Why are pchat and ichat separated in the first place? It never really did make sense to me. When you connect via Talon, or put up your own "dummy" MUD, you can talk on ichat. And it's not as if ichat is private anyhow, due to the logs being public.

Well, the i in ichat stands for immortal chat, and the p in pchat is for players, at least that's what I've always thought. I guess it makes sense for ichat to be seperate because there might be a discussion about how to handle an unruly player, or some such. I'm not sure. It's just the way it's always been.

I knew what it stood for, but I was wondering why the distinction existed in the first place. :tongue: Put another way, I'm not sure I see the point in separating p and i simply along level lines.

I see the point about the discussion for handling an unruly player, but on the other hand, all these logs are public, so it wouldn't be a private discussion. If the player wanted to, s/he could watch it happen online; s/he could even participate by logging onto Talon or using some shill MUD to be an imm.

The logs are public, but how many people know how to check them? I don't remember a link to them anywhere. I dunno, maybe this is another topic for debate, should the two be separate?

If you're going to complain about Talon, remember it only takes about 3 seconds to set up a FUSS MUD onto the IMC network. So fairly irrelevant.

Well, it seems appropriate to discuss pchat vs. ichat if we're discussing player policy. I'm tempted to merge the two into a "chat" channel and have that be the main chat channel. If imms still want to have an imm-only discussion (and I agree, this makes sense), I suggest making a new channel that is not logged. I'd call it ichat, except that would probably confuse people… :wink:

In other words: is there any reason not to put imms and players on different channels for the majority of their conversations?

Indeed not many people would know to check the logs, but on the other hand, if I'm going to have a potentially sensitive discussion about an individual, I do not want that discussion to be logged. It could be disastrous for such a conversation to become public.

And Kiasyn is right about how easy it is to make other MUDs, that is what I was referring to with shill MUDs. That is why I don't think Talon should be treated specially.

I think it'd be great if ichat wasn't accessible by anyone who wasn't an imm on a mud with imc, but as David has correctly pointed out, the reality is that we've got ichat logged publicly (for those who care to find the logs, it isn't really that hard to do…) and Talon provides ichat to anyone who logs on or, as David also mentioned, one could just install a copy of smaugfuss or what have you and have their own connection to imc with full admin access. One would hope that no one doing so is a "problem player" who'd be likely to get discussed on ichat but it certainly is a possibility.

As for separating it from pchat, I think that the only reason to not maintain that would be if we were going to deny mortals access to pchat anyway… unless I've missed something here.

I wasn't complaining about Talon, Kiasyn, I was pointing out that it's not a typical mud and allows anonymous access to all the channels so it can't be handled exactly the same was other participating muds are. Though I suppose it could be treated like any other mud on the network and you would be considered the responsible party there. *shrug*

Um, so what are you saying? We should rename pchat to chat? You don't think that'd conflict with the local chat channel most muds already have?


So, you're saying then that you feel the majority of our conversations currently on ichat should just be conducted on pchat instead?

Well, in some sense, the true problem players are the most likely to be going out of their way to make, well, problems. :wink:


This sounds reasonable, right? If it actually becomes a problem, Kiasyn can restrict Talon, no biggie. I think we should cross this bridge when we come to it.

Ugh, getting hard to manage this thread… :tongue:


Conceptually, yes. Obviously the implementation might have trouble. But yes, I was saying that both chat channels should be merged into a single chat channel. imcchat if you will.


I don't think the distinction should exist. It's not that I think that current ichat talk should go onto pchat: it's that I think pchat and ichat have little reason, if any, to be separate given the various circumstances we've talked about.

Fair enough.


A bit. *nod*


I see, so we'd have imcchat instead of pchat and imms would be directed to only use ichat for actual imm issues and ichat should no longer be logged?

That would be the idea, although I don't like keeping the name ichat because it would mean everybody breaking habits – they'd use it for normal stuff, when really the normal stuff should go onto the public chat channel. But yes, that's what I'm proposing.


EDIT:
hey, we could think of it as pchat –> public chat and ichat –> imm chat :wink:

So I figured I'd drop back in and see what kind of chaos has ensued. And good god, what a mess! I'm reminded of the two former networks and how they both descended into oblivion over minutia such as is being discussed now. I am also reminded of how utterly ridiculous it all was.

Who has the power? The person running the server. End of story. You can debate it all in committee like some UN resolution until you're all blue in the face, but ultimately you need to come ask the US to enforce it. Meaning a server admin needs to implement the result. Why bother with all the extra bullshit and just let the server admins run things they way they've been run for the last two years? It's worked pretty good so far and the one problem member has been dealt with without much trouble.

Why have a distinction between pchat and ichat? Because quite frankly the discussions that players have on pchat are inane and I'd disconnect permanently rather than have to listen to it on a merged channel that used to be imms only. I can see the value of a private non-logged imm channel for sensitive issues, but why torture people who don't want to deal with seeing player spam?

Access control. Face it. There is none. A MUD connects to the network. Their client is inviolate as far as server controls. A server admin can only block their members from using channels, and if things get really out of hand, block their MUD from using the network. Who has what access on a given MUD is entirely out of your control, so there's no point in bothering to debate it. If someone grants their level 1 newbies access to ichat, tough luck. Ban them or live with it. The client as is right now ships with all channel access disabled. Players have to actively seek it out and turn it on before they can use it, but you can't stop them from figuring that out.

And seriously. If this is where things are headed, then I wonder just how long the network has left to survive at all.

BTW, if you guys want to hack up the client and server code, be my guest. I'd turn ownership of the submissions over to someone else but alas, QSFP lacks such a feature and I'm not in a PHP kind of mood right now.

I'm actually in agreement with Samson over the the merging of channels, I really don't want to have to listen to players on other muds if I don't have to, I'll have enough listening to them to do on my own mud when I open, I'd like to keep the option to ignore the ones on other muds if I can.

I certainly hope we haven't devolved this to that level yet, Samson…

Well, yes, only the admins actually have power, but if they choose to get advice from select others before acting, I see nothing wrong with that.

In case anyone missed where I was coming from on this, I think the idea of not (publicly) logging ichat is a good one. I'm kind of inclined to agree with Samson and Kayle on the idea of merging ichat and pchat, albeit for different reasons since I still 'hear'/see everything on every channel anyway in the name of monitoring my mud. I like having casual chats with other imms sometimes that simply don't concern players and I also like the idea of allowing my players access to other players (advertisement free), and, frankly, sometimes the tone of conversation on ichat might drift into adult oriented topics that I would prefer not to inflict upon my players since I try to maintain my mud as kid friendly.

Someone was talking about hacking up the client/server code?

right now i actually dont see any need for changes. the problem has gone away. woo. we're ok!

Only one problem remains… that game bot isn't running. >.>

And there are no other problems because I've been pushing to keep code/build chatter on their respective channels, and I've been watching my language, and trying to keep mud specific chatter off the network.

cool, problem solved then =P