Admin Policy & Conduct

Note: This page is moderated and can be referenced in OOC issues, such as ban appeals, complaints, reports, etc. This may not apply to the pages this page links to.

Conduct we expect from admins acting in an official capacity both in and out of the servers.

Rules

• Be in IRC if you're going to admin on the servers.

• Privacy is expected by the players. Do not publicize IP(s) and computer IDs (cids) anywhere in game or outside.

• Trial Admins are expected to follow the instructions of Game Admins. If you have a problem with what they're saying, ask the adminbus for more opinions.

• Don't cheat. Never use admin powers on yourself if you are playing or planning on playing the round. Do not use your admin verbs to gain yourself an IC advantage.

• Don't be a hypocrite. If you're doing something you'd normally ban someone for doing, you're breaking this.

• Don't handle adminhelps against your own person. A simple "valid" for someone adminhelping about you, an antag, killing them, is fine, but don't debate your side of something with someone over admin PM's, have them make a ban request if they feel it's a major enough issue, or have another admin online at the time handle it.

• If you have a complaint against a player while you're playing yourself, adminhelp it like a player would. Don't try to pressure the admin handling your complaint to rule in your favor as well.

• Do not touch another admin's ban without prior permission / talking to them. Exception to this being if the ban was placed by a Trial Admin or Admin Candidate, or if the Admin has retired from the position. If you do take over another admin's ban, be sure to provide explicit reasons why you have done so.

• If you are playing the game at all, you're expected to only use the admin panels when absolutely necessary. There's no reason to go and check the round type and the antag list the moment the round starts.

• Do not stack sound files, or split long songs into smaller parts in order to play them. This creates a lot of slowdowns to the players especially in foreign countries, and those with bad internet connection.

• Don't spam sounds and events. If you're queuing sounds one after the other, or if you're running an event every day, you're doing it too often.

Guidelines

• Adminhelps should be answered in a timely manner. Let the ahelper know you're looking into his complaint to acknowledge that you're looking into it.

• Let the ahelper know once you've resolved their complaint. You shouldn't tell them what the resolution was as long as the round is still ongoing as they could infer meta-information from it, but a simple "It's been resolved" can go a long way for them to know you're doing your job. If they insist on knowing what the resolution was, just tell them to adminhelp after the round ends, when it would be safe to tell them.

• Don't defer players to creating a forum ban request if you can help it. It's a lot easier and quicker to deal with it while the players are still online where you can question them.

• Maintain professional conduct both in game and outside of the game. It is expected that you take the position seriously. This doesn't mean you can't talk casually to the playerbase, but remain professional on the forums, as well as on other Space Station 13 communities.

• The adminPM BOINK sound is often startling to players and starting a PM in a hostile or threatening tone will often cause them to lash back at you. Starting the dialogue with a friendly and professional tone will make it more likely that the player will cooperate with you instead of escalating the situation into something nasty.

• Check notes of players being adminhelped for warnings and past aggressions. Be sure to check the notes on both servers, as they’re not shared.

• If you warn someone, use the notes function and actually type out "warned for x" so everyone else knows when you warned them and what for, in case of future aggressions.

• Do not interfere or try to add your own spice to events run by other admins.

• Please be careful if you choose to ‘test’ something you have little idea about. If someone asks something like “How much damage does a stunbaton do”, that can be checked easily, but more outlandish questions, like pertaining to var editing, should be investigated on your own local server and not the thunderdome, as you risk crashing the server.

• If one player is acting like an asshole/spamming OOC feel free to mute them from OOC instead of just turning off OOC for everyone.

• You do not need to be anal about minor IC in OOC violations being performed by new players, things like references to the fact they've been disposaled 4 times this round. A warning will usually suffice. Players who do it with recent warnings/bans should be given a much harsher ban to get the point across to them.

• Don't perform actions just to intentionally piss off players, e.g. spamming buttons or editing sprites.

• Bans are either to teach a lesson, punish malicious behavior, or remove shitty players from the community. Banning for mistakes doesn't really serve any of these purposes (an honest mistake can be explained and in the future avoided without having the players experience ruined with a ban). Of course a jobban might be warranted if a mistake is repeated multiple times.

• Always try to consider what you'd have done in the players place. They don't have the luxury of piecing it together from attack logs, infinite time to make a decision, knowing every antag, etc. They'll act on incomplete information, they'll act on emotion. Don't judge them vs. perfect actions, but based on reasonable ones in their place.

• Upon banning someone, you are placed in charge of ensuring they understand why it is they were banned and are in charge of responding to any ban appeals they should make. Ignoring a ban appeal may lead to the person being unbanned by a headmin. At least have the courtesy to tell them "denied", and WHY. They don't have to agree with you, they just need to know why.

• Unless you're the only admin online, you're expected to de-admin while playing a sensitive role like security, the Captain, or the AI. You get to avoid the barrage of metainfo, and we can avoid player suspicions of admins cheating (Yes, we've had this real issue before). You also won't have to take a break from the action to answer adminhelps (and players won't become frustrated because you're too busy playing to help them).

• Don't be afraid to punish grief harshly. Have no mercy for those who deliberately try to ruin the game for others.