Reporting Guidelines & Suggestions

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INTRODUCTION

 

There have been a lot of players reporting admins without sufficient evidence for our team to act on. Today, I would like to share with you guys how to make a more effective report and strategies to gather helpful evidence, which can help with both Admin Abuse reports and Player Reports. There are a lot of things that can be checked by our logs, but it's not always easy or possible to do; logs can leave things open to interpretation as they are mostly composed of text reports.  Please remember: We strongly prefer that "Admin Abuse" reports are not made on the greater/public forums; we prefer it be sent it to Staff members, or at least the current Server Manager (@Violator).

 

CONSIDERATIONS

 

Before making your report, please confirm with yourself that the rule you are thinking of is inside of our MOTD (Message of the Day), which is where our server rules are posted.  Not only does the MOTD appear when you first enter the game, but you can access it in game by typing into chat !motd, or you may visit our forums and look at the pinned thread: https://gflclan.com/forums/topic/28-ttt-minecraft-motd/

 

We also encourage contacting someone on the Server Admin team for any questions or clarifications about our rules, and we have a list of the Server Admin team in a pinned thread: https://gflclan.com/forums/topic/2905-ttt-staff/

 

WITNESSES 

 

This is the most basic form of evidence if you have nothing else: Witnesses!  Having witnesses is not required for reports, but it couldn't hurt your report having someone attest for your story. You may want to consider asking other people online who saw the incidence and coordinate with them to attest for your story if they are willing.  Witnesses do not need to be very elaborate, although extra details will be helpful.  Sometimes they might even have additional evidence such as pictures or demos.

 

PICTURES

 

Garry's Mod sets the F5 key as the default for screenshots, but using the traditional print screen (PrtSc) key will work too or you may assign it to another key.  Screenshots are super helpful and an easy way to provide evidence.  Our GMOD server has a "Damage Log" you may access using the F8 key, and this could really help support or paint your story.  A common report for GMOD TTT is "Mass RDM" or "Attempted Mass RDM", which occurs when a player kills at least two players and damages a third without good reason; here's an example of what the damage log looks like (pretty clear evidence):

 

 

For reporting "Admin Abuse" you can see above that there isn't any information about the chat or console commands; therefore: We recommend taking a screenshot of Console instead, which you can open using the ` key.  It'll show you both chat and commands.  How to upload your photos outside of GFL?  I'll suggest to you three websites, although you can use any that you like:

 

• http://imgur.com/
• https://gyazo.com/
• https://app.prntscr.com/pt-br/download.html

 

DEMOS

 

Demos are a gold mine of evidence!  As soon as something happens, then it's always a fantastic idea to begin recording a demo; usually: You can even tell when something is *about* to happen, the incidence tends to repeat until authority intervention, or some people will even preemptively record demos each time they play (it couldn't hurt to ask around if someone could share their demo with you).  You can assign a key to record demos very easily in GMOD!

 

 

If you haven't done that already or you forgot which key that may be, you can also quickly type into console "record <demo name>".  When you believe you have enough evidence in your demo, then you type into console "stop"; we strongly recommend typing "status" into console DURING the demo, which will share the Steam ID of the offender (make sure it's not an impostor) and even list witnesses who could help attest for your story.

 

There are a lot of great resources with Steam demos (.dem).  Not only do they share sound with the video (imagine a "screenshot of a mic spammer"), but Steam offers a lot of features that allow you to noclip through demos or to temporarily change settings while reviewing.  @Joshy talks about it in great detail in the following thread: 

 

The forums have been updated such that you can upload .dem and .mp4 files with certain limitations (must be less than 100 mb), but I like to recommend uploading it through websites so that they can be viewed immediately without download.  Youtube is a very popular video hosting site, and I recommend that one.

 

EXAMPLES of "Admin Abuse"

 

A lot of people don't even know what "Abuse" is, and it's common for them to report Server Admins and others over petty things like a reasonable mistake, disagreements, or on things they do not understand well.  I'm going to share with a few staged examples in the spoiler tag to help your considerations beyond the posted MOTD, where these examples are more obvious cases when a report should be made:

 

 

This case above is where an Innocent "called me out" and another one killed me (an admin); I wrongfully retaliate by slaying them both.

Here,  Xy is a Traitor and kills me in game; I retaliate by wrongfully slaying him.

Xy calls me a Traitor for no good reason (I am definitely an Innocent)... I get mad and mute him.  I should not be muting people even if they make a bad call.

 

Roxie uses admin permissions to teleport to my location and RDM me.

 

Roxie randomly adds a slay to me.  This isn't a case of me "not agreeing" with the decision on a report, but literally "out of the blue" a random slay is assigned.

 

Roxie uses admin permissions to silence a player (mute and gag) after harmless criticism. 

 

Lastly, I bring Roxie to my location to kill him.

 

Acknowledgements

 

I would like to thank both @Xy_ and @PB-n-J for helping me stage the screenshots, and @Joshy and @The_Mad_Hatter for helping me with this post.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Joshy
Removed feedback from Server Admin sentence (last line)

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bumping this