Ignore = inaudible ... and invisible?

[Gahlen]

Hi everyone. I’d like to ask a question about an old idea of J’Kla’s from 2008 (http://forum.guildofwriters.org/viewtop ... 868#p28868). (Caveat: I’m not overly tech-savvy, so this is probably going to be very naïve. I'm also new here at the GoW, so if there's a better place for this question, I'd be grateful if a mod shifted it.)

Another issue we had was mainly from what can only be seen as childish behaviour we sometimes saw when we were running our Trivial Pursuit on TMP we did on a couple of occasions have a player who thought it was clever to jump on and around the question master. It would have been nice to have an ignore option let's call it shun that not only silenced the chat but made the Avatar invisible ....

The background to this is that over the last few weeks we’ve been seeing more inappropriate behaviour in the Cavern than usual, in particular some pretty unpleasant sexual harrassment (guys following women around, standing directly in front of or inside them, etc.). It’s proving quite difficult to deal with by the usual methods (we appear to have a repeat offender, amongst others, whom Cyan have been great about removing, but he keeps returning), and a few people have told me that they are starting to discourage others (e.g., their kids) from joining or are themselves leaving the game as a result. Short-term we’re going to have to cope with this as best we can, but long-term I’d like us to find a more creative and effective solution, and I think that J’Kla’s suggestion could be one. So I have three questions:

• 1. Is a function like this technically possible? (It’s happened to me once or twice that I’ve linked into the Cavern to find that an avatar everyone else is talking to is invisible to me; linking out and back has always solved the problem. Is there something going on there that could be made into a feature?)
  
  2. If it is, is anyone currently working on it or could anyone imagine working on it in the not all-too-distant future?
  
  3. Would it help to develop such a thing within a reasonable timeframe if it was funded in some way by the community? For something as directly useful as this, with such an immediate and tangible impact on player experience, I’m pretty sure some people would be very happy to donate real money.

[Lontahv]

This would be possible to program in by slightly modifying the xKI Python code. However, my concern is that if you can't see a harasser, they could be being _really_ creepy and the victim will never know.

[Gahlen]

... the victim will never know.

Yes: that would be precisely the point. I mean, down there it's all psycho-terror: avatars can't touch each other like objects. So the scenario is that someone is standing somewhere or going somewhere in first person, turns around and is suddenly confronted with this guy leering over her shoulder. Or is constantly watching in third person as he violates her personal space. The current "ignore" function can stop the obscene messages and threatening KI-shots, but watching yourself being harrassed is just super-unpleasant, and I'm guessing that creating that feeling in someone else is precisely the kick these people get out of it. He follows her, she is terrified and tries to run away, he laughs and keeps doing it. But if she never sees him, he can follow her all he wants, it won't bother her at all, she'll never react, and all the "fun" will go out of it.

I'd be willing to bet that if the GoW announced at an AGM that they were able to write this modification, there would be enormous popular support for it being done and sent to Cyan.

[Tsar Hoikas]

Pfffft. Why solicit donations for a 15 minute change ? I'll have it coded sometime this week (whenever my crazy schedule permits...).

[Gahlen]

Adam: you are … as always … a remarkable man. Thankyou.

I have started a thread over at the MOULa forums to gauge support for this in the community at large: http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=379384; I'm expecting some opposition, but I think in the end that most people will want it, some of them very badly, so on that assumption … how does this work? Adam does the coding some time this week, or maybe the week after (I roomed with a biology major for a couple of years, I know what it's like), and then …? I'm very vague about how things get from you guys to Cyan, both in terms of timeframe (I'm assuming it's like the unicode thing: there are hoops to be jumped through and some of them involve OpenUru.org) and in terms of who makes the decision about what features get implemented and what don't. Can someone point me to a brief description of how this works? I would just like someone (preferably someone speaking for the GoW) to be able to say to people, guys, if you want this, it can be on Chogon's desk … when, roughly?

[Rhee]

I posted regarding this on the MOUL forums (in favour, of course ) but another minor suggestion was made, that the /shun effect not only makes the offending avvie invisible, but also that the avvie dong the shunning beomces invisible to the shun-ee.

I don't know if this would make more or less work for whomever is doing the coding (be that Hoikas or someone else), but it would literally stop the annoyingness in its tracks... because not only would the victims be freed of the harrassment, the perpetrators would be denied of their victim as well, addressing the concern that you indicated, Lontahv.

While it /is/ all psycho-terror, as you state, Gahlen, if I am being harassed and shun someone but know that they could still be following me around and that others who have not shunned him/her can still see him/her.... well... it would give me the feeling of a "peeping tom" so to speak. As in, I don't know they're there, but I know they're still watching :/

Anyway, just my two cents.

[Sirius]

When I click on the link to Moul's forum, I get this:

"The topic or post you requested does not exist"

Did you make a typo or has the topic been deleted ?

I'm 100% ok with a way to hide another player/yourself (I like Rhee's idea. Think of the offender seeing ~15 people in the city on the Nexus terminal, but once he links to the Age he sees no one as everybody have him in ignore list !).
Maybe I would keep the ignored player on the player list though (at least to know he is here).

Another thing I would like to know: is voice chat ignored by the client too ?

[dendwaler]

Sirius, try this one
http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25268

[Rhee]

(I like Rhee's idea...

The two-way invisibility thing wasn't actually my idea, it was someone on the MOUL forums, but I'm fairly sure they don't frequent this one so I thought I'd mention it.

Actually, the only idea I had was to also include an /unshun function. But that's not a biggie I don't suppose

[Tsar Hoikas]

I'll include two-way invisibility in my change. It's not that hard. Sadly, I cannot make this work for voice chat due to design restrictions (the network protocol doesn't allow for filtering the way I'd like). Well, I could, but then we'd have to download every player's vault who is in the age, and that's seriously a bad thing (TM) to do.

… how does this work?

The process is still somewhat vague. I'll write the code on our fork, and someone (preferably not me) will port it to the OpenUru repositories, and they (OU) will do that silly political dance with Cyan. The middle step is usually the hardest due to the divergent states of our CWE codebases. However, this change will be purely python, so porting should be a lot easier in this case. The unicode change, on the other hand, is a big one that touches both the python and engine code, so backporting it to OU is quite an undertaking. In short... I don't really know, I just write code and do lots of science