[MUD-Dev] Community Relations

[Douglas Couch]

At 12:10 AM 1/18/2000 -0500, Jon Lambert wrote:
>Dundee wrote:
>>
>> The player was banned for being insulting to me.  
>>
>
>I understand that these are very common policies throughout the 
>"mudding" universe.
>
>"Thy shall not insult or offend any member of the administration"
>and
>"Thy shall not insult or offend any player"
>
>Note that the former is usually enforced with great enthusiasm, while
>enforcement of the latter is haphazard and oftentimes explicitly 
>non-existent.
>
>Any thoughts as to why this is so?  
>
>Do such policies introduce a "class" system into a muds social
>structure regardless of whether the administration is faceless or not?
>
>Don't such obtuse policies essentially boil down to 
>    "You can be banned at our whim"?
>
>What is it about administration personnel that makes them so much
>more delicate and important when it comes to being insulted or 
>offended?


In the typical US justice system, the law enforcement system have an
immediate solution whereby if someone is 'caught in the act' or there is
sufficient proof of a person's guilt they are jailed temporarily until the
court system can make a final ruling in their case.  

What about giving individual GM's the power of a temporary account lock or
ban with a scheduled 'court date' where depending on the severity of the
crime the player is judged either by another GM or by a group of peers with
a GM arbitrating.  You could also have a system of 'bail' where a player
can pay either his own money or borrow to be allowed to continue to play
until the 'court date'.  If the player doesn't show on his date for some
reason then he is at the mercy of the judge and forfeits his money too.

This takes the majority of the responsibility out of the individual GM's
hands and if a player is demanding an apology you could route it through
some kind of civil suit.  This would either have the effect of a  fair
decision or would bind it all up in a slow bureaucratic system leaving the
player with a sense of no justice done, but no one to blame.  :-)

Doug Couch



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