31 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
The forum isn't public space and it has a right to dictate terms of decorum of its members. Its interesting you've chosen to run people down for calling you on your disgustingly offensive tone.
31 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
Scandum said:
Koron said:
Oh, Scandum. You know, sometimes I can't tell if you're deliberately baiting or if it's accidental.

It's more so sexist toward men as it implies that it's easy for a woman to seduce a male mud owner and do whatever she wants.

Some people will read what they want to read however, and it's typically the academic sounding folks who get their panties in a bunch, what's up with that?

On topic, I assume that freedom of speech is non existent on their muds, so not only should morally weak admins not play their own games, but it's for the better if they don't login at all.


Sexism towards men is still sexism, and I think you're intelligent enough to realise that, so I'm not sure what you're getting at here short of simply trolling.

Maya/Rudha


Clearly, I'm half trolling. The other half is a very legitimate point, though: society often times has a double-standard regarding sexism. Men degrading women is chauvinistic and deplorable; women degrading men is funny because they are liberated!
31 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
Oliver said:
Clearly, I'm half trolling. The other half is a very legitimate point, though: society often times has a double-standard regarding sexism. Men degrading women is chauvinistic and deplorable; women degrading men is funny because they are liberated!


Its a very valid point; I however have always been of the mind that the proper response to one negative action towards one group is not to do the same action to another, and calling it right. But I think we're drifting a little from topic here. Let me try to redirect this in a more constructive way, before it deteriorates into an unhelpful to the original topic line of social commentary or a not-entirely-warranted lynching of Scandum.

Relationships in a MUD are a valid point of discussion here; be they gay, lesbian, straight, or non-existent, people are going to have friends, of a relationship status or simply friends, and more often than not the average admin that has friends that play the game is going to want to do their best to make the game fun for those people. Sometimes it can drive them to run better events and such things and ends up improving the MUD as a whole as a result, and in that light it can be considered a positive thing, and in other cases it can simply result in cronyism and certain people get stats upped and better items for no good reason.

In both these cases there is a prevailing public perception that as soon as you become the friend of someone who is an administrator's friend you're going to have some sort of a special status, and it's not an unfounded accusation in some cases. It happens often enough that people are usually fairly legitimate to be worried about it, but it's worth keeping in mind that in more cases than not, if anything said MUD admin is going to try to do their best to disassociate and avoid that person to try to mitigate just those kinds of accusations. I don't think its a helpful course of action to do because frankly its only going to alienate all involved - the friend is going to feel abandoned and betrayed, and the people complaining, in my experience, split into two camps - one of which will continue to ardently say that you are going to help this friend out and you're just trying to sweep controversy under the carpet, and the other of which will suddenly grow some compassion and think that you outing a friend because some people were upset about it was a rather dick move. I am somewhat stereotyping and cariacturising what is usually a complicated and complex cluster-fuck of a situation here, but suffice it to say that more often than not it doesn't end well if you disassociate from that person.

Personally I think the proactive and best approach to that kind of thing is to make administration action as infrequent as possible, and to make it as transparent as it can be when I do. One game I recall vaguely had a RSS feed of every administrative action that was available off the website, and that seems a pretty transparent way to do it, to me.

Maya/Rudha
31 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
One game I recall vaguely had a RSS feed of every administrative action that was available off the website, and that seems a pretty transparent way to do it, to me.

Maya/Rudha


Out of curiosity, did this include mundane commands in the vein of "goto," "wizinvis," etc.? What about the more possibly-abused: "snoop", "stat", etc?
31 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
I can't recall the details beyond "they had admin commands in RSS". Personally I would log (and do internally already) any commands that affect a player's stats, any commands that freeze, mute, kick or ban them, or any other such admin action I choose to add in at a later time. I also log internally, but would not log externally, certain admin commands that contain personally-identifiable information, for privacy reasons.

Maya/Rudha
31 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
I can't recall the details beyond "they had admin commands in RSS". Personally I would log (and do internally already) any commands that affect a player's stats, any commands that freeze, mute, kick or ban them, or any other such admin action I choose to add in at a later time. I also log internally, but would not log externally, certain admin commands that contain personally-identifiable information, for privacy reasons.

Maya/Rudha


Not a bad idea at all. I might do something like that. I think I would really opt out of everything but the punitive commands, though.
31 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
It wouldn't be too difficult to have differing layers of granularity to that kind of thing, as I understand it, but I do like the idea of having that kind of thing easily visible.

Maya/Rudha
31 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
It wouldn't be too difficult to have differing layers of granularity to that kind of thing, as I understand it, but I do like the idea of having that kind of thing easily visible.

Maya/Rudha


The only problem I envision would be this:

Quote
RSS Feed: Zeus used the command "freeze" on "Prometheus" in the room "By A Great Rock."

Player1: OMG DO U GUYZ SEE THAT? ZEUS FROZE PROM
Player2: OMG WTF???? I BET ITS CUZ PROM HOOKED UP WITH HERA IC
Player3: YA EVERYONE NOS THERE TOGETHER OOC I BET ZEUS IS PISSD


Repeat ad infinitum; I think it's possible that rumors could quickly get out of hand when everyone knows what an immortal did, but the immortal has no chance to explain. It could cause a lot of problems where staff members have to sit down and explain to a riotous playerbase that "No, I froze Prometheus because he stole my fire."
31 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
I like the idea but I would go ahead and report on even seemingly mundane staff commands. I see no reason for these things to be hidden. Just give a reasonable delay for when things are made public and it solves the 'I can't be bothered while wizinvis' argument. This type of transparency is good for all except those actually fearful of review.
31 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't see it as a bad thing; rumor-mongering is going to happen anyways, and those certain people who are going to be rumour-mongering regardless are not worth catering to. At the same time I find that past MUDs I have lent and administrative hand to have benefitted from admin transparency.

An alternative approach used on a couple of MUDs I've helped was, was to have the actions logged on the game forums. This puts it right in the middle of the locus of conversation, so it might not mitigate the problem you're highlighting, however. There's two alternative ways to do a forum implementation: first of all you can rely on admins to report their own actions in forum posts - this works to a degree when you have trustworthy admins but it doesn't actually help catch abuse cases, which is part of the purpose of an audit trail. The second approach is to have some sort of automated bot report these things - I actually have a bot that does that for my phpBB forum when I remember to run the damn thing, but it only reports new posts to the "Development" newsboard to the relevant forum. And really, that's just another more specialised iteration of the kind of concept you'd have with the RSS stream.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
This type of transparency is good for all except those actually fearful of review.


In my experience, transparency is only necessary in situations where those in charge lack integrity.
01 Sep, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
chrisd said:
Runter said:
This type of transparency is good for all except those actually fearful of review.


In my experience, transparency is only necessary in situations where those in charge lack integrity.


I disagree strongly. Transparency isn't to catch the untrustworthy– that's easy enough without public transparency. The purpose of making actions viewable to the public of your game is to guarantee to them that there aren't deals being made in smoke-filled rooms. When players can see what's happening behind the scenes, it stops them from believing that they're being cheated. It's a proactive solution.
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
Transparency is a good thing in all cases. It is never required. There is no law or statute, nor moral obligation to make my game transparent to other people. Those people that do add transparency to their MUDs do it for one of two reasons, or both: as a gesture of goodwill to the community that allows them to freely see the actions taken in the MUD, or to allow the MUD community to have discussion and a say in and about administrative actions on the MUD in question.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
Oliver said:
I disagree strongly. Transparency isn't to catch the untrustworthy– that's easy enough without public transparency. The purpose of making actions viewable to the public of your game is to guarantee to them that there aren't deals being made in smoke-filled rooms. When players can see what's happening behind the scenes, it stops them from believing that they're being cheated. It's a proactive solution.


If your players are willing to believe that you would make unscrupulous back-room deals or abuse your power in other unfair ways, what does that say about your integrity?

If you demonstrate through your actions that your administrative decisions are fair and considered - and if you are willing to admit your mistakes and reverse incorrect decisions - then you will eventually earn the respect of your players and they will be more inclined to side with the administration in cases where decisions are challenged.

As a player, if I encountered a game with a live RSS feed of admin command usage, I think something along the lines of, "Why is this necessary? Are the admins here in the habit of abusing their power so they need players to keep an eye on them?"
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 75th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
If you demonstrate through your actions that your administrative decisions are fair and considered - and if you are willing to admit your mistakes and reverse incorrect decisions - then you will eventually earn the respect of your players and they will be more inclined to side with the administration in cases where decisions are challenged.


That's an ideal situation certainly, however the problem with the reality in which we inhabit is that it happens to be inhabited by a vast majority of non-ideal people who have these things called emotions, and they tend to react emotionally to things. The thought that player communities will be fundamentally good is something that can be aptly cured by playing XBox Live, PS Online, WoW (especially Wow, my god), or in short any other multiplayer game experience with more than five people kicking around.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 76th comment:
Votes: 0
Given that an admin is… well… an admin, I don't see how any kind of a command logging/publishing system would do anything to increase accountability. If I'm a morally-compromised admin running the show, and I don't want you to see who I'm giving free loot to, you aren't going to see it, whether there's some RSS wiz command log or not. Because I'm the admin. And I do what I want.

On the other hand, if I'm a virtuous admin and I'm just trying to hold the rest of my staff accountable (assuming they lack administrative privileges), then that kind of thing could work, but it also wouldn't need to be visible to anyone but me.

Practically speaking, I can't think of any good reason to make wiz commands player-visible, and several good reasons not to (and no - not to hide my cheating :wink:).
01 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 77th comment:
Votes: 0
One of the great unsolved MB mysteries is how much of it he truly believes and how much is just trolling. Either way, it keeps coming out, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly.
01 Sep, 2010, Cratylus wrote in the 78th comment:
Votes: 0
chrisd said:
If your players are willing to believe that you would make unscrupulous back-room deals or abuse your power in other unfair ways, what does that say about your integrity?


Are you kidding?

The default assumption for mud admin integrity scores in negative numbers.


chrisd said:
you will eventually earn the respect of your players and they will be more inclined to side with the administration in cases where decisions are challenged.


There are more than just one way to earn trust and respect.

Having an admin command log seems perfectly fine to me. It wouldn't lead me to trust someone just
because they publish a log they can falsify. But i can easily see it as part of a willingness to
be open and transparent and I think that's a fine trait to try to demonstrate.

I don't really see what the problem is. If you really think that the admins betray exactly the opposite
of openness by trying to demonstrate openness, there's little I can say that will convince you I am
right about what I am right about.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
01 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 79th comment:
Votes: 0
Deimos said:
Given that an admin is… well… an admin

There are levels of administrators. A staffer who's not in charge of the show is still an admin, although clearly not the top admin. Ssol, for example, is an admin of some sort on the game that HK owns/is in charge of. This is just to provide the context in which the discussion was taking place, not to disagree with the rest of your post.
01 Sep, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 80th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
There are levels of administrators. A staffer who's not in charge of the show is still an admin, although clearly not the top admin. Ssol, for example, is an admin of some sort on the game that HK owns/is in charge of. This is just to provide the context in which the discussion was taking place, not to disagree with the rest of your post.

Deimos said:
On the other hand, if I'm a virtuous admin and I'm just trying to hold the rest of my staff accountable (assuming they lack administrative privileges), then that kind of thing could work, but it also wouldn't need to be visible to anyone but me.
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