Leaking and it’s punishments

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by neutral, May 2, 2019.

  1. neutral

    neutral Banned VIP

    One thing I’ve always been curious about, and honestly regret not making a stink about in the past is staff leaking and it’s punishments.

    Truly speaking... what in the world does banning members, usually ones that have spent a significant amount of time volunteering for the community, for significantly periods of time help protect the community?

    One thing the SGM has nearly always struggled with is this disconnection between the staff team and the community base. There have nearly always been complaints about SGM and it’s transparency. I believe the way leaking is treated is the one of the primary causes of this. In times where SGM is totally dead, the staff discussion is super active. Why is this? Is this because staff just doesn’t like interacting with the rest of the community? I do know that staff in the past felt ‘safer’ because they might accidentally leak. There was a period in the past where trials were allowed to participate in a small section of the staff team, and it had to be removed because moderators were so concerned that they might get in trouble for minor leaks.... why is leaking even a thing? There’s almost a government level of secrecy between the staff team and community members that... isn’t even really protecting anything.

    I’ve been in every position of staff and I gotta say... the stuff being hidden isn’t worth that disconnect. Adminstats get out? Oh no, someone might know that the staff thinks their toxic.... maybe they’ll stop being toxic? What’s the point?
     
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  2. neutral

    neutral Banned VIP

    @Sticky Bandit - I'm interested to hear from a current staff members perspective on this as well. I see that you've read it and rated me dumb. Do you mind explaining your rating?
     
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  3. Cash

    Cash I staff the proper way Banned VIP

    I mean if you don't say sketch shit in staff chat, leaking isn't really an actual issue. Only thing I could see being an actual issue are anti-cheat measures that not everyone should be aware of
     
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  4. Sticky Bandit

    Sticky Bandit Never fall below your standard VIP Bronze

    Sure, I'll explain it a little bit. "Dumb" is a bit harsh and I wish there was some other ratings I could give that fits better. Dislike doesn't fit, neither does disagree, confusing, old, or bad spelling. Unfortunately, that only leaves Dumb behind. By rating it "dumb" I don't really mean dumb, but maybe more of silly? Or nonsense? But dumb is really all there is to rate it that fits best.
    In short, don't mean dumb -- really mean silly but dumb is all there is lol.

    As to why I (That's right -- I. This isn't necessarily the views of anyone but me) think it's silly:
    (Boy, this is gonna be hard to write due to the subject matter. I might not write some things very clearly, sorry but it's the best I can do.)
    Imagine you're playing your favorite TTT server. Some guy RDMs you, so you get a little angry and call him some names. Some stupid mod tells you to stop. Then, that mod makes a note of this behavior. You then check the public notes against you and see this mod has called you toxic. What gives? That mod's got a stick up his ass! Now I'm gonna go call that mod some names for saying I'm toxic for just playing the game and having some friendly trash talk.
    Imagine you're a previous staff member who does some silly stuff to get demoted. We might want to make note of that, but sometimes those matters do get quite private, and really isn't something everyone needs to read about. It'd be disrespectful to those people by having their notes open to the public. There's also the aspect of the people we might consider toxic and might make note of -- if they saw we called them toxic, they might find this disrespectful and would really only create more problems than it's worth.

    I think your post is silly because it doesn't consider those things. You also didn't really consider why staff discussion might be more active than the rest of the server at times. We discuss a lot of stuff. Doesn't really have much to do with fear of interacting with the community, as all us staff members love this community -- we wouldn't be staff if it was any different.

    There's probably more to it than this. I'm only moderator, so I don't know fully everything that's going on behind the scenes. But, there's probably more to the privacy than this.

    Again, this might be a little vague. Sorry about that, but this is the best I can do.
     
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  5. Cash

    Cash I staff the proper way Banned VIP

    "This player has shown toxic behaviour" you don't gotta call them toxic, just their behaviour/actions
    Just make a thread in some staff only section w/ note of who's been demoted for what and when
     
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  6. Agent A

    Agent A Veni, vidi, vici VIP Silver Emerald

    This is a bit of response to both neutral's and Sticky Bandit's comments.

    While some things can be easily shown out to the public, there are some things that should be best left remained hidden.
    While I appreciate staff for doing their job, and the community for being there, there has been times when (or at least in my experiences so far as staff for variety of communities) where the information from staff only has caused mob mentality especially when people don't have all of the context.

    Secondly, I would say that it's not super hard to not leak (at very least) major/important staff-only information.
    If it's an accidental slip of tongue, I can see some leeway for that staff member to not be fully punished.

    Thirdly, I would probably argue that it's more of the community not producing enough content for people to talk about things.
    Out of all communities I have been so far in, the forums here are mostly utilized while the discord tend to be underutilized by the community.
    However, I have also seen far more people on discord talking and communicating when it's properly done.
    As it stands, SGM is so far lackluster in that aspect.

    However, I would like to make a suggestion.
    The lead administration can make announcement of rules and change in policy in more public manner so the community can know what's going on or what has changed.

    That won't fully alleviate the problem, but it will help.
    This is what I think the problem is.
    While I do not fully blame MangoTango's attempt to simplify the extended rules so it wouldn't be like reading a novel, it has brought some problems into the foray.
    That is how do we interpret the rules.
    We all interpret things differently because we define each word differently.
    That is where I would argue that the disconnection between the community and staff comes from in recent times.
    What the old extended rules has provided a benefit to us is how explicitly and clearly it defines things whereas the new extended rules tend to have some of more vague terms that makes it harder to get grasp of what interpretation is the right interpretation.

    Rather making staff sources public, SGM should figure out a way to define the rules more clearly enough for people to understand what is the main interpretation of the rules.
     
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  7. neutral

    neutral Banned VIP

    I think you misunderstood what I was saying here a bit. What I meant was that, hey, if you want to keep it private- that's fine keep it private. But the consequences of keeping it private has a higher consequence than making it public. In your scenario, you say they were being toxic... and they kept being toxic. Cool. You were right. Ban them... it really is that easy.

    Secondly, this thread is more about what the punishment is for leaking rather than making it public itself. I thought the title of the thread represented that but it seems that @Agent A and @Sticky Bandit both missed that point. Probably my fault, I wrote the post while running up a stairway. Why is leaking usually a permaban, or a ban for nearly a year/multiple years? Leaking isn't even that detrimental. The stuff in staff chat is pretty lackluster and isn't that big of a deal, as are adminstats. Yet you see people being banned for literally years for what? Posting their own adminstats? o_O

    Most other communities deal with leaking by you know.. not telling them stuff anymore. They just don't make them privy to that information anymore. Why is it so different here?
     
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  8. Dani

    Dani Impersonating Staff Banned VIP

    its
     
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  9. Agent A

    Agent A Veni, vidi, vici VIP Silver Emerald

    Fair enough. I interpreted your message a bit differently as why leaking staff information might be causing disconnection, which I responded as what I think is the actual cause(s) of disconnection.
    Secondly, I would comment about that thread.
    They are probably interpreting it based off that in a more strict manner.
     
  10. Zuko

    Zuko VIP Bronze

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  11. Jabba the Slut

    Jabba the Slut That's Kinky! Lead Admin VIP Silver

    Obviously, I think it should be dealt on a case by case basis on the punishment for leaking, depending on the severity, and if it was intentional. But unless the leaking done negatively affects a staff/players personal life, e.g credit card info, IP leak, etc, I think a permanent ban is ridiculous.

    *If some dingus leaks adminstats, and you feel like punishing them, demote or temporarily suspend them. (Again, case by case.)
     
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  12. Elvis

    Elvis TheRockStars VIP Silver

    I agree with what helix is saying here.

    I was talking with cowcakes in sb and we were discussing what it takes for a tmod to be considered ready. I ended up having to cut a very large chunk of my argument out of the discussion bc it had staff thread information. Its silly i couldnt speak of a thread that is in the staff only section simply bc it existed only in that section, bc it would have been considered leaking. The thread holds no makor information nor does the information within that thread help or not help any player staff or otherwise within the community. Its just a thread.
     
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  13. Agent A

    Agent A Veni, vidi, vici VIP Silver Emerald

    That and a good amount of things that staff have are already known to the users and are just blatant such as those ban appeals being denied for hacking but they won’t show the information because of its vital part of SGM evidence stuff. The shocking truth is that other communities have used it, and they are already publicly known to hackers.

    Other parts are meme’d when they occurred. The staff picnic is an example of that. Just go look at the sb logs.

    The list goes on, and I can keep continuing.

    It’s these parts that SGM is woefully slow to adapt.
     
  14. Elvis

    Elvis TheRockStars VIP Silver

    yeah its funny falcor got mad at me cause she admitted it and i called her out on it when she was a lead lmao its in the past falcor dont get butthurt again. Even when i was a mod it was still kept under tight lock and key but as the reports stacked up with leads stating they had undeniable evidence but couldnt release it, it became very obvious what they were using to get that information. Still today they arent public with using it, which is weird imo

    The staff picnic i dont think would have been considered leaking staff information if it was talked about by a staff member. That would be an incredible waste of a few minutes banning the person for something that literally holds no information what so ever and could never in the history of fuck all be harmful or helpful to those who know about it.
     
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  15. neutral

    neutral Banned VIP

    I remember that. What's odd is that, admins are totally allowed to post screencaps in appeals. That has been the case since before I was even admin over a year ago. Not only that, but there ARE appeals with screencaps in it- one of mine included when I was a lead.
     
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  16. Elvis

    Elvis TheRockStars VIP Silver

    Bro EXACTLY

    On god the secret is out. Might as well keep the secret going though, see how many people we can fool into thinking yall dont have screengrab
     
  17. Pacifist

    Pacifist Cynically Insane VIP Bronze

    Leaking staff information has differing levels of severity. No moderator has access to information that would seriously harm the server. I'm sorry, but a lot of the information we deal with isn't very glamorous. Even taking it a step up, admins aren't always privy to the highest level of information. That being said, keeping that information is probably for the best, that ways we don't cause any unnecessary drama.

    Now, whether or not someone should be banned for leaking staff information is wildly up to interpretation. I am not so sure on that. However, I definitely think you should be removed from your position if you leak staff information. If you can't be trusted to keep the most basic information from seeing the light of day, how can you be trusted to ban people correctly?

    Obviously, case by case basis and all that shit. This isn't an exact science of course.
     
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  18. Saturnity

    Saturnity SGMs Personal Planet VIP

    well as a mod all you can really leak is player notes and.. well..

    it's not that amazing.

    It's interesting to read staff notes on other staff members since we all just shit talked each other in our notes


    Still kinda a cunty thing to leak stuff that you shouldn't, it's not that hard.. Just d o n t do it.



    Edit: yeah forgot about that Elvis. We also talked shit about each other there too, if I recall not much staff talk happened haha
     
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  19. Elvis

    Elvis TheRockStars VIP Silver

    basically talking about anything thats specifically in staff only sections of discord/forums, its considered leaking.
     
  20. john redcorn

    john redcorn strangers like me VIP Emerald

    I opened this thread and saw lots of scary paragraphs that I’m not going to read, forgive me if this has been said yet;

    The biggest thing for me about leaking and why we punish in the first place for that shit is the trust factor; if a homie is leaking silly little petty stuff from the secured archives of Fort Knox, you can make an argument “well if he was caught doing this dumb shit, what important influential shit is actually leaving through his mouth”. Even with this logic, I can agree that the punishment is too harsh, and the current metaphorical “rift” between the staff mentality and community mentality may be benefited by amending this.
     
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