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Goonstation Administration Team
#1
Not sure I should be bothering with this thread, considering the kind of response someone as long-standing as pope got, but fuck it. I'm tired of watching this happen and feel the need to say *something*.

Myself and several other people have noticed several problems with the Goonstation administration team in general, which were best outlined in popecrunch's thread, and I don't feel like repeating him too much because frankly he's better at this than me, so here's the general gist of it.

-Admins are very clearly not held to the same standards as players, and no punishment system exists for when an admin breaks their guidelines or the server's general rules that *everyone* has to follow, or even the god damn Discord Terms of Service. Which proves to be incredibly frustrating and hypocritical when the latter two things are so heavily enforced on players.

-Admins treat certain members of the community with very real prejudice, between calling one person "deranged and unhinged" unprompted and treating others as if they have a burning hatred for the entire team, just to name a few examples. This became especially apparent when multiple trans members of the community were kicked and/or banned for ToS violations, as well as pointing out the ToS violations of the admin team, which was met with a virtually meaningless "we talked to them and they are vewwy vewwy sowwy", while multiple cis members of the community, myself included, got off with an official warning AT THE ABSOLUTE MOST (I should point out, however, that this is to my approximate knowledge. If any part of this is wrong, which I have seen nothing suggesting that it is so far, please respectfully point it out to me. With proof.) I am also not at liberty to discuss any specific cases for privacy reasons. if someone posts their experience here, great. If it gets deleted for "peanut posting", I'm going to personally take it as a sign that the administration team is further acting on that prejudice and frankly just give up on this thread.

-The Administration team has several structural and cultural problems internally that a large chunk of the community has noticed by now because it's very much leaking out into player-side channels, and are absolutely refusing to be transparent about whether or not they're even bothering to fix it, and if they are, actively refusing to let the community help them fix it or even let them know. Personally, my hunch says that they aren't fixing it.

Pivoting from the issues that were better explained by a much better and wiser person than I am, there's also some more stuff I noticed that really, really pisses me off, and several other people whom I have privately talked about regarding how much these things pissed them off. I will not state names for privacy reasons.

-A complete and utter lack of transparency towards the community. I know, I know, "but now that we're open source we're as transparent as we've ever been!!!". The fact that you have to frequently use that excuse when transparency is brought up should say something about how you can really, really do better. Talk to us, please. Help us help you. Let us know that you're putting in work to not have you and your community crumble into an unstable mess (like you're on track to right now, actually!). The complete lack of transparency regarding admin issues is frustrating. Yes, I know. You don't want to "expose the secrets to the unworthy". You don't want to just tell everyone about what just happened in a private channel. You don't want to show everyone exactly what you're doing because by god, the racists could steal it! Well, I'm gonna be blunt here: now doesn't seem like the time to be maintaining that kind of secrecy. Now's the time to tell the community that yes, we are fixing these issues that are becoming increasingly obvious. Here's how. Yes, we are doing more to punish troublesome admins instead of talking to them and conducting internal investigations that always end like every other internal investigation. Here's how.  I'm not telling you to let everyone see and talk in the admin channels, and I'm not telling you to listen to every rando who tells you to make everyone an admin or some other low effort bad-faith shitpost. I'm telling you to tell us what's going on and let us help in whatever way we can, please.

-Refusal to listen to criticism, constructive or not, and a frankly disgustingly dismissive view of the community in general.. The fact that pope's thread was locked after receiving four paragraphs of non-answers that, to be brutally honest, feel like something I'd receive after calling a customer support line for a big company, should say a lot. The fact that a lot of criticism is met with "take it to the forums" or "open source devs owe you nothing" or "players don't know what they want" or "the devs make the game they wanna make and all they care about is player count" says a lot. The fact that changes that a lot of players absolutely hated the mere idea of never get reverted because "it's been a week and nobody's complaining anymore" says a lot. The fact that the attitude towards the community is explicitly stated by developers to be nothing more than "player numbers aren't going down, clearly what we're doing is working!" says a lot. What this tells me is that the developers don't care about their players. They care about how many players are on. Player numbers not going down doesn't mean that nobody's leaving; people can be dissatisfied with a change and still play the game, because they like the game and they care about it. People who do leave get replaced by new players, or people who have just come back from a hiatus. People typically complain about a game's flaws to developers not because they hate the developers, but because they care about the damn game and wanna see it be the best it can be, because it's good and fun and they've met a lot of good people on it. Especially long-standing players.

Now, this probably isn't an extensive list; I'm sure there's even more problems that I'm either unaware of, or too tired and angry to remember. I'm not pointing out these flaws because I HATE THE ADMIN TEAM AND WANT THEM TO SUFFER A THOUSAND YEAR PUNISHMENT OF BEING TOLD THEY'RE WRONG. I took the time to type this out because I care about Goonstation, even if my way of delivering criticism can be very hostile and cynical at times, (sorry for not being perfect) and I made sure I at least wasn't hostile in this thread. I want this place to be better than it currently is, and we aren't going to get there by pretending that everything is fine, because everything is not fine and Goonstation has become an increasingly hostile and toxic environment to a lot of long-standing admins and individuals. People are leaving the community because of this. And more people will leave. And eventually, some of those people who left will band together and make their own server using Goon's open-source code. And those codebases will start competing with you and drawing away your precious player count. And those servers will outlive Goon, because Goon crumbled under its unstable leadership, because every history book I've read says that the number one reason of failure for countries, kingdoms, empires, religions, factions, political parties, and nearly every other substantial group in history was because of instabilities in leadership which either caused it to fall apart on its own, or made it weak to outside resistance, and there's no evidence that it'll be any different this time. This isn't a threat; it's a warning.

Please take this thread as the good-faith warning that it is. Listen to your players, put in a good-faith effort to solve your own problems. Let your community help you, because there's no shame in asking for help. If you don't, then this entire project isn't gonna last. Once again, that's not a threat, and not something I'd ever act on; it's a warning that your refusal to seriously act on these issues will have dire consequences for you and your community.
#2
(05-31-2021, 02:54 AM)Mopcat Wrote: A complete and utter lack of transparency towards the community.

I’m having a hard time squaring this with the over five hour long townhall we had just last weekend where replied to literally any question asked of us by the community.
#3
Putting aside the bizarrely condescending tone, it is difficult to believe in a plea of concern for the community when it's coming from someone who's been permanently banned from the discord for community harm.
#4
It is patently obvious that when you (and those in other similar complaints) speak of our lack of transparency, it is only concerning that of administrator punishment; retribution-derived consequences for those admins who you perceive as having broken the rules more than players; and not transparency as relates to literally anything else. The simple fact of the matter is that those admins who did break rules were disciplined either by mechanical actions (preventing access to certain channels) or with a verbal warning when the infraction was minor. You can ridicule this as internal investigations leading to nothing, but the truth is that the players you cite as having been banned unevenly have almost all done way worse shit that you either aren't necessarily privy to (for example in private channels when we attempt to communicate, or over time when you weren't present to see a pattern), or have provided to you an incomplete picture that reflects their biases or own lack of information.

This leads nicely into another point I want to make. We do not, and will never, treat those who are trans differently. The fact that multiple trans members were banned for shitty rule breaking behavior is not an indictment of trans people, but it is of rule breaking. I want to be absolutely clear that we will continue to ban anyone who breaks the rules regardless of any other personal information. You can try to pontificate on the true reasoning based on your bias and desire to paint us as the big bad, but you will not find bigotry here regardless of how much effort you put in to bending the truth.

The rest of your complaint is absolutely chock full of so many strawman arguments (aka "little quote like this" that we haven't actually said) that I cannot reasonably take this complaint in good faith. Contributing to this is a vague threat about making a better server with blackjack and hookers, equating this silly game community with a literal country, this whole post being an obvious reaction to Pope's recent thread, and even ignoring how many times we've said that we actually are evaluating admin "punishments" because regardless of what you think, we do actually listen.

I'm sorry that we are not pulling in you, specifically, to debate admin mechanisms. We are not beholden to do so, and despite you or other's insistence otherwise, we are actually in a better place than you realise.
#5
Funny how you ban people who actually care about the community the most huh
#6
If you care about the community, and you break the rules, you still broke the rules.
#7
(05-31-2021, 07:33 AM)Wire Wrote: If you care about the community, and you break the rules, you still broke the rules.

Shame this doesn’t apply to admin staff then smilie with a protruding tongue
#8
(05-31-2021, 07:33 AM)Wire Wrote: If you care about the community, and you break the rules, you still broke the rules.

Good thing none of the admins seem to have to follow the rules!
#9
(05-31-2021, 07:34 AM)subjectparfait Wrote: Shame this doesn’t apply to admin staff then smilie with a protruding tongue

You were banned for:

- History of repeatedly breaking discord ToS (3 or more times).
- Co-ordinated with other banned members to harass an admin in private discord messages. (this one made it permanent)

Whereas the admins you're talking about broke the rules to a lesser degree. As mentioned in my post, they were punished. Big shock and horror abounds that different infractions have different punishments. You can pretend it's because they were admins, but to me it sure sounds like you're salty that you specifically were banned.

(05-31-2021, 07:40 AM)Mopcat Wrote: Good thing none of the admins seem to have to follow the rules!

So I guess you skipped the part of my post where I literally said otherwise, then.
#10
(05-31-2021, 04:49 AM)Souricelle Wrote: Putting aside the bizarrely condescending tone, it is difficult to believe in a plea of concern for the community when it's coming from someone who's been permanently banned from the discord for community harm.

I thought I was banned for my scathing criticism against the developer team, which in all fairness was pretty hostile, but okay, I guess it's 'community harm' now.

I feel like I should mention the fact that I have literally seen admins break discord ToS in cool zone. I can't go and get proof for obvious reasons, but I vividly remember multiple members of the community being banned for it while the most any offending admins got was, for all we know, a stern talking to and nothing else.
#11
Shame this doesn’t apply to admin staff then smilie with a protruding tongue

You were banned for:

- History of repeatedly breaking discord ToS (3 or more times).
- Co-ordinated with other banned members to harass an admin in private discord messages. (this one made it permanent)
.
Maybe the admin in question shouldn’t be such a irredeemable ghoul if they didn’t want to be made fun of  Here's to us! I have no tolerance for bourgeoisie scum regardless of their admin status ESPECIALLY those who promote giving loaded shotguns to old ladies who are pacifists and telling them it’s loaded with beanbags when in reality it’s loaded wi buckshot.
#12
Your read on the situation is very, very far off-base and we really have zero patience or interest left for discussing coolzone issues anymore.
It's gone.
#13
Banned subjectparfait/uranium for: admitting that they think targeted harassment is a-ok, throwing around personal insults and posting snippy little obviously-false one liners in a complaint thread.
#14
(05-31-2021, 07:56 AM)Cogwerks Wrote: Your read on the situation is very, very far off-base and we really have zero patience or interest left for discussing coolzone issues anymore.
It's gone.

Isn't it in admin-archive? Aren't you refusing to delete it even though multiple people want you to because they posted extremely personal things in there and don't trust the team to not abuse it? Was your solution to the problem really to "delete" the place where a bunch of admins broke discord's terms of service rather than actually punish them for it?

Also, wasn't uranium's "targeted harassment" just calling Huk a 'sigma male'? Which he then claimed to be 'racist', somehow? I thought 'sigma male' was some stupid masculinity thing. No clue where it becomes 'racism' but please educate me on the matter, seriously, I'm actually confused about that part.
#15
Thread closed.


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