From: jsteiner@anwsun.phya.utoledo.edu (jason 'Think!' steiner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc,rec.games.mud.tiny
Subject: Re: Oh dear, here I go again (was: Re: Can a WIZ threaten you in RL????)
Date: 22 Jan 93 05:37:46 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

jsb16@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jennifer S Broekman) writes:
> jad@beta.lanl.gov (John De Vries) writes:
> >Why has this action been judged, and almost universally accepted as
> >being rude?  Sexist, yes, discriminatory, yes; but was it truly 
> >rude?
> 
> It was rude, IMO, because it was sexist.

sexist how? because it was sent to only women? careful before you say
"yes". there are lots of things directed at one sex or the other...

> >Just for the sake of argument, let us ignore the fact that the 
> >player chose a subset of other players.  If there was a 
> >"newspaper" where someone put such a request in the "classifieds",
> 
> This is a different situation. There's a difference between posters 
> on a wall and fliers in personal mailboxes.

ok. let's use your definition here for a second. what happens if you
get a flyer for a new perfume in your (RL) mailbox that says "try this
perfume!"? now, it was only mailed to people marked as female on
the company's mailing lists. it is in your personal mailbox. you have
to spend a few seconds looking at it to decide if it's something important
or not. in essence, it's exactly the same sort of thing as the letter
requesting people to role-play dancing girls. (some people might take
offense at the idea of a bachelor party, but you say below that is not
the case.) so just what is the difference?

> >Another question that is rather off-the-wall.  Is there, in fact, 
> >such a function as someone supposed, something called @sex which 
> >returns the "assumed gender" of a player?
> 
> It returns the assumed gender of the character and needn't be set to
> male or female.

indeed, it can be set to anything. the point is, it still exists. and
it exists for the purpose of distinguishing male from female from other,
presumably so they can be treated differently.

> >The only thing that justifies the wizard's behavior in this 
> >matter, to my mind, is that other events occurred than just this 
> >one request. Other players condemning the player because of this 
> >one request, in my opinion, is an over-reaction.
> 
> Multiple complaints about a character's behavior warrant some sort 
> of action. Given that wizzes have a limited amount of time/energy, 
> expecting them to deliver patient explanations of all the ways in 
> which one can be rude over the net to everyone who doesn't think 
> before asking random characters to fulfill personal fantasies is a 
> little much.

and wizards could save even more time by shouting "LIGHTEN UP!" to
the whole mud. if people complained to me about something this tiny
& silly i'd tell them to go handle it on their own. wizards have better
things to do than babysit.

> I have never defended this particular wiz's actions in this 
> particular case. I stated that, were I a wiz who received multiple 
> complaints about a character's actions, I would do something 
> drastic. To me, lecturing someone on basic respect and politeness 
> falls into that category. It's not up to the wizzes to make sure 
> that their players have enough manners not to proposition random 
> other characters. That was up to the players' parents.

there's more to socialization than being polite. sooner or later, even
the most mild of players will offend -someone-. the ability to handle
the situation from there on, without resorting to outrage and anger
is just as important as avoiding it in the first place.

personally, i'm glad there are places like TinyTIM, where wizards moo
at you if you start taking things too seriously. for the most part, things
run smoothly. we've had a few nasty characters, but they are soon
made to feel unwelcome enough -by the players- that they don't cause
many problems. and i'm sure you could get at least half a dozen
players of @sex=female to pop out of a cake at a moment's notice.

jason

--
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`,`        Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty        `,` 
`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,` jsteiner@anwsun.phya.utoledo.edu ,`,`,`
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