Admins Shouldn't Have Discretion To Allow Forgiving Of Themselves

I bet I'm going to get a lot of hate for this by the staff, but I really hope not. You guys are still awesome, I just have this grievance. Oh well, here goes.

About a month ago, an incident I saw has bothered me to this day. An Admin clearly RDM'd a Moderator, and received no slay. It wasn't even questionable. It was a clear-cut case, and yet no slay was given out. I told the Moderator in PM that the Admin very clearly RDM'd him, in case he didn't know, and asked why wasn't he getting slain, but they just ignored me. (I know I know I shouldn't backseat Moderate; I was just worried because he was shot in the back and so it seemed like he might not know)

I think it's very unprofessional for someone of a higher rank than someone else be able to ask for forgiveness of themselves. It's a person in a position of power over someone asking that someone to be let off the hook, and that in itself is corruption incarnate. Imagine in real life, your boss hurt you in some way and then asked you not to tell. That's not good. You could be in fear of losing your job, in fear of facing repercussions during work hours, etc.

This has happened to my own self on several occasions. Admins who are friends of mine, who I will not name like the staff members mentioned before, have asked - unprompted - if I wanted to forgive them. Every time, the answer is always no. Not because I didn't want to, but because the rules are the rules. Every time, however, I felt severe pressure to forgive my friend. I didn't want to upset them or hurt them, but they broke the rules and must be punished accordingly.

When someone brought up the possibility of a "Forgive" button, this case was made against it:

This is ironically what actually happens when Admins RDM. Of course, removing the ability to forgive Admins sounds sucky to Admins and maybe even Mods, but that's what the rest of us players have to deal with on the daily, anyways. And yes, there's the normal argument that Admins are supposed to be held to a higher standard.


I've thought it over and I don't see any way forgiving an Admin would be able to work, except potentially one. Having other Admins have the ability to oversee the forgiveness won't work because they're buddies of equal rank. Having the Leads do it would waste the Leads' time and would also have the same affect, as Leads were all former Admins and still good friends with all of them.

However, if the Leads have the ability to give discretion, and the Admins don't have the ability to ask for forgiveness, it could work. This removes pressure on the player. But I still disagree with this, because you still feel pressured to give forgiveness at least somewhat simply because of the blue in their name. You want to get in good with the Admins. It makes playing easier when the higher staff like you.

Not only that, but I see a crack as a way of exploiting. Many players will not know Admins can't ask forgiveness. Admins might still ask. I'd rather just take away that power all together. Remove all possible incentives for this rather toxic and corrupt behavior.






Note: All the Admins I've found to be nice people. I don't hate them for this, but it's still a problem I would like to see addressed and adjusted until it's fixed.

 

If they were to abuse it they would get in big trouble for doing so. It makes no sense to take it away from them and forcing them to ask another admin for dis when they should be able to do it themself(within reason ofc)

 

Everyone should have the option of forgiveness imo

If admins get it the ability to have less slays given out, so be it aslong as they're willing to share the forgiveness with regular players I see no reason why an admin can't give out forgiveness for any and every report should the people involve decide upon that...


But this idea of forgiveness gets shut down every single time without even testing it.

 

This isn't corrupt, what're you talking about? Unless you see some serial RDM going on and the administrator in question not catching any kind of punishments for it, this is just silly. At what point does discretion invalidate just because it happens to be toward oneself? Admin asks for forgiveness from the player. If the player wants them slain, they can say no just as easy as with any other case, and they can't just NOT slay themselves. Do you think at all that the moderator you saw get RDM'd forgave the admin and that your input was entirely not needed? That's how I see it. Your reasoning needs some real work, Aarow.

 

Make sure to +1 the mod app though.

 

The mere act of asking for forgiveness is abusing it, @Inkling Girl . People in positions of power shouldn't make requests like that to the people they have power over.

 

So someone was hurt by someone with a position of power over them and agreed to look the other way. And you see nothing wrong with this?

 

If they are isngle staffing a server what are you expecting them to do? Go to the staff discord and start asking? And if you can find a case of this being abused then by all means report. I only see this happening when they RDM a friend or someone else on the staff team and the person they RDM is fine with no slay.

 

You are a crazy person. Asking forgiveness is natural, I'd LOVE to know where you draw this out as being some form of abuse. God help me 2017 was bad enough, but this is next level liberalism.

 

One of the biggest reasons staff give for no Forgive button is that friends will abuse them.

 

I'm crazy? Rick, this is literally how real life works. It's literally illegal for a boss to do this kind of thing irl. It's illegal for police to do it. If I pointed out a case going on that mirrors this, however, everyone would go, "Wow you're comparing this to that?" The case is far more extreme but carries the same sentiment that people in positions of power can't do certain things like make requests to people they have power over.

 

This isn't real life, Aarow. This is a video game we play with people. Not sure how the two correlate for you but this isn't the American justice system, this is SGM and if two people can work out a failure and have it result in a slay, at WHAT POINT is this considered 'abuse'? Do you know what abuse is?

 

To be honest, you could go up the rabbit hole all the way to the owner and say the same exact thing.

There are certain situations in where we agree on when discretion shouldn't be used to accept forgiveness. The whole purpose of giving discretion to admins is because they have the trust to be able to judge this situations, and handle them appropriately. If an admin is found to be misusing this trust, it'll be handled by the us (the leads)- but with that trust, I believe they could handle forgiveness against themselves as well. One of the criteria that we look for not only our admins, but our staff team as a whole, is that they are able to look at situations in an unbiased manner.

Now this is a personal thing, but I personally don't accept forgiveness for my accidental RDMs as a show of example. If I screw up, I take the punishment for it. This is not by any means a guideline or a requirement.

 

75% of the time, when a mod comes to us stating that they want to not slay themselves and that the victim forgives them for the RDM they committed, we deny the request on the grounds that we as staff are held to standards. This is not to say that we always deny these requests (context matters a lot), but admins are usually almost never using discretion to prevent slays from happening to other staff members or to themselves.

Now, that's not to say they shouldn't be using their discretion this way. If a misclick for 12 damage happens and a player is seriously okay with it, there isn't really a huge reason for an admin to be going to extremes by putting a slay down. It may not look super cool or fair, but the concept of discretion is ultimately exactly that, an admin using their personal opinions of situations to decide if something is worth having the rules overlook. If an admin was caught using discretion to keep them out of slays that they shouldn't be using discretion on in the first place, they would already get punished for it.

 

Is there any good reasons as to why we cannot enable the forgiveness button for ALL Players? It's built into RDM manager afterall.

It does so much for a servers positivism if Joe Bloggs can forgive Jane Bloggs for killing her wrongly if Jane didn't care as its only an innocent round.

 

This is wrong, Graze. I've literally seen it. I could give you the name of the staff in private if you so wish. And you can tell them I told you (though I would rather not yet given a certain circumstance I hope you know of), I just don't want them being attacked in the public spotlight.

 

The mere act of asking for forgiveness isnt the cardinal sin it's built up to be in our rulesets; goomba stomp related scenarios even require the staff member to ask the victim for forgiveness.

I personally hold myself to a higher standard than most players, and usually won't explore the option of forgiveness even if the player offers it. However, don't feel guilty or inclined to forgive someone based off the mere question if asked; like you said rules are rules, and your pals should understand that it's just a slay.

 

The Admin and Mod instance that set me off the most was because it was blatant RDM, Helix. Blatant RDM. He got gunned down in the back for no reason. I wouldn't be so riled up if it had been grey. Sadly, I wasn't recording yet as I had just stopped a recording to start a new one for the new map, and forgot to start the recording lmao.

 

Then it sounds like this is more of something that you should report to their respective lead.

 

Alright so, one incident of something that looks shaky to you is the grounds in which you insist upon this particular discretion being removed from all administrators?