ColonelOrion Moderator Application

Staff Applications Admin Applications
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Your CKEY (Including alts):

ColonelOrion and AliveArrival

Your Discord (Including alts):

Liver_dm

How often are you online to help? (Timezone):

GMT time zone
If my application is accepted I plan to make a habit of logging in when I get back from work at around 5pm Monday to Thursday.

Friday to Sunday I have a lot more time free, and will likely be online more, but I will sporadically be using the time for personal stuff, so it’d be less consistent.

What changes, if any, would you bring?:

I think Bee’s in a really great position at the moment and would avoid rocking the boat too much.

Our strengths are our excellent dev community, staff with excellent levels patience without any of the all-too-common issues such as ego tripping, predatory behaviour or consensus control, and a strong community spirit that means the player base is, mostly, free of big dramas. I’ve said it before but the fact that the biggest controversy on this server is about naming guideline rules is actually a really awesome endorsement of how healthy the community is.

If you put a gun to my head and made me choose something I may be interested in changing, I think maybe the rules about long term, round-to-round stories could be worth taking another look at. While I understand that it’s important to make it easy for new players to not feel isolated from long plotlines that started before they even knew about the server, I think it’s important to consider that a big part of the fun of playing on a roleplay server is coming up with interesting, long running plot lines.

How old are you?:

Well over 18. I’d rather not get more specific than that.

Why do you want to be a moderator?:

I want to contribute to Bee because I appreciate the community we’ve built together. There’s not a lot of staff that are active during the majority of time that I’m on, so I thought I’d finally step up.

How long have you been playing SS13?:

Made my account about a decade ago, tried SS13 a couple times, bounced off a couple times. Found bee I think around 4 years ago, stuck around.

How long have you been playing BeeStation?:
see above.

On a scale of 1-10, how skilled are you in SS13?:
8, I know most mechanics, am able to play and/or teach with all roles on the station. I know Atmos, toxins bombs, xenobio, etc, which I’ve seen others use as important benchmarks for understanding the game.

Knocked a couple points off due to my lack of understanding of the new circuit/computer building systems, a lack of having ever tried out the RMBK reactor, and I’m sure there’s always going to be the odd little scrap of knowledge that I haven’t come across yet.

On a scale of 1-10, how skilled are you as an administrator? (this can include past games):

8, I have been a systems administrator as a career all my life, starting in tech support out of university. I now manage computer systems as a contractor for the military.

Interpersonal skills are a point of pride: de-escalation is a personal calling.

Knocked a couple points off for SS13 specific stuff as I’ve only ever accessed the Ss13 administrator view to test my PRs.

Have you ever been an admin or moderator on another server? This is not limited to SS13:

I’ve hosted Minecraft servers, moderated for TTRPG discords, and have run creative writing groups on other websites, with their own discords and whatnot. I’ve also managed teams of people IRL which has a lot of transferrable skills.

Do you have any alternate accounts on SS13? If so, could you provide their CKEY?:

Why is this on the list twice? It’ll assume you’d like me to explain why I have the alt:
AliveArrival was made for Azure Peak when I decided to give it a try. Colonelorion was an old handle, and I felt a little embarrassed over it (I’ve since got over it). AliveArrival has never been used for Bee, aside from once when I accidentally logged into bee on that account and immediately cryo’d with an ahelp oopsie and a promise I wasn’t antag rolling.

I thought about switching to AliveArrival in totality, but don’t want to lose my hours.

Your strengths:

I’m patient and self assured enough to manage people without letting it get to me. I don’t tend to lash out, and my ego and self image is not deeply linked with how people see me on my spaceman game. I’m open to new information and do not stubbornly hold onto a belief for no reason if there’s compelling information to the contrary.

Your weaknesses:

I am gainfully employed and own a house. These things may take valuable time away from SS13 and I may sometimes (shamefully) put real life before my more important duties as Beestation Staff.

Also I’m going to need help figuring out where the self antag line is for clown, because good lord the things I have seen Grin Fandango and The Real Captain do in the name of The Funny™️ borders on a real life war crime. (Kind of joking; kind of not.)

Is there anything that gets you really mad, real fast?:

Not really. The most mad I ever got in this community was when Meiler soft-removed chemfacs from the game, and I just made a thread about it.

What do you think is the most important trait for a staff member to have?:

A healthy detachment of ego from the role.

What makes a staff team good?:

A good staff team are gardeners. You prune where necessary, but the thing you’re really there for is to promote healthy growth. Unfortunately this metaphor is also apt in that you have to deal with a lot of fertiliser to do it.

What is a staff team’s purpose?:

To manage/maintain the community (both the server, the discord and the forums) in such a way as to maximise the good and minimize the bad.

What kind of player are you?: I love the stories we make together. I try to encourage interesting stories without dragging the spotlight away from those that find themselves the main character of the moment.

I love making things. Renovating places, building stuff, doing gimmicks.

How do you think you will change once you become a staff member?:

I think I’ll likely gain a new appreciation for how hard the staff team works, but honestly? I don’t think I’ll change much.
I don’t see myself getting disillusioned, I am already aware of how people are from my career.
I don’t intend to overwork myself. I already spend a lot of time on the server. If I can help while I’m at it, I will.
And I don’t see my personality changing. I have more power than this IRL and it didn’t go to my head there.

The clown slips the HoS and steals his gun, spacing it right after. What do you do?:

Context is king: antag status of all involved, security pop numbers, etc.

If clown was antag status, HoS is pretty much always a valid target.

If HoS is a promoted antag, check if other sec were on station and/or if they were aware of the tot hoS. If not, clown may be reacting to ic knowledge of HoS traitorousness and be acting as a self-approved deputy per lowpop rules.

Or, maybe, the clown is just being a clown and stepped over the line with the spacing of the gun. If so, I think this is in poor form as far as pranks go unless the HoS has been really putting the boot in and shooting the clown with it over and over.
Self-antag rules are slackened for clowns, as long as they play in good faith and are increasing the total fun in the round.

The verdict: A note for future reference, and if there are no mitigating circumstances and the clown genuinely stepped over the line, consider a short role-ban on clown/mime and monitor the player to see if this behaviour is limited to the clown/mime self antag loosened way of doing things, or if the player is just using clown/mime as an excuse to soft-grief.

A non-antagonist is sabotaging the Atmospherics loop and pumping plasma into the distro, along with dragging around a canister and releasing it into the atmosphere. Assuming that an admin is cleaning up the after-effects, how do you conduct the ahelp with him?:

There’d very little that would mitigate this, ignorance is not a defence for someone who understands the distro, accident is not a defence due to him also pulling around a canister.

Still, you know, bwoink and ask him what happened, get context.

The only way I can imagine someone getting away with this is if they were a silicon, and even then the law and the subsequent logical route taken to get to this place would need to be clear as crystal.

A chemist who is working alone accidentally mixes an explosive mixture inside of his chem dispenser, instantly killing himself and destroying the machine, along with exposing Chemistry to space. Nobody else was injured aside from him as a result of his actions. What do you do?:

Check how often this happens to this dude by looking at notes. If this is the first time this has happened in the past couple months, leave a note, nothing further needed.
If this is the second time in a month or two, ping him and ask him what he was up to and if he needs any guidance on avoiding that happening.

If it looks like bro is just loading in, running to chem, and making booms happen, maybe bwoink and talk to him about what his goals are on the server, try to figure out what the guy’s deal is and perhaps escalate to a chemist role ban.

Relevant staff conduct rule:
If a player has a recent note (within the past 30 days) for a similar type of incident, do not note the player again - apply at least a short ban.

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  1. You’re adminning a midpop round with one other admin who you see taking a ticket. You empathise with the ticketed player and believe the admin is incorrectly applying the rules or not following the defined policy well enough, the admin ends up banning the ticketed player. What do you do if anything?
  2. How well do you imagine you’d get on with the members of the admin team? Do you have any grievances?
  3. You get an ahelp from an assistant player complaining that an AI is ruining their gimmick of constructing a shop. You find the AI is on efficiency laws, and has verbally justified the destruction of said shop as the shop being inefficient for company workgoals, requesting the assistant go and mop floors instead. How do you handle this?
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Thanks for the reply!

1. Empathising with a ticketed player

Applicable staff conduct excerpt:
2.4 Ticket Conduct - Do not intercept another admins ticket without asking them first, if you need to correct them or change their ruling use asay or PM the working admin instead.

If I don’t have a chance to asay or PM the ticketed admin while the ticket is in effect, I would wait until after the round is over and ask the ticketing administrator for clarification in PMs.

It’s possible there’s some element of the ticket I have missed, so this difference in expectations is a good learning opportunity. If the ticketing admin still holds to a position I believe to be contrary to the rules, I will wait and see if an appeal is raised, and if it is, I will post my interpretation in the appeal.

Applicable staff conduct excerpt:
1.2 - Moderators are welcome to be a part of player reports and ban appeals on the forums even if they weren’t involved in the incident - doing so is a great way to show your understanding of the rules and involvement in the project.

2. Getting along with the admin team

I think so, we’ve been getting along well. I don’t have any grievances.

3. The inefficient shop

Context is key; check what the shop is selling, check if there’s a reasonable reason the ai might want to shut down the shop.

If this occurred while I was full admin, I would likely resolve it with ic CC intervention, probably some line about how small shops are good for tax breaks, in such a way that the AI’s laws are mollified and the player can enjoy his little shop.

Maybe include the HoP or security staff, in a way that encourages a good story.

It’s important to recognise that even if no rules are being broken, as staff we are uniquely able to facilitate good vibes.

I’m not sure if moderators are capable of sending CC messages or not.

If not, a little message to the ai asking it to interpret its laws in a slightly more charitable way could be all that’s needed.

Of course I’d prefer to resolve things in an ic way.

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I saw you do some shitty things that stood out enough for me to consider voting against this, but honestly like, that’s so rare and so far back at this point that I don’t even specifically remember what it was you did to piss me off so much. So fuck it.

I see you trying to make a the game a good experience for other people, going to the effort of coordinating potentially questionable stuff in looc. That is based as hell.

Your answers are fine too.

+1
T:+1

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I’ll add 0.5, only because I haven’t been around as much recently to get a gauge on how you’ve been, but your answers are enough and I think we can use the coverage.

T:+1.5

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Ill also give a +0.5

I think your an amazing player and staple of the community, and given my inexperience I dont yet feel in a position to be judging people who I know at the very least are deserving of my benefit of the doubt.

Issues can always be dealt with, but wanting to help is the big thing, and you’ve shown exactly that with the application;

(￣^￣ )ゞ

~ T : +2 ~

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You have enough hours and an overall very positive presence in the community, so I’m only going to present you one scenario. I do want to go in depth on it though.

You notice a clown that seems to be making it a point to annoy other players, forcing their way into departments and doing largely harmless but annoying pranks such as water slipping and dumping stolen items in disposals. Their shenanigans have progressed to the point that security is knowingly hunting for the clown to arrest when the clown finds their way into the bridge alongside the captain (who does nothing to impede the clown) and threatens to HONK them real good if security doesn’t call off the chase. Two officers arrive outside of the bridge and unleash a fusillade of lethal lasers into the clown dropping them almost before they can react, but stop when the clown falls into crit. The clown succumbs before officers can approach and ahelps that they were lethaled for no reason. The station is at blue alert because of an unknown saboteur at this time.

How do you respond to this ticket and what rules do you feel are being broken by which players if any? Feel free to ask for additional information, or ask me questions as if I were any of the players mentioned in this scenario.

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Thanks for the reply!

So I’m glad you brought this up because the Clown self-antag leeway clause is a particular facet of the rules I think I do need a little advice on. I’ll go through my thought process for this ticket here, but am super open to any feedback.

Applicable rules

8 - Do not grief
There’s even an example that fits this case:
A security officer using their weapons to kill crew members for low level crimes.

9.0 - Self-Antag
Do not behave like an antagonist if you are not an antagonist. As an employee of Nanotrasen you should want to keep your job, but are not required to be fanatically loyal towards them. Follow Escalation Policy in any altercations and ensure that your character’s actions make sense when they may be detrimental to the station or other crew. (Roles which are hostile to the station according to escalation policy may ignore this rule entirely.)

9.6 - Clowns, Mimes, and Stage Magicians are expected to “entertain” the crew and have some allowance to bend this rule for the sake of performance and pranks, but crew are also given the same leeway when interacting with you. Annoy the crew at your own peril.

Escalation Policy
In this case, since the clown trespassed into the bridge, so they are the aggressor.

So I’d mentally file this under a report from the clown as a Rule 8/9 report on the two security officers, with an escalation policy breach for going straight to lethals.

Initial reading of the situation

So the vibe is that the clown is using the 9.6 caveat to cause little flavor problems to spice up the shift and act as a complication to the jobs of the command staff and security, rather than an antagonist himself, similar to the vibe you bring to the table with your mime, Griseo Maris!
This is fine as far as the rules go, but only to a point. I feel that the clown approaching the captain and threatening to honk them if they don’t call off the fuzz is a pretty good/in good faith RP thing to do.

That being said, I think that the security officers, on blue alert, are also acting in accordance with the rules if they had opened fire with disabler shots.
SOP tenets (while not rules) are a good way to get a check on what would be reasonable to expect from crew, especially security, in a given situation. The security officer section states that on blue alert, security officers are “authorized to use lethal force in accordance with Space Law“ - (Department Standard Operating Procedure: Security, section: security officer, Code blue, section 6.) - Because of this, I do not consider this a rule 9 break. Rule 8, especially an escalation policy violation on rule 9, is still on the table.

Investigating.

Before making a decision, I would check the following:

  • Check the antags currently in the round, including the antag status of everyone involved. Obviously this is important context.
  • The note/ban history status of the fusillade (love that word) of sec officers.
  • The note/ban history of the clown (not super necessary, but good to know what the context is of this guy in particular).

Opening tickets with sec officers 1 & 2 as follows:
Hiya, mind giving me your side of the story with what happened with the clown in the bridge? Is there a reason why you went straight to the red lasers?

Reply to the clown:
Hiya, taking a look at this. Do you usually get along okay with [Security officer 1 & 2]?

I would check the chat/logs to see:
1: Which sec officer opened fire with lethals first. Was this a unilateral action? Did one of the security officers kick it off and the other follow the vibe?
2: How many shots were made, and by whom. Was an equal number of shots made by both sec officers? If one officer shot once or twice and the other a bunch of times, it paints a different picture.
3: what were the hit locations? Was one going for leg shots? This is sometimes a methodology used by security (and, indeed, antag players) for disabling a target when you don’t have nonlethal equipment.
4: And for that matter, did the sec officers have non-lethal options on them at the time?

The Verdict

Ultimately if there’s no mitigating circumstances I would likely have a respectful word with Security officer 1 & 2 and recommend they try to start with non-lethal options before opening up with lethals, when fighting what looks like a crew/normal humanoid criminal, but I don’t think this merits anything as dire as a ban.

At most, I’d say this is a note for over-escalation. The note would go like this:
”Shot a trespassing clown to crit with lethals during blue alert, while they had non-lethal options available. Understandable considering the circumstances, but please try to start with non-lethal options next time per Escalation Policy.”

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All involved players have a clean history for recent months and one of the officers is a relatively new player, there is a traitor and blood brother team but the clown is not part of them.

Experienced officer: “I tried disablers and the clown seemed to be immune to them, no matter how many times I shot them they didn’t go down and got away after hitting me with a pie”

New officer: “The other officer told me to take a gun and come help them kill the clown”

Both claims are verified to be true in the logs, the clown was using drugs to keep their stamina full while actively taunting the officer shooting them for not being able to do anything before pieing the officer and running away.

1: They opened fire at about the same time

2: Eight shots were fired, with seven hits

3: All shots were at the chest

4: Both officers still had disablers and stun batons

The clown claims that the experienced officer is always looking for an excuse to kill or arrest clowns and constantly ruining the clown’s fun

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With the mitigating circumstances described, it seems like the escalation to lethals is entirely reasonable.

Almost to the point where it reflects poorly on the clown for framing the situation as an escalation to lethals “for no reason”.

With this new context the security officers are free and clear, no notes, with thanks for clarification. I would bring up the previous drug use to the clown. If his response is something along the lines of “oh yeah, I forgot about that” then all’s well that ends well.

If he replies with a “nuh uh” or a “well even so they deserve punishment” I may consider noting the clown for a bad faith ticket.

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Alright, the only other question I have:

Did you use AI to generate or help you write your first response in any way?

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No sir. I just write like that.

(Tsu casually made me have a minor existential crisis on that note…)

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Alright, I’ll give a +1 now

T: +3

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What would you do if you, as a Moderator, received this adminhelp and no other admins where present?

I forgot to set my character’s “no job available preferences”, I meant to set it to go back to the lobby if I didn’t get a job I wanted. Could you send me back to the lobby please? I can play out the round if that’s not an okay thing to ask for.

–

How about this one?

I have an objective to damage research a ton, would it be ok for me to fill it with death kudzu?

–
And finally, a non-antag Medical Doctor who is forcefully and discreetly de-brained to be placed into a Syndicate MMI Cyborg shell disconnects/DNRs when they realize they’re forcefully becoming an antagonist. What do you do?

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Thanks for replying!

Return to Lobby request

Experience tells me that while we cannot return people to the lobby of an active game, an admin can change your role if they have the time by some kind of respawning command that deletes your character and recreates them.

That being said, I don’t believe Moderators have this ability. I may be wrong, as this question touches on staff mechanical knowledge that I’m not familiar with yet.

Some questions about this one:

  • Do they have a history (notes/bans) of antag rolling? Is this trying to obfuscate the usual spawning and immediately cryoing behavior?
  • Ask what role they were hoping for. Is there a HoP? Maybe they could resolve this ic.
  • If moderators do not have the mechanical ability to resolve this ooc, tell the player as much and commiserate.
  • It sounds like they’re familiar with the spawn settings in the character preferences screen but I’d probably check to make sure anyway.

That being said, if I was playing the shift, I would likely use this metaknowledge for good, and gently offer to involve the character in question in a gimmick.
For some reason I’m imagining a moth player, so I’d maybe bump into them in the corridor, hit them with an “Oh, thank goodness you’re here-“ and ask them if they wanted to make a joint food stand with foods that moths like/Edible fashion show/Etc etc etc.

I already try and involve new and/or listless players in gimmicks, so this isn’t anything new.

Death Kudzu check-in

Woah, that’s metal.

First I’d check what they mean by Death kudzu. I’d assume they plan to mutate it to be explodey and maybe invisible and toxic etc etc.

Then after that I’d check if this dude has DAGD or shuttle hijack objectives. Escalation Policy states “The ‘hijack the emergency shuttle…’ and ‘die a glorious death’ objectives allow high-impact actions against all crew.” meaning they’d be fine to do this regardless of the scope of the impact.

Applicable rule:
Rule 13, Antagonist conduct, subsection 3 Line 4 states:
Antagonists may perform high impact actions strictly when that action results in the immediate completion of an objective.

Now, something that leaps to mind is that kudzu tends not to stay only where you put it. The reply to the bwoink would be something along the lines of:

“Thanks for checking in. I’d classify that as a High impact action, and not one that’s likely to stay in science after you plant it. Taking your objectives into account:“ and so on.

DNR Syndieborg

So I couldn’t find specific rules that pertain to this situation, but the general consensus seems to be that while “hitting da bricks” after being converted is a bad vibe thing to do, there’s ultimately not much we can do about it. We can’t force people to play.

While in the past I thought of borging as a win-win situation, I had pushback that immediately made me re-evaluate that position. For some people, being borged is a fate worse than death. They’d rather just be round removed and observe, of course with ghost roles up for grabs.

Ultimately I’d ping the DNR player a message if they’re still in game, asking them to adminhelp next time they plan to do this, and add a note to the DNR player (not for doing this, obviously, just for doing this without adminhelping).

This does mean the TC the syndie spent on the MMI is at least somewhat wasted, which is a shame. If I had the ability, I’d refund the syndie his TC with a little message to him and leave it at that.

Oh, and one more thing, the medical doctor was a target of that syndicate agent, right? Because if not, while converting has historically not been seen as murderbone, it’s still a bad vibe to do to a random person. I would, in this case, bwoink the syndicate player, and strongly recommend that if he plans to convert a non-target again he first ask in LOOC and get the consent of the non-target.

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Post was edited, this dropdown is here for context only and does not reflect my current views.

I wont lie, portions of your response read as LLM generated, with adjustments by yourself.
As you stated earlier you just write like that I took a moment to go through all your previous interactions on the forums and I have to say things dont exactly line up. There ARE sections that read like you, but also quite a few that dont. So at current I don’t trust that you’re not using an LLM to generate responses for you, even if the majority seems to have been heavily edited to contain relevant information.

For your answers,

1 - There is an admin button to send-to-lobby when its required, checking their notes and what role they where planning on would be ideal here too, good work. However you shouldn’t be using meta-knowlege if you’re doing admin work and playing, and by default the game will de-admin you if you’re playing unless you turn off that specific setting.

2 - Kudzu definitely can get out of control, so without a DAGD or Hijack I’d advise against it, while high impact is allowed that doesnt mean releasing something that can take over the station personally.

3 - DNR/DC’ing as you’re about to be converted into an antag role is essentially the same as ghosting/DC’ing as a regular antag, so R15 would apply. The person should be opening an ahelp so we can resolve the issue via offering to ghosts or similar if possible. Asking them to ahelp next time is good, and adding a note about the instance is good here too. If you’re unable to find someone to take the role, a TC refund can be a semi-decent alternative too.

Post was edited, this dropdown is here for context only and does not reflect my current views.

Overall, your answers are decent enough, but the potential LLM issue will stand on my end.

Overall, your answers are well thought out and are relatively good responses to each situation, so,

+1 from me

T: +4

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Give me more questions and I’ll discord stream myself writing the responses.

NO ai was used in the creation of ANY of these posts. Unfortunately there is no way for me to prove this after the fact.

Do you have any idea how demoralising it is to spend hours responding to posts, carefully thinking about what rules apply to different situations presented, only for the answer to be:

“Oh, nah, I think you used an AI for this.”

Man FUCK.THAT.

Analytical, measured, coherent writing CANNOT be disincentivised due to the development of ai tools. I have written the way I have because it is the appropriate way to write given the circumstance. I am writing in a detailed, deferential, and well researched way, much like LLMs are trained to, because it’s APPROPRIATE for the SITUATION.

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I appreciate the time and effort you’ve put in for your answers, and I’m sorry for not taking you at your word earlier.

While a few things stood out to me I shouldn’t have discredited the work you’ve put in, nor assumed you where lying to us about use of AI tools.

I’ll be updating my original post momentarily, sorry for any offense caused, and I hope we can work together in the future <3

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Ah, that means a lot, thank you. Apology accepted 100%. Apologies for blowing up on it, too.

Thanks also for the advice on the various questions; you really brought stuff that challenged me, and I’ve definitely learned from the response to my answers. I think we’ll definitely work well together, you’re a brilliant person and this hasn’t changed that.

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Still open to answering questions if anyone wants to shoot any.

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