From: msjle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Joi L. Ellis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Transcript of the "God Conference on Players' Rights"
Date: 11 Jan 93 19:18:57 GMT
Organization: Educational Computing Network
NNTP-Posting-Host: uxa.ecn.bgu.edu

whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt) writes:

>My thoughts on the Ethics Conference: I attended about 1/3 of it, and
>read through the transcript. (Yes, someone read the whole thing. ;)


>3. Each MUD should carefully state its rules, or guidelines, in a place which
>can be immediately accessed by any player at any time. I say "should" rather
>than "must" because no one has the authority to force a MUD God to do so if
>he doesn't want to. I put this forward as a suggestion to all MUD Gods based
>on the collective experience of former Gods. I think all other specific
>policy recommendations (on snooping, logging, whatever) need to be recognized
>as the same: suggestions based on past experience, rather than as Rights or
>Laws or what have you.

>4. That said, the responsibility for knowing the guidelines of ethics is
>with each individual player. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse. Even
>if the rules are NOT publicly posted, responsibility STILL lies on the player
>rather than on the MUD God. If you don't know, ask; if you aren't certain,
>don't do it.

Ask?  Get real.  Every wizard I've talked to has refused to answer my
questions on policy or basic rules.  I'm left to experiment and
trial-n-error to find out what the gods allow and what they don't.  I
stopped playing SouCon because everything I tried to do that I thought
would be appreciated turned out to be against the rules.  And these
rules were never posted.  NONE of those objects were malicious or
out-of-theme.  I got *really* tired of wasting my time coding objects
that could never get put to any public use. 

Ignorance of the law only works when there is a standard reference.
That works in the US because you can always go to a lawyar and ask about
the legality of some action.  On a mush/mud/lp, who do you ask?  No game
I've been on has had  100% wizard coverage, and none of them had really
helpful wizards.  The wizzes on Dragon's Dawn don't answer questions,
and even basic questions and suggestions get wizard-flamed.

Hell, Dragon's Dawn won't even fix drastic damage done to a player by
a bug in new code.  And they don't have much in
the way of rules and guidelines online ANYWHERE.  I asked for *that* and got
flamed by a god and a wizard. 

The only thing I'd like to see you all agree on is fair treatment for
your players.  If you write a new combat system that ends up killing
most of your players, you shouldn't be surprised to hear complaints
about it, especially when you didn't post anything about the changes
anywhere.  WHen you change the store code and introduce a bug that
STEALS MONEY from characters, you should be willing to restore the funds
if players can produce logs or other proof of their previous status.

If players offer suggestions or comments you've heard a million times
before, but which aren't discussed anywhere in your help or rules
system, you don't need to jump down their throats about it.   If you
deliberately boot your game so you can install something on it, and
don't give your players enough (or any!) warning, you don't need to jump
on their butts when they complain afterwards.

Yes, it's your game and you can do what you want with it.  Acting like a
jerk about it and throwing your weight around because you're god ticks
players off.   I know it ticks me off.  Some of you won't even converse
with a player you're mad at, you hide behind anonymous 'SOMEONE' and
the player can't even answer your accusations!  If you're going to
punish some player, have the balls to do it with a name they can respond
at to defend themselves.


The most frustrating thing I've seen about playing muds/mushes/whatever
is the high-handed way wizards and gods treat their players.  If you'd
COMMUNICATE with your players instead of flaming them, you'd all be
better off.  I detest asking some immortal a question, only to be told
GO READ THE HELP.  It's not IN the damn help, or I wouldn't be asking!
50% of the entries under DD's main help have NOTHING in them, and most
of the rest are out of date.

>-- 
>Steve Schmidt			<><		   whale@leland.stanford.edu
>I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist
>indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist
>conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!
-- 
Joi Ellis                      msjle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Student Residential Programs   Western Illinois University
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