[MUD-Dev] [RRE]MediaMOO annual birthday symposia: 1/20

[Bruce]

Possibly of interest to some.  Ostensibly at least Raph will be interested
:)

 - Bruce
>
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>Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 20:15:58 -0500 (EST)
>From: "Amy S. Bruckman" <asb at cc.gatech.edu>
>Subject: MediaMOO annual birthday symposia: 1/20
>
>[...]
>
>[Please forward to appropriate lists until 1/20/99]
>
>
>      Please come
>     to the annual online symposia
> in honor of MediaMOO's 6th Birthday
>   At MediaMOO, telnet://mediamoo.cc.gatech.edu:8888
>
>
>Wednesday, January 20th
>1:30 - 2:30 PM ET: MANAGING DEVIANT BEHAVIOR IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES
>2:30 - 3:30 PM ET: THE FUTURE OF MEDIAMOO: AUTOPSY AND REDESIGN
>3:30 - 4:30 PM ET: THE 7TH ANNUAL MEDIAMOO COSTUME BALL
>
>
>
>    MANAGING DEVIANT BEHAVIOR IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES
>
> an online panel discussion featuring
>        Jennifer Glos, Third Age
>       Raph Koster, Ultima Online
> Scott Moore, formerly of WorldsAway
>       Moderator: Amy Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology
>
>1:30 - 2:30 PM ET in the STS Summer Conference Room (@go summer)
>
>An increasing percentage of the general population have had direct
>experience with those pesky individuals who spoil the party.
>Anti-social behavior in online communities ranges from the merely
>annoying to the downright scary.  But who determines what is too
>annoying to tolerate?  And what can community members leaders do about
>it?  Too many community managers are reinventing the wheel; as a
>community, we need to learn from one another's experiences.  In this
>symposium, we have the opportunity to learn from represents of two
>large commercial entertainment communities about what works, what
>doesn't, and what it all means.
>
>
>JENNIFER GLOS
>POSITION STATEMENT
>Every community is unique in its make-up of individuals as well as its
>context and environment, and these factors determine how a community
>should be managed.  Solutions need to be acceptable to both the
>community members themselves as well as the organization or body
>behind the community.  Much like a Mayor of a city has to work with
>her constituents to create a city they want to live in, she also must
>stay within the city budget and answer to her fellow politicans.
>Finding the balance between these two groups is the core challenge of
>managing a community.  And, much like NYC's problems and Toledo,
>Ohio's problems vary, every online community will discover new and
>unique issues.  But by compiling the knowledge and experiences of many
>community managers, we can map out a grid of choices and better
>understand why particular communities respond best to certain
>solutions.
>
>ABOUT JENNIFER GLOS
>Jennifer Glos is currently the Technology Channel Producer at ThirdAge
>Media, an online community website for 45+ users.  Previously, she was
>ThirdAge's Community Director, where she helped to develop the
>community's structure and rules, community-enhancing interactive
>tools, and a team of volunteers to help grow the community and deal
>with community crises.  Previous to ThirdAge, Jennifer worked in
>Kyoto, Japan as an Internet technology consultant, and at Microsoft
>where she worked on interface design for adult novice users.  She
>received her Master's from the MIT Media Lab where she studied the
>convergence of storytelling, identity, and technology.
>
>
>RAPH KOSTER
>POSITION STATEMENT
>As virtual settings develop with greater flexibility and freedom, it
>becomes possible for players to affect each other's virtual lives in a
>multitude of ways that are indirect and not easily trappable in
>code. Traditionally, mud servers of various types put the burden of
>detection of illegal acts and tracking of illegal acts on either the
>code itself, or on mud administrators. This solution is not
>particularly scalable to larger groups of people, nor to more
>flexible environments (wherein it is easily circumvented). A
>preferable solution is finding a way for the populace to police itself
>more effectively by allowing them to track player reputations with the
>aid of coded tools.
>
>ABOUT RAPH KOSTER
>Raph Koster is known in the mud world as Ptah, implementor on
>LegendMUD (http://mud.sig.net, telnet://mud.sig.net:9999), which is
>about to celebrate its fifth anniversary as an award-winning mud themed
>around different time periods and places in Earth's history. However, he
>is probably better known in the commercial software world as "Designer
>Dragon", the lead designer for ORIGIN's highly successful graphical mud
>Ultima Online (http://www.owo.com). Ultima Online recently achieved over
>100,000 paying customers, with peaks of over 20,000 online
>simultaneously. Raph is also an active member of the MUD-Dev list, and
>maintains a page of online game design writings at
>http://mud.sig.net/raph/gaming/.
>
>
>
>SCOTT MOORE
>POSITION STATEMENT
>The environment in which a virtual community exists will encourage or
>discourage degrees of deviant behavior.  Understanding the environment,
>the lay of the land and the type of community which is planned (or
>already exists), will influence what methods are employed for managing
>behavior.  Is a profit expected?  Who pays the maintenance costs, users
>or sponsors?  What does the interface do and allow?  How large is the
>community expected to be?  Answers to these questions along with
>definitions of the purpose, values and goals intended for the community
>will favor a certain mix of methods from social to technical,
>centralized to distributed, authoritative to authoritarian ("show how"
>and "do for") and proactive to reactive.  With the wide varieties of
>communities emerging online, no one solution will fit for all, but
>similar types of communities will gain the greatest benefits from
>similar methods of behavior management.  Large communities will benefit
>from distributed methods; Pay-for-play communities will be under
>pressure of consumer value to adopt quick, cheap authoritarian methods;
>communities with a decided eye toward the long run will favor social
>solutions for social problems.
>
>ABOUT SCOTT MOORE
>Scott Moore is independently providing online community consulting
>after three years as community director for Fujitsu Systems Business
>of America's WorldsAway avatar-based communities. There he gained
>valuable experience in designing and extending virtual worlds both
>physically and socially, being the primary liaison with users,
>handling human issues within the community, selecting and training a
>volunteer community staff as well as designing objects, interfaces and
>localities to promote greater interaction and spur community
>growth. Scott has taught his lessons of community management and the
>essential elements of establishing online communities at Earth To
>Avatars and Stanford University. He uses his experience in both the
>technical and social aspects of online community to educate and advise
>technologists and content providers expanding the realm of
>human-to-human communication.
>
>
>
>      THE FUTURE OF MEDIAMOO: AUTOPSY AND REDESIGN
> A community discussion
>
>2:30-3:30 PM ET in the back room of the Root Lounge (@go Root Lounge)
>
>A lot of MOOs are pretty quiet these days.  There are exceptions:
>LambdaMOO thrives like kudzu.  Diversity University and Tapped In
>grow slowly, buoyed by the relentless enthusiasm of their creators.
>Like many MOOs, MediaMOO at this stage is largely a historical
>artifact--one of the living dead.  Yet the concept of an online
>professional community for media researchers remains intriguing.
>Questions for discussion include:
>
>* When MediaMOO was thriving, what benefits did it bring to its members?
>* Why is MediaMOO so quiet these days?
>* What might a redesigned system look like?
>
>Special appearances by beloved former MediaMOO regulars are rumored.
>
>
>
>3:30-4:30 PM ET in the ballroom (@go Ballroom Foyer)
>
> THE 7TH ANNUAL MEDIAMOO COSTUME BALL
>
>Come catch up with old friends, sign the birthday card, and wear your
>favorite costume.  Order a Metaphysical Pepsi and toast the new year.
>Happy birthday to us!
>
>
>
>
>ABOUT MEDIAMOO:
>
>MediaMOO is a text-based virtual reality environment (or "MUD") designed to
be
>a professional community for media researchers.  People from a wide variety
of
>backgrounds (computer scientists, anthropologists, artists, writing
teachers,
>psychologists, journalists, etc.) come to MediaMOO to meet one another, and
>discuss the future of new media technologies.  MediaMOO opened its virtual
>doors on January 20th, 1993 with the MediaMOO Inaugural Ball.  MediaMOO was
>originally hosted at the MIT Media Lab, and is now at the Georgia Institute
of
>Technology.  MediaMOO is located at telnet://mediamoo.cc.gatech.edu:8888
>
>
>    *** You are invited to apply to become a regular MediaMOO member! ***
>
>
>