/report and even more exciting!!!!!

[ThomPhoenix]

If someone when this thead started had told me it would go to 9 pages, I would've laughed at him.
What are all you people whining about?
This is a game, it's not real life, why would you care some GM reads your chat?
And in normal conditions, you wouldn't even end up in the situation that someone reads your chat.

[Anne Ominous]

Xordan, [hope i'm not stepping on anyone's toes, or misinterpretting-- but] i think the point o verrliit saying that thing about not having insulted anyone was:

It appeared you were [whether directly or indirectly] insulting that user when you quoted verrliit & made the statement proclaiming the accuracy of judgements regarding insanity and retardedness, which are definitions the individual had already made clear s/he found disturbing. (not sure if verrliit is fe/male)

note: at the end of the post you've most recently quoted was the command '/report xordan' [presumably jokingly, but still; pretty clear message IMHO]

PS--ThomPhoenix: are you posting that just to make it longer? Cause it seems to me that you are not contributing to the discussion by asking "What are you people whining about?"--if you read the entire thread before replying then you already have an idea. Same goes for your following question. The last statement you make seems inaccurate, or at the least unclear. Either way, without being certain what qualifies as spam or needless posting;  i get the distinct impression your recent post falls under one of those headings.

[Karyuu]

Let's not end up beating a dead horse here

All information passed through our server may be recorded and used at our descretion. This is entirely legal, and we will definitely make this clear and visible for all players. All communications, actions, stats will never be disclosed to third parties, and can be analyzed only by trusted Game Masters with the purpose of ensuring a strong enforcement of anti-harassment rules, with the final objective of having a better game for all players.

If this does not sit well with anyone, we do not force you to play our game, nor do we charge you for your time nor require any expenses. I do not think that this is an unreasonable action on our part, and although we do listen to player input, policies ultimately rest in the hands of the PS team.

As long as this is added to the end user license agreement, there are no issues here.

[Kerol]

EULAs exist to inform you of what's already being done, and not as an agreement.

That's wrong. EULA = End User License Agreement
It indeed _is_ an agreement between provider and user on the rights and restrictions, terms and conditions of a service.


As to which law applies, I wondered that already because of another thread sometime ago. Here is the answer:

[11 Jun 06 15:58] Ker_lap: just wanted to know under which constitution/law of a country PS is, for instance in regard of storing personal data

[11 Jun 06 16:32] Talad: the non profit org is registered in Texas, USA

Romantic RP can take hours.  No one really does that in /tell.
Additionally, if a player refuses to group with an abusive player, there can be no problem in group.
Worst case, a group of more than two, with an abusive player as a member, can disbnd and reform without the abusive player.

That doesn't hinder sick children abusers to invite into /group and actually rape (in "RP") with the threat to not tell a GM.. If /report would filter such channels there would be no way to conter that.

For the billionth time, personal data is data about you, the person.  The closest thing we have is an email address, which we don't use.  The law you quoted simply doesn't apply.

Actually email-address is more than sufficient to relate data to a natural person. I tell this according to a crime inspector I had a conversation about virtual crime investigation.
Police wouldn't need the chat logs on our server to investigate in a RL crime committed (respective planned) in PS. The /reported logs are for GM use only, at first hand.

Additionally, you should remember that everything you do here is annonymous.  We don't know who you are.  Therefore no privacy laws apply, as they require personal data.

It is true that _we_ don't know who you are, but it is very much possible to find out the identity of someone, just not with the means we have usually.
Laws however don't take into consideration what we or someone else knows, but usually apply in general. Therefor I beg to refrain from that generalisation.

The risk here might be that the { server / reporter's client } crashes before the report was sent.

If the log gets written directly while logging, this risk would be minimized. It would just run till the client either sends a "stop logging" or disconnects. Don't see a real issue there.

If the server just keeps on logging until the reporter cancels or logs out, then people will forget, meaning gigabytes of useless logs.

I disagree. Take a look at your own chatlog. The biggest chatlog of mine is about 13 MB big, and thats for about a half year with over thousand online hours.
So this would be an issue if all players hit /report each and every time they log on...

or both in light of the selective mute bug, which at least wasn't solved before laanx was taken down

I guess this bug is client-sided, but even if it is server sided, we shouldn't take bugs into consideration when discussing things like that.



I believe this thread doesn't serve much purpose if the majority isn't able to keep cool..

[DaveG]

Let's not end up beating a dead horse here

But that's all these forums are for. 

Kerol:  Yes, you're talking about the intent of a EULA.  I was being pragmatic, and reffering to the general abuse of such systems.

Anyone can find out who anyone is, with less information than an email address.  Annonymity is an illusion; we can find out who you are if we feel the need to put the effort in.  As I already said, yes an email address counts as "personal data", but that's all we have.  We don't have any pesonal data that can reasonably be used by us to trace back to a living individual.  (we're not exactly the NSA here)

Again I say, there is no report sent.  The entire process is done on the server.  The server keeps a running buffer of recent messages, and then after a /report writes to a file and continues logging to that file afterwards.

Speaking of tells, there used to be a bug where tells would randomly be misdirected.  I remember more than one occasion when I got a tell conversation from someone else. 

[zorbels]

Romantic RP can take hours.  No one really does that in /tell.
Additionally, if a player refuses to group with an abusive player, there can be no problem in group.
Worst case, a group of more than two, with an abusive player as a member, can disbnd and reform without the abusive player.

That doesn't hinder sick children abusers to invite into /group and actually rape (in "RP") with the threat to not tell a GM.. If /report would filter such channels there would be no way to conter that.

As for intimacy and the fear of the GM's and Dev being able to see it. Well I think that fear is healthy. You want to know why? Because there are alot of kids who play this game and there are also alot of sick people out there. I personally would hate to see a 12 having "intimacy" with another player who maybe a 30 year old child molester. So for the safety of the children, remember this isn't just a adults game and try not to be so selfish with your requests, keep their safety in the back of your head. As a mother I would appreciate that.

I am glad someone agree's with me. Makes me think better of this conversation about the /report command. It is very easy to talk children into doing things they don't understand or shouldn't be doing. Mostly because they are curious and don't know any better, or do know better but are given the option to do it. I know for a fact .... though I will not name names ... That there is a player in this game who is in their 30's and cyber's with a 13 year old. I find that very unsettling and wrong. The adult should know better. So if I have to sacrifice my privacy to prevent that sort of situation from happening and have this 30 year old fear being caught. Good! I am all for it.

[Suzuka249]

My goodness this is an exhaustively long thread. Anyways, on to my personal input.

I support the system described. I feel that having some previous /says also recorded would prevent a harasser from logging out to avoid incrimination. I would be somewhat concerned about the warning that is given, because if a person is harassing someone it would be easy to figure out who sent the report. The harasser could then get others to bother the reporter. Personally, I have had someone bother me in game, insulting and cursing and such, so I feel the /report command is good when someone just won't leave someone else alone.

As it has been pointed out earlier, the devs and GMs are doing this service for free. It seems rather childish and very ungrateful for some people who take advantage of this service they provide, to then yell at them and threaten to bring law suits against them.

[Verrliit]

I believe this thread doesn't serve much purpose if the majority isn't able to keep cool..

Unfortunately, the ones losing their cool were staff members.

This, all by itself, serves to undermine confidence in them.

And those who are certain their position is valid, do not attempt to convince people by yelling and name-calling.


DaveG:

I see from your previous post, that you have regained your composure, and I thank you for informing us of the mechanics of /report logging on the server. 

I found it very helpful.


Zorbels:

Sweetie, I have two teenagers, and though they are boys, I worry about them too.

But I do not see how a predator could threaten a child to silence, in PS.

I think that only a GM or Admin could possibly do it.

If there are any predators, perhaps that is the first place to look.


I also believe that teenaged children have the right to RP a romance, and to have a RL romance as well.

Of course, this means that the grownups have to be wary of children pretending to be older...

It is not too difficult to handle...


Suzuka249:

No one yelled at GMs, or threatened them with legal action.

[Karyuu]

Verrliit, your reluctance to let this argument go and understand the necessity of /report with /tells is both disturbing and comical. You can feel as confident as you want about your ludicrous positions, but I have absolutely no qualms about stating them as such, just as I have no problems justifying feeling irritated if an individual in a discussion does not understand the points that have been made, time after time.

I understand that you are very distrustful of all authority figures except yourself and those under you, and cannot help but sprinkle mud on the GM team whenever the chance arises - I have never seen you miss a chance. I am sure that in your mind your actions are perfectly justified.

However this continuous back and forth "debate" is just sinking lower and lower, and I do not appreciate many of these finger-pointing posts.

If there is anything further that you or anyone needs explained about the implementation of the command, my PM inbox is open.