Message 1 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sun Sep 12 18:43:06 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: #38111: a partial sample implementation You may want to check out 'help #38111' for a partial sample implementation. I'm looking for comments on every part of the proposal. But more specifically, if anyone can propose a better nomenclature I'd be very grateful (I hate the term 'officer', it's too official, too cop-like). --QV -------------------------- Message 2 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Sep 14 13:10:22 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Comments on petition I recommend against ranking volunteers by preference. If one person is particularly good at the job, this person will become overwhelmed and burnt out---your petition nearly guarantees this behavior. Sure, that person can start to give bad decisions such that they get ranked lower next time, but I don't think this is fair to the person who is subjected to the burnout, nor to the people who are treated badly by said burnout-case. Having been a burnout case myself, and not quite recovered, I know it can be bad. Since I disagree with ranking, I think that the mayday should be sent to all connected volunteers at once. Once someone has accepted, additional accepts are locked out, since the case is being handled. Perhaps the other volunteers would want to join the officer (I agree, I don't like this word, but I don't have a better one) and offer opinions; this should be permitted but no specific code should arrange for it to happen. What ideas have you for the unwritten section 7.3 (officer's special powers)? Booting an offending player is one obvious idea. Temporary newting (I wouldn't want permanent newting or any sort of toading). Disabling of verbs (not removal, just disabling, by setting them this-none-this !x). Maybe they need to be able to @list !r verbs in order to know for sure to disable them. --yduJ -------------------------- Message 3 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Sep 14 13:29:26 1993 PDT From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: initial impressions Boy, and I thought my petition was long. You're gonna get hell for this, lemme tell ya. I agree with yduJ about people getting burnt out. You should select the least-recently-used person at a given trust leve. That would help a little. Probably there should be a delay time built in where a person was not re-used for n days anyway unless there was no one at all available. As to emergency powers, I think giving your officers the power to temporarily newt exactly one person for 24 hours (i.e., to have them locked out long enough that others could have time to be consulted, and to have only enough power to resolve a single one-on-one dispute at a time)... I think the procedure for sorting trust is ill-specified. The other people, assumed to be of equal rank, are not ordered with respect to those who are not. Are they all more trustworthy or all less trustworthy or all somewhere in the middle? I'd rather a number of fixed levels of trust, described in english, and the ability for any individual to associate such a trust level with any person. Ifthey're just relative orderings, I may disagree with someone else about how high the top is, etc. I think the table of contents is not needed and makes the petition 50% less likely to pass. In general, I think the petition could be made shorter with no loss of meaning just by clever reorganization. I think you'll find the work it takes to do this well worth it when you see how hard it is to get people to read long petitions. Believe me, I know... --M -------------------------- Message 4 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 12:10:12 1993 PDT From: Shungnak (#50276) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: more comments and concerns First of all, the over all idea intrigues(sp) me. I agree with yduJ, about the need to further explain and define the powers granted to an officer, and I hope that these powers would only be granted once a mayday was called, and an officer chosen. I also, agree with Mickey about removing most of the table of contents, just make it 8 lines, for each 'chapter'. Further, ranking of officers I see as a weak point. Maybe having a more stringent policy for becoming an officer should be implimented instead. Have a prospective officer 'voted' in, by having 15(# is debatable) other mooers show support for her/him/it. Finally the conflict of intrest (6.5) could be a sticky matter. I'm not sure how this would work. If my player-class is a decendent of SSPC, could I not be an officer in any dispute involving Sick? How is one proven to be a friend of another and therefore have conflicting intrest? Maybe this is not a large problem, if you are planing to just trust(gasp, what an idea) the officers. But I could see a lot of headaches for mediators coming out of this. Other little problems, the time period of 1 minute, does not to seem to be enough for me. I have at times experienced 15 min. lag, and often have lag that is more than 1 min.(granted, I don't stay on long under these circumstances). Maybe the time delay could be hooked to the lag meter or something simple like that. I can't come up with a better name than officer either, but I'll work on that. sorry, this was so disorganized, I'm not much of a logical thinker. ---Shung -------------------------- Message 5 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 17:03:49 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Comments on petition yduJ writes: > If one person is particularly good at the job, this > person will become overwhelmed and burnt out---your > petition nearly guarantees this behavior. I disagree. To be invited to become an officer, you must volunteer and be highly ranked by the voters. But to actually become involved in a dispute as an officer, you must accept an invitation. Being at the top of the list only garantees that you will be invited first, you don't have to accept the invitation. If you are afraid of a burn out, either: 1) don't accept; Someone else will. 2) resign; Take a breather. When you feel refreshed revolunteer. yduJ writes: > Once someone has accepted, additional accepts are > locked out, since the case is being handled. It follows from 6.7's last sentence (maybe I should make it more explicit?): [...] a player may not have more than one officer assigned to him. --QV -------------------------- Message 6 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 17:07:03 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: initial impressions Mickey writes: > I think the procedure for sorting trust is ill-specified. The > other people, assumed to be of equal rank, are not ordered with > respect to those who are not. Are they all more trustworthy or > all less trustworthy or all somewhere in the middle? Are you refering to the unlisted people on a ballot (5.3)? If so, they are all considered less trustworthy than all the listed players. On the other hand, you could be referring to the interpretation of the vote (5.6). In that case, let me explain the ambiguous rank problem. It may happen that, while ranking the volunteers, volunteers A to D have been ranked in the following strict order (no ties): A B C D. Now comes the time to rank X. Lets say X is less trusted than A, he is more trusted than D, but can't be ranked against B or C. What I propose is that A be given the benefit of the doubt and put at the same level as B. Note that if you forget ties, the ranking algorithm is well defined; that is, there can't be any inconsistencies like A < B and B < C but C < A. Mickey writes: > I think the table of contents is not needed Ok, removed (in my working copy at least). --QV -------------------------- Message 7 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 17:09:40 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: more comments and concerns Shungnak writes: > Finally the conflict of intrest (6.5) could be a sticky matter. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think it should be handled the same way as mediator conflicts of interest. Maybe I should rephrase it to ressemble more closely the text of the mediation ballot. Shungnak writes: > Other little problems, the time period of 1 minute, does not to > seem to be enough for me. Note that you have more than 1 minute to accept an invitation. You have until someone else accepts the invitation. The one minute time lapse is to give the top of the list a decent chance to accept before the bottom of the list does. In any case, I changed the wording to take lag into account (sort of): > This process continues, inviting one more volunteer every minute > (lag permitting), until either one of the invited volunteers > accepts, or all volunteers have have been invited and 5 more > minutes have elapsed. --QV -------------------------- Message 8 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 17:26:41 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: powers of the officer My personnal view of the matter is that the conflicts should be resolved by a mediator. The officer is only there to temporarily fix the problem. Maybe the wizards could tell us what kind of actions they have had to take in the past (before the newMOO order) to settle these kinds of disputes. I was thinking of newting for 1 to 8 hours at the officer's discretion. If it isn't enough, the officer (or some other officer) can refill the prescription as often as necessary. Why so short? Because I don't want it to interfere with mediation. The newted player should be allowed to come back relatively promptly to either defend himself if a dispute has been registered against him, or to register a dispute against the officer if he thinks there was no cause for newting. On yduJ's advice, I'd also propose some way for the officer to disable verbs. But I'd make it so the player can't just reanable it right away. Maybe the verb should be copied elsewhere and deleted from its original location. This needs more thought. Originally I had thought of making second character information available to the officer. But I'm not so sure any more. --QV -------------------------- Message 9 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 18:09:49 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: why the ranking scheme? Everyone agrees on how an vote with 2 options should work. Every one should vote for either option and which ever gets the most votes wins. The case for multi-option votes is not so clear though. Assuming you only want to know which option is the most popular, I'll look at a few of the alternatives. The cases where you want the top N options or where you want to rank the options are similar. If you extend the 2 option case in the natural way, everyone votes for one of the options and the option that collects the most voteswins. This system is not fair. Suppose you have two options (A and B) and that A is prefered over B. By introducing a new unpopular option (C), you could make B win. For example, C may steal more votes from A than from B and the results might end up as B A C. This is true of ALL systems where you assign points to positions on a ballot, wether you are looking for one winner, or for an ordering of the options. In the example above, one point was given to the first entry on each ballot and none to all the others. Let me try to rephrase paragraph 5.6: 5.6 The ranking of the volunteers is determined as follows: * If there is no volunteer Y such that X appears before Y less often than the converse, X occupies the highest rank. There may be more than one such X, in which case they all share the highest rank. * All the ranked volunteers are removed from the ballots and the second rank is filled according to the previous rule. * Repeat the process until all volunteers have been ranked. Is that any clearer? I'm sure it is. I'm changing the petition's text to this. --QV -------------------------- Message 10 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 15 18:38:48 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Against ranking I'm still against ranking. I can't tell you how stressful it is to *know* you are the only being asked a question. I get completely stressed out when I'm in a public room with other people and someone (in the room!) whispers or pages me a question. If they'd say it out loud then I would have the option of not answering, hoping someone else would, knowing that *they* all saw it too. Even if you know it's only for one or five minutes until some other volunteers get asked, getting asked *first* is going to be stressful. You can say "just don't answer" but that's not a solution. It's still stressful. I think your petition is good *without* the ranking, and would do just as useful a service for the user community, and I just think this is unnecessary complexity and a bad feature. I ask again that you take it all out. Mediators barring people from serving is a good enough filter, IMHO. Others who agree with me, please make your voices heard! (And vote yes on #51664 so I can propose this as an amendment if Q-V won't listen :-) --yduJ -------------------------- Message 11 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Sep 17 07:42:35 1993 PDT From: Joe (#2612) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Comments on petition > If you are afraid of a burn out, either: > 1) don't accept; Someone else will. > 2) resign; Take a breather. When you feel refreshed revolunteer. As an officer/mediator/general caretaker in a previous life, I have to agree with yduJ. If you have the capability of helping people deal with problems, it's _really hard_ to just ignore them. Trust me on this. Although I'm wary of complicated petitions right now, I like Mickey's suggestions: institute "trust levels" and select the least recently used person; at any rate, even if you don't like the specifics of that proposal, I really think you should build in mechanisms that guarantee that a given volunteer won't be used over and over again. I'm cutting this short because I'm inarticulate; just consider this a general show of support for yduJ's and Mickey's comments. -------------------------- Message 12 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Sep 18 13:53:50 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Joe (#2612) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Comments on petition > From: Joe (#2612) > As an officer/mediator/general caretaker in a previous life, I > have to agree with yduJ. If you have the capability of helping > people deal with problems, it's _really hard_ to just ignore them. > Trust me on this. Ok, I have to admit it's a valid point. > Although I'm wary of complicated petitions right now, I like > Mickey's suggestions: institute "trust levels" and select the > least recently used person; at any rate, even if you don't like > the specifics of that proposal, I really think you should build in > mechanisms that guarantee that a given volunteer won't be used > over and over again. In fact, I'm not sure I understand how those trust levels would be used. How would it change the voting process? How would you tally the votes? In the mean time, I've changed 6.7 to force the volunteer to take a breather after each case: 6.7 When a volunteer accepts, he takes on the role of officer and he loses his rank for one week as if he had resigned and volunteered again. When the week has elapsed, he regains his original rank (unless a vote has changed it in the mean time). A player may not have more than one officer assigned to him. > --QV -------------------------- Message 13 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Sep 18 14:10:52 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Officer's powers I've added two new paragraphs to define the officer's special powers: 7.3 The officer shall have the following powers: * Move: he shall be able to move objects, including players, without their consent, or the consent of their owners. * Disable: he shall be able to disable verbs that are used maliciously. He will also be able to read unreadable verbs to help him decide wether to disable it. * Boot: He shall be able to disconnect a player. * Newt: He shall be able to make a player unable to connect for a period of time going from 1 minute to 8 hours at his discretion. 7.4 The officer should use of his special powers only for the purpose of resolving the situation that lead to the mayday. --QV -------------------------- Message 14 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Sep 18 14:34:53 1993 PDT From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Trust levels Rather than rank people, since you don't know how it's "grounded", I recommend absolute ratings: In my dealings with them, this person has seemed: a. Always trustworthy and fair. b. Usually trustworthy and fair. c. Occasionally trustworthy and fair. d. Rarely trustworthy and fair. e. Never trustworthy and fair. f. Not Applicable (e.g., I have had no dealings with this person) I would feel a lot more comfortable knowing that Joe and Sally and Fred all thought a given person had absolute ranking B than I would knowing only relative orderings specified by Joe, Sally, and Fred where those relative orderings might not even contain the same sets of people. I also think it's important that a single such rating be performed which combines all attributes we'll care about (e.g., "trustworthy and fair" in the above) rather than leaving the combination of qualities to some after-the-fact mechanism which might be the subject of dispute. (e.g., some people may say trustworthy is more important than fair, and others may think it less important; this allows people to factor in their individual preferences as they assign a single rating). Just one mouse's opinion. --M -------------------------- Message 15 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sun Sep 26 12:00:11 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Mickey (#52413) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Trust levels > From: Mickey (#52413) > Rather than rank people, since you don't know how it's "grounded", > I recommend absolute ratings: > In my dealings with them, this person has seemed: > a. Always trustworthy and fair. > b. Usually trustworthy and fair. > c. Occasionally trustworthy and fair. > d. Rarely trustworthy and fair. > e. Never trustworthy and fair. > f. Not Applicable (e.g., I have had no dealings with this > person) I think assigning a rating to each volunteer will be too cumbersome. But that's not my biggest problem with the suggestion. The real problem is that you only address half the question. How will you tally these votes? If you assign to the volunteer the rank that received the most votes, there will be strange situations. Suppose that for some volunteer, a. b. and .c receive 20% each, d. gets 19% and e. 21%. What rank will you assign? e. because it received the most votes? c. because it is the average? It seems to me all you have done is make a multioption ballot into a multitude of multioption ballots without solving the original problem. > I also think it's important that a single such rating be performed > which combines all attributes we'll care about (e.g., "trustworthy > and fair" in the above) rather than leaving the combination of > qualities to some after-the-fact mechanism which might be the > subject of dispute. (e.g., some people may say trustworthy is I agree. I'm not gonna consider someone thrustworthy if I don't think he's fair, or at least free of prejudice against me. (was that criticism of my proposal? if yes, what after-the-fact mecanism are you refering to?). --QV -------------------------- Message 16 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sun Sep 26 12:17:22 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: yduJ (#68) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Against ranking > From: yduJ (#68) > I think your petition is good > *without* the ranking, and would do just as useful a service for > the user community, and I just think this is unnecessary > complexity and a bad feature. I ask again that you take it all > out. Mediators barring people from serving is a good enough > filter, IMHO. Others who agree with me, please make your voices > heard! (And vote yes on #51664 so I can propose this as an > amendment if Q-V won't listen :-) > --yduJ Unfortunately, Mickey's ballot did fail. I really hoped it would pass. The only "interesting" part of my proposal is the summary. The rest of the implementation details are not important to me. However, without Mickey's amendment process, I have no way of building a democratic consensus around the implementation details. Therefore I decided to make my own amendment process. If you want to change some details of the proposal, create an amendment and edit the proposal's text to your liking. If I like your suggestion, I'll put it in right away. If I'm not so fond of your changes, we can hold a vote on your changes and I will respect the population's wish. I have created a copy of the petition's text as #52895. To propose an amendment, type 'amend #52895' and edit the text. To learn more on my voluntary amendment process, help #44448. I would very much like to get yduJ's and Mickey's proposals in the form of an amendment (or two). --QV -------------------------- Message 17 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Sep 28 19:01:37 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: new improved, %26 leaner I just cut out some of the fat from my petition. It is basically unchanged in its meaning. --QV -------------------------- Message 18 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Sep 28 21:30:58 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Hm. I'm concerned that the 7 day rotation period will have the problem that nobody is eligible to reply to a mayday. Perhaps there needs to be a "unless there are no other eligible volunteers" clause in there. I still think the ranking is completely unnecessary, and think you should instead have two ranks: normal and just-used, where the just-used people have a 7 day (or fewer if no other eligible moderators (nice new term, btw) are available during a mayday) waiting period as you specify. --yduJ -------------------------- Message 19 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Sep 29 00:54:44 1993 PDT From: Xiombarg (#37636) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: hmmmm.... I have to agree with yduJ on this one. As a real-life and a MOO helpful person, burn-out is a big problem in any domain where your "job" is to help people. . . -Xi -------------------------- Message 20 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Oct 1 16:15:48 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: yduJ (#68) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Hm. (sigh) my response to yduJ got lost in the crash. I'll try to recall what I had suggested. > moderators (nice new term, btw) are available during a mayday) Miles should get all the credit for suggesting it. Sorry I forgot to mention it earlier. > From: yduJ (#68) > I'm concerned that the 7 day rotation period will have the problem > that nobody is eligible to reply to a mayday. Perhaps there needs > to be a "unless there are no other eligible volunteers" clause in > there. I did change it, but the MOO crashed. So I'll have to do it once more. > I still think the ranking is completely unnecessary, and think you > should instead have two ranks: normal and just-used, where the > just-used people have a 7 day (or fewer if no other eligible > moderators (nice new term, btw) are available during a mayday) > waiting period as you specify. I'm not sure I understand your suggestion. Are you suggesting that anyone who volunteers and is quick to accept maydays gets the special powers? Should they be able to @newt everyone and disable all the verbs? I am willing to simplify the voting process by saying that the names listed on the ballot are not ordered. The volunteers would be ranked by decreasing popularity (number of ballots on which their name appears). It seems to me that you (yduJ) and Mickey are confusing two issues: voting and ranking. You keep complaining about the ranking but your "solutions" only deal with voting. Or am I the one who is confused? --QV -------------------------- Message 21 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Oct 1 16:25:47 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: Quo_Vadis (#53118) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Hm. Um, I don't want anyone to vote or rank anyone. I just want there to be a pool of volunteers. Perhaps you should adopt the same mechanisms as mediation has for barring people from being mediators. I forget exactly what they are, but they have to do with N people saying that Foo can't be a mediator anymore. The details are available on that ballot. That would prevent there from having to be two separate but similar mechanisms for preventing abuse. I agree that abuse prevention is necessary, but until just now I did not realize that was what your ranking/voting thing was all about! All I could tell was that a *good* moderator was going to get creamed by being too popular and getting too much work and stress, not that a bad moderator was going to be kept out... --yduJ -------------------------- Message 22 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Oct 1 16:36:30 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: abuse of the system I think mediation can function without any 'ranking' because the mediator can't do anything bad. His decisions have to go through the common sense of a wizard and there is a 24 hours delay during which the community can overturn the decision. This is not so of moderators! Their decisions would have to be carried out immediately and automatically by a wiz owned verb. You NEED to decide BEFOREHAND wether you accept his decisions. --QV -------------------------- Message 23 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Oct 1 17:29:37 1993 PDT From: Gru (#122) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: moderators, mediators, officers, etc. Isn't justice here already too complicated. If you really think there's a need for immediate action, why not just give registered mediators the power to do stuff `right away' with logging and review. Why have a totally separate list of people? It's already set up that you can just `page mediator whatever' to get help from any of the logged-on mediators. -------------------------- Message 24 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Oct 1 19:10:22 1993 PDT From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Make it smaller I think this petition could be a lot smaller and lot lose its basic essence. Some things are said twice, and some things are said but really are just programming details that don't affect the fairness. Also, I am inclined to agree that the ranking biz is not needed. What follows is a straw-man proposal for how I'd like to see this simplified. I apologize for the length, but it's not as long as the present petition by a long-shot... This proposal introduces a method for immediate resolution of small disputes, without the need to resort to the full mediation process. Any player can issue a MAYDAY. In this situation, a MODERATOR is assigned to help. The moderator may attempt to solve any problem that mediation is permitted to solve AND that the moderator believes to require immediate action. The moderator should take the minimum action necessary to resolve the situation that led to the mayday. The moderator is chosen from a group of volunteers, preferring individuals who have not recently been used, in order to avoid burnout. A moderator may only moderate one mayday at a time. Any player may volunteer to be a mediator provided the player satisfies the requirements to vote on a ballot, and the player hasn't been barred from volunteering by a mediator. A volunteer may resign at any time. A moderator is expected to decline a mayday if moderating it would be a conflict of interest. The moderator has special powers. Each use of such powers is logged and must be justified. These powers are acquired upon acceptance of a moderation task, and are yielded upon completion. These special powers are: a. Move: he shall be able to move objects, including players, without their consent, or the consent of their owners. b. Disable: he shall be able to disable verbs that are used maliciously. He will also be able to read unreadable verbs to help him decide wether to disable them. c. Boot: He shall be able to disconnect a player. d. Newt: He shall be able to make a player unable to connect for a period of time going from 1 minute to 8 hours at his discretion. Every step of the resolution process and every use of the special powers are logged and the logs are publicly readable. A mediator can override a moderator's decision (but not vice versa). A mediator can also bar the moderator from further moderating for a specified time. If they believe the moderator's decision is questionable, any of the involved parties can call for mediation and resolve the matter in that way. -------------------------- Message 25 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Oct 2 12:55:07 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Comments on Mickey's rewrite In one of the early paragraphs you said "mediator" when you meant "moderator". Since you refer to mediators (correctly) in later paragraphs, this is confusing. I'd add "The same mechanisms by which a player can be barred from mediation apply to moderation, except that players can be barred preemptively. Players so barred may turn to mediation to request reinstatement." Also, "Conflict of interest may be detected automatically as per the same mechanisms used by the mediation system." --yduJ -------------------------- Message 26 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Mon Oct 4 14:38:11 1993 PDT From: Caernarvon (#48412) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Past history I have to say that I'm uncomfortable with the speed with which the MOO is adding rules and regulations. There appears to be no one arguing in favor of custom and social pressure as an alternative to legislation - the ability to make legislation at all has blinded those who are used to MUDs where gods and wizards act unilaterally and arbitrarily, and where a player's only recourse is to vote with their feet. That said, and taking no position on the proposal as a whole, I would like to mention that the 'moderators' in this proposal remind me of the old-time operators on the ITS time-sharing system at MIT, or of the on-line assistants on PLATO. Both worked in a similar fashion, handling problems in real time. However, both of these implementations possessed something which this proposal lacks: The on-line assistants placed themselves on and off the current duty roster using interactive commands. The mere fact of being a volunteer was not sufficient to cause them to receive requests for help; they also had to volunteer for duty at each login, and they could take themselves off the roster with a single command. This important consideration allowed them to prevent interruptions when they were busy doing other things. Most, of course, enrolled themselves automatically at login, but if they had a long editing session, they could temporarily withdraw their names. I think this is a more powerful tool than anything I can think of for avoiding burnout. And again: avoid overlegislation. -- Caernarvon -------------------------- Message 27 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Mon Oct 4 15:10:19 1993 PDT From: Gru (#122) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: using mediation During the discussion over medation (called `arbitration' at the time), there were several folks who wanted the ability for people to have the capability to act more immediately. There was a serious tradeoff between giving out the power to stop malicious behavior, and the possibility that those with such powers might use them unwisely or overeagerly. I believe that there wasn't, and isn't, much evidence of cases where immediate action is necessary. (Except, perhaps, in the case of abusive guests.) As it stands, you can page the character `mediator' and contact all of the on-line connected mediators. (I used Puff's Generic Group Interface Player). Mediators have no special powers to act immediately, but that's rarely necessary, in any case. The fact that you really can be held accountable for your actions here is usually sufficient to stop abuse. Mediators do have, in the resolution of a case, the power to do all of the things this proposal currently outlines (move, disable, boot, newt), it's just that there are some time delays built in to make sure that these actions aren't invoked overly hastily. Given that mediation is only just now 'in place', I'd hate to see a completely independent mechanism of moderators established. Give mediation a chance. It's complicated enough. If it needs to be tinkered (e.g., to make the process more responsive), the petition allowed for some of the time intervals to be adjusted. If the current implementation is cumbersome, I'd encourage suggestions for improvements. (Comments to *mediation appreciated.) QV and I spoke about this; he had some suggestions for `help mediation' that I hope will make the process clearer. -------------------------- Message 28 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Mon Oct 4 16:12:28 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Gru (#122) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: using mediation > From: Gru (#122) > Mediators do have, in the resolution of a case, the power to do > all of the things this proposal currently outlines (move, disable, > boot, newt), it's just that there are some time delays built in to > make sure that these actions aren't invoked overly hastily. To me these delays also serve to prevent abuse of the system by the mediators. But not everyone will agree with me. The point of my petition is that, in order to eleminate this delay, you must introduce some other measure to prevent abuse; hence the vote I propose. But I'm just repeating myself. > Given that mediation is only just now 'in place', I'd hate to see > a completely independent mechanism of moderators established. Give > mediation a chance. It's complicated enough. If it needs to be Agreed. I'm moving forward with the debate right now, but I'm not going to sign this for a while yet (quite a while, I'm sure). > QV and I spoke about this; he had some suggestions for `help > mediation' that I hope will make the process clearer. I am working on it... but don't expect anything before the weekend, I'm quite busy irl too. Of course, if anyone else has suggestions, make then known on *mediation. --QV -------------------------- Message 29 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Oct 5 09:32:24 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: Caernarvon (#48412) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Past history Caernarvon, we tried peer pressure and societal norms. We tried it for three years. It doesn't work. :-( --yduJ -------------------------- Message 30 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 13 08:24:04 1993 PDT From: Mickey (#52413) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Ranking Having now written a variant of the petition myself (the one I mailed you), I am relatively convinced that the whole ranking thing is not needed. Yet I see your petition still has the ranking stuff in it. Can you either remove the ranking stuff or describe a scenario in which the ranking stuff will achieve an important social effect that something simpler like peer review will not achieve? I think that for me (and perhaps others) to buy into the ranking stuff, a justification of its purpose is called for. --M -------------------------- Message 31 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 13 17:10:28 1993 PDT From: Xiombarg (#37636) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: me, too! I'd have to agree with Mickey on this one. What advantage overcomes the disadvantages that have been brought up? -Xi -------------------------- Message 32 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 13 17:49:43 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Mickey (#52413) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Ranking I can think of a million nasty things a mischievious moderator could do. In your suggested text, it seems to me that the only criteria for becoming a moderator is being the fastest to answer the mayday. Given that, two characters X and Y could harrass a third without ever getting punished. Here is how: X maydays and Y answers (Y is ready for it, he has all the chances in the world to answer first). Now Y @newts the innocent victim (Z). As soon as Z reconnects he newts him again. If you limit his powers to a single @newt, X and Y will just have to go through their little game of maydaying again. No one may call for mediation because all the participants are X, Y and Z only. X and Y won't call for mediation and Z can't even connect. No mediation, no slap on the wrist. My opinion is that mediators should (and do) have broad powers. These powers can't be entrusted to just anyone. You need some way to pick the fittest few or to weed out the rotten few. I don't feel confortable relying solely on the ability to bar someone who has abused the system. Allowing someone to use these special powers is a risk the whole community would take. The decision on who to trust with these powers should go to the community. That's why I am proposing this scheme. Now if someone has another idea on how to 'pick the fittest few or weed out the rotten few', I might use it instead of ranking but I won't just remove ranking. I can't bring myself to edit my petition into something I wouldn't support. In a way, I wish this petition was out of my hands. If the majority thinks we can do without a safety net, then fine let's do it that way; we'll see how it turns out. But until I am convinced such a safety net isn't necessary, or until I am convinced the majority thinks a safety net isn't necessary, I won't remove it. Am I really all alone in my camp? --QV -------------------------- Message 33 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 13 17:51:07 1993 PDT From: Mickey (#52413) To: Xiombarg (#37636) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: me, too! Not to mention the disadvantages that we haven't brought up: like the overall way in which people will be encouraged to think of each other as ranked. "Hello, Mr. I-trust-you-better-than-47-people-but-not-as-well-as-22-others." people may say as they great each other. Ok, they won't really. But I worry that you'll still feel the effect. If that effect is not purchasing something pretty important, I don't think we should go out of our way to establish it. --M -------------------------- Message 34 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 13 18:14:07 1993 PDT From: Euphistopheles (#50222) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: similar idea I discussed a similar system for 'trusted players' (from which to draw juries, moderators, whatever) with Miles soon after the petition system was created. One of our ideas was that the .trusted property would be !r. yoof -------------------------- Message 35 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 13 21:48:12 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Working without a net Everything a moderator does will be logged. Yes, your scenario is possible without a ranking "net", but I think it is unlikely. Because everything is logged, X and Y's little "joke" will be found out, and Z will have gotten a good night's sleep or actually studied for that exam. :-) X and Y stand to get newted *permanently* for such abuse, which makes me think they'll be less likely to actually do it. Therefore, I think that this is an insufficient reason to institute a ranking system, given the ample objections which have been raised. You might build into this system mechanisms for changing it itself that will not require another petition, similar to what has happened with mediation. (Heck, you could just use mediation's rules.) --yduJ -------------------------- Message 36 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Oct 14 14:21:21 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: [Moriah (#50459): Re: Ranking] Date: Wed Oct 13 18:55:38 1993 PDT From: Moriah (#50459) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118) Subject: Re: Ranking No Qv, you're not alone. I'd like a safty net too. I'd like one that is simple to understand though, or the Moo populace won't take the time to wade through it. (witness the comments on Mickey's ballot). So, could we come up with a simpler plan? -M -------------------------- Message 37 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Oct 14 14:43:04 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: yduJ (#68) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Working without a net > X and Y stand to get newted > *permanently* for such abuse, which makes me think they'll be less > likely to actually do it. But who would newt them? Not a mediator because as I said, the only participant who could call for mediation is the victim and he won't be able to get back on. Not a wizard because it isn't a security issue. But nevertheless, even if this particular scenario won't work, the moderator still has a lot of power. He could do a lot of damage to the DB before getting the axe. A 'suicidal' player (or a pair of suicidal players) might take a lot of the DB down with him (them). But this is of course a matter of opinion. The question is: are you willing to live with that risk? I say no, you say yes. And that's life. > (Heck, you could just use mediation's > rules.) What makes the mediation different from my scheme, is that there is a delay in the implementation of a mediator's decision to allow for public review. If it was possible to use the mediation rules, why would we need a seperate process? Why not change mediation so that if the two parties can't agree on a moderator within 5 minutes, which ever mediator is fastest to intervene gets the special powers and can resolve it in anyway he sees fit without any delay? Oh well, I'm starting to sound angry. I'm not, but I am a bit annoyed by this issue. I wish it was out of my hands! Mickey please resubmit your amendment petition! :-) --QV > > --yduJ -------------------------- Message 38 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Oct 14 18:38:47 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Working without a net Fixed. -------------------------- Message 39 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Oct 14 18:39:01 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Working without a net ARGH! I hate the defaulting of @answer. Sorry about that post. -------------------------- Message 40 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sun Oct 17 11:12:44 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: A small simplification of the voting scheme I have removed 3 paragraphs from the petition's text because they were either redundant or simply not needed. I also simplified the voting scheme a little bit. The text is now 129 lines long. It's still too long. I definately want to bring this under 100 before opening it for signatures. Can anyone suggest a simpler safety net? Here are the changes I made: [removed one paragraph from the introduction] < 1.2 The proposed procedure is described in two parts. Section 2 gives < a complete description of process. Sections 3 to 7 describe < the implementation details. Please don't be daunted by the length < of this proposal; it isn't complex but there are a lot of details < to work out. ------------------------- [removed one paragraph from the summary] < 2.4 The moderator cannot override a mediator's decision and can only act < on matters that could be solved through mediation but require < immediate action. ------------------------- [simplified the voting scheme] < 4.4 On his ballot, each voter lists as many players as he likes, in < decreasing order of trustworthiness. All the unlisted players < are assumed to be equally trustworthy but less trustworthy than < all the listed players. < < 4.5 The ranking of the volunteers is determined as follows: < < * If there is no volunteer Y such that X appears before Y less often < than the converse, X occupies the highest rank. There may be more < than one such X, in which case they all share the highest rank. < * All the ranked volunteers are removed from the ballots and the < second rank is filled according to the previous rule. < * Repeat the process until all volunteers have been ranked. < -- > 4.4 On his ballot, each voter lists all the players he is willing to > trust, in any order. > > 4.5 Volunteers whose name appears on more ballots have a higher rank > than those whose name appears on fewer ballots. > ------------------------- [removed one last paragraph] < 5.2 If two or more volunteers share the same rank, they are invited, < one per minute, in a random order. ------------------------- --QV -------------------------- Message 41 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sun Oct 17 18:20:33 1993 PDT From: yduJ (#68) To: Quo_Vadis (#53118) and *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Re: Working without a net >But who would newt them? Not a mediator because as I said, the only >participant who could call for mediation is the victim and he won't be >able to get back on. Not a wizard because it isn't a security issue. The victim will only be a newt for eight hours, after which time e will log in and scream bloody murder. I would not be averse to receiving pleas for help to LambdaMOO-Registration@Xerox.COM, although what I would do with such a plea would be to post it to some mailing list rather than acting upon it independently. You could add another restriction that a moderator may not respond to the SAME player's plea for help twice within 24 hours, or something like that, if you want to be safe against this sort of problem. (This may be too restrictive though, I'm just talking off the top of my head now.) --yduJ -------------------------- Message 42 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Wed Oct 20 20:54:05 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:duty-roster (#37175) Subject: Much shorter I rewrote a lot of the petition to decrease its size while keeping essentially the same procedure. The only noticable change (apart from the simplification to the voting scheme I did recently) is that I have merged the powers to boot and newt. The new text is 70 lines long!! You have no more excuses, read it NOW! :-) --QV -------------------------- Message 43 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Oct 22 15:29:00 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *social-issues (#7233) and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Immediate action against harrassers There is a new petition ready to be signed: Moderation: Immediate action against harrassers Please 'read #37175' and post your comments. Often disputes are easier to solve at the beginning than at the end. The facts get distorted and it isn't always obvious what really happened. Also, it may be hard for the mediator to get in touch with all the participants. By acting quickly, the moderator can witness the events and rectify the situation before it degenerates. --QV -------------------------- Message 44 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Oct 23 12:48:30 1993 PDT From: Xiombarg (#37636) To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: moderation Okay, two problems, both of which have come up before: 1) The ranking thing. Even if you think it's needed (and alot of people don't), a minute between asking is too long. Also, there should at least be the option of going off-duty without losing one's moderator status. (Going off-duty puts you on the end of the list, so that if everyone else refues, you get asked again.) 2) Logging. The petition needs to specify that the moderator's actions are logged, so a mediator can inspect them if it ever becomes an issue. As a side note, I think this would alleviate the need for ranking, but even with ranking logging needs to go on. -Xi -------------------------- Message 45 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Oct 23 14:34:43 1993 PDT From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Xiombarg (#37636) and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: moderation To bring the petition down to a readabe length, I've made a few concessions. I removed a lot of frills. > a minute between asking is too long. It will be too long for some, and too short for others. Lets try it at one minute and we can adjust it later if it turns out to be a problem. > should at least be the option of going off-duty without losing > one's moderator status. (Going off-duty puts you on the end of the > list, so that if everyone else refues, you get asked again.) That's one of the details I omitted to reduce the size of the petition. In the most probable implementation, the announcements will be made by a moderator player/object. You can go off-duty by gagging that object. If we need something more specific, I'm not sure a petition is needed to get it implemented. > 2) Logging. The petition needs to specify that the moderator's > actions are logged, so a mediator can inspect them if it ever > becomes an issue. The petition specifies that all uses of the special powers should be logged. I think that is sufficient at least for now. Better logging capabilities should be part of a seperate petition, and it should cover not just moderators, but any player. --QV -------------------------- Message 46 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Oct 23 16:57:21 1993 PDT From: Mickey (#52413) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118), Xiombarg (#37636), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: moderation Don't put the "minute between" in the petition. Leave it to the implementors. Just say it will ask one, wait a reasonable period (to be determined through use) and then if no response ask the next. In general, details like this which you're 100% sure cannot be road-tested prior to implementation and that cannot affect the "fairness" of the proposed process should just be left to the implementors. --M -------------------------- Message 47 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sun Oct 31 14:16:44 1993 PST From: Moderation (#37175) To: *Wizard-List (#6428), Quo_Vadis (#53118), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Request for vetting Reply-to: Quo_Vadis (#53118), *Wizard-List (#6428), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Quo_Vadis, the author of Petition:Moderation (#37175): `Moderation: Immediate action against harrassers', 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 #37175' to grant it your mark of approval or 2) type `deny #37175' to refuse such approval and then send mail to *Petition:Moderation explaining your reasons for doing so. Thank you for your attention to this matter. -------------------------- Message 48 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Nov 2 22:01:46 1993 PST From: Moderation (#37175) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118), *Wizard-List (#6428), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Petition vetted Reply-to: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) The wizard Nosredna has determined that *Petition:Moderation (#37175): `Moderation: Immediate action against harrassers' is implementable and has therefore vetted it. -------------------------- Message 49 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Nov 2 22:04:03 1993 PST From: Nosredna (#2487) To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) and *Wizard-List (#6428) Subject: Spelling error You spelled "whether" as "wether" once. I don't think this makes it unvettable... I don't see any ambiguous bits in this petition. Would other wizards care to enlighten me if they see some? (Is it possible to unvet a petition if we screwed up? I'm a little nervous by the overwhelming weight of the decision here if I make an error... Or maybe just the flamers waiting to strike :-) --Nosredna -------------------------- Message 50 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 6 14:37:14 1993 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: rationale Before the newMOO order, if you had a problem with someone, you would simply call a wizard for help. However, that option isn't available anymore. Instead there is mediation. It is relatively complex (to a newbie) and it takes days to produce any results in the best case. Often the time lapse between the event (that triggered the process) and the decision makes testimonies doubtful. This proposal seeks to come back to the kind of system before the newMOO order, where one could get a quick response. The important points of the proposal are: moderators have the power to help moderators are players trusted by the majority of MOOers moderators are volunteers as a player, you only need to know 1 command to invoke it decisions can always be overridden by mediation Read #37175 and sign it if you like. --QV -------------------------- Message 51 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 6 16:00:52 1993 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Reading list (suggested) For those of you who don't want to read all 50 posts, you may want to take a look at the following posts. I picked what I thought were the most relevant posts and I think they are representative of the global discussion. Here are my suggestions: @mail 8 14 21 23 24 27 33 34 42 44 45 50 on #37175 12 messages on *Petition:Moderation (#37175): 8: Sep 15 17:26 Quo_Vadis (#53118) powers of the officer 14: Sep 18 14:34 Mickey (#52413) Trust levels 21: Oct 1 16:25 yduJ (#68) Re: Hm. 23: Oct 1 17:29 Gru (#122) moderators, mediators, officers, e 24: Oct 1 19:10 Mickey (#52413) Make it smaller 27: Oct 4 15:10 Gru (#122) using mediation 33: Oct 13 17:51 Mickey (#52413) Re: me, too! 34: Oct 13 18:14 Euphistopheles (#50222) similar idea 42: Oct 20 20:54 Quo_Vadis (#53118) Much shorter 44: Oct 23 12:48 Xiombarg (#37636) moderation 45: Oct 23 14:34 Quo_Vadis (#53118) Re: moderation >>50: Nov 6 14:37 Quo_Vadis (#53118) rationale --QV -------------------------- Message 52 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 6 23:35:10 1993 PST From: Gru (#122) To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: no At the risk of repeating myself: If mediation is too complicated, mediation + moderation is MORE complicated. We don't need yet another mechanism. If mediation is too complicated, you want to give mediators more immediate powers, or add additional safeguards to make sure mediators can be 'trusted' to handle those powers, amend the mediation process, don't add yet something else again. -------------------------- Message 53 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Nov 11 06:58:59 1993 PST From: edd (#54917) To: *social-issues (#7233), *Petition:Moderation (#37175), and *Petition:guest-booting (#40768) Subject: Having slated cross-posts, here goes one. The last few days I've been worried about abuse of guest booting if *P:gb were to be implemented. So I've taken the time and re-read the petition, all the comments, and carefully read the implementation notes. I was startled at how clear the petition is, and how there seems to be just enough latitude not to pin it down too tight. That is a credit not to me, but to those who commented on it before I 'petitionized' it. I am satisfied that the system will work and that abuses will be few, and mostly early on in the process. The main philosophy of the petition seesm to have been lost: "Registered players can have their behaviour called into question by mediation (even guests can call for mediation with a player, though this is unlikely). On the other hand guests are immune from mediation." Guest booting tries to address this inbalance. Quo Vadis has been campaigning against *p:gb but for *p:mod. I honestly have difficulty seeing how *p:gb can be MORE harmful than *p:mod. The class of eligible players forgb is smaller, the punishment more severe and SPECIFIC mechanisms are in place for guests complaining about player actions. I will post a more thought out answer to all the points which have been raised later in the week. BTW: Thanks Rog for doing such a good job on the implementation notes! edd the duck (busy writing up still) -------------------------- Message 54 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Nov 19 08:31:03 1993 PST From: edd (#54917) To: *social-issues (#7233), *Refrigerator (#6443), *chatter (#16543), *Ballot:guest-booting (#40768), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Some Frequently Asked Questions about Guest Booting What is booting? Booting is the process by which people are forcibly disconnected from Lambda. Currently only wizards may do this. What is this ballot? This ballot would, if passed, allow players (older than 4 months) to boot guests, and prevent them from reconnecting for an hour. An explicit complaints procedure for the guest is also provided. Why is this necessary? Sadly there are a number of guests who use their anonymity to abuse and harrass players, often in an overtly offensive and sexual manner. Won't this be abused? Sadly, yes. This is why there is provision for removing the privilege, complaints from guests, and the powers are limited to non-newbies. Why the limit on the players? Some limit seems to be necessary to get approval from you, the MOOers. This limit was picked as it is also the minimum age for mediators, a position of responsibility. Doesn't this create an imbalance? On the contrary. Guests have redress against players through mediation (though a simpler mechanism should be afforded). Players have no effective redress against guests. The ballot simply balances this. Why can't annoying guests just be jarred? Jars (rooms which don't permit leaving) are private mechanisms, often without: controls on who may use them, records of their use or a mechanism to complain about their abuse! They are also ineffective as guests may log out and in, escaping the jar. I urge you to [vote yes on #40768]. edd the duck -------------------------- Message 55 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 20 07:57:56 1993 PST From: edd (#54917) To: *Ballot:guest-booting (#40768) and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Guest booting versus Moderation The idea that Moderation somehow ha more safeguards than guest booting is completely bogus. I've carefully read the Moderation petition in the past and I really can't see how guest booting can be described as anything short of a subset of it. For instance any player who is eligible to guest boot is eligible to be a moderator. edd the duck -------------------------- Message 56 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 20 08:20:03 1993 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: edd (#54917), *Ballot:guest-booting (#40768), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: Guest booting versus Moderation > The idea that Moderation somehow ha more safeguards than guest > booting is completely bogus. I've carefully read the Moderation > petition in the past and I really can't see how guest booting can > be described as anything short of a subset of it. There are two additional safeguards: * The player who has a gripe with someone can't boot him himself. He has to `mayday' and someone else will decide what to do about the offensive behavior. * The vote insures that most of the time, it will be someone generally trusted by the players who'll be wielding that power. That said, I am not unsatisfied with the safeguards on guest-booting. Given that it is restricted to booting guests, whereas my petition covers much more. What I object to is that guest-booting discriminates against guests. It is the behavior after all that we are condemning. Why does it matter if it is from a guest or a player? --QV -------------------------- Message 57 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 20 08:24:54 1993 PST From: edd (#54917) To: *Ballot:guest-booting (#40768) and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: The difference between guests and players There is a difference between guests and players. Players are subject to the process of mediation, guests CANNOT be mediated against (they were I think explicity excluded, though I'd hafta re-read the petition to confirm that). DO NOT [vote no to #40768] expecting *P:mod to pass. There is no guarantee that it will ever get the required number of signatures! edd the duck -------------------------- Message 58 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 20 08:35:53 1993 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: edd (#54917), *Ballot:guest-booting (#40768), and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: The difference between guests and players > There is a difference between guests and players. Players are > subject to the process of mediation, guests CANNOT be mediated > against (they were I think explicity excluded, though I'd hafta > re-read the petition to confirm that). I believe you are mistaken on that point. The arbitration (now mediation) ballot said that a dispute against a guest would be collectively with all guests from that site. Help mediation is kinda misleading in that regard; it says that disputes against guests aren't implemented when it means that there is no automatic way to note the site information. It does say however, that if you note the guest's color and time of connection, the wizards will be able to trace its site. > DO NOT [vote no to #40768] expecting *P:mod to pass. There is no > guarantee that it will ever get the required number of signatures! Agreed, but DO NOT `vote yes to #40768' expecting justice. ;-) --QV -------------------------- Message 59 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 20 14:03:36 1993 PST From: Shadowjack (#58169) To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: First takes... Sorry that i don't have time (nor currently the inclination) to wade through the 58 uplist posts, so take these comments as my first takes on this subject. I really don't see any good reason to give away my rights. I currently have the right to make verbs !r and excersize it. I do this for the reason that I don't _want_ my verbs read by just anyone. While the specifics have not been made crystal clear on the powers granted to a volunteer, it has not been explicitly said (as far as I can make them out) that the volunteers will be restricted to only reading/disabling on the offending player. Even if this were the case, I still don't like the idea much. Why not just let the offender be newted and then call in a wizard (who already has the powers to manipulate folks verbs and such) to do any monkeying needed to the verbs. I'd much rather trust wizards to do this than just anyone who can meet the volunteer requirements and this doesn't give away any rights as we wouldn't be giving them additional rights over peoples' verbs. Shadowjack -------------------------- Message 60 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Nov 20 18:36:15 1993 PST From: Gru (#122) To: *Ballot:guest-booting (#40768) and *Petition:Moderation (#37175) Subject: mediation and guests I have to confess as author of the Arbitration ballot and the guy who implemented it (and wrote `help mediation') that I blew it when it came to disputes with guests. After the fact, I've not been able to figure out what it means to have a dispute with a guest, or with `all the guests from that site'. If you have any ideas, please share them, because otherwise I'm stumped. (This is the reason why petitions are supposed to get implementation notes now.) In the meanwhile, I support guest-booting over moderation: I don't like moderation because I think it is unnecessary (mediation seems to be working well enough). But because mediation-with-guests doesn't work, something like guest-booting seems necessary, if only to cover the hole in the mediation implementation. -------------------------- Message 61 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Nov 23 19:15:12 1993 PST From: Patroclus (#56329) To: *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: power elitism I also disagree with this ballot. It is the latest in a long line of proposals to give police power to a few select players. I think those playrs would easily be more of a pain in the ass than the rudest guest. -------------------------- Message 62 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Nov 25 16:50:39 1993 PST From: Rog (#4292) To: *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: opinions I did some implementation notes. Some particular details that bother me: The moderator holds his special powers until s/he voluntarily gives them up (3.1) or a mediator removes them (4.2). This could be a very long time... Under this system it is possible for a completely random player to volunteer and be chosen immediately as a moderator, owing to the possibility of all volunteers of rank >= 1 being not connected, idling or having handled a dispute in the past 7 days. The moderator may disable any verb and move any object (*). Unlike with mediation there is no notion of a defendant against whom the dispute is called to limit the scope of the moderator's actions. I wonder if the possibility of later action by a mediator is a sufficient deterrent... (*) modulo certain DB integrity preservation issues yet to be decided. I'm not sure what to do about this yet. Call me power-happy, but the idea that a completely random player can become a moderator and disable ANYTHING bothers me. On the other hand, if this ballot passes and I have to implement it, then I'd like to have it be useful... -------------------------- Message 63 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Nov 25 19:11:59 1993 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Rog (#4292) and *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: opinions > I did some implementation notes. Thanks. > Some particular details that bother me: > > The moderator holds his special powers until s/he voluntarily > gives them up (3.1) or a mediator removes them (4.2). This could > be a very long time... Indeed. That is why I have fought to have the strongest safety net I could think of. My hope, and I'm sure it will be realized, is that enough mature players will volunteer to make that unlikely. > (*) modulo certain DB integrity preservation issues yet to be > decided. I'm not sure what to do about this yet. Call me > power-happy, but the idea that a completely random player can > become a moderator and disable ANYTHING bothers me. On the other > hand, if this ballot passes and I have to implement it, then I'd > like to have it be useful... I agree. My idea from the start was that his powers would be limited to verbs, object and players not owned by a wizard. Well, I know, there is a lot of important non-wizardly code... --QV -------------------------- Message 64 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Thu Nov 25 19:25:44 1993 PST From: Quo_Vadis (#53118) To: Rog (#4292) and *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: opinions > I did some implementation notes. I've read them and they're fine. Except that logging isn't mentioned. Every use of the special powers shall be logged and the logs shall be publicly available. --QV -------------------------- Message 65 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Fri Nov 26 17:08:37 1993 PST From: Rog (#4292) To: Quantum-Vacuum (#53118) and *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: opinions > Except that logging isn't mentioned. Much though it may seem otherwise with certain recent petitions, the point of implementation notes is NOT to rewrite the entire petition, but merely to clarify what's going to happen with those portions of the petition that either are unclear/ambiguous and where the question of how it's going to be implemented may have some impact on whether people vote for it. The text about logging was entirely clear. > Well, I know, there is a lot of important non-wizardly code... Therein lies the rub... -------------------------- Message 66 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Dec 4 13:17:54 1993 PST From: splat (#59277) To: Gru (#122) and *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Re: no > Date: Sat Nov 6 23:35:10 1993 PST > From: Gru (#122) > To: *Petition:Moderation (#37175) > Subject: no > > At the risk of repeating myself: > If mediation is too complicated, mediation + moderation is MORE > complicated. We don't need yet another mechanism. If mediation is > too complicated, you want to give mediators more immediate powers, > or add additional safeguards to make sure mediators can be > 'trusted' to handle those powers, amend the mediation process, > don't add yet something else again. Well I don't know. In RL it's a lot easier to call 911 or something than it is to press criminal charges in court. Moderators would be the equivalent of MOO cops, while mediators would be the judges. Most of the time you wouldn't need to figure out mediation at all if moderation did the trick for your problem. Now, I'm not saying I necessarily WANT MOOcops, but it IS reasonable... splat -------------------------- Message 67 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Sat Dec 4 13:50:29 1993 PST From: Patroclus (#56329) To: *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: No MOO cops! I don't want to create MOO cops. For me, that IS the point and is why I voted no on this ballot. I can @gag a guest or support Puff's less coercive ban/witness mechanism. I am not interested in importing RL social control mechanisms into VR where they are not needed. There are many acts of creativity and free speech which are bound to offend some people. Since we don't have well-defined civil rights in the MOO yet anyway, I sure as hell don't want some MOO cop to roll up his sleeves and step in. -------------------------- Message 68 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Dec 7 17:47:13 1993 PST From: Moderation (#37175) To: *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) Subject: Voting closes on ballot #37175: Final Results The voting period for Ballot:Moderation (#37175): `Moderation: Immediate action against harrassers' has ended. The final vote count is as follows: In favor: 217 Against: 160 Abstaining: 182 The proposal has failed to get twice as many votes in favor as against and so has not passed. -------------------------- Message 69 from *Ballot:Moderation (#37175): Date: Tue Dec 7 18:08:19 1993 PST From: Moderation (#37175) To: *Ballot:Moderation (#37175) and *Wizard-List (#6428) Subject: Ballot statistics A total of 1581 eligible voters logged in during the ballot period. Of these, 559people or 35% cast votes of any sort; 377people or 23% cast `yes' or `no' votes. --------------------------