[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wi

[Jon A. Lambert]

On  7 Aug 98, Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Jul 1998 03:46:36 -5 
> > Jon A Lambert<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> [..]
> > > Nod.  The availability of @gag did not prevent the Mr. Bungle
> > > incident.  Nor would @gag or "squelch" affect third party
> > > observation of such activity.
> > 
> > A thought:
> [..]
> >   As the number of gags increased on a player, the distance
> > propagation of his speech, or of his proxies speech would be decreased
> > proportionally.  Ultimately perhaps he would have to shout to be heard
> > by someone standing immediately beside him.

Nod. hmm.
 
> If you're going to do something like this, why not just let people
> vote to prevent players from speaking at all? Say, if 10% of the
> people on the mud (minimum 10) vote to @gag someone, that person gets
> gagged for the next thirty minutes or until a wizard ungags them. You
> can of course expand this sort of system to handle all the wizard
> functions: @boot probably requires slightly fewer votes than @gag,
> @toadplayer requires a lot of votes, @siteban requires virtual
> unanimity. There's some stuff to work out here about preventing
> multiple votes from the same person and how long the voting period
> should be and so on, but no biggie.  

Some excellent ideas here.  This gives players access to OOC 
mechanisms on a limited basis.  It might be particularly handy for
muds which cannot for various reasons supply 24/7 supervision.
While some of these mechanisms can be abused in certain social 
environments (those that contain high ratios of jerks), I think
use of these mechanisms might also provide a more focused point 
for triggering automated logging.   For instance @gag requests could 
be logged and when these escalate to global levels, more detailed 
logging of activity could be triggered.  This might provide a level
of post-event review to check against abuse.
  
> (If you want, it might be better to do a chit system instead of a
> voting period. You have X chits you can give out. If a person
> accumulates N chits, they get whatever penalty is appropriate. This is
> basically a slightly-more-decentralized version of the voting system.)

I like these ideas, though I'd much rather disguise and hide the 
"voting" aspect.  Yes, this is a form of player voting, but I am 
wary leading players into thinking that anything relating to mud 
administration is democratic.  Changing the aspects of "voting" is 
more politically painful than changing mechanics of @gag.  And all 
@gags are not created equal. :)   A player with game master privilege 
would have more "votes" or weight.  Such mechanisms for OOC 
enforcements may be integrated into in-game thematic constructs. 
(i.e. literal as well as mechanical "toading") 

This also might have implications in enforcement of role-playing in
an immersive RP environment.  How about the @GOP command?
  
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