10 Jun, 2010, Koron wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I'm pleased to see things have calmed down somewhat, and I hope it's not too soon to resurrect this issue without stoking the flames. To keep things brief, here's what I'd like to see happen from here:

Proposed rules changes should be posted for at least a day before going into effect in order to let the community make suggestions, ask for clarification, or express moral outrage. It likely won't surprise anyone to hear me say that if most people object, the change oughtn't take place. (Perhaps a poll can be used?)

I really don't have any problem with the current verbiage on the rules page. Due to the subjective nature of enforcement, however, it would be nice to have a system in place for the community to know that there is a civil way to overturn a decision (preferably without resulting to name calling) if the vast majority does not agree with it.

I welcome constructive criticism and reserve the right to flame horribly anyone who, by merit of poor netiquette, deserves it. :biggrin:
10 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
If I am remembering correctly, it wasn't that long ago that we were able to collectively overturn some changes. I don't believe it was put in front of us to allow the majority to decide but, I think it should be. I agree with your entire post.
11 Jun, 2010, kiasyn wrote in the 3rd comment:
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How do you define majority though. There are ~800 registered users at the mo.
11 Jun, 2010, Runter wrote in the 4th comment:
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Since we're all about being democratic I guess we need to elect the new site admins.
11 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 5th comment:
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I vote Runter. :P
11 Jun, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Due to the subjective nature of enforcement, however, it would be nice to have a system in place for the community to know that there is a civil way to overturn a decision (preferably without resulting to name calling) if the vast majority does not agree with it.

That's not a bad idea. Maybe we should get a team of 3rd party moderators separate from the admins. That would help with just this kind of issue – let's try it.
11 Jun, 2010, Kline wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
That's not a bad idea. Maybe we should get a team of 3rd party moderators separate from the admins. That would help with just this kind of issue – let's try it.


IMC2 != MudBytes (despite the amazing similarities in who they are run by and what they are hosted on :)
11 Jun, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
How about an electorate of democratically chosen members that propose new rules or remove old rules, with the owners having the right to veto. There'd be a separate juridical branch, with the owners have the right to grand amnesty - for example when I get banned and the owners realize that things just aren't the same without me. And perhaps some kind of constitution could be drafted that requires a 66% or higher community vote to be changed, and I could be in charge to see whether newly proposed rules are in violation of the constitution or not, and when I retire the owners can pick a new supreme judge, though only if the electorate approves - for obvious reasons no approval is needed for the very first supreme judge.
11 Jun, 2010, kiasyn wrote in the 9th comment:
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I vote Koron as grand high arch chairman of the super powerful MUDBytes council
11 Jun, 2010, Koron wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
That's not a bad idea. Maybe we should get a team of 3rd party moderators separate from the admins. That would help with just this kind of issue – let's try it.

Your sarcasm aside, I don't see any problem with expanding the MB mods group to cover IMC terrain if they want to do this. I don't see most of them on there with any degree of regularity (or in some cases, at all–though perhaps some just use different names? This seems unlikely.), so I don't know how much good this would do.
11 Jun, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Since we're all about being democratic I guess we need to elect the new site admins.

I vote for me, on the grounds that absolutely no one else ever would.
11 Jun, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't use IMC2 so I don't know if it's possible, but is there some kind of ignore feature that people can use if someone is being abusive or otherwise objectionable? Admin intervention should only really be necessary when someone is actively trying to disrupt the whole network. I've read the log of the cratban and I still can't see what all the fuss was about or why it was necessary to ban him.

On the subject of moderating IMC2, I don't use the network so it's not something I personally have any interest in doing.
11 Jun, 2010, Runter wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
I don't use IMC2 so I don't know if it's possible, but is there some kind of ignore feature that people can use if someone is being abusive or otherwise objectionable? Admin intervention should only really be necessary when someone is actively trying to disrupt the whole network. I've read the log of the cratban and I still can't see what all the fuss was about or why it was necessary to ban him.

On the subject of moderating IMC2, I don't use the network so it's not something I personally have any interest in doing.


Ignore features aren't a replacement for moderating abuse. It adds insult to injury when people have to do an ignore and suffer fractured conversations. If I were on your mud is this how you would handle a situation where someone is being abusive?
11 Jun, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Ignore features empower people to deal with those they find offensive without having to wait for a moderator to take action. Active moderation takes a lot of time and effort for no reward. Are you volunteering, Runter?
11 Jun, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
I give players an ignore command, and it's fine for blocking spammers, although I agree that it can also fragment conversations.

Personally I think it would be interesting to see more of a freeform channel thing, where any mud can create its own channel - and as channel owner they can choose to make it public or invite-only, and even grant moderator rights to other mud owners if they wish (creating a sort of joint-ownership channel).

In this way, MudBytes could have its own channel and moderate it as it sees fit. But so could everyone else. If you wanted an unmoderated channel you could create it and give nobody else moderation rights. Equally, if a particular mud causes trouble on your channel, you could ban them from it - but they'd still have access to the other channels.

The IMC network admin would then only need to step in in the case of illegal activities.
11 Jun, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Personally I think it would be interesting to see more of a freeform channel thing, where any mud can create its own channel - and as channel owner they can choose to make it public or invite-only, and even grant moderator rights to other mud owners if they wish (creating a sort of joint-ownership channel).

In this way, MudBytes could have its own channel and moderate it as it sees fit. But so could everyone else. If you wanted an unmoderated channel you could create it and give nobody else moderation rights. Equally, if a particular mud causes trouble on your channel, you could ban them from it - but they'd still have access to the other channels.

I think that's a much better way to handle things, but wasn't there some objection to this when it was raised before? I think the other mud chat network thing allows freeform channel creation doesn't it? How does that work out?
11 Jun, 2010, Kayle wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I give players an ignore command, and it's fine for blocking spammers, although I agree that it can also fragment conversations.

Personally I think it would be interesting to see more of a freeform channel thing, where any mud can create its own channel - and as channel owner they can choose to make it public or invite-only, and even grant moderator rights to other mud owners if they wish (creating a sort of joint-ownership channel).

In this way, MudBytes could have its own channel and moderate it as it sees fit. But so could everyone else. If you wanted an unmoderated channel you could create it and give nobody else moderation rights. Equally, if a particular mud causes trouble on your channel, you could ban them from it - but they'd still have access to the other channels.

The IMC network admin would then only need to step in in the case of illegal activities.


I3 supports user created channels, and IMC was founded with the express intention of getting rid of this ability due to their being almost 100 channels on the I3 network it spawned from and only 2-3 channels ever got used. There were several other reasons, but for all of them, you'd have to contact the original founders of IMC.

IMC doesn't need moderated. There's a rather large difference in the atmosphere of IMC since I stepped down as Admin, because I policed the channels, and made sure people were following what the community had agreed on for channel standards. After I stepped down, however, things changed, because that policing ceased, and it became acceptable to do whatever at anytime anyone wanted.
11 Jun, 2010, Runter wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Personally I think it would be interesting to see more of a freeform channel thing, where any mud can create its own channel - and as channel owner they can choose to make it public or invite-only, and even grant moderator rights to other mud owners if they wish (creating a sort of joint-ownership channel).


This is similar to how it's being implemented in the CoralMud intermud network (which I'm developing). Instead, though, to create channels people must host their own node of the server software.

Each node can be connected to by mud , mud client(built in custom talon-like for every node), or by another node. Only nodes can define channels and are responsible for policy/administration of packets for anything under its umbrella. Ultimately the core/command cluster are used by everyone, but they will be 100% unmoderated.


In this example, if mudbytes has their own router on the network and they implement ichat then only people beneath mudbytes in the umbrella will have access to this channel. It's not propagated upwards. Indeed, mudbytes may decide that the unmoderated channel implemented in the core nodes should not exist across their router. Even though this may be the case, mudbytes may choose to not have their node connected to the rest of the network at all. This is fine. There can be multiple networks. If mudbytes did choose to connect it to the main network they could block unmoderated content while still receiving the other facilities that the network allows. Such as information, messages, and mail across the server. Mudbytes could also moderate the unmoderated content in other ways if they chose. They could filter out curse words, gag specific users, etc etc. Ultimately, they just wouldn't have direct moderation control of higher nodes.

Server software will be available in Ruby only. Client software is being developed concurrently in Ruby and integrated into CoralMud. C/C++ client will be available for the first non-preview release and with any luck perhaps packaged in a release or two. Currently I'm using YAML as the data transport, although a JSON parser will be compatible as well. The only object serialization other than primitives will be hash/map for key pairs.

http://github.com/jeffreybasurto/
11 Jun, 2010, Cratylus wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
KaVir said:
Personally I think it would be interesting to see more of a freeform channel thing, where any mud can create its own channel - and as channel owner they can choose to make it public or invite-only, and even grant moderator rights to other mud owners if they wish (creating a sort of joint-ownership channel).

In this way, MudBytes could have its own channel and moderate it as it sees fit. But so could everyone else. If you wanted an unmoderated channel you could create it and give nobody else moderation rights. Equally, if a particular mud causes trouble on your channel, you could ban them from it - but they'd still have access to the other channels.

I think that's a much better way to handle things, but wasn't there some objection to this when it was raised before? I think the other mud chat network thing allows freeform channel creation doesn't it? How does that work out?


It works out pretty well in practice.

Any mud can make a channel it administers. It can be invite-only, or it can be open, or it can be "filtered",
which allows that mud some fine-grained control over what goes over that channel.

You do wind up with 60 to 100 channels, with only a dozen or so being active. I don't think this is
a nuisance, however, and those who do can simply choose to have their mud only list the
channels they think their users find worthwhile by altering their client.

I think KaVir is really on to something there, because IMO the conflicts would be
conveniently resolved if there were multiple channels that were actually used and
their topics enforced. That is part of what I think has kept i3 lively and alive.

IMC2 has a news channel and an icode channel and a game channel, but it for
all practical purposes has only one socializing channel, and I think that's part of
the problem. It's as if MudBytes had only one board, called "General Discussion",
and people kept changing their minds about what is appropriate discussion for
a board on a mud forum.

You'd see confused administration, arbitrary changes, arbitrary enforcement,
confused members, and ultimately an exodus to a site with a more coherent policy
where people don't feel like they're walking on eggshells.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
11 Jun, 2010, Dean wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Koron said:
David Haley said:
That's not a bad idea. Maybe we should get a team of 3rd party moderators separate from the admins. That would help with just this kind of issue – let's try it.

Your sarcasm aside, I don't see any problem with expanding the MB mods group to cover IMC terrain if they want to do this. I don't see most of them on there with any degree of regularity (or in some cases, at all–though perhaps some just use different names? This seems unlikely.), so I don't know how much good this would do.


As far as I know, only myself and Zeno frequent IMC and even then, it's far from regular.
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