Completed Report against Temar, Noob999

Name of Staff/Player:

Temar, Noob99​

Steam ID of Staff/Player:

N/A​

Your Steam ID:

N/A​

Which Server:

West 1​

Which Map:

N/A​

Which Round:

N/A​

Time of Occurence:

N/A​

Reason For Report:

Temar's mindset when staffing and Noob99's decision to not find fault in it.​

Evidence And/Or Witnesses:

Hi

I'm piggybacking off a report @Chance made here. I'm going to be quoting from that report multiple times, but I recommend reading the original thread through at least once to get a full picture of what happened.

To just reiterate why I'm reporting this, I feel like Temar's feelings drastically influenced his decision making, making his decision to keep a slay purely emotion based. I don't blame Noob for this; however, by not commenting on it in his painfully short answer, I'm finding him partially responsible as well, as it's his duty as an admin to look out for these types of things.

I don't agree with the decision on GBA either, but I see it as a less pressing matter than the attitude demonstrated by Temar, so for the sake of not bogging things down, I'm not reporting for the actual verdict of it not being GBA. I do want to add that Chance has been a member of SGM since 2014 and probably is capable of using his eyes to see that someone is fake firing, but I digress.

I'm just going to start this out with two quotes from Temar.

Quote one, from here.

Quote two, from here.

Those are two verbatim quotes. I added some color for emphasis.

To break down why this is bad:

Firstly, Temar says he could have removed the slay and accepted the reasons given after the report response. Moderators don't have that power. They have to go solely by report response, and then seek discretion from an admin+ to accept the later reasons. Maybe Temar had an admin standing by on teamspeak, or discord, or steam. But looking at his response, it seems he made this decision alone. Not really a big deal - mods sometimes do this to save time. Just something worth noting.

[UPDATE] The statement I just made in the above paragraph may be outdated and inaccurate. I'm waiting for an official response now. Regardless, it's not the main issue in this report.

Secondly, Temar says he would have removed the slay after hearing Chance's responses after the slay was placed, but he decided not to just because he was harassed by Chance. He says it was "due to your [ Chance's ] attitude and harassment i didn't remove it" He later states again that He [ Temar ] "Would of accepted you other reason..........which you gave after I gave the slay if you hadn't been harassing me"

Something I think that is vital to realize here is that moderators generally have valid reasons for not seeking discretion to remove a slay. To use a personal example, I had a case where someone lied in one report, then changed his story in a second report. Knowing that he had already lied before, I made the decision to go off his original response in the second report and slay him. I had no faith whether or not his answer was honest or trying to avoid a slay. That's what it should come down to.

To paraphrase that in my own words, Temar decided not to remove what he viewed as a invalid slay because he had been harassed by that user. I say invalid slay as Temar's own words indicate he would have removed it otherwise. To paraphrase again, he didn't doubt that Chance was telling the truth, but he made the decision solely because Chance called him a name.

This is an awful mentality for a moderator to have. Don't get me wrong, harassment is wrong. However, harassment is harassment. The motd does not say one slay for your first offense of harassment, it says one warning. You cannot allow an unrelated action to influence another like this. Actions that would be fine would be like lying in a report before, which goes to a history of lying. This is completely different.

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Moderators are not robots. They have emotions. But they cannot allow personal feelings to come in the way of a report that should be invalid. That's just bad staffing.

I think that's really all I have to say about Temar's decision. I've tried to concisely explain just why it is so wrong, but I'd be happy to address counterpoints if people disagree.

____

For Noob, I don't really have much to say. You wrote a half assed eighteen word verdict. While I know the original topic for the report was GBA, Chance himself said this:

At that point, you especially have a responsibility as an admin to address that concern. He's bringing up a valid point about keeping the slay, and you just totally ignore it and focus on the GBA aspect. That's lazy.

____

I'd like to wrap this up by thanking whoever looks over it - I don't know if it will be handled by Opal or one of the leads, but there's no rush since I know everyone is probably busy with Christmas stuff. If you guys think this is invalid, I would really appreciate the chance to talk with you before it's locked.

Thanks.

​

 

Tagging @Temar , @Noob999 , and @Opalium .

 

Hey Temar, thanks for responding.

I don't agree with this, but like I mentioned in the original post, I'm not contesting it as I don't see it as the main issue here. If you guys believe that to not be GBA, that's fine. No problem.

Okay, you say here that "because of the harassment we were not even considering those other reasons,". This can be interpreted in either one of two ways:

1) Because of the harassment, you did not even consider looking into other reasons why the kill would be valid.
2) Because of the harassment, you got distracted from handling it and ( mistakenly) did not consider other reasons why the kill would be valid.

Let's break those down.

1) Because of the harassment, you decided not to look into other reasons why the kill would be valid.

The reason I say you may have believed the kill to be valid is this quote: "i would of under normal circumstances removed the slay based on talked to you after however due to your attitude and harassment i didn't remove it and left it as it was,"

Moving past that point and addressing the big text, that is the wrong mentality for a staff member to have, and I tried to thoroughly explain just why it was wrong in my OP. You're letting an unrelated action, in this case harassment, affect something else, like a report verdict. Like I've said previously, Chance's decision to harass after a slay was placed was a bad one, and I'm not trying to defend that in the slightest. At the same time, not investigating other reasons to a report just because someone harassed you is not what a staff member should do. It's letting emotional bias into a report. I think that's pretty clear, so I'll move on to the second reason.

2) Because of the harassment, you got distracted from handling it and ( mistakenly) did not consider other reasons why the kill would be valid.

If you look at some of your comments in this context, it can add up. However, that's only some of your comments.

Looking at this quote with the context provided, I can see that you may have simply worded the response poorly. No harm there, just an unintentional mistake. But let's look at your original quote.

Here's where there's an issue with your story. You said word for word "why should i be generous and listen to you and accept you additional reasons after the slay if you wanna talk to me like that?" and "however i dont have to take you reason that you give after"

This doesn't line up. In your response to his original report, you're openly defending your decision to keep the slay because he harassed you. Even if we place this quote in the context of situation 2), it doesn't make sense. If you got distracted from handling the original report and didn't look into other reasons, why would you say that? Your own words contradict themselves.

I hope I'm not coming across as too harsh. Making a bad decision on a slay isn't that much of an issue. At the same time, it just grows into a greater problem when the admin handling the report doesn't show any sign of disproving of it. Furthermore, this response just doesn't add up.

Thanks again, Han.

 

Sorry for the delay, I was getting a bite to eat.

I'll spare everyone the long post since you've concisely stated your point of view here.

You acknowledge that you knew his other reasons. Having access to the deathscene, you could have verified that he was in the sight of unID's and most likely saw them.

You state that "because of his behavior I wasn't even going to consider it".

This is the heart of the issue, and I've tried and tried again to explain why that's not the right mentality in this case. I could restate everything I've said in this thread again, but I'm going to take a different approach.

Yesterday, when a mod informed me that I might have been incorrect in one of my statements in the OP, I made a Q&A thread here about it to get official clarification on if moderators could change report verdicts based on later responses. I know you've read over it, but here's what Graze said.

Graze's statement reflects the official standpoint of the administration on this. Note that he doesn't say "As a clarification, a response change, or ignore it due to harassment". He says "As a clarification or as a response change."

You cannot decide to not accept additional, post-report info because the player in question harassed you. If you believe his response to be an attempt to escape punishment, that is a valid point. If you believe his response clarifies something stated in the original response, that is a valid point. This instance is neither of those. This is you receiving harassment and choosing to serve your own emotions instead of one of the players of the server. Had you considered his comments afterward simply a response change to avoid punishment, this could be a entirely different situation. But you've double downed on the fact that because of his harassment, you had a right to choose to deliberately ignore his later comments. That is not found anywhere in what Graze said. He clearly lists two distinct and appropriate reactions to receiving additional info after reports. Making a decision because of harassment is neither of those.

To just condense what I've said here: You can't choose to not accept a post-report reason just because of harassment. What further intensifies this is that you knew he said there were unID's, knew that there were clear unID's in his sight thanks to the deathscene, but you still opted for a slay solely because he harassed you. This is not how it's supposed to be.

Perhaps you honestly believe this, which I don't actually doubt. Maybe you were taught it incorrectly or it was just an assumption that stuck. But I hope what I've explained in this post, and from what Graze has said- which is the official standpoint - that you realize that staff can't act in this manner.

 

tfw someone staffs in a way you dont like so you write an essay on it

 

I'll be tagging @DieKasta and @HelixSpiral due to Opalium's recent promotion.

 

Temar,

I want to sincerely say I've never been trying to twist your words here. I'm not just writing this report for the fun of it or trying to roast you and Noob - that's never been my intention. I'm trying to right what I think is a wrong.

The issue that we're coming to again is harassment. I'm quoting you when I say this: "i would of under normal circumstances removed the slay based on talked to you after (......) however due to your attitude and harassment i didn't remove it and left it as it was, why should i be generous and listen to you and accept you additional reasons after the slay if you wanna talk to me like that?"

In this quote, you are saying you would have removed the slay based on his reasons. In your most recent response, you're saying there was a possibility you would have considered the other reasons. There's a clear difference here: would have versus possibility. Finally, I'm just going to quote your last sentence in this response.

What you're saying here is that his original reason was wrong - I'm granting that as well since it's not the issue. But even though he gave other reasons, you decided to not consider them due to his behavior ( which was harassment ). You consider this fair, as staff members only need to accept the reason in the report.

I disagree with this. I think I explained in my previous post why you have to consider it. Unless you think it's a response change to avoid slays, you still need to consider the response - and in this case, you could have verified that the unID'd explanation was legitimate. Just refer to this post for a detailed explanation.

But at this point, Temar, I think we're just going back and forth without going anywhere. We both have different views of what was appropriate here. While I invite you to respond to this if you think I've described something inaccurately, I don't think I have that much more to say to you without repeating most of what I've already said.

Thanks again for responding.

 

I talked with Noob over this in teamspeak and we've agreed that we have two clear, but opposing, views.

Temar decided to not look into an additional response to see if it was valid or invalid because of the harassment he received.

He and Noob feel like if a moderator receives harassment, they do not need to look into any additional info that is received after the report.

I feel like even though a moderator receives harassment, they still should look into additional responses.

To be clear here, this is just looking into the responses. It doesn't matter if the original verdict of the report is unaffected or if the moderator deems it to be a response change and keeps the slay. The issue I see here is that Temar didn't even look into Chance's other reasons because of the harassment.

I'm going to put what I typed into realistic example just so I can show where I'm coming from. Joe kills Bob and answers in his report "It looked like you were GBA and ran away from that firefight when the traitor was right there." After investigating the report, the moderator concludes that it wasn't GBA and Joe RDM'd. After receiving a slay, Joe says in admin chat "Hey you stupid faggot, he went past an unID'd two minutes earlier anyway. Remove the slay." The moderator at this point has two options based on what Noob and I are disagreeing on.

1) Because of the harassment, the moderator does not need to even examine Joe's claim of the unID'd.

2) Despite the harassment, the moderator should still look into Joe's claim and see if there is merit in it. Even if the moderator concludes it's a suspicious attempt to escape punishment and decides keeps the slay on Joe, they still need to look into it.

My issues with option one is that they allow a moderator to combine their decision making with personal feelings, even if it's unintentional.
____

As for the issue of what Temar said in the original report responses as well as in this very thread, Noob has said he considers that to be just very poor communication, not an actual admittance of an emotional based decision. I don't really know if I agree about this,* as I don't know Temar, but I'll let whoever oversees this report decide. At the very least, it would still be incredibly contradictory communication, which needs to be avoided in official reports.

* After doing a little more research, I'd honestly say that Temar just doing an horrendous job of communicating his side is actually a plausible suggestion. ( No personal offense intended to you, Temar. ) Considering he slayed a traitor for killing an innocent, I could see just typing the wrong way very possible. At the same time, this still isn't okay for a staff member. They should be able to communicate clearly and concisely, but most importantly, accurately. Temar's statements in Chance's report and mine were so contradictory and inaccurate that they led Chance, myself, several members, and even staff members who messaged me personally, to believe it was an emotionally biased decision. This isn't really okay, so while I'm willing to admit it could have not been emotional decision, I still feel like Temar dropped the ball in this report and Noob should have addressed it. Hopefully communication can improve in the future. I would change this in the original post for my report, but currently, I'm not able to edit it to clarify what I'm now reporting.

 

I would like a lead admin to answer the question about whether if it's the mods choice to look into a change of reason from what was written in the report.
As for my part in the report based on what @Chance said, I felt he no longer cared about the report after he let off steam.
I would just like to say I have never seen Temar become emotional when he is staffing or talking about something that has happened in-game.

I'm going to tag me some Leads / My acting Lead @Opalium @HelixSpiral @DieKasta

 

Hey Noob,

I can see where you're coming from in that you may have interpreted Chance's comments to mean he just wanted the report closed. However, I think it's important to see the difference in "I see that I'm wrong in this report and that you acted correctly, please lock this up!" vs "quiet down and have your dad lock this up." and "Just have your admin lock this up and save your sorry ass like this server always does". Chance still cared about the report, but had no faith it was going to be handled fairly. At that point as an admin, it's especially even more important in that case to give a thorough answer. I'm assuming you agree with this sentiment, since you told me yourself you updated your response to the original report. The response is much better, but it should have been your initial response, not eighteen words. Regardless, I appreciate you updating it, so thank you for that.

 

Oh yeah, kinda forgot about this one. I’ll finish it up tomorrow.

 

Alright, sorry for the delay... Had a busy weekend. Lets hop to it.

Looking over the original report, there were definitely some mistakes made. As staff members, we can't choose what is rdm and what isn't based on how a player is acting towards us. @Temar, you yourself admitted that this entire case wouldn't have been rdm had the player not been "harassing" you. Going through on a slay when you know it isn't rdm isn't acceptable regardless if a player is behaving or not. I'd also argue that the original report response of "GBA" could have been valid in this scenario as the player in question was quite clearly shooting the floor and not at his T buddy who was shooting the detective.

I'll be having a discussion with @Noob999 regarding the verdict on the original report. If you have any questions, you know where to find me.

Valid.
Thanks for reporting.

-Kasta