Post by mehtastic on Apr 5, 2023 4:45:52 GMT -5
Armageddon's whistleblower rule is meant to allow players leeway to bring to light things they think break the rules or are abusive. It provides for exemption from the normal consequences to their character, game account, GDB account and Discord account that might otherwise happen due to the nature of these activities. It does not provide an exemption for activities that go beyond this, and there is no intent that this rule be used to shield a player engaging in bad faith behavior.
With this in mind the new Whistleblower Rule is as follows:
A player will be exempt from reprisal or corrective behavior if they have made "good faith" attempts at resolving a dispute over an issue with staff, staff's behavior, a fellow player, or a fellow player's behavior and failed to receive a resolution. This does not cover game issues such as bugs, or systems the player disagrees with. It does cover things such as staff behavior towards a player that goes unresolved, or fellow players' behavior that goes unresolved. A "good faith" attempt means that the player has legitimately attempted to work the issue out through the proper channels. This could be a player complaint if the issue deals with another player, or this could be a staff complaint if the issue deals with a member of staff. The proper channels are:
- The player has engaged with staff in a back-and-forth conversation about the issue, and was dissatisfied with the outcome
- The player has escalated the issue to a more senior staff, or in the case of a Producer to a different Producer, and was still dissatisfied with the outcome
- The Player Committee has been presented with the issue (as a staff complaint) and advised on it, and the player is still dissatisfied with the outcome.
If after these steps have been attempted and the player feels the issue was not properly resolved, and the issue breaks game rules or the spirit of the game rules, they player will be exempt from normal corrective actions associated with publicizing the issue (whistleblowing) if:
- The player explains the issue they are "whistleblowing" about, and does not attempt to bring in other, unrelated issues
- The player does their best to avoid outing who plays what character, unless doing so is relevant to the issue
- The player does not publicize any personal, real-life information about people involved in the issue, unless doing so is relevant to the issue
No other instances of breaking game rules will be covered, only those directly related to the "whistleblowing" activity. For example, if a player meets the criteria above and publicizes a violation that was not resolved properly, they would be covered under this rule. If in doing so they also divulge game secrets, name who plays what characters, or post logs of private conversations all unrelated to the issue they are "whistleblowing" about, those actions will not be covered by this rule.
With this in mind the new Whistleblower Rule is as follows:
A player will be exempt from reprisal or corrective behavior if they have made "good faith" attempts at resolving a dispute over an issue with staff, staff's behavior, a fellow player, or a fellow player's behavior and failed to receive a resolution. This does not cover game issues such as bugs, or systems the player disagrees with. It does cover things such as staff behavior towards a player that goes unresolved, or fellow players' behavior that goes unresolved. A "good faith" attempt means that the player has legitimately attempted to work the issue out through the proper channels. This could be a player complaint if the issue deals with another player, or this could be a staff complaint if the issue deals with a member of staff. The proper channels are:
- The player has engaged with staff in a back-and-forth conversation about the issue, and was dissatisfied with the outcome
- The player has escalated the issue to a more senior staff, or in the case of a Producer to a different Producer, and was still dissatisfied with the outcome
- The Player Committee has been presented with the issue (as a staff complaint) and advised on it, and the player is still dissatisfied with the outcome.
If after these steps have been attempted and the player feels the issue was not properly resolved, and the issue breaks game rules or the spirit of the game rules, they player will be exempt from normal corrective actions associated with publicizing the issue (whistleblowing) if:
- The player explains the issue they are "whistleblowing" about, and does not attempt to bring in other, unrelated issues
- The player does their best to avoid outing who plays what character, unless doing so is relevant to the issue
- The player does not publicize any personal, real-life information about people involved in the issue, unless doing so is relevant to the issue
No other instances of breaking game rules will be covered, only those directly related to the "whistleblowing" activity. For example, if a player meets the criteria above and publicizes a violation that was not resolved properly, they would be covered under this rule. If in doing so they also divulge game secrets, name who plays what characters, or post logs of private conversations all unrelated to the issue they are "whistleblowing" about, those actions will not be covered by this rule.
In the next part of the Armageddon staff team's quest to endlessly legislate without bothering to prove they'll follow their own rules, we have the "whistleblower rule".
Starting from the top, it sounds really good! It says "a player will be exempt from reprisal or corrective behavior if they have made good faith attempts at resolving a dispute over an issue with staff, staff's behavior, a fellow player or a fellow player's behavior and failed to receive a resolution". In GDB reading level terms, "we won't ban you if you complain about us on the shadowboard, provided that you tried the request tool first."
Then we get into the nitty-gritty of what Halaster considers "good faith". He defines "good faith" as an attempt to work things out through the proper channels, e.g. a player complaint or a staff complaint. The path he defines as a good faith attempt is: a conversation occurs with staff, and the player is dissatisfied with the outcome. Then the player brings it up to a producer (or if the initial conversation happened with a producer, a "different producer"), and is still dissatisfied. Then the player committee advises staff on the issue and the player is still dissatisfied.
The absurdity of this is the bottleneck created by having to talk to Producers. Whistleblowing becomes inevitable. Suppose you have a conversation with Halaster, and it sucks. So you take it to Brokkr, who is the only other choice at the moment, and of course the conversation still sucks because the Producers are supposed to be a unified front (also, Brokkr has the social skills of a sewer-dwelling vampire). Then the Player Committee advises Halaster and Brokkr, who of course believe they were both right in the first place, and either completely disregard the advice or pick and choose pieces they agree with that are least likely to change the outcome.
But that's not the worst part. The player will only be exempt from "corrective actions" if the player explains the issue they are whistleblowing about without attempting to bring in other, unrelated issues. The player doesn't out who plays what character unless doing so is relevant to the issue. And the player does not publicize any personal RL information about people involved unless that's relevant.
How the hell do you whistleblow without bringing everything to light? The answer is: you can't. By refusing to give leeway to players on determining which information is most relevant to their complaint, this "whistleblower rule" basically says: complain about us the way we want you to complain about us. It doesn't protect players, it outlines mistakes that the staff will inevitably find a player has made just so the staff have an excuse to punish them anyway. And of course, staff determine what information is relevant and what is not.
That's setting aside the fact that it's painfully obvious that the staff took everything they didn't like about Bebop's complaint and wrote it into the rules.
And that's also setting aside the fact that the rule exempts players from "corrective action" but doesn't protect them at all from retaliation (or at least is very vague about what staff consider "reprisal" and "corrective action" in the first place), which is what whistleblower protections IRL are actually made for. Suppose that a player is the "ideal whistleblower". They follow the staff-approved communication chain and only leak the slightest amount of details about the incident. Staff don't ban them for leaking the info. They just kind of treat the player as persona non grata. They never give the player a sponsored role again, or approve their mastercrafts, or let character reports sit for a couple of weeks before even looking at them. They drop a 100-strength gith next to the player's character "by accident". Instead of forcing the player out of the game, they make them want to quit. Apparently, this is not specifically forbidden under the whistleblower rule because staff don't understand what whistleblowing is.
Also, this rule does not protect staff at all when whistleblowing. How am I supposed to get new inside sources? Jesus.
Staff could have just taken the time to write out decent core values, but I think this new rule proves they have none, aside from maintaining the justification they need to do whatever they want, whenever they want.