#d/Conf/boards/centre.c
ob_data (["long.text":"You can set up new notes with the command 'post headline'.
Read a note with 'read #', and remove an old note with
'remove #'.  Edit a note with 'edit #'
","last_location":0,"short":"@@query_short","id":({"board","bulletin board",}),"short.text":"Conference main message board","long":"@@query_long",])
messages ({(["poster":"Pallando","time":727053238,"body":"TMI plan to hold some conferences for admins of muds on internet.
The first will be on User Ethics (see seperate note).

If you would like to help run, or code facilities for, conferences
please post a note here giving further details.
","title":"This board","id":1,]),(["poster":"Pallando","time":729403379,"body":"
		TMI-2 (tmi.iastate.edu 5555) announces

		      A Conference on MU* Ethics

to be held at TMI-2 on Wednesday, February 17th, at 5:00 pm Pacific Standard
Time.

All members of the MU* community are invited to attend and share their
opinions on the topic of standards for user behavior. With regret, due to
the fact that TMI can only handle a finite number of connections, priority
may have to be given to users with a special interest in the subject, such
as users with the authority to represent the players or the administration
of their mud on this issue.  Membership will be limited to 100, so 
registering in advance is important.

The purpose of the conference as a whole is to increase understanding
between admins and players about what standards of behaviour each
expect and are prepared to give, and to exchange information about
the desirability of various possible MU* behaviour policies, their
legal implications, and how well they actually work in practice.
The conference will focus on the following three topics:

1. Rights, Privileges, and Obligations
  Do players possess any rights at all, and if so what are they? Do
administrators incur any obligations by opening a MU*, either under law or
ethically, and if so what are they? Does a player implicitly agree to any
rights/obligations by remaining logged onto a MU*? What restrictions are
places on MU*s by Usenet or by law? We intend this part of the conference
to help clarify people's ideas about what they may expect to exist at all
MU*s and when a MU* player or admin has violated the law or another user's
rights.

2. Privacy and Harrassment
  What privileges are commonly granted to users by MU* admins, and what are
the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? Is a MU* required to guarantee
the privacy of users? If not, is a MU* that does not guarantee privacy
required to state that fact explicitly? Is a MU* administrator required to
enforce some code of acceptable behavior between players on the MU*? If a
MU* does not enforce acceptable behavior, must the MU* explicitly state the
fact that it does not? If it does, must it make the standards of acceptable
behavior on the MU* know to its users? Under what conditions may a MU* admin
make a user's private behavior known to other users, or to the community as a
whole? We intend this part of the conference to help guide new MU* admins
in choosing wise policies to enforce on their MU*s.

3. Code Ownership
   Who controls the code that makes up the MU*? Who has the right to change
it, add to it, or delete it? Are existing MU*s in compliance with existing
intellectual property law? How much imitation of another wizard's work is
acceptable? When does imitation become piracy? When does a wizard give up
control of his code to the MU* administrator? We intend this part of the
conference to clarify people's expectations of code ownership, and help
reduce the incidence of MU*s being destroyed by arguments over code control.

Pre-Conference Submissions and Post-Conference Records

At the Singlenesia ethics conference, many participants felt that too much
time was spent stating positions and not enough time was spent discussing
them. To avoid this problem, TMI-2 is receiving pre-conference submissions
which will be made available to the public. Such submissions may come in
two forms; position statements or proposals for the approval of the
conference. Anyone is welcome to make submissions. Position statements
should clearly address one of the above topics, and should not be longer
than 5000 characters. The best position statements will be selected for
presentation at the conference. Preference will be given to statements
which discuss one issue in detail rather than those which discuss many
issues in little depth. The authors of selected statments will be given
time to present their statements and compare them to others on the same
topic, with general discussion following the presentations.
  Proposals for the approval of the conference will be voted on at the end
of the conference. Any registered attendee will be permitted to vote.
At the end of the conference, a list of all submitted proposals and the
results of the votes on them will be made public. Proposals should not
be longer than 100 words and are subject to the approval of the conveners.
Proposals which are very similar may be combined into a single proposal
with joint authorship, if all authors approve. In addition to the proposals,
logs of the conference will be available to the public at TMI-2.
  Both statements and proposals should be mailed to mud-ethics@cats.ucsc.edu,
and should be clearly labeled in the subject header as either statements or
proposals for the ethics conference.

Schedule of Events:

February 14th: Last day to submit statements and proposals.
February 15th: Accepted statements and proposals made public.
February 17th: (all times Pacific Standard)
  4:30 pm. Pre-conference get together. The basic features of LP MUDs will
be discussed for non-LP attendees.
  4:45 pm. Registration.
  5 pm: Opening statement by conference conveners.
  5:10 pm: Conference moves into meeting rooms, one per topic. Presentations
of position statements.
  5:30 pm: General discussion of topics. Amendments to proposals may be made.
  7:00 pm: Voting on amendments. Final proposals taken to voting room.
  7:15-7:45 pm: Informal discussion of proposals, and voting.
  7:45 pm: Votes tabulated and results announced. Plans made for next
conference, if attendees desire another round.
  8 pm: Conference adjourns.

Facilities

The conference will take place in the TMI-2 conference center. This facility
features four meeting rooms in which discussion will be held. These rooms
have a number of features designed to enhance discussion such as permitting
a single attendee to speak uninterrupted, silencing or ejecting unruly
participants, a built-in clock to time speakers and votes, logging of
meeting proceedings, and echoing to an observation room. The conference
center also features a voting room where users may vote on the proposals
before the conference, a registration room, and a wet bar and discussion
area where people may withdraw for public or private informal chats about
the issues.
  Discussion in each meeting room is controlled by a moderator. Individuals
wishing to serve as moderators are encouraged to volunteer: to do so, send
mail to mud-ethics@cats.ucsc.edu.
  Anyone wishing to inspect the conference center before the meeting and
learn how it works in more detail is invited to do so. Log into TMI at
any time and type \"conf\" in the start room. You will find yourself in the
entrance to the conference center.
  Please feel free to re-post this notice anywhere that non-usenet reading
users from your mud might have access to it.

Conference Conveners:		Douglas Reay     ( Pallando@TMI-2)
				Adam Beeman	 ( Buddha@TMI-2)
				Steve Schmidt	 ( Mobydick@TMI-2)
","title":"Announcing the Conference on MU* Ethics","id":2,]),(["poster":"Pallando","time":735861793,"title":"Announcing a Conference on TMI's future","body":"Recently TMI-2's purpose has mainly been to produce for distribution
a mudlib that utilises the features of the MudOS LPmud driver.

In this period it has also served the MUD community as a whole
(eg running conferences) and the LPmud community in particular
(eg keeping a central intermud list) - something that our 
current location (ccs.northeastern) also does (eg its ftp site).

In the past, TMI has acted as a driver delevopment site, an LPC
teaching site and bug-fixing centre.  It has not so far acted
as a conventional game, as per Nightmare, Genesis and Discworld.

It is time for change again.  Now we have distributed a mudlib,
Buddha and Mobydick are taking this opertunity to move on to
other things (though they will still log in from time to time).
[ NB this means Mobydick is still staying around.  Just being less active.]

Therefore they are holding a conference here at 5pm, this Sunday,
on the role TMI should play in the future.  Anyone from the TMI
community reading this message is welcome to attend.  If you have
views on the subject, it would be a good idea to post them here
before hand, to give others a chance to think about them.
","id":3,]),(["poster":"Pallando","time":735863353,"title":"Re: TMI's future","body":"[ The following is my personal view and in no way official ]

Whatever additional functions we decide to take on (and I have
views on which I would prefer) I think if we did not act as a
backup site for the distribution, collating and spreading bug
fixes, we would be letting down a lot of people who have taken
our distribution in the faith that we would provide support.

I'm sad that Buddha and Mobydick won't be with us much, but I
respect their decision.  They have waited until the distribution
was out and certainly have a right to move on to new things.
(Can we say enhanced BuddhaMUD driver? 8-)   I want to take this
opertunity to thank them on my own behalf for the benefit I've
gained from all their hard work.  They will be missed.
","id":4,]),(["poster":"Forlock","time":736382120,"body":"Ok, here's what I see:

First, I beleive this MUD should go back to informing people on how
to code MUDOS code, since MUDOS is now very powerful and many people
should know how to use it.
Here's how I see us doing it:

First off, we need to drop the individual guilds idea.  THis didn't
really work too well on the old TMI, because it invited politics.
Instead, there should be one central guild, ahd here's how it should work:

Sages:  These are the people who, essentially, are in charge of the
political side of the MUD.  THey keep track of who gets
directories, who gets promotions etc.

Adepts:  there are the people who work on the mudlib and driver, and
generally don't need to be interested in the politics.  Their one
responsibility would be to make sure the MUD is running well
and effeciently. 

Initiates:  these are people who are very good at MUDOS coding,
and are interested in teaching it to others.  They concern
themselves with the lower ranks, answering questions, and setting
up classes if they are so inclined.

Apprentice through seeker: These are the actual builders of the
MUD, and are the ones who are here to learn MUDOS and how things
work.  APprentice would be the most advanced of these, and
seekers would be beginners who hardly know anything.

A test should be set up to decide who should get what position
intially as we attempt to staff up, however after we've gotten
a considerable staff together we should start everyone at seeker
level and go from there.


That's about it I guess, I will be at the conference, if you like
my idea then help me back it up there :)

Forlock
","title":"TMI'S FUTURE","id":5,]),(["poster":"Runn","time":746665595,"title":"New server meeting","body":"The new server meeting will be held in conf room A at 7pm PST
your moderator will be Runn from Perilous Realms. Please come 
with ideas in hand for the new game system. This will be a 
general get together and meet everyone and then a discussion
about the mechanics of the new system. 
Proposed topics include Spell systems, persistance (no resets),
roleplaying and how to encourage it and anything else that comes 
up while we are there that is important.

Thats Sunday 8-29 at 7pm PST
","id":6,]),(["poster":"Mobydick","time":761692935,"body":"There will be a class on coding monsters in conference room A at
4pm EST on Wednesday, Feb. 23.
","title":"Class","id":9,]),(["poster":"Demon","time":773281863,"title":"FOO","body":"This board is too old.
","id":11,]),(["poster":"Edo","time":782289948,"body":"do conferences ever happen here anymore? 
why?

	just nosey 
	edo the pointless :)

","title":"hmm","id":13,]),(["poster":"Flashpower","time":789106130,"title":"WHY!","body":"hello my name is flashpower and i run the mud called frontiers.
scimming through this board i cant help wondering WHAT YEAR THESE
POSTS WHERE MADE! is jan this january 1995 or last january? are there
any confrances here anymore nad if not WHY!? 

well i think someone needs to clean this board.

","id":14,]),(["poster":"Deathknight","time":789117889,"body":"Well, there were a whole bunch of meaningless posts as well, but they
all seem to have been deleted.
And yes, they were all in '94.

Deathknight, one of the contributors to the nonsense postings that were
on this thing...  (:
","title":"Re: Flashpower","id":15,]),(["poster":"Mobydick","time":789150672,"title":"conferences","body":"Wanna have one? On what? Who's gonna talk?

We can easily arrange for people to use the facilities. We have a
preference for conferences to be open to the public but we don't
insist on it. Especially if they're likely to attract enough uses
to lag TMI (ie, 25 or 30) then they should require registration
ahead of time (or maybe be invite-only).

Mail me if you wanna work something out.

Moby

","id":16,]),(["poster":"Hulkster","time":790340905,"body":"go to the north and get a load'a beers down your neck at the bar....
","title":"north","id":17,]),})
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