Mod Team Update - May

[Josh3738 3137]

Announcements

Addressing Staff Permissions Abuse

It’s been brought to the attention of administration by way of a number of diverse reports that several members of staff from three teams have been party to abusing their permissions for their own benefit and that of their non-staff friends. The investigation is ongoing and ranges from simple mechanical things like duping, pulling items from banned players’ inventories, and searching chests prior to petty theft/heists to more duplicitous activities like leaking, spying on roleplay, and using privileged permissions to spy on people’s OOC happenings, reporting on them to friends. 

 

It’s been a long time since we’ve had real abuse like this to be honest. We’re generally forgiving in terms of spawning in minor items, or mina (ex. Paper for birds or bread) or using LC for small things, but I want to make clear the scale of the abuse and the intent. It’s evident through reports, testimonies, and omni logs that this was invariably malicious and extensive.

 

The bulk of the investigation was handled on my end, with most of the reports and evidence either gathered or forwarded by @Aeus, who also took care of much of the documentation. @Spoopy_Duck assisted with a few smaller issues, as well as one of the major ones I mentioned earlier. After reviewing everything, I consulted with @Halt, and following a few more discussions, we all agreed it was best to escalate the matter to the admin team for a diversity of opinion, given just how absurd some of it had become. At least for the largest incidents.

Items get duped from time to time, accidents happen, and people make mistakes. No team is perfect, but what happened is really inexcusable and seemingly more expansive by the day. As a consequence, we’ll be reinstituting regular audits to actively monitor for problems like this, and I highly encourage players to reach out if they suspect any issues. That goes for any staff member.

As it stands, the administration has met, discussed, and unanimously voted to issue several staff blacklists, and a number of bans have gone out.  More evidence has been given since then, and we’re continuing to investigate the extent of the situation.

War Pause (Not Yet)

As with the usual end of map program, war will be paused prior to the transition to the next map and extend through the beginning of 10.0 to allow for unhindered preparation for players and staff. The actual date of the pause is somewhat fluid at the moment, depending on in-game story progress and stages of 10.0 development, but it’s likely to start in the next month or so.

 

Mod Team is Recruiting

 

Applications to join the team are still open! With our sights set on 10.0 and having a larger, capable team in place for the transition, we’ll be looking to fill out the ranks a bit more before we move on. If you’re active and interested in helping out, read about applying for staff or put in an application directly.

 

State of the Team

Current Team

As of right now, managers and mods (and singular advocate)  are:

Projects

Active

Rule Clarifications & Reformatting (Final Stages): A review of the current rules looking to see where things could be confusing or otherwise require an amendment.

 

Forum Rule Changes: A review of forum rules and proposals for admin consideration given discussions.

 

Naval Warfare (Early Stages): System for naval effects, battles, and movement of armies.

 

Warzones & War Changes (Early Stages): Offering an optional addition to wars to have sides set up pvp zones to fight outside of warclaims and raids. Also the exploration of adding new things to war such as gear, new siege equipment, etc.

 

Precedents

 

• Inventories/items of banned players may not be transferred to others or otherwise redistributed.

 

Afterword

As always, the rules of the server stand as both reference and guideline for how we should proceed, but they’re also flexible and should adapt with the times so we might provide the fairest, safest experience we can. Things can be changed, and it’s your help and feedback that lets us know how we can change things for the better. A big factor in how we adapt and introduce rules and systems is player feedback, so join the Moderation Discord if you want to give input on our active projects and anything else you’d like to see changed.

 

Your Mod Admin,

Josh

 

[wowj 9760]

17 minutes ago, Josh3738 said:

Inventories/items of banned players may not be transferred to others or otherwise redistributed.

Make this a rule.

It will solve a-lot of issues.

[Benleft 2581]

I wish they duped for me man. 

[tcs_tonsils_ 3666]

Perhaps there should be some sort of application process to get items from Banned player inventories? It could go through the mod team and be approved by them. Perhaps something to look at in the future?

[Borin 7646]

Riiight but who did it and what did they do, arguably its in the interests of the playerbase to know.

[StingyParrot 1595]

y'all have a hard job kudos to the blue tags

[Tabby64 1464]

2 minutes ago, Borin said:

Riiight but who did it and what did they do, arguably its in the interests of the playerbase to know.

I agree

[Cheese 8891]

41 minutes ago, Josh3738 said:

Addressing Staff Permissions Abuse

 

bro look at your story team

[xDisarray 553]

31 minutes ago, tcs_tonsils_ said:

Perhaps there should be some sort of application process to get items from Banned player inventories? It could go through the mod team and be approved by them. Perhaps something to look at in the future?

I definitely agree with this. 

 

I do feel certain situations should be looked at to see if that item is eligible to be redistributed though. (i.e proper roleplay prior to the person being banned, an event that makes sense for the item to be redistributed depending on the item, or some sort of storyline/event line that the item can bring so it isn’t given out so easily.)

There can be varied circumstances that allow for the items to be reintroduced to RP instead of being lost forever. Imagine if someone had an item/relic from like 3 maps ago that got lost due to someone getting banned and there is virtually no way to get it back unless an event is set up. I think if someone was attempting to get the item IRP prior to the ban there should be a way to get it back. (Obviously proper roleplay would have to be there and not just someone trying to get their long lost item back and it would be looked at case by case by admin/mod manager/Story team.)
 

 

[PrimnyaQuorum 4003]

That it took this long [and that some of them were allowed BACK onto staff after prior bans] is comical. This feels like its saves face more then anything but it is better then the literal nothing that was before this.

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

"I have detected a problem instead of actively fixing it, praise me" - Josh

[Animael 1500]

Committing petty theft in the first place is evil :o

[Netphreak 510]

So.... You stopped audits when? Giving people you don't intimately know the power to moderate and then ceasing auditing of server commands and functions? I mean, congratulations at actually spotting a problem in a massive pool of issues that have and continue to plague this server over a GRAND number of years. 

 

You're right about one thing, no staff team is perfect. Probably about the most truthful statement I've ever heard a staff member exclaim. Why also is there leniency with staff members when they deliberately do something that a non-staff player would get gutted instantly for 'abuse'? Shows favoritism does it not?

And if there's a bug in the system that 'just so happens' to duplicate an item, and the staff member doesn't discard said item and report the bug; isn't that bug abuse? Leniency ESPECIALLY in staff teams will breed a false sense of security in the actions that they're doing. (Hence your kabash /after/ the reports have been made.)

What's with flexibility in rules and consequences? That in and of itself is a huge flaw, you're opening the opportunity for favoritism again to be the foundation of moderation decision. If two players break the same rule with the same exact severity and there's no concrete and hard written consequence.. One player may get a more severe punishment than the other; just based upon the staff member who whacked them with the judgement hammer; along with the staff member's own bias, personal feelings and external influences. 

It may only be me and I speak for myself; I feel there's very little confidence in the staff teams in this present time. There are plenty of complaints that you can read through just on the status posts alone. Don't take my word for it though, staff know my position on this subject matter very well. Just be more proactive in this stuff; instead of waiting for reports to come in and /then/ investigating. Proactive actions are much better than reactive actions.

[Laeonathan 5889]

3 hours ago, Cheese said:

bro look at your story team

all the vanished st members who thought my CT ass couldnt see them... yeah spying on diplo huh

[Smmer 2441]

I was afraid to even give players status effects because I didn’t want to be removed under 60th. I was made to be afraid to even joke about pex abusing by my trainer cause it was reprimanded, a day came where I jokingly took an item from an offline player (a friend of mine) and accidentally duped it and realized “oh wow that’s not good” and immedietly trashed it and told them i’m sorry. The server is optimized so poorly because it focuses on the wrong things to fix. It puts rules in place too late that should’ve been hella obvious from the beginning (NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS A RULE IT NEEDS COMMON SENSE) LOL. As a mod you’re expected to behave, craft a good image and be the person people trust, how have you managed to sink the perception of this team so low even further than when it was under 60th in just a few months. 

 

Lock in man. Recognize who you hire onto the team, abuse is easily detectable via a weekly audit of omni logs you don’t need to wait months for an investigation. It should’ve never reached that far in the first place. Confront them and ask for an explanation if it’s not a satisfiable answer remove them. I say confront because not every person on your team is going to do things out of malice, but when there’s 20+ players on and ur with friends or a player and everyone’s getting along and having fun there’s no harm in running around a nation w a player giving them a status effect like jump ect…