Proposed Rule change - Pasting Event List Logs

[Cogliostro]

In many towns where there are draconian rules about picking up stuff from the ground, people routinely go and paste into everyone's event list something like:

"2558-3.27: Project Digging for salt has been finished (1416 grams, ending up on the ground)"

Then this is considered "Proper Proof" by the town leaders that it was OK for that person to pick up the salt from the ground. Terrible, guys! Just terrible! (I have done it, and I'm ashamed of myself).

This "pasting of stuff from the eventlist as proof of what happened" should REALLY be outlawed in the rules as a mild form of CRB!!!!



So, we think, it would be really good to update the main rule page to reflect this:

- No pasting of event logs into "talk to all", for any reason. If anyone pastes, players should know to completely ignore these just as they do other forms of CRB-ing.

- All players should know that pasting logs into notes is not ever acceptable as "proof of what really happened", and such logs must be ignored. Instead, edited transcripts "made by the character" should be used, and in all cases these have to be taken at face value - as something written by the character and not immutable proofs of anything.

- Quickly copy-pasting raw event logs into private notes for the character's own use would remain okay. Preferably to be deleted by the player afterwards when no longer needed.

A few players have voted so far in "General Discussion" to add this to the rules:

- Arenti
- Cogliostro
- Caesar
- Miri
- Tangential
- Seko
- Dudel
- Genevieve
- joo

Others are welcome to post a vote here too if they support the change.

[Dudel]

*re-validates vote*

[Spider]

This is a bit crazy.

People may be pasting that and then picking it up, but town leaders and characters in game should decide if someone saying something is proof enough. People tend to lie and try to get away with it, its your own fault if you just accept them saying that as proof.

It can be annoying but "outlawed" and making it a CRB is way too extreme.

I personally believe copy and pasting is a natural part of the cantr life, I haven't done it in a long time because I don't really care, but back in the early I accepted tons of notes such as attacks on towns to share the events "as they saw it". I never accepted them as proof positive because I always knew I could change a note to whatever I wanted it to say (it was funny how people would get annoyed at me not believing their "proof") but if you take someone at their word, then whatever, if you don't, then start questioning instead of trying to get it banned.

I always remember cantr as not being real life...like, in cantr, resources are endless, you attack a person once a day, hold perfect time, can see anyone in the center of town doing anything, even if they are "hiding" it and...can write notes like a robot, tis the cantr way I say.

[Armulus Satchula]

I tend to agree with you spider, but it is pretty damned annoying that everyone has photographic memory. It'd be nice to see more people write their own cliff notes version of what happened, maybe even with some errors in it.

[Dudel]

Not to mention that if you, as the player, decide against copy-pasting then your character could/is deemed the person in wrong as the other has "proof" and yours does not. LAME!

Not to mention if your character is either dumb or stupid then copy-pasting is even WORSE in the "bad form" category.

Although, actually changing the rule, now that I think about it, is slightly silly. I'd like to see this behavior of copy-past STOP but changing the rule could be a bit much.

[snm2001]

I like the idea of writing ones own account.. cut and paste is a bit Lazy (guilty of such a thing once and looking back.. I'm an ass)

[IHaveNoLegs]

Could stretching the definition of a CRB to suit your personal RPing tastes be a CRB? Think about it.

[Elros]

I disagree with making this outlawed and considering it a CRB. I tend to agree that it is weird to post logs in conversation, but that is part of the game. I could list 20 other in game features that would seem weird or out of place if you really think about them, but they are common and no one cares. If you don't like this, then that is your personal opinion, but I do not feel it should be banned or considered a CRB and players punished for doing it. If you banned event logs from talk to all, then you would technicallyh have to ban it from notes as well which would suck for people that like to keep a diary or record of events.

[Cogliostro]

The problem is that a lot of people treat the ability to copy and paste text from the event list as a super-magical ability their chars have to prove "what really happened." Here's the log, they say, and pass over a note, or even paste the events for all to see as speech.

Most people, not being aware of the problems with this, in absence of any rule that would say that this is bad, will just go along. They just take the note, read it, and go "oh, ok. he gave me the log. Look at all those numbers, he wouldn't have taken all the trouble to fake that. I guess it's the truth then."

That's completely ridiculous and ruinous for the game, in which lots of things may happen that have to stay unprovable, otherwise all realism and a good chunk of possibility in creating different situations is lost.

Meanwhile there's even more problems:

1. The logs can easily be faked.
2. Where are they even coming from?

But as Dudel pointed out, what happens is that when players that value RPing a realistic world refuse to resort to super-magical abilities, they can easily lose their character's legal fight or argument, just because of that. It's really not fair. We need the rules changed so people know about the issue and how to deal with it: ignore any logs people post/hand over in notes, and treat it as something from outside the game that shouldn't be there.

I wasn't saying we should ban people from the game if they do this, but just to update the rules to say that this is a practice that's strongly discouraged because it's both unfair and breaks the game for everyone no matter what their RP style. Really if you think about it, there's no point to doing that pasting thing, ever. If your character needs to write down some events for someone, then they should write them down, not magically pull from some infallible "log".

But as for keeping private logs in notes (which only your char ever sees), hey, no one is against that at all! I agree that if it's in your own char's diaries or notes, you should be able to paste whatever you want there to help you play that character. Convenience is very important. But we have to forget convenience when you're talking about interacting with other characters and the world, it's more important to play properly, without breaking character.

[SekoETC]

The tags like "You say", "a man in his twenties says" are parts of the interface and thus the characters shouldn't see it, only the player. It's not necessarily a CRB but it's ugly and clumsy, just like talking about project ticks. Saying something like "Excuse me, I need to go turn the roast so that it won't burn, I'll be right back" sounds much better than "I really have to go since the project tick is in like 1 minute". One could argue that writing stuff like "(Timestamp) X says:" wouldn't be very bad because they said it, but sometimes it could be an emote instead of something verbal. They didn't SAY *smiles*, they smiled.

[*Wiro]

Yeah, there can be tons of replacements for ticks.

"Oh, let me check on the apple pie for a moment, I have to make sure the temperature's just right!"

"Ah, I can feel the wind coming from the north-west, it's about now we should loosen the sails!"

And for road travelling, hmm... dunno.

[Doug R.]

Making this a rule is pointless. I personally don't care, and can't wait for the day my characters can exploit it to lie through their teeth about something that happened. If you want copy/pasting events to stop being trusted currency, start lying! Exploit the behavior that annoys you, and it will eventually turn out of favor.

[Genevieve]

Whether we like it or not, can you imagine the magnitude of actually trying to enforce this as a CRB? It is already tough enough to enforce the current rules with a volunteer staff. Poor PD, you're really trying to make this tough -- unless you are also volunteering?

[joo]

I wouldn't make it a punishable, but definitely a strong guideline -- after all, it isn't as bad as pure CRBing, however could be equated with other forms of bad RP.

New players might pick up that it's acceptable from seeing others do it, before they've been playing for long enough to realise how bad it is.

[Genevieve]

Oh and I did not vote to add it to the rules...I think it would be too hard to enforce.