#d/Conf/boards/centre.c ob_data (["long.text":"You can set up new notes with the command 'post headline'. Read a note with 'read #', and remove an old note with 'remove #'. Edit a note with 'edit #' ","last_location":0,"short":"@@query_short","id":({"board","bulletin board",}),"short.text":"Conference main message board","long":"@@query_long",]) messages ({(["poster":"Pallando","time":727053238,"body":"TMI plan to hold some conferences for admins of muds on internet. The first will be on User Ethics (see seperate note). If you would like to help run, or code facilities for, conferences please post a note here giving further details. ","title":"This board","id":1,]),(["poster":"Pallando","time":729403379,"body":" TMI-2 (tmi.iastate.edu 5555) announces A Conference on MU* Ethics to be held at TMI-2 on Wednesday, February 17th, at 5:00 pm Pacific Standard Time. All members of the MU* community are invited to attend and share their opinions on the topic of standards for user behavior. With regret, due to the fact that TMI can only handle a finite number of connections, priority may have to be given to users with a special interest in the subject, such as users with the authority to represent the players or the administration of their mud on this issue. Membership will be limited to 100, so registering in advance is important. The purpose of the conference as a whole is to increase understanding between admins and players about what standards of behaviour each expect and are prepared to give, and to exchange information about the desirability of various possible MU* behaviour policies, their legal implications, and how well they actually work in practice. The conference will focus on the following three topics: 1. Rights, Privileges, and Obligations Do players possess any rights at all, and if so what are they? Do administrators incur any obligations by opening a MU*, either under law or ethically, and if so what are they? Does a player implicitly agree to any rights/obligations by remaining logged onto a MU*? What restrictions are places on MU*s by Usenet or by law? We intend this part of the conference to help clarify people's ideas about what they may expect to exist at all MU*s and when a MU* player or admin has violated the law or another user's rights. 2. Privacy and Harrassment What privileges are commonly granted to users by MU* admins, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? Is a MU* required to guarantee the privacy of users? If not, is a MU* that does not guarantee privacy required to state that fact explicitly? Is a MU* administrator required to enforce some code of acceptable behavior between players on the MU*? If a MU* does not enforce acceptable behavior, must the MU* explicitly state the fact that it does not? If it does, must it make the standards of acceptable behavior on the MU* know to its users? Under what conditions may a MU* admin make a user's private behavior known to other users, or to the community as a whole? We intend this part of the conference to help guide new MU* admins in choosing wise policies to enforce on their MU*s. 3. Code Ownership Who controls the code that makes up the MU*? Who has the right to change it, add to it, or delete it? Are existing MU*s in compliance with existing intellectual property law? How much imitation of another wizard's work is acceptable? When does imitation become piracy? When does a wizard give up control of his code to the MU* administrator? We intend this part of the conference to clarify people's expectations of code ownership, and help reduce the incidence of MU*s being destroyed by arguments over code control. Pre-Conference Submissions and Post-Conference Records At the Singlenesia ethics conference, many participants felt that too much time was spent stating positions and not enough time was spent discussing them. To avoid this problem, TMI-2 is receiving pre-conference submissions which will be made available to the public. Such submissions may come in two forms; position statements or proposals for the approval of the conference. Anyone is welcome to make submissions. Position statements should clearly address one of the above topics, and should not be longer than 5000 characters. The best position statements will be selected for presentation at the conference. Preference will be given to statements which discuss one issue in detail rather than those which discuss many issues in little depth. The authors of selected statments will be given time to present their statements and compare them to others on the same topic, with general discussion following the presentations. Proposals for the approval of the conference will be voted on at the end of the conference. Any registered attendee will be permitted to vote. At the end of the conference, a list of all submitted proposals and the results of the votes on them will be made public. Proposals should not be longer than 100 words and are subject to the approval of the conveners. Proposals which are very similar may be combined into a single proposal with joint authorship, if all authors approve. In addition to the proposals, logs of the conference will be available to the public at TMI-2. Both statements and proposals should be mailed to mud-ethics@cats.ucsc.edu, and should be clearly labeled in the subject header as either statements or proposals for the ethics conference. Schedule of Events: February 14th: Last day to submit statements and proposals. February 15th: Accepted statements and proposals made public. February 17th: (all times Pacific Standard) 4:30 pm. Pre-conference get together. The basic features of LP MUDs will be discussed for non-LP attendees. 4:45 pm. Registration. 5 pm: Opening statement by conference conveners. 5:10 pm: Conference moves into meeting rooms, one per topic. Presentations of position statements. 5:30 pm: General discussion of topics. Amendments to proposals may be made. 7:00 pm: Voting on amendments. Final proposals taken to voting room. 7:15-7:45 pm: Informal discussion of proposals, and voting. 7:45 pm: Votes tabulated and results announced. Plans made for next conference, if attendees desire another round. 8 pm: Conference adjourns. Facilities The conference will take place in the TMI-2 conference center. This facility features four meeting rooms in which discussion will be held. These rooms have a number of features designed to enhance discussion such as permitting a single attendee to speak uninterrupted, silencing or ejecting unruly participants, a built-in clock to time speakers and votes, logging of meeting proceedings, and echoing to an observation room. The conference center also features a voting room where users may vote on the proposals before the conference, a registration room, and a wet bar and discussion area where people may withdraw for public or private informal chats about the issues. Discussion in each meeting room is controlled by a moderator. Individuals wishing to serve as moderators are encouraged to volunteer: to do so, send mail to mud-ethics@cats.ucsc.edu. Anyone wishing to inspect the conference center before the meeting and learn how it works in more detail is invited to do so. Log into TMI at any time and type \"conf\" in the start room. You will find yourself in the entrance to the conference center. Please feel free to re-post this notice anywhere that non-usenet reading users from your mud might have access to it. Conference Conveners: Douglas Reay ( Pallando@TMI-2) Adam Beeman ( Buddha@TMI-2) Steve Schmidt ( Mobydick@TMI-2) ","title":"Announcing the Conference on MU* Ethics","id":2,]),(["poster":"Pallando","time":735861793,"title":"Announcing a Conference on TMI's future","body":"Recently TMI-2's purpose has mainly been to produce for distribution a mudlib that utilises the features of the MudOS LPmud driver. In this period it has also served the MUD community as a whole (eg running conferences) and the LPmud community in particular (eg keeping a central intermud list) - something that our current location (ccs.northeastern) also does (eg its ftp site). In the past, TMI has acted as a driver delevopment site, an LPC teaching site and bug-fixing centre. It has not so far acted as a conventional game, as per Nightmare, Genesis and Discworld. It is time for change again. Now we have distributed a mudlib, Buddha and Mobydick are taking this opertunity to move on to other things (though they will still log in from time to time). [ NB this means Mobydick is still staying around. Just being less active.] Therefore they are holding a conference here at 5pm, this Sunday, on the role TMI should play in the future. Anyone from the TMI community reading this message is welcome to attend. If you have views on the subject, it would be a good idea to post them here before hand, to give others a chance to think about them. ","id":3,]),(["poster":"Pallando","time":735863353,"title":"Re: TMI's future","body":"[ The following is my personal view and in no way official ] Whatever additional functions we decide to take on (and I have views on which I would prefer) I think if we did not act as a backup site for the distribution, collating and spreading bug fixes, we would be letting down a lot of people who have taken our distribution in the faith that we would provide support. I'm sad that Buddha and Mobydick won't be with us much, but I respect their decision. They have waited until the distribution was out and certainly have a right to move on to new things. (Can we say enhanced BuddhaMUD driver? 8-) I want to take this opertunity to thank them on my own behalf for the benefit I've gained from all their hard work. They will be missed. ","id":4,]),(["poster":"Forlock","time":736382120,"body":"Ok, here's what I see: First, I beleive this MUD should go back to informing people on how to code MUDOS code, since MUDOS is now very powerful and many people should know how to use it. Here's how I see us doing it: First off, we need to drop the individual guilds idea. THis didn't really work too well on the old TMI, because it invited politics. Instead, there should be one central guild, ahd here's how it should work: Sages: These are the people who, essentially, are in charge of the political side of the MUD. THey keep track of who gets directories, who gets promotions etc. Adepts: there are the people who work on the mudlib and driver, and generally don't need to be interested in the politics. Their one responsibility would be to make sure the MUD is running well and effeciently. Initiates: these are people who are very good at MUDOS coding, and are interested in teaching it to others. They concern themselves with the lower ranks, answering questions, and setting up classes if they are so inclined. Apprentice through seeker: These are the actual builders of the MUD, and are the ones who are here to learn MUDOS and how things work. APprentice would be the most advanced of these, and seekers would be beginners who hardly know anything. A test should be set up to decide who should get what position intially as we attempt to staff up, however after we've gotten a considerable staff together we should start everyone at seeker level and go from there. That's about it I guess, I will be at the conference, if you like my idea then help me back it up there :) Forlock ","title":"TMI'S FUTURE","id":5,]),(["poster":"Runn","time":746665595,"title":"New server meeting","body":"The new server meeting will be held in conf room A at 7pm PST your moderator will be Runn from Perilous Realms. Please come with ideas in hand for the new game system. This will be a general get together and meet everyone and then a discussion about the mechanics of the new system. Proposed topics include Spell systems, persistance (no resets), roleplaying and how to encourage it and anything else that comes up while we are there that is important. Thats Sunday 8-29 at 7pm PST ","id":6,]),(["poster":"Mobydick","time":761692935,"body":"There will be a class on coding monsters in conference room A at 4pm EST on Wednesday, Feb. 23. ","title":"Class","id":9,]),(["poster":"Demon","time":773281863,"title":"FOO","body":"This board is too old. ","id":11,]),(["poster":"Edo","time":782289948,"body":"do conferences ever happen here anymore? why? just nosey edo the pointless :) ","title":"hmm","id":13,]),(["poster":"Flashpower","time":789106130,"title":"WHY!","body":"hello my name is flashpower and i run the mud called frontiers. scimming through this board i cant help wondering WHAT YEAR THESE POSTS WHERE MADE! is jan this january 1995 or last january? are there any confrances here anymore nad if not WHY!? well i think someone needs to clean this board. ","id":14,]),(["poster":"Deathknight","time":789117889,"body":"Well, there were a whole bunch of meaningless posts as well, but they all seem to have been deleted. And yes, they were all in '94. Deathknight, one of the contributors to the nonsense postings that were on this thing... (: ","title":"Re: Flashpower","id":15,]),(["poster":"Mobydick","time":789150672,"title":"conferences","body":"Wanna have one? On what? Who's gonna talk? We can easily arrange for people to use the facilities. We have a preference for conferences to be open to the public but we don't insist on it. Especially if they're likely to attract enough uses to lag TMI (ie, 25 or 30) then they should require registration ahead of time (or maybe be invite-only). Mail me if you wanna work something out. Moby ","id":16,]),(["poster":"Hulkster","time":790340905,"body":"go to the north and get a load'a beers down your neck at the bar.... ","title":"north","id":17,]),}) id_ref 17