Managing Deviant Behavior in Online Communities
The following transcript is a slightly cleaned up version of the ones available at the MediaMOO home page. It includes some extra prefatory material, and is from my log rather than Dr. Bruckman’s. In addition, I snipped out people arriving and leaving.
Managing Deviant Behavior in Online Communities
an online panel discussion featuring
Jennifer Glos, Third Age
Raph Koster, Ultima Online
Scott Moore, formerly of WorldsAway
Moderator: Amy Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology
on MediaMOO, telnet://mediamoo.cc.gatech.edu:8888
An increasing percentage of the general population have had direct experience with those pesky individuals who spoil the party. Anti-social behavior in online communities ranges from the merely annoying to the downright scary. But who determines what is too annoying to tolerate? And what can community members leaders do about it? Too many community managers are reinventing the wheel; as a community, we need to learn from one another’s experiences. In this symposium, we have the opportunity to learn from represents of two large commercial entertainment communities about what works, what doesn’t, and what it all means.
JENNIFER GLOS
POSITION STATEMENT
Every community is unique in its make-up of individuals as well as its context and environment, and these factors determine how a community should be managed. Solutions need to be acceptable to both the community members themselves as well as the organization or body behind the community. Much like a Mayor of a city has to work with her constituents to create a city they want to live in, she also must stay within the city budget and answer to her fellow politicans. Finding the balance between these two groups is the core challenge of managing a community. And, much like NYC’s problems and Toledo, Ohio’s problems vary, every online community will discover new and unique issues. But by compiling the knowledge and experiences of many community managers, we can map out a grid of choices and better understand why particular communities respond best to certain solutions.
ABOUT JENNIFER GLOS
Jennifer Glos is currently the Technology Channel Producer at ThirdAge Media, an online community website for 45+ users. Previously, she was ThirdAge’s Community Director, where she helped to develop the community’s structure and rules, community-enhancing interactive tools, and a team of volunteers to help grow the community and deal with community crises. Previous to ThirdAge, Jennifer worked in Kyoto, Japan as an Internet technology consultant, and at Microsoft where she worked on interface design for adult novice users. She received her Master’s from the MIT Media Lab where she studied the convergence of storytelling, identity, and technology.
RAPH KOSTER
POSITION STATEMENT
As virtual settings develop with greater flexibility and freedom, it becomes possible for players to affect each other’s virtual lives in a multitude of ways that are indirect and not easily trappable in code. Traditionally, mud servers of various types put the burden of detection of illegal acts and tracking of illegal acts on either the code itself, or on mud administrators. This solution is not particularly scalable to larger groups of people, nor to more flexible environments (wherein it is easily circumvented). A preferable solution is finding a way for the populace to police itself more effectively by allowing them to track player reputations with the aid of coded tools.
ABOUT RAPH KOSTER
Raph Koster is known in the mud world as Ptah, implementor on LegendMUD (http://www.legendmud.org, telnet://mud.legendmud.org:9999), which is about to celebrate its fifth anniversary as an award-winning mud themed around different time periods and places in Earth’s history. However, he is probably better known in the commercial software world as “Designer Dragon”, the lead designer for ORIGIN’s highly successful graphical mud Ultima Online (http://www.owo.com). Ultima Online recently achieved over 100,000 paying customers, with peaks of over 20,000 online simultaneously. Raph is also an active member of the MUD-Dev list, and maintains a page of online game design writings at http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/.
SCOTT MOORE
POSITION STATEMENT
The environment in which a virtual community exists will encourage or discourage degrees of deviant behavior. Understanding the environment, the lay of the land and the type of community which is planned (or already exists), will influence what methods are employed for managing behavior. Is a profit expected? Who pays the maintenance costs, users or sponsors? What does the interface do and allow? How large is the community expected to be? Answers to these questions along with definitions of the purpose, values and goals intended for the community will favor a certain mix of methods from social to technical, centralized to distributed, authoritative to authoritarian (“show how” and “do for”) and proactive to reactive. With the wide varieties of communities emerging online, no one solution will fit for all, but similar types of communities will gain the greatest benefits from similar methods of behavior management. Large communities will benefit from distributed methods; Pay-for-play communities will be under pressure of consumer value to adopt quick, cheap authoritarian methods; communities with a decided eye toward the long run will favor social solutions for social problems.
ABOUT SCOTT MOORE
Scott Moore is independently providing online community consulting after three years as community director for Fujitsu Systems Business of America’s WorldsAway avatar-based communities. There he gained valuable experience in designing and extending virtual worlds both physically and socially, being the primary liaison with users, handling human issues within the community, selecting and training a volunteer community staff as well as designing objects, interfaces and localities to promote greater interaction and spur community growth. Scott has taught his lessons of community management and the essential elements of establishing online communities at Earth To Avatars and Stanford University. He uses his experience in both the technical and social aspects of online community to educate and advise technologists and content providers expanding the realm of human-to-human communication.
You sense that Ola is looking for you in Summer Conference Room.
Ptah smiles at Ola, having found emote.
Andrew says, “I’m in the process of writing the proposal for an online community for middle/high school students…”
You sense that Ola is looking for you in Summer Conference Room.
Ptah’s real name is “Raph Koster”.
Guest says, “andrew is it a synchronous or asynch community?”
Andrew grumbles at his connection
Summer Conference Room
A warm, sunny room with a table and plenty of chairs. Outside, the trees along Memorial Drive are a verdant green and pleasure boats are skittering across the Charles River. A warm breeze enters through an open window.
This room is reserved between 1:30pm EST and 2:30pm EST for the 6th Birthday Symposium on January 20th 1999. The topic of this symposium will be “Managing Deviant Behavior in Online Communities.” Everyone is welcome to attend. Please note that the symposium is being logged and that the log will be publicly posted.
If the room gets too crowded, you might try stepping into the overflow annex. Just type “annex”.
Obvious exits: out to STS Centre 2nd Level Hall and overflow to Summer Conference Room Annex
Cil is on the chair. Ola and Chrissey are on the sofa. Zachary, Iliana, yduJ, Gold_Guest, Guest, Striped_Guest, oomwoo, and Andrew are standing here.
You see Plaque Showing How to Use This Room and camera here.
Andrew says, “guest, have you heard about MOOSEcrossing?”
There appears to be some writing on the note …
Pogo materializes out of thin air.
There appears to be some writing on the note …
The Summer Conference Room is equipped with a program called ‘about’ to help users keep track of multi-threaded conversations.
Any number of people may speak (and emote) at one time, but if a number of different subjects arise, you may label your thread of the conversation by typing ‘about ‘. Everything you then say will be prefixed by that topic name.
For example, if Munchkin’s topic is fudge, everything Munchkin says will come out: Munchkin says [about fudge], ‘I like fudge.’
You can also use the command ‘about’ to change your topic. Munchkin can change his topic to cookies by typing ‘about cookies.’ To get rid of the topic altogether, type ‘about nothing.’ Typing just ‘about’ will tell you what your current topic is.
The ‘about’ function was designed by Barry Hayes of Stanford.
(You finish reading.)
Guest says, “andrew, no i haven’t what is it?”
Andrew says, “it’s a project run from Goergia Tech… children up to 15 I believe, both children and adults, working on the project sign very strict consent forms and I think it helps keep order, how would you adapt that to more adult crowds is something I would like to see”
Andrew says, “it was Amy’s docotoral research project, the information should be in her home page”
Ola would hate to make a mud for 15-17 years old..
Ptah has effectively made one by accident!
Andrew says, “not a MUD, but probably a MUSH or a MOO?”
Guest says, “well, i’m more experienced at “open”groups like Internet Relay Chat, no consent forms really would be pratical there, i don’t think”
Chrissey says, “There’s alot more control on a moo.”
Ola hmms…
Andrew says, “we’ve been experimenting with that on a MUSH I’m running…”
Ola doesn’t like control…
You say, “The problem is that for a younger audience, you can expose yourself to liability issues if you don’t have strict policing and consent forms and the like.”
Cil [to Ola]: When you have 15+ people in a moo room, control is sometimes necessary ifyou are trying to teach.
Guest says, “ola, but then what to do with disruptive users?”
Guest says, “anybody ever try a room with 300_+ users?”
Guest says, “(that would be on IRC, not MUD?M)”
Andrew nods, “I guess that the first stp is to define what deviant, disruptive and rude are before you can decide on what restrictions and what type of control you’re going to use”
Ola says, “Depends on what you mean by control..”
Guest says, “andrew, yes, you have to have the definitions”
Pogo says, “But who makes that decision?”
Cil says, “If you are teaching a class, you make the decision.”
Guest says, “in my exprerience, norms develop from within the community (but that’s not in MUDS, it’s in IRC)”
You say, “That depends on the purpose of your community.”
Cil says, “If you are talking about a moo in general, the wizards/managers/administrators/community members make the decision.”
Guest says, “ptah very good point, leisure communities and purpose-oriented ones are quite different”
You say, “Norms do develop within the community, but they tend to form around nuclei–said nuclei being imposed standards or ‘community standards'”
Ola says, “cil, yeah, but then again, you could have custom clients for teaching which allows the users to separate the dialogs, then disruptive isn’t really disruptive..”
Andrew says, “the people running the place, after all they are the ones subject to liability… you assume that the people you choose to help you run the community are mature enough and know enough about the community to helpguide it through a formative process”
Andrew waves
Cil [to Ola]: That’s not what we mean by disruption, however…in general
Amy says, “hi everybody!”
Ola says, “what community?”
Amy says, “we’ll get started in about ten minutes”
Amy says, “officially anyway”
Amy smiles
Ola says, “Cil, what do you mean by disruption? Netsex?”
Cil [to Ola]: That’s an extreme.
Andrew says, “whatever community you are working with… a MUD is as much a community as a MUSH or IRC”
Ola thinks it is too common to be called extreme.
Guest says, “ola, on irc people do “flooding”, send various sequential lines”
Cil [to Ola]: No…there are other forms of disruption. Excessive emoting, paging, etc
Ola says, “guest, true, that is a designflaw.”
Guest says, “if you don’t stop a flood it disrupts other peoples chatting”
Guest [to Amy]: thank you and Cilla for the email invitation to join today
Amy [to Guest]: glad you could make it!
Amy grins at ptah
Andrew says, “good afternoon”
Ptah wonders if he should have used his real name, instead of his mud name.
Andrew [to Amy]: will a log be available
Ola [to Ptah]: Yeah, Raph is no longer.
Amy gathers you know eachother? 🙂
Ptah [to Amy]: yes, Ola is an active participant in the MUD-Dev mailing list, and he’s also interviewed me/gathered notes on stuff I’ve said for his forthcoming research paper
Ola thinks that international awereness is the biggest potential of virtual worlds.
Amy clears her throat
Amy says, “I’d like to welcome you all to MediaMOO’s sixth birthday celebration!”
Amy says, “for the next hour, we’ll talk here about management of deviant behavior in online communities”
Amy says, “then for an hour in the back room downstairs we’ll talk about the future of MediaMOO”
Amy says, “and then it’s time for the seventh annual MediaMOO ball!”
Amy says, “in the ballroom, of course”
Amy says, “today it’s my great pleasure to welcome our featured speakers”
Amy says, “Raph Koster from Origin Systems”
Ptah bows.
Amy says, “Scott Moore, independent consultant, one time of WorldsAway”
Pogo blinks and is suddenly aware of being in a room full of people
Amy says, “and Jennifer Glos, of Third Age”
jenglos says, “”thank you!”
Amy says, “I know they’ll have diverse perspectives on the issues we’re going to discuss today”
Amy says, “and I’d like to thank them for taking time out of their busy schedules to spend an hour with us today”
Amy says, “Raph Koster is Ptah, Scott Moore is Pogo, Jennifer Glos is jenglos”
Amy says, “I’d like to start by directing a few basic questions to our guests of honor”
Amy says, “and then we’ll open it up for questions from everyone”
Amy says, “for starters, I’d like to ask our guests: What sorts of deviant behavior do you typically observe in your community? How does your community define “deviance”?”
Amy says, “Ptah, would you like to start?”
Ptah Sure…
You say, “That’s kind of a broad question. I guess the first step is try to define deviant behavior. Presumably we are measuring deviance from some standard, which may be a standard either defined by the administration of the community, or a standard that has evolved naturally through social pressures.”
Amy [to Ptah]: what does it mean, concretely speaking, on Ultima Online?
You say, “The social mores and strictures thus vary from community to community, of course. In the case of the kind of virtual spaces I work on, which are games and ‘virtual world’ simulations, the deviance we have to address are generally ones centered around antisocial behavior, such as players attacking each other with the tools available.”
You say, “These tools range from using the game’s implicit combat system to kill other players, to using communications facilities to spam or harass.”
Amy [to Ptah]: and how do you handle these situations?
You say, “In UO’s case, the commonest forms of it are playerkilling of victims who do not wish to be killed, stealing possessions from people, and simple verbal harassment.”
You say, “Well, our approach is somewhat different from the norm. We felt that it was a valuable thing to try to put as much policing on the player shoulders as possible. BEcauise we are a business, our bottom line is directly impacted by the amount of policing that the admins have to do.”
You say, “It is to our advantage to create systems that help offload said burden onto volunteers or “citizens” as much as possible”
Amy [to Ptah]: do you ever intervene?
You say, “We intervene only indirectly. If I may try to explain the logic a bit:”
You say, “I see three points at which the deviant behavior can be tackled: there’s the issue of identifying it, the issue of tracking it, and the issue of actually handling punishments for it.”
You say, “Traditionally, all three of these are ultimately a burden on the admin. In the case of a player claiming harassment, an admin must be called to verify the case, the admin must track repeated incidents in the case of accumulated violations, and the punishment must rest with the admin as well.”
You say, “Note that here, “server code” can and often does substitute for admins.”
Amy [to Pogo]: How are things different on Worldsaway?
You say, “On many gaming muds, you see server code trying to handle the task of intervening before actual harm is done, and prevent the antisocial activity from occurring (eg, the “playerkilling switch”)”
Pogo lets Ptah finish
Ptah thanks Pogo–he’s almost done, and he knows he is typically verbose. 🙂
You say, “What we try to do on UO is give tools to the players to help them identify the behavior THEY don’t like, and then to give them tools to easily identify and track repeat offenders.”
You say, “Then we try to use the code to administer the punishments–the ultimate goal being reducing the immense cost of having humans judging, and then acting as executioner, for a multitude of ambiguous, often controversial personal disgreements or attacks.”
Ptah nods to Pogo.
Pogo says, “thanks”
Amy [to Ptah]: of course scale is a big issue here… how many users do you have, Ptah?
Pogo says, “Actually, I’ll address the first questions first.”
You say, “Right now, UO sees peaks of well over 20,000 users simultaneously every night.”
Amy whistles
You say, “UO = Ultima Online”
Amy turns her attention to Pogo
Pogo says, “well, there’s a quick difference. Dreamscape (the main WA world) started small and stayed pretty much small.”
Pogo says, “Current peaks are about 400 simultaneous, though they are all in one world.”
Pogo says, “Regardless, the first point of deviant behavior is typically that some individuals will use whatever means they can to abuse, harass, cheat or con other users as happens in everyday life and which is a potential in any on-line community which allows freedom of actions.”
Pogo says, “Since such actions tend to run counter to everyday norms, both community members and community managers tend to consider such behavior as deviant.”
Pogo says, “I tend to have a broader definition of what cam be considered deviant and who is on the wrong side of that definition.”
Pogo says, “For example, there was a case of a large number of community members using a “hack” on the system. It’s a technicality specific to WorldsAway worlds so let me set it up a bit.”
Pogo says, “WorldsAway worlds are graphic and avatar based. Each avatar is in the form of a particular body shape whose colors can be altered, but only through a special object which change the body to predefined colors.”
Pogo says, “Someone figured out and distributed a method which allowed any avatar to color themselves any set of colors allowed on the palette.”
Pogo says, “Technically, the hack and distribution of the “paint patch” was against the licensing agreement for the software. However, using the paint patch was not only an accepted norm among the community, but allowed greater expressions of individuality and drew people deeper into their online presence and, thus, into the community as a whole.”
Zachary . o O ( ‘True Black’ dye tubs )
Pogo says, “As the community managers made any attempt to prevent the use of the Paint Patch, the actions were considered deviant in the face of such widespread use.”
Pogo says, “Ultimately, this is a case where a perceived deviance (on the part of the community managers) turned out to be a benefit to the community as a whole.”
Pogo says, “But where WorldsAway or Ultima Online differ in definition of deviance, it will wind up boiling down to things based on specific technical differences.”
Mogat . o O ( the meaning of a word is its use in the vernacular… )
Pogo says, “WorldsAway doesn’t have death so PlayerKilling is a moot point.”
Ola wonders if what Pogo just said was that the managers were deviant..
Pogo says, “Yes, I did. It was a case where the managers were deviant to a community norm which they had created.”
The housekeeper arrives to cart Elizabeth off to bed.
Amy [to Pogo]: in what sorts of problems have you intervened on WorldsAway?
Pogo says, “I think it is important to point out that while community managers may initially define normative and deviant behaviors, it will be the community which will be setting their own norms later.”
Pogo says, “It’s also a case where perceived deviant behavior actually becomes a new stage of evolution for the community.”
Janster says, “in what way?”
Pogo says, “in this specific case, the deviance was initially the users using the Paint Patch. As the use spread, it became a norm.”
Amy [to jenglos]: I imagine you see very different kinds of “deviance” on Third Age!
jenglos says, “”yes…”
Amy [to jenglos]: Can you tell us a bit about it?
jenglos says, “”Since ThirdAge is a community of older adults (45+), it’s a fairly self-selecting community of responsible and mature individuals. For our size, we’re lucky to have a disproportionately small amount of deviant behavior. In addition, we are still a fairly small community — about 150,000 registered users (although registration is only required for a few things, such as chat).”
jenglos says, “”On ThirdAge, there tends to be 2 types of deviant behavior groups…”
jenglos says, “1) Regular community members “misbehaving” (often unintentionally), and…”
jenglos says, “2) Trouble-makers (often younger kids) who come to TA expressly and quite purposefully to make trouble.”
jenglos says, “Community members “misbehaving” includes actions like overly aggressive and antagonistic language, making overly explicit sexual overtures, and inappropriate language. Their behavior is the most challenging to deal with, because it requires defining where the line for “appropriate” is drawn.”
jenglos says, “How do we define “inappropriate”? Well, for starters, if it results in offending or upsetting other community members, then it’s worth exploring…”
Ola wonders what ThirdAge is and why it attracts old people…
jenglos says, “several of the points Ptah and Pogo mentieed are true for us as well…”
jenglos says, “First, to answer Ola, some background…”
jenglos says, “We’re a Web site created expressly for “ThirdAgers” — people in their “Third Age” of life — this tends to be a time post kids, sometimes post-career, etc. Typically ages 45-65. Typically older Baby Boomers.”
Gold_Guest says, “might this website be www.thirdage.com ?”
jenglos says, “The site ranges from news and content to a strong community element — chat, forums, personal portraits, email, etc.”
jenglos says, “yes.”
Amy says, “at this point I’d like to open the floor to questions, comments from everyone”
jenglos says, “Probably the biggest community challenge we’re had to date dealt with age…”
Janster says, “I’d like to know how you all deal with “troublemakers”, at what point you draw the line and contact an offender’s ISP, for example”
jenglos says, “We started with older users and as the site grew we began to skew younger.”
Amy will let jen continue, and let everyone else chip in as well–your standard MOO free-for-all 🙂
jenglos says, “go go ahead pogo!”
Gold_Guest [to Janster]: I’m going to guess that contacting an ISP wouldn’t fall under any category of deviance, but more likely hacking or something illegal.
Cilla says, “Pogo said that “percieved deviant behavior can actually become a new stage of evolution for the community. What does Ptah and Jenglos think of this idea?”
jenglos says, “cilla — i definitely agree. ”
Janster wonders what pogo pmeans by “stage of evolution”
Ola says, “In what way is age your biggest challenge?”
yduJ says, “I’m sort of in shock; I had thought that LambdaMOO was large with 5,000 registered users and a peak usage of 250. We certainly have a lot of deviant behavior. I’m curious if these larger sites have a full-time paid administrative staff? LambdaMOO is still run entirely by volunteers (most of whom are burned out at the moment, so who aren’t really paying enough attention).”
You say, “Pogo is absolutely correct. We had the same color-changing thing happen on UO, in fact. You can only provide initial social mores–after that, the community itself will begin to dictate standards. In fact, one of the strongest possible tactics for strengthening your community is providing implicit support for new social customs the users develop.”
Umber_Guest says, “Sorry to be so late. My name is Stacy and I run an online serivce called Echo. Glad to be here.”
Umber_Guest says, “Hi Amy! I told my NYU students to participate.”
Amy [to Cilla]: can you answer yduj’s question about staffing patterns?
Gold_Guest is an NYU student
Zachary [to Ptah]: has UO done that wrt. monsterish roleplaying? (the orc tribes, etc)
jenglos says, “We started with a vaguely defined idea of what’s appropriate in our community. Each and every time a user “acts questionably” or possibly inappropriately, we’ve been forced to challenge and possibly redefine what we consider appropriate. The biggest issue to date on our site that illustrates this is sex — is sexual behavior ok? to what degree? in what environment? ”
Ptah [to yduJ]: UO has a large fulltime staff. But the reason why we try for a hands-off, player-driven approach as much as possible is exactly because traditional mud admin methods are very manpower intensive and do not scale up well at all. A strong volunteer admin structure can help, but in the case of a commercial endeavor, it opens you up to liability issues.
Janster says, “NYU also”
Pogo [to Janster]: Well, if evolution is a continuous process, looking back there are sometimes identifiable stages to that process.
Ptah [to Zachary]: Not yet, but we have indeed been exploring it. We HAVE done many things with providing guild structures, crafting capabilities, house decoartions, and the like.
Janster says, “pogo, what are these stages?”
jenglos says, “Since we started with an older demographic, our social mores regarding sex were more restrictive. But some of our younger users (younger = in their 40s) have different opinions and have changed what we consider appropriate.”
Gold_Guest [to Ptah]: I’m aware that UO utilizes a sort of “reputation” system. Do you feel that this is an effective method of self-monitoring by players, or is it not understood enough (i.e. other players don’t really understand what a bad or good reputation *means* [perhaps they aren’t always savvy role-players]) to be fully effective. Furthermore, other (competitive) online RPGs [e.g. Everquest] plan to use a (simpler) system where PKs are may not even be relevant. Do you think that this form of laisse-faire / “if you dont want to play by the rules, you can go elsewhere” is effective for the online RPG business or for the RPG *experience*?
yduJ says, “Also, it is true that on LambdaMOO we have the “administrators are deviant according to community standards” in that the administrators would like to enforce more polite behavior then a large segment of the community would like to engage in. Of course, there are some community members who would like this segment to engage in more polite behavior, and therein lies a conflict.”
yduJ says, “Those of us who would like politeness are inclined to say that the needs of the jerks are less important.”
Cilla says, “To answer yduJ’s question, most larger communities do have full-time paid admin staff. ”
Amy says, “cilla has been interviewing people who manage deviant behavior in quite a variety of communities”
Pogo [to Janster]: In general? That’s a toughy. For the specific case of the Paint Patch was a realization of how far people will go to express individual identity and that we, the service, needed to support further means for it.
Ptah [to gold_guast]: I have *strong* doubts that EverQuest will find its switch approach to be cost-effective in the scale of game they will be operating. The problem with hardcoded solutions is that they are lousy at judging the intent of actions. This results in admin calls over ambiguous cases.
Amy says, “my view is that most community managers have been reinventing the wheel, and we need to learn more from one another’s experiences”
Pogo [to Janster,]: The first thing we did was turn a blind eye to the use of the painting. We quickly found that the community settled on and enforced (through peer pressure) their own set od aesthetics.
Ptah [to Gold_Guest]: Ultimately, I suspect that if they get a vibrant player-vs-player community, it will result in a lot of admin cost–but they may simply just chase it off, and thus limit the size and diversity of their community instead.
Cil says, “I think it’s importatnt to define norms, but also important to remember that flexibility and open-mindedness is key to any communiity”
Umber_Guest says, “Most people are polite. Too polite maybe. They’re too nice for reality.”
Zachary [to Amy]: is it possible to keep from reinventing the wheel if communities are constantly being reinvented?
Ptah [to Gold_Guest]: on the fli pside, yes, a “reputation” driven system has flaws in that it is too forgiving.
Janster says, “pogo, i think i got disconnected when you described this, but it sounds like problems we’ve hadon IRC with color in new clients. people DO evolve and start toaccept newtraditions”
Pinstriped_Guest [A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[B[A[Aquit
Amy [to Zachary]: of course we’ll always need ideas to evolve, but I don’t think we need to *start over* each time!
Amy laughs. “And speaking of deviance….”
Pogo nods in agreement with Amy
Ptah [to Gold_Guest]: if you look at the most iwdely used reputation system on the Internet, eBay’s system, you’ll see that they suffer from “spoofing the system” problems. We do too, on a smaller scale
jenglos says, “”it’s difficult to keep up to date with what others are doing when you’re swamped with what you’re own community is doing! to Amy”
Gold_Guest [to Janster:]: I find color on irc to be offensive and annoying, in that it’s often used simply to “get attention” as if I can’t read . *shrug*
Amy says, “Amy Jo Kim in her new book is writing about using the term “dissidents” ”
Ptah [to Pogo]: we had a problem with people who found a way to make true black dye to dye their clothes with. It looks ugly, but it was very popular. So for Christmas we gave away black dye tubs. 🙂
Janster says, “gold, yes, but when it started, there werere many debates about panbanning people for using color”
Gold_Guest [to Ptah]: secure authentication systems can solve “spoofing” easily, though. It’s just not as cost-effective.
Zachary [to Amy]: I guess the question is ‘are the ways of dealing with deviance sufficiently general to be able to be applied cross-cumminity, given that deviance itself and the communities themselves are by definition evolving and changing?’\
Janster says, “gold I’ve sseen spoofing on IRC that simply cannot be tracked down”
jenglos says, “gold — on our site, color can be used only in certain rooms.”
Ptah [to Gold_Guest]: I meant spoofing the reputation system. It’s very difficult to prevent that. You can collude with other people to spoof such a system even under an authentication system
Zachary [to Amy]: the question I was really asking, I mean
Pogo [to Ptah]: Spoofing one thing we worked hard to eradicate on WorldsAway. I think we went very far with succeding, though the problem became more refined in the form of the nature of imposters and satire.
Amy says, “anyway, I think Amy Jo, brilliant as always, wants to make the point that we should not only anticipate deviance, but also embrace it in some sense as a potentially positive force in some circumstances”
Gold_Guest [to Janster]: spoofing on irc isn’t possible anymore, fyi. I do recall spoofing in the past, tho (and I did it, in fact, but not to be malicious, just to be funny)
Cil nods in agreement with Amy
Janster says, “gold, i see it every day, I’m an IRCop on DALnet, people have “virtual hosts” to spoof with”
jenglos says, “yes. in addition, a community should be designed to be able t allow multiple mini-communities to co-exist, each with it’s own set of mores and defintion of deviance.”
Gold_Guest [to Janster]: that’s not spoofing. A virtual host is a real host that is from a real unix box. It’s not difficult to figure out who owns that box.
Janster says, “perhaps i mean something different by spoofing (using domains that cannot be traced back to your real connection)”
Pogo [to jenglos]: Absolutely, the concept of a mega-community simply doesn’t work.
Ptah [to jenglos]: our rule of thumb is that a community proper is really no larger than around 250 people. More than that, you start to get subcommunities. It is rare to even find a community that is actually 250 without subdivisions.
Gold_Guest [to Janster]: well, a vhost on a unix box is a real connection, it’s just not the real name of the connection. It’ll still traceroute to the right place.
jenglos says, “”that’s a nice way to think about it, ptah” to Ptah”
Janster says, “ptah, on IRC i find overlapping communities: the channels, the servers, the IRC networks themselves”
You say, “It logically follows that creating facilities for subcommunity creation, identity, and cohesion is a must for any online community environment.”
Pogo [to Janster]: Ah, being a commercial service as Ptah can probably attest to allows a few more tracking devices such as credit cards.
Ptah [to Janster]: you’re not going small enough: you will find subcommunities within a given channel too 🙂
jenglos says, “And each of those subcommunities are going to have different definitions of deviant.”
Gold_Guest [to Ptah]: and a large problem I encounter is that the rules of etiquette vary so largely from one community to another, that it’s often hopeless for new people to learn and ingratiate themselves.
Cilla says, “It is only thru deviant behavior that we can in fact define what is normative. it is an essential component of culture without which we’d have difficulty defining what is mormative. Durkheim said that, not me. So a bit of deviance in all communities is essential.”
Ptah nods agreement with jenglos.
Janster says, “pogo, yes subcommunities for ssure, even ones that fight with each other”
yduJ says, “Interestingly, one of the foundations of LambdaMOO is privacy, and confidentiality about email and site of origin. This probably assists in people who want to be jerks being jerks (the admins have this information but we don’t give it out).”
jenglos says, “sadly, yes. ”
Janster says, “cilla, goffman said that too, and i agree”
Ptah [to Gold_Guest]: you hope to have some sort of overall consensus on certain base rules, of course. But you don’t always get it.
Amy says, “I’d like to ask our featured guests and everyone else here who deals with deviance in a community: what for you is the hardest unsolved problem relating to deviance you face? what’s your biggest challenge in dealing with these issues?”
Ptah thinks on that one…
Janster thinks any system where you have user accountability through identification like credit card, will be easier to control deviance
jenglos says, “cost and scalability”
Ptah [to Janster]: it is easier, but it’s not enough.
yduJ says, “Figuring out who’s lying.”
Van*Faussien thinks about amy’s question
Cil says, “My problem is being able to keep up with the troublemakers, Amy”
You say, “I’d say solutions that scale up as online communities grow is the key issue to solve”
Zachary says, “What is Truth?” and washes his hands…
Ptah [to yduJ]: Our course there is to get admins out of that loop
Janster says, “agree with cil, keeping up with the troublemakers, esp. those using technological means to disrupt”
jenglos says, “you can scale *if* you have infinite funds to spend :)”
You say, “getting admins to act as judges and juries and executioners is NOT a scaleable solution”
yduJ says, “Then, dealing with the repercussions from that person after you have censured them.”
Cil [to yduJ]: Exactly
Gold_Guest [to Amy]: I find one of the largest problems in dealing with deviance is a lack of any “punishment” that could motivate the person to not commit said acts of deviance. Unless someone pays for a service, it’s unlikely they will care much if they get kicked off of it.
Van*Faussien thinks it might be having the ability, time, and cooperation to respond to problems as learning opportunities, instead of as problems
Janster says, “trying to protect myself (as a “moderator” type, from attacks, so I can stay online enough to help users”
jenglos says, “We’ve found that scaling by relying more and more on community volunteers doesn’t work in the long run either…”
Ptah [to Gold_Guest]: they will care if they feel they have a sense of ownership in the given community. The “hit and run” harassers won’t, but longterm members will indeed work hard to try to keep from being kicked out
yduJ [to Ptah]: We haven’t managed it. We *tried*; we gave them a mechanism of peer reviewed justice, but the jerks have completely destroyed that system (voting “no” on even the most *obvious* of abuses.)
Pogo [to Amy]: Ptah just touched on it and I think it is important that the idea and mechanisms for consensus building would go a long way toward helping communitites determine and codify their own norms. Also, it give Admins confidence to put resources behind technology to support certain norms.
Janster says, “somebody mentioned burnout of community volunteers, i see a great deal of that (and suffer from it myself)”
Cil [to Gold_Guest]: Oh, even if they don’t pay, they care.
Van*Faussien [to Ptah]: i think your point is a critical point
Cil nods to Janster…same here
Amy says, “in working with kids, I worry more about the truly dangerous than the merely deviant. we try to teach the kids not to give out personal info, but they’re just kids…”
Gold_Guest says, “(Cil + Ptah) I was referring more to an open (free) forum, e.g. irc”
Ptah [to yduJ]: I read a proof copy of Dibbell’s upcoming book on that… it was fascinating to see how it worked out
Caille_Bot says, “I’d like to add my own spin on the applicability of Durkheim to all this”
jenglos says, “bor out is common ”
Ola [to path]: but hit’nr’run can be regulars under a new character…
yduJ [to Ptah]: the books out, FYI.
yduJ <- enaJ
yduJ . o O ( duh )
Cil [to Gold_Guest]: In moos which are free for the most part, people put effort into creation.
Umber_Guest says, “Dibbell’s book is a GREAT read.”
Ptah [to yduJ]: Excellent! 🙂 Nice to meet you, btw.
Janster says, “title of dibberl’s book, please?”
yduJ says, “My Tiny Life”
You say, “Bruce Sterling slipped me the proof copy months ago… I LOVED it.”
Umber_Guest says, “My Tiny Life.”
Janster thanks everyone for title
Cil [to Ola]: Yes, regulars do sometimes try to hit-and-run…and it can be a problem.
Amy says, “well folks, were’ just about out of time”
yduJ [to Cil]: in LambdaMOO, people put effort into harassment. Sigh.
Zachary was merely a spectator to it.
Amy says, “let’s have a round of applause for our featured guests!”
Ptah [to Van*Faussien]: which point was critical?
jenglos says, “Our community members care a lot about ThirdAge, but they don’t always have the dipolmatic skills to make the right choices or word things correctly, and then it just makes a bad sitution worse.”
yduJ claps
Shaan cheers
Amy claps!
Janster says, “yduj, on IRV they do too, whole war page site sabout it”
Guestwahe:clpas
Cil [to yduJ]: Yes…there have been some at DU like that also.
Zachary claps.
Gray_Guest applauds.
Turquoise_Guest claps.
Janster claps too
Ninja_Librarian claps.
Caille_Bot says, “Durkheim wrote that another function of deviance is to maintain a sense of proportion as to what behavior to supress–if no deviance, or little, the smallest violation will arouse a disproportionate reaction.”
boom claps
Van*Faussien [to Ptah]: the point about community member’s investment in the community and the behavior problems that do/don’t result
Amy says, “and a round of applause for our distinguished and thoughtful audience members as well!”
jenglos says, “this was a wonderful hour — went by so quickly!!!”
Cilla says, “this was inspirational—thanks to all!”
Van*Faussien applauds madly
Ptah [to Van*Faussien]: we call those “barriers to exit” and the most effective are the ones where the community member leaves some tangible mark on the world.
Cil applauds!
Amy [to Janster]: it’ll be up on the MediaMOO web pages, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/mediamoo/
Turquoise_Guest throws flower petals.
Pogo says, “far too quickly – I think we only stirred up the issues.”
Lizzie claps.
Jason claps.
Stuart claps
jenglos says, “ptah — we call it “stickiness ihancers! ”
Rodney claps
Gold_Guest says, “I guess a problem is that the concept of what is supposed to occur in a given community can vary too much for generalization. in an RPG, e.g. UO, it’s save to say that a majority of people go there for ‘hack-n-slash’ and not “true role-playing.” Those people who PK would not even be aware of the deviance of their actions if they are playing on the premise is that they are to get the highest level/etc, while “real” role-players would be greatly offended by this action (and even less ‘harmful’ deviance)”
jenglos says, “oops enhancers.”
Ptah [to Van*Faussien]: merely forming social bonmds is not enough, because they can keep those even if they are in a different environment. But if they, say, added, rooms, made a bot, built a house, painted a picture they CAN’T take with them, they are less likely to do something that kicks them out of the space
Caille_Bot says, “I was toaded once on a MOO where there was very little real trouble, for amorphous alleged violations of an obscure and amorphous policy–for which I got no due process at all. MOO life imitate;s Durkheim :-)”
Caille_Bot says, “too bad we can;t do both :-)”
yduJ [to Caille_Bot]: due process sucks 🙂 I was happier when we toaded at will.
Cil [to Caille_Bot]: Me too
Ptah has to go, sadly, but some discussion of this sort of thing happens on the MUD-Dev list… he also has a web page with many observations related to this that is at http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/
yduJ . o O ( fascism is great when you’re the fascist )
Amy [to Ptah]: thanks so much for being here!
Ptah [to Amy]: gald I could make it 🙂
Orange_Guest disappears suddenly for parts unknown.
jenglos says, “mice to meet you both, pogo and ptah!”
Ptah [to Amy]: and I look forward to meeting you RL 🙂
Amy [to pogo&jen]: thanks to you too! This was great!
