Log edited with Logedit 2.7.0pl on Sat Oct 25 19:07:22 CDT 2003 Word-wrapping at 76 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Hall(#2548RaJ) / /^\/^\/^\ \ |"""""""""""""""""""""""""|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|"""""""""""""""""""""""""| | LECTURER |~~)~~~~~~~~~(~~| TOPIC | | |~~) (~~| | | Ellis |~~) ___ (~~| FQ discipline system | | | |~~) Y (~~| | | | |_________________________|\___ | ___/|_________________________| | |/ (_ (_ (_ (* (_ \|==\_____/==|/ _) *) _) _) _) \| \ (_ (_ (_ (_ (_ \|___|/ *) _) _) _) *) / (_ (_ (_ (* (_ _) *) *) _) *) (* (_ (_ (_ A _) _) _) *) (_ (_ (_ / \ _) _) *) (_ (_ / \ _) *) (_ / \ *) / \ do: -help lecture Present: Javelin, Trispis, Chimera, Blue_Guest, Demae, Alric, Walker, Mystery8, Luke, Territan, Grinna, Huz, Nymeria, Balerion, Zebranky, Cheetah, China, Viila, Gallahad, Tyr, Tammy, Elvira, Pozzo, Colputt, Boris Javelin carefully walks up the narrow stairs to the stage. Javelin has left. Javelin has arrived. Javelin says, "And now, with no ado...Ellis, on the "Fun Quotient Discipline System"" Javelin can't wait to find out what this is. :) Ellis carefully walks up the narrow stairs to the stage. Ellis has left. Ellis has arrived. Javelin goes down the few steps to the seating area. Javelin comes down the few steps from the stage. Javelin has left. Javelin has arrived. Ellis says, "Hi, all. :>" China applauds for Ellis. Boris waves and claps Ellis says, "Funny enough, aside from what I'm going to talk about, I consider nothing about Olympus Island MUSH to be innovative. It's designed based on the sum of conventional wisdom, with the idea of 'let's not make the same old mistakes.' That idea was the basis of the single innovation, called Fun Quotient. A little history, first...." Ellis says, "On the first MUSH I joined, I was very active. It was an RP MUSH. Despite the restrictions placed on players, as far as what plots or scenes they could run, I managed to run a scene a week, plus would roleplay daily. Unfortunately, though, there were some staff 'politics' there that I sort of became a victim of." Ellis says, "The staff setup was that of an elite group of players, separate from the rest of the playerbase. This is never a good thing. In my case, it created some bad episodes for me. A few staff decided they didn't like me, and pressure was put on the rest to do the same. For a while, I just kept being active, but at some point, I got fed up and simply stopped playing." Ellis says, "However, the Discipline procedure there was "3 +warnings and you get sitebanned." Because of the dislike for me, I was given 2 +warnings, and I didn't bother to appeal them. Now, here's the rub.." Ellis says, "There was, on this MUSH, another player with 2 +warnings. He barely Roleplayed, and instead, he sat in the OOC room, complaining about things or insulting people. It began to irk me that, as far as staff were concerned, he and I were the same. That it didn't matter what I _added_ to the MUSH; any good that I had done was entirely erased by any infraction." Ellis says, "I had seen similar ways of doing discipline on other MUSHes, as well, and often thought that it was somewhat arbitrary, but most importantly, it mostly hurt any active player who was disliked by staff (both plural and singular). I'm not even going to defend myself on the infractions. Let's simply suppose I did these things, apologized, and resumed being an active player. There is a 7 month time-span in between my two +warnings. On this MUSH, +warnings were permanent and unchangeable. Nothing good that I did after receiving them, or the fact that over a year has passed since my getting the second one, mattered." Ellis says, "Around the end of 2001, the RP MUSH was in the initial stages of The Slide Down. (That's when most or all of the staff of a MU* are burned out, the players are dissatisfied, plots are scarce or nonexistant and an Exodus begins.) Something the Head WIZ there said when he posted his goodbye was what started me on Fun Quotient..." Ellis says, "He said: "When you "grow up" and develop your own MUSH, may each and every one of your players, act exactly the same way, that you have acted here."" Ellis says, "I thought about that, long and hard. I would actually _want_ players like me. Yes, I'm not perfect, but I was active and helped keep stuff happening. ActivePlayers are the gold on an RP MUSH. More valuable than staff, even..." Javelin chuckles softly;. Ellis says, "Yeah, it's a funny curse ;)" Ellis says, "So, it was in my interests to make sure to develop a discpline system that punishes the bad player, yet doesn't overpunish an ActivePlayer. I also wanted to make sure that there was some non-arbitrary quantification of a player's worth, so that it was not all staff's word versus player's word." Ellis says, "Fun Quotient is my way of trying to make sure that discipline is as fair and balanced as possible. When a player breaks a rule from a file a couple times, staff begin to give +Demerits. However, it is not "Get 8 Demerits and goodbye." In the bottom of their +FINGER, you see FQ: <#>. As long as someone's FQ doesn't go below 0, all is well. If it goes into the negative, the player will be asked to leave..." Ellis says, "The code for it is laughingly simple. On my MUSH, there are several rewards, each for their own reason. +NOMs (players vote each other), XP - Experience points are handed out at the end of a plot, +KUDOS for running a scene, and Staffchits (staff do a good job)." Ellis says, "On the other end of the spectrum, there are +DEMERITs. These are given out only for exact breakage of RULES or NEWS files policies. (Harassment, cheating, code hacking, spying, unethical staff behavior)" Ellis says, "The code's been up on the webpage. In layman's terms:(Unspent XP + Spent XP + Noms/30 + Staffchits + Kudos) minus (Demerits) = Fun Quotient (FQ)" Ellis says, "In January, 2003, I opened my MUSH to its Alpha testing, and chose 26 players, each to serve a purpose. Among the 26 was that other '2 +warning' player. This player had been sitebanned from several MU*s for harassment of other players and staff. He rarely roleplays, he's what I call a Perpetual Unhappy Camper. There were some other players chosen to help test, who were occassional rulebreakers, and all with varying levels of activity on other MU*s." Ellis says, "My most active player has only had 1 infraction (Demerit), and his FQ is now 56. The only players with 0 are people in Chargen or those who never RP. From January until May, the Unhappy Camper managed to get a few +noms and some XP, but his total FQ by May 2003 was -6. Nobody else has gone into the negatives. In June, he was removed from the MUSH." Demae . o O ( If someone does something *really* bad, can he get more than one demerit? ) Ellis says, "Yes." Ellis says, "But I can answer questions soon :>" Ellis says, "Publicly showing the FQ in the +finger has had the added benefit that players and staff are always aware of the symbiosis, the give and take, involved in a roleplaying MUSH. It encourages them to play, to run plots, and to try not to detract from the total MUSH fun. The only time a player can be kicked off prior to going negative FQ is for what I call The Big Ones (Posing Rape, Posing Child Porn, MASSIVELY offensive behavior on a continual basis, hacking the MU*)." Viila says, "Oh, Zeb left?" Ellis says, "In closing, it has been a successful system. It's fair, and it takes into account the total sum of player action, not just the negative. Now, I guess I'll try to answer questions." Tammy takes notes on this FQ. Colputt logs it Demae says, "How effective do you think this system is, in terms of deterring players from misbehaving in the first place?" Javelin says, "You mentioned the time between infractions. When I heard FQ, I thought (Good - Bad) / (time on MUSH). Is there a 'rate' involved here?" Ellis says, "I didn't add a time-based rate to the FQ. It's a total summation. But you really have to totally not play and keep doing infractions to go negative." Ellis says, "Did that answer sufficiently?" Javelin nods. Êlvïrå ponders Tammy says, "Is the code for FQ available for installing on our MU*s?" Ellis says, "Sort of. The code itself is on http://www.angelfire.com/games4/oim/resources/fq.html. However, you can use this with any reward system you currently have. It's only subtract and add" Tammy says, "Thank you." Ellis says, "I'm going to paste something, so bear with me :>" Ellis says, "Within the +FINGER code, it's written like this: [footer([if(hasattr(%q0,sheet_xp),FQ:%B[sub([add([extract([get(%q0/sheet_xp)],1,1,|)],[div([extract([get(%q0/sheet_xp)],2,1,|)],30)],[extract([get(%q0/sheet_xp)],3,1,|)],[ifelse(hasattr(%q0,staffchit),[get(%q0/staffchit)],0)],[ifelse(hasattr(%q0,kudo_amount),[get(%q0/kudo_amount)],0)])],[ifelse(hasattr(%q0,demerit),[get(%q0/Demerit)],0)])])]" Ellis says, "Replace the XP and stuff with whatever you use, and you're good to go :>" Tammy says, "Thank you, again." Demae . o O ( That code would look better if it took advantage of null_eq_zero. ) Ellis says, "I didn't say I'm a good coder ;)" Blue_Guest says, "What about those players that intentionally work the system to harass specific targets, it seems that this system might encourage such behavior? (not hose players abound, but they *do* exist)" Ellis says, "I'm not sure what you mean." Êlvïrå's arm aches Tammy stands and leaves the Right Second Row. Tammy sneaks out to RL. *snif* "I'll have to catch the log later." Demae says, "I think Blue_Guest means a player who is really popular and gets a lot of +noms, but he keeps harassing people anytime his FQ is high?" Tammy goes home. Tammy has left. Viila disappears suddenly without a trace. Viila has left. Balerion says, "Do you feel that it's wise to allow people with gobs of FQ to potentially go nuts and do a lot of damage over a day or so? I'm speaking from experience here, where a long-time, formerly ery active staffer, much-liked, pretty much trashed his org some months after his last log in. It was a drunken rampage. To me, that was siteban worthy, but in FQ his prior activity would probably save him. I'm not sure if something like that would work." Ellis says, "Ack. Please do the raise hand thing. I'm doing the qnext" Demae says, "(Are we still on Blue_Guest's question, or should I ask mine?)" Javelin says, "Ellis'll answer whoever he was supposed to. Do use 'raise hand' to get on the question queue (and 'lower hand' to leave it), please. Don't just blurt. :)" Ellis says, "Actually, since Bal and Guest's are the same, I can answer it quick. Someone who trashes it that quick will be under "The Big Ones". No matter what, I get to kick off people who damage the game. Ok, Demae?" Viila has arrived. Viila appears from thin air. Viila takes a seat in the Right Back Row. Demae says, "How effective do you think this system is, in terms of deterring players from misbehaving in the first place?" Ellis says, "It seems very effective. Having the FQ sitting out there in the open encourages people to be adding to the MUSH, and they can see how they rank." Demae nods. Ellis says, "I've had to do very little discipline, which shocks me." Boris thinks he does this in his classroom: rewards positive behavior. Êlvïrå says, "Do you think with this system, you may actually be encouraging people to misbehave? It seems to convey some sort of expectation that players will do antisocial things. That perhaps this system is saying that there is a level at which it is ok to behave offensively as long as you don't do it most of the time or make up for it with good deeds?" Trispis hmms. interesting. Blue_Guest says, "Thank you for putting my question in a more understandable fashion :)" Ellis says, "If I have been, I haven't seen it. In my experience, the people who have the higher FQ, like our 56 FQ player, are working their butts off for the MUSH. He's only had 1 or 2 times he's broken something, both were minor annoyances, but nothing sitebanworthy. The NEWS files show, unequivocally, what constitutes bad behavior. It's never ok to be an offensive jerk, and the players on my MU* know that." Ellis says, "It could be, also, that since I do speak with anyone breaking the rules that the -real- deterrent to bad behavior is -me-." Êlvïrå hmms and re-raises her hand Javelin grins at Ellis. Ellis says, "Was that ok, Elvira?" Êlvïrå nods, "That answered that question, but raises another with me" Ellis says, "Go ahead?" Êlvïrå says, "What do you define as bad behaviour? I wouldn't expect adults (or mature younger players) to break things intentionally or to do any other antisocial thing /intentionally/. If they did something /unintentionally/, I wouldn't really want to punish them for it, or make a record of it as long as they realised it was a mistake." Êlvïrå wouldn't want people who weren't mature on her MUSH though Ellis says, "I have a 5-page News File depicting 'gonna get you thrown off fast' versus 'it's obnoxious and people will stop talking to you' things. And it's very obvious the intentional versus unintentional. I don't punish people for having a bad day, or being cranky." Ellis says, "Except for a few people who were overt in harassment, most of the players have been good, and the FQ has been representative." Ellis says, "Is that ok, Elvira?" Êlvïrå says, "Ok, but to be more clear, why would you want people who would do something /intentionally/ destructive or offensive on your MUSH in the first place?" Êlvïrå says, "I think that's what I'm trying to get at. Sorry if I'm being a bit too grilling. That's my final question :)" Luke goes home. Luke has left. Ellis says, "We don't. Our Chargen system weeds those out. But that's another tale. I should wrap up :>" Êlvïrå nods Ellis gathers her papers and goes :> Ellis goes down the few steps to the seating area. Ellis comes down the few steps from the stage. Ellis has arrived. Javelin carefully walks up the narrow stairs to the stage. Javelin has left. Javelin has arrived. Trispis applauds. Êlvïrå claps Trispis says, "interesting bit, Ellis." Viila clasps. Ellis says, "Thanks :>" Viila claps too-. Boris claps Cheetah applauds. Javelin says, "Thanks very much, Ellis. That was interesting and makes a neat hook into my topic, too!" Ellis takes a seat in the Left Front Row.