From: whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt)
Subject: Re: Transcript of the "God Conference on Players' Rights"
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 19:48:04 GMT

In article <1ish71INNr0k@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> msjle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Joi L. Ellis) writes:
>whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt) writes:
>>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. 
> [ trimmed ]
> 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. 
> [ trimmed ]
>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.
> [ trimmed ]
>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of the rest are out of date.

I think the only way to handle a situation like this is just not play
the MUD. Vote with your feet! I still think it is the player's responsibility
to know the rules of social conduct: but if the MUD doesn't make it possible
for you to know them, then find another MUD. There are plenty of them lying
around, especially if you're not picky about which kind you play, and the
mudlist makes it real easy to find them.

Given this kind of display of emotion about a particular MUD, I can't see
how the MUD would have any wizards left after a couple months.

There will always be poorly run MUDs and there is no way around it, except
to avoid them.
-- 
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!
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin