01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 101st comment:
Votes: 0
I should hope that very concern would keep people from tooling around with things rashly as you would describe, which in and of itself is something I consider a virtue of the system. There really isn't a situation in which seeing that kind of thing is a bad thing to me, except as regards personal information, or personally-identifiable information.

Maya/Rudha

edited out the quote since I actually managed to post after the person Im replying to for once
01 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 102nd comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
The same is true of police records, which anyone can actually check on anyone else, and I in fact have to do frequently as pre-hiring screening of employees. Does that mean that I should not consider someone's criminal record because they get locked into that? Of course not, and I don't think you would say so either, however that is what you seem to be implying with your statement.

You are correct that I wouldn't say so either, but then again I think this is a rather different situation that makes comparison tenuous. For starters, the stakes involved with a "MUD criminal" and real-world murder, rape, etc., are extremely different.

Even with police records, it's worth asking how fair it is to permanently brand somebody as a criminal for something they did when young and stupid, even if now they are 40 years older and have learned. (Note: I am neither asserting that it is unfair nor fair; I am merely saying that the answer to this question is not obvious.)

Regarding chrisd's question, I think it's worth noting that presumably the temporary revocation of OLC privileges will also be in the log. That said, the damage can already be done. Even if you immediately catch the inappropriate action and fix it, people can post it without context and get people very upset. "I knew it all along", bla bla bla. If you can handle a problem like that discreetly and internally, might that not be for the better?

Heck, somebody might even make a mistake while learning, without any bad intention. It's not just a question of people necessarily "tooling around with things rashly". Do you want to risk branding this person – who might become a very valuable staff member – as a cheater permanently? Oh, sure, you can say it was just a mistake. But that won't stop certain people from crying bloody murder if they thought they were disadvantaged somehow even momentarily. In other words, what seems like a protective measure can very easily backfire from time to time. Arguably, a backfiring creates far worse consequences than does normal operation; all it takes, sometimes, is a single incident for trust to be basically permanently broken.

The point here is, again, not to assert that the effect is net positive or net negative. I am merely trying to point out that satisfying a person or two does not necessarily mean that the whole thing was a good idea.

Rudha said:
so I'm unsure where you feel the implementation issues could arise.

Nothing is free; that is all I was trying to say. Any system will have bugs or other issues that need to be addressed, even if overall it's not terribly complicated.
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 103rd comment:
Votes: 0
To illustrate how my own (currently non-public, test version) audit system works, its very simple: when you go into an OLC as usual, you can edit any of the fields as normal, and when you reach the final QUIT marker (in programming terms, when you pop the last OLC input handler from the stack), you are given the option to provide a summary of your edits. It then prints a line in ./logs/audit/<date>

An example:

11h51 8/31/10: Maya (admin, immortal, coder, playtester, player, speaker) edited ROOM in_gate@traye. Change size: >1kb. The following fields were affected: Abstract. Summary: "Testing.."

I also save the previous version of that room as room_name.<revision_id> which allows me to revert to any previous revision merely by saving that file's contents onto the current file. I should probably write a command to do that inside the MUD.

I provide this for two reasons: to provide an example of how this kind of revision control and audit system -does- work in practice, and to also highlight that edit summaries for these edits are a tool that can be used for communicative purposes to mitigate things form becoming overly controversial.

If you want a much larger version of a openly available and viewable auditable version control system, take a look at Wikipedia, it's probably the largest and most popular example out there.

Maya/Rudha

edited for clarity
01 Sep, 2010, Runter wrote in the 104th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm not sure that calculating what trust you may lose by a scandal being uncovered is a valid concern. Its better the scandal was not uncovered?

I agree that taking implementation effort into account is valid. But I get the feeling the words between the line for some here is they don't feel comfortable with this info being released.

As a player this would give me faith that the lowest bitter of the staff answers to someone. These more often than not are the culprits of such things. If I believed the admins were of the character to doctor logs for mortal ambitions I'd have a hard time believing they'd spend the time or effort to make such a transparent system.

Also, since we went there earlier. I for one would have more questions about the character of admins rejecting transparency at face value than the ones embracing it. After all, we'd hate a scandal be uncovered. Amiright?

@chris

Yes…that's exactly the kind of thing the system should uncover. If it was truly in good fun there is no need for secrecy. If you were actually doing something wrong in that instance surely you'd know the player in question would be able to tell if and who did something possibly against rules. Indeed there'd be little chance of a coverup at all. Multiple people would likely see the original log first.
01 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 105th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I'm not sure that calculating what trust you may lose by a scandal being uncovered is a valid concern. Its better the scandal was not uncovered?

Is it any more valid to calculate the amount of trust you may gain by providing a system that players have to take on faith anyhow? Both are intangible; therefore it seems inappropriate to me to conclude that potentially convincing a few people necessarily outweighs potentially angering a few others. Which is better/worse? If you can't quantify the downside for methodological reasons, why can you quantify the upside?

The point is not that scandals should be kept under wraps at all costs so it's not necessary to make moral proclamations here. The point is merely that it is not immediately obvious why there is necessarily a net gain.

Again, there are more things that might show up in those logs than scandals; there are perfectly legitimate mistakes that could give the utterly wrong impression even when corrected immediately.
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 106th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
You are correct that I wouldn't say so either, but then again I think this is a rather different situation that makes comparison tenuous. For starters, the stakes involved with a "MUD criminal" and real-world murder, rape, etc., are extremely different.


The concept between both of them is the same: you want it known when you do certain actions of a nature that are considered important. Did you know that it is also recorded whenever a police office stops someone, even if that person is not charged? I suppose this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, however the underlying point is the same: to anyone that looks, I probably look like some sort of repeat traffic offender, because I am almost constantly pulled over because of the fact that the average cop doesn't recognize my disabled permit :P

David Haley said:
Even with police records, it's worth asking how fair it is to permanently brand somebody as a criminal for something they did when young and stupid, even if now they are 40 years older and have learned. (Note: I am neither asserting that it is unfair nor fair; I am merely saying that the answer to this question is not obvious.)


The idea of pardons is something that is relevant here, and it actually bleeds into the example that chrisd brings up. In real life a pardon can be granted for an offense done a certain amount of time ago when it is deemed that you have no risk of re-offending, however that still does not address the fact that people whom know you committed the crime in the first place are going to continue to think as they did about you.

I agree that there are issues in regards to people's reputations being tarnished is not as easy a one to reconcile in some circumstances as I do make it seem - however in the majority of cases well-documented response to well-documented problem generally tends to lead to a different community response than a poorly-documented response to a poorly-documented problem. By the by I'm much happier with contentious arguements over the acceptability of certain administrative actions than I am tin-foil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists prattling on about what I might be doing in a hidden dark corner of the mud. Moreover I would argue furthermore that a community that feels it has a say in decisions that affect them is altogether probably going to be happier than a community that feels powerless and oppressed against a dictatorial regime. Not every such MUD administration has bad intentions in mind with such a manner of doing things, but it is worth keeping in mind that a benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship.

David Haley said:
Heck, somebody might even make a mistake while learning, without any bad intention. It's not just a question of people necessarily "tooling around with things rashly". Do you want to risk branding this person – who might become a very valuable staff member – as a cheater permanently? Oh, sure, you can say it was just a mistake. But that won't stop certain people from crying bloody murder if they thought they were disadvantaged somehow even momentarily. In other words, what seems like a protective measure can very easily backfire from time to time. Arguably, a backfiring creates far worse consequences than does normal operation; all it takes, sometimes, is a single incident for trust to be basically permanently broken.


This is somewhat of a non-issue for my MUD at least - I train people on a non-production, separate iteration of the server so that if they do cock something up it's not going to affect the main, production server - it only seems the reasonable and responsible way to handle it for all involved.

I do recognise that there is a real cost to running things in that there can be a higher rate of burn-out when people's actions are under constant scrutiny. It's why by the by the people I do employ in roles that I don't pay them for running are largely roleplaying roles where they might get the fancy GEMOTE tools and I guess they can REVITALISE people but really the latter is the only open to any abuse at all.

In summary, there are drawbacks that are worth considering but I consider the implementation of such a thing to be a net gain to the mud community; to me quite frankly the people running the mud (myself and a few others) are a secondary concern. We're here, ultimately, to entertain people. We want to do that in an open, honest, and fun way. That's the bottom line. Not everyone approaches MUD administration with the same mindset here, I feel I should qualify the 'we' with, but that's how I look at it.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, Runter wrote in the 107th comment:
Votes: 0
I disagree that its not obviously a net gain. If you want to play the contrived scenario game I can too.

Maybe you handle matters discreetly a number of times over the years and someone disgruntled on the inside tells all. Maybe they even lie a bit. The fact that you decided to cloak it in secrecy makes it all the more believable when you explain that only part of the story is true…the part about keeping abuses under wraps to protect someone good name.

Sorry. I believe if someone does something they are married to it. They may regret it but white washing does no good. Depending on the severity of what they did perhaps they deserve it. Presumably were talking about successful games. Successful games need competent people who won't make these types of mistakes. Again, depending on the severity, they very well may lose the confidence of the players. Let them decide that as they know the facts. People are forgiving when there's genuine apologies. Saying it wasn't that serious or it was just that one time doesn't get it. Indignation deserves what it gets.
01 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 108th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
The concept between both of them is the same: you want it known when you do certain actions of a nature that are considered important.

Well, sure… but that concept is pretty vague and applies to very many things.

Rudha said:
Did you know that it is also recorded whenever a police office stops someone, even if that person is not charged? I suppose this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction

Yes, it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some places, only arrests are recorded.

Rudha said:
to anyone that looks, I probably look like some sort of repeat traffic offender

Doesn't this make a case that putting information out there without context can do harm?

Rudha said:
The idea of pardons is something that is relevant here, and it actually bleeds into the example that chrisd brings up. In real life a pardon can be granted for an offense done a certain amount of time ago when it is deemed that you have no risk of re-offending, however that still does not address the fact that people whom know you committed the crime in the first place are going to continue to think as they did about you.

I'm assuming that by pardon you also mean that the conviction is struck from the record. Of course, we cannot change what people think about the past. But, you can affect how people perceive things in the future.

Rudha said:
however in the majority of cases well-documented response to well-documented problem generally tends to lead to a different community response than a poorly-documented response to a poorly-documented problem.

Well, this statement is true by construction. I think it's safe to assume that the worries people are bringing up have to do with situations were people are not behaving poorly, otherwise the question answers itself, ne? :smile:

Rudha said:
By the by I'm much happier with contentious arguements over the acceptability of certain administrative actions than I am tin-foil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists prattling on about what I might be doing in a hidden dark corner of the mud.

Well, nothing will stop the tin-foil conspiracy theorists anyhow (ok, sure, you have logs, but how do we know they're not filtered, etc.). I don't think they're the interesting demographic to consider.

Rudha said:
Moreover I would argue furthermore that a community that feels it has a say in decisions that affect them is altogether probably going to be happier than a community that feels powerless and oppressed against a dictatorial regime.

Not publishing a full public log of all administrative actions is not the same thing as removing all say from people. You could still give people actually affected by some decision a way of expressing this, perhaps even publicly, and why not, allow full democratic vote or whatever it is you want to do. However, this is different: in this case, only people who actually care about something will talk about it, rather than stuff being there without context to give potentially false impressions.

In other words, it is incorrect to say that not publishing admin action logs removes potential for redress.


@Runter: I think you kind of missed the point of what I said, and I sort of suspect you're writing from your phone and so not fully engaged, so I'm a little disinclined to reply much. The only thing I have to say is that what you describe is not how actually successful games operate.

Let's assume that you're correct and that this is indeed the utterly obviously correct thing to do. Why, then, do games that are, oh, actually successful in the real world with real millions of dollars at stake not do this kind of thing? I suppose you might say that they are in fact pretty dumb and don't see this obvious fact, but in the meantime they're making a lot more money than anybody here, and even if you don't like money as a metric of a game's success, their playerbases are far, far larger…
01 Sep, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 109th comment:
Votes: 0
The point I was trying to make was that an indiscretion which is ultimately insignificant may well lead to a dramastorm in the playerbase that may result in players leaving, staff quitting and the overall quality and reputation of the game going downhill. This isn't a good result for anyone.

The question that I've been trying to pose is simple: if my administration is operating effectively and fairly, what point is there in revealing our every action to the players for scrutiny? Players will probably take things out of context, blow things out of proportion and use the audit logs to attack and vilify the staff, because that's just how some people act. You go through all this trouble so that in the rare case where a member of the administration does something that's actually wrong, they're punished not just by the game's owner but also by the playerbase?

If one staff member acts inappropriately does that have to be revealed to the playerbase through logs? What's wrong with the head administrator dismissing that person, taking full responsibility for their actions and offering a full and unequivocal apology?

It's been said that an administration that actually goes to the trouble of keeping audit logs and making them available to the players is more than likely an administration that will endeavour to do the right thing. If that's the case, then what's the point of making those audit logs publicly available?

EDIT: I'd like to reiterate that I take no issue with MUD admins that decide to release their audit logs - it's obviously their choice to do so and even though I wouldn't do so, I'm not going to say they shouldn't. I'm not the who implied that anyone who doesn't release their audit logs is obviously engaging in unscrupulous behaviour.
01 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 110th comment:
Votes: 0
chrisd said:
It's been said that an administration that actually goes to the trouble of keeping audit logs and making them available to the players is more than likely an administration that will endeavour to do the right thing. If that's the case, then what's the point of making those audit logs publicly available?

Well said. I think you can add furthermore that in the worst case, an administration might put up logs just to doctor them, so really, no matter how you look at it, it's unclear what the big value is here.

There are many games in which players already basically know whether the administration is generally mature, responsible, etc. They will know quickly if the admins mess up, with or without logs.

I guess I'm just really not seeing what all is gained here, and there's potential for loss. If people are already so skeptical that they don't trust you based on your actions that players know about anyhow, what is to say that they will trust you with a log that you provide?

In other words, if there is already a trust issue, why should they trust whatever you provide in your own defense?
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 111th comment:
Votes: 0
I find the statement that not making admin actions public is not the same as not giving people a say to he somewhat fallaciiuz; if I don't know what admins are doing then I cannot contribute to duscussion of their actions in an educated way. Quite frankly though, if someone is so concerned about their perceived reputation that having you admin actions being made public is a negative then more likely than not you lack the maturity required for MUD administration anyways.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, Cratylus wrote in the 112th comment:
Votes: 0
chrisd said:
Cratylus said:
I don't really see what the problem is. If you really think that the admins betray exactly the opposite
of openness by trying to demonstrate openness, there's little I can say that will convince you I am
right about what I am right about.


I don't think I said that, either.


Here you go…

chrisd said:
As a player, if I encountered a game with a live RSS feed of admin command usage, I think something along the lines of, "Why is this necessary? Are the admins here in the habit of abusing their power so they need players to keep an eye on them?"


-Crat
01 Sep, 2010, Cratylus wrote in the 113th comment:
Votes: 0
chrisd said:
EDIT: I'd like to reiterate that I take no issue with MUD admins that decide to release their audit logs - it's obviously their choice to do so and even though I wouldn't do so, I'm not going to say they shouldn't. I'm not the who implied that anyone who doesn't release their audit logs is obviously engaging in unscrupulous behaviour.


Actually you've made it clear that you think it's a bad idea, so I'm not sure why you're pretending
you're not advocating against it.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
01 Sep, 2010, ATT_Turan wrote in the 114th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
I find the statement that not making admin actions public is not the same as not giving people a say to he somewhat fallaciiuz; if I don't know what admins are doing then I cannot contribute to duscussion of their actions in an educated way. Quite frankly though, if someone is so concerned about their perceived reputation that having you admin actions being made public is a negative then more likely than not you lack the maturity required for MUD administration anyways.

Maya/Rudha


What I don't get is: where is this whole concept coming from in the first place? With the exception of professional sports, I can't think of any game where moderator actions are publicly displayed for the sole reason of allowing people to discuss them. Can you show me the RSS feed for World of Warcraft so I can monitor what the GM's are up to? :thinking: I understand that MUD's are often run in a more amateur and tyrranical fashion than professional MMO's, but I just don't see the precedence for a player to expect something like this.

I have nothing against the concept of transparency, but I don't really see how this would be a helpful feature. When are people going to look at this log? Are people going to go look at the admin RSS feed when they die to see if that mob was set to be unbeatably tough for them? Are they going to keep it open in a window next to their game client so they can see immortal commands and try to react if it concerns them? I can only see this feature detracting from the amount of time players are spending playing my game.
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 115th comment:
Votes: 0
Im not sure how "other people don't do this" is a valid arguement for or against anything unless you can provide reasoning as to why they dont.

I think we're getting a little too married to and caught up with one specific way to implement something with the detracting arguements.

Its worth noting that there -are- examples of GM actions being made public to all players. I cant speak to whether it has continued to do so or not, but certain actions in Ultima Online resulted in a message being broadcast to the whole game. Certain MUDs do this with zap commands that everyone knows its been done. Its a less extreme version of something done to the same end.

Either way, its not something that Ive actually heard a compelling arguement against yet. "Admins feelings might get hurt" comes off as frankly childish the summary implies and I gaurantee you that a MUD environment is not as caustic as say, a player run CS server; saying that there isnt prior art demonstrated, even if it was correct - which it isnt - only proves that no one has done it before, in and of itself.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 116th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
chrisd said:
Cratylus said:
I don't really see what the problem is. If you really think that the admins betray exactly the opposite
of openness by trying to demonstrate openness, there's little I can say that will convince you I am
right about what I am right about.


I don't think I said that, either.


Here you go…

chrisd said:
As a player, if I encountered a game with a live RSS feed of admin command usage, I think something along the lines of, "Why is this necessary? Are the admins here in the habit of abusing their power so they need players to keep an eye on them?"


-Crat


Yes, that's my feeling. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but there it is. Is my thinking that wrong, like you suggest? I've never played a game where it's been necessary for the administration to be so transparent. I think it's understandable, then, for me to be a little suspicious about an administration that chooses to volunteer that information. What you see as a friendly demonstration of openness, I see as something else. Who knows, maybe you are right and I'm wrong. I'm not sure correctness applies to feelings, though.

Cratylus said:
Actually you've made it clear that you think it's a bad idea, so I'm not sure why you're pretending
you're not advocating against it.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

I think it's a bad idea. Failing that, I see no point in doing it. Do you want to do it? That's fine. I don't care, and I'm not going to judge you for it - it's your MUD. Compare that attitude to this one:
Runter said:
This type of transparency is good for all except those actually fearful of review.

Runter said:
Hiding staff actions only benefits the crooked.

Runter said:
I'm not sure that calculating what trust you may lose by a scandal being uncovered is a valid concern. Its better the scandal was not uncovered?

Which suggests (though perhaps unintentionally) that anyone who doesn't release their audit logs is engaging in some sort of corrupt behaviour and seeking to cover it up. I have tried to point out that there are situations in which keeping something secret could benefit someone who is not "crooked". I have tried to point out that I, personally, think that there is nothing to gain from releasing audit logs. I have not claimed that those who do are bad MUD admins, and that is what I was clarifying.
01 Sep, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 117th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
"Admins feelings might get hurt"

I haven't been giving this as a reason. If you're reading that in my posts then I apologise for the lack of clarity because that is (as you point out) a childish argument.
01 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 118th comment:
Votes: 0
I believe what Runter is trying to communicate is the question: if you don't have something to hide, then why hide it? Its a valid question.

Maya/Rudha
01 Sep, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 119th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
I believe what Runter is trying to communicate is the question: if you don't have something to hide, then why hide it? Its a valid question.

Maya/Rudha


If you have nothing to show, why show it?
01 Sep, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 120th comment:
Votes: 0
chrisd said:
Rudha said:
I believe what Runter is trying to communicate is the question: if you don't have something to hide, then why hide it? Its a valid question.

Maya/Rudha


If you have nothing to show, why show it?


That is a ridiculously silly retort.

Anyway, if I were going to implement this system, I would make it so that it reports only punitive commands used on players. I don't think there's a whole lot to be gained from displaying, as per the example above, modifications to mobiles.

First of all, it would bridge the IC/OOC gap on a roleplay MUD. Players would see "oh look someone just set a new reset on Clifford the Big Red Dog; let's go kill him and see what the new loot is!" I don't really like that.

Second of all, players could read far too much into the trivial stuff, again, as per the examples above. If the reports are only punitive commands performed on players– well. How do you misinterpret "Oliver has banned Ima Troll"?
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