From: crew@CS.Stanford.EDU (Roger Crew)
Subject: Re: Guilty-until-proven-innocent
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Dept.
	<1992Jul21.092056.2983@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> <BrsrAD.M34@ais.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 01:17:22 GMT

In article <BrsrAD.M34@ais.org> jgm@ais.org (jim miller) writes:

> Ah, the "it shouldn't matter it's just a mud" argument in yet *another*
> guise.  This totally ignores a previous writer's well-taken point that
> removal from one's circle of friends on a certain mud can be inconvenient
> -- all the friends are normally not going to follow you to whatever mud
> you have to go to -- as well as demeaning.  Like it or not, you as a
> wizard have the power to considerably affect a *real* person's life,
> their emotions and their ability to communicate.  Writing it all off as
> not "real" damage is just a tired old copout.  

As someone who has argued for taking at least some of the real-life effects
of MUDs seriously, I should clarify what might have seemed like a reversal.

Let's try a real-life analogy here:

Suppose for the sake of argument, I have this (real-life) house and I hold
(real-life) parties regularly.  Perhaps I have lots of people come to my 
parties.  Suppose also that, though I used to invite you regularly, I have 
now decided that you're an annoying person to have around, or maybe I just
don't like your shoes, or somebody told me you molest small children and 
I believed it.  

So I STOP INVITING YOU to my parties.

Assuming I am not simply in a bad mood or acting stochastically, it appears
that I have passed some kind of judgement on you without a full evaluation
of the evidence, no jury trial, no chance for you to confront the witnesses
against you, and perhaps no attempt at all to get your side of the story.

Can this do damage to your life?  Maybe.  You might argue that lots of
your friends come to these parties and this is your only chance to see them.
Maybe someone tells nasty stories about you at my house and you're concerned
no one is around to speak up in your defense.

Should this be illegal?
   Yeah, right.  It's MY HOUSE, dammit...

Should I be considered a nice person for doing this?
   Perhaps not.  Maybe people will get incensed at my treatment of you and
   stop coming to my parties.  Then again maybe they'll be ecstatic that I 
   finally decided to get rid of you.  

My point about damage is that, bad as it may be that you can't go to my
parties anymore, this NOTHING AT ALL like the damage I could do if I were,
e.g., your employer, a cop, a judge, or an IRS auditor (an interesting example
in and of itself).

To be sure, gray areas abound.  One only has to consider the case where I'm
actually an influential person in society and my parties consist of
important corporate board members and the aforementioned cops, judges and
IRS auditors whose actions might be affected by things that happen at my
house.  I might argue though, that it's THEIR moral/ethical failing if they
let their private lives and opinions interfere with their jobs.  On the
other hand, if I arrange an off-site get-together specifically to
circumvent official channels, it's hard to see how I could consider my
hands clean in that case....

... Of course, one would have to be pretty far out of touch to think that
MUDs or anyone on them currently have anything like this kind of status.

To be sure, we may someday have these "electronic town meetings" that Ross
Perot talked about.  Or we may have other types of forums with similar status
and impact on people's lives.  There are legitimate issues to be raised about
how such electronic forums should be run (translation: nobody has a clue)
and this necessarily includes the question of rules of conduct and methods
for disciplining participants.  

Nor will I doubt the utility of running experiments NOW, trying out systems
of on-line "justice" to see how and if they work.  If a particular MUD's
owners want to try this and really have the time to do it right, more power
to them.  Given no real responsibilities, though, it remains an experiment
(perhaps a useless one if you're not sufficiently scrupulous about the way
you run it).  Though you might try playacting a real-life court in your
living room, it's still your house.

One more particularly salient feature of the house analogy is that there
are *lots* of people with houses out there (Scott Goehring's list is pretty
long these days).  If somebody doesn't want you around, you can go
elsewhere, and perhaps you're better off not having to cater to the whims
of some small-minded wizard.

Then again, if you find lots of doors being slammed in your face, this
might be an indication of something, too.

Note that when I said that the standards of proof are significantly lower,
I did NOT mean to imply that such standards can be eliminated entirely, or
that it is GOOD for wizards to act in an arbitrary manner.  I DO acknowledge
an obligation to act consistently.  There is no point to promulgating any 
rules at all (be they house rules for a MOO or house rules for an actual 
house) if people have no idea what to expect for enforcement.

> There's also the ironic slam against people who rely on your mud for
> happiness (no one relies on any one thing as their *sole* source of
> happiness -- does something have to be the *sole* source of happiness for
> the pursuit of happiness clause to be pertinent?).

Well, okay; it was a cheap shot, though the emphasis on *sole* seems a bit
of a nit-pick. I would have had something similar to say about people who
rely on LambdaMOO as a *predominant* or *major* source of happiness.
It was mainly a rude comment aimed at reminding folks just what it is they're
fighting about.  Consider it my version of "Get a life!" and it applies
both to MUDs and Saturday night parties.

--
Roger Crew      OBEY     MARRY AND REPRODUCE      CONSUME      STAY ASLEEP
Internet:   crew@CS.Stanford.EDU      
LambdaMOO:  Rog