Discord account: John Doom#0178
Date of ban: 11 June 2023
Events leading to the ban: Having completed my zombie PR, my first and only SS14 PR, I asked it to be reviewed. metalgearsloth asked me to implement a “friendlyfire faction component”, but it didn’t seem to make sense to me, because that component seems to be used only for AIs, while zombies are players. To avoid issues and hopefully make the PR easier to review, I changed it to one single vital edit and asked for review again. After 2 weeks of work, having not received a reply yet, I asked on Discord too, where I was told, not very politely, to just wait, as PRs take lots of time to be reviewed. After some days, I found out another developer was making a similar PR, except this one was getting reviewed constantly. I felt betrayed and expressed my concerns to that developer. metalgearsloth stepped in and threated to close my PR if he heard me complain about my PR anymore. I just flat out told him what I thought was going on: that his threat was useless since they had already decided to replace my PR, and that they were favouring only an inner-circle of developers. He closed my PR and even banned me from Discord. I told him that this last decision to ban me from Discord made no sense. Then he banned me from SS14’s Github too.
Reason the ban should be removed: Months old ban. And matter how you view it, metalgearsloth’s decision to ban me from both Discord and Github, like a criminal, is beyond any reason: there is not a single rule I could’ve ever broken that make metalgearsloth’s decision any sense at all and his justifications are empty.
= For game ban =
Ban reason: “Unpleasant to deal with on github and ingame.”
Length of ban: “This ban will only be removed via appeal.”
Events leading to the ban: I’ve asked admins to ban these self-antaging characters: Kobe Free, Desmond, Joe Stucker(?), Lennox, Thominson(?). All of them were witnessed by other players too. Getting no answer, I asked again at each game end, thinking messages I sent were wiped out after each game. After a few games, admin metalgearsloth stepped in and banned me saying i was spamming admins and because of what happened with Github. He didn’t ban the self-antags, as far as I know.
Reason the ban should be removed: Over 1 week ban and I’m sorry for calling him “scum”. It’s still complete admin abuse: I try to report self-antags to help the players and the game, and I get banned instead. It’s clear to me that metalgearsloth has a personal vendetta against me and, after closing my PR, banning me from Discord and Github, he now dosen’t even want me to play SS14 at all.
Your PR https://github.com/space-wizards/space-station-14/pull/16963 had a dozen reviews in the first week; as mirror pointed out it had 47 comments which I think is one of the highest amounts of attention a PR has ever received in its first week. When you whined at devs to merge this PR, not even a week old and still pending changes, mirror pointed out it was reviewed not even 3 days ago. Do not lie and say it went 2 weeks without response.
You went on discord and made the false claim it hadn’t been reviewed and that I said reviews don’t matter.
1-2. At the time I wrote on Discord about the PR, there were pending reviews asking for changes (ficcialfaint’s, PJB3005’s, mirrorcult’s and yours), all of them being fixed and marked as awaiting for approval from days, but no response. When I wrote on Discord that it wasn’t getting reviewed back, I meant this. As this was my first ss14 PR, I clearly overestimated the mainteners’ ability to quickly get back and actually thought my PR was being forgotten, hence why I asked clarifiction on Discord. As for what I said that I said reviews don’t matter, I was referring to your post here, which I guess I misunderstood (English is not my main language).
I went on that PR not because of the PR not getting reviews, but because I feared tom-leys’s PR was replacing my work and so I expressed my concerns to me. The fact that you intervened and threated to close my PR, led me to believe that you guys had decided to replace my work and that was the reason I wasn’t getting my PR approved.
That’s about it. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding, maybe I was being paranoid. Either way I find inappropriate the decision to ban me from Github, Discord and the game itself. As I said, there’s no rule I could’ve broken to deserve such treatment. I was an appreciated regular on the main servers and I’m a fellow video game developer. I didn’t mean bad to anyone, it’s just not my way.
The user is essentially shitcurity incarnate and thus completely unpleasant to play with or against - they overstep IC suspicion boundaries by random checking PDA’s (ID and Pen within included), masks (if its face-covering) and shoes for noslips. Before initiating such searches they make NO attempt to RP and instead immediately stun and cuff people over minor offenses if any present. 1 (one) point of heat damage from a practice disabler is enough excuse for them to stun another security member and demand a demote from Warden or Head of Security (granted they relent if told that that’s moronic by an above authority).
Upon dying from anything that is not straight up contraband they usually cry selfantag in deadchat or OOC, sometimes in all caps about them calling admins and that those who wronged him are getting banned. Merely staring at him getting beat to a pulp from an IC (in-character) grudge is enough reason for them to declare selfantag.
When they’re not a security officer they are usually acting as a backseat secoff instead, instructing others to PDA/Headset check whoever actual security officers have in cuffs.
If none of the above work to “win” at the game they threaten to metagrudge in post-round OOC:
Mostly I would echo what Clairvoyant said right before me.
Giovanni Mariotti is the type of security officer character that goes just leaps and bounds beyond what could be considered a normal search. And believe me, whenever I play security I love playing the very strict hardass type of cop that goes by the book. But fair is fair and what Giovanni often does is not fair.
As a security officer / Warden / Head of Security Giovanni is just plainly said an absolute pain in the ass to work with. Even if we leave his attitude out of this, the fact that he searches and treats station members to a degree as has been described above often leaves the rest of security to deal with the fallout. Upset members of the crew, Heads of Staff complaining and more are some of the effects of his actions.
On the other hand, whenever I am not a member of security, even for the smallest offenses I have found myself be completely stripped naked by him. This has happened consistently with Giovanni. You dare to make the smallest of mistakes in his presence? Be ready to get stunned, cuffed, dragged off to security and then stripped in a cell COMPLETELY. All without the timer running. Then he will often leave you in a cell while he takes his sweet time to go get the HoS or Warden, shoving responsibility for the extended brig time off to superiors. Let’s not even get into how he often exaggerates his claims of what prisoners have done.
In other words; quintessential shitsec. Sorry for this little rant here but seeing as this has been brought up by somebody else I just had to chime in and share my personal experiences.
My experience with the character of security officer/hos Giovanni Mariotti was only positive, but I don’t greytide or antagonize security so I might be in the minority. I also have no evidence to back this up, but it’s an equally proven claim to the ones made above me.
About the way I search people, I only learned recently by another admin that checking headsets and PDAs can’t be done without a reasonable RP reason and I stopped doing it regularly. I play this game from just a few months, so I apologize if I did some mistakes in the past.
Despite not being the subject of this appeal, I’ll tell about my secoff character. I play as a serious no-bs officer. I want to arrest people only when they commit actual crimes (like harming people), when security is at risk (like suspiciously trespassing into security or bridge, else I’ve seen them bombing so many times already) and when strictly ordered to. Clairvoyant’s arrest was a mistake, I admit that: she started shooting me with disabler in sec and when I saw I was getting damage, I thought she was trying to kill me, so I arrested her. Only after I found out it was a practice disabler and that it only dealt a few heat damage. I asked HOS about it, who then order her to be released. No harm done in the end, but I still apologize for what happened, I should’ve tried better to regain my cool and just release her immediately.
About “crying” on selfantags, I just feel it’s unfair people play that way despite breaking the rules and that they still don’t get punished. I don’t randomly accuse anyone, I had always waited for the end manifest to check if someone was actually a selfantag, except a couple of times I directly asked admins. The instance that brought me to call ahelp and get banned was that these 5 players metagrudged me and worked together to ambush and kill me, despite not being syndicates. I then did say that I would’ve metagrudged them if admin hadn’t ban them, but then I didn’t and kept playing with them has nothing had happened.
I am in agreement that it is an unfair advantage towards antags. There are several people who consistently greytide the station every round or actually self-antag and aren’t punished for it. And if you wait the 2 seconds as an officer to find out if they’re actually antag or not, you’d be dead in the worst case scenario vs mildly annoying someone who can’t take 3 seconds out of their time to be searched. #FreeGiovanni
Im locking this thread from further replies. This is not a thread for discussion of if self-antagonism is being punished or not, nor is it a thread to berate the accused over questionable playstyle.
2 minutes ago, WhimsySpirit said:
I am in agreement that it is an unfair advantage towards antags. There are several people who consistently greytide the station every round or actually self-antag and aren’t punished for it. And if you wait the 2 seconds as an officer to find out if they’re actually antag or not, you’d be dead in the worst case scenario vs mildly annoying someone who can’t take 3 seconds out of their time to be searched. #FreeGiovanni
You have no idea if self-antags are punished or not because we (for good reason) do not generally make actions taken against players publicly known. To say people “self-antag and aren’t punished for it” is disingenuous.
5 hours ago, JohnDoom said:
About “crying” on selfantags, I just feel it’s unfair people play that way despite breaking the rules and that they still don’t get punished. I don’t randomly accuse anyone, I had always waited for the end manifest to check if someone was actually a selfantag, except a couple of times I directly asked admins. The instance that brought me to call ahelp and get banned was that these 5 players metagrudged me and worked together to ambush and kill me, despite not being syndicates. I then did say that I would’ve metagrudged them if admin hadn’t ban them, but then I didn’t and kept playing with them has nothing had happened.
Let me re-iterate the principal problem we have with you going about this the way you did:
You can clearly see [SOS] attached to your messages (which all get relayed to the discord, which is clearly stated underneath the ahelp window) which means no admin was currently online to handle your request. We try to retroactively go back through and handle complaints. What you decided to do instead was assume you were deliberately being ignored and repeatedly told us to ban three people with IC names with very little/no supporting information beyond they killed you and you didn’t like that. In fact, OOC logs even seem to support the fact that you knew admins were not readily online to deal with your problem.
You then proceeded to go into OOC and claim you’re going to metagrudge them. Regardless of your action taken to metagrudge them or not, we’re going to treat you threatening to metagrudge people the same. It is not tolerated. Your aim with this kind of comment is to scare someone into compliance with a threat of metagrudge or to actually metagrudge someone, neither of which I care for.
We will hold a vote on this appeal and move it where it belongs once that concludes.
Vote’s been decided. For all of the reasons that lonesoldier stated previously, and then some, we’ve elected to deny your appeal at this time, and may be appealed again no sooner than September 15th, 2023.
I would like to take a moment before closing this to address a few common thoughts from the team that came up during the admin discussion for this appeal.
The way you’ve carried on in Discord, in those ahelps, and in relation to how your contributions were handled on Github were the equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum. Up until you were banned, most interactions you had with anyone on the administrative side of the game has been wrought with complaint after complaint, that things were not being done at a quick enough pace according to your timeline.
You need to keep in mind, any time dedicated by coders, contributors, admins, and developers is wholly appreciated, but not mandatory by any stretch of imagination. Yes, I specifically included contributors to make sure you were put on the same playing field in that regard, because the time contributors spend working on potential additions is equally appreciated.
I would like to make one final thought perfectly clear before closing this:
The people who work on this project on a daily basis are all volunteers, not punching bags. Please remember that in the future if you ever choose to contribute to this project, or really any kind of passion project in the future.
