[MUD-Dev] Totally OT... (Or is it?) (yes it is ;)

[Adam Wiggins]

[Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad:]
> Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl> wrote:
> >> Reason being, IMHO, that "correct behavior" is such a vauge term, an=
d
> >> depending on the player's culture/country of origin will vary greatl=
y
> >> from player to player.
> >
> >I am sure that it is possible to find something that (almost) everybod=
y
> >can agree on.  However it is practically impossible  for the players t=
o
> >enforce anything.  They have no control over the game, or the way it i=
s
> >working. Only the people who do the coding and the people who make sur=
e
> >it is running can do anything about enforcing things. I think they hav=
e
> >to provide safeguards against admin abuse of private information, but =
I
> >see no way how the players can enforce that.
>=20
> I never expected the majority on the list to agree with me, simply
> because the list is heavly biased.

What you mean to say is that you already knew that many members of the
list had a different view from you.  Saying 'biased' seems to imply
that this view is somehow unreasonable.

> Actually I knew the attitudes in
> advance. I am not going to bring up all the arguments though, because
> that would involve a lot of theory, philosophy and deductions.
> Unfortunatly the attitudes are heavly colored by Taylorism (scientific
> management guy) and the belief that ownership of a system implies a
> right to control the people acting within the system.  Spoke to a
> norwegian friend working in the US today, he confirmed my observation
> (along with american professionals' observation), the attitude is that
> the employer "owns" the employee much more there than over here. (I
> know this is different in some game houses)

This is part of the reason I haven't responded to many of your posts;
nationalistic setiments tend to put me off.  (Certainly this isn't the
first time this list has witnessed heavy amounts of US-bashing, though.)

Anyhow, I scarcely see how the above applies.  The members of this list
are spread far and wide.  The list itself is not based in the US.  The
US members are not in the majority.  How, then, would the attitudes of
those in the US have a significant impact?  I think you're argument here
would hold more credibility if you insulting England for a while, I'm
sure that there's something wrong with the populace there you could
pick apart.

On to the actual argument:

> the employer "owns" the employee much more there than over here. (I
> know this is different in some game houses)

The idea of ownership never enters into the issue that I've ever
seen.  It's like this: the company decides how it wants to run itself,
within the realm of the law.  Its policies are made clear from the outset.
People can choose to work for them, or not.  If their policies suck,
no one will work for them, and they will go out of business.  The result
is that the companies that treat their companies the best get the best
pick of potential employees.  Motorola is an example of this.

This is freedom.  One can run ones business how one likes, within reason.
Employees can choose what businesses they want to work for.  It may
not be the best system, but it is how it works here, and I'm
completely happy with it.  For the same reason, I will run my mud this
way.  If this lack of strictness causes people to leave my mud, then
I will not have any players.

> Anyway, the issue is not what users should or can enforce, but first
> and foremost: What is a good design?

I strongly disagree that putting in code barriers to logging is
'good design'.  First of all - how is this different than just *not*
logging things?  Either way I'm making a conscious choice.  Putting
in a code barrier seems to imply that I'm trying to stop myself from
doing something I really want to do, like a smoker hiding their cigarette=
s.
Secondly, is it important to enforce morals in the code?  I may think
stealing is morally wrong, but I let players do it anyhow.  I may
think deception is also morally wrong, but I don't plan to check the
logs to find out who has been lieing so that I can siteban them.

> Second: exessive logging is
> immoral, in my view, independant of what shade of western culture you
> live in.

In your view.  It's never immoral, in my view, because I just don't
care about it.  As an administrator it's a tool, albient one that
takes a lot of disk space.  Paging through a zillion pages of boring
chatter is not fun to me.  As a player I also don't care one way or
another.  The idea that someone might be watching me doesn't change
my actions.  I feel fully justified in everything I do, all the time.
If this is ever not the case - if I ever find myself questioning my
actions because I'm afraid someone might see - then I think my action
needs to some reconsideration in the first place.
Thus, I will be catering to players like myself.  This is no surprise
to anyone, I'm sure, since this is exactly what we all do.

> The cognitive psychologist Norman calls most people's view of how the
> human mind works for "folk psychology".  "folk psychology" is in the
> best case misleading or incomplete, I am tempted to say: wrong.
>=20
> I guess this along with the natural "it is my system, I don't want to
> be made responsible for what I do with it" is causing the current
> position.

I don't see the application of the first.
As to the second, the view is actually, 'Here it is.  Do what thou
wilt.'  It has nothing to do with responsibility.  You seem to think
there is something about it being a communication system that makes
the owner more responsible.  Okay, I don't agree, but - what is it
that makes them required (morally) to protect privacy, but *not*
required, morally, to try to restrict criminials from using their system
to set up drug deals?  Other than, of course, that these two things
are contridictory.  By the same token, I guess the admin of an FTP
site is not allowed to scan for pirated software on his system, as
he'd be looking into his users private directories?  This is, IMO,
identical.  The owner of the site does, indeed, own the hard drive on
which it resides, and he can do with it as he pleases.  Do you not
agree with this, either?  If an admin finds that his hard drive is
being dominated by a huge directory called "MY_WAR3Z", is it morally
incorrect of him to investigate?  What if he deletes it without looking
at it?  What if he lowers the owners disk quota to the point that the
file gets auto-deleted?  What if he lowers all users' disk quotas
simutaneously?

I could go on, but I think it's clear - it's impossible to administer
something which you are allowed to control due to morallity.

> That aside, it is the owner's (ultimatly "owner of the company")
> responsibility to make sure (enforce) that his system's moral is both
> legal and user friendly.

I don't have any problem with this at all.  However, *I* get to define
are moral and user friendly.  (Legal is normally left up to my
government.)  I believe that command-line interfaces are user-friendly,
so I use them.  I believe that logging is perfectly moral, so I will
feel free to use it whenever I like.

Side note: our system has never had logging, as I can't think of any
clear use for it (I have no desire to admin social issues like harassment=
,
which is what it is mainly useful for), and I don't feel like devoting th=
e
disk space.  However I never thought about it such as the way that
JC has it set up, which makes it actually a gameplay element.  I find
this extremely cool, and obviously would have no problem with playing
on a mud with time-travel.

> I'm not sure what ACM's ethical guidelines
> says, but they are probably too weak to be useful (they are the result
> of a least-common-denominator process)

I see - I'm supposed to conform to someone else's morals with my system?
Perhaps I should publish a set of guidelines which include "no GUIs
allowed!" in order to force people to create the sorts of games that
I like to play?