[Alec]

Yeah, holding everyone accountable for their actions regardless if you are best buds with them or not is definitely a concern. If a guest sees a staff/donor get away with something just because they are staff/donor, they might A. have a warped perception of how the server is being run., and B. think that rule breaking is okay.

[Nicol Bolas]

The biggest fix I see to this is to get rid of "staff discretion" completely and use actual baselines for punishments and warnings. It should not be up to one person to assess what they consider harassment/trolling and instead if there is confusion to put it up to a group conversation that INCLUDES the victim.

This does exist for this exact reason

Staff discretion exists because it is necessary lmao.
If I wrote scenarios and punishments for each and every thing that happens on the server, it'd be 50 pages long and nobody would read it. This is exactly what you are mentioning, a baseline for punishments and warnings.

We also have a staff discord for asking questions and discussing things

[JesseTheUndeadCowboy]

The biggest fix I see to this is to get rid of "staff discretion" completely and use actual baselines for punishments and warnings. It should not be up to one person to assess what they consider harassment/trolling and instead if there is confusion to put it up to a group conversation that INCLUDES the victim.

This does exist for this exact reason

Staff discretion exists because it is necessary lmao.
If I wrote scenarios and punishments for each and every thing that happens on the server, it'd be 50 pages long and nobody would read it. This is exactly what you are mentioning, a baseline for punishments and warnings.

We also have a staff discord for asking questions and discussing things

Either way, something isn’t going right because harassment happen almost regularly on the server I’m pretty sure and it seems like no one else take any evidence of it or anyone is punished for the harassment usually. I don’t know anymore. I’m just so tired of all this.

[Foxka]

The biggest fix I see to this is to get rid of "staff discretion" completely and use actual baselines for punishments and warnings. It should not be up to one person to assess what they consider harassment/trolling and instead if there is confusion to put it up to a group conversation that INCLUDES the victim.

This does exist for this exact reason

Staff discretion exists because it is necessary lmao.
If I wrote scenarios and punishments for each and every thing that happens on the server, it'd be 50 pages long and nobody would read it. This is exactly what you are mentioning, a baseline for punishments and warnings.

We also have a staff discord for asking questions and discussing things

 You are hyperbolizing my point here; Staff discretion exists to the detriment of guests. I guarantee that you will see more guests banned for map exploiting (for example, this could apply to any rule break) than you would see a regular/donor being punished for the exact same rule break. The whole point of staff discretion is to be more lenient to people who won't be repeat offenders and end up banned, but the issue with this is that when a repeat offender is someone who has just been around for a long time in the community, they don't get punished the same as if it were a guest doing the exact same thing. There should not be a need for staff discretion if the base guidelines were actually followed instead of ignoring problem players just because staff are friends with those players.

I also don't know why you are mentioning a staff discord when that goes against what i said in the last part of my quote, which is that the victim of any kind of harassment should also be involved in discussions regarding said harassment. Keeping a secret clubhouse for staff furthers my point of staff being seen as a clique in itself.

Please don't take this as a personal attack on anyone, either. I'm just relaying my frustrations like the threads purpose.

[bunniey]

So I was gonna make a master post on this last night, then I fell asleep, then I forgot, then FX did this so I'll just throw it here instead so I'm not clogging up the tubes with lizards.

Staff inconsistency, staff discretion, ASAB, and a few 'high profile' bans.

Staff inconsistency. Everyone knows this is a thing. It's not a secret, no one is denying it, but it's definitely an overplayed phrase because it's not really as big of a deal as people make it seem. People see person A get hit with punishment X and person B get hit with punishment Y even though they did the same thing and think that's inconsistency, but they don't stop to think about what went into that decision. Most of the time, the difference between punishments is how often someone offends. If Battons became a cock some day and trolled someone for a few hours and the person didn't like it, yeah he'd be punished, but not nearly as bad as some guest who we don't know getting on and harassing our playerbase. Because Battons has built up some level of trust between himself and the playerbase and the server itself, so we can count it as a misstep, but with a guests, our only knowledge of them is that they decided to get on an be a cunt to our players. We can agree that there is a huge difference between those, correct? And there is a whole level of severity we can get in to. Someone h arassing someone, being told to stop, and doing it once more versus someone harassing someone on the forums, the discord, and in game and being told to stop by people repeatedly, you'll be harder on the latter. (Yes I know you'll say why wasn't the second one punished earlier, but when you have a bunch of staff that don't have regulated shifts, it's impossible to keep everyone on the same page, which is why we have our own discord @"Foxka oops" , because there are things that need to stay between the staff, to help manage that information getting to everyone) So yes, inconsistency exists, it gets very blown out of proportion because of the caveats that go into each decision. If you want to talk about in game stuff, like slays, that's even less of a big deal because most of the time they're fairly on point and when they're not staff almost always own up to it. Shit just happens, we can get over that. In game harassment, mic spam, slurs, ear rape queues, and all that are a whole terrible beast because dealing with them almost always ends up in more of them. There will definitely be times where someone will get muted and someone else won't get muted for the same thing despite the same staff being on both times. The answer to this is really simple, and every staff member or person that has been a staff member or wants to be a staff member will agree. This is not the only thing that staff members have going on.   Literally everyone is doing several things while they play most of the time. Staff are no different. We pay some extra attention, sure, but we're going to miss things, pretty often too, because we have other shit going on. Many of us are in college and are doing homework. I'm starting a business and am working on my website while I play. This is where it gets kicked to the players, some. If someone is doing something that bothers you, PM a staff member. You all have access to our Steams, forums, or discords, most likely, as well as in game. We aren't going to catch everything, so if someone is bothering you, collect some evidence and tell us and we'll figure something out.


That pretty much hit staff discretion and inconsistency, so ASAB is next. ASAB does not help anything. The same people that yell asab constantly are the ones that scream about staff inconsistency and discretion, yet they constantly do things that make us have to dish out punishments in defiance of the staff, yet don't see the vicious circle they create with it. If you really have an issue, open up a civil dialogue, don't just ree on server and expect us to react kindly. Having to deal with a dozen people mic spamming asab and spamming  chat with asab after one warranted slay is just annoying, to say the least. Especially since most of the people who are parts of the problem  pop up on every ban appeal like sad eyed puppies pretending they aren't actually doing anything wrong. Like, several of you I've talked to directly and the second I am like "I'm not mad at you, I just am asking you to stop this" you'll do it. I don't want to have to speak to people like they're children to get them to stop trolling, it would be nice for there to be some give and take. If you have issues with donors and staff that go beyond what's possible for DMs between you and whoever you have the problem with, contact a higher up or make an abuse thread with evidence. Big key word, though, always have evidence. That's one big thing. People bring up issues often but don't give out evidence, and unlike @"Prince Nicky La Flama Blanca" , your evidence is not your word, it doesn't really work like that. Give us something to work off, we really want to help and want the server to be better. The  fracture between the staff and some of the playerbase isn't something we want, we're actively trying to better it, but the second a punishment happens it gets worse despite you guys getting on, reading the !motd, noting that there is going to be punishments for several actions, and continuing doing them. That's pretty much all I have on that. asab asab asab

And lastly, high profile bans. These are the things that really fracture the community, which is why there is hesitance to actually punish people that are very known. The whole Benny, Henry ban thing gave way to the ASAB thing because of how much people in that group hated it. We get it, it's hard to agree with when your friends get banned. Why would you agree with your friend being punished? I get it. I really do. But  we can't just let things slide. And the punishment list is available to everyone, so once someone teams or ghosts or masses, it's still as big a deal as noted on those guidelines. "But Rand, I see other people mass all the time, why my friend?!" Well, a lot of people mass and don't get reported, which means it's not actually a mass. And a lot of people "mass" their friends, because all inner groups just fuck around with each other. That's why you'll see me propkill several people in a round and not get in trouble, because they're all my friends. It's just a different circumstance. So we know you won't be happy with certain bans, and we're sorry for that, but maybe you should take the opportunity to make sure your other friends don't do that kind of thing that gets people banned. Because really, ideally, we wouldn't ban anyone. Everyone would be able to just play and have fun and form this community without having any bans or slays or anything, but this is reality, and really our first line of defense is the friends of our playerbase, not the staff. So we'll keep trying, and trying, and trying, and hopefully resolve all these issues, but please do try to do some of your parts, too. As easy as it is to blame staff, it's a community issue first.

[⋆ Fx ⋆]

People think I'm too much of a strict staff member but in reality I've been doing what I always do just now I get harassed for it by people who spam asab which just makes me angry. There seems to be an expectation that staff are robots but we are just trying our best to keep everything in line according to the rules we were given. Some are more lenient than others and unfortunately that's just the way it is. A lot of our current playerbase sees trolls as haha funny meme clap clap bonk but there is a difference between having fun and being a pain in the ass. Another thing is "inconsistency" I try to treat everyone exactly the same no matter what. Take lycan for example he was grapple exploiting and I punished him for it and he had a shitstorm meltdown about it and RDMed me over it and flamed me in admin chat about it. If I didn't punish him everyone else would find it acceptable to grapple exploit which it is not. So why should I feel any desire to listen when things like that happen? Or killbot even. He is using a form of voice changing and everyone likes it but its against the rules. If I do not punish him everyone else will start using it which is a massive no. When I did punish him everyone on server just shits on me and calls me fun police, like, im just trying to have fun too guys -_-

you sure are sensitive lol

I wrote specifically to be respectful. If you aren't gonna put anything to add to this thread other than insults don't write anything at all.

[Jammin]

Responding in the order NotRand posted in:

1. Staff Inconsistency/discretion: Is staff inconsistency really that much of a problem? I feel like if some staff say you are breaking a rule, and other staff say you are not, then you are probably too close to the line. Usually anything that Staff have to rule on or take action on involve intentional action from the person, such as trolling, racism, harassment, and some forms of RDM (other RDM's may be gameplay related, such as not enoguh evidence for a kill, killing wrong person, etc. that isn't fully intentional). The worst case is that some players get away with the rule breaking. I feel like, if anything, staff discretion involves showing more undeserved mercy to a rulebreaker thah anything else. Plus, RDM won't be slayed unless that person reports. I haven't seen any issues with staff discretion so far.

2. ASAB: I didn't know this was an issue, and i'm not sure the wider community knows that this is a full movement. I personally thought it was a joke being spammed by a few regulars, and have participated in memeing around as many regulars do. My apologies for my ignorance on this issue.

3. High-profile bans: Some people will enter the server just to troll, slur, and leave. That is the reason why guests are treated with less respect than regulars are. It makes sense - guests are presented with the rules, and some enter the server with the intention to troll. Setting a firm foot down will ensure that the server can focus on the gameplay aspect. That being said, racism, toxicity, and harassing staff is never acceptable. If 5 regulars team up to spell out a slur 1 letter at a time, that's not funny - all 5 are complicit and should be subsequently warned. There's no such thing as an accidental slur. 

Additional comments, on donor abuse:
I do think we can improve the guidelines for donor usage. When should donors gag those mic-spamming? How much discretion should donors acutally use? Can donors gag/mute when someone is spelling 1-letter variations of common slurs? Can donors gag/mute when a player is being harassed by another player? In one instance, Bg was being specifically targeted by another player. I wanted to help, but since staff was online, I didn't feel comfortable taking action. I informed the staff member of Bg's situation (which was legitiamte - he was being harassed pretty badly), but the staff member didn't take action, possibly due to being busy with gameplay and other staff items.
The donor guideliens are here: https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/sho...php?tid=38. I post it here because in my opinion, there isn't enough clarification for when it is appropriate to use disciplinary commands while staff are online. Obviously, if a donor is gagged by staff, the donor should never ungag themselves. Yet, this is not listed in the guidelines. I think having an update which makes the guidelines more clear would be good.

Sorry if some of this is non-sensical, my 5 am brain is half buried in work papers right now. Feel free to respond as desired, and you can PM me on the discord (jammin#8313) if you want further thoughts.
Thank you.

[Xenny]

2. ASAB: I didn't know this was an issue, and i'm not sure the wider community knows that this is a full movement. I personally thought it was a joke being spammed by a few regulars, and have participated in memeing around as many regulars do. My apologies for my ignorance on this issue.

I mean I sure as hell didn't, half the people using it are people that struck me as incapable of being serious about anything so this being the big "movement" or w/e is news to me.

[bunniey]

ASAB started out as a giant meme and is/was funny here and there, but the people that bring it up the most started being /really/ uppity about staff doing anything to anyone while online. It just kind of became more serious as they kept it up.

[Loon]

I don't think mods need to join a crazy server and start power modding left and right, but I do think mods should be more consistent with sending out the awarns. Sometimes the server will just be full of people playing like it's VRChat and not TTT, so when a mod comes online and starts enforcing rules, there's a lot of pushback. I think that's why sometimes people may think there's inconsistency.

Like Nicky joined the server the other day when it was modless, and for whatever reason everyone was just RTV'ing maps over and over again, screaming to do it nonstop. Like 5 people screeching constantly. Nicky didn't really choose to insta gag the entire server or stop the brainlets from turbo-RTV'ing in their tracks, but slowly stopped individuals from excessive ear rape or hard slurs, didn't give a shit about the "oh look the fun police is on!" and the server returned to normal. I was confused at first but I realized it was probably smart, whether he intended to mod like that or not.