Concerning Karate

This thread is perhaps more suited for the appeals thread but I'd like it to both include orange regulars (if they choose) and be visible to everyone. I am also sort of posting on behalf of my friend so it is important to me that he is able to see the thread. I do this because, as a member of the community for around four and a half years (admittedly not the most popular member of the community) it concerns me that my good friend has been threatened with both a permanent gag and ban.

Yesterday, Karate Farmer and I were just enjoying our regular orange session and, to our delight, found quite a few people tryharding. After a while of messing around, we started taunting players after killing them, we did this to pretty much everyone.

Quite quickly Mei started slaying Karate after taunts and then subsequently kicked him when he continued.

This is the first of the issues we encountered. No where in the rules does it say taunting is not allowed and can it really be considered "harassment" if its just indiscriminate and silly?

Alongside this, Karate started trolling some players in the chat, something we've been trying our best to do for the past two years or so. If you read the chat, it's pretty innocent (albeit aids) memes.
This is his entire chat history for yesterday.



Now apparently, this was worth (in DrunkPug's opinion) a permanent gag. Karate then subsequently contacted other admins through dstock and steam chat and negotiated it down to a week.
In my opinion, a week's gag is still ridiculous.

Now, whether the ban was justified or not, it gets a bit murkier deeper in.

Karate chatted with -M-m-, the only admin who didn't just respond with "we are looking into it internally" (and also a really nice guy btw.) through steam chat about the ban.

-M-m- said he had been told the ban was for calling players "fucks" and "shits". Now, if this were true, of course it would constitute harassment, but you can see for yourselves, he wasn't doing that in the slightest.
Now much as I have long had a sort of meme-beef with DrunkPug, I have no issue with him and I wish him well as an admin, but if you review his chat logs, you see him making fun of people's spelling.



In this case, the spelling was intentional, and a meme, but it's still a bit rich to claim taunting is harassment etc. but this kind of stuff isn't.

Also I have one last point about awful communication among the GM admins. -M-m- had been told Karate had amassed 4 bans so far, but he has only two. I find it concerning that the potential permanent ban/gag is being discussed by admins who aren't really sure of what the situation is. (Once again, not that I'm blaming -M-m- in any way, I really like the guy.)

Finally, although I can't look that far back in dstock, Helljack claimed he would look at Karate's chat logs, but, in my opinion, the week's gag shows that either no one has reviewed them, or the admin team is far too sensitive. Just to sort of prop this up, -M-m- himself wasn't too concerned by any of the chat logs and he looked far past the incident that got Karate gagged.

Thanks for your considerations, I hope we can either clarify the rules or come to some form of agreement.

 

Well first of all, would've been nice if the gagged player made the thread themselves, no need to cover for him, ask him to come for the discussion to ever get progress.

Next, we have a history for reacting to such behaviour https://www.gamingmasters.org/bans/index.php?p=banlist&searchText=taunting&Submit=Search so its not random suddenly.

Nobody really likes to be "trolled" against with constant taunts and such, like 5 complained how annoying it is on server that day, and nobody found your "innocent memes" funny, and had to listen to the majority and take action. Also its not exactly nice to be teasing the admin about it, constantly, might get a ban for it, admin teasing, besides hackers or spammers, is possibly the next most common ban in this case, just a gag.

It shouldn't be hard to not be an asshole online imo, never really was a consideration to add a rule for it as it looked to be pretty obvious, but considering that there's people like this that pop up sometimes, might consider adding the rule. If you treat others with "banter" or "meme" behavior, expect something in return for it, we've dealt with this kind before. And the fact that the two of you are doing it for a few years, really doesn't help.

I'm fully aware of this situation as I was there with some other people like Drunkpug, can't answer for HellJack's comments though. I'm personally not all for gags, i would make a ban instead, but since i never really saw this guy before, thought a gag would be appropriate for the situation.

Everyone no matter what ban/gag can make an appeal, if he comes on here, writes an apology or such, his ban/gag will get shortened, things like that are appreciated/encouraged. If not, then they need to wait out a week of just not writing, not exactly the worst case scenario as most of the time, people get a ban instead, honestly, consider yourself lucky.

Also, a fair warning, as discussed with others, no admins really like this behavior from you 2, consider changing your attitude or it won't end well in the future.

 

Im all with Mei here, it's really not unexpected too see a gag/ban when conducting behavior like this. I mean really you're just being toxic and this kind of behavior really is not encouraged. The chat logs pretty much speak for themselves, as Mei said we hardly knew the person and so a 1 week gag seemed (and still currently seems) completely necessary.

But next time, get your friend to appeal for himself, if he feels that a gag or ban has been misused against him then he has every right to post an appeal here.

 

To respond to both of you, this isn't an appeal as much as it is a wider question regarding firstly, the lack of clarity in the rules, secondly the mishandling of the event and probably most importantly, why anyone takes issue with our behaviour anyway.

I would really dispute the claim also that anyone on the server was at all upset by any of our behaviour. People like avenue were on the server and spamming binds of Karate everytime he killed him.



And DrunkPug and avenue kept saying things like "you're having a stroke" etc. but neither actually seemed too upset by any of our behaviour.



In fact I spent a long time trawling the chat logs and the only complaint I could find about anyone was this one. I'll just leave it here.



Finally, neither of you actually addressed the fact that -M-m- considered our memes acceptable or the fact that the admin team is seemingly quite confused about the whole situation.

And to address your "consider changing your attitude" Mei; I'm sometimes pretty aids, I'm sometimes pretty normal on orange, but none of that changes the fact that there are no actual bounds of what is considered aids or what is considered reasonable punishment, which is what my question was.

Sorry to come off a little short but, it kind of annoys me.
Cheers.

 

Okay, well, the only reason there isn't a clear rule about the sort of behavior you took part in is because simply put, it's common sense and pretty obvious that it shouldn't be done I mean come on. Secondly, there is a difference between a bit of banter (the messages avenue and I were sending) and "prolonged harassment". You admit yourself you're "pretty aids", it seems the only reason you come on and play with us is to annoy and harass others. And finally, being pretty aids sometimes and pretty normal sometimes is certainly not a good enough excuse for what you and however many others there are in your little group do.

 

To be fair, M-m considers everything acceptable though, even sunnar's hacking behaviour he was on his side for quite a while, no disrespect of course but its nothing new.

I do agree that we should clarify what is aids or what is not, i dont notice absolutely everything thats going on, i react when someone reports it aswell, i cant do it all the time because there's quite a lot, i encourage everyone to report disruptive behavior to me or to any other active admin and we'll take a look at it.

 

If you, at the time of Karate's gagging, were unaware of who he was (as you mentioned earlier), how are the twenty messages he sent over as many minutes "prolonged harassment" you can see all of them in the OP. None of them are personal, none of them are aggressive.

I appreciate the "we should clarify what is aids or what is not", but I feel like these 20 not personal, not aggressive, not spammed messages should not constitute aids under any new rule.

Were the messages any of those three things I think it would be fair and just to ban/gag any of the perpetrators.

 

To sort of correct where i fit into this mess of events a bit.

I only checked the chat as mentioned and i must admit i'm fairly lenient on banter in the chat if its not directed towards someone for a longer time, like "x go hang yourself bla bla bla".
And i pretty much followed from what Beppo said in the middle of the mess in discord somewhere or the dsock about someone calling them shits & fucks ? which turned out too be a whole other thing going on at the same time as i was starting to check this out.

But had no clue of who & asked KF & he had no clue & i had no clue either, found nothing about that in the chatlog & called it off for a moment on that, that's all i checked until i asked Mei in steam what it was about & he summed it up pretty much about it being the taunting & that has been mentioned here already.


About Sunnar i didn't really believe it at first as he rarely played out of the ordinary & wasn't really doing any amazing stuff while i was on any time at all.
(Saw some odd scores here & there but figured it was mostly one sided fight with them pretty much spawn camping the other team as i've seen before with for example opticrug,yuta,kn2wn,madness etc... So i didn't really think of it other then hes going full tilt on tryharding to farm points & kills on his rifle.)
(Most likely kept it off as he knew i was on probably as well when i joined as well btw.)

Was doing some fairly straightforward shots even i did back in 2014 on the orange server when i almost daily played sniper only for a few weeks until i grew tired of it while i was spectating.

So simply on Sunnar there until i saw the demo of him cheating on orange i was deceived for quite some time, kind of one of those guys where you think you know someone.

 

I believe this matter has been solved.


-thread closed-

 

I assumed that this was a post about the martial art. I was sorely mistaken.

 

Thanks for all your very insightful comments such as "If you act like a cunt, expect to be treated like a cunt." which ignore the question of, why is taunting in any way "cuntish".

Moving on...

It has come to my attention that a slew of regulars have been banned or gagged or muted, not just my friend Karate. EroticCornetto, someone who's been around for a very long time, r0draaik, someone with whom I'm not too familiar but who is frequently on the server, and probably many more for "taunting" or "toxic behaviour".

Now I would really appreciate an explanation as to why this behaviour is suddenly a massive crime when people like Cornetto have been around far longer than me, and been a fairly popular member of the community for that time.

I hope I needn't remind anyone of the antics of Mei and Spikius that so annoyed the server up until not that long ago.

r0draaik received a three month ban for telling people they're bad.

Yet, just six months ago, our beloved manager Mei was doing the very same, describing people as "cringe" calling people "cowards" and also spamming the lenny face in his trademark style.
The guy also frequently refers to new players as "bots" and pretty much bullies them calling them "fucking bots" or "disgusting".

Finally, it's pretty amusing to see a group of admins just accusing -M-m- of not being a proper admin, but I hope you remember that his application was supported by a petition, made by an orange player, because he is hugely popular among the players for his friendliness, his useful tech support and his reasonable use of admin powers.

 

The amount of time played, like Karate, Cornetto or r0d doesn't matter at all, if you treat people like trash, expect same towards you, no matter if 10k or 1mil points. This is not a popularity contest, even if someone like Trash can or Syhous or Me or Spik, who are in top 5, will start treating many players like trash, they will get punished for it.

R0d was banned today for not paying attention to warnings for his behavior and being an asshole towards managers when confronted about it.

Uh, I dont know where to even begin with the Mei accusations. Feels like instead of making appeals now, you're going after others.

Well first of all, i didnt spam 5 lennies in 5 seconds, that is punishable, heck, even 5 in 30 seconds is bad, or just bind spamming overall, i wrote 5 lennies in like 25 minutes, as in your pic which isn't considered spam, and you're trying to say i spam in my trademark style.

8-9 months ago i refered to snipers as bots sure, as a regular i was getting frustrated at the amount of snipers as some other regulars aswell, and i do agree i shouldnt have written some things, and about the spawn killing threats. Jack came in one day, explained that i shouldnt do that to spawnkillers and such and i stopped, i think he remembers that moment. Clearly i changed and understood what i was doing is not right, and now i punish the people who go after others to tease or annoy, i was explained to by Jack, now i warn others and punish if they dont listen aswell.

Also, i dont think calling people "bots" or "cringe" is on the same level as calling people "bitches" and "kill yourself" or "cocksucker" and adding "its the truth".

I do wonder what kind of antics me and Spikius did to annoy the server? Playing demomen and flying to snipers a year+ ago? I think that even happened 2 years ago...

It feels pretty pointless to have this discussion on what happened pretty much a year ago. Heck, even half a year ago.

-M-m- is a good admin no doubt, he has great reputation but he is a bit lenient towards the toxic players, we had an admin discussion few days ago because of this and such appeals, and concluded that we don't want such players who are extremely rude or make other players uncomfortable, anymore in our servers, if they wont change after a warning, then they'll receive proper punishment.

Like I said many times now, its not hard to not be an asshole on the internet.

 

If you, as an admin, had to have HellJack tell you how to behave, isn't that incredibly embarrassing?

If you were to behave like that now, and you weren't a manager, you would risk being banned.

Also, you undoubtedly used to spam lenny faces. You have 82 pages of the things, I just skipped through some pages and found plenty of spam.
https://i.gyazo.com/965b1d492b46e2f47ea4fab381ad7021.png punishable
https://i.gyazo.com/4d5d9decc3e8f70730e3dd228bfe0d79.png punishable
https://i.gyazo.com/dfe06c58120000022d5e12bf2e03134b.png punishable

You would never, under the rules that you have imposed today, become a manager.

 

As mei mentioned we did discuss this with others already about needing to deal with toxic behaviour & i agreed on being too leniant on toxic in the chat.

About that chatspam Armadillo, fairly sure we weren't really enforcing the anti spam rule that hard as we do now.

 

The rules weren't imposed today... I wasnt the only one who made the rules... HellJack giving advice or explanations to admins is considered embarassing? @DrunkPug i gave you some tips on how to behave with such people today about the whole r0d deal, what do you think?

 

Yes I was given some tips of how to act, this is fairly normal and I'm told happens with almost every new admin. It's not at all embarrassing, rather helpful actually.