[MUD-Dev] Guilds & Politics [was Affecting the World]

[Derrick Jones]

On Mon, 8 Dec 1997, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> As a sidenote. Are there more genuine misunderstandings and bad 
> feelings generated between persons on a mud than in RL "because of the 
> medium" in addition to anonymity. 
> 
> In particular:
> Does the lack of visual perception of the person communicating via text
> cause misinterpretation?
> Does the increased chance of being overheard cause gossip to be more
> rampant?
> Do mistakes in text communication cause more conflict than normal
> would?

Yes, Yes, and Yes.
I'd also like to add that jerks are harder to spot in a virtual
environment, and become much more successful in their art(of annoyance).
For example. body language to me is the singlemost important judge of true
intentions, and its 100% absent in a virtual world (or worse 100%
controlled...).   If someone walks up to me, I can pretty much judge the
content of the following conversation by the way they are handling
themselves (easy to do if you know the person, but it can be done with
practice on most strangers).   You can't tell from tone-of-voice if you're
being lied to on a mud (I was toying around with the notion of a 'detect
lie' spell, but decided that it would be impossible to impliment...)

In short, jerks can easily 'hide' in a virtual environment, and can dupe
their prey much more easily.

Derrick