Open Source Uru Plans, the GOW perspective

[Chacal]

Yes, as I said those are two very different worlds. In MOUL, being rude was forgetting to say "Hi!". In BF1942, being rude was shooting a team-mate in the face and stealing his jeep.

[Grogyan]

In UT3 being rude is not saying hello to a friend with a head shot.


Not forgetting that the Unreal Tournament series includes a server hosting setup, and there is a myriad of ways to get banned, but none I have seen come to fruition.

Being calice with negative verbal taunts is good way to get banned, but in MOUL nothing happened when players deliberately found holes in the game to jump through, and the whole genre of skydiving happened.

Need to define what will and won't I guess

[Nalates]

J’Kla I agree with in principal. We do need to trust whoever is responsible for the in-game ResEng/Admin people. I also understand LonTahv’s feeling that if he were running a shard he would not want someone telling him what to do.

Many of us feel that the GoW Admin’s would be fine on a GoW server. I am one that does. However, there are some that won’t like that idea. I see no way that the community will come together in 100% consensus on this point. So, we should probably just decide to do it. Also, the situation is such that the server operator literally gets to decide. Only if that operator allows us to have a say will we have a say in how that server is run.

I understand BAD’s points on problem people and their friends. I agree that an Uru server is likely to see fewer problems than other games. But we will have some problems and if we are able to create more RP in game and attract new players we are going to have some level of problems. So, Chacal’s recommendation to have good and complete rules in place is a good plan, IMO, and should be a requirement and in the GoW list of things to do. I expect each server operator will choose the rules they prefer and how they are enforced.

On dealing with problem people and their friends… I disagree with BAD. There is no doubt some will defend their friends right or wrong based on being informed or not, no matter what we do. Handling those in public rather than in private one on one, I think, is far better. In private there can be abuse, real or imagined, and people can lie or distort what was said and that leads to growing problems. When the chat logs are added to the appeal and the admin set’s forth the reasons, everyone has the some information. They may see it different ways, but it is there for each to see. The feedback from other players, subject’s friends or not, can guild the admin’s in improving the rules and the admin moderation.

BAD’s idea of handling people one-on-one in PM’s is a very workable thing. It can defuse problems. However if people are being emotional and irrational it can also make things worse. I think it really depends on how good the arbitrator is.



On COPA, in the USA it has been blocked twice but only the Federal version of the law has been blocked. States have begun passing versions and rewrites of the law trying to get something that works. So, some states have in place active COPA laws and others that are harder to find. The UK has such a law in place. There may be other countries that have such a law in place. So, the research to tell us what has to be done to keep the server operators safe is needed. Also, if a child is harmed we need to know that our operators are as legally safe from law suit as possible. These posts and the research are part of our due diligence.

Many site operators basically attempt to comply with COPA just to avoid possible problems. I think whoever runs the main game server will have some measure of legal liability and personal (or the group) financial risk. We also are going to want to decide how to protect children if we allow under 18 and even more if we allow under 13 in game. We will likely have to educate the ResEng’s and write a ToS that covers these issues. We may need liability insurance. Other games may have found good ways to handle these issues.

[Chacal]

I think both public and private channels for complaints can work.

We had a public forum because people coming from the game server usually didn't know who to complain to. Once they had posted their complaint, usually the relevant admin would respond. Then they could settle the case in public or in private as they wished. I supervised to ensure everything went smoothly.

The complaints forum permissions are set so that you can post a new thread and respond to posts in that threadm but you can NOT post in a thread that you have not started. Admins can post everywhere. So you can't sign on and start posting in support of your friend. Maybe this is why there was no flame wars ever started, even in that explosive evironment. 95% of the threads went this way:

Player: I was banned last night. Why?
Admin: You shot a team-mate and stole his plane. That's against our rules.
Player: Oh, sorry. I hadn't read the rules. Won't do it again.
Admin: Ban lifted. Enjoy the server.

Another reason for doing this in public was to educate people. They would see this exchange and understand how we ran the servers.

I really don't expect we need all this for the Uru crowd, but it's better to be prepared, and it is always better when things are clear.

[J'Kla]

Cyan may have also been down this road before us and have some info.

But as a first step towards due diligence a frank open discussion has to be a good step. We all seem to be agreed that it is something we need to consider Do we go the route of asking for a 13 or over declaration and block anyone under. Or do we make it clear to players that some may be under 13 and any dialogue should be viewed as possibly subject to scrutiny.

Do we ask players below 18 to actively not declare their age for their own protection. Should we consider monitoring game chat as a mater of course is their an obligation of care if we have minors in game.

On D'mala I had a game session where I guided a new player around who was trying to find markers. This was fine and was ok till the player in all innocence said I am 14 how old are you. The risks of accusation loomed in my head and I passed the player on to two mature Female players. Until the statement and question the player could have been any gender or age. Even an accusation can be harmful it's not just the young players that need protection.

[Lontahv]

I don't know how games other than the ones I've played work with team-killing but about Chacal's bans... uhm... am I the only one that thinks that's a little extreme even for a war-game?

I can't tell you how many times I've team-killed by accident. Sometimes it looks (at least to me) very much like it was on purpose (some player runs in front of you, you shoot, you get a teammate at point-blank range).

The only reason I'm not banned is because admins waited around to see if I did it again. They didn't jump to conclusions.

Of course, everyone has their own style but personally, I think it's kinda creepy the (IMO) over-use of the ban list.

I wouldn't want to go onto any kind of server that the admins were so mean and assertive of their power.

Lontahv out.

[Chacal]

We're sliding off-topic but yes, you would be right if that was how it happened.
What happened really is someone would complain to an admin during the game, who would then stay in camera mode (invisible) and watch the presumed offender closely. Imagine looking at someone as if you were the camera in Uru, that's how close. It was easy to tell between accidents and repeated on-purpose killings.
The one thing that made players come back to our servers every night was that the admins were fair, not trigger-happy, never rude, and didn't have an inflated ego. They were, actually, the opposite of what you said. I have already posted the guidelines we had for admins, everyone followed that.

Sadly, such overbearing admins were commonly found on other servers.

But all this was only an example. Scroll back to my original post, the point was that admins must be carefully selected, trained, provided with proper tools, etc.

[Nalates]

I like the player and admins only post threads. I had not thought of or seen that.

With the rules out front, and appeals public and post restricted to appealing player and admins... I think we should have a minimum of problems and good feed back on admins too.

J'Kla's experience of having a player tell him 'I'm 14 and you are?' could have been anything. It could have been a 14-year old. It could have been a police officer. It could have been a troll. There is no easy way to know.

Does passing a 14yr old girl' to female players actually reduce risk? ...probably...

How do we verify that our ResEng's (or whoever does in-game policing) are child safe? This is the kind of position we find bad people infiltrating. As time goes by we will likely need new ResEng's (I hope). Who and how will we vet them?

How did Cyan look at child protection when they ran things?
How did GT look at it?
How did they pick their ResEng's?
How does GT pick their support people?

Will research show this is a serious enough problem that we need liability insurance? If so, how much difference does the 18 vs 13 year old limits affect cost?

Does having 24/7 in-game policing reduce those costs?

Is it possible to flag chat for ResEng review if the words 'I am [wild card for numbers and spelled numbers]' pass through chat? (can we have a flag list for numerous words and phrases?)
How much review work would that create?

May be we should start a thread just for this subject. /me goes to add questions to MOUL's Cyan Question list

[Lontahv]

Why are young players such hot-potatoes?

Risk? Huh, unless you're actually molesting children (or have a natural way creeping them out to the point that they're mentally wounded) I don't think you should worry.

We should always act in a way suitable for kids unless we _know_ otherwise.

Sending someone who happens to be a child off to someone else is like saying children should be forced to use special silverware or something.

Reiterating the point: As long as you're an upstanding Uru player your actions should be suitable for all audiences (at least your default behavior when you don't know the person).

IMO this is part of the problem that a lot of people get when they spend most of their time in an adults-only game like SecondLife (main grid).

I don't think sending children to a group of female players helps all that much. The important thing is to have people who are KNOWN to be guardians of not just the children (or at least legally children) but all the players on a server. Naturally, this person is the admin.

Edited to make more clear.

[Nadnerb]

Paranoia. That's all this is. It's an online game that doesn't actually have the ability to portray violence or anything else. It's no more of a liability than running an IRC server for crying out loud.