Eldritch - A World of Darkness MUX

Three-Eyed Crow · Mar 23, 2015, 5:07 PM

It also seems to serve a utilitarian purpose and isn't just for the sake of perception, which is a less-flip way of stating why this seemed weird to me.

Arkandel · Mar 23, 2015, 5:08 PM

I think you want to avoid a situation where staff who want to be on just in case (but are doing Other Things such as playing alts and would rather not have to handle staffy stuff) would be forced to go offline.

Coin · Mar 23, 2015, 5:13 PM

@RDC said:

Not make passive-aggressive changes/policies to discourage it without having the courage to just...say 'Hey, stop that.'

Sometimes the changes in policy come because when you have the courage to tell a person "Hey, stop that," that person doesn't give a flying fuck and continues on because they think their fun trumps other people's fun. It's never black-and-white, this-or-that; mutual exclusivity is not a thing, in this context; this is not apples-and-oranges...

I ran out of suitable, or even semi-suitable, metaphors. But I would hope the point is clear.

HelloRaptor · Mar 23, 2015, 5:27 PM

@RDC

If it's not worth making a rule against, it's not worth discouraging, in my opinion.

...it's been a while since I read anything just really, really stupid, so I've been waiting for the dam to burst. Thanks for leaping on the grenade, RDC, you're a real mensch.

Please Delete · Mar 23, 2015, 5:29 PM

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Coin · Mar 23, 2015, 5:31 PM

@RDC said:

I think if you've got someone staffing who doesn't stop doing something when you ask them to and continues on because their fun trumps other people's fun, you remove that person from staff.

I'm not surprised you think only staffers can continue being assholes who don't listen when they're told something they're doing isn't cool or conducive to a collaborative, friendly experience.

But you're wrong. Just FYI.

And before you say 'I didn't say that', I'll elucidate for you: that's how it reads to me.

@HelloRaptor said:

@RDC

If it's not worth making a rule against, it's not worth discouraging, in my opinion.

...it's been a while since I read anything just really, really stupid, so I've been waiting for the dam to burst. Thanks for leaping on the grenade, RDC, you're a real mensch.

Some people just really think about other people's needs, you know?

Please Delete · Mar 23, 2015, 5:32 PM

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Coin · Mar 23, 2015, 5:33 PM

It's not a strawman. It's a logical progression of the topic.

Ganymede · Mar 23, 2015, 5:59 PM

I wish I could just hole up in my office every day to plow through my work, but I have this fucking phone that just won't leave me alone. And e-mails. And people keep walking into my office.

I deal with it.

I'm all for removing the DARK flag for staffers entirely. If you're working on something, have an &idle message up.

Rook · Mar 23, 2015, 6:13 PM

@Thenomain said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

Spoiler: People are gonna be dicks.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being afraid to try things because of what people might do. I see no harm for trying, and it fits (or at least doesn't break) our staff philosophy of letting adults be adults.

I'm not assuming it's going to be a rousing success, but I do know that being an optimist once in a while allows me to learn quite a lot on how to implement something on similar lines in the future, or even in the now.

Theno, does your codebase/server .conf allow you to disallow WIZCLOAKing (Dark + Cloak)? I've overridden the WHO so that it shows DARK wizards and the +WHERE tells you right where you are.. That's what I'm doing, for the exact same reasons - so wizards are visible if they are on. The end goal here is that anyone flagged as Staff will always be visible to the players as connected and either working or AFK and able to get back to them when they can.

TL;DR: I'm with Thenomain on the approach.

Thenomain · Mar 23, 2015, 6:14 PM

@Rook said:

Theno, does your codebase/server .conf allow you to disallow WIZCLOAKing (Dark + Cloak)?

No, but this is trivial since people will be using soft-coded commands where I can ignore it.

Rook · Mar 23, 2015, 7:28 PM

I can't think of any reason why DARK on Player objects is even needed, if you are out to effectively disable wizcloaking. What codebase are you working in? There has to be a configuration param to disable/mask that flag from PLAYER object types, I would think, or am I spoiled?

EDIT: @icanbeyourmuse has branched this part of the technical conversation to another thread.

HelloRaptor · Mar 23, 2015, 6:23 PM

@RDC said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@RDC

If it's not worth making a rule against, it's not worth discouraging, in my opinion.

...it's been a while since I read anything just really, really stupid, so I've been waiting for the dam to burst. Thanks for leaping on the grenade, RDC, you're a real mensch.

Hey, welcome to the Hog Pit. Oh wait.

You can probably guess which one you are here, Bitch Wonder.

In case you're still not picking up on the nuanced subtlety here, my point is that sometimes we want to discourage behaviors, but don't feel it's either necessary or desirable to make actual rules about it. There's no 'DO NOT FART IN THE ELEVATOR OR YOU WILL BE FINED.' rules, but farting in the elevator is something most people would probably like to discourage. Sometimes you can't help yourself, but much of the time you can, and should.

Please Delete · Mar 23, 2015, 6:25 PM

This post is deleted!

Thenomain · Mar 23, 2015, 7:25 PM

@Ganymede said:

I'm all for removing the DARK flag for staffers entirely. If you're working on something, have an &idle message up.

Currently the code uses the &position attribute. I could change this easily to &idle.

surreality · Mar 23, 2015, 7:35 PM

@Ganymede said:

I wish I could just hole up in my office every day to plow through my work, but I have this fucking phone that just won't leave me alone. And e-mails. And people keep walking into my office.

I deal with it.

I'm all for removing the DARK flag for staffers entirely. If you're working on something, have an &idle message up.

There's an entitlement thing on a lot of games. "You are connected, therefore you can do my thing right now, even if other people are ahead of me in line, even if you are asleep, etc." Oh hey let's chatter for half an hour about the weather even though you're trying to set up somebody's stats who has been waiting patiently... who will scream at you until you're cringing if you misplace a dot due to the distractions or have to ask a question you lost the answer to in the mountain of spam now on your screen.

Sometimes having the idle message set just scrolls your screen much faster, since it adds another line to every page that keeps on coming in.

I got it a lot at work, too. Customers have zero qualms emailing at 3am and bitching by 3:15am why they don't have an answer yet.

lordbelh · Mar 23, 2015, 7:43 PM

@surreality Say: 'Please do not page me while I'm dark.' Some will think you're a total bitch for it, but eh. You're not.

Thenomain · Mar 23, 2015, 7:58 PM

@surreality said:

Sometimes having the idle message set just scrolls your screen much faster, since it adds another line to every page that keeps on coming in.

So when it scrolls off your screen and you don't see it, you have every justified reason to say, "I had an Idle message up." As Belh says, if they complain, the fault is theirs, not yours. You can't help them at that point, nor should you be beholden to.

Rook · Mar 23, 2015, 8:06 PM

This may be off-topic, but short of a game emergency (hack attempt, abuse, security threat) there is no reason for immediate response from staff. If you have a player that doesn't understand that, then they need educated on etiquette and the Rule that states "RL comes before Game, always".

Three-Eyed Crow · Mar 23, 2015, 8:15 PM

People freak out if anyone misses a page, even if it's just a random player saying hi to another player. This comes up in the Peeves thread all the time. It's one of the more aggravating parts of this hobby for me, but it's definitely a thing.