[MUD-Dev] dealing with foul language

[Kristen L. Koster]

on 4/8/2000 6:13 AM, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:

> "Kristen L. Koster" wrote:
>> "Every newbie is a psychopath."* Socialization (which really is a fancy =
word
>> for a subtler form of peer pressure) is required.
>=20
> (There can be a significant amount of peer pressure in the research
> community without any significant amount of socializing.  I suspect you
> could achieve the same thing with a skill/knowledge oriented MUD
> society, assuming 10 years+ lifespan.)

I don't mean socialization as in "hanging out." I mean socialization as in
"to be socialized." To acquire a sense of the social norms of the
environment.

>> travel makes this possible. In a game with a single official broadcast
>> channel (gossip or chat for example) you may never get sufficient normin=
g.
>> It's an easily observable phenomenon on Usenet, where the rule of thumb =
is
>> that the larger the group, the less polite it is.**
>=20
> In my experience the rec.* and alt.* groups are notoriously bad, but the
> comp.* groups are a lot better. A fairly high volume newsgroups like
> comp.graphics.algorithms does rather well IMO.  One of the problems with
> rec and alt groups is that those that really know a lot avoid them,
> those that know a litte use them, but assume that everybody else are
> clueless idiots.

The norms are clearer in a technically oriented forum, of course. There is =
a
narrowly defined topic, with a high barrier to entry; most participants are
educated; and the process of social norming is accelerated by the clarity o=
f
the topic. Typical problems such as miscommunication, obfuscation,
misdirection, etc, are less likely to occur.

> Create a constructive MUD rather than a
> socialized kill-fest and I think you have a fair chance of creating a
> high quality environment with sustainable growth potential. (Assuming
> that the technical platform is sound)

That completely depends on factors like barrier to entry, focus of the
construction, etc. Plenty of MOOs suffer from huge problems with social
norming, foul language, etc. The more restrictive they are about topic, the
higher technical level required, and the smaller audience they appeal to,
the less problems they have.

> The problem with EA is that they try to (re)invent TV.  TV is generally
> low quality, even when heavily moderated. >;-}

Any fairly small group is going to remain fairly civil, because the
individual correctly perceives that their future welfare within the group
depends on that. Any larger group is going to have to wrestle with the
greater difficulty of establishing social norms. To dismiss the larger
groups as intrinsically being of lower quality is foolish, to my mind; ther=
e
are areas of endeavor (both on the admin AND the players' sides) which
require large groups.

Our perception of "quality" (artistic or otherwise) is often determined by
whether the preoccupations of the piece are those shared by our
subcommunity. Broader forms of entertainment are those which manage to
appeal across subcommunities and therefore touch on social habits and norms
held in common. For example, one sitcom may be about fart jokes and another
about wit, but you can bet that both are probably simple morality plays.
That's because the morality play is what can cut across the different
subgroups within the larger society. Broader forms of entertainment must
seek that lowest common denominator. When they fail to do it engagingly, we
call it pablum; when they succeed, we call it tapping into myth.

>> regardless of whether they are female in RL. I speculated to my design t=
eam
>> the other week that perhaps we should allow only two characters per play=
er,
>> but they had to be one male and one female--my theory is that we'd get a
>> much friendlier world overall.
>=20
> My theory is that gender will be less pronounced, and that the role-play
> environment would suffer. "I'm not a fucking woman, it's just those
> clueless Origin faggots..".  People will no longer have a reason to
> expect a female-presenting character to be a woman?

Nobody expects that NOW. :) However, it's been documented both formally(*)
and anecdotally that people in muds tend to take the presentation at face
value. Anyone who's ever played a female character and gotten hit on twelve
times in an hour on a heavily GoP mud can attest to the fact that even in a=
n
environment that is 95% male in RL, players are wilfully ignorant of the
fact that any given female they proposition is likely to be male. They'd
rather not know, and what that speaks to, I think, is the power gender has
in our everyday interactions.

-Raph

(*) I'd have to go dig up references, but they are out there--there's been
copious study on this topic. Cross-gender roleplaying is an extremely commo=
n
phenomenon--the figure I've seen is as high as 40% of males attempting it.




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