Lolz, when I read this forum post....I know I'm just one insignificant ant on the grand scheme of things as Mitten likes to point out about the server's players, but the OP has a excellent point. Iron fist rules doesn't work, sure ban people. Silence them with godly admin powers....and alienate your customer base. Because after all isn't Skial a business? Sure it doesn't make millions but I'm guessing those paid advertisement money goes somewhere, and if more people play on the servers because it's known as a friendly place...then isn't it beneficial to everyone?
A simple warning...takes what...5 seconds to write? Less time to hold "v" and say what you want to get across. I know I did read a post where the person was worried about the admin running into some flack for trying to give a warning...but in temporary ban or temporary silence will do the same EXACT thing. What will happen when his friends or just other players on the servers notice when one of their members without warning get a temporary ban...
"He didn't tell me it was against the rules to hack before banning me!"
You're mostly right, it is difficult to track warnings, maybe a 1 minute ban can act as a warning, its a shame that kicks arent recorded as this would be my ideal solution.That might get a little messy in some instances. How do you keep track of these warnings? What if Mittens warns a guy, then this guy switches servers and Rue warns him for the same offense and it becomes a situation where people can repeat offend and get away with it due to different admins warning the same people. Most people that are breaking the rules are well aware of it, but just don't care until they get busted. Being an admin is similar to law enforcement in that you can use your own judgement on some things, but sometimes it can come back to bite you in the ass as well. It's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes, but most people breaking the rules know they are doing it and the other small percentage are just kind of simple. If someone could come up with an efficient warning system...perhaps.
1 day bans are no big deal, it's just like putting a kid in the time out chair in the corner for a bit.
Haven't played in a skial server or even used the forums in a while, however I thought I'd add my two cents to this debate..
I'm all for bans being a last resort, but should one really require a warning with how laid back Skial rules are? Lets break it down to the simplest of terms for sake of argument.
No Hacking
No Racism
No Griefing
No Exploiting
That's pretty much it. This is the only server group where you can talk shit on the admins and not receive a ban instantly. Some do warn, but at the end of the day should one have to be warned not to cheat, not to be a bigot, and not to be a nuisance? These rules are common sense enough that someone shouldn't have to be familiar with the rules to not be a douche.
What about teh guy who gets banned for burning through gates at start up? happens on all teh other servers he plays on, never seen anyone banned for it, thinks its part of the game. warning or not?
lets say we give him a warning "hey guy, thats not allowed on skial servers" - next time he sees someone do it, he regurgitates the warning "hey guy that's not allowed on skial servers"
now lets say we ban him, for a day with no warning.. "fuck you skial your admin suck" me and my 5 friends will go play somewhere else.
Now tell me which dictates common sense.
Tbh, if I think somebody is purposely griefing, and lets face it after a while of playtime, you can just tell, I will remove them from the server, and tbh again, my priority is the 31 people who want to have a good time, not the one who is the disruptor, because at the end of the day "you dont care what teh players think, noone cares what you think"I can't argue that there is logic there. That said perhaps a warning requirement for something like that wouldn't be unreasonable. However, about 99% of the time I don't think a warning really should be required because a large majority of the time it's something common sense they got banned for.
I followed him for a while and I never saw anyone hacking or anyone complaining about it.Nice text
First of all, I think your friend could start a thread here if it occurs so they can start figuring out what went wrong. But voteban abuse is when the attempt to ban a person is not on it's place (so an admin wouldn't have banned that person either), therefor you are abusing the menu.Warnings or not, it should be mandatory that admins attempt to figure out what is going on in a given situation before taking action. As admins, you're not mind readers, and it is very easy to jump to conclusions.
For example, a friend of mine who streams on twitch.tv (=GP= Guildy / STEAM_0:0:27669218) recently got temp banned while playing on a skial server by an admin named "himym" for voteban abuse. This admin made no attempt to figure out what was going on, nor did they submit a demo with the ban. On Guildy's twitch vod, it is clear that, while his perception might be a bit flawed, he made the voteban in good faith because of a suspicious string of crits coming from the player he attempted to voteban. Had the admin even scratched the surface of why the vote was made, they would have found out it was not abuse in an instant.
Evidence: twitch tv guildybram/b/358461588?t=12m02s
Crits on the heavy start here. Voteban is at 13:20. Talking about why he's suspicious at 14:30. More crits at 17:25. More crits at 18:19, then a SECOND string right after the first. Banned at 19:20 and puzzled as to why.
Say what you want about his ability (or lack thereof) in identifying hackers, it's absolutely clear he 1. was using the voteban feature in good faith and 2. the voteban served its purpose, he lodged it, people voted it down, no harm done 3. no admin made any attempt to converse with him as to why he lodged the voteban, instead deciding to instantly ban without question.
I personally am not related to this as I just happened to swing by here to fulfill my own curiosity as to why he was banned, but that's just an example of what admin systems are not intended to do.
I followed him for a while and I never saw anyone hacking or anyone complaining about it.
If your friend really was collecting evidence he could have made a ban appeal and i would have looked into it.
I'm not a monster who is happy to ban people as a way to spend my time.
Most of the time it's just not always like you or me see it. But if your friend doesn't contact me, how could I know?
What i saw was that he was pulling of some random votes.