Recently there was a debate on the i3 router about the propriety
of banning from intergossip muds that violated the rules of the router.

You can see for yourself here

http://dead-souls.net/articles/chanban.html

I like to be a responsive admin, and so I take seriously this sort
of thing. I think I've made sufficiently clear what my justification
is for having the rules and for chanbanning. But maybe I'm mistaken
in my assumptions.

I'd like to know what people think about this, so I'm opening this
poll and discussion thread to encourage further discussion.

Obviously I'm not committing to implementing anything at all other
than the status quo, but I'd appreciate your helping me understand the
general opinion.

EDITED: 26 Oct 2006 by CRATYLUS

Alright,

Im going to publicly voice my support for Cratylus on this issue for the following reasons:

1- There is no "right" to use intermud 3( I-3).

I know the intermud/internet community believes strongly in the right to and the freedom of speech, however, besides stating the obvious point that these rights apply to and only keep the government from abusing us the more obvious point is that Cratylus is the HOST of the router.

2- As the host of the router Cratylus has the right to create whatever rules he wishes.

Claiming that Cratylus is not able to establish whatever rules he wants on his router is tantamount to claiming that I, or any other owner/admin, am unable to publish and enforce whatever rules I want on my own mud/server. If you are unhappy with Cratylus's rules then you should, quite simply, not make use of his router.

Cratylus, to my knowledge, does not recieve any compensation what-so-ever for his service. He provides the use of this router for free. I think it is almost ridiculous to demand that he not enforce the rules he thinks are proper.

3- The rules are reasonable, if you find them unreasonable start your own router.

It is that simple. Moreover, most people do not understand how many minors have access to intermud. I know a lot of people say "so what" to this but those of you that do fail to understand the reprecussions of willfully exposing a minor to certain material. These reprecussions may involve civil or criminal penalties on both the state and federal level. Aside from wishing to enforce common deceny it seems completely legitimate for Cratylus to wish to protect himself from liability.

If you wish to have more "freedoms" of expression you ought to start your own router. Personally, I remember when intermud began. It was horrible. Why? The channels were filled with a bunch of people spamming profanity and flame wars constantly broke out. Coming back to coding my mud and changing code bases would have been impossible if not for the "DS" channels.

I know that I am just a law grad, that I am not a super coder let alone a computer programmer. But, as an administrator of a game that I pay for and that I work daily on I think that the DS rules should remain in effect. The rules apply only to 6 channels.

I agree also. If anyone doesn't like it, then as Capo said: Go start your own router.

Daelas

For those who need a refresher, etc. ;-)

info and rules initially set out by Crat -

http://dead-souls.net/router.html
http://dead-souls.net/router_rules.html

Memrosh

It's Cratylus' router, so he makes the rules. There is no other argument that has any merit, end of discussion. I totally agree with that.

That said, I feel the move to his router has been a disappointment, and probably a mistake. I have mostly had igossip turned off since the move, because it has changed from an adult themed channel, where I enjoyed baiting and annoying right wing nut jobs like Duuk and intellectuals with a chip on their shoulder like Cratylus, to a completely different channel with the same name, where people discuss the sort of LPC related topics that would get them called a n00b on imud_code, and where I have to be careful not to bait and annoy Cratylus.

I personally don't like hate speech, and I despise newbie bashers, but it turns out that this new channel called igossip is not my thing. It's the Phantom Menace of I3 if you will. I don't believe changing the rules would make a difference, it would still (unlike *gjs) be a router run by an active participant on igossip, who could always pull the plug if he feels he doesn't have to take this **** anymore.

I ask myself whether I personally would be able to run a router without ever being tempted to ban someone no matter what they say, and I'd probably have to turn most channels off to be sure.

Dexter at nanvaent

Not writing on behalf of anyone else.

I really do see both sides of this issue. When I saw that Dead Souls had been resurrected, I installed a copy mostly out of curiosity. The tone of intergossip/intercre seemed really bizarre to me; civility was not exactly one of the traits I remembered from I3. At first it seemed like a really positive change, and I still believe that it is still at least -mostly- positive. However, I understand the position that *gjs had established norms that transcended the router and became the de-facto I3 culture.

I think the kicker here is that Cratylus opened up a router for two main reasons (that I know of): to avoid the instability of the gjs router, and to keep things a bit more friendly on the channels. The choice now is between forcing him to continue running a router that does -not- satisfy the needs he had in mind when he started it, or to find an alternate location for the gjs-talk to go. I know I've slipped a time or two on the 'regulated' channels, and would be totally fine with restrictions going out the window. Still, it seems unfortunate to have a guy start a router to get away from gjs, only to end up forcing it on him down the road.

Suggestion:

If Cratylus wants six channels, why not give him those? Use free_speech, or even create a new code/gossip pair of unregulated channels that follow gjs tradition. Cratylus has been open to channel creation in the past, and this solution neatly circumvents 'start your own router', which has been shot down for various reasons already.

I'm not trying to start or contribute to a flame war here, nor am I claiming to be breaking new ground with this suggestion. I'm just trying to reconcile what I consider to be two valid opinions, into something that is relatively simple and can work for both sides.

-- Aransus

I think that is a fair compromise to the situation. Everyone wins essentially (Like duct tape accross a bedroom floor). Normal talk for *gjs stays on their side and we stay on ours.

People foolish enough to go over the imaginary line have to deal with the consequences.

Cratylus has always been willing to compromise and has created channels for people to use. He created the ascii_art channel so I, and other people like me, could display spammy pictures for others to see. Cratylus, keep it up!

Daelas

My only response to Aransus and Daelas is:

That's the way the system currently works, there are only 6 regulated channels.

Why people complain about this is beyond me. If people want to act like children and call each other names on other channels, that's fine, but keep it off the DS associated channels.

In brass tacks, yeah, it's Crat's router, but I don't think the situation was, or is, so black and white. The rules weren't unspoken or even implied: they were linked and spoken of as a requirement in every thread I've seen on the forums, and in the articles on the DS site Memrosh linked to.

http://www.topmudsites.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=453d94dd1760ffff;act=ST;f=14;t=55;hl=intermud+or+gjs+or+i3
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=general&message=16512
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=15718

The ds channels, as I understand it, were made for the express purpose of giving Dead Souls newbies a wading pool to play with LPC and ask questions without hostility or explicit stuff. (Adult conversation isn't a problem for adults, but a 14-year old kid with a parent looking over his shoulder would have a good amount of explaining to do.)

What surprises me is, the router itself isn't totally censored, only the six 'clean' channels that Crat set aside, and there's still a problem and even demands to change policies, on the six that Crat started maintaining his own router for in the first place. It's asking him to defeat the purpose that motivated him to start his own channels and router; and what's more, expecting him to foot the bill. I think the fact that he's even considering public opinion shows just how serious he is about fair play.

I don't see why there's any reason an 'adultgossip' channel or some such couldn't take off: it just means realizing igossip's changed and adjusting to it. It looks like people weren't interested in free speech (the channel), and circumvented that alternative to break the rules on the friendly channels.

I think there's more than enough places to find people saying whatever comes to mind on the internet, and I'd be profoundly sad to see one of the few oases in the vast desert of the mud community dry up, just to get more of the same.

Note: Whoops, didn't mean to repeat what Aransus already pretty much nailed down.

EDITED: 24 Oct 2006 by J_RATHJENS

I cleaned up and colorized the log so you son't have to chase
it around the backlogs page (No offense to Tricky, it's
just that the page is scrolling):

http://dead-souls.net/articles/chanban.html

Tricky, I have a major problem with your post.

Igossip, and it's "culture" of being rude and obnoxious, and the community built around it predates you, and anyone else who has been offended by it, why don't you move to a new channel ?

Yes, it's a very lame argument that we were here first, but unfortunately it's true, this is essentially the merging of two different communities, the dead souls community and the igossip community.

I'm really sorry, but the idea that we should move to a new channel is quite offensive. Yes, it's cratylus' router and he makes the rules, but he has to take account of the fact that when he invited muds to join igossip he was inviting a preexisting community with it's own rules on what is and isn't acceptable.

Given he was one of the few people who was actually in a position to do this (He had available router code, and he already had a community which he could shift over to the new router automatically), does not mean that he should let his DS community effectively destroy the already existing community on igossip. If he intended to impose rules which would obviously divided and split the igossip community from the start (and I'm quite sure he didn't) he probably shouldn't have invited them in the first place.

As it is, I think the issue is that he's being protective of his DS community, which I assume he's spent plenty of his free time building up, parhaps overly possessive. This issue should never have been an issue from the start, I don't know who mishandled it, but the idea of banning Nanvaent (don't get me wrong, there's at least one personality on Nanvaent who I think should be strung up for crimes against decency) which is one of the oldest muds out there, where the majority of people who use igossip are entirely sensible and approachable. Why oh why couldn't this have been solved by approaching the more friendly individuals on that mud and getting it sorted out quietly rather than a blanket ban on the mud.

Haven is a different kettle of fish I'm sure, but surely there is a better way of sorting it out than a blanket ban on the mud to igossip.

-CyberTiger.

God I hate phpbbs.

*shoots cratylus for dragging him onto one*