A guide to what to do, and not to do, with Team Fortress 2's vote to kick function.

The votekick function is intended to be a measure for players in a public server to remove players disrupting the normal flow of gameplay. Valve has given the following reasons for a votekick:

1. Player is cheating.

This vote is to remove a player who is strongly suspected of using a third party hack or game exploit to disrupt play. Reasons may include wallhacking, aimbotting, exploiting game mechanics such as payload premature win mechanics, or otherwise using some sort of unfair advantage that people do not have available access to. Note that if your behavior emulates a known hack, such as spamming ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ text in chat, or following a streamer around perfectly like a wallhacker would because you are watching their stream, people may misidentify you as a hacker and call a vote, and would be justified in doing so as there is no way to truly know if you are hacking or not.

This vote is NOT to remove a player who is simply playing better than you, or has an advantage that can be easily explained by a normal in game phenomenon, such as knowing a player is behind a wall because their shadow is glitching through the wall and giving them away. Generally, you should look for repeated shady looking plays, rather than just assuming off of one which could be pure luck.

2. The player is idle.

Player is idle denotes that a player is being a noncontributor to their team, and is commonly called in a variety of situations where players are not contributing to the game.

Note that idle does not mean just physically away from the keyboard, it also is a synonym for taking part in activities that make you worthless, such as being the 4th spy with a score of 5 kills 28 deaths, or actively griefing the team out of a player slot by taunting in irrelavent spots on the map.

For more information on griefing, please visit: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Griefing

For clarification, idle definitions:

adj.

1. (especially of a machine or factory) not active or in use.
"assembly lines standing idle for lack of spare parts"

2. without purpose or effect; pointless.
"he did not want to waste valuable time in idle chatter"

verb.

1. (of a person) spend time doing nothing; be idle.
"four men were idling outside the shop"

Synonym: worthless

Common reasons a player might be votekicked for being idle:

- they are inactive and not moving for an extended period of time (generally, 3 respawn cycles would be a reasonable amount of time to figure someone isn't coming back anytime soon).

- they are off on an irrelavent part of the map doing nothing (or doing something useless, such as building sentry nests on the last point of a map when the team is defending the first point).

- they are taking actions to otherwise cause someone else on the team grief (ie. making teleporter traps, blowing fire in allied snipers eyes so they can't see to aim, screaming into their microphone, spraying the walls with offensive imagery, using rocket jumper or sticky jumpers when the team clearly needs them to be using proper weaponry, etc.)

- their performance is so poor that they are not making a reasonable effort to help the team, or utterly ignoring the objective whatsoever (note: this doesn't usually apply in maps such as hightower, harvest, or 2fort as there is an unwritten rule amongst the playerbase that these maps are set aside to be able to do as you wish on). You can check a player's performance by going to options > advanced options > enable mouse input on score board > and then clicking on the player in question on the scoreboard. As a rough rule, players who are 1:2 as a redundant pick class (ie. scout, spy, sniper), or 1:3 as a different class other than medic (medics should be referenced by their healing output) are in the realm of inappropriately poor performance, as they create imbalanced play (and rolls) through their inability to contribute properly to the team. These players should be encouraged to play on beginner friendly maps such as harvest, 2fort, or hightower, or offline versus bots so their performance does not cause issues for other players just wanting to enjoy the game.

- they are engaging in activities that sandbag their performance when their team needs them to not be, such as using melee weapons only, or using weapons that cause no damage and are intended for practice (see above: griefing).

This vote is NOT to remove a player that is otherwise being a productive member of the team, nor is it a method to allow you to take personal revenge on a player you don't like for whatever reason. Calling useless votes, as per griefing, is griefing, and you yourself are subject to being legitimately votekicked. If you disagree with a player's opinion or don't want to hear what they have to say, there is a mute command for this, unless they are doing blatantly offensive things like shouting racism over their mic which are generally considered socially unacceptable.

3. The player is scamming

This vote is to be called when there is a player observed attempting to scam another player out of TF2, steam, or other virtual items. Note this is NOT to meddle in the affairs of a trade that you do not agree is fair, rather, it is to stop people attempting to steal items through common scam methods, such as fake middlemen, asking to "try" the item first, etc. For more information, please check your local trade server's rules and regulations lists, differing communities have differing considerations as to what denotes a scam.

4. No reason

This covers any reasons not covered by the first three, such as violating the community rules of a player owned server. Again, as with idle kicking, this is not an excuse to make up your own reason for kicking someone you don't like. People are free to have their opinions, play on whatever team they wish, and otherwise be unharassed so long as they make a reasonable effort towards playing the game properly.