A Modern +Finger?
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Pre-code the afinger to send a message to the player. "X is reading your +finger info." Nothing else.
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@icanbeyourmuse
This could be fixed by having the +finger code read data/text on the &afinger of the +fingeree, and emit that data to them... while stripping anything but ansi and simple substitution logic. Much like some games pass you either %0 as the one doing the fingering, or whatever. So while %ch%cr would work for them, [pemit()] (a return emit to the +finger-er) would get stripped out. -
I have really never understood what &afinger would be used for other than playing in to paranoia, or irritating people. Assuming the latter is excised somehow, it still leaves the former.
It'd be like someone asking for a feature where they got an email notification from the wiki with the names of everyone who looked at their wiki page, or something. What the fuck? o.O
Is it ever used for something besides notification, and if not, why do people want it?
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I almost never use the +finger command anymore solely because of &afinger and what irritating fucks other players become because of it. Which is sometimes involves a lot of cumbersome searching through semi-updated +info and wiki pages for something as simple as a surname check so I'm calling the character the right thing, but it's worth it to avoid all those "Teehee that tickles!" pages and weird-ass paranoia.
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I am not in the crowd that likes using AFINGER code to pemit the fingering person back. In the coding sense, that is an OFINGER, to be honest.
However, I believe that AFINGER can be used by me to mutually find RP interest, RP Hook interest, new people to a group, whatever. I believe that it facilitates player communication and link-up, when used right. Now, I will be quick to admit that there are better ways to do this, but with the prevalence of shyness/laziness that I have witnessed over the years, it can help in some game environments.
I have seen places where people embed code to count the number of times they are fingered, to emit back cutesy things to the other, and so on.
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@Mercutio said:
@Rook said:
@Thenomain said:
Oh, and no calling player data with
u().Quoted for truth.
Assuming you're working in TinyMUX. It's safe in PennMUSH, as it gets evaluated with the permissions of the object it is on.
Even on Penn, do not use u(). Do not allow the player to make their own @afinger. This isn't about security, this is about sanity.
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@Rook said:
However, I believe that AFINGER can be used by me to mutually find RP interest, RP Hook interest, new people to a group, whatever. I believe that it facilitates player communication and link-up, when used right.
Except... it isn't. +finger provides the basic data to the person making the inquiry when the only information they may have is the other party's name. (I'm not talking about &ofinger -- that is its own creepy kettle of fish.)
Interest is not confirmed because someone doesn't recognize a new or unfamiliar name and wonders who or what it is attached to, and assuming otherwise is what causes most of the problems I rattled off earlier -- interest is only confirmed if the inquiring party makes some kind of direct inquiry beyond typing +finger <name>.
This is why I say there is zero benefit to having the other party notified, and only downside.
At best, you're stuck having to explain to some brain-dead idiot that 'I was using the command that gives me the basic information you listed yourself about your character to find out if you were interesting or not', which nobody should have to do, and no one should be required to justify to someone who doesn't understand what public, volunteered information is.
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Please stop telling people how many unread mail I have. That can go away.
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That's actually a functional tool.
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I agree with @Ganymede. I have watched someone I sent IC requests for information to, and never saw that unread number change. Thought, @mail/review and the like do the same, and more accurate.
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@Rook, I think you might be confused as to what afinger is, and why people have a problem with it.
- &afinger allows players to be notified that someone has looked at their +finger. Typically with a custom message to themselves with the name of who checked +finger.
- People then respond by paging the person who just checked their +finger via page with 'teehee that tickles' or 'watch where you put that thing!' or 'can I help you?' or 'what do you want?' or even forbid you've checked +finger more than once and they'll shout on a public channel STOP +FINGERING ME!!.
What you are suggesting does not stop people from responding to folks who check their +finger. The only way to do that is to remove &afinger from the code.
@Luna & @Ganymede: I'm now somewhat on the fence here. While Gany has a point that it could be a decent functional tool -- if I'm trying to get in touch with a staffer or a faction head and I see that they have 1000 undread @mail? I know not to @mail them. However, I feel like Luna has a point. Do we really need to be telling JoeBob that SarahBeth has 2 unread @mail? That would be kind of like if Facebook & Gmail allowed you to look at someone's profile and see how many unread notes/emails they have.
Any thoughts on changing the name from +finger to +info, or +check, or I don't know +whoisthis ?
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@Cobaltasaurus
I am unsure why you think my idea of what AFINGER is, is off. Now maybe on the WoD games, there is no literal &AFINGER attribute that the +FINGER code parses and emits to the +fingeree, but on other games, that is exactly how it works. If you are attributing AFINGER as a built-in emit within the code of the +FINGER command, then it isn't truly an AFINGER in the sense of the rest of MUSH/MUX attributes that get triggered on actions (@asucc, @adrop, @adesc).I am not sure why:
- &AFINGER me=
- +finger code that will not parse functions within AFINGER attributes
- +finger/silent
will not work for solutions to your point 2.
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@Cobaltasaurus +info would be cool but I'm just so used to the code. As for the unread mail? All it makes me do is delete all my mail, unread. It becomes something that people poke at you about and it's irritating. Lol October has over 100 unread mail! Check your mail! Why you no read your mail?!
Because fuck yall that's why.
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@Rook said:
@Cobaltasaurus
I am unsure why you think my idea of what AFINGER is, is off. Now maybe on the WoD games, there is no literal &AFINGER attribute that the +FINGER code parses and emits to the +fingeree, but on other games, that is exactly how it works. If you are attributing AFINGER as a built-in emit within the code of the +FINGER command, then it isn't truly an AFINGER in the sense of the rest of MUSH/MUX attributes that get triggered on actions (@asucc, @adrop, @adesc).I am not sure why:
- &AFINGER me=
- +finger code that will not parse functions within AFINGER attributes
- +finger/silent
will not work for solutions to your point 2.
The examples I've been giving aren't just from WoD games -- they're from a pretty broad range, unfortunately.
While I could list at least a dozen more examples downsides to having &afinger, I haven't seen a positive presented as to why it should exist in the first place.
'People are shy' as a 'positive' is actually encouragement of very poor behavior, and a fallacious understanding of the command and its actual purpose, that leads to much bigger problems down the road.
One should not need a +finger/silent command to be unbothered when they check publicly-available, player-volunteered information.
This is a cultural problem that ultimately, code is not going to resolve with a notification; keeping it will 'aid' shy players and the aggressive, obnoxious ones in ways that are simply not aid. Removing it encourages players to speak up to their interests actively in the case of the 'shy'. This is important, because this is not a passive hobby, it is an inherently interactive one. If someone is too shy to interact without an automated notifier pinging them that someone felt like seeing what public information they listed about themselves, what happens when that person gets no further feedback? Are they going to become any less shy or any more confident when the person does not pursue any further inquiry? Highly doubtful.
Edit: A much more useful switch option in this case would be to have players be able to use something akin to +finger/noisy if they're seeking attention in return or want it to be known they're looking over whatever it is. Leave the rest of us in peace, for mercy's sake. HR's example of "You were just looking at me!" below is spot on.
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@Rook
&afinger runs whatever you put in it. Want it to pemit something to you? It will. Want it to pemit something to the person fingering you? It will. Want it to pemit a poke to the code wiz reminding them to disable afinger? Sure. Want it to check your mail? Okay. It is, 99% of the time, used primarily to notify the person being +fingered that someone is doing so, and who exactly has done so.My query is more why any of this is necessary, or even useful? As others have remarked, if I'm typing +finger to check out some basic IC/OOC information out about you or your character (depending on what's displayed by +finger), why do you need to be notified? You keep talking about facilitating shit, but unless I've actually gone out of my way to page you, all it's facilitating is an awkward situation where my attempt to query basic public information has you trying to engage me.
It'd be like if whenever somebody looked at you you walked up to them and were like "Hi! You were just looking at me. Is there a reason you were looking at me? I know you looked at me. Why were you looking at me?", which would get really weird really fast.
I'm leaving out the fuckers who use it to pemit messages to people who +finger them, because there's a special circle of hell for that shit, shared only with the people who complain that someone is +finger-spamming them by looking at their +finger too much and thus triggering their self-imposed &afinger. Fuck both of those people.
Speaking of people who can fuck right off:
As for the unread mail? All it makes me do is delete all my mail, unread. It becomes something that people poke at you about and it's irritating. Lol October has over 100 unread mail! Check your mail! Why you no read your mail?!
Because fuck yall that's why.
I sincerely hope you get a computer virus that not only burns out your computer but clings to your digital footprint and keeps you from ever MU*ing again.
Because fuck people who have hundreds of unread mail and get pissy with people wondering wtf.
@Thenomain
+finger is +finger. Renaming shit almost never ends well. Remember the threads about why more games didn't use MUFF or whatever it was called? People got actively turned off by unfamiliar command names and syntax even when others kept pointing out it'd do the same shit. We had @mail and then +mail, and then everybody just aliased +mail back to @mail.Many of us type commands by rote by now. If you made it +info, people would just set commands to alias it back to +finger. Which I guess means there's no reason not to, I just don't see much of a point.
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@HelloRaptor said:
@Thenomain
+finger is +finger. Renaming shit almost never ends well.Neither does mis-attributing quotes, mister.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
@HelloRaptor said:
@Thenomain
+finger is +finger. Renaming shit almost never ends well.Neither does mis-attributing quotes, mister.
Oh, whups. That was @Cobaltasaurus and @Rook, I guess. Sorry about that.
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I am also a -1,000,000,000 on &afinger functionality. If you must have this for some godforsaken reason, PLEASE let me globally opt-out of triggering people's afingers. Having to remember to +finger/silent is not a good enough solution in my opinion.
This has caused me to not play people's games before.
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You object to someone knowing you are reading their information?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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