Proposal for limited public chat logging

[o11c]

Recently it has come to my attention that a significant number of new players have left the game due to abuse by other players.

Therefore, I propose that all public chat be logged. This would allow screenshots to be accepted as evidence in the Court House abuse as long as it's not in whispers. Only server admins would be able to see the logs and confirm.

We are also taking other steps, but this one is necessary for the cases when abusers know that there is no GM online or if they stop when the GM is summoned.

[Avenn]

Voted No, because abusing is a part of mmo for me, you need to fight with it of course, but logging public chat... no just no, when someone abuse me i abuse him too simple for me.

[veryape]

No, the way I see it there is no need for it. And here is the reasoning:

1. The ones who abuse the rules in public will learn fast to do it with whispers, effectively making the change worthless. Worse still, it would soon become impossible to lure them into talking about/advertising scams in public because they KNOW that what they say can come to the attention of a GM, rather than now when they could suspect a GM of being present while in hiding.

2. Hate speech, abuse, trolling and what not do not need to be moderated by GMs, the players themselves can filter those players out of their world by simply right-clicking them and choosing "nuke" if the use the official client - manaplus.

3. I myself and many of my in game friends takes their privacy seriously. If what we say in public is logged I would feel uneasy with it. Also I would fear that since point 1 is valid this would only lead us down a slippery slope where someone down the road will probably think that we need more logging because of what I predicted in 1, that all the abuse/trolling/scams will move to whispers.

---TL:DR---

If we implement logging the problem will just move to whispers.

Is someone annoying you? right-click and choose nuke. Play on without any annoying char bugging you.

[Hello=)]

Not sure how to vote:
- On one hand I don't mind logging popular town hall areas, etc since every player can turn on client logs anyway and there is no way to prevent it. So it's hard to expect privacy in public areas anyway.
- On other hand I don't support logging ALL public chats, since some remote houses, etc can be used by groups of players to held some semi-private meetings Since there're no better ways to dynamically assemble group chat at the moment it's not obvious it should be logged in arbitrary locations.

In general I think it's okay to log public chats in popular public areas, where offence is most likely to happen anyway. And of course I would expect clearly visible warning about this fact. Just as it happens with warning signs required for CCTV/video recording in many jurisdictions.

P.S. And almost all evil deeds are conducted with good reasoning. Logging chats on server haves potential to be evil and abused by admins/hackers/etc. It have to be considered.

[SriNitayanda]

I think the context in which o11c brings this idea needs to be clarified a bit more in order to lessen the upcoming drama from this poll.

It was brought before o11c that some players from rainbow gaming guild, were called faggots the first hours they played tmw since they didn't see any GM online they didn't report it and decided to leave the game which led to the departure of some other players in game also.
Well first of all i heard some people say maybe if people get offended so easily they shouldn't be a part of tmw, but just imagine yourself if someone is insulting you regarding your ethnic group, nationality, religion or sex, the first few hours you spend in a new community. how does it make the entire community look like and how would you feel yourself. i know i would certainly consider to leave the game if it would have happened to me the first few hours i played it.
I think thats the reason o11c wants to make serious changes in order to monitor insults and the likes. Ofc other changes were offered like notifying new players about the @wgm command so it sends a whisper to any online GM even if the GM is invisible. Maybe its a good idea to notify players about @wgm in news feed with an emphasis that a GM might be invisible, so its always good to try it. Also there might be a shortage of GM's right in order for all people to get response as soon as possible so we can always take a part in enlarging the GM team: viewtopic.php?f=25&p=140111#p140111.
I know this topic is about logs of public chat as a tool to enforce game rules, i just think we need to figure out other ways of addressing the real issue which is new players facing abuse early in the game. i think logging of public chat and or private chat eventually, should be the last resort as a tool of enforcing the rules, cause it seems privacy is very important to many players.
Anyway i wont vote here.

[Hello=)]

It was brought before o11c that some players from rainbow gaming guild, were called faggots the first hours they played tmw since they didn't see any GM online they didn't report it

IMO this is clear indication game needs more GMs. And solving human problems in technical ways tends to work poorly. If there're no online GMs to handle situation, it's not a big deal some troublemaker would face retribution "somewhere in future". Since damage is already done and it's too late anyway. Not to mention troublemakerss can change IPs and register new accounts to evade bans. So the only real solution I can see is to have enough of online GMs in different timezones to deal with situation. Also it would be nice if players would consider GMs as their representatives and join their forces to help GMs to keep overall climate in game friendly to players. Especially new players. In fact there was enough players who stays on Tulimshar for purpose of helping newbies. Unfortunately, latest events and poor ingame climate made at least some of these players quite inactive.

[AnonDuck]

I'm fine with logging because absolutely any player can log public chat. Add to this fact that if the admins wanted to read your messages, both public and private, they could without the log feature anyway(Packet sniffing, process tracing, etc etc.. And before you ask or point fingers: As far as I am aware, nobody is doing this)

So why not have an official record if it could help things? You're not losing any privacy.

BUT: There should be a deletion policy. Do not log everything forever. I'd say 24-48h is fine, nuke the log after that. Only people who have access to the server itself should have access to the logs. It's important to ensure nobody has access to them who couldn't just sniff the traffic if they wanted anyway... Otherwise there'd be a loss of privacy.

I think the real question here is should chat logs be used to help prevent abuse? veryape makes some interesting points.

[o11c]

I'm fine with logging because absolutely any player can log public chat. Add to this fact that if the admins wanted to read your messages, both public and private, they could without the log feature anyway(Packet sniffing, process tracing, etc etc.. And before you ask or point fingers: As far as I am aware, nobody is doing this)

The approach I would probably use is gdb with output redirection and a dprintf, since it is low-maintenance and simple to apply. If TMWA were not in active development, however, I would probably edit the source though.

So why not have an official record if it could help things? You're not losing any privacy.

Apparently it's okay to trust the masses and @invisible GMs not to release their logs, but the moment you limit the power to people who are already trusted with access that theoretically could be used to do absolutely anything, they can't be trusted to follow a standard of ethics ...

BUT: There should be a deletion policy. Do not log everything forever. I'd say 24-48h is fine, nuke the log after that.

Of course. My plan is a daily rotation between two logs.

I think the real question here is should chat logs be used to help prevent abuse? veryape makes some interesting points.

It would be effective against several reports we've gotten in the last few years, and Turing only knows how many reports were not filed because they knew that it would be closed for lack of evidence.

Also, even when it shifts to being in-whisper, I expect the psychological effect of abusive *whispers* is less (i.e. easier to ignore) than that of abusive chat in public (which is legitimized by all the people who don't do anything to stop it, and threads like this defending it). But logging of whispers, even opt-in, is even more unpopular than logging of public chat.

I don't know how for sure how effective it would be at *stopping* the abuse after that, but we *do* have some pretty stupid rule-breakers.

--

I *really* do not buy into the argument that "Hate speech is okay, you can just ignore it". You do realize, the only reason people can get away with it in-game is because you are defending it?

[WildX]

Voted yes. This could help with a number of things such as players that keep breaking the English in public rule when GMs aren't around, abusive players, some scammers that are stupid enough not to use whispers and possibly more.
The chat is already public and it can already be "spied" by an invisible GM or Admin, there is no real privacy concern, the only concern comes from people that are way too obsessed with privacy and don't stop to think about the benefits of this against the almost non-existent disadvantages.

P.S.
Forgot to mention, that are already a number of people around that log public chat for private use, so this is really nothing new, you're already being logged much of the time.

[Chay]

1. i am not allowed to vote here, same goes for *any* new player who o11c does care so much more about than *old* players (grep your own logs if you were in town) which brings me to
2. whoever brought up the argument that anybody can log chat he is plain wrong. There is no such thing as a global chat channel and hence *nobody* can log all public chat except those places where a visible (except gms) character was placed. So at any time a player can be certain what is being logged and what is not.
3. Since logging wouldnt help in a hot case its simply more surveillance: please read more Orwell guys.

And for productiveness:
the only thing i could accept is (at most 48 hr lifespan) hashed logs that could be used to verify screenshots/private logs ( that kind of policy would even allow logging whispers)

edit: lol this post enabled me to vote ...

[WildX]

1. i am not allowed to vote here, same goes for *any* new player who o11c does care so much more about than *old* players (grep your own logs if you were in town) which brings me to
2. whoever brought up the argument that anybody can log chat he is plain wrong. There is no such thing as a global chat channel and hence *nobody* can log all public chat except those places where a visible (except gms) character was placed. So at any time a player can be certain what is being logged and what is not.
3. Since logging wouldnt help in a hot case its simply more surveillance: please read more Orwell guys.

And for productiveness:
the only thing i could accept is (at most 48 hr lifespan) hashed logs that could be used to verify screenshots/private logs which also could log private chat.

1. There's a reason why new users can't vote. Enough with blaming o11c for everything.
2. You can't know for sure who's logging the chat and who's not when in a crowded area. Also, again, invisibility is a thing.
3. Surveillance of what? You talking about how many acorns you need for your daily quest? What's so bad with surveillance? You can still have private conversations in-game via whispers or other chats, or even in a logged area as NO ONE CARES about your conversation as long as you're not being investigated for breaking the rules.

[Silent Dawn]

From a GM point of view,

I tend to agree that public logs could help us catch rule breakers in some occasions (e.g., insults, not talking English in public places, possible scams).
Like I said yesterday when the topic was brought into the game, it’s not the first time i get reports of insults and when i go check, the incident is over. Since screenshots are no proof of anything, it could help the GM team to know what really happened and act based on that later.
To make sure I’m being explicit, I only agree to log the public chat in these cases and not with the intention to spy on people.

Of course there's the catch of since you know you are being logged in public, things will move to whispers. Honestly, and from my experience since i've became GM, if players want to break the rules, they ll do it anyway being the chat logged or not. About the scams is another question. However, most of the attempts are through whispers already...

BUT: There should be a deletion policy. Do not log everything forever. I'd say 24-48h is fine, nuke the log after that.

I agree on that, if there are no reports on that day or on the 2 days after the incident, no point to save the logs.

Also, as others already pointed out, I’m pretty sure many players log everything when they are online, invisible GMs can read what you are saying when you thought you were talking in “private”. So after all, not everything you think you say it’s private. And if you really need to say something you don’t want anyone to read, you have whispers, parties and guilds.

Is someone annoying you? right-click and choose nuke. Play on without any annoying char bugging you.

In my opinion, I don’t think avoiding the problem is a solution, but rather trying to find solutions to prevent these situations to happen.

---
To finish, in an attempt to avoid newcomers for being harrassed when they start playing, which culminated in this topic, there were some productive ideas when we discussed it in town. I’m sure someone logged it

[veryape]

Is someone annoying you? right-click and choose nuke. Play on without any annoying char bugging you.

In my opinion, I don’t think avoiding the problem is a solution, but rather trying to find solutions to prevent these situations to happen.

---
To finish, in an attempt to avoid newcomers for being harrassed when they start playing, which culminated in this topic, there were some productive ideas when we discussed it in town. I’m sure someone logged it

In my eyes a newcomer who gets harassed will not in any way shape or form be better off with logging. If a GM is not there to stop it in front of his/hers eyes we probably lose them anyway. And for a Admin to check the log they need a report from a GM about possible harassment. So for the new user to feel somewhat protected what is needed? Probably that a gm shows up and takes his side, a /wgm without any immediate effect will still make them leave the game if they are inclined to do so by being called names.

Also what would that lead to? a Warning? A kick? Come on. Why go all this length for such a minor punishment? I'd say better teach people to use the built in features in the client that let them police for themselves. If this was possible irl I sure as hell would use nuke a lot when i get annoyed with people. I think learning out those features will lead to the game being much more enjoyable for everyone than the logging-proposal. I have a hard time seeing a newcomer feeling that justice is done when he reads on the forum "User x warned/kicked because of prior harassment of player y."

Also regarding "people are logging anyhow"-stance. Yeah sure, they are logging things. But (and this is a big but imo) only where they are. There is quite a difference from me being able to eavesdrop in my immediate surrounding and being able to eavesdrop everything ever said in public. It is like justifying bugging of mobile phones because people standing beside the guy talking in the phone can listen to what he says. I think there was some controversy with guild spying in the past, if there is logs that people are able to grep the chance of them being greped are quite a lot larger.

I just don't see any advantages to this what soever. If the current rules should be followed, ie warning - kick - ban escalation scheme that is posted as GM guidelines, this will be ineffective.

[AnonDuck]

Random idea: What if we approached this from an alternate angle? Is there a way to make screenshots verifyable without logging? Technology is pretty wonderful afterall.

For instance the server could start sending hashes of every line in chat along with the line or in a special packet. Mix a secret string in that only the server knows. Add a "screenshot for abuse" thing to the client that writes a logfile along with the screenie. Put the hashes in the logfile along with the text. Make it easy enough for noobs to figure out they need to post both a screenie and a log.

Example:
Pluto says "give me all your items" ..
The server hashes this text this with it's secret: "Pluto: give me all your items | supersecret"
Computes to:56513768de5491ded4ee7ac0fc3b2615 as a md5 hash (Probably want to use a shorter hash like adler)
Client logs: "[21:00] 56513768de5491ded4ee7ac0fc3b2615 Pluto: give me all your items" when screenshot is requested by user

Anyone who knows the secret and can see both the line from chat and the hash value next to it can verify that line of text was actually sent through the server. There's no way to fake this without knowing the secret only the server has!

The user can then simply post their log + screenshot to the forums and the admins/GMs can validate they are accurate by pasting the log into simple web-based tool. The tool could even be public. The beauty of this is it can be done with ALL chat, whispers included, with NO server-side logging.

Again though, I don't know that players abusing eachother is a large enough problem to warrant this type of feature. There are MUCH bigger fish to fry such as the way noobs are trapped in rather frustrating tutorial in a completely unpopulated area for their first several hours of gameplay.

[prsm]

I am not a fan of this idea.

With all the things that need to get done, this should be dead last on every ones list!

who polices the chat logs? we reads what is written?

and whats the next step, recording the whispers, because when people become aware that we are recording public chat logs they will have to insult in whispers. So that will have to be the next step .......

If you want a better solution make the beginner maps unavailable to someone over level 10. Give them a taste and let them decide. This game has a niche, playing big brother isnt it.

I voted NO.

Prsm