Witcher MUSH Design
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Yeah, it sounds like the same gist of my master log idea. You only check it when you doubt the veracity of player-submitted logs.
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Roz It only allows me to line up timestamps if someone decides to provide logs or at least prove, without a doubt, that there was an interaction in the time frame that someone specifies.
Yeah, to me, the fact that there was an interaction at all rarely seems to be the thing people hear about or experience in regards to player complaints. The real meat of this stuff is in the content of what was said. It just feels to me like a log of timestamped evidence of interaction happening is next to useless, or it would put you in the position of just – your brain trying to extrapolate meaning from it.
@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
To be honest, I did not expect my stance to be so controversial.
You’ll find a lot of recent discussion about this sort of thing here! Which may help to see some opinions written out in more detail about how folks feel about privacy. With that said, this board is only a small section of the hobby, at the end of the day. I think most people will respect this sort of thing as long as it’s displayed loudly on the tin so they can opt out if they have an issue.
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@Istus yeah idk this all sounds very thought policy to me, because what is a problematic word? How are you going to define that, are you going to tell players what words get flagged, etc.? Also it’s a very strong encouragement for creepers to just do their creeping via Discord or other mediums to avoid detection from the logging system.
As for the time stamps… idk any person who independently pulls time stamps into their logs but also why couldn’t I alter the log but keep the time stamps and yeah. This is a problem that doesn’t have a defined answer other than to be responsive to player complaints and do a gut check.
ETA I should probably admit that I have a huge distrust for most people after being burned too many times so I always think of the worst possible scenario and how someone could manipulate the system
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@bear_necessities Off the top of my head, having a list of potentially problematic keywords that get flagged up is easy enough.
I unfortunately really don’t think this is gonna catch anything useful. There’s no real list of keywords that will magically catch this sort of harassment.
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@Roz Thank you for the link! I will dig through it.
@bear_necessities I would not share what words I consider worthy of investigation. Ultimately, I can not control what happens outside of my spaces but I can try to keep what I do own as clean as I can reasonably manage. As you have mentioned, it all boils down to trust and there is nothing I can do to establish that at the outset. These games are dictatorships at the end of the day but I feel that faith can be built through consistency and transparency over time.
I appreciate all of the responses, dissenting or otherwise. Everything is valuable.
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@Istus The worst creeper that I ever reported was over a page that said, essentially, “I bet I can change her mind.”
as previously stated, good day.
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@Istus Just to toss in - with MUSHers using Discord so much - logging everything on the MU* still won’t catch all your problem fish.
Sooooooo much shady shit begins with “what’s your discord handle?”
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@farfalla said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Istus The worst creeper that I ever reported was over a page that said, essentially, “I bet I can change her mind.”
I swear to god I hate it here sometimes.
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@bear_necessities I would not share what words I consider worthy of investigation. Ultimately, I can not control what happens outside of my spaces but I can try to keep what I do own as clean as I can reasonably manage. As you have mentioned, it all boils down to trust and there is nothing I can do to establish that at the outset. These games are dictatorships at the end of the day but I feel that faith can be built through consistency and transparency over time.
I’m half-stealing someone else’s thought here that was brewing in my mind, but. What your responses have made me worry about is the sense that you think you can kind of – code fixes to player disputes, and you just can’t. And you may be building yourself a false sense of security by adding these tools that aren’t at all going to catch the sort of harassment that goes on. Like, if you build tools that don’t solve a problem, but you feel like they’re solving some of the problem, then I think you’re actually less likely to actually catch and fix things.
@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@farfalla @KarmaBum Every system has cases where it will fail. There is always going to be a situation where I will have to make a gut check. I do not think that this means I should completely abandon my desire to minimize possible footholds and catch whoever I can proactively.
I think that “gut check” is not an accurate descriptor of a lot of staff investigation and discipline that goes on. It’s there, certainly, but I think what more happens is “investigation and using personal judgment,” and no matter what, this will be the bulk of your work in staffing player conflict.
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@Istus I think your logging everything will have your players trusting you as staff less. Players already have trouble trusting staff on game. It’s part of why predators can get so far (the majority is because they know how to control the story). Some staff has shown to be pretty abusive with their power to a lot of players over the years.
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
I do not think that this means I should completely abandon my desire to minimize possible footholds and catch whatever I can proactively.
It definitely does not. However, if the proposed solution will turn off a big chunk of players over privacy concerns while providing extremely minimal benefit to avoiding problems, you may wish to reconsider. Or not - that’s the beauty of running your own game.
Having dealt with a wide variety of inter-player problem reports, I agree with others that the mere existence of a conversation is rarely in doubt and defining specific alert keywords nigh-impossible.
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@Roz The only goal is to provide the means to investigate without requiring victims to justify their complaint. I understand that it is impossible to automate the resolution of an issue, and it is impossible to catch all instances of abuse. If it was possible, the YouTubes and Facebooks of the world would have already implemented it.
By ‘gut check’ I mean making a subjective decision on whatever evidence is available.
@icanbeyourmuse I can not avoid distrust from the outset. If I say I am logging everything, some people will assume I will abuse it. If I say I am logging nothing, some people will assume I am lying.
@Faraday I do certainly have the power to bury myself!
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For me personally I would not play a game that logs everything I do, however vague the capture. I’m sure you’re a lovely person but I kind of agree with the other posters here – if details are captured, it’s too invasive. If no details are captured in the log, there’s no point to do it.
@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
If I say I am logging nothing, some people will assume I am lying.
Not sure that’s true? Most games don’t log everything and the player response isn’t, “I think you are logging everything and lying about it.”
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@imstillhere I think you might actually be misinformed about what most mu do or do not log tbh
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Roz The only goal is to provide the means to investigate without requiring victims to justify their complaint. I understand that it is impossible to automate the resolution of an issue, and it is impossible to catch all instances of abuse. If it was possible, the YouTubes and Facebooks of the world would have already implemented it.
If you’re only logging interactions and not full content, though, you won’t have any means to do this. A log of the fact that people interacted isn’t evidence of anything. A list of pinged keywords also isn’t evidence of anything. You’ll still have to talk to people and understand what happened. You’ll still be dealing with player logs.
By ‘gut check’ I mean making a subjective decision on whatever evidence is available.
But that is how player management works. You have to be able to make judgment calls based on the evidence available, and it will always be subjective.
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@hellfrog As in most games ARE logging all content in the way OP describes? I think if that’s the case I am misinformed, yeah, I didn’t realize it is common.
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@imstillhere ‘most’ games (I only know Evennia and that Ares do it) record all input, yes. It just takes someone good at the code to LOOK at them, usually - and I think Ares logs roll off after a period of time.
Now, a gamerunner saying they intend to log everything in a way that is easily accessible to them and that they PLAN to access it is not the norm, I don’t think.
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@hellfrog said in Witcher MUSH Design:
‘most’ games (I only know Evennia and that Ares do it) record all input, yes.
I don’t know enough about the codebase market share to know if Ares & Evennia are the majority yet, but outside of those two codebases, it’s rare for a game to actually log absolutely everything.
Often other codebases can selectively log everything from a particular person, but that requires complaints to come in about that person first.
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@Pavel well evennia is DEF not in any majority lol, but just from vibes I imagine Ares might be
