Head of Staff Complaint - Koenigsegg - General Conduct

[MojaveWanderer]

Your CKEY/BYOND username:TheMojaveWanderer

Admin's CKEY/BYOND username:[b]Koenigsegg[/b]

Details of complaint: I'm starting this out by saying this is not a hit piece against Koen. I respect them as staff, and they've made many good decisions in the past, and having worked with them for a time, I respect their judgement. I'm not one for malice, and this isn't me whining about someone being mean. This is -not- a popularity/dick waving contest. This is a genuine issue I feel Koen has when dealing with the player base.

That being said,

Koenigsegg has been staff for as long as I can remember, and I think that this is a relatively new issue in the grand scheme of the server as a whole. They're rude, ban on first offense, try to justify less-than-chill actions, and have even gone on record saying they don't care what the players think. This is disturbing for a number of reasons, and I would be willing to attribute the slow death of Halo SSE at least, in part, to the actions of Koenigsegg. I'm aware this is a very strong claim, but I hope I'll be able to back it up well enough.

With that preamble out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks. I'll be listing off the issues I have with Koenigsegg, how they can improve, and hopefully, how we can prevent this with future staff. Here we go.

Part One: Mediation.
It's no secret to anyone Koen does not mediate well. They tend to go in with the intent to ban, and usually don't examine logs very well. The point of an admin should never, ever be to hand out bans, as your role as a moderator is just as important, if not more important. I know it can be tempting to smash the big red button when someone is being less then agreeable, because I nearly did it many, many times - especially when dealing with the URF. But banning people - often on first offense - is never the best option unless they are very obviously griefers. By overusing the ban function, it not only dissuades people from playing on the server, but it gives us a "Baystation" reputation -  The running gag about being banned for doing literally anything wrong even once.

As I mentioned before, this is not just a complaint list, as I also have solutions to offer. Simply put, there needs to be either a grace period, or better use of the note system- something I noticed Koen did not do while I was staff was religiously use notes on players. This means nobody knows who's a first timer who's confused and unsure of the rules, or what their roles entail - or someone who seeks only to cause trouble for the staff and playerbase for their own personal jollies. So, all in all, here's what we have.

1. Better Mediation, sorting out issues without using the big bad hammer of justice.
   
2. Less Banning, not banning on first offense or with subpar evidence.
   
3. Better Use of The Note System, as this will allow your fellow staff to better sort out who's an asshole and who's an asshole to a somewhat lesser degree.
   

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Continued due to word limit.

Part Two: Attitude.
Koen can be less than agreeable at times, as many players will tell you. They seem to have a hot temper, and added to the previously listed items, one can see how this has been a point of distress for a few of us. They do not reason with players, are unwilling to accept being wrong, and even handle admin situations relating to themselves - a pretty nasty practice for any server, let alone one with a war setting and set factions. This has lead to accusations of meta-communication, meta-gaming in general, favoritism, and meta-grudging. While I will not confirm or deny any of these, as I have not made these claims, I will bring my own claims to the table.

This is a snippet of OOC chat from a recent round where Koen bombed several vital locations on the colony as a lone insurrectionist, injuring civilians and destroying machinery. I'll be commenting on every one of these panels as I post them, and will note ahead of time that these may not be in order, as my evidence storing prowess leaves some to be desired without a doubt.
Koen admitted to random bombing as a URF regular, attacking civilians.

They stated it was okay, as it was giving people some action.

---

I mentioned there were other ways to get action, and they instantly wrote off the entire server population as being here for Leiben-Style PVP, having no interest in roleplay. I responded, stating that with or without admin, I managed to create interesting events as Johnny Reno which brought the URF, UNSC, Civilians - and even the Covenant, in a few rare cases, - together.

They correctly call me out for my rigidness, which is a fair complaint. I tend to have issues being flexible when it comes to uncomfortable situations. Yet, it still detracted from the point of the conversation. Not pictured here was what lead from the second to last message to the last message, where Koen mentioned they didn't remember me running any "events". I responded that just playing the game was enough to bring people together, if you did it right.  As far as the bombs themselves go, I've no reason to believe he spawned in the parts to make them, or anything else that would constitute abuse of power. There were plenty of missing items which he used to make them- oxygen tanks, wires, assemblies and such.
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All listed logs above.

The concise version of this section is as follows.

1. Koen did not follow the wishes of both in game high ranks, as well as the general sentiment of the faction leader of the faction they were playing at the time - the URF.
   
2. Koen attempted to defend themselves through the lens of calling random bombings an "event".
   
3. They resorted to attacking me personally, stating that I was quote, "Too afraid to deal with a situation you are not prepared for.", despite such a situation never coming to pass had they not acted out like this. It's like shooting the president and being confused when the secret service tackle you.
   

How this can be fixed? Simple again.

1. Koen needs to take more time before acting - think before you do something that could negatively effect the round of someone else, especially a civilian. Civilian players are often new, so the way you treat them will form their overall opinions on the server.
   
2. Koen needs to be calmer in a-helps, complaints, and other such things. See the second on moderation for more details.
   

Part Three: Devil's Advocate.
I would -never- post something here I didn't have fact checked. I am not here to slander Koenigsegg, as I hope I've made clear. I'm here to possibly help someone who's been around for a long time, longer than I have, improve how they act as staff. Koen, for all I've said here, is a great person to talk to, and was very helpful in getting me started in terms of learning admin commands. Without them, I likely wouldn't even still be around to make this complaint- which, to me, is a perfect segue in to what I feel is the core of this long ass college length paper of a complaint.

Koen, while a good member of staff, has a few issues which need to be resolved for them to act at their full potential as a member of Halo SSE's staff.

Part Four: Final Remarks and Addendum.
I want to once more make it clear that I am not trying to slander anyone. I wouldn't take the time to write this up if I wasn't sure the issue could be fixed. Koen, you're going to read this, and respond to it, I've no doubt. You've a right to defend yourself, and I'll happily listen to whatever you have for me. But whatever this ends up as, I want you to understand I've nothing personal against you, or any other member of staff. Besides Stingray. Fuck that guy.

Now, the hot topic. Why did I say Koen is contributing to the death of HSSE? Banning at first contact, curt and brash responses to players, and inability to step back and see things as a whole. This all makes players take one look at this server and then run for the hills as fast as stumpy 2D legs can carry them.

And finally - many people wanted me to add in cases of admin abuse. I did -not- do this, simply because they do not exist. Koen, to my knowledge, has never abused their power in game to harm someone else, or help themselves. They've also, to my knowledge, handled an adminhelp against who they're playing themselves, leaving it to other members of staff.

Koen, my guy. You're great. Please, don't take this as an attack on your personality or who you are. You've always been a great member of this server's community, for better or worse. But this trend of activity I've seen since I've returned is worrying - and rather than bitch and moan in discord like literally everyone else, I've decided to actually make a proper complaint so things might actually get done.

Thank you for reading through all this. DM me at Mojave#1640 for more information, or ping me in the Halo SSE Discord. Note that I do not have access to any faction room outside of the URF regulars. That is all.

[Stingray540]

I'll post a more in-depth response once I have the time. But after reading through it, the first major point that I can see is that conduct as a *player* and conduct as *staff* are separate. From what I can tell with your (albeit limited) logs is that Koen was doing something IC with their character that pissed people off. It happens, but without more information, I can't really tell if that part is at all relevant. While I prepare my longer response;

What action, if any, would you like to see carried out regarding this? (Most of those points are for Koen themselves to alter, not us)

[MojaveWanderer]

I'll post a more in-depth response once I have the time. But after reading through it, the first major point that I can see is that conduct as a *player* and conduct as *staff* are separate. From what I can tell with your (albeit limited) logs is that Koen was doing something IC with their character that pissed people off. It happens, but without more information, I can't really tell if that part is at all relevant. While I prepare my longer response;

What action, if any, would you like to see carried out regarding this? (Most of those points are for Koen themselves to alter, not us)

I want nothing to happen. I want them to read this and fully understand the issues we have with them as staff. Koen is an adult, and they can handle criticism.

And as far as that goes, yeah. I was really unsure if I should slap this in player or staff complaints. So I put it here.

[Koenigsegg]

Alright, I'll try to explain everything I do as clearly as possible, while making abstraction of the quite insulting presumption that the "slow dead of HALO:SSE" as you name it, is partly my fault. Myself, I will use facts. You are a returning player, you are probably not as up to date as any other player, so I could understand if you missed a few points.

Part One: Mediation.
It's no secret to anyone Koen does not mediate well. They tend to go in with the intent to ban, and usually don't examine logs very well. The point of an admin should never, ever be to hand out bans, as your role as a moderator is just as important, if not more important. I know it can be tempting to smash the big red button when someone is being less then agreeable, because I nearly did it many, many times - especially when dealing with the URF. But banning people - often on first offense - is never the best option unless they are very obviously griefers. By overusing the ban function, it not only dissuades people from playing on the server, but it gives us a "Baystation" reputation -  The running gag about being banned for doing literally anything wrong even once.

I cannot deny it, and I will never have the intent to; I always go with the intent to ban when I am certain that the involved party is somewhat regular player amongst the community, which I'd expect to know a bit about the rules by now. Even then, that alone does not constitute a reason to ban someone immediately, some players can be reasoned, some players do listen and some players do make genuine mistakes. This is where player records come into consideration. That's bold of you to assume that I am mindlessly banning players, but if you have a hard-on for facts, the last ban I have issued was the 2019-06-23 at 08:20:58 am/pm. I joined the staff with the intent to help the players and share my experience with them as a player, more than a figure of authority, when necessary. Also, concerning no caring about the players' opinion, that's entirely wrong; I do care about their opinion, proof is, I have never shut down anyone, even when I disagreed with them, and have stated countless time that I no authority over server developent in the cases those opinions were worded as suggesstions. In our case, I said that "it wasn't for the players to judge", because in the given context, you among another player said that, when someone says I did a bad, then that means I did a bad. As far as I am concerned, my reasoning is "a player would say anything to defend their side or get some sort of revenge", players lack impartiality in 99.9% of cases. The 0.1% left is a minority. I have been in the SS13 community for years, long enough to know that in any community, there will always be an overzealous player that will try to spout as many lies or statements as possible to rally people to their side and gang up on another person. You cannot expect someone to not assume such a radical state of mind after starting boycotting them.

Part Two: Attitude.

Koen can be less than agreeable at times, as many players will tell you. They seem to have a hot temper, and added to the previously listed items, one can see how this has been a point of distress for a few of us. They do not reason with players, are unwilling to accept being wrong, and even handle admin situations relating to themselves - a pretty nasty practice for any server, let alone one with a war setting and set factions. This has lead to accusations of meta-communication, meta-gaming in general, favoritism, and meta-grudging. While I will not confirm or deny any of these, as I have not made these claims, I will bring my own claims to the table.

Anyone can be, denying it will make you sound like an idiot. The same applies to everyone. If being harsh is what you call less-than-agreeable, then yes, it very much is. And this is one of the many things you failed to be when it was needed during your time as a staff. Being harsh does not mean talking you down like you were some kind of worthless shit; no. Being harsh is sometimes needed when a party fails to listen. Being harsh often comes with an ultimatum, such as an instant mute or temporary ban. It is a last resort when diplomacy has failed. As for refusing to accept being wrong... I rarely confirm anything, so I could be always wrong, always right, or partly right and wrong. Honesty is important to me, and I am honestly telling you that I do not recognize myself in this statement, as I have no example of situation to give you. As for handling the issues that involve me directly, that has never been the case, and I am certain the rest of the staff could prove it, should it be necessary. Finally, I'm not sure if I am being accused of meta-communication, metagaming, favoritism and meta-grudging here, but those claims are all situations I have sworn to forbid, they are against my principles as an admin, and I have incentive to encourage them nor take part in this.

I mentioned there were other ways to get action, and they instantly wrote off the entire server population as being here for Leiben-Style PVP, having no interest in roleplay. I responded, stating that with or without admin, I managed to create interesting events as Johnny Reno which brought the URF, UNSC, Civilians - and even the Covenant, in a few rare cases, - together.

They correctly call me out for my rigidness, which is a fair complaint. I tend to have issues being flexible when it comes to uncomfortable situations. Yet, it still detracted from the point of the conversation. Not pictured here was what lead from the second to last message to the last message, where Koen mentioned they didn't remember me running any "events". I responded that just playing the game was enough to bring people together, if you did it right.  As far as the bombs themselves go, I've no reason to believe he spawned in the parts to make them, or anything else that would constitute abuse of power. There were plenty of missing items which he used to make them- oxygen tanks, wires, assemblies and such.

You are deforming my words. Never have I mentionned Leben or PVP in general. What I meant is that the playerbase counts a lot of CM, TGMC and other codebase that are heavily combat oriented. They are here for the combat mechanics our server offers, while the roleplayers are fairly scattered and almost nonexistant. This is not a presumption, this is a fact. I have tried countless RP events in the past, and they would always end up the same way; being killed, being subdued and locked up permanently and many more. I'd be an awful admin if I were constantly ignoring what the players are interested in, and knowing what they want, like, or are expecting, is partly a staff members' job. Especially an admin. Yes, the context and outcome of that event was probably not the best, but it was either that or nothing at all. What would constitute an abuse of power, would be to spawn UNSC units despite the Bertels not even be anywhere close to the Geminus orbit.

Spawning items for an event character does not constitute an abuse of power. (There is a distinction between a character and an event character, the former belongs to a player, the latter doesn't in most cases) The only civilians who were injured were NPCs who were blatantly supporting the UNSC. As for the GCPD, both were incapacitated, but the intent and sole purpose of the event character was to die. However the players have a tendency to run in the line of fire, even if shoot right next to them. They were slightly healed so that they wouldn't be removed from that round. Someone had even prepared for a gunfight before round end. You weren't even in the round yet, that you started spouting orders while I was engaged by the GCPD at the time, even if my goal was to die as this specific event character, I just couldn't stop and speak while the police would gun me down with relatively low efforts.

And finally, I often observer the round, I judge players and act accordingly. I am not stupid, I'd never just spawn myself in shoot everywhere, especially toward a new player who strives to accodomate itself with the server mechanics and the community. In fact, there were two new players from what I can recall, the first one was GCPD at the times and killed me. The second was the one preparing for a gunfight.

Part Three: Devil's Advocate.
I would -never- post something here I didn't have fact checked. I am not here to slander Koenigsegg, as I hope I've made clear. I'm here to possibly help someone who's been around for a long time, longer than I have, improve how they act as staff. Koen, for all I've said here, is a great person to talk to, and was very helpful in getting me started in terms of learning admin commands. Without them, I likely wouldn't even still be around to make this complaint- which, to me, is a perfect segue in to what I feel is the core of this long ass college length paper of a complaint.

Koen, while a good member of staff, has a few issues which need to be resolved for them to act at their full potential as a member of Halo SSE's staff.

Part Four: Final Remarks and Addendum.
I want to once more make it clear that I am not trying to slander anyone. I wouldn't take the time to write this up if I wasn't sure the issue could be fixed. Koen, you're going to read this, and respond to it, I've no doubt. You've a right to defend yourself, and I'll happily listen to whatever you have for me. But whatever this ends up as, I want you to understand I've nothing personal against you, or any other member of staff. Besides Stingray. Fuck that guy.

Lastly, I'm not taking the time to respond to this (especially right after waking up) to defend myself nor deny any of these claims. Merely explaining my reasonining behind them and how I handle things. You have made some fair points, which have all been fully aknowledged in their entirety. And they will be considered. However, at which point I should fix these issues will be up to me, as I cannot allow myself become too friendly, which would naturally lead to accepting favoritism. This is one example amongst many more.

Best regards.

[BDpuffy420]

Koen had been spoken to about their behavior, this issue is being closed.