It's not too much to ask for consistent admin actions canary. And his opinion is pretty obvious, clear evidence of poll abuse results in a minor offence.
Anyways i'd like to hear some non chaos, gg, or PRO affiliated admins direct opinions on poll abuse, yours too.
Whether or not something is poll abuse is going to be subject to interpretation. Trust me, I'm a very vocal (maybe overly vocal) proponent of having consistent admin actions. But there are so many grey areas that it is only possible to provide guidlines as to what to do should something occur, and it is up to the Admin to decide exactly
what occured.
Rageball is particularly thorny. It is a new(er) game mode, with very little in specific rules that apply to it, while Battle and Siege do.
I see from your description that what you did was a tactic, and apparently an effective one. I don't fault you for it.
However, looking at this thread where the creator of the game mode weighs in and calls the "TDM" players "bottom feeders", and is proposing a new scoring system to discourage constant killing of the opposing team, that killing someone every time that they spawn is not the goal of the game mode.
http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,29359.msg430643.html#msg430643He doesn't agree with the "kill zone" opinion, because of the way that the ball moves so fast from one zone to the other, but it is clear (to me at least), that spawn camping and killing is not the object there in his mind.
But there still is no defined rule set other than debate on how to discourage the type of play that you could be interpreted as having adopted against this player.
The only mechanism to allow the population of the server to determine whether someone is playing Rageball, or being a "bottom feeder" (or a troll) is the poll option.
I wish there was a ruleset that defined what playing Rageball is or isn't. Is it killing everything in sight? Well that's not against the rules, but clearly against the intentions of the creator of the mod.
It's kinda like Rugby, where tackling is allowed and blocking is allowed, but taking someone down far away from the ball and pounding them into the turf over and over isn't.
But again, we don't have defined rules for it.
Rageball is the wild west.
So lets take all of that into mind and get back to this kick poll. Was it abuse?
I would have to say no. While you took the strategy of killing this guy over and over and over to prevent him from getting the ball and scoring, it appears to be against the spirit of the game as I read the mod creators intentions and labeling of that playstyle of "bottom feeding". Yes, I know you considered it a valid tactic and it worked, but do the rest of the Rageball players?
Should the Rageball population have a say in whether someone playing or being a griefing kill whore troll? I would have to say yes to that. (Not saying that you were, I get your thinking, but there is more than one way to see something)
Now, if it had failed, and he continued to post poll after poll until it passed, then yes I would say that is poll abuse.
On other game modes, it would have been no question. You killed him, he couldn't take it and polled you. Poll abuse.
On Rageball....it is up to interpretation on what you were doing. If he were carrying the ball, again, no question. You were doing what you were supposed to be doing, killing the guy with it. Without it, killing someone over and over and over and over as they respawn could be rule breaking if there were actually any, and a form of griefing if the interpretation were taken a step further.
No rules exist like that, so you weren't breaking any. But I also wouldn't say that creating a kick poll for someone who could be seen as going against the spirit of the game (or trolling in their eyes) as being poll abuse either.
In short, Rageball could use some "Official Rules" tightening to avoid disagreements like this. In the meantime, it has been left to the Rageball players to work out what a Rageball game should be. Polls will likely continue to be a part of that unless someone who makes the server rules changes that. Contrary to the popular winds blowing at us, that is NOT the NA Admins. We just do our best to enforce them as they are written as the proper interpretations handed down to us.
That's my lengthy take on Rageball and why the "poll abuse" topic is not nearly as cut and dried as it is on other game modes.
