Then we figure out a different way of measurement. By the round, perhaps. Or time. The point isn't complete accuracy, it's that people should be slain less, not more, and there should be some sort of limit in place. Here is a reason: Even if it's not malicious, a moderator is going to be far more forgiving for their friend than they are a stranger, or their mood may effect their actions day by day. If they are upset, they might be far more willing to ban or slay twice than if they are happy. And then, there is the simple inconsistency from the player's point of view. Two players might get slain on the same round. Three maps later, both RDM again, and one could get two slays while the other gets one, on the same round. Maybe it's not even related to their offenses: Maybe the moderator just remembered one name and not the other. Then you get two players punished for the same crime at the same times, differently. Not to mention all the people who play, see things done one way (And on our server, 'one way' is just about the only way, with the only exception being special circumstances), and then suddenly, with another mod, it's done another. And there is absolutely nothing special about the rule. It just looks bad, from an aesthetics standpoint, and reflects poorly on the server. And to preempt this response: It's not that hard to open a note, copy a player's name and the time of their slay. Even on a busy server, that takes seconds.
The limit is common sense. Going by time would be an absolute joke, which is just not going to happen. Rounds would be more realistic but again that would only happen if developer added a way to instantly check how long ago the player was reported. To other points, yes inconsistency might happen but it does not happen enough if at all to be any kind of realistic problem. Theres no point creating extra workload for staff for something that is not a problem. Nobody wants pointless extra work for themselves. Every moderator I remember playing with during the time I was staff would use 1 map inbetween RDMs to reset simply because thats fair enough and very simple to check given the resources. No matter if they were feeling shitty or not, this kind of checking was guaranteed to be consistent(excluding RTVs) and took few clicks, there was nobody who would go through older slays because "they were feeling shitty" or someone was a "stranger". You are making it seem like moderators would consistently redecide lengths between slays which is simply not correct. Not to mention same system was taught to every new trial moderator and I really doubt in few months this has changed drastically.
You mean beyond extremely common sense? Human nature, and all that we have studied about it, shows that the vast majority of people are either more lenient or extremely harsh when wielding power over their friends, when that power is wielded in a form they can control. If you want links to those studies, I would implore you to find them yourself, mainly because it would be a pain to do so, and again, common sense. If checking is consistent and easy, that's all well and good. But if you think staff members aren't more forgiving on some days more than others, then it's nice to know someone interacts with other humans even less than I do. Aside from that, the bigger issue is that one staff member will have a different reset period than another. For one, it could be one map, for another, it could be three. Lets just add another problematic situation: Two staff members are moderating the same server. Two people commit the exact same RDM offense. Staff 1 handles RDMr A, Staff 2 handles RDMr B. Two maps later, those same two people commit the exact same RDM offense again. Once again, Staff 1 handles A, Staff 2 handles B. A gets 1 slay, B gets 2, just because of the staff member that handled the report. Does that seem right to you?
Spoiler: My MO As a baseline, I operate on a map-to-map basis. If there's a sequence of 3 maps, you RDM on map 1 and map 3, I'll slay you twice total, that's two first offenses. Due to the map in the middle not having had an instance of RDM. In cases where the middle map is RTV'd early, I will usually mentally note the people with prior offenses and carry them for the missing # of rounds. If you're playing clean for 6 rounds, your rare RDM is likely not affecting the actual game severely, and so I don't see the need to pursue additional punishment for behaviour that is fairly benign. Ideally, no RDMs, but even among good, well-behaved players, it happens due to accidents, lapse in judgment, etc. Those aren't the people I'm here to discourage. I can only speak for myself in that regard, but @TomCat™, I treat all players equally. I follow the protocol laid out for me and treat players fairly as best I can. I'm equally forgiving and harsh to friends and strangers, as I'm expected to be. I don't staff if I'm upset for whatever reason, exactly because it will impact my ability to judge fairly. Moving on, I don't know why you're giving a preemptive response to a worthless point. And so I loop back to the actual suggestion at hand here: As a moderator, I'm very aware of what my role is, what I can and cannot do. As happy as I am to have free reins, I speak out against looser boundaries for me and my fellow moderators. In cases where it does not make sense according to what my role is. Some staff will be able to testify that I act in accordance with this. To quote the new users guide: The part most relevant to this thread is what goes under "moderate a server on their own with guidance" and what would be an exercise of discretion when issuing punishments. Should the statute of limitations on RDM be a set time, a set number of rounds, a set number of maps, or should - which sounds a whole lot like discretion - mods be given the choice of when to refresh the count? I don't know. I, like presented above, normally work on a 3 map sequence. As long as you have a full map where you don't RDM, which can be anywhere between ten minutes and an hour, that's good enough for me. It's easy to track, I believe it to be fair, and it punishes equally regardless of session length. But my method has gaps and can be exploited. And stricter methods can become punishment for punishment's sake. I think some leeway lets moderators "moderate a server on their own" in a way that is fair. And as such, a set expiration would be detrimental. Moderators should not be making leaps in punishment, e.g. counting the last 2 years so they can get that mass rdm x3 ban, but restricting it excessively will open gaps in a mods ability to tackle malicious players. Currently we operate on common sense: is this player excessively RDMing/being malicious and do they consequently require harsher punishment? When something - someone - causes problems, we notice it. And if they keep causing problems even when reprimanded (be their offense slays, harassing, or spamming), they're negatively affecting the server and the game. That's who we want to punish. And whenever I'm on with fellow staff, it seems that only the troublemakers get banned. So, please quantify for me how often it's an issue/how large an issue this inconsistency between no discretion and variable counting is. What purpose does a set-in-stone expiration serve - would it noticably make the moderation more fair?
wait, we weren't supposed to ban people for mass rdm 3x and 4x due to them gaining slays over the course of several weeks?
When I was staff I normally just went off how long the damage logs lasted because I honestly couldnt remember much past that. If a guy was being a super trouble maker and I knew for sure and had proof from 3 maps ago I would use that too tho. I dont think this needs to be defined. Every mod is more comfortable with their own way.
To be honest, what happens mostly is that if a player RDM'ed once for like what, 3 or 4 maps ago? More often than not, the staff member in-charge would forget that the player was slain once already. I generally do not see this to be a recurring issue. There isn't a sample size big enough to justify that staff members are being "biased" towards someone, and etc. Unless there is proven evidence that someone is biased towards another (e.g., player A and B both get slain 4 maps ago then RDMs this map and player A gets 1 slay while player B gets 2), you can't call bias. If you do however, have evidence of staff doing this on a regular basis, feel free to make a report against them. If we put a 1 or 2 rounds in between where RDM offenses can expire, this can be abused by RDM-ing from time to time and consistently getting 1 slay. You can argue that you can make a case of toxic gameplay here, but why not just follow the usual protocol then? If we put a 3 or more rounds in between where RDM offenses can expire, there isn't a guarantee that all slays are tracked by the moderator in-charge, risking inconsistency which means ultimately --- nothing really has changed if you wanna talk about "consistency" --- just added work to the staff in-charge since they have to keep track of every player. Also, please don't equate inconsistency with bias.
Heya, This is an interesting suggestion. Just an FYI- I’m reading all of the comments here and am interested what everyone thinks of this both from a staff and player perspective. Tracking is one of the largest issues in here as Solar touched on- we don’t have a reliable way of tracking past the previous map on what offense a player is currently on. And with hectic server, this can be lost pretty quickly losing a bit of this consistency that’s being strives for here. But I don’t think that’s really what this thread is trying to address? Pretty much, I’m saying- we’re listening here. I’d like to hear more input on this one.
why was this even locked for a period of time edit: it was either locked or i was on a different browser and wasnt logged in
Im going to drop a few pennys here. My general rule of thumb is the current map and the map prior, i have had a few rare cases in discretion to not ban for freak accidents where admin+ would specificly say over the course of the next x maps if they rdm again its a ban. I honestly forget something i slayed for 2 maps ago, this is even moreso the case on very busy servers, the only exception to this is when I have players being toxic in admin chat, not only arguing their slays for 3-4 rounds but also demanding others be slain for something that is not rdm. It is these players that stick in my mind longer than current and previous map. In general I feel this is the case with a lot of staff and even another has mentioned this above. Tl:dr. Do not be a pain in the ass to staff members and 90% of the time you are good to have a clean slate every other map.
If you play by the rules and don't rdm the sol should never apply. Thus changing it is counterproductive, and will only serve to make our jobs as moderators harder. Also take into account that if I set an SOL than I am going to have problems with rdmers waiting for that period of time to rdm again. Not interested really. If you guys do want to set an SOL though, make sure it is by session or longer. Anything shorter could be abused.
How does it make a mods job harder? I'm not a mod, but when I was, it wasn't difficult to remember who was slain So say 2 people rdm on average each round After 12 rounds, that's 24 players. Not too difficult to remember imo
I would have to say I agree with those that would rather see it as a time-based expiration. I believe that's the most practical as nearly every other punishment on the forums or in game are based on a specific amount of time. A simple way to look at it would be that 1 slay equals 1 hour. After a player servers a slay, their one hour probationary period begins. If they are to RDM within that 1 hour, then 2 slays are added and they now have a 2 hour window before they hit their SoL. Maybe it could even be coded as a command for staff such as: !slaycheck MangoTango MangoTango was last slain(2 rounds) by Highwon 39 minutes ago. The above command would tell staff the info on the player's name, the staff member who slayed them, how many times they were slain, and how long it's been since they served their last slay. I think that making a counter that counts up rather than down would be easier to code, but if it could be done, make it easier for everyone and code it to say(SoL could be changed to CS for CleanSlate or something else to not confuse it with ban SoL): !slaycheck MangoTango MangoTango was last slain(2 rounds) by Highwon; 81 minutes remain until SoL. Either way, I cannot see how this would make a staff members job harder other than adding one more step to adding punishments for those that are uncertain. Obviously a !slaycheck would only be needed for those members who haven't seemed to have RDM'd recently and a staff member is unsure how long it's been. This mechanic could be abused by some members; ones that want to RDM intentionally just to wait one hour and do it again. However, that's why admins have discretion to change punishments and carry out harsher punishment should a player exhibit trollish/toxic gameplay as mentioned. We've all seen players that are a bit trigger happy, but this would be a pretty easy thing to track those trigger happy players and curb their tendencies. Overall, I think something like this could help make the servers a bit more friendly. Mistakes happen here and there and sometimes players just have a bad night. I remember being a mod and having players that I know were legitimately having a rough night and I eventually had to ban them because I couldn't get some kind of admin discretion; that was a long time ago (think 2013). I think this would also help mitigate any confusion of standards amongst staff; anyone would be able to expect a certain criterion for stacking slays and giving bans.
My sessions are frequently 5 hours or more in a single block - and off the top of my head, I've gone over 12 hours in a single block twice at the very least. How on earth would it make sense to base it off of session when there are people who rarely last 30 minutes per session and people who last quite literally 10 times that. Janppa is certainly correct to say some people get off with a LOT of RDMs over a short period of time due to either a) staff change-overs or b) logs being lost in map change. This is certainly particularly common on EU2 where maps get skipped with a decent frequency, meanwhile in reverse, there are times when the opposite has been true - people have randomly been punished with additional slays for a report handled by another staff member 2-3 maps ago (I, for one, was once given a double slay out of the blue from a previous RDM slay 4 maps prior - though one was RTVed in all fairness). Whilst these are anecdotal, the fact that multiple people have come out pretty strongly for it should be evidence enough that there IS an issue.
Maybe it wasn't difficult for you to remember rdm offenses, but it can be impossible on a server that is full. I know I forget, and so many other moderators forget too. The reason it would make a moderators job harder is that they would have to not only remember who was slain and what offense, but when they were slain. I meant the moderator's session, not yours.
Meh, I've always or usually kept track of slays across maps, excluding staffing different days, and punished them according to protocol, no matter how many maps have passed. But that's just me. EDIT: As I heard/read before, staff should punish RDM according to protocol for as long as they can remember. This may have changed, I don't know.
To play devils advocate here, just because something isn't a glaring problem doesn't mean it can't have a rule defined. We'd be talking very minimal effort to implement this, even if we coded the !slaycheck command recommended by @MangoTango which I love. I see this a lot on SGM. Many suggestions are shot down just because they are small.
I'm not going to be quoting anybody for the sake of convenience, but here are a few points: 1. If you play by the rules it doesn't matter A. Yes it does. I play strictly by the rules, to the point almost half my slays, if not more, are self-reported. And I get slain because I sometime shoot on a snap decision, or bump my mouse against my keyboard. 2. Inconsistency isn't Bias B. I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it's still inconsistent. I very clearly defined it as human nature, something that very few people can defy or be in control of. We should account for that human nature instead of dismissing it as 'not bias', because ultimately, the end results are the same. Even if you don't personally have these issues, you have to at least acknowledge someone will, at some point, on the staff team 3. It makes it harder to combat Toxic Player C. RDMing once every 5-10 rounds, to be blunt, isn't that toxic. Even if they do that every 5-10 rounds. Even if they are doing to be toxic, if that is all they are doing, and they aren't even targeting a specific player? Nobody on that server is even going to notice that guy, other than a mod, and if he is that much of an issue, ban him for toxicity. We have rules in place for a reason. Use them. Don't exploit this rule to deal with people performing other offenses. 4. It's hard to remember or keep track of D. Like I mentioned above, you can do this manually by copying over the name and time of each person's slay into a notepad. This takes seconds. With a little control-F, it would just add seconds to the report. And that is assuming Opalium is unable to add something as simple as a slay-tracker. 5. Any measurement is inconsistent E. The point is to have a set standard. I think we can clearly see from above, just about every staff and ex-staff have their own way of doing things. The most reasonable approach I can think of is to make it by-round. This makes it so it's based more off of the number of opportunities someone has to RDM, and while not perfect, probably isn't going to get any better. 5-10 rounds is the number of rounds it would take for an RDM to expire. 6. F. This is the biggest problem with our current system. Everything about what Atlas said was problematic, but this was the highlight, and it shows to everyone, yes, the staff can and do have bias. Just because someone is a 'pain in the ass', doesn't mean they did anything more or less wrong when it comes to RDM. This is a server that punishes people based off of demonstrably proven fact, not off of feelings. And again, I am going to point out something that hasn't been addressed yet: And, when it all comes down to it, (and I understand it's inconsistent with what I've said myself, but the point of this all is to punish people less, not more), staff should still have some form of discretion here: If they feel someone made a genuine mistake, there are no admins on, and their option is to ban or forgive, let them forgive. Give them the slay still, but don't ban them. Or even go a step farther, and let them forgive upon discretion, compiled offenses. When it comes down to it, we want the server to be a fun place were people don't have to constantly be worrying about the rules, but at the same time, where the same crime will warrant the same punishment every time. I'm being contradictory here, but it retains the one good thing about this current rule: Mods have the discretion to forgive players they think are good, to a degree. If the comments by staff in this thread have shown me anything, it's that we need this rule sooner, not later. Nobody has the same standard, and on this server, which prides itself for being so thorough with the rules, it's a glaring flaw that needs resolution, no matter how trivial of an issue it might seem.
