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In-game Username: hyphenation
Discord username: poop sticks
Characters you play: Risks-the-Rain, borg/AI

On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 10-20

Days you are available to admin on: Wednesdays, Fridays, and weekends are most likely (EST)

How old are you? 24

Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? SS14: Delta-V, maybe a hundred or so hours
SS13: Extensive. On /tg/13 servers, I had 700 hours of AI alone.

Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? Not with 13 or 14. Some small sub-community moderation for a gmod RP group, but that probably shouldn’t even count.

Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? SS14: no
SS13: yes, not permanently though that’s probably because of extenuating circumstances (wouldn’t have blamed the admin for making it permanent, to be honest)

What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? Of the listed tasks, in-game and out-of-game rule enforcement would be among my interests. In-game events I’m not so interested in, I already do a lot of DMing, and ban appeals are probably something I could do but I don’t have as much an interest in.
As for unlisted tasks, generally new people take information from Trusted™ sources more seriously, so I’m fine fielding questions both in #help and #admin-questions. Otherwise, there isn’t much I can think of.

What are you least interested in doing as an admin? I said above that I’m not that interested in game mastering for SS14. Maybe that’ll change as familiarity with admin tools increases, and generally there is no set schedule for the hobby, so.

Detail Questions

What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?

In part, and likely the one most people think of, a game admin serves a similar role to what a judge is supposed to serve in a legal system; it is the judge’s duty to interpret the law, and apply fitting punishment where needed.

However, it is also partly up to the game admin’s discretion to make a round more interesting as needed. For the most part, I’ve never witnessed any major intervention, but I’ve seen (and head of) a few minor things - typically on the LRP servers, which admittedly I don’t go to often.

Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?

Partly, it is because of the admin exodus, and the project’s reaction to it - while I don’t doubt there’s still a lot of communication I can’t see, the fact that everyone I’ve spoken to seems to agree that the situation has, and still is, improving is a sign that my faith and effort won’t be misplaced.

However, a not insignificant factor is that I have much less confidence in my ability to contribute via PRs than I do via the whole interpretation game. It’s the basis for sillycon behaviour, after all.

How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?

The wizden servers can vary a lot, even on just an individual server depending on the time of day and population count. Trying to regulate the servers beyond a certain point is counterproductive.

That is to say, I don’t always like them. I don’t play on the LRP servers very often at all, and even Salamander can make me mald from time to time.

Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?

There are a lot of small, almost unnoticeable actions that can add up. Sometimes it’s helping players who are as good as dead, sometimes it’s throwing a curve ball at a station that’s a little too calm and orderly for the players.

Most of the time, it seems to be just having neat little in-character interactions, from the small scale of fax responses all the way up to full-on admeme. Somewhere in the middle lies the range of TC Trades and the like.

Have you ever had a negative experience in the game or with a game admin? If so what, if anything, would you do to prevent other players from experiencing this?

In SS14? No.

Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?

Skarlet once bwoink’d me when I privately expressed that I wished to have a different AI name. I wasn’t expecting a response at all, let alone an admin reaching out to “fix” something that, honestly, wasn’t even a problem. Maximum respect, Shortest One.

Scenario Questions

Scenario 1

It is the start of the round. There are 60 players on the server. The game mode is traitors, traitors have not been selected yet. There are three players who decided to observe the round instead of join it orbiting you. Two of them are encouraging you to “do something funny”.

As, in this scenario, the majority of players won’t have established their basics yet and won’t be ready to really react to anything, I’d likely do something that wouldn’t require any reaction at all, and just end up as a little curious thing that happened.

Littering plushies in maints, maybe faxing the HOP unprompted with a strange request, or something similar. The most round-affecting it might get would be spawning more mice and mothroaches than a station would reasonably see in a normal round, I think.

One thing I have quite missed from ss13 is Station Goals - a little thing that is intended as a cooperative goal for the entire station, in lieu of any unforeseen circumstances. Faxing command some odd requests that might take them a full round of cooperation through various departments… sounds interesting. Though it depends if they’d take the request seriously.

Scenario 2

This scenario takes place on LRP. The Head of Security has decided to coup the Captain. The Head of Personnel agrees with the Head of Security and has taken up arms in case it is necessary to aid in effecting the arrest of the Captain. The Captain is hiding with the Quartermaster in the cargo shuttle to avoid the Clown who has stolen the captains saber as a non-antag. There are five people named in this scenario. Please describe what actions, if any, you would take in relation to each, and why.

“Coup”, at least to me, implies an unjust attempt to take control. I will answer assuming I have enough context to know that this is the case. However, I don’t have enough context to know whether this is an overly hectic situation to be handling multiple chat windows at the same time, so depending on the speed of escalation I will take these actions either during (if it is especially slow and clogging the round) or after (if it is especially fast, so I avoid clogging up the round) the events resolve themselves. I am also assuming none of the individuals mentioned ahelped, and so I would have to reach out to them of my own accord, and likely get other admins to help, even if the most they can do is advise.

I’d also like to note that in the case this situation is especially slow, I’d see about whether having an ERT response to help defuse the situation while the individuals are dealt with privately is within reason. If crew are mostly siding with the Captain, this shouldn’t be necessary.

1. Head of Security - I would like to hear, from their perspective, why the Captain must be deposed. Even if I do not agree with their actions, they may see it quite differently, so I will assume a position near but not equal to them - at least in conversation. If I don’t find their explanation acceptable, whether because it’s unreasonable or because it doesn’t add up with the reasonably observable events, I will make this clear with them before deciding on a punishment. (Punishments are elaborated on later, during the Captain’s segment, because if the HoS and HoP don’t have a just reason to coup the captain, that’s already a “bordering inappropriate” response)

2. Head of Personnel - similar question, but depending on the number of security officers available, I would ask why they have chosen to take up arms. Their position as the Head of Paperwork places them neatly in a position to mediate the situation, if at all possible. Results would be similar to the Head of Security, though their actions are judged individually.

The order might branch from here depending on the actions of the other individuals involved - whomever is responsible for the most harm becomes the priority.

3. Clown - I may not even reach out to them, depending on the extent of the behaviour. If they’re notably part of the situation, though, I would ask why they have/had the captain’s saber and why they’re making themselves a threat as a non-antag. There’s a significant amount of ambiguity with their actions here - are they unaware of the coup situation, and just clowning around? Have they actually struck at the captain, and are most certainly not providing comedic relief? If it’s the former, it’s an easy resolution. Tell them not to worry overly much about it, no actual punishment and likely not even a note. If it’s the latter, it’s more complicated. How much do they know about the coup situation? It’s still self-antag, but if it’s under instruction from the HoS and HoP that gets noted on them as well. The captain isn’t a threat to the non-antag clown’s life and duties unless the captain makes themselves one.

4. Captain - whether I even reach out to them and the quartermaster depends on more context than is given in the prompt. Has their response been appropriate (attempts to defuse, negotiate, etc; only responding with combat if they have no other reasonable option; not attempting to round remove people for no reason…)

• In the event their response is within the realm of appropriate, I might leave them be, or I might, after the situation has resolved, ask them why they didn’t see fit to ahelp (assuming they didn’t)
• In the event their response is bordering inappropriate, I may ask them about specific actions. I’m not here to nit pick the absolute hell out of their behaviour - being an observer and being an active participant are two very different perspectives - but there are some behaviors that can still be used as a moment to possibly learn from, for the future. It is possible that there would only be a note left for this scenario, if at all, but this could extend to a role ban. It’s a grey range.
• In the event their response is exceptionally inappropriate, I would ask them why they didn’t ahelp as opposed to responding with such a level of irresponsibility to their role. Even on LRP, Command are held to a higher standard, et cetera. If they’ve been using the excuse that they’re being couped as reason to murderbone, for a rather extreme example… well, that’s almost certainly a command roleban. The only real reason I would ask them for their input here is to determine if there’s any real remorse, as that can affect the severity of the ban - whether it extends to a full ban, appeal only, etc.

5. Quartermaster - depending on their actions, similarly to the Captain, it’s possible I wouldn’t reach out to punish the QM at all. It also remains very possible that I do, though. If they were ordered by the Captain to take certain actions that are exceptionally inappropriate, these actions would reflect on the Captain’s punishment as well.

…ideally, if I have enough context to know this is a coup (as in, unjust) as opposed to a deposing of command (justified), I’d also have intervened before it got quite this complicated. Given that the QM is working with the Captain, though, it is already likely to be unjust.

Scenario 3

You are ahelping a player about an issue. The player has no prior noted issues. A few days earlier, an admin had told you that this type of situation should result in a temporary ban for a first offense, and you are confident that this situation is not substantially different from the type that admin was describing. During the ahelp, another admin pings you on Discord with a link to the ongoing ahelp and tells you to just indefinitely ban them and make them appeal. Excluding trialmins and headmins, all admins are equally “ranked”. A headmin is not currently available.

I’d ask them if there’s any outstanding reasoning - there may very well be a backlog of ahelps that includes this particular player, at which point I’d take that over and ask them about it as well - but there might not be, at which point I’d inform them of the conflict of information, and ask them to see if they can clarify with either: the rules, the prior informant admin, or at least one other admin.

If they are unable to do so, I will inform the user of the fact that for now they will be receiving the temporary ban, but it may get extended by admin consensus, and let them know to DM me on Discord or something similar so I can inform them if the decision changes. It’s a lot easier to leave a negative impression than a positive one, and if they’re getting temporarily banned anyways, there should be enough time to come to a clarification and conclusion - much more than is available in the duration of an ahelp.