I would like to suggest that “upper” staff reveal the server’s list of precedents and maybe present it as if it’s case law so players can search this.
It is my experience that much is done behind closed doors, even sometimes only by upper staff and lower staff is unaware.
When it comes to telling off players, rather than simply explaining by the way you can’t do that, let’s see if we can fix that, they come down so heavy on players it’s intimidating and makes them want to leave. It’s usually guilty until proven innocent, even with the most genuine of incidents.
Players should be able to see examples of precedent and lower staff too. Much of the interpretation of the rules and actions by departments seems to be left to the whims of an admin who wants it their own way at that time and it undermines the rules itself sometimes.
This needs to stop. If players break the rules then fine, but let’s get some order.
I feel like most of this is already covered by the common sense law, at minimum.
Maybe you should be staying clear of barely legal or plainly illegal practices, because that’s where you’re coming from. You can also always ask a moderator for clarification for certain problems. Most mods are happy to point out illegal behaviour.
I should probably point out that the rules are meant to be updated once a gray area issue has been identified. This suggestion is in response to Luc notifying players that precedents will be listed on the forums. This has not happened in an ordered way to my knowledge. This is not his fault but there Is an expectation this would be worked on by all upper staff. Common sense goes hand in hand with expectations and player’s expectations are always different. The rules are also meant to help guide players what they can’t do, they don’t always stipulate what players should do. For players to know they are doing something illegal it should be expressly stated somewhere. I should note some admins have been good at updating rules but there are historical precedents which we can’t always be expected to remember.
surely it’s worth a mention that when the discord “meth recipe” incident occured i got a ban from the discord for a day with little explanation, instead of a “dont talk about this” or a warning as shown on the hm discord rules
honestly admins were the ones in that situation that were willing to discuss to me and tell me what was wrong, if anything they kept my willingness to play too lol
Acc you were removed from discord for circumventing a mute because upper staff hadn’t fixed discord time out, resulting in you continuing to reselect your roles to continue to stir trouble. I was given a staff warning for removing you from the discord, which I disagree with to be honest, considering it was meth recipes and chatgpt guides on how to make molotov cocktails on a 13+ general chat. Many actually thought the unprecedented post in announcements was unnecessary but it did not condone your behaviour. You have already waged a campaign against me since so sincerely do one.
This would be awesome, I think there should be reasoning shown in certain cases. This is why quite often ban topics are so important, to show why a player has been given a specific ruling.
Just to piggyback here - precedence is already openly available through existing ban topics, however I do agree that the loss of old forums has made some of it a bit less clear. Definitely something we can look into clarifying more.
This is quite a misrepresentation. Interpretation of the rules and actions are not just on a whim of a sole person and has not been for quite some time.
Generally speaking yes some things are discussed behind closed doors, this is no secret and is a given considering the difference in role/responsibility between techs/admins and mods/trial-mods.
Ultimately, something that is really being overlooked is that outside of precedence, staff have a responsibility to interpret what is not clearly defined based on the facts at hand paired with experience and understanding of the various situations that we come across. This is no different than real life - and decisions are made based on a concensus of what the whole staff team (or in some cases the upper staff team) believe is right. The rules are not all encompassing for a reason - we cannot account for every possible situation that may arise, and the lack of concrete definition around a given subject is not an argument for over-enforcement or “coming down too hard”.
This would be awesome, I think there should be reasoning shown in certain cases. This is why quite often ban topics are so important, to show why a player has been given a specific ruling.
I agree. Also non-ban stuff too. If it’s in an easy to read way and forum doesn’t get wiped again. Would help. Alternatively updating the rules as well. I noticed we can’t see edit history on posts so some rules like the billboards one got updated after a billboard was taken of the roof of mental’s plot.
But then they can always rely on the ‘gray zone’ and the ‘If a staff member tells a player to do something, failing to listen is seen as breaking the rules’ (which no-one seems to want to follow anyway). Some staff are pretty good at updating the rules, but there is stuff that is just precedent that isn’t mentioned in the rules.