(This is going to be mildly
technical, and severely boring, if you do not have the benefit of
context regarding the issues at hand. Beware.)
So a couple of days ago,
Justin and
Apple
were behaving in a manner I felt unbefitting their status as
moderators. Their behavior, though unseemly, did not justify the
use of a ban, and kicks tend to inflame. So I shut down the server
by using sm_rcon to remotely execute the quit command; something
that I wouldn't normally be able to do, since sm_rcon is an
enormous security risk. This had the dual advantage of stopping the
abusive behavior, and exploiting the vulnerability in such a manner
that the server admin,
Sazpaimon, had no
choice but to fix it. He messaged me a couple of hours later,
pointed out that that was a dick move, and we preceded to have a
nice discussion on the topic of rcon. (Read: screaming argument) My
position is thus: sm_rcon allows privileged elevation of
non-privileged users, since rcon'ed commands run at superuser
level, and also obfuscates accountability by removing the
initiator's name from the executed command. At the time of writing,
sm_rcon has not been disabled, nor have my privileges been
revoked.
So either:
1.) My arguments in favor of removing my access to sm_rcon were so
well-reasoned and persuasive that I convinced him of my sound
judgment in all things, obviating the need to remove it.
Or
2.) He hasn't gotten around to it yet. (Update: He did get around
to it. Then he banned me from the server.)
Whatever the reason, I am still presented with the problem of
sm_rcon. We have a tool to remotely execute commands, and it's
called
rcon. This is a common element in
sourcemods. What isn't poorly
designed or half-thought-out is actively unconscionable. Take
sm_blind, or sm_drug, or sm_mute, or any of a
dozen similar commands. If someone is breaking the rules, you
should warn, then kick them. Slaying them, or blinding them, is
cruel and unusual punishment in the truest sense of the word;
designed purely for the amusement of the administrators.
The critical flaw here is that moderating TF2 is
hard, for
two reasons. One, it's a video game. Since you pull moderators from
the pool of heavy users, you end up with a moderation team
consisting entirely of people of play video games all the time;
which isn't a recipe for finding stable, well-adjusted members of
society.
And two, people playing a video game, are, wait for it,
playing
a video game. It's not like running a dramafest over IRC or in
a forum, where logs are trivially easy to reproduce and evidence is
made public. In a video game, drama takes place over in-game chat
and voice communications, both of which and ephemeral and difficult
to document. If that wasn't enough, everyone is
busy. Half
the people in the server won't be paying attention, a non-trivial
fraction don't speak English, and a couple of people will be AFK;
leaving four or five people who have to speak in clipped sentences
or else they'll be killed while typing.
This is not an environment which fosters justice and well-reasoned
discussion; it is one that encourages the admins to ban people so
they can get back to playing. This is not the fault of the
moderators, it is the fault of architectural flaws inherent to the
system.
But I'm not just whining! These problems can be fixed, if not
entirely trivially. First, rip out all the
eighth amendment violating crap. This also includes sm_god,
sm_noclip, and their vile ilk. Secondly, enhance accountability for
moderators. Currently, kick messages are printed to chat console,
and are less than visible, especially given their importance. It
would also be nice if the server logs were automatically parsed for
admin actions, and digests published to a web server.