[MUD-Dev] curses and grief players

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 11:35:09 -0400 
John Buehler <johnbue at email.msn.com> wrote:

> Patrick Dughi Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 7:55 AM

>   These two paragraphs are antithetical.  In the first, you say
> that the purpose of voting is to make players feel good - with the
> implicit assumption that they are involved.  In the second, you
> say that whether their vote is significant or not is up to the
> admin.

>   My point is that players shouldn't be left to vote unless their
> opinions have weight.  If I ask your opinion and I don't really
> care, why ask?  I'm lying to you.  When you realize that, you'll
> be annoyed, hurt and less likely to trust me or believe me in the
> future.

You are attepting to apply absolutist values to something which is
inherently analog.  Consider the following:

  1) I have a problem I want to resolve or change

  2) I think about it and come up with various ideas.

  3) I decide what I want some external evaluation of those idess,
     as well as some evaluation of the problem to see if I missed
     anything, or I want to raise general awareness of the problem
     area so that they are positioned to help resolve it.

  4) I open up a discussion on the item, possibly associated with a
     poll, or several polls on various facets of the problem and its
     intended solution.  Typically the voting and vote counting is
     implicit rather than explicit.

  5) I participate in the following traffic.

  6) I look at what was said, what was proposed, the various
     opinions, etc until I feel I grok both the problem and its
     social significance.

  7) I make up my own mind, using whatever criteria I chose, and do
     that.  The results of this step may or may not have been
     influenced by anything that occured in steps #4 and #5.

Are the people in #4 hoodwinked?  They are asked, they are polled,
they may vote for their preferences, and they are (implicitly)
requested to participate and contribute to the decision making
prcess by adding their two cents.  Certainly all these things are
true.  Equally, while there is an explicit promise that they will be
listened to, there is no promise as to what will be done with their
statements, just that they will be heard.
  
You get the ear of the king, not his complicity.

Further, there is often a useful implicit deception which can be
constructively used with this technique.  Frequently merely raising
the topic of the problem for discussion as a problem raises general
awareness on the area enough that the problem alleviates.

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                               Other: coder at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/        Keys etc: finger claw at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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