[MUD-Dev] [Meta] chest puffing (fwd)

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Fri, 19 May 2000, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Gr=F8stad wrote:

> foggy smokescreen" domain.  What is great for roleplay and constructed
> drama also leaves a lot of opportunity for harming other people.=20
> Whether it is pretending to be suicidal or ignoring suicidal signs and
> justifying anything as play.  I am personally easily pissed off by
> people pretending to be suicidal, or coming forward with such threats
> and am likely to not deal gracefully with it. (Or rather, I get worked
> up over the anxiety he induce in the rest of the populace just for the
> heck of it). The suicidal-claiming user is really in a win-win
> situation, which is truly annoying. No matter what you do, he will still
> be able to laugh at your expense. (as he gets to objectively define you
> as a soft-hearted moron or a cold-hearted asshole solely based on your
> response)

Just summarily remove the ability of that user to communicate with other
users. That's really my favourite way of dealing with people who are
causing trouble verbally. In Achaea, when that is done, the only evidence
that no other players are hearing what the muted player says is that he's
not getting any responses. It usually takes quite awhile (if at all) for
the muted player to figure out that he's not simply being ignored by
everyone.  And what do you care if he objectively defines you as a
soft-hearted moron, a cold-hearted asshole, or a tepid-hearted three-eyed
frog named Pip? I'm quite sure a number of readers of this list have
defined me as a cold-hearted asshole, but so what? The only reprecussions
could be that I (god forbid) have to actually get a proper job someday and
someone says "We're not hiring him! He's a cold-hearted asshole!". In the
case of a user threatening to commit suicide, there's not even that risk!

=20
> > in something real... and what I felt, and feel, is that following down
> > the road of your paragraph, taking even that fraction of a step in the
> > direction of Jerry Springer, is such a bad idea as to be morally wrong.
>=20
> I don't watch Jerry Springer (is that a talk show?) so I don't quite
> follow.

It's the depths of tv. Basically, he finds the dumbest, most trashy people
he can who hate each other, puts them on tv, and hopes they scream (and
occassionally throw punches) at each other.=20

> When that weird kid suddenly delete all his stuff and yell at you then
> it might not be the best time for smart answers and rejection... Or is
> there some evidence to the contrary?

Best for whom? I'd argue that as an admin, your responsibility (well, I
don't really believe you have a responsibility to the users if you don't
choose to, but let's assume that we're talking about admins who actually
want players here) is to your user-base as a whole. I, personally, am not
willing to let a suicidal user create a "situation" that is completely out
of context within the world, and really do not see it as my problem or my
business what his personal problems are. When I go to the grocery store
for my daily dose of blackberries, I don't expect the checkers to worry
about my problems, and I would certainly not be so rude as to impose my
personal problems upon them.=20

--matt




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