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.

This page is currently under construction! The following page is currently in the process of being created, is undergoing a major structural rework and/or is being moved. The reason for this is: "Currently under rewrite."

Conduct we expect from admins acting in an official capacity both in and out of the servers. If you have concerns with an admin violating any of these, make a complaint or PM a Head Admin.

New Admins

• You must apply on the forums following the rules and template to have a shot at being an Admin.
• You may not apply for Admin while you have any active bans.
• New Admins must be at least 18 years old.
• Full Admins and above may vote from -1 to +1
• The Head Admins may accept an application even if it doesn't have a positive tally. This also applies vice versa, applications that have a positive score may be rejected.

Senior Admins

• Senior Admins are selected by the Head Admins to advise and assist in day-to-day operations.
• There is no limit to how many Senior Admins there can be at once.
• Senior Admins can approve events but cannot approve their own.
• Senior Admins can not overrule other Admins.

Head Admins

• The Head Admin role is an elected position. Only Admin and above may apply. The ones that apply will be voted on by Admins and above. The vote will end 1 week after it starts. The candidate(s) with the most votes is elected. Candidates may vote for themselves.
• Head Admins are responsible for the whole of the admin team and relating rules/policy.
• Head Admins have a 1-year term. There are no term limits.
• Exiting Head Admins may be given the Senior Admin position.

Impartiality and transparency

• Do not resolve tickets/reports about you.
  • Do not handle issues involving yourself.
• Ensure tickets and situations are handled equally across all players.
  • Any form of bias in dealing with players is not tolerated, favoritism from players or other staff should not weigh in the decision making process.
  • This includes "adminbus"
• Administrative actions are to be carried out within admin channels. Any and all private communications while acting as an admin are to be documented and provided within admin channels.

Action Policy

• IC and OOC punishments are separate.
  • IC consequences have no bearing on OOC punishments.
• Notes are a form of record, not a punishment.
• Job bans are to be given out when a player has shown to be too incompetent or unwilling to learn to play as a role properly without compromising the game for others.
• Server bans are to be given out when a player has shown to be non-compliant with our rules or is activity malicious towards the server, the staff, or other players.
• Repeat offenses will be met with escalating punishment (e.g. Note > Minor > Major > Perma)
  • Wrongfully applied bans that have been successfully appealed do not count towards escalating punishment.
• Notes should not factor into a ban, unless they are directly relevant.
• Admins are to cite broken rules within the ticket and any resulting bans

Trial Admin Policy

General Conduct

• Trial Admins must have their tickets reviewed by an admin to issue a server ban. This rule does not apply to job bans. Trial Admins may apply job bans at their own discretion unless a higher ranking admin rules otherwise.
• Trial Admins should have their tickets reviewed by an admin+ to issue a ban. Server bans that exceed 3-days require admin+ approval.
  • As an exception, trial admins may apply permanent bans to players who perform unquestionable acts of grief (e.g. Plasmaflooding as a non-antag).
  • Bans requiring authorization must include the name of the approving admin in the ban reason.

Trial Admin Promotions

In order for a Trial Admin to be promoted to the full admin position the following conditions must be met:

1. Trial Admins must have actively served at least 30 days within the administrative team.
2. They must complete basic Admin Training.
3. They must have dealt with a minimum of 100 tickets.
4. There must be no active admin reports against the Trial Admin.

Upon these conditions being met, a vote will be held among the Head Admins, Senior Admins and Host.

• Before being promoted in this manner, it is likely that questions regarding tickets will be asked, which can be unique to each time.
• In the event this vote fails, Trial Admins may have their probationary period extended another month. If the Head Admins decide you are unfit, you may be demoted and forced to reapply after a one-month period.

Ticket Conduct

• Admins should notify the submitter of the ticket that it is being investigated.
  • Players are not entitled to know the outcome of any individual ticket.
  • Players should not be informed of punishments not issued to them.
• Do not intercept another admins ticket without asking them first, if you need to correct them or change their ruling use asay or PM the working admin instead.
• If a ticket becomes too complex or another issue prevents you from resolving it inform the other admins through asay and provide the ticket number.
• Handle tickets respectfully, do not be condescending or aggressive in admin PM’s.

Notes

• Read the notes to determine if they’re relevant to the player’s current misconduct. To ensure a consistent record is kept for repeat offenders, include the number of similar notes in your note.
• When writing notes, describe the misconduct and how the player responded. Be sure to include the rules broken, how cooperative the player was in the ticket, and any information or warnings given to the player.
• Do not show a player someone else's notes, be it through Discord or in-game means. If they want to share it, they can do so through the OOC tab in-game.
• Depending on the severity of a note, a manual expiration date can be set per the following guidelines:
  • Severe: 1-year
  • Medium: 6-months
  • Minor: 1-month
• As a general rule, notes should be visible to the player. However, secret notes can be used for ongoing investigations.

Playing the game

• When in-game as a player, you are required to de-admin.
  • If you are the only admin on and wish to play, you will still be required to de-admin.
• Inform the other admins online if you are going to de-admin in order to play. This rule is simple common courtesy to keep the admin team informed and coordinated. While not heavily enforced, if caught abandoning admins during a busy round to avoid tickets you may be punished.

Innocent until proven guilty

• Do not issue a punishment unless you can prove their misconduct through logs
• Same goes for accusations of lying in tickets, you need proof that it was intentional and not misinformation.

Admin Strikes and Demotion

• Admin strikes are issued by a Head Admin as a punishment for breach of conduct.
• When an Admin receives a total of three recent active strikes they are to be demoted from their position immediately.
  • Administrators may be removed at any time per the discretion of the Head Administrators.
• Violating the Admin Conduct will be judged based on what happened, how it happened, and external factors; with the introduction of admin notes.
• Admin strikes are removed by a Head Admin by a unanimous agreement to appeal the strikes.
• Trial Admins need only 1 strike to be removed from their position.
• The demotions of Senior Admins are to be handled by the Head Admins. Depending on the strike(s), they may be demoted to Admin or removed from staff completely.

Admin Intervention

Smites

Smites are a way to punish minor IC misbehavior or rule breaks. They serve as an informal method of administration. They can also be utilized to serve as a punishment for cursing the gods, or otherwise abhorrent behavior in prayers. Some questions you should ask yourself before smiting a player are...

• Did the player(s) involved pray or otherwise do something to incur the wrath of an established divine being IC?
• Did the player(s) involved break the rules in some way?
• Is this an attempt to enhance the round for players at all?

If you answer "yes" to any of the above, then a smite could be warranted.

CentCom Officials

CentCom Officials can be used to help enhance on-going rounds, bring rounds to a close, or add flavor to IC events. They are not, however, a vessel for OOC communication to players.

IC Announcements

CentCom (or renamed) announcements are ways to convey information to players about ongoing events, prefacing/warning about admin intervention, or to add flavor to the round. Announcements should remain IC at all times and should not be used for OOC communications.

Creation of Antagonists

• Antagonists should not be added during extended rounds.
• Mid-round antagonists should almost always be randomly selected
• Mid-round antagonists should only be added when the current antags are dead/afk/ineffective and at least one-hour has gone by.

E.R.T.

Emergency Response Teams are antagonist roles reserved for helping or destroying the crew.

Low Severity Sent to address low risk issues with the station that would normally require a CentCom response, such as reprimanding a misbehaving captain. Intern CentCom Officials Normal Severity Sent to address moderately dangerous incidents that cannot be addressed by current station-staff. For example, instances where most of the security detail has been killed and the station requests aid. ERT Blue ERT Amber Inquisition High Severity Sent to exterminate all life on the station address extremely dangerous incidents on the station and mutinies against Central Command. ERT Red Deathsquad Honk (Clown Deathsquad) DoomGuy Joke/Weak Responses Sent to bring life back to the station. These are true powerhouses used in the most dire of situations. Clown Janitor

Ending rounds

Rounds should be allowed to conclude naturally under most circumstances. However, rounds that extend beyond 90-minutes or have substantial issues may be pushed towards their natural end artificially under these guidelines.

When to encourage a round to end

• Rounds that exceed 90-minutes that have no clear end in sight
• Issues with the server that negatively impact game performance and player experience
• To accommodate a scheduled admin event
• To accommodate important security/bug fixes (At a maintainer's discretion)
• To accommodate potentially unstable/important test merges (At a maintainer's discretion)

How to encourage a round to end

1. Coercing command staff to complete station objectives or to evacuate through roleplay means (Sending a CC official, secret announcements, etc.)
2. Triggering minor "random" events and creating mid-round antagonists to help encourage an evacuation
3. Triggering severe "random" events and/or creating failures within established station infrastructure (Such as disabling telecommunications)
4. If all else fails, total station destruction and/or round-ending antagonists (Meaty-ores go brrrrrr)

Behavior

• Maintain a decent standard of professionalism when operating within the community. Insulting, harassing, or intentionally targeting anyone in our community is not tolerated.
• If you are being insulted or harassed, don’t provoke or retort their behavior as it will only escalate hostility. You can choose to ignore them if they do this, but you should still attempt to resolve their a-help or forum post in a professional manner.
• Do not spam ping members of the community or staff.
• Game Administrators are held to a higher standard than normal players.
  • Breaches of conduct by Administrators may result in elevated punishments, including but not limited to immediate dismissal.
• You may remove all of a player's antag rep if they ahelp asking about it, as they are likely antag rep farming.

Event protocol

• Admin Events are large-scale modifications to the round that would dramatically affect the typical flow of the game. When doing an admin event, you must do the following:

• Before the event even begins a player vote must be held (OOC Tab) with a majority in favor of participating in the event.
  • The vote should not specify the details of the event, only that one is to be held.
• An admin announcement must be made explaining that an admin event is occurring, any information or expectations from the players must also be included. If an exemption to any rules is required, that must be stated as well.
• The admin(s) holding the event and managing it’s construction are responsible to make sure the event and round are done properly.
• Events must have the approval of a Senior Admin or higher before occurring.
  • Events that change the rules must be approved by a Head Admin

Antagonist Tokens

• Antagonist tokens are granted only in rare circumstances.
  • Admins may grant the token at the direction of the Head Administrators.
  • Tokens are only granted when the player's antagonist round is inappropriately affected by an Administrator's interference.

Legal and Operations Policy

• Sensitive Information (Restricted Channel Contents)
  • The contents of administrative channels is protected, and should not be released without the express authorization of the Head Administrators.
  • Game Logs may only be provided after sufficient sanitization, including the removal of Personal Information.
    • Game Logs may only be provided for official purposes.
• Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
  • This includes information such as Hardware Identifiers, IP Addresses, as well as other sensitive identifying information.
  • Player data must NEVER be released without express consent of the Head Administrators.
  • Malicious use of data will result in immediate, irrevocable ejection from the community, including possible legal action.