Public Parsed Logs.
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:49 pm
I'm moving this discussion here from discord because we ended up doing nothing but going in circles with new people joining the conversation and the same points being repeated several times back and forth.
So, this post is in a way, a request to made servers logs publicly available and censored. There are two other servers that do this(off the top of my head). /vg/ and /tg/. /vg/ provides all the logs with only IP/CIDs scrubbed out. Everything else is visible including asay and adminpms. /tg/ has a bit more privacy and censors asay/apm/ahelps/etc but also shows all the actions that an admin would do.
When this was brought up by removesilicons, Izzy replied and said that it would not be impossible because of the misinterpretations that would be caused. I was intrigued by that and asked what misinterpretations, which lead us down the discussion of providing these logs to players. Izzy's main objection is that players would use these logs to start an influx of complaints against admins withholding context.
While a valid concern, I think it's a flawed one as more complaints is not necessarily a bad thing. More complaints leads to more transparency and more transparency leads to bridging the gap that clearly exists between admins and players. Generally, you'll find that most players do not trust the admin team as a whole but rather prefer a few admins over others.
Following this, Izzy also mentions that admins can investigate admins themselves if they are reported to be breaching admin standards and if a player needs help confirming things that happened they could petition another admin or a player-rep. My counter-point is that admins policing admins is.. not a great way to earn trust. If there is nothing to hide then the logs(parsed/censored) should have no problem being shown to players. And while player-reps are certainly a novel role and idea, they too are humans and aren't always on your side. Finding the truth yourself is more reassuring than relying on others. Plus, not everyone can say they trust in the player-rep. Maybe they voted for someone else? Maybe they weren't around when the vote happened? Maybe they don't even know the player-rep. Asking players to blindly trust in someone they don't know when they're trying to find out the truth can be a bit hard.
Back to the first point, Izzy and Justin bring up the cases where say, antags don't want their antag status and that leads to shuffling of antags at roundstart. This is again, back to misinterpretation. Which is once again, a valid concern. However, if someone has the time of day to sift through logs and they aren't doing it out of spite, then they should know well enough that the antag shuffling near roundstart is due to people not wanting their role.
The last point brought up is those who'd write complaints using misinterpreted logs just out of spite. My reply to this one is simple. Shut them down. If a complaint is clearly made out of spite while holding no water then show no mercy and shut it down. Keep in mind I mention that this should only happen if the logs are misinterpreted and the complaint holds no water. Valid complaints, even if made out of spite, should still be looked into.
Making logs available to the general public of the community does nothing but take the power of investigation out of solely the admins' hands and places it in everyone's hands instead. People shouldn't be locked out from knowing what has happened during a round.
Here are the two examples I brought up at the start of my post. One is /tg/, the other is /vg/.
TG TG2
VG
Both were chosen randomly but both hopefully showcase how these parsed logs look. Keep in mind that /vg/s censors nothing outside of ips/cids.
Hopefully we can reach a conclusion on this on the forums and i'd love to see citadel moving forward and letting people view censored/parsed logs.
So, this post is in a way, a request to made servers logs publicly available and censored. There are two other servers that do this(off the top of my head). /vg/ and /tg/. /vg/ provides all the logs with only IP/CIDs scrubbed out. Everything else is visible including asay and adminpms. /tg/ has a bit more privacy and censors asay/apm/ahelps/etc but also shows all the actions that an admin would do.
When this was brought up by removesilicons, Izzy replied and said that it would not be impossible because of the misinterpretations that would be caused. I was intrigued by that and asked what misinterpretations, which lead us down the discussion of providing these logs to players. Izzy's main objection is that players would use these logs to start an influx of complaints against admins withholding context.
While a valid concern, I think it's a flawed one as more complaints is not necessarily a bad thing. More complaints leads to more transparency and more transparency leads to bridging the gap that clearly exists between admins and players. Generally, you'll find that most players do not trust the admin team as a whole but rather prefer a few admins over others.
Following this, Izzy also mentions that admins can investigate admins themselves if they are reported to be breaching admin standards and if a player needs help confirming things that happened they could petition another admin or a player-rep. My counter-point is that admins policing admins is.. not a great way to earn trust. If there is nothing to hide then the logs(parsed/censored) should have no problem being shown to players. And while player-reps are certainly a novel role and idea, they too are humans and aren't always on your side. Finding the truth yourself is more reassuring than relying on others. Plus, not everyone can say they trust in the player-rep. Maybe they voted for someone else? Maybe they weren't around when the vote happened? Maybe they don't even know the player-rep. Asking players to blindly trust in someone they don't know when they're trying to find out the truth can be a bit hard.
Back to the first point, Izzy and Justin bring up the cases where say, antags don't want their antag status and that leads to shuffling of antags at roundstart. This is again, back to misinterpretation. Which is once again, a valid concern. However, if someone has the time of day to sift through logs and they aren't doing it out of spite, then they should know well enough that the antag shuffling near roundstart is due to people not wanting their role.
The last point brought up is those who'd write complaints using misinterpreted logs just out of spite. My reply to this one is simple. Shut them down. If a complaint is clearly made out of spite while holding no water then show no mercy and shut it down. Keep in mind I mention that this should only happen if the logs are misinterpreted and the complaint holds no water. Valid complaints, even if made out of spite, should still be looked into.
Making logs available to the general public of the community does nothing but take the power of investigation out of solely the admins' hands and places it in everyone's hands instead. People shouldn't be locked out from knowing what has happened during a round.
Here are the two examples I brought up at the start of my post. One is /tg/, the other is /vg/.
TG TG2
VG
Both were chosen randomly but both hopefully showcase how these parsed logs look. Keep in mind that /vg/s censors nothing outside of ips/cids.
Hopefully we can reach a conclusion on this on the forums and i'd love to see citadel moving forward and letting people view censored/parsed logs.