Comments on: Player Justice!

By: Bertie

Bertie — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 02:48:05 +0000

Successful governance of Internet communities (past a certain size) tends toward detached, somewhat arbitrary despotism. There have actually been a number of studies and research on this. Democratic or legalistic styles (with appeals and trials and such) just don’t scale very well. You’ve hit on one of the reasons why — metagaming the system. When last comes to last, there has to be a dictator who has the right to ban for no better reason than “because I said so”.

Elitist Jerks is actually an awesome example of Internet moderation done right.

By: Bear

Bear — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:01:50 +0000

Corruption is my main concern with player tribunals, which is why EvE can’t make them work. The benefits of being a “wise” judge have to be greater than the benefits of players selling their decisions for in-game rewards. Give me X or I’ll ban you for 3 days. Give me Y, file a complaint against so-and-so and I’ll find them in the wrong. If judges are not officially rewarded at all, some of them will find ways to be compensated.

By: Bri

Bri — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 13:05:06 +0000

Star Wars Galaxies had (has?) a system whereby each server had several appointed player “wardens”. These players had the ability to squelch another player for 1 hour, preventing them from using any in-game forms of communication, in an attempt to combat the gold seller spam. Wardens were told not to reveal their role to other players, and every use of the warden powers created an automatic GM ticket so the circumstance could be investigated.

The spam dried up overnight. Huge success.

By: Kring

Kring — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:52:29 +0000

> There’s no special reason why minimum wage GMs
> should be able to do a better job of judgement than
> active players.

I’m not a GM nor do I have any information about that but I assume:

- They have to follow rules or they might loose their RL job.
- They most likely have check lists/guides which tell them which action to take.
- Most GM tasks are stupid tasks. Unstuck. Explain a misunderstanding of game mechanic. Recover an item. I doubt your “minimum wage GM” is the one deciding if someone should be banned. That’s most likely the task of a senior GM.

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:02:58 +0000

The one thing that paid GMs who don't play the game would have over player judges is a possible lack of bias. Note that's possible, not guaranteed, especially as the GMs interact with the community and get to know people. Some people are going to value a paycheck over making lots of virtual friends. Assuming there's some punishment meted out, there will be some people who will choose to use that punishment as a meta-game option to hurt competitors and help allies. Especially in a game with an intense competitive nature. Which is pretty much why player policing has never worked very well in PvP-focused games without a LOT of structure around it.