Staff Bits Linking Handles

Juniper

Everyone except me should link their handles.

InkGolem

This is exactly the point I’m making. If I am going to putting in the time and effort in a game, I want to know whose house I’m in.

Faraday

@dvoraen said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

“ok but who owns the business?” “You don’t need to know.”

I view it more as: “Who owns this business?” “No clue. <shrug>”

Which is honestly how I feel about most businesses. Most places do not plaster their owner’s identity on their front door, and most patrons just don’t care.

There’s nothing wrong with caring. By all means, give your business to a place that you’re not comfortable with. I just reject the notion that not advertising your OOC identity is some kind of shady practice.

Yam

I figure the handle being prominent, right after the name on all channels with every message has probably shifted the expectations a bit, as opposed to an alt list tucked into a finger.

Third Eye

Believe you me everybody still knew who the staff alts were before handles most of the time.

I guess this is why I find the subterfuge Neon engaged in so silly, in addition to being a red flag. People are gonna find out 90% of the time.

ham

@Faraday I think there’s a pretty big difference between a business you go to for a few minutes to an hour at a time, and a hobby where you may spend a significant amount of your leisure time.

MUSHing isn’t a business. It is an extremely niche hobby that new people rarely find. Most if not all of us have had intensely negative experiences with one or more players, some of which even extend to RL doxxing and stalking.

I don’t think that means everyone in it needs to be completely transparent about who they are at all times, but comparing a MUSH gamerunner to a business owner is not very apt imo.

Faraday

@ham I didn’t start the business owner analogy, I was responding to a previous comment. Any kind of RL analogy is going to be flawed because once you meet the people in person you can be like: “Oh no, not Harvey again. I’m out.”

You’re never going to get that same 1-1 correspondence in an online system. What we’ve been talking about is whether staff OWES people that same level of transparency.

I think being transparent is a good way to build trust. I think being cautious around staffers you don’t know is reasonable. I just don’t think “they have no handle therefore they have something to hide” is appropriate or fair. YMMV.

Yam

@Third-Eye said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

People are gonna find out 90% of the time.

Yeah, they will eventually, it’s hard to really “hide” here. But the discussion has brought up examples of players unknowingly interacting with staff characters and feeling a certain way about it. They’re talking about that sliver of time when people don’t know.

Eventually people will pair person to character. We have a personality fingerprint that’s hard to smudge, at least long term.

But clearly some folk didn’t sign up for hidden staff characters, where it might take a little while to actually pair staff to character. It got paired, clearly! They know now. But they didn’t. And that was the issue.

Pavel

@Yam said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

I figure the handle being prominent, right after the name on all channels with every message has probably shifted the expectations a bit, as opposed to an alt list tucked into a finger.

Ares isn’t the be all and end all, it’s one system among many and the others don’t have a handle with history attached.

Yam

@Pavel This makes me want to run a poll to see how many folk are actively RPing on Ares games right now vs anything else.

dvoraen

@ham Yeah, it was not a perfect comparison I made, but even in the business world your reputation can precede you as to who will want to do business with you. (I can think of an example here, but that is tangential.)

I did insinuate some bad faith with the made-up dialogue, true, but it was more to illustrate the point where if something comes up with the metaphorical business dealing and I get cagey answers about who is managing and/or owning it…

Jennkryst

@Yam said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

We have a personality fingerprint that’s hard to smudge,

Wot?

I feel attacked.

hellfrog

for someone infamous, hiding would mean actually changing the behaviors they became known for, AND not being weirdly preoccupied with their former characters/reps.

I feel like it’s possible, but we’ve never seen it happen.

Pavel

@hellfrog said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

I feel like it’s possible, but we’ve never seen it happen.

I think that the people on the scale we’re talking about would have to have something fundamental to themselves or their lives change for such an evolution to happen. And that would likely coincide with their interests changing to the point that they leave MUing and go on to write books or something.

L. B. Heuschkel

@Pavel said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

they leave MUing and go on to write books or something.

Both. Both is good. (MUing is where I write all the stuff that doesn’t fit into my book-in-progress at the time).

catzilla

@hellfrog The people who truly do change aren’t going around saying ‘hey, I was SOECentipede from Hello Kitty MU! I used to be terrible but now I’m great!’

instead they have probably either left the hobby like Pavel said or are truly such a changed person that they keep their head down, RP, have fun, and maybe make a friend or two like the rest of us.

Cobalt

I prefer it when people link who they were in other places, because I prefer transparency these days. However, I don’t feel like anyone owes me that transparency. If someone ran a WoD game in the past that turned into a toxic wasteland and five years later they don’t want their new Star Trek game associated with it at all-- They don’t owe it to me or anyone else to announce it via linking their handles, or by saying ‘hey I was BloodDrink420 on Colorado by Night: High Werewolves in the Woods’.

Similarly, I don’t think it is mandatory that staff link/announce/whatever their personal PCs … but I do prefer it when they do.

Pavel

@Cobalt Hi, I’m Troy McClure, you might remember me from such MUs as…

Cobalt

@Pavel No sorry, doesn’t ring any bells.

renaveleigh

@chorus You’d think, but why moderate one’s behavior when hiding from responsibility for it is an option?