Lopz1 - Staff Report: Enforcement Action Taken - x31stOverlord
What’s your BYOND key:
Lopz1
Round ID:
25193
Your character name:
Tim Trot
Their BYOND key:
x31stOverlord
What are you reporting?:
Enforcement Action Taken
Description of the incident:
During a round I was playing in, I was given a note by a staff member that mentioned two supposed rulebreaks. The admin handling the situation asked me to explain what had happened, and was then unable to state in the ticket how my actions broke the rules in question. For one of the rulebreaks, the admin completely stopped talking about the topic after I explained how it was wrong, and then proceeded to put the supposed rulebreak in my note regardless. For the second rulebreak, after I explained how that also did not constitute a break of the rule in question, the admin copy pasted an excerpt of the rule, said “mention this in your staff report, thanks.” and then wrote into the note that I had broken said rule.
I believe both of these instances are a violation of the “Whenever a player receives a punishment they should know why and what they are being punished for” part of the staff guidelines, as I still remain completely uninformed of how my actions went against the mentioned rules, or how the things I stated in the ticket were incorrect. The staff had extended the round to handle the ticket and needed to end it as people were getting impatient, but, to my knowledge, the right thing to do in this scenario would have been to continue discussing the matter in the following round instead of applying a note in which staff was completely unable to explain to a person how his actions broke the rules or how his defense was incorrect.
Here I will give a recap of the accusations and the incidents that led to them.
- Failing to follow through with an officer-ordered arrest.
Upon coming across her in the medbay, the CMO ordered me to arrest a doctor for major insubordination. I complied, found the doctor, explained the charges to her, and escorted her to the brig. Here, I provably did conduct the arrest, as Oxford Languages defines the word arrest as “seize (someone) by legal authority and take them into custody”. After I took the arrestee to the brig, I inquired about the situation that led to the charges being made. The doctor explained to me that she was ordered by the CMO to print metals limbs, but was unable to because she did not know which limbs to print. The CMO, even after I chased her around medbay and hangar asking for her to explain the situation or provide her side with more detail, had completely refused to do so and ignored me. So, using the information available to me, I concluded that it was a misunderstanding, the doctor had not intentionally refused an order, and I let her go.
After this ordeal I felt worried that I may have had done something wrong, so I opened a ticket and explained the situation to the admin Lagomorphica, in which she confirmed I did not go against any rules or marine law by handling the situation the way I did. In the following ticket with x31stOverlord, I mentioned this also (which was ignored).
After this, the admin asked if I had arrested the CMO for false charges, which was seemingly an indicator that he did agree with what I said regarding the doctor’s case, and thought what I did after was the point of concern. I responded by explaining the rest of the events, which consisted of me beginning the process of arresting the CMO by writing a brief fax to provost updating them on the situation and informing them that I would be arresting the CMO (this is my standard procedure as MP when such legal incidents happen, as I enjoy writing faxes a lot). But before I could even begin writing the fax, the CL broke into the ARES core with a team of PMCs, and both the XO and the CO ordered me (the sole MP) to tend to it. Seeing as this was clearly the higher-priority situation, and I was ordered by the highest-ranking staff on board at the time, I moved to the ARES core thinking I would tend to the CMO’s arrest after the situation was over. Right as the ordeal at the AI core was concluding and I was on the scene attempting to handcuff the liaison, the XO came along and arrested me per high command’s requests. I then spent the remainder of the round imprisoned inside brig, which rendered me incapable of arresting the CMO.
It was at this point that the admin, without responding to my defense, completely stopped talking about this supposed rulebreak and moved on to the other one. I initially believed what I got noted for was not arresting the CMO, but then I found out that, after letting go of the “not following officer ordered arrest” accusation and switching it to “not arresting officer for false charges”, the admin decided to put the former “offence” in my note regardless.
- Sedition as MP
I like fax roleplay a lot and so, after seeing that a high command fax responder was awake, I decided to create what I thought would be a fun fax-writing topic by creating a paper with a upp logo inserted on it via the [upp] prefix, writing a fax that went along the lines of “oh no, I discovered UPP propaganda! Let’s talk about this!” and sent it to the comms operator. They then replied with a fax that went like “this is not real UPP propaganda, we will not talk about this”.
After this I thought it would be funny if an MP saw this reply, got upset and wrote a very obviously fake fax impersonating a UPP officer that went “Haha your MP was right and you should have listened to him!” in order to make himself seem more credible. And so I did exactly that, while making sure OOCly that the responder would know it was not a real UPP fax by sending it with no stamp or signature whatsoever.
I do not believe this breaks the marine law of Sedition in any way as I did not refuse to follow orders, create a massive threat on ship without knowledge of the commander, or proclaim allegiance to a different faction. One of the involved staff stated in the discord that I had spoken “on behalf of” the UPP, which is incorrect. Oxford Languages defines “on behalf of” as: “in the interests of (a person, group, or principle)” or “as a representative of”. The first definition does not fit as my character wrote a silly fake fax to make himself seem like a good detective/officer, did nothing that would or could benefit the UPP in any way, and remained a regular, loyal USCM marine ICly. The second definition also does not fit as my character had nothing to do with the UPP. They were never contacted by, or had even interacted with the Union of Progressive Peoples in any way, and so was not one of their “representatives”.
The discord admin in question, after making this statement, said “I will no longer be discussing this”, which made it impossible to inquire about how it was the case.
When I explained this to the admin responding to the ticket (in simpler terms, of course), they, like I stated at the beginning, copy-pasted the entirety of the sedition rule, said “mention this in your staff report, thanks.” and then wrote into the note that I had broken said rule.
I can see how this could have broken the law of “False Testimony”, but I believe that this is extremely iffy and unclear since I did not give testimony or provide information under my name as an MP officer. But regardless, the responding admin ignored me saying the sedition accusation was untrue and that false testimony could be more fitting, so it remains irrelevant.
To conclude, the responding admin(s) ignored my pleas to discuss the situation on an external platform like discord so that it could be properly resolved and concluded, and made no attempt to continue the ticket in the next round. I was asked to explain the situation, had the entirety of my explanation subsequently ignored, and was applied a note listing two separate offences. One of these offences was entirely untrue, and the noting admin was seemingly aware of this. This “offence” was also greenlit by a member of staff, which my mention of also received no response. As for the second offence, I was not explained to in any way how the actions I explained actually had broken the mentioned article of marine law.
The admins had seemingly taken an “apply the punishment, decide later if a crime was actually committed” approach and found it fit to assign me to the duty of writing an extensive staff report they could later discuss this under while they kept playing the game in the following round, seemingly possessing a great amount of time they could have taken ten minutes out of instead of making me spend half of my Monday evening writing this. When this happened I was genuinely so appalled I had experienced this that the only reason I was able to keep my composure enough to write this afterwards was because my medication makes me incapable of crying.
Extra note: I realized after writing this that the admin in the ticket and the one on discord were the same person.
Evidence:
The logs