Toxic/Abusive/Flippant Behavior - Efrem/CaptainBravo - 10MAY2021

[Slazenger]

Admin: Efrem/CaptainBravo

Server: RP Morty/Discord DM
Date + Time: 10MAY2021 01:00 - 03:30 Eastern.
Synopsis: During an admin nukie round as HoS, I responded to a report of a Syndicate with guns, attempted to RP, the situation was escalated by the other party, and resulted in their antag gear being removed from them as they had shot the Captain and I.  I attempted to open discourse and defend my actions to Efrem/CaptainBravo, which was responded to with a ban as I had a differing opinion to them.

I posted an unban appeal and reached out via Discord, for feedback and insight, which devolved into them ridiculing me and then abruptly shutting down the conversation.  They then took it back to my unban appeal, made mischaracterizations and made inappropriate comments about my playstyle (as it differs from their own expectations), while being toxic in the process.  I asked for follow-up on their response as the ban itself was not mentioned in their response, to which they derided a typo I made in the title as a "last word".  

Their behavior is uncharacteristically (for Goon as a whole) childish, vindictive, and frankly unfun and is a poor example of proper behavior for members of community.  They are incapable of having contentious discourse with someone who has a different opinion of them, and instead rely on bullying and personal attacks.  They never once provided a reasonable explanation of a different course of action that I could have taken in the situation and the ban was heavyhanded, to say the least.

There is no reason to be a nasty person when people are being respectful towards you.

Much of the context comes from my ban appeal:  here

Screenshots of our Discord follow-up after the ban are below.

Logs: 

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/8...nknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/8...nknown.png

[Vorlice]

(Stated in the ban appeal linked above) When Efrem/CaptainBravo said:
"That round would have had a more thrilling ending if you had never even spawned in."
Upon reading that I was going to start a report myself but I'll instead just combine it with this one.

I don't deem Efrems replies in the conversation as professional or helpful. I appreciate this being looked into for quality assurance.

[AWarriorBunny]

Slazzy acted as I would as a HoS so I'm not sure what this man is about, and I don't even feel secure saying this much lest I be banned or worse have my messages edited for partaking in a "peanut gallery". Extremely unprofessional attitude from an admin.

[saccharineChampion]

Unfortunately, from the conduct I have seen from Efrem during the time he has been an admin, this incident is fairly unsurprising. He uses his authority and claims of other people engaging in bad faith or "deserving" his toxicity as justification to act horribly. This isn't right, and I pray that even those who have thought well of him in the past can see the error of how he has acted. Current-day goonstation administration as a whole should be better than to allow his behavior, whether they do so by explicitly supporting him or by silently allowing it to continue happening.

[Carbadox]

As far as I understand, nothing that Slaz did went outside of the realms of the basic expectations for someone to do in a situation and I don't really see what else he could do outside of just observing with no interaction on the situation whatsoever, which is not something you can expect from a Head of Security when there's obviously nuclear operatives on station. I don't see how what happened was anything out of the ordinary from a typical response on the RP server that I doubt would have any negative admin reaction in a standard situation.

I'm gonna guess this was a planned admin gimmick (because otherwise I have no clue how Nukies happened on the RP server), but I dont think anyone can honestly say that they would expect the nukies to succeed on a server where most players never had the chance to play nukies outside from a couple instances on Main. And yeah, the arrival of a Head of Security certainly wouldn't help but an admin has more than enough power to say "I need you to sit this one out. This is a gimmick that's happening and I prefer you didn't interfere". Admins notifying mentors about ongoing gimmick is common so it's not as if it'd be out of the ordinary for that to happen.

Frankly, "making non-apologies" sounds really baseless and only makes me assume Efrem wasn't going to accept anything outside of outright grovelling in this scenario.

I find it funny how we've come full circle. "Go play on RP if you don't like Main", now we have "Go be HoS on Main"

[NapsWasTaken]

I'd like to chime in and say that an admin saying to ignore RP server rules for their special antag gimmick seems a bit wrong to me. Why even have it in the rules if people are supposed to ignore it.
The rule I'm referring to is "Play as a coherent, believable character that you enjoy portraying. Real life realism is not required, and you are allowed to be silly within the context of the SS13 game world. (Clowns, farting on people, people spontaneously combusting and exploding are all non-serious things but yet a vital part of the game world.) At the end of the day, it is very likely your character wants their employment with Nanotrasen to continue. As such, they should act like it. Playing as a violent or otherwise psychologically unstable character is not a valid reason to cause harm to others or damage to the station unless you are an antagonist. Only minor criminal activity is permitted.".
Would it be realistic for a Head of Security to ignore something like this especially with people asking for their help? It's an RP server and Slazzy RP'd it out from what I can see.

[Enderthunder]

I posted this earlier in the wrong section.

I feel like there is a slight bias here and i am not agreeing with the admin's descission in banning Slazzy/Gunnar.
I feel that the Admin has made a mistake, but i will not hold a bias against the admin themselves because of this, everyone makes mistakes,
I just hope the Admin can Re-evaluate the ban.

[DimWhat]

So wait a minute. You got banned and PMed the admin that banned you about it? This directly breaks discord rule 13. Efrem was entirely in the right to shut you down. You should have known better than to PM the admin over your ban. Even if you believe it to be unjust it is simply against the rules. Just as much as efrem is an "ambassador to the community" so are you as a mentor. You lead by example and the example is to break rules because you don't think they matter to you.

Efrems real mistake here, not even considering the reasoning of the ban, was not blocking you on the spot for PMing them.

[awfulworldkid]

So wait a minute. You got banned and PMed the admin that banned you about it? This directly breaks discord rule 13. Efrem was entirely in the right to shut you down. You should have known better than to PM the admin over your ban. Even if you believe it to be unjust it is simply against the rules. Just as much as efrem is an "ambassador to the community" so are you as a mentor. You lead by example and the example is to break rules because you don't think they matter to you.

Efrems real mistake here, not even considering the reasoning of the ban, was not blocking you on the spot for PMing them.

There are only nine discord rules.
https://wiki.ss13.co/Rules#Discord_Rules
https://discord.com/channels/18224996089...9729758239

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So wait a minute. You got banned and PMed the admin that banned you about it? This directly breaks discord rule 13. Efrem was entirely in the right to shut you down. You should have known better than to PM the admin over your ban. Even if you believe it to be unjust it is simply against the rules. Just as much as efrem is an "ambassador to the community" so are you as a mentor. You lead by example and the example is to break rules because you don't think they matter to you.

Efrems real mistake here, not even considering the reasoning of the ban, was not blocking you on the spot for PMing them.

There are only nine discord rules.
https://wiki.ss13.co/Rules#Discord_Rules
https://discord.com/channels/18224996089...9729758239

i'm an idiot, rule 8 does actually say what they said rule 13 says, their only mistake was saying the wrong number

[Enakai]

While it's good to have an opinion on stuff, this thread is not the place for arguments between players about who is wrong or right, nor is it the place for other players who have not actually been actively involved in the aforementioned situation themselves to come in and bang pots and pans about who did what and how much they don't like someone.

Slazenger has submitted a complaint in what I assume to be good faith about a situation that occurred in game and on their ban appeal, but the rest of you should not be in here bringing up how you 'personally feel' about the situation from looking afar at a forum thread. This problem is for the admin team, the admin in question and Slazenger themselves to resolve and does not need posts like 'I would have done this', or 'I don't deem this', as they add absolutely no substance.

If you have a separate problem with a staff member, or how they have handled something, then you are encouraged to make your own feedback/complaint thread regarding that instead of crashing another thread, as this is also unfair to the person making the complaint and can take away from the core of their problem.

Thank you.

(Minor edit for formatting)

[pali6]

My personal opinion is that Efrem does sometimes tend to be unnecessarily rude. In particular when it comes to the ban in question based on the context provided in the ban appeal (which might not be unbiased for all I know) the ban doesn't seem justified to me as it comes across more like Efrem was trying to railroad the gimmick in a particular direction instead of letting players play it out as they want. From the perspective of being inside the admin team I know that in many areas Efrem is a very good admin but I too think that he tends to be a lot more rude and ban-happy than I'd be in a lot of situations and I sorta get the feeling that once he decides on his opinion about a particular incident he tends to stick to it no matter what the other party says. But also I'm not good at judging all this and am probably the wrong person from the admin team to post here, I just wanted to voice my opinion.

[Flourish]

Hi, I wasn't involved in the aforementioned round. I'm chiming in as an admin, because I feel like my perspective may be valuable, and because I want to respond to what I think are some pretty unfair characterizations.

I attempted to open discourse and defend my actions to Efrem/CaptainBravo, which was responded to with a ban as I had a differing opinion to them.

If someone does something that I think they shouldn't have, and I PM them "hey please don't do this", the response I'm looking for is "oh okay", not "I'm sorry you feel that way". If someone refuses to acknowledge what an admin is telling them, then yes they're getting banned.

I posted an unban appeal and reached out via Discord, for feedback and insight, which devolved into them ridiculing me and then abruptly shutting down the conversation.

Efrem could've just straight up ignored you, but instead chose to try and explain to you a second time his expectations. He clearly told you when he was done talking, but you chose to push and continue.

They then took it back to my unban appeal, made mischaracterizations and made inappropriate comments about my playstyle (as it differs from their own expectations), while being toxic in the process.

I feel like comments about your playstyle are pretty fitting in a ban appeal where you got banned for refusing to adjust your playstyle. In the logs you posted, Efrem already tried to explain to you ingame why he didn't think your actions were appropriate. And he tried explaining again in Discord. He could've just responded "appeal denied" to your appeal and closed your thread, but instead chose to give you a thorough breakdown of his thought process in banning you. 

They are incapable of having contentious discourse with someone who has a different opinion of them, and instead rely on bullying and personal attacks.

This isn't some different opinion on whether frog hats are cooler than cowboy hats, this is a different opinion on behavior that heavily impacts other players' experiences and how rounds play out (especially on the RP server). Ban appeals are for explaining why you should be unbanned, not for "contentious discourse" - you don't argue with an admin and then get unbanned if you "win".

Your explanation for why you should be unbanned was basically "technically I didn't break any of the rules", which really isn't very substantial. The RP rules are there as guidelines for how people should play, but they aren't all-encompassing, given the squishy nature of roleplay and what makes for good roleplay. And even in general - 

They never once provided a reasonable explanation of a different course of action that I could have taken in the situation.

I see a lot of different courses of action in your Discord conversation. None of them were "just sit there and ignore everything and don't do anything". They were all variants of "be kind to the antagonists". And even if Efrem hadn't offered any different courses of action, admins aren't required to give alternative courses of action for every single person they ban. 

You feel like your ban was unfair. Sure. You feel like some of the things Efrem said were rude. I get that. These are valid things to feel. But framing it as Efrem being "toxic" and "abusive" and "bullying" really isn't convincing. Those words in particular are pretty loaded, and I really fail to see how you think they're appropriate. This complaint feels like it was made in bad faith (especially now that I see your posts on mentor/HoS apps about "representing the community" - this is pretty passive aggressive and not great), and I'm not sure where the "constructive feedback that we can learn and do better from" is. 

To all the other posters in this thread - if you expect professionalism and niceness from an admin (someone whose time and labor is totally unpaid and uncompensated), doubling down with "I'm sorry you feel that way" in your unban appeal is not the way to go, after that admin has already tried to explain to you why they don't want you to do something, twice (once ingame, once in Discord). This doesn't mean you can't be critical, but I hope you also have it in you to be empathetic about how exhausting all this work is.

[Slazenger]

Thanks for your response Flourish. I think assuming that everything that occurred with Efrem's behavior (and the ban itself) is justified due to a single sentence I said while being yanked out of the middle of an RP scenario and being ignored and talked down to by an admin in the penalty box is pretty silly. There is no justification for the words and actions used that make sense.

From the very start of our conversation, Efrem was condescending and rude, well before I told him I was sorry that he felt that way. And I genuinely did feel sorry about that. He wanted an apology for transgressions that didn't occur, and it upset him that he didn't receive it.

I play nearly nothing but HoS. I've responded to numerous admin PMs respectfully and calmly to explain context behind scenarios and situations. Can't say I've been yanked out of the game because I didn't respond to an admin PM within 15 seconds and then talked down to. Efrem set the tone of that conversation.

I'd also like to point out the exhausting work your community members, mentors, HoS's, and all involved with coding do on a daily basis. There are a lot of talented, dedicated people in our community. Their contributions and efforts do not give any of them free pass to approach a discussion in poor faith and be downright rude to others, especially after making a baseless ban.

We pride ourselves in being one of the nicest, most accepting and well-behaved SS13 communities. It's unfortunate to see the stance you're attempting to portray, Flourish.

[Froggit_Dogget]

I PEANUT POSTED MY OPINION AFTER THERE WAS A POST SAYING EXPLICITLY NOT TO DO IT. I WILL NOT DO THIS AGAIN.

[Vorlice]

I PEANUT POSTED 3 HOURS AFTER SOMEONE WAS ALSO TOLD NOT TO AND ALL I GOT WAS MY POST REMOVED.

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My post wasn't a peanut, it had actual parts to it.