Before I start this topic I must first mention that I have posted it before in the Myst Online URU Live forum, where it was locked. This seems to be a very contested topic and is for some reason difficult for people to discuss without getting hostile and name calling. We should all be here with one goal, and that is to make the experience of our time in game as much fun as possible for the respectful players who love being in URU. While making it as difficult as possible for the troublemakers to disrupt the good people of the game. Please keep this topic civil and add suggestions not attacks on other persons opinions.
As many of you know, the ages have been (at times) made a place of discontent by a small number of people making trouble for the good people of the game who are there to have fun and enjoy the company of friends both old and new. At this time we have only one way to deal with the troublemakers, put them on ignore. This works to a degree, but only to a degree. I do think there is a simple solution to the problem that could be accomplished with very little effort in the open source game. And could possibly be added to Myst Online URU Live
I'm sure all who read this message are aware that every few days when we enter an age we are invisible to the other players. I know I have arrived in the city only to find no one there, I Relto out and back and am greeted by a group of people.
In my opinion all we need is to take what is now a glitch and add it to the ignore feature and the problem of troublemakers is solved. They can no longer PM us, voice chat with us, or jump through us, they simply become a nonentity. We can be in the same age as the troublemakers without knowing they exist. The only consequence to this that I can think of would possibly be a door that opens now and then or a ball that is kicked with no one there. And that I can live with.
Now let me be more specific. If there are three avatar’s standing in a circle and avatar one said something that avatar number two found offensive avatar number two would add avatar number one to his/her ignore list. At that point avatar number one and two would no longer be able to see, hear or pm to each other. However avatar number one and three would still see, hear and be able to pm to each other, and avatar number two and three would still see, hear and be able to pm to each other. This would not affect anyone but the person who adds the troublemaker to his/her ignore list and the troublemaker who was added to that list.
If a troublemaker comes into the game and all players add him to their ignore list he simply becomes a avatar by himself as a single player, and cannot bother others. This simple change would, I think, have solved many problems that people have had with troublemakers in the past. It removes any power they (the troublemakers) think they have.
This is a simple, none confrontational way of solving the troublemaker problem and only takes seconds to do, if they should come back in another avatar it only takes seconds to add that avatar to the ignore list also.
If you have anything to add to this please do. We need a fast reliable way to keep these emotionally troubled people from spoiling this great game that Cyan was so kind to give us.
rocketdog
deal with the troublemakers
Moderator: OpenUru.org Moderators
Re: deal with the troublemakers
rocketdog, I understand your concern and a desire for peace in the game. However, the primary problem of who decides who is a problem that quickly comes up. It is not just a matter of you muting the annoying person into some invisible realm. Remember, there is the problem of changing names, IP addresses, and MAC numbers that comes into play. The bad guys can keep changing names. They can come back to create an ongoing problem. At some point a game manager has to get involved and impose penalties that are enough of an annoyance to the bad guy they give up.
You barely scratched the surface of what an invisible player can do. We have had several discussions on what might be done to improve the existing system. But, we don’t need to sort that out until someone actually decides to try and build a better muting or anti-griefing system.
We started considering how to handle many of the issues you seem concerned about. See Standards For Discussion & Debate. One soon finds that some means of enforcement is needed. In game and in forums enforcement is rather limited. Exercising the enforcement tools available requires someone with good judgment. Even then once the issues of fairness come up things go down the tube. The best one can hope for is some justice and somewhere down the line SOMEONE has to decide what is just.
You barely scratched the surface of what an invisible player can do. We have had several discussions on what might be done to improve the existing system. But, we don’t need to sort that out until someone actually decides to try and build a better muting or anti-griefing system.
We started considering how to handle many of the issues you seem concerned about. See Standards For Discussion & Debate. One soon finds that some means of enforcement is needed. In game and in forums enforcement is rather limited. Exercising the enforcement tools available requires someone with good judgment. Even then once the issues of fairness come up things go down the tube. The best one can hope for is some justice and somewhere down the line SOMEONE has to decide what is just.
Nalates
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
Re: deal with the troublemakers
Nalates
I didn't respond immediately hoping others would get involved in a discussion. But I guess that's not going to happen.
I understand what you are saying and i do agree, having some means of enforcement would be great. However as you stated we need someone, or a number of people with good judgment who are impartial, to do this thankless job.
What I'm proposing is a way for you and I to take care of the situation immediately as it happens, in real time. This in no way means we shouldn't have people in charge who remove people who are causing trouble in game. In fact this idea would if anything help them in their decision. For instance if a certain avatar has been blocked by a large number of players who are in good standing, the person enforcing the rules would have the names of those people or avatars who have all blocked the troublemaker and could contact them for information.
In URU Live, as I'm curtain you know, we have had trouble with a certain Lady who is starting to cause trouble again. Cyan has not been brave enough to remove her from the game even though they have had many many complaints against her over a long period of time. I have no reason to believe anyone else will do a better job in removing people like her then Cyan has.
That's why we as players need a way to stop these people from bothering us while not affecting the decisions of anyone else in game.
I didn't respond immediately hoping others would get involved in a discussion. But I guess that's not going to happen.
I understand what you are saying and i do agree, having some means of enforcement would be great. However as you stated we need someone, or a number of people with good judgment who are impartial, to do this thankless job.
What I'm proposing is a way for you and I to take care of the situation immediately as it happens, in real time. This in no way means we shouldn't have people in charge who remove people who are causing trouble in game. In fact this idea would if anything help them in their decision. For instance if a certain avatar has been blocked by a large number of players who are in good standing, the person enforcing the rules would have the names of those people or avatars who have all blocked the troublemaker and could contact them for information.
In URU Live, as I'm curtain you know, we have had trouble with a certain Lady who is starting to cause trouble again. Cyan has not been brave enough to remove her from the game even though they have had many many complaints against her over a long period of time. I have no reason to believe anyone else will do a better job in removing people like her then Cyan has.
That's why we as players need a way to stop these people from bothering us while not affecting the decisions of anyone else in game.
Re: deal with the troublemakers
I would caution against being tempted to cite particular cases in discussions like these: Apart from anything else, what that tends to produce is a set of responses tuned to those particular circumstances and the bigger picture gets lost.
In looking at these issues, you have to consider that MOULa is a different beast to MOUL under Gametap. Griefers aren't a phenomena that is unique to MOULa; they existed in Gametap MOUL (I witnessed such myself) and in any "public" entity like MOULa you'll get the odd bored dimwit who thinks it's fun to go and "noise up" the regular users. But they're mainly casual, "drive by" nuisances that you're probably unlikely to see again. Repeat offenders are a bigger problem. You could also categorise some of the recent "unauthorised hack" issues as a form of griefing.
There are two big difference between MOUL and MOULa: The first is that MOUL, as a funded game, had employed Customer Care representatives that could appear in-game as a "ResEng" and take care of the situation, and with the power to eject a player immediately if that was necessary. From what I understand, banning was a big step and probably dealt with by a Cyan/Gametap committee (since subscription refunds may have been involved). MOULa has no such ResEngs and Cyan have indicated that they have no intention of appointing any fan equivalents (I think it's all a matter of responsibility vs accountability).
The second is that accounts were effectively controlled via Gametap's systems and tied to credit card accounts. This means that the account owner for any misbehaving avatar was easily traceable and "account hopping" to subvert bans wasn't really possible. MOULa's system allows you to create as many accounts as you can manage to find unique email addresses for.
I said that griefers weren't unique to MOULa, but maybe the problems they present are: The point is that griefers were fairly effectively dealt with in MOUL, so I wonder if what we experience in MOULa is simply an artefact of the current setup. Cyan declared MOULa as a relatively hands off, unregulated environment and gave caveats that go with that. However, if someone sets up a shard, then there's no reason why they couldn't employ more strict policing if they wished: Restrictions on setting up user accounts, appointing ResEng equivalents from amongst their users, etc. - I wasn't involved in Until Uru, but I'd be interested in hearing how any griefing was handled there.
The other thing that you need to account for is that one person's view of when behaviour crosses over into griefing may be widely different from another person's view. Drawing a parallel with the forums, the threshhold where Person_A will report a post as "trolling" may be at odds with Person_B's opinion, and indeed can vary depending on who made the post: There can be an issue of assuming intent based on past behaviour rather than what was actually written, and you get into subjective rather than objective assessments and it's always difficult to justify actions based on subjective opinion.
In looking at these issues, you have to consider that MOULa is a different beast to MOUL under Gametap. Griefers aren't a phenomena that is unique to MOULa; they existed in Gametap MOUL (I witnessed such myself) and in any "public" entity like MOULa you'll get the odd bored dimwit who thinks it's fun to go and "noise up" the regular users. But they're mainly casual, "drive by" nuisances that you're probably unlikely to see again. Repeat offenders are a bigger problem. You could also categorise some of the recent "unauthorised hack" issues as a form of griefing.
There are two big difference between MOUL and MOULa: The first is that MOUL, as a funded game, had employed Customer Care representatives that could appear in-game as a "ResEng" and take care of the situation, and with the power to eject a player immediately if that was necessary. From what I understand, banning was a big step and probably dealt with by a Cyan/Gametap committee (since subscription refunds may have been involved). MOULa has no such ResEngs and Cyan have indicated that they have no intention of appointing any fan equivalents (I think it's all a matter of responsibility vs accountability).
The second is that accounts were effectively controlled via Gametap's systems and tied to credit card accounts. This means that the account owner for any misbehaving avatar was easily traceable and "account hopping" to subvert bans wasn't really possible. MOULa's system allows you to create as many accounts as you can manage to find unique email addresses for.
I said that griefers weren't unique to MOULa, but maybe the problems they present are: The point is that griefers were fairly effectively dealt with in MOUL, so I wonder if what we experience in MOULa is simply an artefact of the current setup. Cyan declared MOULa as a relatively hands off, unregulated environment and gave caveats that go with that. However, if someone sets up a shard, then there's no reason why they couldn't employ more strict policing if they wished: Restrictions on setting up user accounts, appointing ResEng equivalents from amongst their users, etc. - I wasn't involved in Until Uru, but I'd be interested in hearing how any griefing was handled there.
The other thing that you need to account for is that one person's view of when behaviour crosses over into griefing may be widely different from another person's view. Drawing a parallel with the forums, the threshhold where Person_A will report a post as "trolling" may be at odds with Person_B's opinion, and indeed can vary depending on who made the post: There can be an issue of assuming intent based on past behaviour rather than what was actually written, and you get into subjective rather than objective assessments and it's always difficult to justify actions based on subjective opinion.
Mac_Fife
OpenUru.org wiki wrangler
OpenUru.org wiki wrangler
Re: deal with the troublemakers
Nalates invited me a while ago to come over here and talk about this type of thing as I had looked into this a little when I came to MOUL (GT era) in November 2007. But at that time I was going through a bad time which in a way I still am so I didn't come over to share. I am no expert in community dynamics or anything like that. I am a simple man so I speak/write simple, as I like to call it plain english. I speak from how I want to be treated so I treat others acordingly. I don't look down at say the fringes of the commuity and I have proven myself to that fact. I don't care for personal politics anymore, as that is what drove me away, Yep I reacted in a negative way.
I have thought about all this for sometime and to be honest there is no avoiding these issues. I personally like the approach we had in MOUL of politely and privately asking someone to desist in disrupting the discussion. Not just one person privately PMing the offender but nearly all of us did. Not one person in that discussion, and there were a few of us, got angry, we remained calm and spoke as one. Funny thing was that this discussion was about "manners in the carvern".
Anyway this person kept on so we all ignored him/her. After ten mins or so the person gave up. This approach I used from there on. I learned not to get angry (though that was hard as I feel so passionate about Uru). I learned not to bite, learnt not to react but to act or to link out.
I hope a made some sense in my medicine induced ramblings. LOL
I have thought about all this for sometime and to be honest there is no avoiding these issues. I personally like the approach we had in MOUL of politely and privately asking someone to desist in disrupting the discussion. Not just one person privately PMing the offender but nearly all of us did. Not one person in that discussion, and there were a few of us, got angry, we remained calm and spoke as one. Funny thing was that this discussion was about "manners in the carvern".
Anyway this person kept on so we all ignored him/her. After ten mins or so the person gave up. This approach I used from there on. I learned not to get angry (though that was hard as I feel so passionate about Uru). I learned not to bite, learnt not to react but to act or to link out.
Griefers want reactions, that is why they do it. So if we don't react and try not to let them get under our skin they will in most cases get bored. People have to stand up and stand together if they want to keep GT MOUl standards as the norm.rocketdog wrote: That's why we as players need a way to stop these people from bothering us while not affecting the decisions of anyone else in game.
I hope a made some sense in my medicine induced ramblings. LOL
Re: deal with the troublemakers
Again I understand what is being said and I do not respond to griefers.
I guess what I don't understand is the "well we just have to put up with this" aptitude. The fact is, no we don't. There are things that can be done. And let me try to explain one reason why they should be done.
In our case we as a Bevin have made a point to make it safe for children to be (Which was also Cyan's intention). We have several small kids in our Bevin and we are a voice chat Bevin. Would it be best to let the griefers use any language and actions they want in front of the children, or would it better to be able to tell the children to put them on ignore and not hear them see them or in any way interact with them? I choose the later. We also know that if the parents of these children would be in the room when this happened the children would not be allowed to come back. And that''s not what any of us want.
The answer isn't always to let others do what they want, nor is it my job to try to reason with griefers.
All I am saying is give me the tools to remove a griefer from my game if I want to remove him, If you don't want to remove him that's fine with me, you don't have to put him on ignore. Remember Cyan already added the ignore option from the start because they understood we would need to separate ourselves from some people. All I'm suggesting is we also have a "invisible" feature added.
I in no way would want to force any other player to use this option anymore then I would have wanted to force anyone to use the ignore already in the game. I would only want this option added for those of us who would want to use it. This infringes on no one other then me and the griefer I have put on ignore.
I'm sorry if I was to specific on the griefer I mentioned in my last post, that wasn't intended.
I guess what I don't understand is the "well we just have to put up with this" aptitude. The fact is, no we don't. There are things that can be done. And let me try to explain one reason why they should be done.
In our case we as a Bevin have made a point to make it safe for children to be (Which was also Cyan's intention). We have several small kids in our Bevin and we are a voice chat Bevin. Would it be best to let the griefers use any language and actions they want in front of the children, or would it better to be able to tell the children to put them on ignore and not hear them see them or in any way interact with them? I choose the later. We also know that if the parents of these children would be in the room when this happened the children would not be allowed to come back. And that''s not what any of us want.
The answer isn't always to let others do what they want, nor is it my job to try to reason with griefers.
All I am saying is give me the tools to remove a griefer from my game if I want to remove him, If you don't want to remove him that's fine with me, you don't have to put him on ignore. Remember Cyan already added the ignore option from the start because they understood we would need to separate ourselves from some people. All I'm suggesting is we also have a "invisible" feature added.
I in no way would want to force any other player to use this option anymore then I would have wanted to force anyone to use the ignore already in the game. I would only want this option added for those of us who would want to use it. This infringes on no one other then me and the griefer I have put on ignore.
I'm sorry if I was to specific on the griefer I mentioned in my last post, that wasn't intended.
Re: deal with the troublemakers
On MOUL Forum we have had discussions about mute + invisibility. Some do want that feature.
Here bug reporting is headed toward Mantis, Bugzilla, and whatever... I'm not sure what the final decisions are, if any. But, often the same system is used for feature requests, at least in several open source projects using JIRA that is the case. So, somewhere we'll have feature requests. I suggest adding this one to the requested features list. It would be nice to have a way to vote on features wanted, for and against.
I think it is possible to change the server or client so a player is totally ignored, invisible. I'm not sure this is a good idea. If you have watched the invisible man movies you know what mischief he was up to. I think invisibility might be more of a boon to griefers than a solution. I can think of a number of ways to pester a player to point the game would be unplayable and they would never know it was me.
In SL one can be muted and one can be turned into a grey person. So clothes and avatar attachments don't show, prevents flashers. While a player can make their self invisible they cannot hide their name tag. The system prevents that. The grey avatar is the best solution for the problems that they have found over the past 7 or 8 years.
Also, the attitude in the community isn't to put up with griefers. There are gray areas of what constitutes griefing. The gray areas are not the issue areas. Bad language in a PG areas is generally unacceptable and falls into a definite black area, so we have clear griefing incidents. The problem is enforcement and keeping enforcement from being gamed. Several of us deal with these issues in different places. Keeping people out and perma-banning them is not as easy as it may sound. If you watched the MOUL Forum fight with spammers, you start to get an idea of how complex it is. People change identity, IP addresses, email addresses, and other identifiable attributes quickly and easily. Enforcement is also labor intense. Plus we have no official enforcement. We have vigilantes. The most recent episode apparently caught some innocents too. We saw the reaction to that. It is currently not a good situation and there are no best solutions.
Here bug reporting is headed toward Mantis, Bugzilla, and whatever... I'm not sure what the final decisions are, if any. But, often the same system is used for feature requests, at least in several open source projects using JIRA that is the case. So, somewhere we'll have feature requests. I suggest adding this one to the requested features list. It would be nice to have a way to vote on features wanted, for and against.
I think it is possible to change the server or client so a player is totally ignored, invisible. I'm not sure this is a good idea. If you have watched the invisible man movies you know what mischief he was up to. I think invisibility might be more of a boon to griefers than a solution. I can think of a number of ways to pester a player to point the game would be unplayable and they would never know it was me.
In SL one can be muted and one can be turned into a grey person. So clothes and avatar attachments don't show, prevents flashers. While a player can make their self invisible they cannot hide their name tag. The system prevents that. The grey avatar is the best solution for the problems that they have found over the past 7 or 8 years.
Also, the attitude in the community isn't to put up with griefers. There are gray areas of what constitutes griefing. The gray areas are not the issue areas. Bad language in a PG areas is generally unacceptable and falls into a definite black area, so we have clear griefing incidents. The problem is enforcement and keeping enforcement from being gamed. Several of us deal with these issues in different places. Keeping people out and perma-banning them is not as easy as it may sound. If you watched the MOUL Forum fight with spammers, you start to get an idea of how complex it is. People change identity, IP addresses, email addresses, and other identifiable attributes quickly and easily. Enforcement is also labor intense. Plus we have no official enforcement. We have vigilantes. The most recent episode apparently caught some innocents too. We saw the reaction to that. It is currently not a good situation and there are no best solutions.
Nalates
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
Re: deal with the troublemakers
Nalates
This is why I started this post, not because I think I know the answer but because I wanted people to start brain storming ways to stop griefers as best we can. I know this idea isn't perfect but I do believe it would be better then what we have now. If we all contribute to the idea of affecting the griefers as much as possible we will all end up with a better OpenURU.
You mentioned that the griefer can just make another account and come back. That's true but I can again put him on ignore faster then he can make a new account. I will gladly play that game if the griefer wants to. it will take me seconds and him minutes.
As for who is to say who is a griefer and what constitutes a griefer, the answer to that would be ME and YOU, we would decide what we are willing to allow others to do or say to us. I may find things offensive about a person that you don't, I would place that person on ignore you wouldn't.
You mentioned the invisible man movies and that making griefers invisable might be more of a boon to them, and I agree, this is something that needs to be thought out. But I would be willing to suffer some inconvenience in game rather then the inconvenience of hearing seeing and text from a griefer.
I have spent my life designing as engineering and I know that anything can be accomplished if people put their heads together and think things through. But for some reason this topic has been met with "this won't work" rather then "let's see what we can do".
If you can tell me how to transfer this over to the "requested features" list I will. Or do I just start a new post there?
This is why I started this post, not because I think I know the answer but because I wanted people to start brain storming ways to stop griefers as best we can. I know this idea isn't perfect but I do believe it would be better then what we have now. If we all contribute to the idea of affecting the griefers as much as possible we will all end up with a better OpenURU.
You mentioned that the griefer can just make another account and come back. That's true but I can again put him on ignore faster then he can make a new account. I will gladly play that game if the griefer wants to. it will take me seconds and him minutes.
As for who is to say who is a griefer and what constitutes a griefer, the answer to that would be ME and YOU, we would decide what we are willing to allow others to do or say to us. I may find things offensive about a person that you don't, I would place that person on ignore you wouldn't.
You mentioned the invisible man movies and that making griefers invisable might be more of a boon to them, and I agree, this is something that needs to be thought out. But I would be willing to suffer some inconvenience in game rather then the inconvenience of hearing seeing and text from a griefer.
I have spent my life designing as engineering and I know that anything can be accomplished if people put their heads together and think things through. But for some reason this topic has been met with "this won't work" rather then "let's see what we can do".
If you can tell me how to transfer this over to the "requested features" list I will. Or do I just start a new post there?
Re: deal with the troublemakers
A slight aside, just as a point of information:
End of digression. Please carry on
When you create a "new issue" in JIRA you can set the issue type (which usually defaults to "Bug") to "New feature" or "Improvement" amongst others. Once an issue is created, while you're viewing it, you can find a "vote for this issue" option under the "More actions" drop down. There's no "vote against" option I'm aware of.Nalates wrote:Here bug reporting is headed toward Mantis, Bugzilla, and whatever... I'm not sure what the final decisions are, if any. But, often the same system is used for feature requests, at least in several open source projects using JIRA that is the case. So, somewhere we'll have feature requests. I suggest adding this one to the requested features list. It would be nice to have a way to vote on features wanted, for and against.
End of digression. Please carry on
Mac_Fife
OpenUru.org wiki wrangler
OpenUru.org wiki wrangler