[MUD-Dev] The morality of logfiles [was 'Wild west']

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Greg Munt <greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>You seem to be assuming in your posts that all mud administrators are 
>corrupted by their power. This is not true. You also assume that any and 
>all information held on a person, will be used against that person, by 
>those in power. This is not true, either.

"corrupt"... It is hard to tell what being "corrupt" is.  I guess
being "corrupt" is to break the buraucratic rules because of external
motivation/personal gains.  You may end up with an undesirable
situation without "corruption".

Humans are likely to stretch rules as far as they can according to
their own norms... :-/ I don't see any reason why MUD admins should be
different.  Anyway, the main issue here was what kind of rules the MUD
should have in the first place.

An admin can't erase knowledge he has gained about other people from
his brain just like that.  The fact that he has gained some knowledge
about a person without that person as an active information provider
is a problem.  It is easy to come up with embarresing situation.  It
is easy to picture situations where that knowledge is sifting out..

>I am curious as to why you feel this way. And I find the idea of 
>commercial mud administrators being made legally responsible for their 
>actions quite abhorrent. Frequently, problems between users and admin 
>have no witnesses, and it is simply the admin's word against the user's.

I was talking about the system.

The reason for why I feel this way is partially philosophical,
partially professional.  The professional part is based on the history
of how computer systems has been used in organizations.

Commercial mud administrators are of course legalle repsonsible for
their actions, as we all are.

Ola.