Hello PMOGers,

Whether or not you have experience in playing other MMOs, we live in a world where we each hold the other accountable to certain expectations. These unwritten rules are likely considered to be, in the real world, known as common courtesy.

In the MMO world, they take on names such as "Play Nice Policies," "Community Standards," "Player Ethics," and so forth.

As an example, here are a list of standards Sony asks of its MMO players:
http://tinyurl.com/3q4nos

I'd like to start a (civilized) discussion of expectations you have for one another.

For example, I'd like to suggest no one should feel threatened (personally, not with mines or St. Nicks) while playing PMOG.

What would you like to see as community standards for PMOG?

Looting public crates (ie, not on your profile) and never stashing should be considered bad etiquette.

Also, spam is bad manners everywhere but in a sandwich.

Looting public crates isn't an issue, that's how they choose to play

But treating others with respect is an issue

It's too easy to fall back on the idea that you don't have any responsibility for what you say as you have your account to hide behind. Moderation in the forums is a must to this point. Spam is bad, but creating an environment of hatred and anger just because you want to is worse.

Otherwise, standards placed on usernames, avatars, and tags would nice. I think we all have more or less agreed that the site is more of a "PG-13" atmosphere, and as such should be treated in that manner. Missions and Portals can be NSFW, but much doesn't have any restriction on it. I don't want to come to a page and see something offensive or read something offensive.

Portals should always describe where they go. Going through a portal labeled "Kittens" and getting directed to something like tubgirl is not cool. Missions and Forum Topics should be the same.

When it comes down to it, these should fall along side with "Do Unto Others", I'd think. If the atmosphere can be kept playful, then there won't be an issue. Griefers are going to be the cause of the problems.

I agree with zous about the portal naming. I never, ever take portals when I'm at work. Sometimes, the person who placed the portal won't label it NSFW, even though it is. And people taking the portals don't always mark them either. If I could trust that it was tagged appropriately, then I'd be ok with letting people name them anything they want.

I do think one thing that needs to be made clear to all players is that, in the end, this is just a game. If someone drops 100 mines on your profile for no good reason, that's ok. If someone loots every crate they find, never says thank you and never restashes, that's ok. There are in-game (and quite fun) ways to retaliate for that kind of behaviour. What's not ok is tracking someone down and retaliating outside of the game. I have no idea if that's happened yet, but I'm sure it will.

Personally, I hate missions that are nothing but thinly veiled ads, which is just another form of spam. A lot of portals early on were basically spam, but that seems to have cleared itself up.

One last thing. Rick rolling should result in immediate termination of your account. (ok, just kidding about that one)

>Portals should always describe where they go. Going through a portal labeled "Kittens" and getting directed to something like tubgirl is not cool. Missions and Forum Topics should be the same.

that, my friend, is what portals are all about! the only time it should be an issue is when its NOT marked NSFW. in which case, if you see "Kittens with sugar on top" for a portal as well as a NSFW tag, then you'll know to skip it! but tricking people into taking a portal is part of the TORCH OF CHAOS thing

>Looting public crates (ie, not on your profile) and never stashing should be considered bad etiquette.

boooo, if that was ever an issue in the first place, im sure the devs would have not included stashing of crates or where they were stashed in the recent events log

nice try, tho! im gonna go loot some now without replacing!!

#1 drudge

I fully agree on the PG-13 bit. It would be nice to keep the names, avatars, threads, and etc. to PG-13 content.

I'm not one to take portals... ever. However I do agree that there should be more enforcing around marking NSFW portals. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of categorizing with the NSFW. I think there is a difference between NSFW containing nudity or X-rated things compared to NSFW containing adult topics or bad language. Maybe have a few different levels of NSFW to mark it as.

Outside that I really can't think of anything else. Maybe asking people to avoid the stupid flaming in the threads? Some name calling is all in fun, but maybe avoid the all out foul name calling?

@ Chavas crate comment.

Peoples comments are right, nobody really cares if a crate has obviously been taken by jumping to it from the events page. However, I think his complaint stems from a shared experience with a solitary pmog member, who is the unfortunate exception rather than the rule.

This person seems to come onto pmog for extended periods of time and wiles away the hours refreshing the events page and looting every crate they find. They could probably get away with this mind you, if they were mindful enough to just grab a single crate from a group deployed by a member, but they don't. To me that screams that they just don't care. Greed is the name of the game.

This person isn't part of the community, they do not seem to post or socialize or do anything but take missions and loot. With someone like this retaliation feels almost redundant, they are rude when approached politely and since they can both afford to bore the brunt of any attack and also afford to turn it back on you.

Technically, as people said, they aren't doing anything wrong, but you can't deny that someone like this, especially if they are usually on at the same time as you will detract from the experience of benefacting, and it's just not fair play. To put the rant into perspective, this person had managed to accumulate over 55,000dp (not even half of that 'earnt' if i recall) before the person finally got it into thier head to switch their profile to private. this in turn seems to have made them more bold with their looting.

Looking at the linked guidelines I see some 'play nice' rules. Maybe something like that, that just makes people think about their actions (e.g. looting fairly) would be nice. It's just one person now, but it's possible that as pmog expands you are likely to encounter more people like this. I don't think its grounds for the ban hammer or anything like that, but it would be nice to see some kind of disciplinary action brought upon someone like this.

PHEW.

in saying all that pmog generally rocks I can't think of much actually

Good comments here. We have to walk the tightrope between creative roleplaying and outright rudeness.

For example, I responded to drudge's Week of Chaos call with a Week of Order. If I may break character for a moment, I have no vested interest in the "Torch of Order" or the "Torch of Chaos." It's just a game. I'm playing a role, and the conflict is all in good fun. Just the same, all hell's going to break loose and we're going to have a bitter war on our hands. I hope. The important thing is that no one takes things personally. A "rival" on PMOG is someone I pretend to hate, wink wink, nudge nudge, but hopefully everyone is aware that none of it's real. I could be real-life best friends with my bitterest in-game enemy.

There are people who don't get that distinction. They should be informed. PMOG is no place for real anger and frustration. All drama here should be strictly fictional, in my opinion. Don't ruin the fun with misplaced angst.

A good example is NSFW. Playing a game such as this at work is pretty much NSFW in my profession. Does that mean all missions should be marked as such? I don't think so.
*rolls eyes*

I hope you get the point. If YOU think that something should be marked NSFW, then you have the ability to do so, or flag it if it's not your portal/mission.

Just throwing in my two cents about what's been said before...portals should not need to say a general topic or anything relating to the portal (that's half the point) but should be clearly marked NSFW if they are. I think that there should be a huge penalty for failing to mark something NSFW...and I think that we can (possibly?) agree that NSFW would be links involving nudity/sexually implicit anything and violent content. Language is a bit harder to mark since it would have to be excessive (and yeah, there is trouble defining "excessive").

The part about crates: yeah, it bugs me if I notice people clearly camping the events page. But, I figure if they want to waste their time waiting for the events to change then let them do it.

On a side note, while some of the policies would have to be changed to be more "PMOG friendly", I've always been quite fond of the Policies of Loathing on Kingdom of Loathing for basic game play guidelines.

As chetyre said, a simple sheet of general etiquette, like KOL's would be nice. I'd like to see that combined with a clearly stated process for reporting or responding to someone who doesn't follow the spirit of the rules.

I wouldn't want PMOG to get bogged down in a bunch of serious red tape, but when someone puts horribly offensive tags on your profile, sends scads of harassing messages, or otherwise sucks the fun out of life it is nice to have a consistent way to deal with that.

Excellent discussion so far. Everyone has brought up very valid points.

My intention with this thread is to encourage our community to develop something like a "Play Nice Policy" or the "Policies of Loathing." Granted, not everyone will agree on everything, but at the same time it will not be as binding as a Terms of Service. Instead, it will be a general guideline for our community.

Right now, I am hearing to go along with this policy, we'd need some way of easily reporting and documenting abuse. I will brainstorm ideas of how, with our current backend system, we could do that.

Please continue to share your thoughts here, and in a few days, hopefully, we'll have a few generally agreed upon expectations.

I agree about the PG-13 rating for the game. That feels about right to me.

WRT looting crates off the Events page, I was disappointed the first time that happened to me, too. But I quickly learned to put crates somewhere besides the top page of a site, if I wanted to make a game of it.

As a Vigilante/Bedouin, I frequently hang out on the Events page waiting for mines that I can neutralize/Nick. I also use that page as an easy way to rack up datapoints - I just click on any unfamiliar URL without even checking to see whether the event was a Mine, Portal, or Crate. If there's a Crate there, sometimes I loot it, sometimes I don't.

So, for me, that's an expected part of the game. The Events page wouldn't exist, if it wasn't to be used.

For Benefactors who want to make people work for their loot: place your crates on internal pages of a site, and force the vultures to try to re-create your thought-processes! It's fun. :)

@mrbubbles You are correct, although I know two such people.

I don't mind drudge looting and not re-stashing, since he'll pay the community back in mines.

@burdenday As far as reporting and documenting abuse, that's something that may be opening a big can of worms. If players are allowed to report abuse of other players, such as improperly tagging Portals and Missions, there will be some who abuse the abuse reporting. In other words, the abuse will have to be verified. This has the potential to make a whole lot of extra work on you trustees as the game grows. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done that way, but there can be unintended consequences.

I guess a stepping off point for building a "play nice" policy would be for PMOG-ers to decide what we consider to be not so nice. I'd like to contribute:

* threatening private messages

This would not include regular game play threats ("I'm gonna mine you like hellfire!") but personal threats to a player that are carried to extremes("i will kill u if i ever c u").

* spammed private messages/threats

Sending 200 "You sux0rs!" messages to a single player in a short period of time.

In both cases, common sense should prevail - most griefers get bored if you don't respond and go away. On the other hand, some people just seem to thrive off of harassing others and won't stop until someone reprimands or stops them. I don't want the massive hand'o'justice, but harassing messages just suck.

@chava I've been doing something like that lately too - but fully intend to repay everything when Drudge's chaos is over...

Which I guess just goes to show that ultimately it comes down to playing fair. And that really should be the primary rule, if we're going to have rules: "don't be a dumbass, and play fair." like we all learned in preschool.

I am constantly amazed at how naive I seem to be. It never occurred to me that people mining, nicking or saying adversarial things (eg. weeks of order and chaos) could possibly be in anything other than the spirit of the game. I also haven't come across much flaming in the forums - but then I admittedly don't spend a lot of time on them either.

One of the things I like about the game is the passive sense of community it creates. There is nothing nicer than to stumble over a crate or a portal when you're having a dreary day on the net.

The accurate tagging of NSFW portals and missions is essential, but I have no idea if that is possible to enforce. I would also however hate for portal titles to have to describe what the destination is - it would ruin the magical mystery tour thing they have going.

Looting crates I think is just part of the game. While I don't check the events page for crates, I freely loot whatever I happen to find in passing. I'm not much of a benefactor myself, so I often don't leave anything behind (for some reason I never seem to have any crates even) but I always send a thank you message to the giver. Is that ok?

@Salinat How about at least 3 votes of abuse before it goes to the Trustees? Threes notes of 'Did not label Portal as NSFW, etc.?'

@hanli - I love the competitive spirit of this game, even (most) of the mining and 'nicking. Almost all of it seems to be done entirely in the spirit of fun or gamesmanship. I think the Trustees are encouraging us to define what might fall outside of that, because sometimes people genuinely do.

Looting and crating are up to the person - I like being a benefactor, so I usually re-crate some stuff when I loot a crate in the wild, but I don't get all worked up if others don't do the same. Part of the fun here seems to be that there's no really wrong way to do most things.

@pixielo - I think the "votes" to register abuse is a great idea

I agree on the votes.

Maybe we should just follow Wheaton's advice: "don't be a dick"

ive cut/paste the codes from sony that i approve of

1. (threaten and harrass are vague terms, 'I'm going to mine you into next tuesday' would be ok, but anything that crosses the line into real live would not be,

2. You may not use any sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive language.

4. You may not violate any local, state, national or international law or regulation. (don't ask me for drugs!)

8. You may not organize nor be a member of any guilds or groups within EverQuest that are based on, or espouse, any racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic, anti-gay, or other hate-mongering philosophy. (of course, what if a relgion espouses hate-mongering? hmmmm)

all that other hacker shit, I don't really know much about.

I think the most important thing regarding PMOG is that there are many ways of doing it, and one should respect that and foster it. I'll make a couple examples based on parts of the game I use.

Example #1. Benefacting.

Sometimes I will come upon a website where someone's stashed a crate, and it's a generous one, and there's some sort of message about "let's keep this crate going." I'll lay down a crate but that day I may not have the tools and DP to be as generous. So I'll lay what I can and then message the person, so that if they choose to loot it and set up a more generous one again, they can. Because I want to honor what they're trying to do, but when it comes down to it, that's not how I crate.

I'll either send someone maybe 20 dp and a tool extra after they've made an exceptional mission, or I'll stick a lot of crates in random places with small amounts in them, or when I see a forum post about the impending Apocalypse between Chaos and Order, I'll send a crate to an active forum member letting them know I am contributing to the cause. It's kinda how I feel about funding NPR: I contribute what I can that year instead of holding myself to the same donation every year. I know there are Benefactors who save up large amounts of DP and tools and hand them out upon request in much larger amounts, and that's another right way to be a benefactor. They all are.

I don't think it's wrong to loot a crate and not ever put another one down. That person may use the loot to make missions, or work with mines or armor or nicks. And if they're hoarding and they're not the kind of person who distributes it again -- there are very few people who will continue to find that exciting for weeks and months at a time. Eventually they will start giving, or leave. DP and tools have no value except for their use inside PMOG.

Example #2. Portals.

The best portal I ever found in this game, I found somewhere where it had nothing to do with anything. The portal brought me to a site that let me know about a musician who was sick and needed help raising money. I happened to have heard her in concert once, but like I said, the portal had nothing to do with where I was. I was so grateful for knowing. (For the record: http://www.500kin365.org/) So I think sending someone somewhere completely out of their way can be a very good thing!

I also think it's fun to add a portal to a mission with information that's relevant. Or, the more chaotic Seers may send you somewhere really distracting with the full intention of making you forget all about the mission you were on, and I think that's a valid way of playing, too. If that mission were really, really engaging, the portal wouldn't be as tempting. It can be a form of chaotic quality control.

The ultimate in chaos would be to rickroll, goatse, etc. And I do think it's important that we make sure NSFW is marked NSFW. But trickery is a part of PMOG. It's the same as when a Destroyer makes a mission, makes it really tempting, and then covers it with mines. That's valid and can be fun for some people.

In short (ha!), I think the ability to play PMOG many different ways is one of its strengths. I think it should be more forward about that fact. The writeups of the different character-types in the codex are too one-dimensional, I feel. If PMOG endorsed more kinds of play with the tools given, I feel we'd all be more accepting of different kinds of play, here. And we'd all get along better.

@pixielo Votes could work on some things, but I guess I was thinking more along the lines of more personal abuse, like sending someone non-game related threats like jenn2d2 mentioned. But I don't have a better suggestion.

@chava short, simple, easy to remember. I like it :)

Other sites I've been on where you can vote somebody abusive gets sorely abused. If you are being abused you should be able to report it to a trustee and they should check into it.

You nick someone here once, and they might give you one star, or leave a nasty tag etc. Retaliation is a common reaction here, so there would need to be a way to discern gameplay from inappropriate behavior.