Why the note system on bee SUCKS BALLS

General
1

I personally have a major problem, that i’ve outlined several times and near constantly to most people i know and in my ban appeal.

Basically, the way admins on here use the note system is REALLY atrocious and fucks everything up for most players.

The main problem here, being the absolute lack of usage of the “positive note” option. I have literally never seen an admin use it to reward a player who brought something unique to a round, or made everyone’s round that much more enjoyable - and that’s a MAJOR problem for 2 reasons :

1st:
You all know the expression “the carrot and the stick” - here, the warnings/bad notes being the obvious stick, beating the ass of players when need be.
The problem, is the lack of carrot - while a lot of players try to be a good player for the sake of being good to others, many see no point to it, which, makes sense :

If you’re not particularly involved in the community, why wreck your ass to make amazing and fun gimmick for everyone when you could just get your validhunt fix for the day by playing HoS/sec ? Why bother interacting with others and making funny new things/experiments as scientist, when it probably will fail/be ignored and you’d prefer to just go do your little minigame in your own corner? It could be boiled down like this for almost any role, and explains why a lot of players who are not particularly interested in joining the Bee Community ™ don’t make any effort to be particularly good. For some, it’s better to do nothing than try and probably fail, and on the off chance it work, get “nothing”.

2nd:
All admins are inherently biased. There’s no denying that - we all are humans, with our own pet peeves and likes.
The problem, is the picture that the current note system portrays.

Imagine encountering a player, with about 700 hours. Got about 20 notes, all rather bad, and for various issues, maybe repeating ones, or one/two bans. Problem is, you don’t know him. All you have to get a picture of that player, is the negative notes available for you to see - and you’re left to wonder if the dude is just generally a piece of shit with maybe a few times where he finally got caught, or just bad rounds that are exceptions to what the dude generally offers to rounds (positively)

That’s the main problem. There is no way to know when someone is actually putting in effort to fix their problematic behavior.

And it even gets worse when admins keep telling us that notes are not “punishment”, which is an extremely hard call to make. A few admins already hold the view that notes = where a sanction should have taken place.
And even despite that, with the scenario i just described above, even if admins just put a shitload of notes solely to, indeed, note bad behavior where there is some without necessarily meaning it to be bad, could you really honestly say that giving a note to someone wouldn’t inherently cause them problems and act as a punishment, even if light?

To summarize:

-There’s no reward for being a shiningly good player (even IC !)

-Admins will judge much more harshly due to notes only depicting the worst version of ourselves

-Notes will always be considered punishments by the playerbase, despite being pushed by admins as being only there to “keep track of behavior”

All of which could be solved simply by handing out positive notes where one would be deserved, instead of always only noting down the worst behavior someone may show

11 Likes
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Remove my notes and problem fixed

1 Like
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Notes are reserved for admins to keep… notes, on a players bad behaviours for future ban judgment. It also means that when you have a good note, admins are usually gonna be more lenient with punishments, or more likely to accept an app

My notes:

  • jerma sus copypaste (wrote clown is sus at the end)
    -running into sm round start
  • “using the name mr allah isnt gomna fly on either server” | Bloons3
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Yeah, if the only thing you have to go off of someone is their disclipinary record from middle and high school, you’re not going to have a good impression of them.

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I can say for certain that I have come across ‘positive notes’ before, however they are fairly rare, but they do exist. Another thing to consider is that you’ll rarely hear about positive notes being brought up, not gonna see appeals or admin reports or just general complaints over a positive note. I think the general rarity combined with the fact they aren’t really ever discussed makes it seem like they never happen, when in reality they just rarely happen.

Except for the fact that you can look at their notes and see whether or not they keep getting in trouble for the same offense, if they aren’t (assuming they are still playing) then it’s usually fair to assume they are trying to improve.

They aren’t a punishment though. Notes exist for record keeping, that is their entire purpose. Notes may end up escalating into punishments if they keep violating the same rules, but on their own they are not a punishment.

The only real situation in which a note would ‘cause them problems’ is if they continue violating the rules further on down the line. Which is something you would only know about because a note was placed back then for record keeping.

Except for the fact that if you are a good player and don’t cause much trouble you aren’t going to have many notes because there haven’t been many incidents involving you.
And as mentioned above positive notes do exist.

The system itself works off of punishing bad players, unless it wasn’t serious enough to warrant an actual punishment (IE a ban) in which case a note is left to keep track of it. Otherwise you’d end up with ‘minor’ offenses never being punished since there would be nothing to escalate them.

A lack of negative notes can have effectively the same outcome as a ‘positive note’ since it shows they aren’t frequently getting into trouble, and that they are more than likely a good player.

Placing positive notes isn’t as simple as negative ones either. Since most of the time a note is placed it was brought to the admins attention by either a ticket, a complaint, a report ect, none of which you’re going to get for someone going out of there way to make the round better.

Is the notes system perfect? No, I’m sure it could be improved in some ways.
But in my opinion it’s fine as it is.

I spent way too long writing this

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WYCI⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

1 Like
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The oldest trick in the book. :pensive:

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We actually use notes/bans per hour played as a solid metric of how many issues a player causes. This metric + skimming notes for repeat or egregious issues is usually how bans end up being escalated to final warning / permanent ban

TL;DR haven’t gotten through the whole post yet

Edit This whole thread feels like it would be addressed pretty well with the point system I laid out for notes last year, but it will be on someone else to pick up that torch.

In a nutshell:

Every note has a point value, and every rule a point range that a related note should fall into.

Based on how many points a person has, the system would automatically recommend (but not force) a ban in place of a new note, up to recommending permanent bans.

Points would decay over time spent playing rather than real world time, and here’s the best part: The value can become negative, with benefits in the form of extra beecoins and antag rep gains for those that maintain a negative score, in addition to the fact a negative score effectively gives a cushion of forgiveness for messing up once every now and then

5 Likes
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I’m no genius moderator, but maybe a way to better aggregate positive notes could be through some kind of commendation system, where players can reward others who roleplay well, are experienced, etc. through an OOC comment or ‘point’. Though, the only other server I can think of that does a similar thing is Paradise with ‘karma’ and it’s total dogshit, but I would put it more down to it being tied to in-game rewards, which makes it a pointlessly hard ‘cool kid’ currency grind, rather than a way to measure the quality of a player (why do I need 100 good boy points to play the statistically worst species?). If the extrinsic rewards were cut out and getting one of these commendations was a reward in and of itself, it could provide a good avenue for positive player feedback which minimises the need for admin intervention as well as reducing an incentive to grind/game the system.

3 Likes
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I would only approve a community karma system if it was both without tangible reward and hidden from the general public.

Circlejerks and metacliques rubbing each other off are bad enough without something to show for it, and there will come times when a player is popular despite being really bad for the server (Gukle for instance) as well as times when someone is unpopular despite being fine overall (people who RP jerks without actually being one OOC for instance)

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Yeah, I agree.

This solution is hardly water-tight, it would need some really tight design paired with a few good months or so in practice to mature. But, if you felt the OPs problem was worth addressing, it wouldn’t be a terrible place to start.

1 Like
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Paradise has a karma system and it’s pretty well enforced, i don’t see the problem of karma in bee

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Think of notes like a zero in multiplication, they don’t do much on their own, but if other numbers get mixed in (More notes) It will lead to a number in this case a ban

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That’s kind of the point of them.

They are not a punishment on their own, but amassing enough of them especially if they are for the same issue is going to result in future punishments being escalated.

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I would like more positive notes being handed out tbh, it’s psychologically proven that rewarding positive behaviour works much better than punishing negative behaviour, obviously I’m not say to stop giving negative notes but maybe having shining moments be rewarded by what’s effectively a gold star would be nice

11 Likes
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Plus hidden notes are total bullshit. I wonder how many of those I got. Really silly to be able to just tag players with biased info forever

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Isn’t this Basically a karma system?

Interesting you didn’t use maggot, perhaps he is good for the server

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we really dont hand them out much, and we only use them incase for future investigation. If your towing the line every round a secret note can be applied to let admins know this was not your first time

Also as far as iam aware, there is no policy in handing out positive notes. the main question comes when you do it or when you think its worthy enough to be noted

1 Like
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I like the concept of rewarding players for not getting into trouble, but not the Karma system. I hate the idea of instating a system that’s essentially a popularity contest based on commendations and forbids you from playing certain roles if you don’t have enough Karma.

I deal with enough social pressure on a day-to-day basis, I don’t need that kind of stress in my SS13 experience.

2 Likes
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God, yes, this. Karma system would basically be a giant popularity contest, and every ss13 player is already some form of social outcast. It would not go well