The rules....and other stuff

[Kypari 579]

Current rule:

"Spamming chat, both typed and voice, is not allowed. This includes but is not limited to, usage of Voice Changers, Soundboards, TTS Programs, immature voices, and chat macros."

If we wanted to, we could elaborate on each of them where it is necessary like this:

"Spamming chat, both typed and voice, is not allowed. This includes but is not limited to, usage of Voice Changers, Soundboards, TTS Programs, immature voices (such as but not limited to fake high voices, fake accents, etc), and chat macros."

Unfortunately, as much as we don't want staff discretion involved, there will always be staff discretion involved with this rule since one situation can be so different from the others in terms of severity, in which some staff members would allow the voice or some would not at all. As annoying as it is there is no rule re-wording that can create an environment where every staff member agree on whether someone gets muted or not. If you are told by a staff member that you haven't broken a rule, but told by another staff member you have broken a rule, it would be best if you just didn't do what you were doing for the staff member to call you out on it.

We can elabroate on the rule all we want, but it is impossible for every staff member to have the same opinion on muting someone or not every single time.

 

[QueenOfHearts 61]

Keeping mod discretion and the final say is definitely necessary and ofc we can not all agree. Making the rules more definite and clear helps way more, as it is easier for mods to incorporate them, all the same.

People will always whine about final say and that discretion is abuse but keeping the rules clear should help a lot

[Aegean 849]

Just wanna chime in after reading the thread, for the few who think we should just remake the MOTD, it is NOT easy to just write rules that will not need to be touched on in the future, all it takes is one person to interpret them their own way for us to have to clarify or edit it. I have absolutely no issues with that either as I'd rather people not have to argue about a rule that isn't clear. 

In CS:S, some rules we created for JB never had to be touched whereas others constantly got reworded. Common sense is unfortunately not that common, so keep that in mind before contemplating why higher-ups won't just "solve the problem"

 

[NitNat 239]

Bumping this thread for a quick reason, 

On 7/2/2018 at 2:28 PM, Aegean said:

for the few who think we should just remake the MOTD, it is NOT easy to just write rules that will not need to be touched on in the future

This is completely understandable, I'm sure creating a motd from scratch is as fun as a bed of nails.  My only suggestion involving with the rules is that there are (what feels) like invisible rules.  From rejoining surf with a few friends, there seems to be rules I've never seen; or have been enforced in a long time are just showing up out of the blue.  From that "immature voice" situation to even an exploit rule on surf today involving quick spawning.  The guy who did this genuinely didn't even know it was against the rules along with majority of the server.  Yeah, you can argue that quick spawning and killing is under combat exploit rules, which I'm somewhat agreeing with; my pet peeve is the problem with such broad and vague rules. You can't assume every new member has common sense or just know every rule under the sun. There are just too many implied rules that newcomers to xG will not know of.  Heck, I didn't even know of it til tonight.  All I'm really trying to say is not to have so many implications in the rules, to be more straight forward to specific problems and to be a little more cut and dry.  At least in the end that leaves little room for any biased behavior with staff now or in the future. 

[Aegean 849]

@NitNat

Any rules that aren't written should not be enforced unless someone would like to give me an example of one that is not written in the rules for whatever reason. I can also comment on the "immature voice" rule as well now that you brought it up again. We had that rule back in 2010 - 2011 and I remember rejecting it back then because one of our members had a very squeaky voice but was active, followed rules, and wanted to warden in Jailbreak. We stopped the immature voice since from what I remember unless they intentionally tried to be annoying or spammed voice chat. 

If any staff or member wants to message me a list of "implied rules" that they have been hearing, I'm happy to clear up any misconceptions that there might be about each and every single one of them. I'm happy to discuss with the TF2 staff + Virr to make sure we revise any rule that is confusing to staff as well.

Edited July 5, 2018 by Aegean (see edit history)

[Elcark 288]

Despite being late there are a few things I'd like to chime in both to elaborate on and explain a bit.

First of all people have been throwing around "staff discretion" a lot as if it's some accursed form of staff using personal bias to enforce their own ideals separate from that of the community, which is not what the purpose is at all. To put it into better perspective, i'll borrow from what @Tatost said.

Quote

I think the key words here are "in my view," which indicates you are going to state your opinion. Instead of people saying "in my view," regarding rules, I'd like it to turn into "in the community's view..." I hope you know where I'm coming from.

"In the community's view" is exactly what this is, or at least what it strives to be. A staff members goal is always focused on making the servers as enjoyable for everyone on it as possible which isn't always cut and dry. Not all rules can plausibly be direct in every situation (spawnkilling is very much direct, while something like trolling or even this case of immature voices covers too wide a variety of possibilities to be summed up to cover every situation) and require a judgement call to best find a solution to the issue. These judgement calls are in essence where staff discretion comes into play and one of the most important, and difficult, parts of being a staff member. They need to decide based on the situation and context where and how to draw the line for these situations to their discretion as to how it will best benefit the server. Now since this is a solution coming from the mind of a single human they will not be able to not always have a perfect answer that fits in line with what a mass of people desire (especially when often times what that is ends up being several conflicting opinions) and there is always margin for error (people learn over time), but it's being able to come to a solution as close to what satisfies everyone as possible or at least try to that ends up being a notable amount of the trust put in staff to have this authority. 

On 7/1/2018 at 3:29 PM, Tatost said:

No, things did change. You said that the 'no immature voices' rule used to be targeted at young children. Nowhere did it say "you can't make impersonations on mic." You guys recently changed the rule to fit more modern needs. There isn't anything wrong with that, it's just that we're not very good about getting the word around that this or that rule changed, or you got a new rule at the pet store.

I know we have a general updates thread, so can I suggest that we add that to the list of stuff being broadcasted at all times on the server? Ex: "Any changes to the MOTD will be posted in this thread [link], please check this thread to keep informed!"

Recently is far from the case. The children aspect hasn't been enforced since before I even knew these servers existed myself and was changed around then if not before. The issue with this is between the atrocious inconsistency between motd's and server rules as they have been made and the absolute paltry "communication" of any note worthy changes of these for quite some time. Like @virr mentioned working on fixing these issues has been on going for awhile and still is (server motd's were recently all reorganized to varying extent) and you pointing out the general update thread is one place for overall communication to be done better, but this also has been addressed between a lot of more direct communication to staff through the xG discord and is the entire purpose of this thread. Not every discrepancy is going to be known right away though such as in this case here where it is revolving around a very old change to a rule that does not come into relevance very often. When these issues are brought to light though, they are often very easily addressed thanks to these new"er" ways of doing so. 

Now like how the immature voices rule does still exist for a reason as pointed out by @LAN_Megalodon, the rule about not arguing staff decisions does as well. Frankly, the server is not the place to have such arguments especially when they delve into clear conflictions between people which often can happen when someone attempts to argue solely because they are upset about being punished for breaking a rule, but regardless of any legitimacy to either sides claims in these situations, the bottom line is they are not best handled over the server. There is no need for unnecessary drama to have to ruin everyone else's time. Instead, these is far better handled through pm's or by coming to higher ups especially if it's believed that a staff member is incorrect in their decision or as said using it as a way to shut down people when the staff member is themselves wrong as that's an issue that exists on a basis direct to that individual at that point and can only be solved in such a manor. Now @YeEternalTuna pointed out feeling as if that can't be done due to believing one such higher up was allowing the situation in the first place, but you need to remember "higher ups" aren't some single entity. There are others that can be reached out to always and what one seems to be acting on is not by any means what the rest will. 

Staff as a whole are there to help everyone which shouldn't be dismissed so easily when seemingly having conflict with a few, and the more direct people are about these under lying issues that exists the better they can be handled before they bloat and heads end up colliding over the ordeal.