Some educational and research MOOs such as Diversity University are more precise. It can be asked whether such long messages (especially on a small tty screen) are really read. But then basic manners also are addressed in some ways on the welcome screen.
---------------------------------------------------------------- DU May 4 /95 >help manners Expected Behavior and Manners for Diversity University MOO ========================================================== This document describes the guidelines and expectations for acceptable behavior on Diversity University MOO, as well as some general suggestions for how to interact with others on the MOO. Users are expected to behave in a reasonable and responsible manner at all times, as laid out by this document, and failure to do so can result in disciplininary action by the wizards of the MOO. General security issues and matters which involve the functional integrity of the MOO, access to unauthorized abilities or areas, or real-world legal concerns are not covered in this document. For information on these policies, please see 'help terms'. Social Interaction ------------------ The MOO is not a game. It is a real social environment with people of all ages, from all walks of life, from all over the globe. Citizens of Diversity University are expected to act accordingly. This means the following: 1. Harassment of other users will not be tolerated. This includes, but is not limited to, spamming (filling their screen with unwanted text), teleporting them or their objects without their permission, repeated paging or following them after they have expressed a desire to be left alone, broadcasting messages to everyone on the MOO, or actions done with the specific intent of causing another person annoyance or discomfort. 2. While freedom of speech is an important part of Diversity University, obscene language, violence, unwanted sexual acts, or other blatantly offensive behavior will also not be tolerated. 3. Spoofing (displaying text that is not obviously attributed to your character) to deceive others or avoid responsibility for one's actions is traceable and is not allowed. Moreover, programming or making available verbs designed specifically to display text without attribution or misattributed text is also not allowed. 4. Spying on others is expressly prohibited. All objects which relay messages heard in a room to another person or location must clearly state that they do so. Silent teleportation is also a form of spying, as is any mechanism intended to intercept messages not intended for you through unanticipated loopholes (this last is also a security issue, see 'help terms'). 5. Common courtesy is expected from all users toward others on the MOO. In addition to the above points, this means paging others before joining them in a non-public space (a private room, a classroom, etc), asking before taking or using objects that do not belong to you, leaving objects where you find them, and all of the other courtesies you would follow when visiting someone else's house or place of business. Users should also attempt to respect other people's sensibilities. Inhabitants of Diversity University come from a wide range of cultural, religious, and racial backgrounds which should be acknowledged and respected. Not everyone has the same feelings of acceptable speech and behavior, and consideration of others' feelings is an essential part of reasonable behavior on Diversity University. Diversity University is also a family environment with participants of all ages, and actions and statements made in this environment should reflect this. Public use of language or actions which are not suitable for children will not be tolerated on this system. Should you have problems with another user who is not following these requirements, please report their actions to a wizard or other designated authority. If none are immediately available, some commands for temporary sanctuary are available. For more information see help on @gag, @refuse, and @eject. For tips on contacting wizards and other busy people, see 'help wizards'. Polite Use of MOO Resources --------------------------- Be considerate when designing verbs and objects to perform tasks on the MOO. MOO resources are shared amongst all the inhabitants, and badly designed systems can affect the performance of the entire MOO. Do not design code or create systems that consume inordinate amounts of processing time or resources without consultation with the wizards first, and always design code in such a way as to be as efficient and server-friendly as possible. Help keep database size down. Use verbs such as @copy only when absolutely necessary. Do not copy nifty verbs someone else has made to yourself so you can use them. Ask them or a wizard to put the verb on a feature object instead. Use @rmm to remove personal mail messages once you are done with them, and keep cross-posting (sending the same mail messages to multiple recipients) to a minimum. When copying or modifying other people's code, be sure to ask permission first, and comply with any requests they have regarding the use of their code. Simply because something is readable does not give you the right to use or copy it, and use of another person's code against their wishes is both illegal and not allowed on this MOO. Another limited resource of the MOO is player names. Player names and aliases, unlike the names and aliases of other types of objects, are required to be unique. This means that if you have taken a certain name as your name or one of your aliases, nobody else can have a character with that name. For this reason, please keep the number of your aliases, particularly common ones, to a minimum. Users should only have aliases that relate directly to their character's name, and possibly one (reasonable) nickname. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------- Media MOO 5/95 >help manners The MOO, like other MUDs, is a social community; it is populated by real people that you interact with via network connections. Like other communities of human beings, the members of this one have evolved certain guidelines for the behavior of the participants. This article lays out what the wizards believe to be the general consensus concerning these `rules of courteous behavior,' or `manners,' on the MOO. Many of the rules that follow are by no means `obvious' or even related to similar rules in the real world. The MOO is not the real world; it has its own special properties that require new kinds of rules. These rules have been worked out through our experiences with the MOO; they reflect what we've learned about what make the MOO an enjoyable place. >> Be polite. Avoid being rude. << The MOO is worth participating in because it is a pleasant place for people to be. When people are rude or nasty to one another, it stops being so pleasant. >> Turn the other cheek. << If someone is nasty to you, please either ignore it or tell a janitor about it if you must. Please *don't* try to take revenge on the person; this just escalates the level of rudeness and makes the MOO a less pleasant place for everyone involved. >> Respect other players' sensibilities. << The participants on the MOO come from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds. Your ideas about what constitutes offensive speech or descriptions are likely to differ from those of other players. Please keep the text that players can casually run across as free of potentially-offensive material as you can. If you want to build objects or areas that are likely to offend some segment of the community, please give sufficient warning to the casual explorer so that they can choose to avoid those objects or areas. >> Don't spoof. << Spoofing is loosely defined as `causing misleading output to be printed to other players.' For example, it would be spoofing for anyone but Munchkin to print out a message like `Munchkin sticks out his tongue at Potrzebie.' This makes it look like Munchkin is unhappy with Potrzebie even though that may not be the case at all. Please be aware that, while it is easy to write MOO programs that spoof, it is also easy to detect such spoofing and correctly trace it to its source. See `help spoofing' for more details. >> Don't shout. << It is easy to write a MOO command that prints a message to every connected player in the MOO. Please don't. It is generally annoying to receive such messages; such shouting should be reserved for really important uses, like wizards telling everyone that the server is about to be shut down. Non-wizards never have a good enough reason to shout. Use `page' instead. >> Only teleport your own things. << By default, most objects (including other players) allow themselves to be moved freely from place to place within the MOO. This fact makes it easier to build useful objects like exits and magic rings that move things as a part of their normal role in the virtual reality. Unfortunately, it also makes it easy to move other players from place to place without their permission, or to move objects in and out of other players' possession. Please don't do this; it's annoying (at the least) to the poor victim and can only cause bad feelings. EXCEPTION: Room owners should feel free to eject unwanted objects/players from their own rooms or to divert unwanted objects/players trying to enter their rooms. >> Don't teleport silently. << It is easy to write MOO commands that move you instantly from place to place. In writing such programs, please remember to print a message to all players both in the place you're moving from and in the place you're moving to. It is disconcerting and otherwise unpleasant for someone to suddenly say something in a room without there ever having been a notice that that person had arrived. Similarly, it is annoying to discover that you've been talking for some time to a person who has left the room without a sound. >> Don't hog the server. << The server is carefully shared among all of the connected players so that everyone gets a chance to execute their commands. This sharing is, by necessity, somewhat approximate however; while players cannot completely shut out others, they can significantly degrade the server's overall performance. The most annoying way to do this is to run MOO programs that loop forever (or for a long time) using `fork (0)' or `suspend(0)' occasionally to keep from running out of ticks. If you are writing a program that will run for a long time, please make it wait at least five seconds between iterations. That is, if your task will run continuously, use `fork (n)' or `suspend(n)' where `n' is at least five. >> Don't waste object numbers. << Some people, in a quest to own objects with what they consider `interesting' object numbers (e.g., #17000, #18000, etc.) have written MOO programs that simply loop, creating and recycling objects until the `good' numbers come up. Please don't do this; it artificially inflates all object numbers and increases the disk space used by the server unnecessarily. >> Don't Crack << It should go without saying: attempting to break into the system to obtain more quota, power, other player's site information, etc. is *very* rude. See 'help cracking' for more on this topic. ============================== The wizards are always interested in hearing players' feedback on these rules of behavior. The rules were developed by the consensus of players and can be expected to evolve that way, too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------