Relevant rules:
Details
Don’t do anything with the goal of negatively affecting other players. Not everyone is going to enjoy every round. Killing someone is allowed in certain situations even though it might negatively affect them, but no one should be doing anything for the purpose of harming someone else’s experience.
Do not interact negatively with SSD/AFK players. Interactions to complete antagonist objectives or duties like security searches/arrests are always permitted.
Relevant admin policy:
Professionalism is important, and in general will help reduce the number of issues you run into as staff. We expect you to deescalate, rather than escalate situations. As staff, you’re often the first person that a player with an issue will talk to. No matter your opinion on the player, do your best to be respectful towards them.
If it looks like the situation will be able to resolve itself, or escalated naturally; and nothing actually actionable has happened, then there is no reason to interfere. Reminder: The official servers are LRP, outside of Salamander.
Relevant ban guidelines:
Looking at the replay and logs two main interactions seem to have occurred in the round which ultimately precipitated the ahelp and note.
Early in the round the complainant Pinkshiny uses a cap gun to troll the captain / sec and in turn gets shot at. While there’s nothing against the rules about doing so, I would point out that its also not against the rules to react to such a prank with the full belief that the prank is real. In general, when engaging in pranks the repercussions are presupposed within reason.
Similarly, later in the round Pinkshiny is found to be wearing a syndicate hardsuit, which an officer kindly confiscates instead of blasting them at first glance. This too, was a kindness because wearing this particular syndicate equipment carries with it the presumption that you are yourself a syndicate and therefor armed and dangerous.
Further, upon becoming aware of Pinkshiny’s activity within the round it would have been reasonable for admin Geekyhobo to investigate the chat logs of complainant Pinkshiny. When doing so admin Geekyhobo would have seen these chat messages within different contexts throughout the round:
Given the above chat messages it seems reasonable for admin Geekyhobo to investigate further, and a sensible first step is contacting the parties involved; in this case the complainant Pinkshiny.
01:04:53 Geekyhobo: Hey what with the anger?
01:05:05 Pinkshiny: just a edgy tider character
01:05:13 Geekyhobo: being a dick is not edgy
Upon being asked why they were being so rude this shift, Pinkshifty informs the admin that it is what their character would do. Here it is worth considering whether characters which are Dicks are acceptable.
In many other roleplaying games, dnd, pathfinder, other tabletop games, it is often considered a faux pas to claim that your character would be a mean person or do unfun things and then proceed to do them. There may be instances where it is acceptable, particularly when the other players are preemptively involved in consenting to unsavory behavior, however in spacegame there is no method by which other players can express this ascent to your character’s demeanor on creation or indeed any way for other players to actively prevent it, as exists in other RP mediums. For these reasons, defenses such as ‘it is what my character would do’ or similar lines of thought, can be reasonably rejected as a defense for being a Dick as outlined in Rule 1.2 Don’t be a dick. This is due to the distinction between a character being a Dick, and the player being a Dick not holding up to muster since the player is the one who chose to play a Dick.
This is the conclusion admin Geekyhobo seems to have arrived at;
01:06:11 Geekyhobo: You were being kind of a asshole this shift based on your chat to the point that someone ahelped it
01:06:30 Geekyhobo: Im jsut saying that being an edgy tider is not very fun for others
01:06:57 Pinkshiny: Well I get it that someone ahelped it at this point. Don’t see how me saying womp womp and cry to a sec guard is being a dick to a “player” and not a character
the ahelp continues for another 24 messages wherein complainant Pinkshiny offers little in the way of further defenses and the admin Geekyhobo tries to impress upon them their reasoning. Until finally;
[postround] Geekyhobo: Would you like a ban insted?
Thereafter complainant Pinkshiny requests another admin, which is not something we promise to accommodate. Pinkshiny asks if their interaction with admin Geekyhobo is logged, are told it is, and informed they can make a complaint if they wish, but that Geekyhobo would be leaving a warning on their account.
This established, we can now move on to whether Pinkshiny was indeed, according to the evidence available to admin Geekyhobo engaging in what was likely to be a Dick Move.
Over the course of the round in various contexts you sent messages stating that others were a “Wuss,”
they could “get fucked,”
that they were “losers,”
they were “dumbasses,”
and finally that they could go “cry” about it.
When considering whether something is a Dick Move there is no direct ban policy guideline for what a Dick Move is. There are a couple ban guidelines we can use as touchstones however.
While this may not directly correlate to what the events of this admin action were, it certainly has similarities. While harassment implies a repeated nature, it also means to do unsavory or intentionally unpleasant things to another. The later seems to have been the case here with regards to the above chat logs. The associated first offense is a warning, up to a 12 hour game ban. It stands to reason that were this the guideline applied, that not only would admin Geekyhobo be within policy to apply a warning as they have done, but indeed to step the punishment up to a gameban. This of course did not happen as a warning was deemed sufficient and there are some questions about whether Pinkshiny’s actions were repetitious enough to justify a gameban at the time of the ahelp.
Importantly we can note here that by policy if the complainant Pinkshiny had engaged in further similar acts it may well be reasonable to escalate them to a ban under this guideline, and therefor when admin Geekyhobo replied in the ahelp;
[postround] Geekyhobo: Would you like a ban insted?
it can be inferred that admin Geekyhobo meant they would apply this guideline in the event the conduct was likely to continue.
While the specific R word was never used by complainant Pinkshiny, and this guideline is typically reserved for a lower class of slur, there are certainly echoes of similar patterns to its meaning. The guideline also indicates that other variants may be applicable under this guideline. The first offense for this would by guideline be a warning, and that is the highest measure applied in this case.
In conclusion, it would seem from the available evidence that Pinkshiny did engage in at least one if not multiple Dick Moves. This satisfies the need for admin intervention in accordance with policy 2.6 Do not interfere unless you are needed, and addresses the accusation of unprofessionalism under 1.2 Be professional, polite and welcoming as it relates to the implications of a ban as admin Geekyhobo was simply being informative. Further for whether complainant Pinkshiny violated Rule 1.2 Don’t be a dick, we can apply the “you are what you eat” standard, and conclude that as complainant Pinkshiny engaged in what would reasonably appear to be Dick Moves to the on scene admin Geekyhobo, that it was reasonable for admin Geekyhobo to decide Pinkshiny violated the rule by being a Dick, and that an appropriate and reasonable level of admin intervention was applied.
For these reasons the appropriate remedies are null, and there are no further actions recommended or required.
