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[RRE]MediaMOO annual birthday symposia: 1/20
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Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 20:15:58 -0500 (EST)
From: "Amy S. Bruckman"
[...]
[Please forward to appropriate lists until 1/20/99]
Please come to the annual online symposia in honor of MediaMOO's 6th Birthday At MediaMOO, telnet://mediamoo.cc.gatech.edu:8888
Wednesday, January 20th 1:30 - 2:30 PM ET: MANAGING DEVIANT BEHAVIOR IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES 2:30 - 3:30 PM ET: THE FUTURE OF MEDIAMOO: AUTOPSY AND REDESIGN 3:30 - 4:30 PM ET: THE 7TH ANNUAL MEDIAMOO COSTUME BALL
MANAGING DEVIANT BEHAVIOR IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES
an online panel discussion featuring Jennifer Glos, Third Age Raph Koster, Ultima Online Scott Moore, formerly of WorldsAway Moderator: Amy Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology
1:30 - 2:30 PM ET in the STS Summer Conference Room (@go summer)
An increasing percentage of the general population have had direct experience with those pesky individuals who spoil the party. Anti-social behavior in online communities ranges from the merely annoying to the downright scary. But who determines what is too annoying to tolerate? And what can community members leaders do about it? Too many community managers are reinventing the wheel; as a community, we need to learn from one another's experiences. In this symposium, we have the opportunity to learn from represents of two large commercial entertainment communities about what works, what doesn't, and what it all means.
JENNIFER GLOS POSITION STATEMENT Every community is unique in its make-up of individuals as well as its context and environment, and these factors determine how a community should be managed. Solutions need to be acceptable to both the community members themselves as well as the organization or body behind the community. Much like a Mayor of a city has to work with her constituents to create a city they want to live in, she also must stay within the city budget and answer to her fellow politicans. Finding the balance between these two groups is the core challenge of managing a community. And, much like NYC's problems and Toledo, Ohio's problems vary, every online community will discover new and unique issues. But by compiling the knowledge and experiences of many community managers, we can map out a grid of choices and better understand why particular communities respond best to certain solutions.
ABOUT JENNIFER GLOS Jennifer Glos is currently the Technology Channel Producer at ThirdAge Media, an online community website for 45+ users. Previously, she was ThirdAge's Community Director, where she helped to develop the community's structure and rules, community-enhancing interactive tools, and a team of volunteers to help grow the community and deal with community crises. Previous to ThirdAge, Jennifer worked in Kyoto, Japan as an Internet technology consultant, and at Microsoft where she worked on interface design for adult novice users. She received her Master's from the MIT Media Lab where she studied the convergence of storytelling, identity, and technology.
RAPH KOSTER POSITION STATEMENT As virtual settings develop with greater flexibility and freedom, it becomes possible for players to affect each other's virtual lives in a multitude of ways that are indirect and not easily trappable in code. Traditionally, mud servers of various types put the burden of detection of illegal acts and tracking of illegal acts on either the code itself, or on mud administrators. This solution is not particularly scalable to larger groups of people, nor to more flexible environments (wherein it is easily circumvented). A preferable solution is finding a way for the populace to police itself more effectively by allowing them to track player reputations with the aid of coded tools.
ABOUT RAPH KOSTER Raph Koster is known in the mud world as Ptah, implementor on LegendMUD (http://mud.sig.net, telnet://mud.sig.net:9999), which is about to celebrate its fifth anniversary as an award-winning mud themed around different time periods and places in Earth's history. However, he is probably better known in the commercial software world as "Designer Dragon", the lead designer for ORIGIN's highly successful graphical mud Ultima Online (http://www.owo.com). Ultima Online recently achieved over 100,000 paying customers, with peaks of over 20,000 online simultaneously. Raph is also an active member of the MUD-Dev list, and maintains a page of online game design writings at http://mud.sig.net/raph/gaming/.
SCOTT MOORE POSITION STATEMENT The environment in which a virtual community exists will encourage or discourage degrees of deviant behavior. Understanding the environment, the lay of the land and the type of community which is planned (or already exists), will influence what methods are employed for managing behavior. Is a profit expected? Who pays the maintenance costs, users or sponsors? What does the interface do and allow? How large is the community expected to be? Answers to these questions along with definitions of the purpose, values and goals intended for the community will favor a certain mix of methods from social to technical, centralized to distributed, authoritative to authoritarian ("show how" and "do for") and proactive to reactive. With the wide varieties of communities emerging online, no one solution will fit for all, but similar types of communities will gain the greatest benefits from similar methods of behavior management. Large communities will benefit from distributed methods; Pay-for-play communities will be under pressure of consumer value to adopt quick, cheap authoritarian methods; communities with a decided eye toward the long run will favor social solutions for social problems.
ABOUT SCOTT MOORE Scott Moore is independently providing online community consulting after three years as community director for Fujitsu Systems Business of America's WorldsAway avatar-based communities. There he gained valuable experience in designing and extending virtual worlds both physically and socially, being the primary liaison with users, handling human issues within the community, selecting and training a volunteer community staff as well as designing objects, interfaces and localities to promote greater interaction and spur community growth. Scott has taught his lessons of community management and the essential elements of establishing online communities at Earth To Avatars and Stanford University. He uses his experience in both the technical and social aspects of online community to educate and advise technologists and content providers expanding the realm of human-to-human communication.
THE FUTURE OF MEDIAMOO: AUTOPSY AND REDESIGN A community discussion
2:30-3:30 PM ET in the back room of the Root Lounge (@go Root Lounge)
A lot of MOOs are pretty quiet these days. There are exceptions: LambdaMOO thrives like kudzu. Diversity University and Tapped In grow slowly, buoyed by the relentless enthusiasm of their creators. Like many MOOs, MediaMOO at this stage is largely a historical artifact--one of the living dead. Yet the concept of an online professional community for media researchers remains intriguing. Questions for discussion include:- When MediaMOO was thriving, what benefits did it bring to its members?- Why is MediaMOO so quiet these days?- What might a redesigned system look like?
Special appearances by beloved former MediaMOO regulars are rumored.
3:30-4:30 PM ET in the ballroom (@go Ballroom Foyer)
THE 7TH ANNUAL MEDIAMOO COSTUME BALL
Come catch up with old friends, sign the birthday card, and wear your favorite costume. Order a Metaphysical Pepsi and toast the new year. Happy birthday to us!
ABOUT MEDIAMOO:
MediaMOO is a text-based virtual reality environment (or "MUD") designed to be a professional community for media researchers. People from a wide variety of backgrounds (computer scientists, anthropologists, artists, writing teachers, psychologists, journalists, etc.) come to MediaMOO to meet one another, and discuss the future of new media technologies. MediaMOO opened its virtual doors on January 20th, 1993 with the MediaMOO Inaugural Ball. MediaMOO was originally hosted at the MIT Media Lab, and is now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. MediaMOO is located at telnet://mediamoo.cc.gatech.edu:8888
You are invited to apply to become a regular MediaMOO member! ```
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