Model Policies?

surreality

a MU*'s culture is shaped way, way, way more by what is actually practiced rather than what is written down in some help file.

I agree with this, but this is precisely why you have to tell people.

I have said the following what feels like a hundred times by now, but all points remain 100% relevant:

Culture varies from game to game. In an RPI, for example, code will prevent you from entering a room and stealing everything inside if you're not supposed to be able to do that. On a MUSH, this would be considered incredibly bad form despite little or no code preventing it. Similarly, one may join any scene freely in some games, while an invitation is required on others and anything else is considered to be barging.

So, yes, you have to tell people. This is going to require some measure of detail. Part of the reason for that is that a good policy document shouldn't just say 'don't <thing>', it should explain -- or provide a link to an explanation of -- why this matters and how ignoring it negatively impacts the game and others on it. Not having any idea how something could be harmful and thinking something is just silly and arbitrary is one of the most common reasons for policy to be ignored, not 'is just a jerk'.

This shit is not automagically intuitive. People don't psychically download it at the login screen.

Re: the social issues factor, this also varies wildly from place to place. Some are PG-13 or no profanity allowed. Some are a free for all. Some games are run by sexists, racists, and anti-semites; we've seen them advertised here on and off. People coming from those environments may be perfectly decent folk -- hell, they may be leaving because they find that distasteful! -- but on such places, 'the line' is skewed so far in a different direction that the 'normal discourse' there is unacceptable elsewhere.

faraday

@gryphter said in Model Policies?:

Policies cover everybody's asses.

I do believe that you need more than JUST a “be excellent” policy, but I don’t think you need a ton of detail either. If your policy files are huge a lot of people won’t read them anyway.

I view it like going to a club or restaurant or even someone’s house. They don’t need to spell out all conceivable ways someone might misbehave badly enough to be shown the door. It’s mostly common sense.

Enforcement doesn’t have to be draconian either. If I see a channel convo going off the rails, or somebody making an inappropriate joke, all it takes to clarify expectations is a polite “let’s not do that guys”. If the behavior is pervasive maybe I’ll make a bbpost and or add it to the policy but it’s overkill to do that for every possible misstep.

gryphter

@faraday Power upvote because I can't agree enough: too much policy might as well be no policy at all, because nobody's going to read it. Balance is important.

Ganymede

@surreality said in Model Policies?:

Culture varies from game to game.

Being able to explain the cultural differences between games is largely an exercise in futility, if we presume that people can have their own understanding of what "being excellent" means even on the same game.

I appreciate players who want guidelines to follow so that they can avoid "trouble," but having an online social faux-pas might as well be added to "death" and "taxes" as an inevitability we all need to be gracious about.

Knowing that everyone is going to make a mistake about something largely means that the overseers of games should act thoughtfully and maturely when confronting a situation. This goes back to what I said about the quality of staff as opposed to the quality of policies. Staffers who are dogmatic and policy-driven have, and will, let egregious things happen because "they were not against the rules." Anecdotally, this happens more often in my experience than incidences of staffers taking harsh, egregious action against a player for something that isn't contrary to some unwritten set of mores that persist across games, which may euphemistically be called "common sense."

I think we all know people here which we trust implicitly and are well-regarded based on their online persona. Most, if not all of us, would play on a game run by Faraday, for example, even if her conduct policy read something like: THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES. And when Admiral, in some other thread, asked who was running a new game, I found this to be the best question a player can ask.

Nothing is magically intuitive, yes, but policies aren't the only or best solution. I think the best solution is to recognize that a player making a faux-pas is a person, that people make mistakes, but that there are certain mistakes that breach common sense and that these mistakes cannot be condoned if you want a player population to remain. And the best way to communicate this sort of policy is to tell players: we will do what we believe to be fair and consistent to the best of our ability to provide a welcoming player community.

surreality

@Ganymede said in Model Policies?:

having an online social faux-pas might as well be added to "death" and "taxes" as an inevitability we all need to be gracious about.

I could not agree more effusively. The reality, though, is that there is a huge hurdle in this community re: expectations, and how people react when someone who legitimately doesn't know better behave as though they surely did and it was all intentional shitty behavior -- the gossip and bitching chain starts, and that player is often screwed.

This is a substantially larger problem, in my view, than the usual sort of offense that triggers the reaction.

Knowing that everyone is going to make a mistake about something largely means that the overseers of games should act thoughtfully and maturely when confronting a situation.

I don't believe that's something for staff alone to shoulder, in part because they can't. Staff can be perfectly reasonable and handle the initial issue without any stress on them, or the player who made the mistake, but the remainder of the playerbase has a role to play here, too: to not be shits about it once the matter has been handled.

I think the best solution is to recognize that a player making a faux-pas is a person, that people make mistakes, but that there are certain mistakes that breach common sense and that these mistakes cannot be condoned if you want a player population to remain. And the best way to communicate this sort of policy is to tell players: we will do what we believe to be fair and consistent to the best of our ability to provide a welcoming player community.

I would put the latter bit thusly, to account for the points raised above: the administration will do what we believe to be fair and consistent to the best of our ability to provide a safe and welcoming player community and expect all participants on the game to behave in the same fashion.

Derp

This is why I actually tend to have two documents: a pure policy document, and then an FAQ about the policies that I hope clarifies the vision and reasoning.

This keeps the policy document (relatively but still not entirely) short, and allows me to point to something else when people ask why we made a certain decision a certain way, and what we're looking for as far as player behavior goes. I do this for House Rules, too. (Really, if I think that at some point I'll be asked more than once to explain the 'why' on something, I have probably thrown it on a website somewhere.)

surreality

@Derp That's a good call.

Whatever a specific policy actually covers is only one of the potential problems.

There's the 'how the playerbase responds to any ruling about the policy and how staff handles it, no matter how fair or reasonable that is', but also:

...how the player staff has to discuss it with handles it.

This is the other gigantic landmine. How many minor issues that require a brief 'heads up' from staff explode into spectacular drama because the player being counseled -- not even punished, but just talked to and asked not to do the thing again -- explodes into a festival of flailing and macrodrama?

This is absolutely one of the worst situations to be faced with as staff -- especially by a good, fair-minded, empathic and decent-human-being staffer.

Seraphim73

@Derp said in Model Policies?:

This is why I actually tend to have two documents: a pure policy document, and then an FAQ about the policies that I hope clarifies the vision and reasoning.

Something that I've found helpful on games is to have a series of Staff Notes that can work like an FAQ, but can also be used to provide information that isn't worthy of its own huge wiki page, but could still be helpful. On an original theme game, this could be the mechanics of how boarding starships work -- it's not going to interest all the players, but it's still good to have available so that players who are interested can all be on the same page. It could also include Staff's philosophy on game running, or how to balance combat for GMs, or FAQ on a particular policy.

surreality

@Seraphim73 said in Model Policies?:

it's not going to interest all the players, but it's still good to have available so that players who are interested can all be on the same page.

I wish I could upvote this a dozen times more.

Often, the 'too much!' issue isn't the issue people assume it is. Reference-as-needed is a thing. If it's needed and it's not there, the problem surpasses someone whining that they feel like they have to read everything first, when that's rarely the case at all.