A General Apology from the Guy Who Was Ashur
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I'm the only good one in a set of triplets. Trufax.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@HelloRaptor said:
I don't like anonymous complaints. As an adjudicator, I want to know who the accuser is. But that does not mean I have any obligation to disclose this to the accused.
I believe this was covered above, but when talking about anonymous complaints we were referring in particular to the person filing them being anonymous to anyone and everyone. i.e. I can put in a complaint 'Ganymede is a pedophile and tried to show me her kiddy porn collection.' and even the staff reading it have no idea who put it in. Which also means that when multiple complaints about the same behavior comes in, staff has no way of seeing that it's the same person making the complaint, which can be problematic if it would otherwise be clear that it's someone just trying to stir up shit for someone else.
I don't care who the accuser is. However what I do care about is accusations having some sort of basis. An anonymous complaint without any verifiable information in it is just a rumour. These can be useful to Staff in that it can make them pay attention to something they wouldn't otherwise be aware of but by themselves they carry no weight as far as accusations go, regardless of how many times they're made.
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I'm torn between keeping complaints anonymous and letting people know who their accusers are.
On the one hand, it protects victims.
On the other, I've been on the receiving end of complaints before and only given some vague 'You did bad stuff, but we can't tell you what because then you'll figure out who complained' reasons for it. I wound up removed from a game over it.
And years later I found out what it was, and it was something I had nothing to do with and was just some jealous girl trying to remove some other girl's RP partners through frivolous sexual harassment complaints.
...I think I just reminded myself why I don't play on MU*s as much as I used to.
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@Admiral said:
And years later I found out what it was, and it was something I had nothing to do with and was just some jealous girl trying to remove some other girl's RP partners through frivolous sexual harassment complaints.
...I think I just reminded myself why I don't play on MU*s as much as I used to.
It happens sometimes that people come up with amazing lies in an attempt to get other people ejected from a game. It works more often then it should just because it's so unexpected and Staff will usually only catch on by the time they try it for the second time on the same game.
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There's the flipside of it, when staff - usually wanting to wash their hands clean off having to pick a side in whatever's happening - ask for 'evidence' before they'll take action.
Evidence, of course, is next to impossible to gather.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said:
There's the flipside of it, when staff - usually wanting to wash their hands clean off having to pick a side in whatever's happening - ask for 'evidence' before they'll take action.
Evidence, of course, is next to impossible to gather.
Well, it depends a lot on what it's about. Players are often more then willing to send logs Staff's way but in most cases the log won't contain what the Player thinks it contains because often the complaint is not about what the other player actually did but rather some 'subtext' or 'hidden agenda'.
There are some MU* players who are a bit obsessive about logging which sometimes comes in handy, we had one case where we as Staff needed to sort out what happened in a scene 6 months prior and one of the players involved actually had the log available!
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@Arkandel said:
There's the flipside of it, when staff - usually wanting to wash their hands clean off having to pick a side in whatever's happening - ask for 'evidence' before they'll take action.
Evidence, of course, is next to impossible to gather.
This is so very, very accurate it gets me in the feels. Yes, yes, log everything and this is much easier to negate somewhat. But you know what? I hate turning into the paranoid person who logs every damn thing. Also, logs can get wiped in computer crashes, et al. Yes, yes, back up your logs every day? See re: paranoia.
I have had this happen to me on Road to Amber at an EPIC level. It just fucking sucks. Bullshit happens, you didn't keep logs because you weren't expecting to be screwed over, and therefore staff will take no action. -
One of my many rules of thumb is that if I ever need to 'keep logs of everything' what I really "need" to do is stop playing that game.
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Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to doctor a log.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin said:
I'm the only good one in a set of triplets. Trufax.
The other two are chaotic evil and true neutral. I mean, really, you should be getting royalties off of so many fantasy books...
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@Coin said:
Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to doctor a log.
Dreaded double post to add:
What 'evidence'? What 'verifiable information'? At the end of the day, you're playing in an anonymous text-based medium where anything and everything can be made to appear as easily as moving your fingers across a keyboard. As Coin pointed out, it's painfully easy to make up whole reams of information, and everyone in this hobby has some experience getting into the mindset of a writer and creating convincing characters. Bottom line is, it comes down to a gut check, nearly every time. Do you believe the information being presented? Have you seen something that makes you think that this is likely a legitimate series of events? If so, then act on it. If not, then do nothing, or take some other action that you feel is necessary if you think that the person providing the complaint is overreacting/full of it/missing information/etc.
What more can you really do and hope to get something concrete and irrefutable?
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@Coin said:
Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to doctor a log.
While it is trivial to doctor a log in most cases, my method of dealing with it so far has been to ask all parties involved if the log is accurate, so far noone has claimed a log is inaccurate. If a situation comes up where someone does claim the log is inaccurate, then you have a situation where Staff have to act one way or another since someone involved is making rather bold lies.
@Derp said:
If so, then act on it. If not, then do nothing, or take some other action that you feel is necessary if you think that the person providing the complaint is overreacting/full of it/missing information/etc.
What more can you really do and hope to get something concrete and irrefutable?
In many cases you'll have a situation where there's nothing concrete to act on presently but there is a legitimate concern that there might be something developing. The best way to approach that is to make a record of current events so that if it comes up again later, especially with a completely different person, you'll know it's a pattern rather then an one-off occurrence. There are a lot of behaviours which are not problematic when done once, but become toxic to the game if repeated.
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@Coin said:
Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to proctor a hog.
I don't know what you teach, but I can't imagine pigs are that easy to teach it to. They are pretty smart, but there are limits.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
In my experience, there tends to be a certain constantly recurring pattern with complainants on games. Or, rather, a certain kind of complainant.
There are definitely people who legitimately do something dumb and have to be talked to because you get a preponderance of logs from more than one unrelated source reflecting this or they're just stupid enough to do it on a channel or in a public area where the staff member sees it themselves.
But I'm not talking about that kind of player. I'm talking about the player who is perpetually tattling on a player or a group of players they've decided is the sole source of every woe on the game, real or imagined. Usually imagined and it usually roots down into a classic case of sour grapes grindy axe because they got outfoxed or outclassed or were socially rejected or not picked for some IC kickball team or some combination of these things (in or out of character) by this player/group.
Asking for logs is a nonstarter because they just don't have them and are working off heresay or the logs they do provide when read by a third party not layering a certain kind of tone in an interaction aren't actually reflective of anything other than the player just not liking the outcome of something. At that point, the error is really more about this case of sour grapes grindy axe that this player has come down with and won't be cured until they use every fit of pique until the object of their scorn is run off the game by staff.
I have a hardline view about that sort of thing in that part of the reason why that kind of person poisons the game atmosphere for as long as they do is because game staff collectively lets them. They don't want to police feelings or social slap fights but in doing so, they empower this player to hold OOC court among other players to rumormonger and witchhunt. The conversation that can avoid this kind of situation probably shouldn't be 'please provide a log'; it really should be 'if you're struggling to just be mildly content with your lot here; maybe this game isn't for you'.
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@Thenomain said:
@Coin said:
Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to proctor a hog.
I don't know what you teach, but I can't imagine pigs are that easy to teach it to. They are pretty smart, but there are limits.
Don't underestimate the anglophone world's desire for English to be the ultimate super language, or the lengths they'll go to to make that the case.
But I have seen some people that I would consider to be absolute pigs have very good grammar, so there's that.
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@VulgarKitten
This is so very, very accurate it gets me in the feels. Yes, yes, log everything and this is much easier to negate somewhat. But you know what? I hate turning into the paranoid person who logs every damn thing. Also, logs can get wiped in computer crashes, et al. Yes, yes, back up your logs every day? See re: paranoia.
One of my many rules of thumb is that if I ever need to 'keep logs of everything' what I really "need" to do is stop playing that game.
The fuck? What kind of arcane programs are you bitches using to MUSH with? It is trivially easy to set up automatic logging. It takes all of a minute, if by a minute I include the rest of setting up a new MUSH world in your client.
The only thing I'm 'paranoid' about is forgetting some shit, losing track of something I said or did that I might want to doublecheck later, etc. I take an extra few seconds when setting up a new world that mostly amounts to copying an old one with a change of address and log file name output, and then don't have to worry about it again. Unless the megabytes of space they use up after years is a concern, I guess.
Every time this comes up people act like logging shit is some onerous task that requires you to go out of your way, or that doing so is obviously a sign of paranoia instead of just what to me seems like some basic, common fucking sense. If you never feel the need for a log and nobody ever asks you for one, wow, you've got a truly miniscule amount of data stored somewhere in your computer. If you do ever feel the need for one, or someone does ask if you happened to log whatever blah blah a couple of months ago, you can dig it up if you feel like it.
It costs you so close to nothing it makes no difference. Not real time or effort, not maintanence, nothing.
Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to doctor a log.
It's pretty trivial to doctor the truth, too, so why even bother talking to people when you're dealing with a complaint? Just go with your gut and don't waste your time with people who could be lying to you.
I've had doctored logs result in me making some really terrible calls. People lying has done the same. That either of these things happen doesn't make logs, or talking to people, absent of value it just means you need to approach both with care.
Also, as @Groth said:
While it is trivial to doctor a log in most cases, my method of dealing with it so far has been to ask all parties involved if the log is accurate
For the record, for your facepalming pleasure @Groth, the primary incident I was referring to above where I later found out I'd been played was because I got logs from everyone concerned (where multiple players were accusing one other player) and ruled based on what appeared to be the accused's log being doctored. It turned out the others involved had all doctored theirs in the same way to make it look like he was up to some shady shit so he'd get banned. People are fucking assholes.
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@HelloRaptor said:
Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to doctor a log.
It's pretty trivial to doctor the truth, too, so why even bother talking to people when you're dealing with a complaint? Just go with your gut and don't waste your time with people who could be lying to you.
I've had doctored logs result in me making some really terrible calls. People lying has done the same. That either of these things happen doesn't make logs, or talking to people, absent of value it just means you need to approach both with care.
No argument there. My point was actually more to call attention to the whole "logs are irrefutable" approach a lot of people take. "Oh, he showed me a log, it must be true" is really common.
