Staff Policy

Administration
Global Rules	Rules - Main	Silicon Policy	Antagonist Policy	Space Law	Standard Operating Procedures	Staff Policy	Policy Configuration

Golden Rule

Staff are here to voluntarily make the place better and more enjoyable for all involved, rather than for their own enjoyment.

• Staff are never to abuse their rank or position for their own or their friends’ gain. Decisions should strive to benefit the community at large with context to the direction(s) we want to take a particular server/area in.
• Staff are, above all, also regular players/members. Staff do not get any special treatment when it comes to rule enforcement. This is especially important on the game servers, as staff should be setting an example for others to follow.
• Much like with rules for players, USE. COMMON. SENSE. Many of these rules have ‘gray areas’ because there are many, many precedents in the past where it has been okay, or even advisable, to bend these a little for the betterment of the server. We aren’t the average gameplay-only server, and we would rather not enforce strict no-second-guessing rules upon all staff, for the same reason we do not want to force players to read a textbook. IF you choose to make yourself consistently the problem, and excuse it with “the policy page said this is sometimes okay”, YOU will be treated as the problem for a lack of self-moderation.
• Stay in touch with the server you’re adminning. If you went on a long break, take the time to reacquaint yourself with the current day. Ask questions if you’re not sure with other admins, see what’s normal. Rules on paper will never replace operational knowledge of daily going-ons. If you usually do not play (or worse, never play) a server, do not touch admin cases without discussion with residing admins outside of hilariously clear/blunt cases of griefing.
• Understand what punishments are for.
• The point of staff is not to hand out bans. It is to ensure the community is a constructive environment for its target audiance.

Bias

• If you are too heated to handle a ticket/issue in an unbiased way, hand it off to other staff if possible. We have >30 admins, this shouldn’t be hard in most cases
• We expect staff to be mature enough to realize when a personal issue will cause bias in judgement as well.
• Staff must never handle their own tickets outside of absolute emergencies.
  • This means if you are involved with a conflict, stop, sit back, and ask your peers to handle it for you.
  • There’s a bit of nuance to this at times - If someone is flooding/spamming a channel it doesn’t matter if you’re an unrelated party or the person they were feuding with, while if you are upset someone wronged you in game you should definitely ask for someone else.

Professionalism

• We expect staff to have a mild-moderate amount of professionalism in interactions, but also strive to be able to tell when something shouldn’t be taken with the utmost seriousness.
• What that means is staff are expected to take things seriously when needed but should not sound like emotionless machines when doing so. Know when it’s time to be serious and when it’s not - taking everything too seriously will smother potential fun, but so will not taking something seriously enough when needed.

Discretion

• Staff, as (usually) veteran players of the game and server, are expected to attempt to have discretion when enforcing rules when it comes to the context of the infraction.
• This isn’t as much of “staff can ignore rules all the time” as much of a “consider in the context of the server you are administration and the context of the current round (if it happens to be SS13) how much the person’s actions affected others”.
• Understand that the game is chaotic. Do not overly choke the spirit of the game. Do not unnecessarily railroad the round. Live and let live.
• If someone does something hilarious that is technically breaking the rules and is not seriously hurting everyone’s experience, consider it a mitigating factor. SS13 was built on the stupid, memorable moments, and we do not want to remove those.
• Consider how many and in what ways someone negatively impacted peoples’ rounds/the round quality as a whole. If you can’t justify a ban by that, consider bringing up a discussion on the rule they broke.
• These all, of course, depend on the connotations of the server, especially in regards to RP levels. As an example, stupid things that would be considered great on main aren’t always great on RP.

Infractions

• Cases of potential abuse of rank should be brought up in a complaint on a forum or via contacting head admins in a discord support ticket.
• No staffmember is exempt from these policies or the server’s rules, whether it’s the Head Admins who set these policies or newly hired Trial admins. Do not be a hypocrite.
• There is no concrete “strike” system for staff infractions, but staff are subject to demotion, removal, or miscellaneous sanctions if they break these policies, with severities dependent on context and if the intention was good-natured - we look most harshly upon staff abusing rank for personal gain.

Cheating

It is considered cheating to use admin abilities for your own advantage.

• As a standing precedent, we do not completely outlaw admin interference in the round that will affect the admin’s character, but it should never, ever be to solely benefit themselves or anyone, really, in an unfair manner.
• Example of things that are (mostly) acceptable: Fixing a swathe of the station bombed by a griefer with repair tool, fixing serious bugs with debug tools, sending an ERT when everyone’s dead
  • Still, consult with/at the very least notify other admins if you are involved in a situation or will benefit in a tangible manner from the effects of any round intervention that you intend.
  • Seriously, we would like to not have a black/white policy of never being allowed to touch anything at all if you are in the vicinity of something, the point is for no one to abuse it.
• Staff should be able to tell if something they are doing is a legitimate fix/for the benefit of all rather than themselves. If they prove they cannot do that, they will be removed from the staff team.
• This is doubly worse if staff are found to be using their power to get back at people who wronged them!
• If we cannot trust you to admin the game without abusing your power for your own gain/to harass others, we will remove you both from administration as well as a matching server ban if you end up hurting other people’s experiences.

Round Intervention

• Admins are generally allowed to do what they need to in terms of round intervention to make everyone’s experience better.
  • Refer to rules page for the server for the atmosphere we want to foster. If you are staff, you are probably in touch with the environment. (If you aren’t, why are you staff)?
  • Consult other admins if you are unsure. We all make mistakes and other viewpoints are often helpful.
• Examples: Calling shuttles, setting gamemode/round intensity, IC intervention in the form of CCO’s, giving items to players, etc.
• Obviously, they are held responsible for said actions.
• Admins are encouraged to attempt intervention in an IC/in universe manner where reasonable.

MIDIs/Music, memes/varediting, global narrates, shennanigans

• We are not going to have a concrete policy on too much is too much for this
• If players are obviously not having fun, stop.
• Do not run things to the ground. Players are required to understand this, and staff do as well.

Investigations

• Get both sides of the picture unless it is obvious grief, spam, emergencies, etc. Intent sometimes matter far more than logs and no admin is incapable of mistakes.
  • Start tickets in a neutral tone. If you force people on the defensive immediately, expect to have a bad outcome. We do not want this.
  • As much of a meme as it is, “Hey, when you have a second, can you explain what happened between you and person/x and y/what happened with thing” is so well known for a reason. Don’t expect instant responses unless you tell people directly to stop what they’re doing, this is a real time game. The above is a workable way to start off a ticket without sounding overly confrontational or rushed.
• Explain what went wrong and why it is wrong. The goal is reform, not to seek a note/ban. People who commit infractions upon the rules will not get better if you do not ever explain to them why something is bad.

Disputes

• Disputed rulings should go to discord in support tickets for specific things, or, recommended, #staff-forums channel for general policy discussions. You are not required to indefinitely draw on a ticket on the server once you have done your due diligence of explaining.
• It is heavily, heavily advised to avoid handling administrative actions over DMs. It will cause you a headache and cause everyone else on staff a headache.
• Ban appeals must be done on the forums unless specified otherwise by the banning admin. Even if you are the banning admin, do not privately handle ban appeals outside of exceptional circumstances. Even if it was a misunderstanding, etc, it should be done in a logged area if at all possible.
  • Notable exceptions include disconnection bans, legitimate misunderstandings, new evidence that completely changes a case, etc. Discord staff forums or support tickets should still be used for this.

Server Events/Adminbussing in general

• Events are fun and cool and we encourage them, but have some discretion.
• This does not just apply to events, but
  • If it’s been constant chaos all day, try to aim for and tweak for calmer rounds when necessary. Do not add to the pile.
  • Absolutely do not run multiple high chaos events in a row outside of specific circumstances. This doesn’t need to be your own events, if it’s been chaos, lay off.
  • This goes both ways. If it’s been calm and nothing’s been going on all day, you are far more justified to do some wacky things if necessary. We want a balance here, not one or the other.
• We will not impose hard rules on what kinds of bussing can be done at what times, but take into account what players voted for a specific round in addition to the above. Admins will not get in trouble over the occasional blunder - reading the round and even knowing what’s been happening all day can be something quite subjective, but try not to completely run the server off the rails.
• Events should aim to keep as many interested players engaged as possible.
  • Obviously, sometimes, this can’t happen. People die, people get removed from the round. These things happen. If this happens to you, at a certain point, you’ll have to just live with it, especially if the event was opt-in.
  • Regarding MAIN SERVER: Events do not need to tiptoe around involving unwilling people. Short of exploding the dorms for an “event”, involvement in stationside events can be considered parallel with involvement with antagonists - this is a video game, and by playing the round, players have signed on to partake in the round events.
    • Don’t overly be a jackass if people complain regardless.
• Tailor events to the server where necessary. Don’t spam click-mob events outside of once in a blue moon on a HRP server. Don’t force RP-required events where people are heavily punished for trying to game on the MRP server.
  • This doesn’t mean hostage situations/the likes aren’t allowed on main. Quite the contrary - people are somewhat expected to take things seriously within the context of the round. The point is, keep it in good taste. People aren’t on main for a job simulator and people aren’t on RP to click people horizontal.
• It never hurts to discuss with other staff if you are unsure. That said, do not be afraid to run events even if you are inexperienced. We all have to live and learn at some point.

Warnings/Notes

• Notes are there to keep track of player behavior.
• Notes must be accurate and include context
  • You might not be around when a note is read, and even if you are, other admins weren’t there to witness it. Even if it is YOU, human memory is not infallible. Word notes accurately.
  • Notes with awful wording, wrong information, and/or severe lack of context can be appealed to be changed. Take the time to note properly.
• Secret notes should be avoided unless necessary.
  • Suspicion of metacomms, sensitive information, etc.
  • We will not fully outlaw secret notes otherwise. It is acceptable to use secret notes for observations that may become issues later on, which are not yet at a point where a warning is necessary.
    • This is under the pretense that they have proper wording and are marked as such. Players are not to be punished as if they were ignoring warnings for “have been observed doing this, might be time to do something if continued”.
  • Notes following a warning regarding the actual warning should never be secret. Be specific, use context
• On rare occasion, warnings do not warrant notes. In general, though, you should - other admins rarely know the full situation otherwise.

Bans

• Outside of particularly egregious cases or special circumstances (WHICH SHOULD ALWAYS BE DOCUMENTED IN THE BAN REASON!!), bans should never be the first resort.
• If you do not leave a paper trail regarding warnings, including non secret notes, do not be surprised if your ban is overturned or if other admins do not punish someone as harshly as you think they should be. Warnings and notes are important. Bans should be the last resort, not the first, again.
• ALWAYS give context in ban reasons. It’s helpful to reference the rule broken, but this is not as important as explaining what was done wrong and what happened, any mitigating or further incriminating factors, things required to be done in the future.
• Jobbans are a thing. Use them where needed. If someone is only a problem in a certain job and are otherwise not awful, ban them from the job rather than the server.
• Players are allowed to request bans. They are usually to be lifted when requested, similarly.
  • “I requested a ban right before I would otherwise get banned” has been seen before, but it will not be a problem if notes are properly used.

Server specific information

Main

• Admins are required to use the deadmin verb in these circumstances:
  • They are in an antagonist role.
  • They are in the security or command departments.
  • They are playing a standard stationbound silicon role (see: cyborgs, AIs)
  • The above three are the big three as all of those tend to have serious round involvement that can be impacted by the presence of meta-information.
  • Exception: If there is a legitimate emergency/need for you to be bending this, you are allowed to stay adminned/readmin on demand for the duration of said need. Examples include rampant, obvious griefing, someone spamming IC/OOC/whatnot and no one else is around to handle it, no other admins online, etc.
  • Exception: Special event or extended rounds have this laxed. The below still needs to be kept in mind, but the requirement is for standard secret rounds.
  • Have common sense with the above. Even if you think you can ignore meta-information this is a cover-your-ass situation as well as being more sensical for us to enforce this on a gameplay server. Consequently, if you find yourself suddenly being involved in the round’s action, or likely to become involved, you should deadmin to not receive unnecessary meta-information. No one is perfect, subconscious biases exist.
• In synchronous with the above, do not feel the need to remain adminned and avoid playing if there are little to no admins online. If you are actually active on the server, you likely already more than pull your weight in terms of handling tickets. This is obviously advice, but do not burn yourself out if you want to play the game. Forcing yourself to not enjoy the game to admin will likely just accelerate any kind of burnout you might have, and we are all here to have fun. If you need to play a round, play the round.
• People signed up to play the game when they joined the round. See: Events, round intervention, etc. Obviously do not screw with people RPing in private for the sake of it, but private RP does not have precedence over server engagement and health.