Zero Population Growth ---------------------- by SamIAm (#41011) [Last edited on Tuesday, March 1, 1994 at 3:24 am] Preamble: LambdaMOO's population has grown beyond the point where the technical and social systems can effectively cope. At the current rate of growth, `environmental' stresses will continue to degrade the quality of life on the MOO. No procedure or criteria is here outlined for selection of applicants. This petition is solely designed to cap the population at near-current levels. New registrations will still occur, as the process of reaping old characters frees places currently occupied by inactive and dormant players. Proposition: This petition establishes a policy of Zero Population Growth, such that the total number of players will be fixed at the number of players registered at LambdaMOO at the moment of passage of this petition by popular vote. Geekspeek Translation: That registration of new players be suspended (with a polite refusal automatically presented to applicants) whenever the expression length(players()) exceeds the value of the same expression at instant of passage of this petition. It is expected that attrition of dormant characters will continue to occur. (End of text.) Message 1: Date: Tue Mar 1 04:27:04 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) I am fully in support of this petition. It is clear that unless we continue to control the use of resources here on LambdaMOO we will experience severe problems in not only our use of the system but also in our community. This is a step in the right direction. -------------------------- Message 2: Date: Tue Mar 1 10:43:04 1994 PST From: Vera (#58578) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Attrition rate What is the current rate at which unused characters become defunct, thereby, under the proposed system, freeing up a spot for a new character? Vera -------------------------- Message 3: Date: Tue Mar 1 11:57:25 1994 PST From: Michele (#50607) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) at the risk of proposing that a nice short petition be longer, i must say that i'd like to see a mechanism for determining who gets the freed slots. otherwise it seems the first few people to @request after a reap would get characters and all those before them would still be out of luck. one possibility would be to have a waiting list. (of course, by the time someone gets to the head of the waiting list, e might not *want* a character anymore, or have the same email address, or... ew, maybe not just a waiting list. :-)) -------------------------- Message 4: Date: Tue Mar 1 11:59:18 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) I believe that it's important to stem the flow sooner, rather than later. I leave it to the community to discover how or if it wants to select new people. I myself am unequal to the task in the time I believe we have available. -------------------------- Message 5: Date: Tue Mar 1 11:59:58 1994 PST From: dr (#7003) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: More info I signed this because I would like to see more information about the current state of new connections and reapings, as well as memory usage and its relation to system lag. I think we will need to hear some on each of these subjects to justify the petition with more than 'gee, I wish there wasn't so much lag when 200 people are logged into the machine at once'. Actually, I've been inpressed, generally, with how LITTLE lag ther is with 200 people on at once, compared to the swapping nightmares of yestermonth. One more thing...do the people allpyng get put on a waiting list if they are negged? And what if someone gets reaped who had been using many more than the initial quota allotment? Shouldn't a few extra people be allowed in if a lot of quota has been freed? -------------------------- Message 6: Date: Tue Mar 1 12:06:33 1994 PST From: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) To: *Wizard-List (#6428), SamIAm (#41011), and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Request for vetting Reply-to: SamIAm (#41011), *Wizard-List (#6428), and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) SamIAm, the author of Petition:ZPG (#57395): `Zero Population Growth', has acquired 10 signatures on his petition and is submitting it to you, the wizards, for vetting. Please look it over and either 1) type `approve #57395' to grant it your mark of approval or 2) type `deny #57395' to refuse such approval and then send mail to *Petition:ZPG explaining your reasons for doing so. Thank you for your attention to this matter. -------------------------- Message 7: Date: Tue Mar 1 13:14:49 1994 PST From: Bakunin (#3553) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: another, related approach I agree there's a population explosion; my perception (not, like, arrived at via vigorous scientific method or anything) is that the server's ability to cope will eventually be outstripped by the multitudes. As dismayed as I am by the inarticulate, circus-like atmosphere here, I'm unwilling, I think, to reduce the rate of new player creation to the attrition-trickle of player reaping. I still believe, somehow, perhaps stupidly, that constant new blood is a good thing, and that it's better to impose limits (if limits are necessary) in the realm of duration and not existence. So, um. I suggest, instead, limiting player connect-time. A simple, week or so long sample of average connect time would probably yield enough information to impose limits that would keep the average on-line population at a reasonable level, since it's on-line population and not permanent population that's really the issue. Not to imply that behavior wouldn't change within a system of limitations. This potential solution is, of course, more easily subverted by secondary and tertiary (et cetera) characters than the solution outlined in Sam's petition. Bak -------------------------- Message 8: Date: Tue Mar 1 14:05:34 1994 PST From: dr (#7003) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Limiting Connect time?!?! Bak, you oobviously have no idea what that would do to a serious addict...not allowed into the MOo when it is running?!?!?! They'd find me dangling from my belt with a laser-printed note tacked to my chest..."I couldn't wait..." Seriously, tho, limiting connect time wouldn't necessarily change the number of people concurrently online, since they could all choose to exercise their two hours time-quota per week at the same time...oh no...the Time Connected Review Board! (TCRB for short, can't wait to figure out how to run the elections...) Bak has a point, tho...it seems like the rate of reapage is too slow to accomodate enough new characters to give people a fair short at an account EVENTUALLY (i.e. say within a year after they apply :) ...what is the rate of player reapage? The rate of applications for accounts? dr -------------------------- Message 9: Date: Tue Mar 1 14:24:44 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Reaping About once a month I do a "reap run". At present we are reaping ordinary characters to five months (though I think a rogue reaper wizard with two letters the same at the end of his five letter name has been known to reap to four months). I reap characters with *no description* to three months. I reap players who have never logged in to three months. I'm not the only one who does reap runs, so I don't know exactly how often they're done, and thus I don't have completely accurate data as to how many characters are reaped. My guess based on the data I have seen and my guess as to how often Gru does it is that we reap approximately one hundred characters per month, perhaps a bit more. Compare that to about fifty new characters per day... --yduJ -------------------------- Message 10: Date: Tue Mar 1 16:28:31 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Who logs in We have 6336 players as of this writing. Of those, 4465 have logged in during the past 30 days. Of those, 2520 are older than 30 days, and 1945 are younger than 30 days. Hm. Maybe this *isn't* such a bad idea after all. I really wish that Sam would propose a mechanism for admitting new players that isn't "the guy who tries right after a reap wins". Should this pass, lambdamoo-registration@xerox.com will be turned into an automaton that sends a reply indicating that LambdaMOO is not accepting new players at this time. That automaton will not be controlled from inside LambdaMOO, and so it will not be able to fluctuate with the rise and fall of the actual length of players(). I dunno. I hate this petition. But I hate the newbies too. --yduJ -------------------------- Message 11: Date: Tue Mar 1 18:05:38 1994 PST From: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) To: SamIAm (#41011), *Wizard-List (#6428), and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Petition vetted Reply-to: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) The wizard Haakon has determined that Petition:ZPG (#57395): `Zero Population Growth' is implementable and has therefore vetted it. -------------------------- Message 12: Date: Tue Mar 1 19:00:45 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Exponential Growth: some of the consequences. Bak, non connected players do, of course, have an impact on server performance: at 50K per $player, the people who registered in the last 30 days consume 972500K, or about 95 Megabytes of core allocation (is that right? Shit! :) Not to mention the eventual core utilisation of the 10 who will eventually learn to program. Core utilisation in this non-diskbased server contributes to lag, I can't prove it, but it seems obvious to me... why else limit $players by size? I would not mind betting that we, as a community, have already written more cheques than the server can cash :) Additionally, one could say: of the non connected players vying for a connection at any high laggage point in the last month, 43.6% are people who have registered within the last 30 days. I fear that LambdaMOO will soon be a victim of its own success, and the publicity it has generated will draw increasing numbers of applicants, at an increasing rate. I remind you of the way exponential growth functions: if we are only half way to exhausting LambdaMOO's resources, and we are doubling online-population once a month, this petition is probably way too late. This petition must be passed, immediately, I believe, if we are to have a chance to evolve a fair and reasonable policy before we drown in our own toxic biproducts. Limits to growth are not a popular measure in a western industrial democracy, huh. :) I would rather put in place a temporary and immediate cap, such as this is, with a view to buying ourselves as a community sufficient time to take effective action, and stop new players from registering, than wait for another month and have to ask ourselves whether we should be reclaiming active $players. -------------------------- Message 13: Date: Tue Mar 1 19:10:37 1994 PST From: Roark (#58112) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: AMENDMENT SUGGESTION: How to choose which people get the characters. Proposed amendment: FURTHER let it be resolved that all guest characters' @request verbs be removed, and that a @register verb be in- stalled which would record the e-mail address of the person using the guest character. The verb would also record the time that each e-mail addressee is logged on (duration) Guests will be booted after ten minutes of idle time, to free up their use for other players, as well as to make sure that nobody falsifies actual logged hours. Guest hours may not be logged by two guests concurrently. The e-mail address information will be tallied at the end of each reap session, and the users who log in most as guests will be awarded the characters. Guests will be informed about this verb ONLY when they request a character from the automaton. Roark (Pork) -------------------------- Message 14: Date: Tue Mar 1 19:26:45 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) A draft of a waitlist mechanism petition is provided in *P:Waitlist, #36908. Please read and comment there or here. I believe it is important to keep this particular ZPG petition simple (KISS) and streamlined, due to its importance. -------------------------- Message 15: Date: Tue Mar 1 20:21:12 1994 PST From: Euphistopheles (#50222) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: active players 1. We have indeed written more checks than we can cover; 4000+ users times 50K+ quota > 200MB, so if all existing players built stuff with their quota, we would exceed the 100 +/- MB RAM currently installed. 2. ZPG would not stop the increase of *active* players; as inactive players are reaped, the fraction of active players would go up (assuming active players rarely quit; whatever fraction of new members becomes active, will stay, so fewer get reaped, etc) 3. As the number of active players increases, lag and refused access will become more frequent, discouraging activity. So we already have a crude, unpleasant natural mechanism for restricting the number of *active* players. In the long run the other MOOs will grow and pick up the slack; perhaps simply providing 'help MOOs' for people to peruse during laggy times, would be enough. All in all, I don't believe the problem is so urgent, or the proposed solution so helpful; but I don't oppose it. We indeed have a problem. yoof (correcting, 6361 players now, yeah) -------------------------- Message 17: Date: Tue Mar 1 20:43:46 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: quick correction Unused players cost about 1600 bytes each. The 50K figured mentioned by SamIAm is complete hogwash: unused quota is *unused* and has no impact on current server performance. There is only an impact if that quota is actually put into use (e.g. via quota transfer or by the character becoming active and creating objects). -------------------------- Message 18: Date: Tue Mar 1 20:46:29 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Hogwash? I said quota allocation. I see no reason to plan for best case outcomes. I think it's not unreasonable to halve that figure over the long run, and this will, indeed impact performance. We're dealing in projections. Best-case analytic optimism as yduJ thinks appropriate is what landed us in this stew. -------------------------- Message 20: Date: Tue Mar 1 20:56:08 1994 PST From: legba (#26603) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Yes, but... I essentially support this petition because I agree that Lambda has become close to uninhabitable. However, I've seen too much damage done by 'simple' petitions that in practice cause bigger messes than they purport to solve--the fiasco of the first ARB election being the most ready example. I am strongly against passing a measure not fully thought out just because its drafting is 'simple' or its implementation 'necessary,' and I think that the practicalities of this one haven't been fully thought out, and I would not vote for it until they had. Nancy's proposed companion petition is a good suggestion toward practical implementation, but because it's a separate entity, it might not necessarily do this one a lot of good. I don't think it's a great idea to have a whole string of accompanying petitions that all need to be separately passed in order to have a functional, practical solution. I'd support this one fully _if_ it included a functional waitlist mechanism in its body and if we knew for sure how many players per month approximately reaping might free up. I tend to agree with Bak that new blood is part of what makes this place fun (I'm just sick of wallowing in it). I _don't_ agree that current players should have their MOO-time restricted just to accomodate waves and waves of newbies. -------------------------- Message 21: Date: Tue Mar 1 20:57:30 1994 PST From: Khym (#60233) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: points Well, I have a few points 1) I think that the 6000+ players registered as of now is too much, I wonder if we could consider capping the number of registered players allowed to 75% or so of that number 2) mebe we need to have a builder class and a programmer class, as on some moos, the builder class being only 20K or so quota. and mebe the qualifications for a prog bit should include having been on line for 2 months or so. 2) I think that we should work hard on getting better network connections to other MOOs, and that we should advertize other MOOs address, at least such moos where the socializing component (the IRC alternative SOOO many new mooers are looking for) is encouraged... try and download some of our population to the emptier moos (tho i think we should consult them before we put their names up on bill boards! :) ) The point is that a lot of the time lag is too high for the moo to be interesting for many or useful for those who want more then talking in the living room. And this seems to be a good way to make sure that Lambda doesn't drown in new people every time Wired or Time even write an article. Na Khym Nef Mahn (khymie to 'es friends) -------------------------- Message 22: Date: Tue Mar 1 21:04:53 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Simplicity, or Elegance? While I understand that some simple petitions could cause more problems than they solve, I don't see any argument that the passage of this petition will have that outcome. I would prefer to put this stopgap in place to buy us time to come up with a policy, believing that a 90% solution will suffice, and that any problems caused by the missing 10% will spur on development of a comprehensive policy we can all live with. Consider that, except for the fact that players need some time served to vote, already 50% of the polity would be less than 30 days old. By the time this petition passes, fully 2/3rd of the polity will be newbies. -------------------------- Message 23: Date: Tue Mar 1 21:10:52 1994 PST From: Agincourt (#57956) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Discussion of Roark's proposed ammendment: msg #13 I've been reading the mail here, and have another suggestion along the lines of Roark's ammendmant. Using some sort of @register verb, the e-mail address of a guest can be determined, and the amount of time that that par- ticular guest is active is recorded... Ok. Perhaps this idea can be coupled with Nancy's waitlist petition. Would it be possible to set another classification of players? I am thinking along the lines of a probationary player class. This new class would have basically the same capabilities as standard guests. However, give them the same name everytime they log on; something like *user-id*_guest. Where the *user-id* is supplied by the @register verb. Those players on the waitlist would be the members of this probationary class. I see this as being beneficial for several reasons. First, these pro- bationary MOOers would be able to interact socially, and learn about the MOO in a more normal atmosphere. Because they have a specific identity each time that they log on, they hopefully wouldn't be subjected to abuse that some guests receive, and in turn would behave more responsibly. The limitation would be that they have no quota. These probationary characters shouldn't take up much more memory than the waitlist itself. And as far as choosing which of these probationary characters "makes it" and gets a real account, Roark's suggestion seems reasonable to me. Being relatively inexperienced, I am not sure that this idea is feasible, please post a message here, letting me know. Thanks. Agincourt -------------------------- Message 24: Date: Tue Mar 1 21:34:43 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: unused quota Better include the 100mb allocated to Grand_Master and Susa then too... --yduJ -------------------------- Message 25: Date: Tue Mar 1 21:52:25 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: email addresses It is not possible to verify an email address other than by sending mail to it and having the user do something on the basis of that mail. That's how we do character requests now---you @request, you sit back, you get mail, you can login cuz the password was in the mail. But there isn't any way to do it other than that---all we get is the site, and some of those sites are telnet servers that don't have computers with real accounts attached where even if there *were* some sort of protocol that got us an account name, there wouldn't *be* an account name to *get*. Anyway, forget anything that involves email account verification; we'd have to store enough data about the user that we may as well just *make more users*. --yduJ -------------------------- Message 26: Date: Tue Mar 1 22:13:58 1994 PST From: quixitachl (#64541) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: reaping what ye sow Well, my best suggestion with regards to the population growth problem is to reap players at the end of one month of inactiveness. I had suggested in private email to SamIAm that if someone knew they were going to be inactive for a period longer than the 'reap period', they should contact the reaper (don't fear the reaper) to let them know of the extended absence. The idea of a probabtionary player class actually complements this idea rather well.... because if a probationary character went inactive for a period of a month, it wouldn't be unreasonable for the character to disappear. After a 2-month probationary period (that was the figure tossed about, wasn't it?), then maybe the 'reap period' could be extended. My own character isn't all that old, but I held the same character over a year and a half ago, and it's actually kind of sad to see just how far downhill the general tone of the MOO has gone due to the population explosion. Hopefully a population cap coupled with an expeditious way for interested newbies to get ahold of a character and join the fun (preferably in an intelligent manner ;-) will help to make Lambda an enjoyable experience again, both for the Olde Guarde and new blood. quix -------------------------- Message 27: Date: Tue Mar 1 22:19:34 1994 PST From: Gru (#122) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: reaping Froxx does a reap whenever he notices that $recycler.contents is empty, and reaps anyone disconnected more than 4 months. The frequency is random. Rogue, harumph. -------------------------- Message 28: Date: Wed Mar 2 05:30:29 1994 PST From: Whyse (#52778) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: How to allocate new users? I am concerned that Lambda would stagnate if not for the supply of new users. While maybe 90% of the new users do not contribute anything worthwhile to Lambda, losing the 10% that do may have a major impact. I have signed the petition because I agree that something needs to be done to slow the explosive growth of the system - at least until the technology catches up. I would, at this stage, suggest that we simply stop issuing new accounts until we can resolve this problem. An interim measure may be to only issue accounts by recomendation from an existing user. I do not feel that increasing the reap rate is helpful - I have had unexpected account problems that have left me unable to contact internet sites for about a month. Regards... -------------------------- Message 29: Date: Wed Mar 2 07:39:58 1994 PST From: Klaatu (#57052) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: enter Does anyone have any information about the rate of growth of the population over a long period of time? Has the rate increased dramatically recently, or has it been slowly but steadily accelerating? I'm wondering whether we're experiencing a momentary burst of growth, caused by recent publicity. If so, the growth rate may fall back to a more manageable level soon. On the other hand, if the rate has been accelerating steadily, then we really do need to take steps to control it. Instead of making it impossible to register new characters, another approach might be to make it more difficult or time-consuming. We could make new applicants wait a mandatory period of time before being granted a character, and point them to other MOOs they could use in the interim. If publicity is the cause of the growth problem, maybe our media personalities need to put out the word that LambdaMOO is becoming too crowded--maybe some discouraging publicity would be helpful. I'm grasping here, I guess. I'm very reluctant to support a cap on the population, especially without more information. --Klaatu -------------------------- Message 30: Date: Wed Mar 2 10:25:19 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Second characters I think this petition is too implementationally specific in that the geekspeek translation specifically refers to length(players()) and implicitly prohibits second character creations, even though traditionally second characters come out of primary character quota, and do not consume additional resources. This isn't fatal, of course, since I expect that if this petition passes, a follow-up petition to clear up loose ends like that would not be hard to write. But if a second generation of this petition is done, it should deal with issues like that. -------------------------- Message 31: Date: Wed Mar 2 11:39:30 1994 PST From: X'iina (#58335) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: In support I believe this is very much an issue whose time has come. The quality of life here has steadily deteriorated since I arrived seven months ago. Aside from the problem of database overload, we are facing undeniable social stresses due to the influx of new people. There's a vicious cycle at work: older users aren't frequenting the public spaces as much as they used to, presumably because of the level of immaturity they encounter there. But then newbies don't get the benefit of their experience, and perhaps never will be properly acculturated. Let's get this passed and regroup as a community, *then* worry about how to accomodate newcomers. X'iina -------------------------- Message 32: Date: Wed Mar 2 20:14:10 1994 PST From: APHiD (#33119) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Secondary Characters This petition addresses a very real concern regarding the amount of available DB space but I think the length(players()) check is oversimplified. Secondary characters, in my opinion, should not count against the total allowed number of existing players since secondary characters don't take up additional space (being counted against the primary character's quota). They also don't take up extra connections since people usually only use one connection at a time unless they're testing something which only requires a brief connection anyway. I'd like to see the references to players be rephrased to clearly state that groups of secondary characters only count as a single player, perhaps by using the term "user" instead of "player" and including a definition of "user" defining it as refering to a single RL user or something along those lines. Also, the "length(players())" reference in the "Geekspeak" section could be changed to "the length of the list of all objects within players() for which $local.second_char_registry:is_primary_char(player) is true". It might also be good to include a pointer to not count the utility characters such as Hacker and Housekeeper against this total. -------------------------- Message 33: Date: Wed Mar 2 20:22:07 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: The intended structure of the petition There is a convention in legislation that the preamble and any postamble to legislation do not form essential parts of it. I consider the geekspeak to be advisory, serving to resolve any possible ambiguities in the main proposal, but in every way subsidiary to it. I don't believe anyone has signed *p:ZPG for the GeekSpeak, and would advise anyone who has relied upon the GeekSpeak to reconsider their signature in the light of this legislative convention. In short, it would be consistent, IMO, for the wizards to ignore the GeekSpeak. I'm not going to redraft, though. -------------------------- Message 34: Date: Wed Mar 2 20:25:25 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Keep It Simple, SamIAm!! Let's not split hairs. The last few days of unbearable lag have clearly shown that LambdaMOO is already *way* overloaded. The utility and second characters in place will be counted in the total number when the population cap is set. What's the point of complicating this simple and elegant petition? There is no clear advantage, and many disadvantages. -------------------------- Message 35: Date: Thu Mar 3 07:22:53 1994 PST From: Dred (#49925) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Re: The intended structure of the petition > From: SamIAm (#41011) > > There is a convention in legislation that the preamble and any > postamble to legislation do not form essential parts of it. I > consider the geekspeak to be advisory, serving to resolve any > possible ambiguities in the main proposal, but in every way > subsidiary to it. I don't believe anyone has signed *p:ZPG for As has been apparent in many of the passed ballots, what you -intend- in the petition is usually not perfectly consistent with how the implementing wizard -interprets- the petition. The wording of the petition is very important. Your explicit `length(players())' very clearly defines an implementation interpretation that they will have to use. While that is in there, there is no room for them to exclude second characters, as far as I can see. Just remember the `party' interpretation and intent of *B:Arbitration. Or Moriah's *B:Time where there ended up being a loophole due to wording.. Dred -------------------------- Message 36: Date: Thu Mar 3 11:21:57 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Information, not Restricting Newbies (IRN) Hello there, If you don't like the Zero Growth Petition so much, or if you are just looking for other options and other opinions, please also read #37152! And post on its discussion group: *p:IRN! (and if you like #37152, you're very welcome to sign it too!) Thanks for your attention, Individual -------------------------- Message 37: Date: Thu Mar 3 19:35:59 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:WaitList (#36908) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: The petition establishing an equal-opportunity, first-come, first-served * The petition establishing an equal-opportunity, first-come first-served mechanism for registering characters in the event that population limits are set has been revised and is ready for commentary. Please read *P:Waitlist and comment on #36908. -------------------------- Message 38: Date: Sat Mar 5 04:21:20 1994 PST From: AEnigma (#21135) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Newbies vs the world? I although I recognize the problem existing here, I don't feel that I can support this petition. I would much rather see something that makes @requesting a character more of a challenge. I like the idea of probationary characters, I'm also tempted by the idea of a registration sheet that new characters have to fill out. The mere act of doing this will deter some users. It doesn't have to be anything difficult, and it doesn't need to be anything that the registrar would have to read, necessarily. Mostly something to help slow down the new arrivals. Also, more reaping could help. I forget what yduJ said the reap rate for non-desc'ed characters was (3 months?), but I think that should be much quicker... There's no excuse for not describing your character. As far as attitudes toward newbies go, it is unfair to generalize them as they have been. Everyone was young once... Which is to say that if everyone here had been treated cruelly as a new character, we might not have had the sort of cool things and fine coding that *do* exist around Lambda. Perhaps we need some sort of moderators to patrol popular social areas, preventing unwarranted spamming, rudeness, etc. I'm opposed to censorship, but the difference between saying discussing sex and demanding sex is a big one. Plus, preventing someone from getting a character is even more prohibitive. -AE -------------------------- Message 39: Date: Sat Mar 5 05:29:38 1994 PST From: AEnigma (#21135) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Sigh. After some discussion about the petition, and after hearing some figures, I have signed this. I still hold by my original statments, though. -AE -------------------------- Message 40: Date: Sat Mar 5 07:59:31 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: The portion of the dbase occupied by players There has been an inordinate amount of time and effort invested in controlling the size of the database by limiting the per-player quota allocation to 50K per person (plus additional quota as authorized by action of the Architecture Review Board). However, this addresses only one variable in the equation: (Portion of dbase occupied by players) = (individual quota allocation) * (number of individuals) Until we control both of those variables on the right side of the equation, we can exercise NO control over the size and growth of the database. It is simple math. Please sign this petition, and vote YES when it comes up as a ballot. We cannot control our own destinies in LambdaMOO without it. -------------------------- Message 41: Date: Sat Mar 5 11:58:52 1994 PST From: AcidHorse (#6924) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: ummmmmmmmmm note that the formula given in the above message isn't strictly correct. it represents a worst-case situation that in all likelihood would never occur: the case where every player uses ALL of eir quota. while this is, perhaps, interesting in a theoretic sense, it's not really true in any practical sense. the practice of "overbooking" quota is common in systems administration (and in everyday life, in fact); you allocate more quota than you actually have physical space, and presume that not everyone will use 100% of the resources they are allotted 100% of the time. in reality, the equation is: percent of db space occupied by players = number of players * average storage occupied by a player in fact, this has some interesting repercussions, most notably that you CAN control the size of the db by a combination of strict controls on quota, aggressive reaping, and a program of educating users on the impact of unrestrained space usage. a player who has done little or no customization on eirself, owns few customized objects, and has little mail occupies very little db space. in fact, the basic player occupies only a few bytes (for non-clear properties like name, email address, and so on, along with a little overhead for the object itself.) i'm not necessarily arguing against the petition (though i don't intend to sign it and i don't believe it's the right solution,) merely clearing up the misperception generated by the previous post. ah cha cha cha -------------------------- Message 42: Date: Sat Mar 5 21:01:25 1994 PST From: Klaatu (#57052) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Re: ummmmmmmmmm > Date: Sat Mar 5 11:58:52 1994 PST > From: AcidHorse (#6924) > To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) > Subject: ummmmmmmmmm > > note that the formula given in the above message isn't strictly > correct. I'd like to second AcidHorse's post. I'd also like to point out that some advocates of this petition have been claiming that lag is related to DB size. As I understand it (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong), this is not entirely true; DB size has little effect on lag unless the size of the DB exceeds the available RAM and paging of the DB occurs. Currently, if I'm correct, the entire DB does fit into available RAM. I do know that some commands which have to scan the object or player index do take longer to execute as the number of objects or players expands. But as I understand it, the ARB does have the power to reinstate a quota on the number of objects owned, as well as DB quota, so we do have the tools to regulate bloat of number of objects. --Klaatu -------------------------- Message 43: Date: Sat Mar 5 21:37:10 1994 PST From: Klaatu (#57052) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Object quota Lest anyone think that I've lost all touch with virtual reality, I recommend @peeking at 41-42 on #25812, the byte quota ballot. --Klaatu -------------------------- Message 44: Date: Sat Mar 5 21:50:14 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) AcidHorse is absoulutely correct: the formula should be average storage per user... what +is+ the average? What can one say numerically about the storage behavior of the player objects in the wild? Very little, except that it is growing, and that the worst case is growing catastrophically. I would be interested to see some statistical models of actual storage usage, I simply don't think we have time to produce such a model before acting. I consider AcidHorse's assertion that the database is therefore under control to be less well founded. Control is defined at the ability to generate requisite variety in response to changes in the state of the thing under control. AcidHorse states that education of users is a critical leg of his database control regime. I note that the ratio between teachers and students has just doubled in the last 30 days, and may be 3:1 in another 30 days. What does AcidHorse propose to do to educate under these new circumstances? Given that education occurs here by osmosis, it would seem that the rate of induction is proportional to the ratio educators/educatees. Further - the very fact of quota allocation tends to argue that AcidHorse's education process failed, in the past, to effectively control average usage. Were the database under control, AcidHorse should be able to show how some system in place can generate a state change to deterministically return db size to some set point under all circumstances. I do not believe he has done so, for the current set of circumstances: unconstrained growth. -------------------------- Message 45: Date: Sat Mar 5 23:26:59 1994 PST From: AcidHorse (#6924) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: hmmmmmmm. reacting to the above post: - if you've not had time to do the statistics to back this thing up, what evidence do you have that we stand on the brink of a crisis? while it's certainly true that character creation is proceeding at a phenomenal rate, you've not provided solid evidence to link this with any real problems, or to show that REDUCING that rate would eliminate (or even reduce) anything but the stress on the registrar and the rate of increase in length(players()). - i think yduJ has been tracking various statistics about object and player sizes for some time now. it might be helpful to ask her about this. - if you check my post, i think you'll find that i did _not_ assert that db size was under control. i said that there was a much greater potential for control of db size than nancy asserted. - it's true that i believe that with aggressive quotas and education we can make progress towards bringing db size under control; there are a number of possibilities here; what about giving new players some extremely small byte-quota, to be increased at a more restricted rate? you'll note that i didn't claim that a useful system of user education was currently in place. - i'm not sure what you mean by "some system in place can generate a state change to deterministically return db size to some set point under all circumstances," but if i'm parsing it right, you're claiming that my message asserted that it is possible, using existing systems, to deal with all possible modes of db growth. i am of course not claiming this. my belief is that this petition makes no significant progress towards addressing what i believe to be the real issues in db growth: heavy database usage by existing characters in the form of mail, verbs, and objects. until we bring that usage under control, the problem of database growth will continue. my primary claim here is that this petition lacks a solid footing in facts about the growth of the db, and how restricting player creation will affect that growth. if you're proposing that we restrict player creation in order to reign in db growth, then you should provide some figures which support this position. if your aim is merely to reduce the social burden on the community and the workload on the registrars, i'd claim that there are more effective means of accomplishing these ends. in any case, i'd like a clearer statement of goals, of what this impending crisis is, and how this petition serves to avert that crisis. i just don't buy that a rapid rate of character creation equates with a disaster on the scale you're describing. ah color me skeptical. -------------------------- Message 46: Date: Sun Mar 6 00:21:38 1994 PST From: @nj (#59447) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: is the idea of the petition to reduce lag or to limit the growth of the moo? it seems like it's the former...to reduce lag...to what number of seconds? 5? 6? why not just refuse people signing on when the lag is greater than that number? i think the maxinum of players signed on now is supposed to be 55 but it's always violated. -------------------------- Message 47: Date: Sun Mar 6 00:36:17 1994 PST From: AcidHorse (#6924) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: ummmmmmmmmmm (wow, my subject lines display an alarmingly consistent lack of information.) anyway. there's already a connection limit when the MOO is lagged. if the lag, according to $login's lag sampler, is greater than 10 seconds, then the connection limit is 65 players. otherwise it's 250. it's interesting to note that having a large number of connected players hasn't really seemed to cause the server to fall over and die much lately. there has been some really horrendous lag occasionally, but i'm not sure that it's directly correlated to the number of people lagging. the connection limit during periods of lag is mostly, i think, to give the server a chance to breathe between tasks, in essence. ah pant pant pant -------------------------- Message 48: Date: Sun Mar 6 05:30:15 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: A continuing concern The point is that we cannot now control total numbers of players. Yes, every character does not use 100% of their 50K quota allocation. But they have the capacity to do so at any time. We have NO effective method IN PLACE to act promptly to limit the portion of the database that is occupied by players and their creations. Writing and vetting and getting signatures on a petition and taking it to ballot takes at least a month. This has been a continuing concern (@peek 2385-2386 on *soc). In one month from today, i.e., by April 6, we will have *at least* 1700 MORE characters on the LambdaMOO rosters, at 60+ registrations per day and <100 reapings per month. I have heard people suggesting *other* solutions to the database size and lag issue. There are many valid approaches being spoken about. The problem is that the people sitting back and throwing out solutions from their comfortable armchairs in the living room are NOT taking effective action toward change. We need a multi-tiered approach. Saying that this petition does not solve *all* the problems of dbase usage in LambdaMOO is accurate, but does not reduce the value of this particular petition. No petition will solve all of our problems. But if we cannot even control the total usage of the database, we have no control over our future at all. I, for one, am not willing to let it get too late before we take effective action. -------------------------- Message 49: Date: Sun Mar 6 08:47:12 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Re: A continuing concern For me, the appeal of this petition is not to do with either lag or db bloat. So the various formulaic views of our present state do not matter to me. To me, the main issue is embodied in complaints that the living room is too full to be pleasant. You could say, ``well, don't go there then.'' But I'm not the only one saying this. And if I'm to stay out of some set of the rooms because they are no longer habitable, how is that different than being on a different MOO other than that the needs of two communities who never talk to each other still draw from the same resource pool. We're better off having fewer people, all of whom make some effort to get along, than the cold impersonal world of a million people who have figured out how to ignore each other. This petition is about quality of life in a different sense than quota. --Mickey (incidentally, a member of the RL ZPG organization) -------------------------- Message 50: Date: Sun Mar 6 09:38:00 1994 PST From: legba (#26603) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Oh, come on guys. Mickey's at least getting a little closer to the point, oh high-tech bean fetishists. Obviously, DB space/usage is only part of the issue. The other part isn't simply that the living room is "too full to be pleasant." What it is currently too full of is newbies with fart verbs, inanities and hostilities who never bother to socialize into the more or less functional, habitable community that this place used to be. Wow, I never thought I'd long for the days of the relatively gentlemanly flamewars in the Living Room, with Sam and Blackbriar spamming for hours and Quinn traipsing through trailing an open bathrobe and sporting a hardon to horrify newbies with. Punwars. I miss punwars. All of us old-timers end up holed up in our rooms paging each other because so few public places are now available for intelligent discussion. I mean, I _know_ I'm desperate when I find hanging out in the Living Room of JaysHouse and exchanging the same formulaic word associations, technociphers, political intrigue and snideries that have been exchanged there ever since the mass braindrain from #4747 more comforting and civilized than good old anarchochaotic Lambda. I like this petition and I signed it but I'm going to vote against it if it comes to ballot. The problem I have with it is the same problem I have with the turn this discussion has taken. Sam refuses to change it; Nancy is encouraging him not to because it's simple, elegant, and needed. Sure, it's all of those things, but it also fails completely to take into account the social impact, the impact on the real, live humans it's going to effect. This petition suggests a drastic solution to a current, very real problem, but offers _no_ suggestions for implementation whatever. Too many times I've seen the disasters that result from half thought out ballots and I'm not going to support another one. I've signed and continue to follow this one primarily because I think the discussion it spurs is essential, and at least goes partway to a solution. -------------------------- Message 51: Date: Sun Mar 6 10:02:16 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Some hard data on Lambda Population growth. A plot of number of characters registered per week from inception of recording to present: 450 ++---------+-----------+----------+----------+-----------+---------++ + + + + + + A 400 ++ "/tmp/junk" A ++ | A| | A A | 350 ++ ++ | | 300 ++ ++ | AA | 250 ++ ++ | A | | | 200 ++ ++ | A | 150 ++ A AA AA ++ | A AAA A A | 100 ++ A A ++ | A | | AAA | 50 ++A A A A AA AA ++ AA A A AAAAAA AAA AA AAAAAAAA A AAA + + + 0 ++----A----+-----------+----------+----------+-----------+---------++ 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Raw Data: 14, 14, 34, 11, 17, 9, 16, 14, 16, 32, 26, 18, 24, 31, 14, 36, 21, 28, 34, 29, 25, 22, 19, 28, 22, 29, 27, 31, 37, 27, 29, 26, 36, 38, 52, 50, 65, 55, 72, 82, 109, 119, 103, 141, 139, 133, 127, 152, 143, 142, 148, 134, 176, 232, 269, 285, 366, 365, 134, 375, 428, SamIAm (and gnuplot - you should see it in X11 with the raw data! Exponential!!) -------------------------- Message 52: Date: Sun Mar 6 11:49:29 1994 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Too radical, non foresight It is obvious that the db and machine can't keep up with the population explosion we are currently experiencing for very long. It is also obvious that as LambdaMOO ripens the social fabric will change in ways that won't please everyone. But locking LambdaMOO in a drop of amber to preserve its present state until the end of time isn't a very realistic option. Part of the appeal is that it is a living evolving society. A few months ago, lag was intolerable. Haakon upgraded the hardware and everything was fine for a while, but growth quickly caught up. Sometime in the future, the hardware will again be upgraded and LambdaMOO will again be able to support more people. What will we do then? Unfreeze the population growth until it returns to a problematic level and refreeze it? Population growth must be controlled, but not simply stopped. Maybe we need a Population Growth Review Board (PGRB). --QV -------------------------- Message 53: Date: Sun Mar 6 12:30:16 1994 PST From: genna (#55390) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: quality of life I was reading Pavel's paper DIAC92 this morning and came upon an interesting sentence that made me think about why I support this petition. Pavel said: 'It has been pointed out that a suitable punishment for truly heinous social offenders might be to strand them in a room with more than a dozen players actively conversing.' I find it interesting that the 'punishment' described by Pavel is now the norm in the livingroom. And he never even mentioned the bonking, knights riding in , missiles, etc. that spam the place so heavily that it becomes untenable. I support this petition in spirit because I believe that we are growing too fast and I understand it to suggest a solution which will still allow approximately 100 new characters to be created each month (as a result of reaping and replacement). I think 100 new characters a month is plenty for now. I do now, however, appreciate the lack of a clear implementation built into the petition. This lack of clear guidance for implementation has probably slowed down the process of turning this petition into a ballot. And it will certainly require the creation of at least one or two more petition/ballots (e.g. waitlist) in the future. Alla that said, I miss a livingroom that I can be in without rubbing my eyes every two minutes. I'm tired of there being so many newbies in one room that I can't even help one of them get started for alla the spam. We need to slow down, regroup, and then see what's next. genna -------------------------- Message 54: Date: Sun Mar 6 12:32:16 1994 PST From: genna (#55390) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: type aiee.. this subject is typo, not type. and... in my last post i meant to say I do *not* not I do *now* genna -------------------------- Message 55: Date: Sun Mar 6 13:25:07 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Average Quota per player is 19436 bytes The total DB size is 129,617,473 bytes. All one can really say about its distribution is that it seems to drop slightly, end to end, and its SD drops a lot as one gets to newbiedom... ie: fewer newbies have built anything very large, as a proportion. Seemingly, most players never build anything. These figures are as close as I can get them. -------------------------- Message 56: Date: Sun Mar 6 18:12:20 1994 PST From: Lambda (#50) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Some real DB size numbers I have a somewhat random collection of old LambdaMOO DB files lying around, so I made a list of their creation dates and sizes: 1993 Sep 01: 81,574,664 bytes 1993 Oct 01: 85,843,669 bytes 1993 Nov 01: 97,054,892 bytes 1993 Dec 01: 101,542,349 bytes 1993 Dec 18: 92,855,431 bytes 1994 Jan 01: 91,166,666 bytes 1994 Feb 01: 94,254,890 bytes 1994 Feb 22: 96,051,224 bytes 1994 Mar 01: 101,024,479 bytes 1994 Mar 03: 112,957,429 bytes 1994 Mar 06: 103,570,207 bytes Note that these numbers won't jibe exactly with the sum of the .object_size properties of objects here, since that's using in-memory size and the representation is different in memory. Anyway, it doesn't look to me like an exponential growth curve is applicable to the DB size... Lambda/Haakon -------------------------- Message 57: Date: Sun Mar 6 18:34:50 1994 PST From: Jay (#3920) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) But still applicable to population size. I think the strongest argument this petition has going for it is that it's impossible to socialize all of the incoming. -------------------------- Message 58: Date: Mon Mar 7 04:03:58 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Some comments Okay, so it seems that exponential growth of database size isn't really happening. And so it seems that those 'uneducated newbies' don't really build much. Of course they don't, they're uneducated! And so this petition ZPG exists because you can't socialize in the living room?? Then socialize somewhere else! I can think of many ideas: - make a new 'veteran room' that can only be entered by players of a certain age. (there are many adaptions possible, maybe veterans can invite newbies, so they can be educated, but they can only be invited non-permanently) - Stay in your own home and invite whoever you want! I'm sure others can think of more along the lines of this. For more on educating newbies as apposed to ZPG, try reading IRN: #37152. (and the associated mailing list *p:IRN) Maybe there are better arguments for ZPG, however. When do I finally hear those? :) At least it's good that there's discussion on this. Individual -------------------------- Message 59: Date: Mon Mar 7 05:31:26 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: The hard data on newbie quota. A graph of average quota per player cohort: 50000 ++--------+--------+---------+---------+---------+--------+--------++ + + + + + + + + 45000 ++ A "average.quota" A ++ | A | 40000 ++ A ++ | A | 35000 ++ A ++ | A | 30000 ++ ++ | A | 25000 ++ ++ | A A | | A | 20000 ++ A A A ++ | A A | 15000 ++ A ++ | A AAAA A | 10000 ++ AA A ++ | A AAAA AAA AAAAA AAAA | 5000 ++ AA A A AA A AAAAA ++ + + + + + + AA A + AAAAA + 0 ++--------+--------+---------+---------+---------+--------+--------++ 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 This graph displays average quota per 100 contiguous players. The range was clipped to 50000, being the default quota. I would say that we can see that there is a relationship between longevity and resource utilisation, such that the longer a player has been registered, the more quota they use. The area under the curve is proportional to db size. One can observe that players after the midpoint contribute much less than players before, shall we say, by about 4:1 ? It would seem to me to be a reasonable hypothesis that the newest players will eventually contribute much more than the database can stand, and that there is a lag between registration and occupation. I'm sorry to state the bleedingly obvious, in interpreting this graph, but it seems that, otherwise, people simply do not grasp it. SamIAm. -------------------------- Message 60: Date: Mon Mar 7 05:40:50 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Extrapolation to January 1, 1995 The primary concern to me is longevity of LambdaMOO. Using 2 different conservative estimation methods: Assuming constant growth, extrapolating conservatively from the figures provided by Lambda, the dbase should grow approximately 25% per six month interval. This places us at 126,000,000 k at September 1, 1995, and 148,000,000 k at January 1, 1995. Assuming growth based on a steady registration of 60 players per day, with only 50% of those remaining active, this adds 7000+ characters to LambdaMOO by January 1, 1995. At a very modest 10,000 k apiece, this adds 70,000,000 k to our current dbase, resulting in a dbase of approximately 170,000,000+ on January 1, 1995. The question is whether LambdaMOO can sustain this level of growth and increased dbase size and continue to function. -------------------------- Message 61: Date: Mon Mar 7 05:48:03 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) I would add to my previous post that those figures represent a BEST case scenario, and if player registrations increase or usage averages more than 10,000 k per character the figures can potentially be MUCH worse. -------------------------- Message 62: Date: Mon Mar 7 06:51:01 1994 PST From: Klaatu (#57052) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: extrapolations Obviously, this surge in new player registration is recent. It remains to be seen whether it will continue; it may be a short-term spurt in the growth rate. At any rate, even by the most dire estimate, we have lots of time to consider less drastic means of handling this surge. --Klaatu -------------------------- Message 63: Date: Mon Mar 7 07:02:58 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: 10,000 K?? per character??? Reading Nancy's posts on database use, I see the character k being used. 10,000 k would mean approximately 10 MEGABYTE per player. Maybe I'm not aware of another use of 'k' (I'm interpreting it as kilobyte), but if not, then I suggest dividing all figures by 1024, to get the real figure in kilobytes, or to read 'byte' in stead of k. I don't know..maybe I'm stupid and am underestimating the terabyte storage LambdaMOO must have. :) (quantum scale date storage at PARC? :) Has anybody calculated in the improvement of storage technology that we can expect this year? Anyway, just blundering along, Individual -------------------------- Message 64: Date: Mon Mar 7 07:25:49 1994 PST From: AcidHorse (#6924) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: responses, thoughts. well, it's becoming clear that this petition is more concerned with correcting the _social_, rather than the _technological_ effects of LM's population explosion. i think this is more supportable than db-related arguments (i don't, for instance, buy nancy's argument about db growth. remember that a good chunk of the db is taken up in the core and objects that aren't likely to increase greatly in size.) however, since the problem seems in large part a social one, wouldn't a social solution be more reasonable? if the living room's too spammy to hang out in, move a chunk of the party to the makeshift cafe' or to hacker's heaven. if we're having trouble (as jay asserts,) socializing newbies, then expand the tutorial to help the situation. ah armchair solutions, yes, but this is a MUD. it's not like ANYONE here isn't sitting around typing. -------------------------- Message 65: Date: Mon Mar 7 07:46:56 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Approximately 38% of the MOO's resources are tied up in the 129 characters and pseudo characters that hold the core/infrastructure and so on. 59 on *p:zpg shows the distribution of quota by age +excluding+ extraordinary allocations (as the ARB would presumably grant newbies at the same rate as they have, historically). Even excluding the high quota average buckets, one can see a trend to increasing size with age. The graph shows the average quota dropping from about 45K to about 5K, per player. I see Nancy's projections as quite conservative. Assuming that the prevailing distribution persists (any hard data to offer in rebuttal, AcidHorse?), we are in for a much heavier growth, like, 400 x 10 kb per week, in the long run... 4Meg per week. Is this a social problem? It will certainly +cause+ social problems. Why, when I provide the data AcidHorse asked for, does he want to switch the discussion to social issues and problems? I think it's principally a technical problem, but there are certainly social problems as side effects. -------------------------- Message 66: Date: Mon Mar 7 08:31:05 1994 PST From: AcidHorse (#6924) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: why? because i'm not buying that the data supports your conclusions. you admit yourself that newbie players don't really make up a big chunk of the db spam; so it seems fairly obvious that we DO have time to educate users about the effects of heavy usage. if size increases with age (not a surprising trend at all,) we should look to flattening the increase with size, rather than cutting off the inflow. i'm entirely failing to see this as a looming disaster, i'm afraid. ah y'know, it's hard to compose a coherent post with 'ritual de lo habitual' blowing your brain out the back of yer head. -------------------------- Message 67: Date: Mon Mar 7 08:34:09 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: SamIAm (#41011) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) I mostly don't go to the Living Room just to have a chat with friends. I can mostly do that with "page". I mostly don't go to the Living Room just to meet people. For better or worse, I know quite a bunch of people and can (these days) rely on lots of unsolicited pages to me in the should-be-privacy of my own room. I go to the Living Room (or, mostly, "used to") in order to greet new guests, welcome them to LambdaMOO in a friendly way (that's why I have my Official Disney pen for signing autographs; it used to be a big hit in the Living Room), orient them to social custom, answer questions, etc. Although a veteran's lounge can be fun and relaxing, it's not what I am lamenting when I say the LR is unpleasant to go to. What I'm lamenting is an influx of newbies so high that when you go to rooms where they are, the populations are out of control, and the only people who can stand it there are busy talking about sex toys and the like. The net result is that there are no oldbies (or whatever we're called) there helping to nudge people in the right ways, technically and socially, and the new culture is growing up without guidance. DB bloat aside, it is easy to see that in a society with expontential player additions, or even something somewhat like that since the details seem in dispute, new players are going to be raised by other new players and the social fabric of the Moo is going to change in much the same way as it would if you encouraged kids in the real world to move out from their families, live on welfare, and have families when they were 12 instead of 18. The inability to socialize usefully with newcomers materially affects quality of life. There is nothing wrong with letting people in. I don't want to stop that. But it is plain from the human experience that there is a balance to be struck between "letting no one in" and "handing strangers the keys and saying `here, run the place. pretend i'm not here. roll right over me and everything i know and love.'" --M -------------------------- Message 68: Date: Mon Mar 7 09:27:57 1994 PST From: quixitachl (#64541) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Spam spam spam spam I know that this is only marginally related to *Petition:ZPG, but since someone brought up the problem of newbies spamming everyone in the Living Room, I'd just like to note that my major problem with going to the Living Room these days is that people rely on @features to talk to each other instead of actually conversing with each other. Obviously, we can't ban bonkers and thinkers, etc...but vc from an aesthetic point of view, I'd be very much in favour of such a move, much to the chagrin of my regular political leanings. This doesn't really address the issues of the petition, except for a touch on the 'quality of life' bit, so take it for what it's worth. Trees/Quix -------------------------- Message 69: Date: Mon Mar 7 11:14:56 1994 PST From: Gru (#122) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: growth Although the database hasn't been growing rapidly, I believe that this is primarily because of a number of extraordinary measures to reduce space usage: (1) size-based quota resulted in a drastic reduction of database usage (by about 20 MB). (2) mail expiration was instituted to reduce the amount of database taken up by old mail messages, (3) the `reap' interval has gradually diminished from 9 months to 4 months. I don't know if ZPG is the right solution; but if it isn't, some alternative more drastic ways to reduce space usage might be called for. -------------------------- Message 70: Date: Mon Mar 7 13:58:48 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: avg byte plot w00f! The latest plot on db usage by player "age" should contain the disclaimer that it does not include reaped players. The majority of new additions will be reaped within 6 months due to inactivity (my guess). In other words, of the players represented in the latest bin, only a tiny fraction will still be here when they are old enough to typically have 50K of db use. The rest will be gone. -------------------------- Message 71: Date: Mon Mar 7 14:00:58 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) It also does not include the players who have been allocated, but never logged on, about 500 or so, I think. At a reapage rate of 50 per month, over the period, the two figures are +roughly+ comparable, and tend, I judged to cancel one another out. In any case, I can't create the information. -------------------------- Message 72: Date: Mon Mar 7 14:46:21 1994 PST From: APHiD (#33119) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Reaping Speed? We've seen graphs of quota allotment and number of players created and so on but, I'm curious, would it be possible to get some kind of graph of how many and how quickly inactive players are reaped? I'd like to see how much our growth is when taking the reaping into consideration. -------------------------- Message 73: Date: Tue Mar 8 08:29:14 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: A Modest Proposal. We could always eat the newbies. -------------------------- Message 74: Date: Tue Mar 8 12:01:19 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: eating newbies But they're just skin and bones! -------------------------- Message 75: Date: Tue Mar 8 12:09:08 1994 PST From: Khym (#60233) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: thots Well, as far as hardware goes, I think the example of the Los Angles freeway system is a good one, ie: If you build it, they will come. So when the expansion hardware wise occurs, odds are that the new capacity will quickly be absorbed and that we will shortly be back where we started, with memory as a scarce resource. I think that it is a false argument to say this is all about byte space, tho. It is about a much more fundamental thing, its about the 'tourists' verses the 'residents'. The frustration is that of people who feel they cannot go downtown to their favorite resturant during the tourist season for fear of tripping over gawking, loud, arrogant, camera totin' foreigners. So its about 'us', the citizens, who want to control our enviroment. Mebe you want the Living Room back. But the Living Room is never going to be that way again. And it shouldn't necessarily be that way anymore. Lambda is not a house, or a small town. It's an internationally known city with #60000+ objects, and thats not in and of itself a bad thing. I rather agree with Individual, if you and you friends want to hang out, there are lots of places other then the Living Room to go to, mebe every neighbourhood on Lambda needs a Cafe... :) We need to control the growth of the db. I think this petition HAS to include exactly how the new players will be chosen, and I think that the idea that applicants who repeatedly log in as guests over time should be rewarded is the only way to ensure we have decent 'immigration control', and that the lucky few new Lambdonians are actually going to contribute to the community. But 'ageism', as it were, is false too. I'd like to think I've made a modest contribution to Lambda during my six months here, and there are lots of other more talented people out there who shouldn't be denied the access to a player-object because the new-player system is abitrary. Persistance should be rewarded. As far as all these other ideas... mebe someone should ask Michele to add some info on etiquite and citizenship to the tutorial. I was going to try to write something but am now too busy on my own MOO. And mebe the architecture of the house should be changed a bit so that the Coat Closet doesn't dump the poor newbies right into the Living Room, give them a chance to acclimatise. Na Khym Nef Mahn -------------------------- Message 76: Date: Tue Mar 8 12:39:57 1994 PST From: AEnigma (#21135) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Re-organization I like Khym's analogy of the tourist. (And the Swift reference to, BTW). I think if we were able to implement some sort of rearrangement to the core level of Lambda, it might aid things considerably. The current Living Room, or the place where the guests are dumped, could become a sort of ante-chamber where only people really intent on helping new players would hang out. People who don't like new players have no reason to be in the Living Room anyway. We do already have a lot of places that people can go to - but what we have to do is make sure that people do go to these places, and don't all just hang out in one spot, the "flash party" effect. If we could re-arrange the - maybe we could force non-tourists not to stay in the Living Room, unless they were helping guests and new players. There are many things that could be done, I'm still thinking about ways to make Lambda liveable by older players while at the same time not causing new players to run screaming. -Cordially, AE -------------------------- Message 77: Date: Tue Mar 8 12:44:35 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: Khym (#60233) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Quality vs Quantity This is also about the resources that we might use. Not to sound piggy, but we could all use a bit more quota, not just for building, but also because some interesting innovations in MOO technology actually require storage to maintain if they must record per-user information (just for example). So many projects do not get done that could. Let's be clear on the point that there is a definite trade-off being made: the admission of a zillion new people means all that new hardware will never be available to up the quota of those who are here, which it could be. Instead, it means that we will be limited to all living in the same amount of personal space for all time. We can make the trade-off either way: more people, or more resources per person. But we should know we are making that choice. --M -------------------------- Message 78: Date: Tue Mar 8 13:50:04 1994 PST From: Agincourt (#57956) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Eating newbies... Just one line, a movie title.... ALIVE 2 -------------------------- Message 79: Date: Tue Mar 8 16:58:42 1994 PST From: PatGently (#37637) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: living room Most of the 'alternatives' to p:ZPG that I've seen are not in fact incompatible with P:ZPG itself. I think P:ZPG is a necessary stopgap, but I also think some of the other suggestions are good ideas. Personally, I would like to see new players and guests starting life in the Tutorial rather than the Coat Closet, which is usually quiet but less than informative. With the dropping average character age, the ability of older players to educate newer ones has been decreasing fast, and this is needed more than ever. This probably requires a petition, which I can't write because I already have P:TimeVoting in the works. I would love it if someone else did, and I would encourage others to sign it. Gently, Pat. -------------------------- Message 80: Date: Tue Mar 8 17:14:30 1994 PST From: Trees_Beatnik (#64541) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: living room I agree with the preceding sentiments on the living room as automatic entry point for people connecting. Perhaps a better point would be outside the front door of Lambda House (on the steps, maybe); this may even inspire people to look around OUTSIDE the house proper, instead of wandering between the Living Room and the Kitchen over and over again. At the very least, it wouldn't be dumping players into inarguably the busiest place in the whole MOO, and encourage congregations in other areas. If you open the door and are automatically greeted by a billion people, what's your incentive to go anywhere else? Perhaps a replica of the fireplace pullchain mechanism can be built out front of Lambda House? Trees/Quix -------------------------- Message 81: Date: Tue Mar 8 19:29:05 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: As the newbies go, so goes the crowd. Making the newbies come out somewhere other than the living room will just make that place "be the living room". I think the only hope is to have the closet have multiple exits, taken at random by the "out" command. It would be bad to have them come out in the master bedroom with the alarm beeping, but perhaps they could drop down to the basement, go north to the entrance foyer, go south to the deck, and go up to . All this chosen randomly when they type "out". (I also have a kluge in mind for "east" to the guest room; I'm seeing if the author of the weird room that would skip over the MBR neatly still has it.) Then the crowds would build up in multiple locations, and you'd have to choose your place. Still they'd be topologically close to each other so you wouldn't have to be totally lost if you came out in a different place than your friend. -------------------------- Message 82: Date: Tue Mar 8 19:35:15 1994 PST From: Whitey (#66881) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: eating newbies Hey, I resemble that :-0 Whitey. -------------------------- Message 83: Date: Tue Mar 8 20:43:23 1994 PST From: Trees_Beatnik (#64541) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Random spitting Spitting people randomly into different rooms is also acceptable. Just so long as they don't all end up in the same place. =) -------------------------- Message 84: Date: Tue Mar 8 21:53:53 1994 PST From: Armando-the-Ridiculous (#59450) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Random Spitting. No, that won't do, people try to meet friends on here, remember? What if for the first 15 or so connections (and always for guests) a new player appears in the library or some other quiet placce? -------------------------- Message 85: Date: Tue Mar 8 22:06:43 1994 PST From: Trees_Beatnik (#64541) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Random Spitting Not quite thinking about spitting people out into random rooms scattered throughout the entire place...I don't think it would be unreasonable to spit some people into the Living Room, some into the Kitchen, some into the Entry Hall, some into the Hot Tub Deck, some into the Pool, etc; all of these are within a couple of moves' walking distance, so if you wanted to find someone, it doesn't take a lot of searching. Certainly, newbies should be somehow made familiar with @who (player), @join (player) and page, and there shouldn't be too much confusion involved. Or am I giving newbies too much credit? T/Q -------------------------- Message 86: Date: Tue Mar 8 23:26:24 1994 PST From: APHiD (#33119) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Random Spitting Use a series of standard entry points but, instead of randomizing for each connection, just randomize every half-hour or so. During a given half-hour, new connections with no home enter from that point, then it randomly picks a new point from the list for the next half-hour and so on. -------------------------- Message 87: Date: Wed Mar 9 00:29:41 1994 PST From: Gru (#122) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: random splitting @peek 2639 on *social -------------------------- Message 88: Date: Wed Mar 9 10:51:50 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: newbie data wo0f! I've begun collecting data on newbie connect times, building a histogram of connected minutes vs age for ages <= 30 days. I anticipate that this information will be useful in determining the "albedo" of LambdaMOO, ie how many newbies are actually being absorbed (and hence requiring resources over the long term) and how many are just lookie-loos. There's gonna be a gap in the data corresponding to the great PARC break-in of a number of days. If I were clever enough I could remove it - anyone know exactly what days we were down??? -------------------------- Message 89: Date: Wed Mar 9 16:08:01 1994 PST From: Jay (#3920) To: *Ballot:qt (#63052) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) I find it interesting that quota transfer is designed to thrive on just the `allowed but unused quota' that worries so many people. I strongly suspect that quota transfer will mostly bring quota that would never be used to people who *will* use it. -------------------------- Message 90: Date: Thu Mar 10 01:17:54 1994 PST From: AEnigma (#21135) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Hmm. Maybe I didn't make myself sufficiently clear. What I was suggesting was no one older than a certain amount be allowed in the Living Room, unless they are a (state certified?) teacher or something. Froxx's cap on the Living Room population is interesting, and may solve some problems, but not, for example, instances of people hanging out in the Living Room talking about how much they hate newbies. Anyone old enough is bound to know of somewhere else they can be - there are certainly many other interesting and under-utilized rooms about on Lambda. I guess what I'm thinking of is a couple of things: 1: Creation of a new player type - Chaperone, or something, that will have crowd control abilities, and must be trusted, wise, and elected... 2: Re-arrangement of the Living Room to be a Guest Room, the introductory place for new players. Only relatively new players and chaperones to hang out there. (If this sounds disturbing to you, it does to me too, but this may be the only workable option.) I'd also like to see some new basic ground floor, or equally accesible rooms for specific discussions - Tech Room, or a couple random social talk rooms. I realize this could largely destroy what's left of the original house, but it may be needed. (Sorry, Pavel.) 3: Uh, I think three was going to be the room re-arrangement... I'd like to do a petition for this, but between Fine Lines, Journeyman, Convergence On-Line Magazine and all my other projects, I hardly have time to keep up with my mail and post incoherently... I'll work on it. -AE -------------------------- Message 91: Date: Thu Mar 10 04:03:59 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Petition IRN has been rewritten (#37152) My apologies if you get this message for the 3rd time or so, but petition IRN has been rewritten! Please read #37152, and if you like it, please sign it. Thank you, Individual -------------------------- Message 92: Date: Thu Mar 10 04:05:29 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) This is a pointer to 2638 on *soc for what I consider one of the most eloquent sociological arguments for ZPG on the MOO. If there is some sense of limited numbers, I believe people will not feel that every other character is a faceless transient. People will get to know one another better. There will be more of a sense of responsibility for one's actions, since you won't have the luxury of just recycling and getting a new char whenever you feel like it. -------------------------- Message 93: Date: Fri Mar 11 01:23:30 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: interesting data I scanned all players (did you feel it?) to collect the following data on ages and last connect times. I was interested again in how sticky new players are. Each column represents players of a given age in weeks, and each row goes back one week in time. So the entries should be read as how many players of an age given by the column last connected a time given by the row weeks ago. For example, of players created between 1 and 2 weeks ago (second column of data) 97 have never connected and 108 of them have not connected in the last week. Someone versed in survival analysis could interpret these numbers. I look at them, do simple sums (heh, I'm just a dog - no fancy stuff) and conclude that only between 1/3 and 2/3 of new players "stick" and become regular players. If regular players have connected within the last week, its 1/3, if you are more generous and just say they've logged in at least once and maybe a few times over the course of several weeks and then never again it is more like 2/3. Over longer periods of time though, the sticking fraction can only decrease, eventually reaching zero when (heaven forbid!) we start dying off. [Maybe if I can get enough quota I can move into the MOO when my body gives out.] last connected NUMBER OF PLAYERS IN EACH BIN (weeks ago) | never 147 97 41 75 69 60 64 45 32 32 27 32 0 281 300 89 98 129 134 106 91 82 44 36 40 1 0 108 41 38 31 32 16 15 10 10 10 14 lambda 2 0 0 9 12 10 8 3 7 5 1 1 2 <-down 3 0 0 0 47 83 45 19 14 14 7 4 8 4 0 0 0 0 44 33 14 14 10 7 0 8 5 0 0 0 0 0 40 21 11 11 9 3 6 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 24 23 15 2 3 4 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 32 23 11 4 5 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 23 7 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 11 5 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 11 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 23 age -> 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 weeks -------------------------- Message 94: Date: Fri Mar 11 01:30:02 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: ack Apologies for the trailing blank lines. Local editing has its disadvantages too. Also, the sentence about being generous etc meant to say *including* those players too would raise the sticking fraction to 2/3. Sigh. So much for being clear. w00f! -------------------------- Message 95: Date: Fri Mar 11 03:16:15 1994 PST From: Quinn (#19845) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: GRaphs Am I the only one who gets absolutely no information from these charts? Am I just tired, or should I dig up my old soc textbook? -------------------------- Message 96: Date: Fri Mar 11 07:12:18 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Querying Kilik's Stats. When I add the `never connected' figures Kilik has provided (never connected for players created in last 11 weeks), I find that its sum is 721, yet when I count the number of players who have never connected in the entire db as at the date of my charts, I only count 495 in total. I'm at a loss to understand the discrepancy... I listed each player's creation date and last connect time for all in players(). I then grep'd for the date `Mon Jan 18 19:14:07 2038 PST' which seemed to indicate `never connected' and stripped these players from my creation totals before charting. These figures of Kilik's would seem to suggest that in the week (approx) between my chart and his figures, of the 400 new players (est) 1/2 have not connected, yet the figure he gives is 147. I am puzzled. Perhaps I should replot the charts including inactive players, in order to compare apples and apples. SamIAm. -------------------------- Message 97: Date: Fri Mar 11 08:35:06 1994 PST From: Topher (#55250) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: I only hope I can only hope that one of the reason's the lag was at 33 minutes last night wasn't because of you two compiling all this info so that we can eventually trim the lag! Hmm... -------------------------- Message 98: Date: Fri Mar 11 09:55:26 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: my stat-maker The code is #3335:last_connect_data, my algorithm for determining if a player has ever connected is if who.last_connect_time <= who.first_connect_time. If this is in error I'd happily redo the run. Its not too spammy BTW, requiring one pass through players(). Quinn - I don't think your soc textbook will help. I for one have never read one. Just think of the numbers as ascii art (heh). Or RPG battle scores. Oh yeah, w00f! -------------------------- Message 99: Date: Fri Mar 11 12:59:43 1994 PST From: Xythian (#24436) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Hey. How do you explain, topologically, a closet that has multiple exits? Wouldn't it be better to make people randomly select a place to wake up (i.e. more closets, not more links to existing closet). Same effect, but it doesn't leave you with many twisty passages. This is probably the wrong list to say this on, but. -------------------------- Message 100: Date: Fri Mar 11 14:46:08 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) and Kilik (#2819) Subject: .last_connect_time If .last_connect_time is $maxint, then .last_disconnect_time records creation date. .first_connect_time is initialized to $maxint as well. I don't know if this is relevant to Kilik's data or not, I got confused as to what he did. --yduJ -------------------------- Message 101: Date: Fri Mar 11 17:50:40 1994 PST From: Condor (#59635) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Kiliks stats I find these statistics rather interesting - try to see them the following way: The numbers in the upper left corner tell you what the very new players have done in the last two or three weeks - not too interesting. But going to the right (i.e. back in time) the high numbers split off into the two arms of a fork: the horizontal ones being the ones which have been active lately, and the ones on the diagonal being the ones which logged on weeks ago and then never again anymore ... These statistics show, that pretty fast (within just some 5 to 10 weeks) the group of "this weeks newbies" splits up into a group of regularly participating people and a group of passive players (which could be reaped). - technically there are some, few, characters in between, but as the fork gets one week wider per week for any given newbie-group, these intermediate people will finally die off (i.e. their average density will drop below 1 per week) This could actually be used to construct an *objective* criterion for when to reap a player: run a statistic like Kiliks once a week, and if a column contains a zero, reap everything below it. I really feel inclined to @petition that to take the arbitrary moment out of the current reaping process ... (the "never connected" people would have to be assumed *under* the table in this algorithm and not (as in the original stats) above). and as long as I'm at it: anybody any comments on Xythians idea with the multiple closets? I'm quite intrigued by that concept... Nobody mentioned it here: once you start talking about "aging" of characters, maturing, "graduating" from some newbie-school etc. you can as well speak about death: Why not introducing some *maximum* age into Lambda? After a certain time (which could be decided after your lifestyle (i.e. how economically you have used your resources (i.e. quota)) plus some random element ) a character dies and gives all its substance (quota) back to the world from which it was taken ... of course you could get a new character, but you can't take material posession ($objects) with you when you die ... just some random thoughts ... Con d'Or -------------------------- Message 102: Date: Fri Mar 11 20:12:38 1994 PST From: You'll (#64541) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Newbie Killing Another thought I recently had on ways to reap faster in aid of having ZPG and still a way to get in: On a MUD I used to connect to, newbies were reaped once a week unless they played their character to Level 2. I realize that there are no levels on Lambda, but are there any other criteria that would be easily implemented as a substitute for playing through a beginner level to get experience points? Quix/Trees -------------------------- Message 103: Date: Fri Mar 11 22:32:17 1994 PST From: APHiD (#33119) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Re: Kiliks stats > From: Condor (#59635) > and as long as I'm at it: anybody any comments on Xythians idea > with the > multiple closets? I'm quite intrigued by that concept... I like it. But I don't think the closets should be randomly selected but rather looped through over set time intervals so that if two people log in together, they'll start in the same place. > Nobody mentioned it here: once you start talking about "aging" of > characters, > maturing, "graduating" from some newbie-school etc. you can as > well speak > about death: Why not introducing some *maximum* age into Lambda? > After a > certain time (which could be decided after your lifestyle (i.e. > how > economically you have used your resources (i.e. quota)) plus some > random element ) a character dies and gives all its substance > (quota) > back to the world from which it was taken ... of course you could > get a > new character, but you can't take material posession ($objects) > with > you when you die ... An interesting idea but it would leave most of the standard generics without owners, left to rot without maintenance. Either that or it would mean _recycling_ the popular generics. If nothing gets recycled, there's no gain from the death of a player who just gets a new character the next day. -------------------------- Message 104: Date: Fri Mar 11 23:48:24 1994 PST From: Jip (#64366) To: *social-issues (#7233), *Petition:ZPG (#57395), and *Petition:Probation (#74848) Subject: Ideas for new player "probation" I put together a petition with some ideas on having new players go through a temporary "probation" period. The petition is #74848, and the mail group is *P:Probation. Some of what I've proposed seems to mesh with what others have said on *Soc and *P:ZPG. This petition and the mail group are intended to begin a serious discussion on the matter. It is merely a proposal and can and will be changed according to input given. Because of this, I haven't signed it yet, and won't until I feel it has had enough discussion and the parameters have been accepted by enough people. -------------------------- Message 105: Date: Mon Mar 14 02:24:00 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Some critical remarks about ZPG Some will accuse me of being 'just a critic' here. Of course I criticize something I don't agree with. And I'm not an unconstructive critic, people are invited to read #37152 (petition IRN). First of all, the Argument of Lag. People argue for ZPG because they hate the lag. But, ZPG won't decrease the amount of active players, only inactive ones will be reaped. The only contributers to lag are the active players. Lag will therefore not decrease. (and might very well still increase, as the amount of active players will probably still increase, with ZPG in effect) Note that the main cause of lag at a certain moment is the amount of players on at the same time, not the total amount of players. Another argument seems to be the database growing too full. As many newbies don't turn into active players at all, and since a newbie character does not take up so much space, I don't think this argument holds either. And, I suspect concern about the growth of the database isn't the real incentive for ZPG anyway. ZPG will eventually close the gates almost completely, so the influx of new players will be close to zero. At least, if the following assumption is correct: of the newbies, a certain percentage will be permanently active. This looks probable enough to me. Even if only a minute percentage of the newbies will be permanently active, the amount of slots opened by reaping old players will decrease to virtually nothing, eventually. Now, I can imagine there would be something to say for the hypothetical petition LPG (limited population growth), because sometimes the amount of newbies coming in at the same time is rather high, and perhaps difficult to deal with. (although I can imagine many less drastic ways to deal with them, even less drastic than an LPG) But why come up with something drastic like ZPG? If my counterarguments are true, I seriously wonder what is left to support ZPG. Besides, although this is of course a totally personal impression, I don't like the elitist attitudes of some ZPG supporters. (there! you lambdamoo chauvinist pigs! :) Although I must add, I do like several other supporters. :) I simply don't see any good reasons for ZPG. Could somebody help me out here? It must be because I'm just too much of a newbie myself. :) Individual -------------------------- Message 106: Date: Mon Mar 14 12:24:53 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Reiteration of the argument to this point Is individual seriously arguing that unconstrained (and apparently exponential) growth in population will not lead to exhaustion of resources (specifically, database) ? Even if 95% of newbies are eventually reaped (and the proportion is, of course, much lower) the growth is still apparently exponential, and will eventually exhaust resources. Is individual arguing that growth is not exponential? What about the observations? What evidence is there against the hypothesis that we will see an increasing rate of population increase, when that is in fact what we have seen? The social argument can't be more clearly shown than by this petition itself! It now takes 138 or so signatures to transform this into a petition. As the voting population doubles, so that number will double. Does anyone want to take on the task of explaining to people who've been on for only a month that Lambda as it was was a better place, that the influx of newbies may have contributed to it, and that they may have to forgo the pleasure of getting accounts for their buddies until we work out what to do? -------------------------- Message 108: Date: Mon Mar 14 12:55:22 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: A small sidebar on elitism. *p:zpg average of signatories' numbers == #51311, *p:irn average of signatories' numbers == #59648. Hmm, a trend? -------------------------- Message 109: Date: Mon Mar 14 13:06:51 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: You might get me to sign this yet. Scary data: (*pcl=*player-creation-log) >@mail first:1 on *pcl WHEN BY WHO EMAIL-ADDRESS 4945: Jan 1 ur-Rog Griffin (#64355) xxx@xxxxx -----+ >@folder *pcl Folder for '*pcl': #25680 It has 3665 messages. As of 4 days ago it was 1,025,339 bytes. -------------------------- Message 110: Date: Tue Mar 15 02:41:41 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Exponential Growth? Obvious growth of this MOO is not exponential. Players are generally not self-reproducing. Sometimes growth might look like exponential, but to defend that this is because of some inherent factor in player growth seems rather difficult to me. Still, database growth is, I think, not the prime incentive for the people that support ZPG. It is the lag, and the social atmosphere. Well, lag won't decrease with ZPG in effect, and the social atmosphere, I can image many ways to deal with that, other than ZPG, if ZPG is actually a way of dealing with it at all. And then there is still the argument, that eventually, with ZPG in effect, there will be practically *no newbies at all*. How would that be for the atmosphere here? And what is does that sidebar on elitism imply? That people with higher object numbers are also involved in this MOO? So, yes, growth is not exponential. Players are not rabbits. There are other ways to deal with people than to simply not deal with them. Good luck, Individual -------------------------- Message 111: Date: Tue Mar 15 03:02:52 1994 PST From: AEnigma (#21135) To: Individual (#63209) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Growth rate db growth is the sole reason that I voted for this petition, personally. I'm sure that many other people have other reasons, but it seems that the potential problem of the increasing database size cannot be avoided. I think - correct me if I'm wrong that the last time Lambda was restarted, it almost couldn't be because the db had gotten so big. This is a problem. Also, ZPG doesn't actually mean no new players, it allows for new players at the reaping rate. And this will be roughly the speed at which new players were coming in during years past. And this was not actually a time of social draught. Not as many people hung out in the Living Room then, but there were other places, and still are. I also want to stress that my support of this is only as a stopgap. If it does pass, I plan to be pushing for reforms plans too allow new players on, albeit slower, and hopefully with some idea how we will fix the db-size. If you read my earlier posts, you know how opposed I am to the xenophobic aspects which are, at least implied in this petition, but this doesn't mean I'm not concerned about Lambda gaining new players at nearly a thousand in three weeks. Sadly, the Lambda machine is not all-powerful. -AE -------------------------- Message 113: Date: Tue Mar 15 04:17:18 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Exponential Growth As if exponential growth is predicated on players breeding! Each player has a non-zero probability of introducing at least one other player to the MOO... voila - exponential growth without genitality. Puerile objection. -------------------------- Message 114: Date: Tue Mar 15 06:08:01 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Exponential Grwoth That's 'Growth' in the subject. :) If exponential growth is the case with LambdaMOO, for the reasons you stated, this same growth should happen in every other mud. Which is not the case, older muds than LambdaMOO, with nothing like ZPG in effect, are not as big, usually. Which should be the case if exponential growth was occuring? What seems to make this place grow so much is the media attention it gets. When (if) the media attention becomes less, the amount of character requests will decrease also, in all probability. But then again, I might be wrong, and every mud around is actually much bigger than I think they are. :) Individual -------------------------- Message 115: Date: Tue Mar 15 06:10:41 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) this is absurd. I am not willing to debate it, look at the graphs I produced. If Individual can't see exponential growth in them, he/she has his/her monitor upside down. -------------------------- Message 116: Date: Tue Mar 15 07:50:20 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) and *Petition:75104 (#75104) Subject: Self-determination There are many worthy objectives for introducing a mechanism to control registration numbers. One of the most important to me is that it allows us as a community, for the first time, to have some measure of control over our total population. We have invested a inordinate amount of time and effort in controlling the unit (per-character) allocation of quota, and none whatsoever as of yet to the total number of units (= characters) to which quota is allocated. Uncontrolled growth is untenable with finite resources. Until we have a viable mechanism for that control in place, I feel we have no control over our own destiny as a MOO. I will support any and all petitions that provide some measure of monitoring and controlling registration at any reasonable level. (As always, apologies for ugly line breaks. I'm on an 80-char limit client. Bah. :) -------------------------- Message 117: Date: Tue Mar 15 09:31:02 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: exponential growth without breeding SamIAm, Thanks for making the point that "introducing" is the key element in the growth and that it can happen this way. I do observe (as MCI no doubt eventually figured out) that it's only initially expontential in that and that there is a bound. We are not, after all, creating new people, and your friends and family will eventually say "I know already. Leave me alone." It takes a while to see that effect, though, so I think that for small numbers like we have, exponential is a worthy model. It's not clear we can do the same kind of business that MCI did and survive. (Btw, I heard somewhere that in the early days of that campaign, MCI telemarketing was 90% successful... and they charged money to let you talk to your friends around the world...) [Any trademarks or service marks appearing in this message are the property of their respective owners.] -------------------------- Message 118: Date: Tue Mar 15 10:12:35 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: In reply to Individual >If exponential growth is the case with LambdaMOO, for the reasons you >stated, this same growth should happen in every other mud. Which is not >the case, older muds than LambdaMOO, with nothing like ZPG in effect, >are not as big, usually. Which should be the case if exponential growth >was occuring? Those other muds aren't MOOs. MOO is the best. --yduJ -------------------------- Message 119: Date: Tue Mar 15 10:37:30 1994 PST From: legba (#26603) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Minimal Population Growth I've drafted a new petition, Minimal Population Growth, as a slightly less drastic alternative to *p:zpg, with waitlist implementation included. Comments are welcome. -legba -------------------------- Message 120: Date: Tue Mar 15 11:59:24 1994 PST From: Stetson (#65101) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Do we really need such a drastic plan? I can see the growth, and can see that it would probably be in our best interests to see it limited in some way. But is it really neccessary to implement this plan? Couldn't some far less complicated, and more easily implemented methods be used? What of setting a low limit for the number of guests logged in at a given time? This, I believe, would cause at least some to give up, and try some other MOOs, which we may or may not give, depending on the wishes of those in them. And how about making the starting place for guests in the middle of nowhere? This may also "trim the herd." Furthermore, we could adjust the help to be slightly less clear, for new guests. Maybe this would be just confusing enough to, combined with other measures, bring the numbers to a reasonable level. -------------------------- Message 121: Date: Tue Mar 15 12:59:31 1994 PST From: legba (#26603) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: addendum say The number of the Less Drastic than *p:ZPG petition is #75104, for those who want to comment on this alternative petition. -------------------------- Message 122: Date: Tue Mar 15 13:34:11 1994 PST From: AcidHorse (#6924) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: ummmm... my feeling is that the least of ZPG's problems are complexity and ease of implementation. in fact, this petition would be pretty trivial to implement, it's one of the shorter petitions posted. The primary problem i see with ZPG is its advocacy of draconian measures which seem of little use in dealing with the problems here. if the petition is meant to address DB size, it should consider that most of that size is tied up in players who were created some time ago -- older players use more space; no surprise there -- and that unless we reign in such db hogs as mailing lists, verb duplication, and so on, no amount of "population control" will bound the db size. if the petition is meant to address social issues, it should enumerate those scoial issues and explain how a cap on length(players()) will resolve them. the petition seems to be pretty reactionary; i'm not convinced that it's a well-thought-out solution -- even a SHORT term solution -- to lambdamoo's problems. ah buying time? -------------------------- Message 123: Date: Tue Mar 15 14:14:27 1994 PST From: Kilik (#2819) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: connect-time-stats-w00f! w00f! Here are some more stats related to newbie usage that may (or may not) be interesting. The following 30 numbers represent the total connect time (in minutes) of players aged 0-1, 1-2, ... 29-30 days. Note that just-born players logged on account for the largest fraction of connected_players(). After just a day though, they have already lost half their usage. By the end of a month it's down to about a fifth. The dip in weeks 3 and 4 are due to the down time and perturbs these data significantly. A caveat though, these numbers are connect time, not tick usage, so your mileage may vary. week 1 32353 14719 13595 14048 14558 12573 14873 2 11842 9325 9444 9095 8547 9827 10480 3 11146 8422 8258 6081 4358 2379 665 4 372 1122 1885 2688 3415 5355 7071 5 5283 6885 These stats are brought to you as a public service. As yet I have not formed an opinion on *P:ZPG or related petitions since I don't yet have a good handle on exactly what the problem is, or how it might be solved. Hopefully some more cogitation (tough with a dog-brain like mine) will bring me to enlightenment. Nah, that's a pipe dream. -------------------------- Message 124: Date: Tue Mar 15 23:44:50 1994 PST From: Individual (#63209) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Exponential Growth - again Okay, here I am again, blabbering on about exponential growth or not. so, okay, yduJ is right, most other muds aren't MOOs. :) But some are, and they're not growing exponentially either, as far as I know. Anyway, though I certainly did not study the graph closely, I don't deny that it looks exponential. But, what I am saying is that you have no reason at all to assume that exponentiality is inherent to the nature of playerbase growth. Like I said, players don't reproduce. Some new players introduce others to the MOO, indeed. But, the same thing is done by players of every other mud, and, as far as I know (and I've looked around quite some), they're not having to deal with exponential growth. So, what I am saying is that this exponentiality is a temporary phenomenon, because there are no grounds to assume that this growth is 'naturally' exponential. From the evidence of other muds, it's even more plausible to assume that it's completely abnormal. Predictions made assuming exponential growth are therefore, in my opinion, fairly useless. And I still think many ZPG supporters don't support ZPG because they're so worried about the database. As for lag, ZPG won't do much about that, and I think there are better ways to deal with the social climate than something drastic like ZPG. (it might be good to check out the new 'mpg' petition?) Being a totally *useless* and *wrong* and *evil* *newbie* *critic* again, Individual -------------------------- Message 125: Date: Wed Mar 16 00:19:25 1994 PST From: Stetson (#65101) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: exponentiality and player reproduction Why doesn't somebody conduct a survey? This could be done to find out where Newbies and Guests are hearing about Lambda, and we can adjust our actions around this? If, for example, 90% of players have heard about Lambda from their friends, then we can politely ask players to restrain themselves, when it comes to introducing friends. If media attention is the culprit, then we can take other actions. P.S. I tried conducting my own survey, by paging guests of arbitrary colors, but none responded. I think that it would probably be more effective to ask "in person". Stetson -------------------------- Message 126: Date: Wed Mar 16 01:11:44 1994 PST From: AEnigma (#21135) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Exponential Publicity About a week or two ago, I went into a newstand-type store, and started browsing. I found articles about Lambda in *every* magazine I looked in. I remember at least 3: Wired, Boing Boing, and Internet World. Now, the I mean to bring up is that the publicity is breeding more publicity - which could become a *big* problem. (I hear he latest Village Voice has another 'virtual' article on virtual cross-dressing, I don't know if it mentions us.) -AE, always reconsidering article he is writing for Convergence. -------------------------- Message 127: Date: Wed Mar 16 11:44:00 1994 PST From: Wholeflaffer (#49822) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Some objections to this proposal I may be a lone voice in a void, but I have some major objections to this petition. I will outline them below. I will show that, while it is true that Lambda's growth WILL reach a point where the resources will be compromised, there is another idea in the study of population growth that will have the effect of doing exactly what this peition wants to. Also, I have some moral objections to the inhibition of new players to Lambda which I will outline. Population Growth As the population of a closed-system (i.e. limited resources) reaching something population study calls the carrying capacity of the envirnment, there is a natural loss of population growth. There seems to be an assumption that the growth will continue unabated ad infinitum. This assumption is false. As lag grows and people find it harder to logon and the Moo's resources become stretched, people will start leaving and the poulation will settle down into a more manageable player/new player ratio that will again come back to the carrying capacity of Lambda. Also, Lambda has one advantage over 'natural' environments: there is is a set, limited amount of resources that is ALWAYS there. It's asif we had an oil well (pollution problems aside) that, although it trickles out, will always have oil coming from it. This factor will insure that there will always BE a LambdaMoo. In population studies, as the carrying capacity is hit and drops and this fluctuation continues, the environment becomes depleted. The species within that environent will become extinct in a finite period of time as these fluctuation deplete the resources. Some may argue (and have argued) that we should stop this now so that the 'Moo way of life' will not be compromised. I will answer this objection in the next section. Moral Objections to P:ZPG There seems to me to be moral issues that are not dealt with and seem to be basically ignored. The cutting of new player registrations, in any method, is wrong. I want to first outline an assumption that I am making. It is morally wrong to exclude others from Lambda without some urgent need that can justify said exclusion. As I outlined in section 1, population growth is a natural phenomena that, by it's methodology, will swing back around and growth in an environment will stop and recede. Any objection to player registrations along the lines that this will go on ad infinitum are false and do not justify the exclusion of others from the Moo. Another objection is that the 'quality of life' on the Moo will deteriorate as an effect of large population growth. I counter this in two ways: one, the 'deterioration of Moo quality of life' is ill-defined in this discourse. If you mean large lag, I have seen very little of the huge lags we have had in the past. If you mean that the 'quality' of the new players is low, I think you should try to be a little less close-\ minded. Secondly, someone's 'comfort' on the Moo does not justify the exclusion of others from experiencing the Moo. Again, my premise that it is wrong to exclude someone from the Moo without outlining an urgent need still stands. One more quick analogy to show that this petition will entail other things that are on VERY shaky ground. Why can't I write a petition that stipulates that the wizzes will reap all players under 4 months old? Just because someone is not a player does not mean that they are not worthy to be considered as having the right to be here on Lambda. I can see no argument that could be to the contrary. Wf -------------------------- Message 128: Date: Wed Mar 16 13:31:31 1994 PST From: legba (#26603) To: *social-issues (#7233) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: *p:mpg *p:mpg (Minimal Population Growth, #75104) is now ready for signing. If you support controlled population growth but find *p:zpg too drastic a solution and lacking in implementation details, please consider reading and signing *p:mpg. -legba -------------------------- Message 129: Date: Wed Mar 16 18:11:00 1994 PST From: Stetson (#65101) To: *social-issues (#7233), *Petition:ZPG (#57395), *Petition:Probation (#74848), and *Petition:mpg (#75104) Subject: LambbdaMoo meltdown or Social problem? I have been thinking about this, and, I believe we see some misrepresentation of reasons for some of the population proposals. I may be wrong, but could it be that some people who feel we are in a "social crises" due to all the newbies, and that they no longer feel comfortable in the LR or the HT, realize that many others will not go along with this, so they fabricate a "population crises," which more may go along with? I would be open to ideas to limit growth either due to DB, lag, or other population-related problems, as well as for social problems such as "unsocialized newbies", "rude guests", and even for the "generation gap" that seems to exist... But I would very much appreciate it if we could see some honest definition and distinction between the two problems. -------------------------- Message 130: Date: Wed Mar 16 18:26:59 1994 PST From: Stetson (#65101) To: *social-issues (#7233), *Petition:ZPG (#57395), *Petition:Probation (#74848), and *Petition:mpg (#75104) Subject: Correction > I would be open to ideas to limit growth either due to... > What I meant was, "I would be open to ideas to correct problems, such as... -------------------------- Message 131: Date: Thu Mar 17 04:12:52 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: [Froxx (#49853): Controlling MOO growth] Date: Wed Mar 16 21:28:57 1994 PST From: Froxx (#49853) To: *social-issues (#7233) Subject: Controlling MOO growth It is my opinion that LambdaMOO is too crowded, and is being presented with more load that it can handle. Lately, I've had to shut down and restart the MOO after only a day or two of running. I think if you want this problem fixed, you (the MOO voting population) will have to fix it. -------------------------- Message 132: Date: Thu Mar 17 09:47:18 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: Nancy (#57980), *Petition:mpg (#75104), *Petition:ZPG (#57395), and *social-issues (#7233) Subject: Re: Alternative waitlisting mechanisms Even though I disagree with the details of *P:MPG as they currently stand, I am also swayed by Nancy's plea that those who think the population is out of hand should not split their vote on this issue. (Do ``@peek 12 on *P:MPG'' if you're unfamiliar.) For this reason, I'm signing not just *P:ZPG but also *P:MPG. To address the issue of conflict: If *P:MPG reaches ballot first, I will vote yes on it and hope that *P:ZPG follows to supersede it. If *P:ZPG reaches ballot first but fails, I will switch my vote on *P:MPG from no to yes as soon as I find that *P:ZPG has failed. [Supporters who prefer *P:MPG could do the same, but in reverse.] But Nancy's point, that having two similar things should not be allowed to work against us by dividing us, is a good one. Please, let's all who think the population is too high for whatever reason get behind as many of these proposals as we can to send a clear message to those on *Social-Issues who say "problem? what problem?" or "golly, even if things are going to hell around here, it's ungrateful for you to suggest that population has something to do with it" that we won't be intimidated. If you don't think these are long term solutions, fine. Neither do I. But they will allow us a chance to stop and regroup without the situation getting worse in realtime. We can always vote to supersede them later with better theories. These are the theories people have now. Let's support them. Do "sign #57395" or "sign *p:zpg" now. Do "sign #75104" or "sign *p:mpg" now. -------------------------- Message 133: Date: Fri Mar 18 13:52:52 1994 PST From: Calvin (#28767) To: *social-issues (#7233), *Petition:ZPG (#57395), and *Petition:mpg (#75104) Subject: Lag and ZPG. How about this: When a player attempts to log in, anyone who has been idle for 30 minutes or more can be booted. Or anyone who has been logged on for more than an hour? If people are going to say that ANYONE has a right to be here then I say HOW COME I COULDNT GET ON LAST NIGHT????? Therefor, one must decide what is acceptable lag (4 seconds?), and then work out how many players it requires to cause this lag - X, and then divide this by how many players *want* to log on, and multiply by 24. This will tell you how long everyone is allowed. Right now, in order to get down to 65 players, that would require a time limit of 42 minutes (yes I looked at a full @who list and worked it out, ). Pretty much sod all eh.... So hey, yeah, lets allow more and more and more and more players until , we're all allowed one quantum of time (presumably an decided by an internet data-packet) on this MOO. Wont that be fun! Given that this is not acceptable, you have to set limits. Poulation limits either ARE or ARENT acceptable - there is no middle ground - you cant say its ok to limit it this much but not that much. Once you agree that limits are acceptable, the choice is where to put them. So I say, put the limits so that it delivers 4 secs lag TOPS! Since we're past that, it means ZPG!!! One of the MAJOR parts of this place is that you have friends here. Yes making friends is fun, but talking to complete strangers the *whole* time isnt. If you allow population to expand indefinitely, with no time constraint on logging in, then eventually probability that *any* of your friends will be logged on at the same time as you will be negligible. I *couldnt* log on last night at all - tried for 3 hours (I was watching TV). So, there are three choices: 1. Limit time, and watch your time-quota drop from the 45 mins per day it would have to be RIGHT NOW to 30 minutes... 15 minutes....? 2. Dont limit time, and go for days without being able to log on... and then meet no-one you know when you do. (Might as well use email). 3. Limit population growth... -------------------------- Message 134: Date: Sun Mar 20 12:32:11 1994 PST From: Sick (#41057) To: *Petition:ZBG (#58115) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: *P:ZeroBonkerGrowth (#58115) at the time of writing this petition, the average descendant of the Generic Bonking Feature (#6190) is 4,231 bytes, with a combined byte usage of 359,718 bytes for the total 85 descendants. in contrast, the combined byte usage of the 85 most recently created players at the time of writing this petition is 159,469 bytes, with an average of 1,876 bytes per player. if you are concerned about the use and misuse of your diminishing resources, I suggest you support *P:ZBG as an alternative to *P:ZPG. sick. -------------------------- Message 135: Date: Sun Mar 20 15:46:01 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Sick shows that the 85 most recently connected players contain less storage than the 85 bonkers. What Sick neglects to mention is that the 85 most recent players have probably been connected for less than 48 hours. The graph of quota by player number shows clearly that quota usage is a higher than linear function of age. -------------------------- Message 136: Date: Sat Mar 26 14:18:56 1994 PST From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Choice of metaphor It's interesting to me that the proponents of ZPG and MPG been advancing largely "birth control" issues; and the opponents have been advancing "immigration" issues. We should think carefully about which of these metaphors is better, because they differ radically. The notion of "immigration" plainly implies "leaving somewhere for somewhere else" and people (mostly :-) don't really -leave- RL for the MOO. Since the way in which one comes to the MOO differs materially from the way in which one comes to the US from Haiti, I suggest that the moral implications of exclusion differ as well. By contrast we don't really know what happens in the case of "birth". Some of us have complicated mythology about souls coming from "somewhere beyond" when we are born, but we're not quite sure where those souls were before we are born, where they are while we're here, whether those souls do double-duty in someone else's body at the same time, whether those souls go away while we sleep, and whether they go away when we die. I think the "birth control" metaphor better captures the nature of the ZPG and MPG proposals. And I think it's no accident that the so-called bleeding heart liberals who champion open borders also tend to champion birth control. I also think it's no accident that the RL conservatives who are pro-life also tend to be pro-death penalty. If one can control the rate of new arrivals, one can afford to be charitable to those who show up; if one cannot, one must ruthlessly (and somewhat arbitrarily) prune those who do show up in order to retain order. --M -------------------------- Message 137: Date: Sat Mar 26 17:01:42 1994 PST From: Asexual_Onion (#59656) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Yes, a new name on the spg (make that zpg) posting. First, I'd just like to point out that it could be worse. Asexually reproducing organisms aften face greater pop growth pressures thatn those that don't. Ok, so much for humor. When Sam and others were thinkin of proposing this (One night in the living Room...Where thy (they ) supposedly don't go anymore do th (to ) the annoying newbies) I listened with great interest (as we onions are want to do). Initially, I supported the population limitation initiatives. Great thought I, we really do need to do something about the lag, and about incorporating new citizens into the lambdaworld. I ahve (have) come to the conclusion , however, that these are not necessarily the reasons actually underlying these proposals. At least, not completely. I know alot of the supporters actually have benevalent motic (motives) and do not wish to slight them. Enough has been said about lag by others more kon (knowlegable) than myself so i'll keep it short. Pop growth limits will not rede (reduce) lag. If they will, someone please post as explaing it con -cisely. No post so far (I have read every single one on both mo (mpg) and zpg) ) as done aht (that) ZPG may limit new players, however, there are approx 6000+ already. Sure, some of them will be reaped over time, etc. Of these, I count about 6 as real close Moo friends. Of these 6, only one has done programming, and one other is trying to learn. The toher (others) , myslef included, are not interested in doing a lot of hardcore programming. Of the two friends I mention, both of them have done programming related to very spammy objects (not anything of great consequence) Amazingly enough, all the aforementioned friends LOVE the MOo. Onion, get to the point... The point is, among other things, that the basis for measuring a productive moo citizen seem s to me to be far too arbitrary. I realize that nothing of this sor t has gone into imp notes.. or anything like that, but there is an underlying mindset that only certain types of activity are productive or worthwhile. This leads me to my next point. All of these friends have been citizens for about 6 months (7 myself). They have different reasons for coming and those reasons have el (evolved). Not all of the people who come here know much about computers (esp me). The people who showed me the basic ropes on lambda are not even here anymore themselves. Some of my firends like to RPG, I hung out in the liv room list- ening to the (admittedly) inane conversation for a long time before RPGing and now trying to create a themed area in which gare (gardens) ponds cottages and such are connected. The pople (people) Point Onion, the point... There are different roles for different people (and plants) on thsi Moo. PG of some type is necssary (given limited db if nting else) but please retingk (rethink your reasons for supporting this ballot I can honestly say that, as a newer paly (lets try citizen) I ahve not had the esperience of the older folks here to guide me in searching for and acquiring knowldege of the moo. Info and assimilation has come l (slowly)save some help by my friends. Are the older folk staying in their rooms? Not entirely. Do they help alot? On occasion. Do they contribute to the problem? Definitely. Who created the crazy spammy fos? One of my last extended trips to the living room was marked by incessant rude and puerile comments from -NOT a newbie- rather, one of the most VOCAL supporters of this resolution I don't want to start a personal war or anything, but lets all do our part. Of course, if you want to complain, complain. But if you want to slve the problem, start with yourself. If you want community BE community. Don't participate or cause the problems you are trying to solve. The characters that have spammed and harassed me the most are not the newbies, they are the older characters. (Perhaps because I am new?) That reasoning doesn't work either because I am always civil (though perhaps a bit satiric) and do not satisfy myself with starting anything. There is that point Finally, please recognize that the diversity is a good thing. I do not feel that everyone should not have the opportunity to spam in the liv room. Thats all I dd (idd, DID) to begin with. Shame on me for being inane to begin with? Well, that's all that was availabe, over time I have learned more. So have my friends; and we continue to do so. Too much of the impetus for these movements seems to com e from a desire to squash this type of variety. Provide alternatives. All newbies are not stupid, nor do they only wish to be inane. But please do not measure productivity in terms that you (the generic, read this only if it applies to you, oyou) do not live up to yourself. What's with the Onion? The fact is, after having read all these posts, I have been aware of a sort of moo angst forim (forming) inside me. I have, perhaps irrationally, begone (begun) to feel as if I am not welcome. Thus, I implore all of you to please think with great effort on your individual reasons for supporting pop growth limitations. The reasos (reasons) for supporting will affect the way its implemented, so be sure of your position. Do I have solutions of my own? Not beyond that previous suggestoin, that the problem can be solved locally (soc problems of course), before thinking seriously about general pg limits. That pretty much says a lot of what has been bothering me. Thanjks for your time, your tolerance (No bkspace and bad typing skills make for a tough letter I know). -Asexual_Onion PS: If we want real solutions, lets try something like a new verb: @reap! I can see the help menu now, "If that spammer really torques your tornado just get you and ten of your pals to @reap! them and give them a ticket to the other side! Lets really think about it. -------------------------- Message 138: Date: Sat Mar 26 19:10:11 1994 PST From: SamIAm (#41011) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: exfoliating the onion post Asexual_Onion says: ``The people who showed me the basic ropes on lambda are not even here anymore themselves.'' That's true in my case. Some left in the first baby boom, more now. For all I know they're standing around trying to log on but unable to connect. Asexual Onion goes on to say: ``One of my last extended trips to the living room was marked by incessant rude and puerile comments from -NOT a newbie- rather, one of the most VOCAL supporters of this resolution.'' Am I alone in assuming it's referring to me? There was a time, Asexual_Onion, when I was the most rude and puerile person on the MOO (although some would contest it). It pains me deeply to lose that position to people who don't realise they're being rude and puerile. I don't think anyone could accuse me of being unintentionally R&P, it's just that it used to take skill: knowing who to insult, why, with what effect, how the great blocs of affiliation would move and reorder themselves in reaction. -------------------------- Message 139: Date: Sat Mar 26 22:11:50 1994 PST From: Asexual_Onion (#59656) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: P&R Thanks for the support Sam. ;) -------------------------- Message 140: Date: Sat Mar 26 23:24:20 1994 PST From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Response to Asexual_Onion I don't think that population limits (well, of course, I'm a supporter of MPG, not ZPG, so this is slanted towards MPG) will spell disaster for diversity in the MOO. @peek 42 on *b:mpg for Kilik's excellent message on that subject. I think that our newbies' adolescence lasts longer than it used to. *Everyone* is an idiot when they first connect to any sort of MUD, and most of them are jerks to boot. They need to be told, gently if possible, or with @toad if necessary, that such childish antics aren't really appropriate. If the people they meet are mostly polite, they'll notice their childish behavior is inappropriate *earlier*, and everyone will be happier. If the people they meet are all still in their *own* moo-adolescence, then everyone's adolescence lasts longer... A ticket to a sorrier MOO, IMHO. Support incoming population limits, in order to shorten MOO childhood and adolescence! --yduJ -------------------------- Message 141: Date: Mon Mar 28 02:02:05 1994 PST From: Stetson (#65101) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: yduJ's assessment of the problem yduJ's last post was, in my opinion, the best assessment of the social problem on Lambda. To take it one step further, you could say that you have a large number of people who don't know what Lambda is about. All of these newbies end up reinforcing each other to the point of changing the whole place completely. The effect, as I see it, is that Lambda is turning into a big senseless orgy. While I will vote against ZPG if it comes to ballot, and am leaning against MPG, slightly, in favor of subtler forms of pop-control, such as guest-registration and a limit obn the number of guests allowed on the MOO at a time, I do feel we have a problem. Stetson (scared that he's starting to sound like Nancy :) (no offense Nancy :-) -------------------------- Message 142: Date: Mon Mar 28 05:09:50 1994 PST From: Nancy (#57980) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) and *Ballot:mpg (#75104) Subject: Stetson & newbies I am a strong proponent of *b:mpg and *p:zpg. This support is based on many observations and conclusions which have been spelled out in dozens of posts by myself and others. I do not like to see the supporters of these measures being mischaracterized with the labels of 'anti-newbie' or 'intolerant'. That is not only incorrect but prejudicial and divisive. Political bashing is no more justifiable than newbie-bashing or guest-bashing. My support of these measures has many reasons, but first and foremost is from a database management perspective. It is important for us, as LambdaMOO citizens, to act wisely to manage our assets. Right now there are NO restrictions on the total size of the database because there is NO limit to the number of characters that are added (each being allowed to create up to 50K in objects, verbs, and descriptions). I view this as a simple and essential step in self-governance and self-determination by the LambdaMOO populace. Until we can manage the database we have no effective control over our future here. Although I believe there are also negative social impacts of unregulated growth, those to me are secondary reasons for supporting these measures. *B:mpg and *p:ZPG are PRO-LAMBDAMOO, not anti-newbie. -------------------------- Message 143: Date: Mon Mar 28 07:09:06 1994 PST From: Klaatu (#57052) To: *Ballot:mpg (#75104) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Gritting my teeth I've held my nose and voted yes on b:mpg. I think it's reasonable to have control over the growth of the LambdaMOO population, but I disagree with much of the reasoning of p:zpg and b:mpg proponents. The analogy of LambdaMOO population growth with RL population growth overlooks a basic difference between the two situations. Computer technology has consistently produced order-of-magnitude gains in speed and capacity over time, while costs have dropped. In VR, technological change _can_ keep pace--or even outstrip--population growth. The history of LambdaMOO bears this out. Every time lag has increased or DB size has grown, there has been a technological fix. The introduction of profiling in the next core will allow us to tackle the lag problem. The much-awaited disk-based core may allow us to have a much larger DB. And while I certainly can't speak for Xerox, its track record to date makes it reasonable to assume that bigger, faster hosts for LambdaMOO will become available in the future. And while I agree that we need to be able to educate newbies, I don't agree with the goal of assimilation. I may not understand the spammy tendencies of many who hang out in the LR, but I don't begrudge them the opportunity to communicate or interact in any way that seems to make sense to them, even if it doesn't make sense to me. And I certainly don't want to live in some programmer's paradise where all anyone does is solve neato-keen thought puzzles and discusses the ins and outs of coding aracana. Demands on the time of wizards, and the inability to educate newbies, are valid reasons for supporting some type of population control--but not an inflexible cap. b:mpg gives us the ability to damp out surges in population growth, while permitting new registrations at an acceptable pace. --Klaatu -------------------------- Message 144: Date: Mon Mar 28 17:16:22 1994 PST From: Armando-the-Ridiculous (#59450) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395), *Ballot:mpg (#75104), and Stetson (#65101) Subject: Erm... There already is a limit on the number of guests allowed on the MOO at a time. There are only 18 guest player-objects. -------------------------- Message 145: Date: Mon Mar 28 17:42:56 1994 PST From: Wholeflaffer (#49822) To: *Ballot:mpg (#75104) and *Petition:ZPG (#57395) Subject: Re: Stetson & newbies > My support of these measures has many reasons, but first and > foremost is from a database management perspective. It is > important for us, as LambdaMOO citizens, to act wisely to manage > our assets. Right now there are NO restrictions on the total size > of the database because there is NO limit to the number of > characters that are added (each being allowed to create up to 50K > in objects, verbs, and descriptions). I view this as a simple and > essential step in self-governance and self-determination by the > LambdaMOO populace. Until we can manage the database we have no > effective control over our future here. Nancy here offers an argument that I have heard others give in other words. It is important to me to point out a simple error in reasoning that proponents of both ballots shroud under "PRO-LAMBDA" sentiments. I will first list Nancy's argument in logical terms and in doing so show the jump from the premises to the conclusion (a jump I see as no justification for minimizing or stopping population growth). P1. "It is important for us, as LamdaMoo citizens, to act wisely to manage our assets." P2. "Right now there are NO restrictions on the total size of the database because there is NO limit to the number of characters that are added (each being allowed to create up to 50k in objects, verbs, and descriptions)." P3. Either *p:ZPG or *b:mpg will restrict the total size of the Db. Conclusion: Vote for either *p:zpg or *b:mpg (or both). I can warmly embrace premise 1 (P1) without a second thought. It assumes an awful lot but I can grant that. However, premise 2 (P2) is hard to swallow. To say that there being no limit on characters is the ONLY restriction that can be applied to the database is totally false. Also, it seems that we areso quick to cut out the faceless masses when we could, instead, work to control what we CAN control: ourselves. These petitions are not "self-determination" but are "We will determine who does and does not enjoy our fatted calf." If we curtailed Db usage by working to change our tick intensive verbs, 'leaning' ourselves, writing new PC classes (like BlackBriar is attempting to do) that utilize better Db usage, and any other mechanisms that we can dream up to make this place better suited to handle the influx of newbies, we would be the better for it. These petitions, to me, are overkill and just show that we always find it hard to clean our own house and easier to kick others out of theirs. To write these petitions without any other serious attempts to make this place RUN to meet the demands of others wanting to experience LambdaMoo is abhorrent to me. It shows a selfishness that does not impress me. This isn't 'self-governing'; it's a cop-out. Taking what I have just with another argument I have against these petitions (that to justify the limiting of player creations needs to have a GOODjustification), I cannot accept the conclusion. There are myriads of other things we could do to make this place better WITHOUT limiting player creation. Again, I ask that you vote no onboth of these petitions. One move Nancy or others could make is that the rate of player creation is so high that something needs to be done NOW to stem the tide. I agree, if and only if there is a concrete move to fix the problems we have internally and then to open the Moo back up again. The use of such terms as 'birth control', etc. lead me to believe that it will be back to business as usual after one or both of these petition/ballots passes. Without a game plan, this is just an injustice. Wf<--His last post unless to answer specifics -------------------------- Message 146: Date: Wed Mar 30 07:11:03 1994 PST From: Klaatu (#57052) To: *Petition:ZPG (#57395) and *Ballot:mpg (#75104) Subject: An apology My apologies to Kilik for misrepresenting his post 42 on *b:mpg. After corresponding with him, I've realized we weren't using the same terms in exactly the same way, and that I'd misread his post. Kilik, good dog. Have a Milk Bone. --Klaatu --------------------------