[Gabe]

Offender's Name: Avi STEAM_0:0:171398726, Hani STEAM_0:0:66026831, Gabe STEAM_0:1:93840118 - This is just an initial response until I am fully awake tomorrow-- ill address the whole activity thing later on here in this aha. it might be a bit long so please don't cherrypick from this and read the whole thing

Offender's Rank: Admins

What They Did:
I recently applied for Tmod, which was denied. I had received 16 +1’s from community members that have played with me and have seen my performance. I am completely fine with being denied, except when they have to accuse me of stuff I have not done and never play on the server with me. I was denied for the fact that “Between your last app and this one, there have been several cases of this. The most recent three being you receiving two warnings in separate instances in the month of December and another minor incident at the beginning of January.” Yes, I did add a slay to Brown for no reason and he did not care; and yes, I kicked Mini one time from the game and as far as I know he did not care. The biggest problem with this reason is that every staff member has kicked another on multiple occasions. What happens when a new staff member joins? What happens when they get promoted? They get kicked! How is my “abuse” any different? 

I'm just going to begin by pointing out how blatantly you are mischaraterizing and miscontruding your denial. Yes, you were denied. Why? We needed more time to have confidence that your days of excessively using tools meant for moderation as a joke were over before entrusting you with more responsibility and power. This could simply be corrected by waiting another month or how ever long it takes. "1. The biggest problem with this reason is that every staff member has kicked another on multiple occasions. 2. What happens when a new staff member joins? 3. What happens when they get promoted?" 4. How is my “abuse” any different? 

1. You're right. This happens a lot. Too often. Last year we had a lot of this. In December, we internally told staff to knock it off and it's ok to joke around once and a while but it has to be done sparingly and not constantly. Especially if it's more than one within a few minutes then it just looks like we're abusing to everyone else. This was the day you were warned, for the second time, for an instance of the use of joking. I'll go into these later. I did say on my Rewind thread and on YOUR app that we were going to be cracking down on this excessive use of joke commands that make staff look like a mockery and that we run a cirus. We have to start somewhere. Is it perfect world we live in? No. Could've we started cracking down earlier? Yes. Instead of sitting back and be reactive every time a staff member excessively jokes around with commands, we must now transition into a phase of being premptive. To prevent further misuses and create some deterrence. Your denial was an example and was use TO set an example that we are not going to be tolerating this anymore since it was a big issue last year. 

2. I don't entirely get what you mean by this part but they would be treated the same? Sure, they might get a slap on the wrist first time but they should still know better. But those that have been staff a long time should know better.

3. Honestly, they shouldn't get promoted if it is a constant problem with them as an individual. 

4. Your "abuse" is different because it was constant over a span of around two months and seemed like our warnings weren't effective enough to deter it from happening. Mostly from the first to second time. Going to post a bit of staff chat here which under normal circumstances should never be posted... and no one should take this as permission to post it after this unless asking. This is the second time you were warned after being warned once on a more informal basis by Hani. So it seemed like the warnings were being brushed off and weren't effective as the same thing essentially happened twice within a short time span in the same month. This was back on December 15th... so yes, around 45 days ago. Then there was the "Minor issue" involving the kick here. I can see how this could've been a mistake, everyone make mistakes. But there are preventable mistakes. Just because someone doesn't care it doesn't excuse the behavior. That shouldn't be an excuse to justify anything. I'm not going to waste my time going into every specific of your app since there is a bigger picture in this thread.
    
According to committee rules found here, each committee member has to have at Minimum 10 hours over the course of two weeks. So, let's take a look at their hours?You're right there.

1. No one is contesting that. However, many people seem to assume that we vote on EVERYTHING while being inactive. That's just simply not true. It's easy to get that misconception given that people don't see what happens behind the scenes most of the time. Myself and other admins generally know when we should and shouldn't be formally voting on things. Take Queef and Dakota for example. They haven't voted on anything in a long while since being inactive. Myself, Hani, and Avi being a bit inactive vote sparingly when appropiate and when we have enough evidence and first hand knowledge to do so. Otherwise, we leave it in the hands of the committees. Take KillerZoreo's mod app for example. None of us voted on that because we didn't really have any first hand knowledge regarding it. For yours, we did as we dealt with most of it first hand. People on Mod committee like can attest to that I'm pretty sure. You can ask people on Trusted committee too, or even TMod for most cases. MiniMe's was the latest TMod app before yours, did any admins vote on it? No. Those active at the time did. In those cases, yes, we rely on community feedback and trust that the community gives us their honest assessment. We give input if inactive, but we don't cast a formal vote and we say that we are inactive and can't really vote on it, as yes, it would be unfair. For myself, I consider myself active on forums and discord. People also come to me with first hand knowledge and issues on a constant basis, with evidence to back them up. 

TLDR: you're right about 10 hours. But we know when it's appropiate to vote or not. If we can't cast a formal vote, we simply give our input if we have any, as admins, to the decision makers that are active. Other times we may not have input to give and leave it entirely up to the committees/community to decide. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices when starting a process of cracking down on things to prevent you and others from doing it in the future, and your app was unfortuately one of them. 

Again, this seems like a case of people not knowing how things function behind the scenes and have their own groupthink or anchoring bias to what they percieve as happening 

As you can see here, not a single member of the Tmod community should have voted on my app (besides penguin) because they do not meet the necessary requirements. Would it not make more sense to take the opinions of current staff and current players that see me everyday and use what they say?

pretty much covered all of this, but is the system perfect? Of course not. Will it ever be? Nothing is. Can it be improve? always.

ill probably respond more to other things such as inactivity as a whole(which i agree with) and go more in detail tomorrow. I could go into a technical argue about how this isn't a "abuse report" and shouldn't be in this section and should be in "community discussion" instead, but I won't for obvious reasons. I also may be slightly editing this as I go.. I already went back and fixed the colors and added a few words aha

Don’t think rotating Admins would work when there aren’t enough active mods or mods that qualify to be an admin imo, no offense. Id be 100% against this. I’d rather it be permanent and based on merits. Not the mention that we already struggle to demote those that resign/get demoted. It just won’t work out logically and logistically imo. The way Admin is set up rn works when the right people are there, which I think they are. 

Co-owner situation up to dink, but if there is going to be one they should be semi active at minimum

I don’t necessarily think it should be 100% based on server time as for “inactivity” and more so on community activity as a whole while factoring in server activity.