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Re: anonymity in moos
J-,
An interesting example to note, although it might not be a proper analogy
in context, is the WorldMOO example. Sometime before it closed the
archwiz decided to make .email_address +r. The players, and quite a few
wizards had a fit. Some proggers even quickly made a listing of them all
and offered to sell them. One of the reasons, as I recall, given by the
archwiz at the time was that, "Hey, it isn't a gurantee, the only reason
every other MOO does it is because Lambda does it and/or because the core
ships that way" (paraphrase). It did pose an interesting situation
though for all involved. (This isn't a world slam btw...just an example).
The difference here seems to be that you are giving the players a voice
in the decision, which is good. Some of the concerns that come to mind
howerver are: What happens when suddenly anonymity is lost? What means
of protection are left for the would-be ingrate that logs in just to
harass, especially when a line such as rl email (is that an oxymoron? :)
harassment cannot be stopped by wizardly intervention such as toading and
newting, or color listing of the harasser's connect sites? While
everyone (should be) taught that logging onto anything through the
"internet" implies a certain risk of information being made publically
available, MOO's in the past have seemed to try to preserve as much of
the "player"'s RL identity as possible.
I think what it all boils down to is "what purpose would it serve" to
make that information available. With a lot of players having multiple
e-mail accounts and connect sites, the threat of losing one of them or
more doesn't seem to ominous. Especially on MOOs with open player
creation when a problem person can just create a new one from a spare
account. Perhaps making it player settable? Ah well, just a few
ramblings, but I hope you post the results of this to the list.
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