[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com>
>> Travis Nixon writes:
>
>> If that's your goal, pray for a miracle, because the fact is that
>> grief players ARE a necessary outcome of an online community.

> As online communities exist today, which is my point.  The formula
> for online interactions can change, and will change over time.  Can
> they be changed such that players will be less inclined to commit
> grief acts?  Or can the online worlds themselves be crafted in a way
> that players will be less inclines to commit grief acts?

No, because the desire to commit Grief activities is entirely
*internal* to the person committing them.  His attraction to your
world is *solely* because that's where he can find people to mess
with, in comparative safety and anonymity.  To prevent grief players
from finding your world attractive, you'd have to do one of four
things:

  1) Eliminate the anonymity: Have a public lookup of names and
  addresses, and map that to character names.

  2) Eliminate the safety: If the above isn't possible, have your own
  assassination squads (actually, lawyers would be adequate, if even
  less humane).

  3) Eliminate the targets: Don't have any players who are involved
  enough in your world that the actions of others can cause them
  grief.

  4) Eliminate the acts: Don't allow *any* potentially negative
  interaction between players (since chat is all that's needed, I
  don't think this would leave much).

>> To claim you can create anything online without attracting at least
>> a few who are there for no other purpose than to cause trouble for
>> others is, er, well...all I can say is pull the blinders off.

> I can deal with a few.  I cannot deal with lots of them.  Just as
> the software bug discussion needed to focus on minimizing bugs, so I
> want to minimize the number of grief players.  Those who don't
> believe they can be limited (and I don't just mean by coersion or
> banning), will never limit them.  Those who believe they might be
> able to be limited have some hope of succeeding.

Coercion and banning, along with where possible limiting their ability
to have a negative impact on the play of others, are the only tools at
hand.  Unless you've got a brilliant solution to one of the four
problems above?  It's a holding action, not a solution, but it works.
It just takes lots of manpower, and causes PR headaches every few
weeks.

>> Life has grief players.  I cannot personally comprehend their
>> motivations, but they exist.  To assume you won't attract any, and
>> therefore to not plan for their existence, is pure folly.

> Let me include a segment of what you quoted from my post:

>> Next, I have to come up with an argument that will convince people
>> that grief players are not a necessary outcome of running an online
>> community.  At least, RAMPANT presence of grief players.

>Emphasis is added.

> And, considering that I'm on the MUD-Dev list, I'll try to qualify
> what RAMPANT means.  It means lots of grief players such that the
> resources of administration of the game are noticeably diverted to
> managing them.

No, "Rampant" would mean the Griefers are completely out of control,
to the point that the administration has given up *trying* to control
them.  Something like the first year of UO.  Significant resources
dedicated to the control of griefers is simply part of the cost of
doing business.

--Dave Rickey

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