Spring Drama

[SwiftSpear]

So combombing isn't an offense, there's nothing wrong with it apparently.

I decide to combomb for the rest of the day, to see if that's true.

I'm told that if I do that, I'll get banned for it.

So that obviously shows that there is a problem with combombing as he would quite happily ban me for it.

If you can't understand that then I couldn't give a flying fuck for you either way.

You wouldn't be the first to do it to be honest, Tired has a long record in that regard.

Just be aware it's an area of thin ice. Some players don't like playing with Comm Bombers, so you may be asked not to rename and rejoin specific gamerooms, which moderators will defend. The other factor, choosing to use a specific strategy all day long is one thing, choosing to be an asshole about it all day long is another thing entirely. My sense is more that you told quant that you were going to try to fuck up as many people's days as you could than that you were going to legitimately try to execute a valid strategy. We've disciplined people for joining games just to sit and chat while filling a player spot for the duration as well, so it doesn't just have to be griefing in an offensive state, being passive to the point of sabotaging your own team can be greifing as well.

With that in mind, feel free to try to pull off comm bomb strats for an entire day, just remember we're not responsible for your popularity.

[SwiftSpear]

durr

One thing to point out here: you yourself admitted that you are inactive in the lobby. How do you feel you are able to judge who is and who is not fit as a moderator?

I wouldn't be appointing or directly monitoring new lobby moderator behavior. In all likelyhood I'd be looking for someone to take over that end of things entirely from the ground up. I'm just one of the few admins with the interest and ability to implement a moderator overhaul fairly seamlessly.

Also, lobby moderators have nothing to be doing moderating INGAME behavior, that is up to the game hosters to moderate. If people follow eachother and kill eachother ingame when on same team, they will get soon banned by the hosts.

for the millionth time, the lobby system still don't work for that. All a player has to do is rename and they are both no longer banned from whatever gameroom they were banned from, and not only that but the gameroom host has nearly zero ability to determine if that renamed player joining the server is a smurf or not... the exception being an quite unreliable smurfs feature half implemented in springie still. However, you being a near habitual smurf, are well aware of that. Thanks for the attempt at social engineering to your own quite likely malicious ends

As a sidenote: I am currently banned by one of the omnipresent moderators (licho) for actions on one of his autohosts. Instead of banning me on his host, he abused his rights and banned me from the entire server.

It's not abusive to ban people exploiting security vulnerabilites in the springie autohosts from the spring lobby. If you are going to undertake behavior that make it more difficult for springie admins to run their servers more fairly and efficiently, we don't want you on our lobby server at all. We're not talking about comm bombing some dude who thinks all BA games should be 10 min no rush. This is not an ingame action. You were actively abusing lobby protocol to impede the authority and activity of game hosts. I'm aware there are vulnerabilities, we give no one open licence to abuse them though. Your ban is not long, take it as a wake up call to the nature of the project you're participating in here.

"I was playing with stuff and I didn't think it would work but to my suprize it did" I understand. The open sourced nature of the systems we're working with means stuff like that will occasionally appear. But if you just sneak off hoping no one notices and we have to find out what you did for ourselfs then we'll assume you did it intentionally and maliciously for lack of better evidence otherwise. If you report that kind of stuff you buy yourself a huge amount of leeway.

[edit] I'm still fishing for public opinion. Do we need more moderators in lobby? I haven't been active, I don't have a good gauge of the day to day state of the space, so if you have an opinion please voice it. Both pro and con.

[zwzsg]

Not more moderators. But clearer rules. And moderators that applies them impartially.

[Carpenter]

This is starting to sound like democrasy, more we get moderators, more we get opinions and it will exacerbate the current situation in my opinion.

Dictatorship for the win.

[Regret]

I wouldn't be appointing or directly monitoring new lobby moderator behavior. In all likelyhood I'd be looking for someone to take over that end of things entirely from the ground up. I'm just one of the few admins with the interest and ability to implement a moderator overhaul fairly seamlessly.

Go with Neddie.

It's not abusive to ban people exploiting security vulnerabilites in the springie autohosts from the spring lobby.

:<

I'm still fishing for public opinion. Do we need more moderators in lobby? I haven't been active, I don't have a good gauge of the day to day state of the space, so if you have an opinion please voice it. Both pro and con.

Not more, just same amount but active. Dump the ones that just moderate when it concerns them (licho,det,kdr..), fill the space with few new and set precise rules as to what is not allowed in the lobby (preferably specify for #main) + precise punishments.

[Jazcash]

Take action as soon as you can Swift. The longer it's left, the more likely it is that nothing will ever be done about it.

Start some nomination thread to allow members who they want to be on the staff team, then once all the nominations are in, start up some poll or something.

[AF]

Moderation both on the forums and the lobby has always been flawed, and I always raised a handful of points and utterly fatal flaws which have never been addressed save to be dismissed. I stopped this because it damaged me and my reputation and the moderation staff did nothing save trying to humour or attack me.

There are technical fixes, but while these attitudes and flaws persist, the moderation staff are fools to think any developer or myself would invest to fix them.

Here we go:

• Moderators are chosen and given power, but the community is not told until its too late
• Moderators once they gain power do not loose it unless theyre inactive for almost a year or if they make outrageous buses of moderator power that are apparent on a community wide scale
• New moderators arent always announced, and there is no list of lobby moderators.
• There is little or not transparency in both lobby and forum moderation, no records of what was moderated and why.
• There is no process for raising issues with new moderators. When peet was newly made a moderator, I pointed out a huge list of things he had done which should mark him out as anything but a moderator, however nobody took it seriously. Nobody even considered what I had said, and blindly defended their new moderator despite proof. A process needs to be put in place where the community can comment beforehand, and if something happens after the moderator is given power, they can be taken down if found to be irresponsible.
• Moderators can be clan members.
• Criticisms are usually met with a dismissal or something akin to what swiftspear is saying, aka blaming the technology and not actually doing anything new or different

If we could see who banned/kicked who and why it would go a long long way to fixing this. Moderators who are inept would become blatantly obvious and their removal would become pretty much necessary.

Users should be able to view moderation complaints against other users too, If I demanded jazcash or wombat be banned for com bombing, anyone on the server should be able to see that demand and comment on it without me baing to write a bot to auto-cast it every 5 minutes in the popular channels.

Moderators and admins should be banned from joning or affiliating with clans. They are by definition impartial, and should not eb shown to favour politicaly a subgroup.

If I had ignored iamacup, not started AFLobby or AFS, and kept in peets good books, I would be a moderator now. Is it a coincidence that those who regularly joined #peet over several years all managed to acquire moderator status? Or that most exploits and attacks where discovered or engineered by people in that channel? Yet nobody will even investigate this? The fact nobody is willing to actually challenge and vett is a testament to how bad things are.



I have ideas and plans which would help moderators enormously. I can negate the swiftspear point completely and utterly if I wished, but until the flaws in moderation are taken seriously I have no intention of doing any of it because it would preserve an inherently corrupt and flawed system, I do not see either why this system is being defended by the very people who complain about it.

[Jazcash]

It's not even just moderation that's problem. There are hundreds of great ideas around here, most likely rotting away at the back of the forums never to be seen again. Nobody wants to do anything that other people suggest any more, it's just use your own ideas and don't take advise...

[aegis]

If I had ignored iamacup, not started AFLobby or AFS, and kept in peets good books, I would be a moderator now. Is it a coincidence that those who regularly joined #peet over several years all managed to acquire moderator status? Or that most exploits and attacks where discovered or engineered by people in that channel? Yet nobody will even investigate this? The fact nobody is willing to actually challenge and vett is a testament to how bad things are.

I see your logical fallacy and raise you one "Moderators are under constant scrutiny by their peers and the spring community. If any step reasonably out of place, they will be removed promptly. In accordance with this, moderators will not be added without good reason."

[Peet]

There is no process for raising issues with new moderators. When peet was newly made a moderator, I pointed out a huge list of things he had done which should mark him out as anything but a moderator, however nobody took it seriously. Nobody even considered what I had said, and blindly defended their new moderator despite proof. A process needs to be put in place where the community can comment beforehand, and if something happens after the moderator is given power, they can be taken down if found to be irresponsible.

Other than your absolutely hilarious PM to lordmatt, did you actually TRY to do anything other than complain months later, lol?

Moderators can be clan members. (...) Moderators and admins should be banned from joning or affiliating with clans. They are by definition impartial, and should not eb shown to favour politicaly a subgroup.

Any rules against that would be ridiculous. Moderators want to play with friends like everyone else, removing that would be removing another reason for them to stick around.

Criticisms are usually met with a dismissal or something akin to what swiftspear is saying, aka blaming the technology and not actually doing anything new or different

Taking that sentence word for word would lead me to say that the problem is SwiftSpear....but then again he was just expressing interest in making some major changes. So I'll just settle for calling you an idiot over this point.

If we could see who banned/kicked who and why it would go a long long way to fixing this. Moderators who are inept would become blatantly obvious and their removal would become pretty much necessary. Users should be able to view moderation complaints against other users too, If I demanded jazcash or wombat be banned for com bombing, anyone on the server should be able to see that demand and comment on it without me baing to write a bot to auto-cast it every 5 minutes in the popular channels.

The moderators and their actions are not accountable to the community, they are accountable to the administrative leaders. I really do not believe a democratic system run by the community at large would have good results in the long run.

If I had ignored iamacup, not started AFLobby or AFS, and kept in peets good books, I would be a moderator now.

That is a hilarious sentiment. I think it had more to do with the fact that you were always pissing off Betalord.

Is it a coincidence that those who regularly joined #peet over several years all managed to acquire moderator status?

Not in the least! The habitants of that channel are part of a large conspiracy to create an illuminati-like leadership team for the community. OR perhaps it was more due to the natural tendency for like-minded people to flock together, and many of those people just happened to be moderator material. Plenty weren't. Some were purged.

Or that most exploits and attacks where discovered or engineered by people in that channel? Yet nobody will even investigate this? The fact nobody is willing to actually challenge and vett is a testament to how bad things are.

People who become intimate with the workings of a system and have no malicious intent often gain sanctioned control over that system...this is not an uncommon occurrance in the world and is not limited this community by any means.

I have ideas and plans which would help moderators enormously. I can negate the swiftspear point completely and utterly if I wished, but until the flaws in moderation are taken seriously I have no intention of doing any of it because it would preserve an inherently corrupt and flawed system, I do not see either why this system is being defended by the very people who complain about it.

I agree there are problems....but I highly doubt adopting your attitudes will aid anybody.

[tombom]

Honestly, you really think the problem is the people? I'm more than happy to shuffle the moderation team, but it's barely a contributor at this point in time. We need a more solid system, and then we need a set of rules that moderation should be enforcing that makes sense to that system. We have rules against intentionally ruining the game for other players, but at what point does "making that player lose" and "ruining the game seperate"? Some people would ban things like dgunning other comms or picking up comms in atlases. Do those things REALLY deserve server wide bans?

The banning structures in place right now are too incomplete and inefficient, the staff is tired and battleworn, and the rules are rusted and non-ideal

pretty much

I disagree with some of the mod choices etc, but there's not a great deal that they actually effect unless they're being power tripping morons. Biggest problem is a lack of knowing what the actual responsibilities are (not easy to define)

As a sidenote: I am currently banned by one of the omnipresent moderators (licho) for actions on one of his autohosts. Instead of banning me on his host, he abused his rights and banned me from the entire server.

oh yeah, the lack of ability to actually complain about/discuss mods (most of the threads are locked or whatever) kind of sucks

[AlcariTheMad]

Is it a coincidence that those who regularly joined #peet over several years all managed to acquire moderator status?

I've been sitting around in #peet for at least 3 years now and I'm not a moderator! (I'm not trying to be pedantic, I'm just saying some of your claims are ridiculous or that I should be made a moderator)

[Neddie]

Some of you want impartial rules applied consistently, and some of you want moderation which isn't mechanical. My approach draws from both schools, personally, the more clear cut the offense is, the harder my response, but in less clear matters I listen to input from the participants.

[AF]

• Betalord had long gone by the tiem i was ejected from cuppyland.
• Your not innocent peet and I have years of logs for #peet showing it, but we all know that it makes no difference what anyone says shows or presents, its a futile effort. But you have nothing to loose by admitting it so why don't you? I don't pretend to be the perfect goody two shoes, far from it, Ive shouted and screamed at times on here before
• I sent a lot of messages to a lot of people, lordmatt may have been the only one who actually told you but of the messages I sent, those to lordmatt where of the least.
• I have in no way supported a community lead democracy, I've simply requested greater transparency and moderation by example, aswell as the ability for the community to input on decisions before they happen, since the community is not a pack of sheep who cannot add up numbers.
• I wasnt the first one to claim that certain groups are betting preferential treatment to moderator status. The LCC claim far predates any claim I may have made about #peet, you yourself have been known to say it in the last few years.
• #peet isn't a conspiracy to gain leadership of the spring community, its an exercise in lulz
• I wasn't the only person in #peet who delighted in the epic fail of betalord, and I did try initially to appease betalord and be nice. When that tactic failed, I took other measures, which we could make multi page flamewars about
• I said when threads liek this are made, one common thing that happens is peet comes along and dismisses it and ridicules the poster. After I posted my first post in this thread, peet came in dismissed what I said and ridiculed me. Anyone seeing a pattern?
• Nobody can comment on my ideas on changing TASServer because nobody actually knows what they are!

[SwiftSpear]

Is it a coincidence that those who regularly joined #peet over several years all managed to acquire moderator status?

I've been sitting around in #peet for at least 3 years now and I'm not a moderator! (I'm not trying to be pedantic, I'm just saying some of your claims are ridiculous or that I should be made a moderator)

It's a legitimate observation IMO, but it's more that for whatever reason #peet became the after hours bar that several moderators ended up kicking off their shoes and chilling out at the end of the day. Since moderators were appointed by nomination from someone on current moderation staff, if you were a good and active community member, and you hung out on #peet, pretty much all of the moderation staff would know you and your chances of being considered would skyrocket. Hanging out in #peet was never a guaranteed in though. Smoth for example will never be a moderator, his heart is only soft for the content development community, and he's to volatile to tolerate the player community.

I've never had a staff member power trip out of their mind. Abuse cases are very very limited and in most cases an offending moderator deals with the situation without us needing to intervene in any way. The biggest crime any of my moderation staff have undertaken is inactivity, and I really don't think that's something I can blame them for, so ultimately I feel that our system has succeeded in producing a good moderation staff, but I'll agree that it's never been a good system for achieving excellent representation of the player base.

[AF]

Swiftspear, I hear many things coming out of lobby land, they defy what you say, but whether they are true is irrelevant to my point, the fact that they're being said at all shows that there is a problem. Greater transparency would help enormously, as well as showing people that if you act this way this is what will happen and we don't tolerate it, whereas right now people have to push the boundaries to figure out where they are rather than being presented them.

[Peet]

I said when threads liek this are made, one common thing that happens is peet comes along and dismisses it and ridicules the poster. After I posted my first post in this thread, peet came in dismissed what I said and ridiculed me. Anyone seeing a pattern?

Peet is a fag unban me.

[SwiftSpear]

Betalord had long gone by the tiem i was ejected from cuppyland.

The reason you've never been considered for moderation powers is that you CONSTANTLY feud with people both developers, moderators, and users in the player base. I have met very few people in my lifetime capable of maintaining as many simultaneous negative relationships without just outright being total arseholes. We've never appointed a moderator who was knowingly feuding with some segment of the player base or developer base, and when those kinds of things have come up in the past the moderator in question has been required to bury the hatchet to the best of their ability pretty much immediately.

Your not innocent peet and I have years of logs for #peet showing it, but we all know that it makes no difference what anyone says shows or presents, its a futile effort. But you have nothing to loose by admitting it so why don't you? I don't pretend to be the perfect goody two shoes, far from it, Ive shouted and screamed at times on here before

Peet has been our most dramatic appointment as a moderator, I was unaware of certain things he had done previous to his appointment, and had I been more aware he likely would not have ever gained any powers. That being said, Peet proved himself in the field to be one of our better moderation team members, he was both active and effective in working towards our goals and promoting as healthy a playing community as possible.

Nobody can comment on my ideas on changing TASServer because nobody actually knows what they are!

I can comment because they aren't implemented. If I could make my imagination reality we would have none of the systemic problems in lobby we're currently plagued with. I'm well aware however that I have next to no ability to implement the systems I dream up. The idea jar is full, that's not the problem any more.

[tombom]

Some of you want impartial rules applied consistently, and some of you want moderation which isn't mechanical. My approach draws from both schools, personally, the more clear cut the offense is, the harder my response, but in less clear matters I listen to input from the participants.

I'm not expecting moderators to be robots, it's just not clear what their role is all the time, which explains stuff like FoeOfTheBee's interesting muting decisions.

[AF]

Thats because Im not going to pander to peoples feelings when theyre wrong. I could very well keep quiet and endeavor to be moderator material and I am capable of moderation myself, I've moderated other forums and my own site perfectly fine, but if I became a moderator here I would be unable to do many of the things I do already, not to mention that I cba with the responsibility of reading uninteresting topics and listening to random people whine at me that they got com-bombed.

Im not willing to shutup right now and humour people to stay in goodbooks so I can yield a banhammer, I never did. That doesnt mean I dont object to things.

There's also an indication that if I wrote bots for you that you compiled and ran, that you wouldnt use them. Some of these bots would need moderator status too so i couldnt deploy them myself, i could only hand their source code to you with a script to build so you could look at their internals and be sure Im upto no good.

We've never appointed a moderator who was knowingly feuding with some segment of the player base or developer base, and when those kinds of things have come up in the past the moderator in question has been required to bury the hatchet to the best of their ability pretty much immediately.

Iamacup vs AF was quite prominent, Peet/Aegis/AF/Lurker vs [1337] lasted years, it goes on and on.

Consistency problem tombom raises would be solved by greater transparency as I requested. TASServer already logs a lot, making a public listing of who moderated who and when would be easy. I assume Uberserver has a spaceage equivilant.