious it's just an excuse for a DM fest. Sometimes we will go to about three a day and it's getting ridiculous. It may come to a point where we won't respond to these situations as our interaction with them is just encouraging them to carry on. In all my FBI career I have only see around 3 proper roleplay robberies and they were the most fun and also the smallest too.

On the situation of spawnkilling I think that if you enter a building with suspects you know that you will come under fire. It really is the same for both sides - they step out we fire, we step in suspects will fire. It would be as if walking through a door IRL, you are likely to come under fire before you have even entered. But I do think that an effort should be made to allow officers to move before firing. Sometimes people get caught in crossfire so it's not always possible.

[Cyril]

People entering the house after a police barricade has been put can lead to banning those who enter, and also to a group warning. Another possibility is to blow up all present in the house...

Spawnkilling is not allowed, however entering/exiting a house is not spawning.

[Pandalink]

You can't drive by as driver from any other vehicle anyway

Well, before that script was put in then. Anyway my point still stands.

[Abraham]

The topic was opened for the purpose it still serves. As questions have been asked more than once, they have been answered more than once.

And so it shall continue.

My protest was, that if I want to find answers to various questions about how things are and should be and how I should behave, I have to browse through atleast 10+ boards to try and find a topic named "SA:MP - Developers answer: give examples", a title which doesn't even insinuate rules being inside them, rather a Q&A with scripters, then when I question the rules I get a "common sense brah" in response.

Now I personally do not have much problem with understanding the rules, I've been playing here since god only knows when and if I break a rule it'd most likely be knowingly, but when you advocate regulars teaching new players how the rules work you should expect various interpretations for each "generation" and it should be 'common sense' that you'd have a easy way of refering people to in-depth explanations of the rules, a FAQ about the rules even, f**k me, that'd be great.

There's even been times where I've been completely confused about some rules, I'm not going to make a list but I think the time where we had illegal ads being not so "rule-breakish" (before Aragorn came back and corrected it) makes a great example of "server-wide rule-confusion". Read Pandas post for another example.

Nevertheless Kojak said he'd do what's been asked to some extent, I'm very pleased.