Staff "going by the report response"

Discussion in 'TTT Discussion' started by Dani, Aug 28, 2018.

  1. Dani

    Dani Impersonating Staff Banned VIP

    I'm going to keep this extremely brief.

    I don't know if your procedures are actually like this or if some people misunderstand what you mean when you say "go by the report response".

    I understand why it's there. If someone kills someone and gets reported, and the reported person could, from what you can see on the Death Scene, have logically deduced that someone is a T (maybe from process of elimination because everyone else was proven), but the reported guy writes "You refused to test after 3 warnings" as a reason, obviously you'd go by the response because the guy would have done it even if the victim was innocent.

    If someone kills his own T buddy in crossfire, and the reported guy writes "I'm so sorry", why would you slay the reported person for it? It was quite obviously crossfire from the Death Scene. There is no "he could have had a reason but did not prove that he thought of the reason" here. The proof that he had a reason for the kill, and that it definitely WAS the reason for the kill, is right and front of you if you look at the Death Scene. The reported guy doesn't have to say the word "crossfire" to show it was crossfire because it has to have been crossfire. The fact that the reported guy apologized also does not contradict that reason.

    Please don't write "checking Death Scene every time takes too long" as an excuse. No, it doesn't. I've been mod and it takes a few seconds, and not looking it at means you'll have zero impression of what went down so why would you wanna skip that?

    I've had a case happen where X shot Y and I shot for it. X reported me saying "he false KOS'd me!", and I responded something like "Oh cool, I won't slay you then!" (because he reported me with a reason for his kill for some reason). I got a slay for that, because I should have written the reason for my kill even though my kill isn't even what the report itself was about. Also, the report already implied my reason for the kill on its own ("he false KOS'd me" implies that the person reporting me killed someone, which is a valid reason to get killed by me).

    Sometimes a report will just be jokingly made by a guy who's mad about some really hard shot the opponent pulled off and the response will just be "hehe, got you" or something like that. The report itself wasn't even really a report!

    These are all things that I've had happen to me or that I've seen happen. I've also had a mod report me for killing someone one round, and I said "I don't remember that kill". Instead of reminding me what the circumstances were, I just got a slay. Turns out I killed an innocent half a second before I, along with that innocent, and three other people, died from a jihad. The mod did not consider the fact that it was crossfire from me trying to kill the jihadist and that the reason why I didn't remember is that I didn't even notice it happening because we all died in literally that same second. "Always go by the response! :D"

    Oh god, I just thought of another one that happened when I was trial mod and had to explain to the moderators why they should not slay in this case. X (innocent) threw a harpoon, Y (innocent) saw this in the corner of his eye and shot X. X said "What the hell, I was inno!" and Y responded "Oh shit, sorry! I thought you were the T!". The response itself says nothing here but looking at the death scene immediately shows what obviously happened. Y shot X for the harpoon, but upon finding out that X was an inno, Y thought he had made a mistake and someone else must have thrown a harpoon, because why the fuck would an inno have a harpoon, throw it, and then make a report? The moderator simply said "we have to go by the report" and I had to explain it to an admin for them to finally decide not to slay the guy.

    I feel like people take rules and guidelines a bit too literally sometimes. Think about the reasons for why the rule exists and what it tries to prevent, and then think about whether that reason applies in this case.
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2018
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  2. neutral

    neutral Banned VIP

    If reports are getting treated like this, then this is outside of staff protocol and should be reported to their supervisor. Staff are required to get more information from the player if the reply is vague, such as what you listed, and more information is required.
     
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  3. Dani

    Dani Impersonating Staff Banned VIP

    Ah, I'm glad to hear I'm not going insane. Maybe still keep in mind that moderators will misunderstand absolute statements like "Always go by the response" and simply not think for themselves sometimes. (Because, quite frankly, moderators aren't allowed to think for themselves.)

    Okay, I would like to hereby officially report FaeThorn (or FoxPac because they have similar names but they're both on my shitlist for this type of stuff anyway) for slaying me when I crossfired that guy during the jihad that I mentioned. When I told him "you can't slay me for crossfire, what the hell" he did not unslay me in time and then responded "I'm looking into it, geez" in a bitch little girl voice. Oh wait, our glorious god has taken both from us already.
     
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  4. Titan

    Titan SGM's official music nerd Administrator VIP Bronze

    If it were up to staff members to drum up a reason for any given kill, it could lead to missed slays that were RDM. When you kill someone, you need to have a reason and you must be able to provide that reason if inquired upon the kill. Your report response is your responsibility & your opportunity to defend yourself in a report against you, and if you write something vague & ambiguous such as "I'm so sorry," that isn't providing a reason. Now, that's not to say that if you wrote that, you deserve a slay, as I would hope that any upstanding staff member would make a followup attempt to get an answer via pms, but why should a staff member be required to "fill in the blank" for lack of a better term?

    There is also some bias introduced into the equation when you give staff the responsibility to think of a reason FOR the reported player. Let me give you a comparison: If you were conducting a survey on the effects that drinking soda daily has on a person's general health, you could ask a person "How do you think drinking a bottle of soda a day affects your general health?" or you could ask "Why is drinking soda bad for you?"

    The first question poses the inquiry with no possible influences on the response, while the second question is biased towards the negative effects of soda. The same thing applies to Garry's Mod - we can ask "Why did you kill this man?" or we can ask "Did you kill him in crossfire, or was it the unid that was sat in the corner of the room that the victim walked past?" You see the bias? What if the person hadn't have seen the body, and it wasn't crossfire. You gave the reported player two easy answers.

    Let's use your example
    Two things conflict here - "saw this in the corner of his eye" and "immediately shows what happens." Those two things don't typically go well together, as we don't have an FOV cone to conveniently determine whether or not the player saw the person who threw the harpoon. It's equally as likely that he heard the harpoon throw, turned around, and shot "X" on suspicion, as opposed to simply witnessing the act. But if we assume reasons, events like this are looked over, and players that would be otherwise be guilty of RDM (& ruining another players round, keep that in mind) are let off scot-free. Sure, the player might give a response in PM, but what if he doesn't? What if the only information you ever get out of "Y" is his response, "Oh shit, sorry! I thought you were the T!"? Would you slay? I would. That's an invalid response. IMO it implies suspicion over everything else, but that is why you inquire.

    Surely there are other reasons too, these are just the ones I thought of quickly.

    now time for a disclaimer: i could be totally wrong so take everything i said with a grain of salt.
     
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  5. Xproplayer

    Xproplayer VIP Silver

    While helix is right something I've always found annoying is that some protocols take the initial response as the only thing said. I can undertand for something like a toxic gameplay investigation you might look at what they say. But the fact is when people make a mistake on the report response and it gets escalated the staff always seem to bitterly reply with WELL YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID THAT IN THE REPORT RESPONSE. My issue is its not easy to keep track, especially if you are reported in another round, or the round itself was very long.
     
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  6. Siddo

    Siddo Banned VIP Bronze

    Mods are allowed to accept additional info for a report (e.g. "I thought you were a traitor" - technically invalid response, but warrants further inquiry).
    That includes the cases where a player gave the wrong response and corrects themselves, particularly if we can verify the reason with evidence.

    Of course, someone who is clearly just trying to get out of a slay, such as initially saying t-baiting.. then unid'd... and gba... then voice chat kos. That's not cool.
    The reason we go by initial response as the baseline is to avoid loopholing out of slays.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2018
  7. Dani

    Dani Impersonating Staff Banned VIP

    I don't know how the justice system works in your country, but where I'm from, we'd rather let guilty people go than to put innocents in jail.


    I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. First of all, are you just trying to teach me what loaded questions are and what "bias" means? I know both of those terms. Second of all, the staff shouldn't "think of a reason for the player"; they should SEE the reason even if it's just implicit and they should see why the reason is not explicitly stated. In all of my examples, there is a good reason for why the response doesn't explicitly state the reason.

    How is any of this relevant to what my original post says? I know that giving people possible answers when you ask them something is a bad thing. Where does my post say anything about that and why would any normal human do this?

    Oh FFS, are you just getting hung up on the wording of "corner of his eye" and basing your entire scenario on it? I saw it happen in the death scene and it was obvious that he shot him because of the harpoon and that it couldn't have been anyone else. "Corner of his eye" was just a way of me saying that he was slightly off to the side by like 30 degrees.

    Why are you asking me if I would slay in that scenario if I just gave you that scenario and I was the trial mod in it and I made the decision not to slay? Sure there could have been the extreme coincidence that Y went blind for a second when X threw the harpoon, and then something clicked in Y's head that made him randomly RDM the guy next to him, but I like to assume that the reason for a kill is the extremely obvious one if it doesn't contradict the report response.
     
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  8. Shadow™

    Shadow™ What it do Shortyyyy™ VIP

    I dont know if im right but mainly its the responce and you prob know that but oh well
     
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  9. Titan

    Titan SGM's official music nerd Administrator VIP Bronze

    If we can punish someone for committing RDM, we'll try because when one person RDM's someone else, that second person's round is ruined, taking away their fun, the whole reason they come on the server. I'm not sure where you get the 'putting innocents in jail' figure, because false slays are very rare with the current system, and when they occur, they almost never go unnoticed. Going along with your analogy, if someone in court refuses to defend themself, only saying "I'm sorry!," they'd be imprisoned, and it would be no fault but their own.


    I'm simply explaining my wording, that is all. Secondly, staff "thinking of a reason for the player" is exactly what you're saying in this post. How are we to come to the conclusion for a report if the player never gives us a reason, without thinking of a reason?


    It's relevant, my friend, because your entire post is about staff assuming reasons for the general playerbase. Without confirming it with the player. When a player gets reported, they are asked the question: "Why did you kill this person?" A nice, unbiased question. If they didn't give a reason, and then I, as a staff member, had to pursue the reason from the player themself via pms, the only question I can ask is "Why did you kill this person?" to remain unbiased. If you're familiar with the term, then surely you know that in this scenario, it's not a positive thing. If you're suggesting that we dream up of the reason for the player, but never tell them that reason, then where the hell do we stand? We're at a standstill.


    Mate, you said it, not me. If you didn't want me to mention it, you should have worded your sentence better. My point still remains that you can never be sure about a player's intent, no matter how obvious it may seem, I guarantee you that you will be wrong many times, and every single time that you assume wrong, a guilty player goes unslayed.


    Sure, we'd all like to assume positive reasons out of the players, but often times, it's not as positive. I think you are vastly underestimating how likely a kill-on-suspicion is in this scenario. I think "extreme coincidence" is an extreme understatement.
     
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  10. TheDarkFade

    TheDarkFade Russian Double Agent VIP

    I feel like this has been an ongoing issue for a while and that mods should clarify the situation even if it means that they have to miss 30 seconds of gameplay or a whole round. The whole point of being a mod is to sort these things out and serve justice. Justice doesn't work if the wrong people get punished or the guilty people don't as that would contradict the definition of the word. For the people who are arguing Dani's points: are you just arguing for the sake of arguing or do you really think that shutting down his reasons is going to benefit the quintessence of this post? As stated earlier mods should be thorough with reports and I frankly don't see how this could harm the current system.
     
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  11. Pacifist

    Pacifist Cynically Insane VIP Bronze

    I see it like this: I give you a little box to write what happened and why you killed the person. If you decide to say "fuck it" and not use that box, I assume you have no reason and I slay you. Seriously, it is not that hard to type a reason.

    That doesn't mean i'm just going to shut it down. I put his response into context of the victim's words and I determine whether or not he actually has a reason or not. Usually I send a PM to the player saying "yo, why did you kill so and so?" and slay when they dont respond.

    if you just put "fuck off" into the report, i'm not going to go out of my way to prove you innocent of rdm. You can just take a slay.
     
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  12. Noccam :^)

    Noccam :^) Regular Member


    Is this actually true? I have been told MANY times by staff that if the reason you give is not good enough, regardless of whether or not you choose to list EVERY reason you decided to kill someone (Which borders obsessive and won't actually be read), then you are getting slayed. I have been explicitly told by staff that it is MY job to make sure that the response is adequate and contains all pertinent information relating to the "RDM", even if the report isn't in serious in the slightest. I have been told many times that it is not staffs job to look for information if the report is vague. I don't doubt you are telling the truth Helix, but I do wonder if the staff are all being taught the same things when it comes to handling reports. If it weren't for this thread I wouldn't have known that it wasn't normal for staff to not look into a report more thoroughly.
     
  13. Toest

    Toest "I am the bus" ~ Falcor, all the time VIP

    its really tricky the way he words this, no offense to helix because this ruling kind of thing is trick all the time anyways. What I take from what he said is that the reply needs to be really vague, not just a "not good reason" like it has to be VAGUE like he maybe doesnt even know he killed this person or smth. Hind sight is 20/20 so you can think of a lot of reasons AFTER you kill someone that werent obvious at the time, or werent the actual reason that you killed them. In that case, we wouldnt want to to take your second response because you are just spouting out random stuff not the actual reason you killed them. Just my 2 cents
     
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  14. Noccam :^)

    Noccam :^) Regular Member

    That's a fair point, but my main point is that there seems to be a lot of discrepancy on this particular topic between staff on how it should be handled and that cannot be the way it's intended to be.
     
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  15. Xproplayer

    Xproplayer VIP Silver

    Theres times where people dont recall. I sometimes kill like 5 people in a round, get reported 3x and I forgot which is which. Or when you are forced to respond or something. When its a vague answer the staff should reach out. If the response is intentionally useless, note their admin notes and warn, then punish when that becomes a habit.
     
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  16. Toest

    Toest "I am the bus" ~ Falcor, all the time VIP

    you could say, "I honestly dont remember killing you, where were you" and then the staff could easily tell you and that could jog your memory, that is a vague enough answer where the staff SHOULD feel obligated to respond. at least thats what you could do when im on and id say thats pretty fair because I fall in that boat A WHOLE LOT where I honestly cant remember who it was.
     
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  17. jshore

    jshore VIP

    I feel like mods should look way more carefully at shit considering I got banned because a mod/admin decided not to look at the situation in full.

    You know the appeal.
     
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  18. Dani

    Dani Impersonating Staff Banned VIP

    What you should take away from this is that you should always consider both Death Scene/Damage logs and the report response. If the DS or DL show that the reported person had a reason to kill, but the response actually explicitly contradicts that reason or is just gibberish/provocative stuff, then you can slay.

    If the response is vague and still makes sense within a scenario where the potential reason for the kill you saw in the DS/DL is the actual reason that the killer had, then you ask for clarification.
     
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  19. Ted

    Ted The knight in white armor! Silver

    Let me put it black and white.

    If they as staff want something to be valid we can make it valid. But what you type is why you did it.

    In other words i can find gba, but if somebody does a random kill and writes i liked to kill you. They put that report as valid and slay even though there was a reason to kill somebody in the DS.
    If they DON'T use report responses you can mark 90% of reports who are valid into invalid.

    So again what you type as report response is WHY you did it. So in my tenure i did all reports first by report response as that is the most efficient way to do the reports and keep a move on in the report line.

    Edit::

    If you as staff have 6 reports a round it is handy to look just at the responses and go from there instead of searching for that peace of evidence.

    And typing it out why you did it is like 10-15 seconds...
     
  20. Cash

    Cash I staff the proper way Banned VIP

    when you assume u make an ass out of u and me
     
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