[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[JC Lawrence]

On Wed, 7 Jan 1998 17:19:33 PST8PDT Ola wrote:

> JC Lawrence <claw at under.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>> On Wed, 31 Dec 1997 10:10:05 PST8PDT Ola wrote:

>>> No, that is not what I meant.  What I mean is that humans make
>>> slips.  Some systems make those slips more likely.  That makes "rm
>>> -rf" such a funny and impolite and hated email signature.
>>  To the same extent I can't protect the MUD from nuclear missile
>> strikes, acts of god(s), meteors falling on the server from the
>> heavens, or other forms of less interesting hardware failure, I
>> can't stop the admin from doing silly things at the command line of
>> his machine.  Sure, I can install tight file permissions (ACLs
>> actually),

> *sigh*

> The user, not the admin. It was an example of how "bad" design + a
> slip can have a rather drastic effect. A good design will take slips
> into account.

The problem with this is that you are gueing for the ability to alter
the past.  I'm not fond of revisionism in even its more innocuous
formats.  

As far as human usability is concerned, the player can still attempt
to control the dissemination of that data he doesn't want known.  Its
not guaranteed, but it can be attempted -- he "merely" ensures that he
owns or destroys all the objects that were in the vicinity when that
dreaded deed occurred.  If he can do that, which is not easy, then he
can control the dissemination of the past.

>> Now, if you should happen to want certain data lost, that is a
>> different matter that I don't address.

> But the topic I tried to address.

Gotcha.

I will not deliberately lose data, whether it is wanted to be lost or
not.  Something happened -- it is recorded with no if's and's or
but's.  I will allow and even aggressively encourage users to attempt
to coltrol the dissemination of data, as above and any other
internally-consistant methods I can arrive at, but that is a different
matter from alter the base design to allow data to be excised.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
                                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
----------(*)                        Internet: jc.lawrence at sun.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...