[Gabeolo]

Don't mean to spam the thread but I don't feel like editing the last post.

Transparency is just generally a good practice. If we don't know why shit's happening, it'll cause confusion, and confusion causes chaos, and chaos spirals into more chaos and drama. The more transparent the staff is, the easier the job of the staff is what I'm saying. When the staff's actions are locked behind closed doors, the staff's actions can easily get more nefarious. and if the staff get more transparent and honest, so do the people. That means people doing nefarious things to eachother behind closed doors get caught faster. And when the punishment for leaking staff chat is so severe, and with the staff being as opaque as they are, the people start to wonder what you're hiding. This both causes distrust from the players, and raises a valid point about the current practices the staff are having.

Not being transparent about the situations the staff are currently going through causes more confusion, more chaos, and more distrust, while also decreasing the honesty in the server. If we swerved in the directions of transparency, I think the staff's job would be easier than it is.

[TheUltraFish]

Just why

[lacer]

I'm kinda missing the part where being spiteful and withholding important information helps the community at all. If you don't want people joking about it, fair enough, but don't put anybody in a situation like this recent one where they didn't know something was going on and they do something seemingly minor only for it to turn into a big shitstorm. Deal with the people who are making it worse and move on. These types of people are always going to exist, it's a part of life.

[[Yellow] Travis1421]

Don't mean to spam the thread but I don't feel like editing the last post.

Transparency is just generally a good practice. If we don't know why shit's happening, it'll cause confusion, and confusion causes chaos, and chaos spirals into more chaos and drama. The more transparent the staff is, the easier the job of the staff is what I'm saying. When the staff's actions are locked behind closed doors, the staff's actions can easily get more nefarious. and if the staff get more transparent and honest, so do the people. That means people doing nefarious things to eachother behind closed doors get caught faster. And when the punishment for leaking staff chat is so severe, and with the staff being as opaque as they are, the people start to wonder what you're hiding. This both causes distrust from the players, and raises a valid point about the current practices the staff are having.

See and I understand you there. I WANT transparency but on the same hand we don't need to tell you guys that there's a child pornographic linker on the loose. If people would not be on the staff's back and getting mad when they don't do something but then turn around and get mad when we do, that'd also make our jobs easier as well. Transparency is a good thing and I believe the staff as of late have done a good job of it.(Granted I could be biased about it but I've seen us talk more in general). But there are specific sensitive topics that don't need to be thrown out. Also, why wouldn't there be a harsh punishment for leaking a private chat? If I told a friend of mine something in privacy and said item was spread, I'd lose trust in that person and wouldn't tell them anything else in privacy. It's not a secrecy thing, it's a sensitive information thing.

---

I'm kinda missing the part where being spiteful and withholding important information helps the community at all. If you don't want people joking about it, fair enough, but don't put anybody in a situation like this recent one where they didn't know something was going on and they do something seemingly minor only for it to turn into a big shitstorm. Deal with the people who are making it worse and move on. These types of people are always going to exist, it's a part of life.

 Why do you need to know that there's a child pornographic linker on the loose to know to not make a tier list and then listing the known pedophiles of ourr servers? It doesn't help that you guys made the thread, had it posted and then played around with the same topics you listed in the discord. I believe you guys weren't raiding in intention but you did it on accident. You did it all on the same day and probably should've thought about how others may have taken it as well. I personally don't disagree with the bans seeing as how everyone who got punished has had warns in the past for shitposting, have they not?

[RussEfarmer]

It's a mixed bag for me.. I've been in some places where everything happens behind a veil and it's extremely frustrating to see major changes or decisions made by administration just out of the blue. What has set Dinkleberg's apart for me over the years is how open stuff like staff applications, ban requests, unban requests, content addition/removal and exploit patches are. Take a community back in the day like Compact Gamers, staff applications weren't public, unban requests weren't public, and almost no contact was made from administration to the rest of the players about server changes. Dink's is the complete opposite, players have the privilege of knowing what is happening on the servers they play on, which I like a lot. The fact that I can make a thread pointing out a major exploit basically saying "holy shit dinkleberg fix this right now", and even disclose the original source code of the addon causing the exploit, and NOT get dragged off in the shadows like a Chinese independent reporter is pretty awesome.

On the other hand though, players don't need to know absolutely EVERYTHING. I hate black boxes, but it's really not a good look for the server administrators to go out and say they promoted two pedophiles to moderator positions and had to ban them for it.. or there's a maniac with 200 alt accounts posting CP on the server every other day for the past 5 months.. I personally don't really need to know that level of detail for a problem completely out of my control, and having an expectation that such level of detail with those kinds of problems is just slapped on the forum's front page isn't very realistic for any community, business or anywhere really.

[La Flama Blanca]

Deal with the people who are making it worse and move on. These types of people are always going to exist, it's a part of life.

We did that - your group were some of the people making it worse. I'm glad you agree with our decision.

[TheUltraFish]

I am going to say something very simple, just because you do not know something that is going on, does not mean it is private.

Did I publicly announce each account of the cp guy? No. Did I try to keep anything secret? No. Much of the staff from throughout the community, especially PH, knew that this guy was an issue over the past several months. More than a few community members also knew of the issue as they would see people complaining about it in discord or would happen to be on the server when the guy was on. Anyone who checks the ban lists for any of the servers would be able to easily see them as well. I think the difference in this is that you guys were not aware of it so therefore, it must be staff being all quiet and secretive about things. Sorry that I guess that I am not making thread announcements or pinging everyone in the discord to make everything clear all the time.

You guys want transparency, I do not know how to make it any more so. After a few things are done, going to be done, or discussed about going on, I generally make a thread about it. I made a thread about rule changes, things we were testing, that we were searching for new maps etc. but you guys want TrAnSpArEnCy. I generally do not just do things either, I discuss them with other staff to make sure I get perspective as well as from community members. There are no behind close deals and yeah we punish people for leaking serious staff things or that lead to serious community issues. I have had a staff member warn a friend to not hack when staff are on, I have had another show evidence of a dire situation because they thought it would be fun to share. Why wouldn't I punish for that? It's not like staff are punishing people for sharing stupid memes or quotes. Generally, most of the things that get shared from the discord, I don't give a fuck.

[bunniey]

hi yes hello i agree with the latter part, and didn't really explain my view, just to throw out my actual thoughts

being overly detailed about stuff isn't necessary, even bringing up that there is anything illegal involved isn't necessary, it's more of a "we should know if something is going on that is going to effect level of staffing, as that will change how we make decisions, because (for example) if something like what we did happened and that wasn't happening, it wouldn't be a big deal. Case in point, ape gang and that sexy minion picture, also with replying to old slurs in the midst of that. It was warn galore for them, like, literally several warns. I was even in on warning them, but nothing too bad happened to them, as it shouldn't really, it was just messing around. worse punishments end up being for people with ill intent, at least that's what i was more or less guided to believe in my brief staffing stint

and @Prince Nicky La Flama Blanca travis was very clearly meaning the people you mentioned in your screenshots, and the people he mentioned, so yeah
chill
[/quote]

also also i'm starting to think this might be a conversation to have in a group chat or something as i dont wanna clutter up the post but i wanna reply to specific things if that makes sense

[Gabeolo]

I think that conversations about moderators committing crimes and someone attacking the server with illegal activity actually ARE conversations we need to have. Knowledge is power, and knowing that things have happened can prevent you from being a future victim, directly by the perpetrator, or by the community's (staff or otherwise) reaction to the events. Because as grim as saying this is, I am under the full belief that those events will repeat. What bothers me about the punishment given to Rand and others is that they are mostly TTT players, and haven't touched PH in a while. The first time they heard about the attacks on PH where when they were appealing their punishment, somebody should have informed them. And about the fear that the community will act immaturely to the news that actions such as the previous examples, that expectation is fully valid and there is just about nothing you can do about them reacting that way. But you quite literally signed up for this, and that reaction is just the kind of thing that you have to deal with. Now I don't think you have to really scream from the hilltops and throw feces around to inform everyone that an event like the examples mentioned has happened. I actually like how the Gebrial situation was addressed, taking it soft, yet obvious, in a forum post by the upper staff (I'd prefer if it was linked in #announcements, probably without a ping though) feels like the way to go in a situation like that, and if that had happened with the other example a lot of chaos could have been prevented I feel. Don't know how to end this tbh but lets keep it cool and preferably semiformal in here, yeah?

[lacer]

Deal with the people who are making it worse and move on. These types of people are always going to exist, it's a part of life.

We did that - your group were some of the people making it worse. I'm glad you agree with our decision.

Making it worse for whom? The admins? Battons didn't care. Bryan, as far as I'm aware, didn't care. You even found it funny at the time. If you want to be pointed towards people who are making it worse, how about you give this same treatment to the people who made and continue to make stupid, petty, sneak dissing comments in the staff discord where they can't be called out for it for fear of being jumped on by the rest of the staff? You know as well as I did that none of us were aware that anything else was going on, and making comments like this don't make the community a better place, it just means you've once again managed to flip yourself onto the "right" side of the argument and made yourself feel better. Congrats.