Admin Meeting 2024-05-18

Agenda

• Brief updates from last meeting
• Discourse
• Trialmin Discoursification
• Trialmin Onboarding
• Silicon Policy
• Disclosed Ban Evasion and Alts
• Review minutes

Topic Details

Brief updates from last meeting

The last meeting’s minutes are available at [link]

Summary

• There’s currently an internal discussion thread about the salamander whitelist
• I’ve been working on the rule rewrite, including metashield draft
• Discourse still real -Chief_Engineer

Meeting Goals

1. Communicate updates related to items from the last meeting to admins attending the meeting.

Discourse

Summary

Discourse is here. Has anyone noticed any issues, or have any concerns right now?

What about suggestions? -Chief_Engineer

Meeting Goals

1. Compile a list of issues that game admin noticed with Discourse
2. Compile a list of concerns that game admins have with Discourse
3. Compile a list of actionable suggestions that game admins have for improving Discourse

Trialmin Discoursification

Summary

Can any trialmin processes be moved to Discourse? How should that move happen?

The main limitations to keep in mind are:

• Discourse does not allow user level permissions on categories, only user group level
• People probably do not monitor Discourse as closely as they do Discord
• Discord relays can only filter by category and tag. Topic creation or all posts can be relayed to a channel. You cannot relay to a Discord thread or to a specific location per Discourse topic.

Main goals are:

• Trialmins should not be able to see their internal threads even after becoming propermins
• There should be a clear place to go to say “there is a widespread issue with most/all current trialmins”
• There should be a clear place to go to s ay “there is an issue with this specific trialmin”. This can be the same place as for multi trialmin issues, but a specific place per trialmin may be more ideal
• Mentors must be able to see at least the threads for their own trialmins

Here’s an idea I had: A category is created that can only be seen by either propermins or trialmin mentors, I’m not sure which option is better. A “vault” subcategory is created that can only be seen by head admins. Internal threads for trialmins are created in the category, and then moved to the vault when the trialmin ends their trial. Discord thread is retained and is used either for widespread issues or as the team wide thread if propermins don’t have access to the trialmin discourse topics. Having the subcategory be mentors only might be preferred. If two trialmins were involved in a situation, the incident might be described in both trialmins’ threads. Having a mentor category instead of a propermin category would allow us to keep both from seeing the information by preventing either from being a mentor until both finish their trials rather than requiring us to do a synchronous promotion. -Chief_Engineer

Meeting Goals

1. Collect any potential issues or concerns related to moving trialmin stuff to the forums
2. Identify possible ways to improve the trialmin process by moving parts to discourse

Trialmin Onboarding

Summary

Is there anything that’s currently outdated or could be improved with trialmin onboarding? -Chief_Engineer

Meeting Goals

1. Identify any specific issues with the trialmin onboarding process

Silicon Policy

Summary

Borgs and their laws are flawed. They’re meant to be that way but we all know they’ve been a bit of a headache to deal with both for admins and players. They should be flawed, but not in such a way that loopholes can be used to break server rules and/or ruin someone’s round because technically they can. -Kezu

Meeting Goals

Compile admin team opinions on the following questions:

1. What should be the restrictions/limitations of borgs?
2. What loopholes should be closed?

Disclosed Ban Evasion and Alts

Summary

[link]

Want to reaffirm our position surrounding ban evasion using this forum post as an example

1. A user simply stating they have/have had used an alt account does not discredit their attempt to ban evade.

• The above mentioned ban appeal was made after a ban evasion attempt was made, likely admitting to the alt in hopes that it would not result in a voucher upgrade.

2. A user that elects to admit they have an alt should have the alt banned immediately via GUID due to it being against our rules

• This point specifcly is shakey as technically in our rules, even having an alt account is grounds for immediate appeal only bans on all of them. -TurboTracker

I agree with the idea that disclosing an alt or ban evasion does not exonerate a player, but I don’t think the reason for disclosure can or should be read into too much. The appeal wizard currently asks players to list their alternate accounts. If we are drawing a negative inference from a player truthfully answering that question, we wouldn’t be able to also draw a negative inference from them lying by listing no alts, even though it seems to make more sense to draw the negative inference when they lie rather than when they are honest.

Multikey disclosed via appeals I think needs to be handled case by case. Alternate accounts should always be account banned, but if, for example, they never connected to WizDen, or only ever connected once years ago, then there’s probably no need to treat that like multikey.

[WITHHELD] -Chief_Engineer

Meeting Goals

Collect admin opinions on the following questions to act as guidelines until the completion of the policy rewrite, and that can be considered while rewriting policies and guidelines:

1. How should a player disclosing an alternate account used in ban evasion, or the ban evasion attempt itself, affect the player’s appeal? Should failure to disclose have any effect?
2. How should multikey be handled when it is disclosed through an appeal? Does it matter if the ban is temporary or indefinite?

Review minutes

Summary

The meeting minutes provide a record of the meeting for those who could not attend, and they are used to action decisions made in the meeting. For these reasons, it is important that they accurately represent what actually happened in the meeting. -Chief_Engineer

Meeting Goals

1. Ensure that nothing important is missing or misrepresented in the minutes.
2. Attempt to ensure that all topics have met their meeting goals. This can be done by ensuring that each meeting goal is directly addressed by the conclusion of the topic’s minutes.
3. Attempt to ensure that all conclusions fit into one of the following categories:
   1. Indicate that a meeting goal was completed.
   2. Are something actionable, meaning that they not only call for an action, but that action is specific enough that it does not require answering questions like “what exactly needs to be done?” or “how can this be done?”
   3. Clearly indicate that the meeting goals for the topic were not met. Examples: the discussion was tabled, the admin team did not reach a conclusion, the admin team was not able to make the conclusion actionable.

Minutes

Brief Update

• Editor’s note: From these minutes onward I will not actually be writing anything in this section unless something additional is said and is relevant. The topic description alreay has everything.

Discourse

• It seems attached videos do not work.
• Onboarding admins on discourse has been troublesome with admins often getting confused with some obscure features.
• TODO dates are not formatted the same as hedgedoc.
• There is literally nothing else wrong with discourse Any further issues have been discussed in this thread

Trialmin Discoursification

• With CE’s proposal, all mentors will be able to view all the trialmin threads since we cannot set individual user permissions.
  • We could technically abuse user groups to emulate individual permissions, however this would be hell to manage.
  • We generally wish to keep trialmin discussions by mentors sealed after that trial period is over. This is mainly because of how both mentors, and newly promoted propermins alike react to old statements.
• Admins are still not used to discourse, although putting the trialmin process on discourse will allow new trialmins to quickly learn and use discourse more effectively.

Trialmin Onboarding

• We can utilize discourse features to make onboarding smoother for trialmins. For example:
  • By making our onboarding docs more interactive. For example we can allow for trialmins to mark their progress.
  • Allow for trialmins to ask questions easier without having to post it in admin general for every admin to see, or to have to specifically approach a mentor in dms.
• Docs are outdated for policy regarding trialmins processing appeals and events.
• Onboarding docs generally could do with a small rewrite.

Silicon Policy

• Both players and admins sometimes seem to think that borg laws and the rules around them override other rules such as “Don’t be a dick”, or our escalation rules. We should clarify that borgs are still fully bound by the rules, unless it’s explicitly stated that they are not by the rules. A clarification will be published on this topic.
• We could also request that the laws be changed but it’s likely any changes would also be rules-lawyered, or be too restrictive.

Disclosed Ban Evasion and Alts

• [WITHHELD]
• When an alt is disclosed, regardless of any other circumstances that alt should be gamebanned so that it cannot be used. This should not be applied to the main account.
  • We need a response template for this.
• We should not draw adverse inferences against appellants for propery disclosing alt accounts.
  • This means we should not immediately apply a voucher ban for alting if they disclose they have another account without proof of evasion.

Discussion outside Agenda Items

• All topics except for ones that are literally 1 point long or empty will have a conclusion instead of being at the discretion of the editor. Editor’s note: :despair: (This used to be an image in the original minutes however I cannot do it on mdbook without adding it to the repo which I don’t wish to do.)

Overall Conclusion

We will be utilizing discourse more for trialmin onboarding, however discussion and reviews for trialmins will be kept in discord. Borg rules will be clarified so that borgs cannot claim that their laws allow them to violate other rules. We now have a clear policy with how to deal with disclosed ban accounts: The account will be banned without any further action on the main account.

🦀