[MUD-Dev] Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens

[Fred Clift]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Justin Rogers wrote:

> [Question from Dundee]
> > I guess what I'm trying to ask is, What's your objective?
> 
>     Ah, the heart of the matter rears its head.  I guess the largest
> point amounts to publicity and how many problems a certain person
> can cause you.  Lets take Mr. Shade2x for example.  How many
> people would go to TFC after reviewing his site about his actions there.
> He made a very convincing argument that the game was a total flop, yet
> nobody really knows if he was correct or if he was wrong.


I disagree.  After reading Mr Shade2x's writings, my sympathies were much
more for the admins of tfc thanfor him.  In fact, a bit more research on
the mud makes it appear pretty cool.  In fact, I'd rather that admins on
any mud I'm on dont put up with crap from players that think they know
better...  If I dont like a mud, I leave.  

His writings only make me identify him with other people who think they
know how to run my mud better than I do.  If that is the case, then they
should run their own mud and leave me alone.

For me, this is nothing about developing a virtual community, about living
inside the world.  This is about playing a game.  Perhaps I'm in the
minority here.  When I invite my friends over to my house for a party, if
someone is being annoying, they get the boot.  My house, my party, my fun,
and hopefully others have fun too.  If someone interfers with the party I
host, I dont put up with it.  As you can tell, I come from a 'free' mud
background.  We run the mud so that we and our friends, and thier friends,
and anyone else who wanders in can have a great time.  If someone goes out
of their way to annoy us by trying to get us to change, then my response
is 'My way or the hiway".

> don't watch yourself, they are going to change IPs and maybe come back
> for another round.  Or it means that you might ban a rather large ISP, for
> instance all of AOL would be a big loss to your MUD.

Not lately it wouldn't -- dont have any players worth keeping around from
AOL or very few anyway.  Banning a few cable-modem providers right now
would hurt the mud, but it hasn't been necessary.  In general, when people
come back, it is usually quickly obvious that A) they've been here before,
and B) they are being annoying.  ban <blah> and I'm done for another week,
until they get another account.

I'm almost to the point of turning on Character Approval though.  A
character named HugePenis logged in and started spamming public channels
with crude language.  Disconnection didn't help.  Deletion didn't
help.  What did help was deletion and banning his IP for new character
creation.  

Which answers someone elses question I saw earlier.  What kind of
mechanical things can be done instead of a ban, since bans have bad
side-effects?  Well, we can ban particular characters, ban an IP, ban an
IP for new character creation or ban an IP for all but a specific set of
characters etc.

Polite email to us saying, my site is banned for new character creation,
but I'd love to play, will usually result in us creating a character of
the race and class they'd like and then presto, they can play.  Yes, it
takes human intervention, but it's way better than them not getting in at
all.  When a site is banned, a polite note is sent to the user trying to
connect explaining the type of ban and how to get in touch with us if they
want to appeal, etc.

>     The reasons for maintaining a problem character in a limited mode of
> existence in my eyes far outweigh the reasons you would want to ban them
> permanently from your MUD.
> 

But you didn't present any of these reasons.  What reasons do you have for
keeping them around at all?


--
Fred Clift - fred at veriohosting.com -- Remember: If brute 
force doesn't work, you're just not using enough.




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