Best posts made by Browncoat

Hi everyone,

let me introduce myself first, I’m Otrere’s partner in setting up the new Firefly Mush and my admin alt there is Londinium. While Otrere is at work, I want to try and adress the valid concerns here.

It’s basically like Derp says: Admin have always been able to lurk in the dark and watch whatever they wanted. We felt it would be better to say upfront that we MIGHT do this at some point if necessary.

But let me reassure you that it’s really a last resort kind of thing and we most definitely have no interest in watching/reading anyone’s TS scenes or otherwise private scenes.

An example for when we may have to take a look is, if we’ve received several complaints about Player X being a creep who doesn’t take no for an answer when flirting and crosses into stalking territory, constantly crosses other lines and/or doesn’t respect requests to FTB. So if we see Player X with another character in a private room, we may go and take a look to see if these complaints are justified and have to call him/her to order.

But we wouldn’t do it over a single complaint – we’ve both been mushing long enough to know how quickly people like to complain and that often two players have a personal axe to grind. It’s not our job to police THAT. But we also know from experience how one awful player can foul everything for others and we just want to be upfront about the measures we can possibly take.

So here’s an idea:

We could add to our policies, that we will warn Player X once that we’ve received complaints and his/her scenes could be subject to being monitored.
We could also adopt Auspice’s suggestion that this warning contains a note, that the player can request details of the complaint(s) filed against them (withholding names).

We have both played on mushes that created a really paranoid atmosphere because admin could be watching quietly and come down hard on you for any perceived imaginery offense against them.

We DON’T want that kind of atmosphere. We want people to enjoy the mush and feel comfortable. The “monitoring” thing is really just meant as a safeguard to prevent jerks and asshats from… well, being jerks and asshats.

I hope all of that makes sense?

@faraday said in Firefly - Still Flyin':

You just have to weigh whether the "last resort" kind of situation you're describing is worth establishing a policy that's going to chase good people away.

Thank you for your thoughtful response, @faraday and the thought occured to me as well that we'd also invade the other player's privacy in this case.

To be entirely honest here, I personally hadn't expected that this bit of policy would stir so much feeling, because it's been pretty much a given on every mush I've been on that staff might lurk "dark" in scenes. I've only ever RP'ed wth that thought in my mind and would only ever talk about staff in pages or through channels away from the mush. So when we wrote the policy, it just seemed... a normal staff thing to do (and say). But if people think that the line would make people uncomfortable and even chase good players away, I wouldn't mind removing it from the policy.

@Auspice said in Firefly - Still Flyin':

Speaking as someone who has Staffed, I think having some sort of system (even if it's just your own Google Spreadsheet) in place could be important. Because even though it's just the two of you right now...

Yes, it's a good idea. We'd probably have started discussing this when we did actually get a complaint, but it's good to have it ready.

But I feel I should be allowed to RP in private with the reasonable > expectation that it won't be observed.

Yes, I understand that, too and for me it went without saying that this is an entirely reasonable expectation. As a player I've been through some of the most (in-)famous mushes where staff made players' lives hell (not least SerenityMush, but also Firan and Blood of Dragons) with corruption, micro-managing, creating angst, etc. and that's the last thing I ever want to do. I know we can't be "universally loved" by everyone but I've also been on smaller mushes, where staff is greatly liked and respected and that's the kind of environment we want to achieve.

I'll have to run this by Osiris/Otrere to see if we can use the SUSPECT gallery.