Best posts made by surreality

@Thenomain I'm not a fan of some of the auto-approve registration options for wiki, so at some point, since the wiki is required for access to the game... I'm going to need an email.

It is just easier to have people email to request a login, and get the login on game and wiki in one go, and since I need an email anyway, that's the ID to link alts/track whatever as needed per player.

Some stuff is opt-in, yes. Any and all fluff -- freeze alerts, 'this other game would like to use the creature you created, how do you want us to put them in touch with you/you can just tell us to hand it along/etc.' credit/usage requests, etc. These things are all intended as staff-to-player courtesies available exclusively by request of the player, intended to respect their work and contributions and avoid easily avoidable and needless hassles.

Sending somebody their reset password if needed wouldn't be, though. The reason for this is pretty simple... they can't get on the game to ask for it. I mean, I suppose this could be set up somehow on the cron to newpass them again at the end of the temp-ban to something you tell them in the initial temp ban warning/email, but the odds of somebody remembering that, and the hassle involved in setting that up, are a code nightmare. I've asked for code assist on things like this over the years and it's cricketsville, for the most part.

To many people share IPs with roommates/spouses/siblings/family for me to be comfortable banning (even temporarily) by IP these days, as this punishes more than just the offender. @newpass and restrictions on account creation are it, for me. While there's an argument to be made that this is incentive for people in those environments to behave themselves more because more people's fun than just their own is riding on them not doing ban-worthy crap, I'm not keen on the idea of it: if somebody's getting banned for being a dick to (reasonably) innocent parties, being a dick to other innocent parties is not a viable solution to me. A VPN will get someone around an IP block easily anyway, as will a jaunt to the nearest net cafe or wifi-enabled lounge somewhere.

@Aria A fat cat dragon, no less.

@Ghost That's a problem with the overly broad skills in WoD, not a problem with PT.

Is what you're describing it any less ridiculous without PT? Nah, because their pool for Crafts is the same for all of those things with or without PT. Which is already oceans of dumb.

The realization that no matter what comes out of their mouth, some people are gonna lie over and over and over again and let you down.

Bleargh.

My annoyance here is with myself in the end, that there are some people I can't stop giving a damn about despite the reality that they did this shit, are doing this shit, and no matter how many times they say it's going to be different, they're going to continue to do this shit, and I am all too aware of this.

@Paris Players should never be getting someone's email unless the email's owner does one of the following:

• directly gives it to them
• shares it publicly
• grants permission for staff to share it with another individual on a case by case (individual by individual) basis by the player's direct request.

That I'm pretty sure everyone making these arguments has sent in a wiki login request that can be seen by a huge group of staffers, vs. 2 with access to a game's email account, makes this all ring weird to me.

Glaring hypocrisy.

@Paris Burner emails are definitely a good idea. Not a single person has suggested otherwise, or that some core or otherwise personally identifying email should ever be used.

I don't think staff should be the ones setting up someone's burner email for them (as was suggested elsewhere). That's more risky, is technically problematic, and is just going too far to coddle paranoia, IMHO, in ways that actually make it less secure rather than more.

What I'm saying is this: the way most MUXes are set up, that +job is visible to the entire staffcorps. Almost universally, those jobs go to a bucket every single member of staff can read.

This means that info is being made available to, typically, a lot more than two headstaffers only. I'm suggesting that people stop sending their email addresses over +jobs for precisely that reason.

Instead, email headstaff for a login. The email you choose to email from is the info that is used to set up the initial OOC player login on the MUX, (and the initial wiki login in one shot if they want); they get an email in return from staff with their @pcreate info, and one from the wiki (which will show up as being from the same headstaff account as the sender if things are configured to send that way, which is helpful).

There is no other way to get an initial login on the MUX with closed login screen create disabled: you have to contact someone to ask and they need a means of sending you your initial connection info and password. Any and all subsequent logins can be requested without ever having to disclose this information again in a +job from that initial login that goes directly to headstaff. The email address initially used can be re-used as needed by headstaff because it's stored on their initial OOC login on an attribute only visible from the God bit, #1, and not even to other wizards on the game. As in, unless you have access to #1, there is no way you can access this data to use it.

If you are trusting shifty people with access to the God bit on your MUX, you have much bigger problems than email privacy.

@wahoo said in RL Anger:

I'm willing to concede that Square is a weird thing to ask a stranger to use. I don't think that was the heart of this whole argument though.

For me, it is... but that's specifically because I have been through the wringer of what it takes to get one.

Most folks have no idea how it goes. They're so pervasive these days, it could seem like 'oh, anybody can just get one of those just like getting a paypal account' to somebody who hasn't been through it.

@Thenomain Here's the thing, though: certain design decisions mean that providing an email is not opt-in. Namely, it's needed for the wiki and to provide the initial MUX login password (and any resend if the person ends up with a temp ban and gets change-passworded until the ban expires; this is relevant, will mention how/why below). That part isn't, and really can't be, opt-in, so the 'provide an email' thing isn't something I can call 'opt-in' completely. There's bonus 'we hope this is helpful and if people want it they can sign up for it and we'll happily do that extra work for you in an attempt to be helpful' stuff, yeah, that absolutely is opt-in. Just, the over all 'we need an email' isn't.

Re: the temp-ban things mentioned above:

My judgement call on this is to work with @newpassword, rather than an IP ban. IP bans are not as reliable in the days of VPN, and like I mentioned before, can adversely impact innocent third party roomies or spouses, etc. in ways I, personally, consider quite unfair, and would not feel comfortable with.

I have seen good effects come from the use of temp-bans, or 'enforced vacations' if one's feeling euphemistic (I'm usually not feeling euphemistic). A more accurate definition of this, to me, is 'cooldowns' if I had to pick an effective euphemism.

There are long-term temp bans that should be called precisely that for actual abuse, or infractions. Permanent ones if it's bad or repetitive, obviously, or intentional abuse that can be clearly proved in some way.

But! ...even the nicest, most reasonable, most fair-minded people can have the occasional meltdown and asplode. And sometimes they will not stop asploding until someone steps in and contains it. You can come up with some kind of elaborate coded prison cell or something to lock someone up in to sit on the game and fume in silence, but I'm not that code savvy, and I actually think that's less effective than temporarily removing them from the environment entirely, because the environment is, at that time, clearly not the one they should be in, usually for their own sake and that of the others on the game. Cutting someone off to go back to the real world for a while is much more effective; leaving someone to sit connected and non-communicative and stewing tends to only make them hyperfocus on the anger/frustration/etc. Basically, confinement and a sense of helplessness in a restricted online space is not the best way to accomplish a reality check, and most of the time, this is what someone actually needs.

@newpassword and @boot does this the most cleanly, IMHO.

It's possible, I guess, to create some kind of login, similar to a guest, that can potentially only communicate with staff or something, to handle these kinds of 'pop back in to get the return password', or otherwise handle things like this, but that seems like a lot more work than just sending somebody an email with their new password when the cooldown time or temp ban has expired. There are options for this with the cron that are also worth looking at. Still, emailing the new password is the easiest, lowest code-overhead method.

To be fair, if someone specifically claims they are starving and need the money to buy food, then turn down food being bought for them, I'm not going to think they intended to buy food in the first place.

Whether that's cover for some other totally reasonable need or not isn't going to matter at that point.

@ThatGuyThere It's more a case of avoiding the collateral damage, as @Derp mentions.

The real 'no immediate slinkback/return under a new name and keep ranting' is that it's closed create at the login screen.

That means there's an interval of time for the person to not be present in the environment, no matter how short, and even a few minutes to reflect on something can often make a rather enormous difference in someone's behavior.

You're still going to have your share of dedicated douchebags, but it's a pretty useful deterrent for the casual angrypants douchebag.

...while this thread is depressing enough to require some levity, can it please be kept on the rails, y'all?

@HelloProject I think there's a 'chat' thing you can set up on wiki. It's just a generic special page and is for anyone logged in to the wiki to use, not something with a chat per-page at all, but that's one thing people could potentially use as an OOC communication thing that's officialish and would be open to everyone participating in the game to use if they wished.

I looked at it, wondering if would be a useful 'per page' sort of thing that people could use for RP on wiki directly, but it wasn't, sadly, that.

@wahoo Take a look in the mirror, please. Seriously. You talk about how it's demeaning to accept certain kinds of help? That's condescending as fuck. Sorry, but no. You're spitting on good actions by good actors and for all your own good intentions, that's insulting as fuck.

No one here is trying to micromanage someone's food and sneer down at their food choices; they are trying to help in the way someone specifically describes needing help, and you are nit-picking at the helper for not doing it in your preferred manner.

Seriously. This is a 'get the fuck over yourself' moment, goddamn.

People taking shitty attitudes like this turn more people off to giving than any panhandler ever fucking did.

@HelloProject I'm looking at a setup for mediawiki that would let people do something on wiki directly, basically adding comments directly to a log as they go.

I get what you're saying, and realistically I'm fairly sure almost nobody would ever use it, but it might be something that could be potentially useful for odd corner cases, or for folks who can for whatever reason get to a web page from work but not telnet, etc. A lot of folks do RP in gdocs and such, and it would be similar -- just, it would all be public, which is a thing people would have to keep in mind, like... I don't care if they're TSing or anything, but they would have to be aware that, hey, anybody and everybody can read that as it happens, and you may have some popcorn-munching audience members, if you care about that.

I have run into my fair share of creepers in the hobby -- in person and strictly online -- but they are far from the worst.

I've had assholes at the faire just walk right up and grab my chest while they're meandering by, some with sleazy winks or nasty comments before walking off. Rude cleavage comments have been the norm since junior high, so I'm slightly more immune these days. (Being fat these days also helps avoid them.)

My "favorite", though, was a guy I ran into at cons a lot in the 90s. He'd just walk right up to me and say, "I paint fat women naked, I would love to paint you!" and then leer. I wasn't skinny then, but dammit, I was far from fat. To this day I consider him the pinnacle of 'HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ALL THE NOPE FOREVER!'

He wasn't the worst, but damn if he wasn't memorable.

ETA: Creepy painter guy started this when I was 17. I mean. Jesus christ.

Jesus, people. Share with the class, if there are examples.

That the examples exist is not going to make the place that banned the cause of those examples look bad, after all.

@Sunny Of all the posts on this forum I have wanted to upvote 300 times, this one wins out over all of them. ALL OF THEM.

It's not even the calories. What is going in makes a huge difference. Me? Seltzer and a few saltines a day, I will gain weight. Eat a half pound of bacon a day for a week with other high fat no-carb things? I will drop weight like I'm literally pissing it off. (SERIOUSLY body, what the fuck is with that?! There are worse things that could work, sure, but that's expensive as fuck. I clearly have the strict carnivore flaw, which blows for someone who loves a good artisan whole grain bread or sourdough. :|)

@HelloProject The setting I'd be tinkering with, if I un-retire enough to do more than tinker in the most generalized sense, isn't modern day, so most of the mass communications mechanisms just aren't in place. There could arguably be something, like, 'the whale song channel' or something, or 'psychic network', but that's about it.

There is a text message and phone code out there for MUX; while it wouldn't be super helpful with Evennia, it's definitely something to consider.

@RightMeow I say 'I have legal evidence of two birthdays, therefore I reserve the right to celebrate twice' is the appropriate response here.

I mean, fixing it, yes, you should, and yes, that's pretty fucked up, but I say claim the Second Cakeday like a hobbit with Second Breakfast.