Policy Update and forum rule changes

Razmael

Hey folks,

Just updating you on a couple of policy changes. One is to do with internal Pools policy, the other is a refresh of the forum rules.

Firstly, the internal Pools policy change:
I've removed almost all the commands that Gods could use to observe a player's communication. This includes, notably, their 'omniscience' which alerted them when someone said a specific word, such as their name. So those of you that like to drop a God's name to initiate some roleplay will have to explore other avenues of getting their attention. Some Gods may decide to assist with that by creating items you can use to get their attention.


Secondly, a couple of updates to our forum rules, which I'll admit I've stolen from Achaea's rules.

I've updated Rule #1: "No posting confidential materials" to also include the following points:
* Confidential guild/city/other org information such as help files or private posts.
* Disclosing, discussing, speculating on, or hinting at alternate characters of any other player without his or her strict permission.
* Posting, or paraphrasing, the text of another person's issue or issue reply without his or her explicit consent.

And a new rule has been added, shamelessly copy/pasted from Achaea:

The Gods

Aetolia attempts to foster a roleplaying atmosphere, but we can't do it alone. We need the help of volunteers (almost all of the Gods are volunteers) and the players to help nurture an RP atmosphere. One of the things that we've been told by many players is that interaction with Gods is very welcome and a big reason they like Aetolia.

That's great! But one of the reasons that Gods sometimes hold back on interaction with players is that they know they're going to get harrassed for it on the forums. Further, it's difficult for Gods to retain any sense of mystery or allure for players when they're reading the forums and seeing Gods discussed like they're (the Gods) waiters at a restaurant. We also discourage Gods from arguing with players on the forums, as it's not Godly, which takes away the only legitimate way for a God to respond to a player who is using the forums to attack Him or Her.

For all these reasons, from now on, criticism of the Gods on the forums that we deem inappropriate will result in post deletion or, in the case of those who insist on continuing after being warned, forum banning. This is at our complete discretion.

However! Nobody on our end is looking to forum ban people, and it's the kind of thing that would only be employed for extreme cases - either from an individual post that's way over the top, or a series of poisonous posts. We don't want to squash discussion amongst Aetolians of good will at all.

If you have constructive criticism to offer about a God that might be the sort that's too blunt to post to the forums, the appropriate thing to do is email Aetolia's producer. razmael -at- aetolia -dot- com

Full forum rules can be found at http://www.aetolia.com/forum-rules as always.

Areka

In regards to help files - What is considered confidential? Is this absolute, or in terms of shaming? I've c/p'd snippets from Templar ghelps in the past to show as an example of how we've handled things or what kind of information we deemed important to note, etc.

Razmael

It would largely be a case-by-case basis. I'm not going to outright ban sharing of orghelps/posts/whatever. Things that might make us step in is them being used as shaming, yes, or sharing information that could put the org at some sort in-character risk due to the threat of metagaming or so on.

Areka

Alright, cool. Thanks!

Aarbrok

If I may also make a suggestion in regards to combat related posting and the Gods who post on it, I think as a more beneficial contribution to the community, could the admins and volunteers who comment on combat related things be limited to those who have personally worked on development and/or coding of said classes or skill development and limit those who are basing their contribution on outdated information or memories of a class to be left silent.

I think definitely not having those chiming in who may not be aware completely on the current state of things could be a detriment to the progress of the development of classes and skills, and I have found some instances where uncertain statements really give a vague perception to players who are truly looking for information has been pushed aside for what can only be construed as opinion. While I appreciate the responses, I think for the benefit of the community leaving it to particular folks to chime in who work behind the scenes on these sorts of thing is best.

Draiman

Someone else made a Stalin joke to me about the post deletion regarding Gods. I laughed. They laughed. Was a great time. But then I seriously became a little nervous. I mean you hear stories and usually due to their own mistakes the identity of people in the pools isn't all that big of a secret. And this change on top of those stories about people and the air is now filled with paranoia. For me at least. I don't necessarily feel like I'm being overly dramatic either. It's just kind of unsettling. 

Edit: I mean I get the good behind it. People (myself included) can be royal assholes to people who mean well. But it's still kind of nerve wracking. 

Trager

This is how it begins! I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.

Edit:

In all seriousness, some good changes here. Having known volunteers and ex-volunteers, you hear a lot of horror stories about people just -watching- everything that goes on. Web tells, private RP, etc - and then there comes the nervousness of actually realizing you could very well be being watched right at that moment. You also hear of incidents where those roles were abused and volunteers even being punished for that sort of thing, so kudos to that change.

I'm not entirely sure what to think in regards to commenting on God-happenings, to be honest. To what extent is discussing events in the game regarding Divine interaction frowned upon? I suppose I'm just curious to whether the private messages will be answered/replied/etc in a timely fashion. Emails, messages and issues can go days without answer or resolution, while there are definite benefits to bringing up a situation that is troubling or bothersome on the forums. Exposure usually makes it a hot issue.

TL;DR - Nice changes with the spying abilities. Hopefully pleasant changes with the shift from talking about Divine and their actions.

Oleis

To assuage general fears and concerns --

Perfectly acceptable criticism: "I feel like Arion totally blows me off when I try to RP. Can anybody catch me up on how to get involved with his order?"

Not cool: "I'm so sick of Arion's bullshit. If he doesn't stop fellating my goats, I'm going to lose my mind."

Basically, nothing has changed in our handling of these posts, as we've already been pretty direct about God issues. We just have an official rule so that there's no confusion.

--

@Draiman -- While you may have a point, we tend to only hear about these things in the vague terms you yourself used. "Things happen" or "people meddle". Rarely do we get an example with details. If anything, this rule is important for your worries, because it codifies what you're to do in a situation where you feel wronged by a volunteer. Putting it on the forums isn't going to resolve anything: it's just going to put the person whom you feel acted inappropriately on the defensive and give them time to work up a counterpoint. An email gives you an opportunity to share your concerns directly with Razmael in a context that cuts down on shadiness.

@Trager -- This rule doesn't apply to things like quests being broken, which are best served with bugs and issues but for which forum posts have lately been a substitute. I still prefer the in-game options, personally. This rule is about interactions with the Gods or volunteers themselves, which are always an issue for direct player-to-producer discussion.

Reux

I'm actually confused now. Are divine no longer encouraged to randomly possess NPCs and engage with players, or does the lack of spying abilities mean that divine must use this kind of acknowledged presence to interact with players in game?

Oleis

Reux said:

I'm actually confused now. Are divine no longer encouraged to randomly possess NPCs and engage with players, or does the lack of spying abilities mean that divine must use this kind of acknowledged presence to interact with players in game?

It means gods can't idly witness your tells, messages, and in-room communication, regardless of whether you mention their watchlist keywords. Divine are absolutely encouraged to possess NPCs and interact. That part hasn't changed.

Areka

It means that you can't go "< I SURE REALLY HOPE AURESAE SAYS HI TO ME" (nor 'yes yes OH MY SLYPHE'S SLIPPERY SLOPES YES' in your boffsessions and have Slyphe exposed to all of your ahems) to ping Auresae's attention to you for some interaction. They can still see stuff with NPCs and sending messages still communicates with them. It otherwise would be more direct at their attention and intention.

Reux

Thank you.

I suppose this doesn't affect how orders will progress and operate then. I was worried the game was taking complete automation too far, and getting rid of the dynamic order experience too.

Oleis

Definitely not, no. These changes are more focused on reducing the culture of cynicism and frustration inherent to the volunteer experience. Our players, in general, are really great people. But at some point, the administrative tools we use to monitor for abusive behavior became part of the general god toolkit for amusement and RP purposes, and every volunteer was exposed to the less savory side of our game and its players. With those tools, it's extremely easy to draw conclusions about people from single statements out of contexts or isolated moments of anger. We have now removed that negative influence.

tl;dr we're finding our zen.

Aishia

Gunna have to throw my "Making wild prayers to gods in a very loud voice" shtick away, or switch to shouts I guess.

Malok

Yeah, this is a good thing. Private things are meant to be private, because sometimes we just don't mean what we say in private webs.

Great changes. Well done!

Seir

Yeah. These are good changes and I can see it now:

(Mobtalk) Seir says to chicken430432, "I hate that Razmael guy. I hear he smells bad and is mean."

Seir has been slain by a chicken.

Ishin

After chatting with @Razmael earlier, I can see why these changes were made. I am a little sad to see a few tools that could have been used for great RP go, but it is what it is.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring it up, but if you msg someone in the game, and then check on the phone app, it will show you who it forwarded that shell's messages to. So like when I msg'd Becue the other day to apologize for having been so harsh on Crafters, it showed me it forwarded the msgs to Soandso and Soandso. Intentional?

Malok

Ishin said:

After chatting with @Razmael earlier, I can see why these changes were made. I am a little sad to see a few tools that could have been used for great RP go, but it is what it is.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring it up, but if you msg someone in the game, and then check on the phone app, it will show you who it forwarded that shell's messages to. So like when I msg'd Becue the other day to apologize for having been so harsh on Crafters, it showed me it forwarded the msgs to Soandso and Soandso. Intentional?

Yeah, it does this if you check messages through the website too(like I do at work, a lot).

Oleis

How very strange! Thanks for pointing that out.

Zsadist

Am we still allowed to message certain admins if we know that they have a project that they oversee and we find bugs in it?

For example, I tend to message Dristin if/when I have questions about the Vortex or find a bug with it. Is this still allowed/ok, or would you prefer us to just use the (in my opinion) never checked BUG command?

Oleis

None of that has changed. This is solely about (a) what tools we provide gods to monitor communication passively and (b) the manner in which you criticize gods on the forums, if you choose to do so.

What you, as players, do in-game has not changed at all.

Seventh

I think this is a wonderful change, to be honest. The fact is that this is a small community, and there's a not-insignificant percentage of us who have been roleplaying together for ten-plus years at this point. Most of us know the people in the Pools. Most of us have benefited from knowing those people at some point or another - even if it's only in that people (even admin) are more likely to roleplay with/pay attention to people they know. It can only be a benefit to the game's environment if its volunteers are required to be more professional in their relationship with players, and if players correspondingly are required to treat volunteers with the respect they would deserve if they were not just "our bros we've known for years but with god powers now".

I would also like to say that I've known a few people who have QUIT the game entirely because the oppressive nature of knowing they were constantly watched made them too profoundly uncomfortable to continue roleplaying here. So, as much as I'm sure Omniscience was fun to have... I'm really glad it's gone. It's nice to be able to feel like I don't have to answer later for absolutely everything I say and do while online. That's a little TOO much stress, I think. And I'm sure seeing it is a little too much stress for our volunteers.

Irruel

Wait @oleis You have goats?

Anfini

Thank god somebody asked.

Lim

razmael sucks.

USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST.

Tenshyo

Oleis said:

Reux said:

I'm actually confused now. Are divine no longer encouraged to randomly possess NPCs and engage with players, or does the lack of spying abilities mean that divine must use this kind of acknowledged presence to interact with players in game?

It means gods can't idly witness your tells, messages, and in-room communication, regardless of whether you mention their watchlist keywords. Divine are absolutely encouraged to possess NPCs and interact. That part hasn't changed.

So, they can still actively follow us, if they so choose? I'm just a little worried how this will affect RP with Divine, when sometimes it feel near impossible to with some Divine (Which it's their choice, and that's okay)


I'm all for the upstairs and such not having to see all the crap and the crud. I can see how that'd absolutely ruin and kill the fun of the game, and the general willingness to help build the game.

Amberlea

Really super sorry about the necropost, but why not just add in a new syntax for literally praying to (a|the) god(s)? I think it's great that I don't have to sweat about who might be watching, but can see where some people might be interested in wanting attention but not want to send a message.

Messages have always felt sort of OOC clunky to me and I avoid using them for anything IC that I possibly can. Basically the entire message system exists (for me) for the sole purpose of my sending @Akirash text hearts.

Example:
PRAY TO OLEIS Oh great and powerful Oleis, bless us with the cheese of the goat!!!

Oleis is up in the pools eating some cheetos with Slyphe and they see something along the lines of:
(Prayers): Amberlea says, "Oh great and powerful Oleis, bless us with the cheese of the goat!!!"

Deities can then decide to act, not act, or completely ignore prayers just as they would have if you did something along the lines of < GODNAMEHERE GODKEYWORDHERE but everyone involved gets to feel warm and fuzzy because there's no mistaking the intention of the ding.

As an aside, it could be interesting if gods customized their own mechanics with neat stuff, like maybe Slyphe only hears your prayer if you are in the presence of sea water. You could be on the beach or in the ocean, or maybe you have a vial filled with sea water (not magical or anything, anybody could just fill a vial with water in the ocean). Maybe to properly pray to Chakrasul you have to whisper your prayers into the ear of a recently deceased nazetu cutter. I dunno. Slap those details into the HELP files, or don't for those that are more secretive.

Take something that was bad and turn around and make something really intricate and flavorful. Is it worth the amount of work for the benefit? I don't know. If you skip the part about the special ways to pray it could probably just be hacking an extra bit into tells or something.

Once again, sorry for the necropost!

Arbre

The PRAY TO GOD stuff exists in Lusternia, but I like your idea of the seawater/dead Nazetu restriction thing, @Amberlea , that's a really neat bit of RP there.