The Mana World Forums

In for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well log all of the chat, public, private, guild. It's a private server, it belongs to the TMWC, and all your chat tabs belong to them. If you really need privacy, don't expect it in an online game or Facebook; use a specialized encrypted chat service, for example this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocat

Unfortunately, online games, just like the real world, need to be policed. Chat logging, of all chat, will make that easier. General rule of thumb: in any online game or public service, like Facebook, never expect your words or images to be private, and expect them to stick around until the end of time, too.

I understand and respect privacy concerns, but I don't think they apply in any way to online games, where you are basically a guest on their server, and they have to comply with the laws of many jurisdictions and to cooperate with police from around the world, if god forbid, an actual crime took place or was planned, and reported, and records are then required by law.

blackrazor wrote:Unfortunately, online games, just like the real world, need to be policed. Chat logging, of all chat, will make that easier. General rule of thumb: in any online game or public service, like Facebook, never expect your words or images to be private, and expect them to stick around until the end of time, too.

What makes this game so appealing at least for me is that it is open source, free and that it is supposedly run like a social project where everyone has a say. The day we turn into a model where it is run like other games I don't see any real good reason for starting to play this game. Sure I and many other players would probably stick around because we've made friends in the game. If it were not being open source project that is community driven i probably would not have joined it in the first place, this is what in my mind make this game both different and great.

I think that going in the direction of logging in public is just a first small step towards more logging because of the reasons i pointed out in my first post.

The problem at hand is that people are behaving badly towards others, how can we fix it?

Logging private chat only would be ineffective, logging everythiing would make this into just another game like all the others imo.

I think it is time to look for other solutions.

veryape wrote:I think that going in the direction of logging in public is just a first small step towards more logging because of the reasons i pointed out in my first post.

Storing anything else than public chat or public channels; for any other purpose than delivery (we must imagine in game mails, they were asked for many times) or testing is just illegal, and I would oppose to such logs with the highest strength. The limits of logs usage could be written in a privacy policy disclaimer, which dramatically lacks in this project. Please note that some countries could block access to tmw because of this lack, California for example. Instead of thinking about the possible bad uses (they may occur: guild bot logs have been spied in the past), lets think that our GMs and admins are trustable .
Some rules about player behaviour are set, and GMs have to enforce them. The actual situation makes it quite difficult to do, because GM has to be present to be able to take a decision. If you check the abuse forum, you may see that the abuse reports are mostly impossible to solve, because GMs cannot ne everywhere at the same time, magic is not yet strong enough in TMW; then this part of the rules is mostly useless. Another aspect is that issues can occur because of misunderstandings. Most players are not native English speakers, the recent Yellow/mahou case may be an example. When GMs are allowed to have a closer look to public chat logs, it may help them a lot in the fair decision taking process. Having a second look to a conversation afterwards, when minds are cooled, may also help to detect such misunderstandings. I am afraid that there is no definitive solution to solve human issues at the moment.
As I recently said to a friend, I don't really care about the result of this poll, because I consider it as a small, point regarding the overall project. Writing privacy policy, and terms of service as well, for game, server and wiki, is more important.

Nard wrote:Some rules about player behaviour are set, and GMs have to enforce them. The actual situation makes it quite difficult to do, because GM has to be present to be able to take a decision.

As it is now the person who is abusing others must be caught in the act for GMs to intervene. Abuse over pm is still impossible to anything about. If we log public chat mostly all abuse it will just move to PMs and be out of reach for 100% of the time instead of <100% as of now.

Conclusion: we gain nothing.

Nard wrote:If you check the abuse forum, you may see that the abuse reports are mostly impossible to solve, because GMs cannot ne everywhere at the same time, magic is not yet strong enough in TMW; then this part of the rules is mostly useless.

This is true, most of the abuse might go on without any GM knowledge of it and without any repercussions now. I however believe that a user that has been accused of abuse will have the GMS eyes on them even if they were not caught in the act. And therefore are more likely to get caught if they are serial offenders. Again, look at what i wrote above, the offenders will just move to whispers and we lost the small chance we have now of them getting caught.

Nard wrote:Another aspect is that issues can occur because of misunderstandings. Most players are not native English speakers, the recent Yellow/mahou case may be an example.

Well, this is a different issue IMO, and this issue was as far as I know resolved after talking to the ones concerned. What happened if I have the right info was that YA gave away his login details and stated that he didn't have time to play (or something along those lines).

As have been stated numerous times, do not give away your login details to anyone - Because game masters cannot help you if you do and get looted.

And I do not think that what mahou did was wrong, if someone gave me a charachter saying that he did not intend to play the game I think that gives me the moral right to do whatever I want with the account that was given to me.

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On a similar note i borrowed out my newly won bull helmet and didn't get it back for a while. I spoke to the GMs about my concerns and they explained that there was nothing that they really could do but apply pressure.

Of course at the time I thought that it was frustrating that the game masters could not just give me my stuff back, but at the same time I understand that without proof (and screenshots are not) my case was kind of weak. They used their social skills. I used mine as good as I could by telling people not to help the guy who borrowed my helmet until I got it back.

This issue was resolved, I got my helmet back, the player who borrowed it got help with illia, so the issue was resolved in the best possible manner for everyone involved. I have faith in our GM team and our community in cases like this and I do think that similar cases will be resolved in the same manner in the future.
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If game masters cannot help you the community probably can.
At least for now when the community is quite small and tight knitted. If someone gets accused for behaving badly and with some kind of proof thereof the community will act. If I knew that someone ran around shouting profanities at fellow players I would act as a player. More importantly I do think that most other players would do the same.

This whole debate about logging came up after one guy who just joined got called names in Tulishmar. The main issue here is that the newcomers to the game don't know about how it works and that there is not often more experienced players around. However if we look at this case I think that there are numerous other ways of solving the problem. The new map in Tulishmar will hopefully bring more seasoned players to the beginners area, that might help.

Also abuse is against the rules, but we do not have 24/7 coverage with GMs, so steps to take if you get abused should be: 1. report using /wgm and wait for 10 minutes, if nothing happens, move on to 2. nuke the player and continue to play.

I think that we need to be clear about telling the players what gms can and cannot do. There are functions to be able not to be trade-scammed, being called names etc. It is up to the players to use them. GMs will help out when they can - but they cannot catch every offense.

The players will have to police for themselves and they have the tools to do so, now the important thing is just to get that info out to the new players.

I'm pretty sure that most online games log all chat, and it's not illegal. Whispers or guild chat in an online game is not the same as private talking in your home in real life. All chat in an online game is still happening in the exact same place, their server. Maybe you have expectations that your chat in an online game should be private, for any number of reasons, but that is not the same as legal rights. In many countries, the police can also get your PRIVATE phone conversations or calling details or emails with a subpeona, which means that it was recorded to begin with. They can subpeona video footage from surveillance cameras, too.

All that being said, I do agree with Nard, that a privacy policy, limiting what can be done with the collected data and for how long it can be stored, is probably the most relevant part of this discussion, and yet it's not part of the poll, nor part of the discussion from the admin side. Unfortunate.

Let me be clear. I don't like big brother. But an online game isn't the real world, it's an internet service. People will abuse it, sometimes even for real-world crimes. The people who own the server may feel they have certain legal responsibilities to log data, and that should really be something they have a right to deal with. As for community driven open-source, I think that is all smoke and mirrors in the end, and that should be obvious by now.

I also agree with veryape, that if you log only public chat, all that will accomplish over time, is that nefarious behavior will move to private chat. So you either log everything, or nothing, depending on whether you value more security or privacy. Going halfway is the worst of both worlds, and accomplishes almost nothing positive over time.

blackrazor wrote:I'm pretty sure that most online games log all chat, and it's not illegal. Whispers or guild chat in an online game is not the same as private talking in your home in real life. All chat in an online game is still happening in the exact same place, their server. Maybe you have expectations that your chat in an online game should be private, for any number of reasons, but that is not the same as legal rights. In many countries, the police can also get your PRIVATE phone conversations or calling details or emails with a subpeona, which means that it was recorded to begin with. They can subpeona video footage from surveillance cameras, too.

As for other online games/communities etc..

Yes, they log everything you do, heck even my ISP logs my traffic. But I do not think that common practice is a justification for this game to do the same. It is one of the things that sets it apart from others. If we have logs the police could force the server owner to hand them over if certain criteria are met. If we don't have any logs they cannot get hold of logs, it really is as simple as that.

blackrazor wrote:All that being said, I do agree with Nard, that a privacy policy, limiting what can be done with the collected data and for how long it can be stored, is probably the most relevant part of this discussion, and yet it's not part of the poll, nor part of the discussion from the admin side. Unfortunate.

No, this is another discussion. This is about IF we should start logging private chat, not HOW. If the conclusion of this thread is that we should then we can move on with the question of how to implement it.

blackrazor wrote:Let me be clear. I don't like big brother. But an online game isn't the real world, it's an internet service.

Let me assure you, I feel very real when I sit in front of my computer and play computer games. Just because my avatar runs around and hits squirrels in a nonphysical world does not mean that it is not part of the real world. It is very real, it is connected to the real world because it affects real people. Facebook is real, so is irc, tumbler, comic books and so are movies. Even if what they depict is a fantasy/fictional they are a part of the real world.

blackrazor wrote:The people who own the server may feel they have certain legal responsibilities to log data, and that should really be something they have a right to deal with. As for community driven open-source, I think that is all smoke and mirrors in the end, and that should be obvious by now.

Firstly, if they are obliged to log data they should say that, however I do not get the impression that this is the case. It was a suggestion to help out game masters to enforce the rules when it comes to abuse as far as I understand.

Secondly about community driven.. well we have this topic don't we? We are not being censored, that makes your statement kind of invalid doesn't it? At least for now, once they implement this without taking concerns to what people write here and answer them or inform the community about their decisions BEFORE they take place. And saying that it is not open source? Are you kidding me? The source is readily available at github.

veryape wrote:

Nard wrote:Another aspect is that issues can occur because of misunderstandings. Most players are not native English speakers, the recent Yellow/mahou case may be an example.

Well, this is a different issue IMO, and this issue was as far as I know resolved after talking to the ones concerned. What happened if I have the right info was that YA gave away his login details and stated that he didn't have time to play (or something along those lines).

For me, this is the perfect example to show that logging the public logs could help the GM team solve these and future issues like this.

You all know the time it took for the mahou/YA case to be solved, mostly because one of the sides did not want to cooperate much with the GM team, only after some efforts.

If we had access to the public logs of when this case happened, the situation would have been solved much faster.

+1 veryape

I voted no, and agree with veryape.

BTW, I don't think being against chat logging, or being in favor of players using their ignore buttons, amounts to defending hate speech or being "obsessed with privacy." Nor do I think I shouldn't be concerned if I have nothing to hide. The problem is trivial and the proposed solution is overkill.

Hey what's this thing I hear about logging the public chat? Are you trying to get me banned?

I vote NO, NO and NOOOOOOOOOO

I voted yes absolutely. Here's why.

1) Why should "We", The Mana World, be the only ones who DON'T have an official record of things if something happened? How would that stand up as a defence if something went wrong? It is a disadvantage not for the players, but for the game as a whole.

2) "No I didn't"...that would no longer exist. It either "did", or it "didn't". Also, contexts could be discussed to determine what was actually meant, as meanings, experience and difficulties in languages cause sentences to be misconstrued by the hearer.

3) Scammers would be restricted to whisper, and if whisper is mentioned in the Terms and Conditions for how to trade (as is already in game anyhow), and as having a method of dealing with abusive players, then the responsibility would legally go back onto the player, inasmuch as they now have at their fingertips a way of eliminating the source, with the option of reporting it too.

4) Just like signs that say "Speed Camera Ahead", and although people still speed, the signs generally work. It may minimise the current methods of abuse, and if it went to whisper, the block could quite easily be applied, and as already stated it could become THE way to deal with a persistent pest. That way, the "general" atmosphere of The ManaWorld would be a positive one. It's public chat anyway we're talking about, not private chat. Of course, if the private chat was needed in any legal issue, the authorities would be able to get it.

5) Revisions would be easier to make when it came to technicalities over certain "breaches". This goes into harmony a little with one of those points on the so-called "laws of online world", which is "Darklocks Second Law", on violations of player's assumptions...assumptions need pointing to accuracy when issues arise. This would help with clarity.