On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Gene Buckle wrote:
> A filter like this belongs in the client machine, not the server.
>
> It's not the job of a multi-player server to provide nanny services. If
> the end user doesn't want to see adult language, they're welcome to enable
> whatever filtering that could be built into the client. In fact, this
> could be enabled by default - that way paruhnts of pweshush snowflakes
> don't come screaming at you about having to gouge out their eyes over four
> letter words (spelling of "parents" is intentional).
>
Gene,
I appreciate your perspective, but I think it's incomplete. The job of the
multi-player server is to provide a fun user experience.
Let's pretend no one is transported instantly to hell for the remainder of
eternity when they read a 4 letter word. Still we have potential for racial
slurs, and the case that started this discussion: online death threats.
Free and open systems work great when everyone cooperates and acts
responsibly. If however one person acts irresponsibly, it can ruin
everything for everyone. We can't enforce a perfect system. I think most
people can look beyond some occasional "salty" language, but other abuses
are more serious, and it's not about protecting my kids at that point. It's
that we can't tolerate things like death threats and racial slurs. It's a
slippery slope I know ... I'm talking about the broader category of "hate
speech" which is probably a loaded term in and of itself and will send many
people spinning out of control into political rants either for or against
... I don't want to define exactly what is or isn't allowable, but I think
we can mostly agree that some things are absolutely not allowable, and I'd
put death threats into that category.
So when there are cases of severe abuse, we at least need to think about
what mechanism we have available or could develop to self police our
community.
Would it be possible to start logging and saving (and publishing) MP
messages somewhere so a person with a grievance would have some hard
evidence to show what happened. Right now when push comes to shove, we are
in a "he said/she said" situation. But if we logged every "message + call
sign + ip address" we could go back and review situations. Certainly it's
possible the grieved party might have said something initially that was more
controversial than they remember and started the situation degenerating into
something worse than it would have been. Certainly it's possible that
comments would be misinterpreted. We could also passively collect some
stats on what portion of messages contain possibly offending language or
what specific call signs might have unusually high percentages of matching
words. Not initially to use for enforcement, but just to review the true
nature of the situation so we can make a more informed decision as to if we
have a real problem that needs to be addressed, or not ... ?
I understand that "data free" discussions are the most fun, but if we logged
and published MP messages, we could do some statistical analysis on all the
conversations, and we would also have specific cases we could review to
determine if there really is a problem or not. I'd hate to spend 6 months
developing an authentication system because one idiot one time said
something stupid and it never happened again. But if stuff happens
regularly, or if there are regular offenders, perhaps we would be wise to
think more carefully about developing mechanisms to deal with it.
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org -
http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/<http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/>
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