'Report this character/player' button

[kabl00ey]

Purpose: To make reporting of suicidal newspawns or disruptive players easier.

Implementation: A button on the character's page, marked 'Report this character/player' or something similar. When clicked, it has a blurb about not misusing it or you'll be the one investigated, and a text box/radio buttons to explain why you're doing this. A report is instantly generated and submitted to the Players Dept.

What say you, Cantrians?

[Sho]

Seems fair. The problem I see is that even though this won't actually make it any easier to make false or frivolous reports, it would probably lead to an increase, just because players who get mad at other characters will be more tempted to report them when this button is right on their People screen.
Also, just in terms of design I don't think I like the idea of this one OOC control being in the Cantr interface with all the in-game controls. I'd prefer some way of making CR reports a part of Cantr, but not part of the in-game controls.
For example, we could have a button next to the new character, unsubscribe and logout buttons. When clicked, it lets you send a message to the PD. Nowhere near as convenient, and loses most of the efficiency that the original suggestion is meant to create, but still ties a report to a player, which is an advantage over the current system.

[Nick]

This will be abused if implemented.

[Sho]

I don't see a serious potential for abuse. You can't do anything with this that you can't do by e-mailing PD with the usual details, and it makes it easier for PD to confirm that a breach actually took place or to determine that the breach report was false and the person who reported it should be warned, and makes it impossible for someone to make a false report anonymously or under someone else's name. The worst that could happen is that the number of false reports goes up, which hopefully PD will be able to handle.

[Racetyme]

The number of false reports will skyrocket, just because everyone will want to get a little revenge, if they can't do it in character, why not OOC? That is what I see happening, and frankly this is another one of those suggestions that requires more members for the PD.

[Nick]

The number of false reports will skyrocket, just because everyone will want to get a little revenge, if they can't do it in character, why not OOC?

Exactly. And not just one report, mass reports.
You'll have newspawns who take all the resources, notes, punch everyone, and then report everyone.

[Just A Bill]

If this is implemented, the system should also keep track of how many reports have been submitted by this player, possibly computing a reports/unit time calculation. This data should be included automatically with the report to PD. PD will then be able to weight the reports accordingly.

[melbi]

Don't like this idea: I think the remedy would be worse than the problem.

Think about newbies, for example, who push every button just to see what happens: they knock on every door, go into every unlocked building, point at people, hit people, all just to see what happens. They will end up reporting every player because they don't know what it means.

[Shaderon]

I'm not so sure, if the button took you to a page where it was explained what you were actually doing and the penalties for incorrect reporting, with a little checkbox to tick to say you understood or something like that, then Newbies would understand what they were doing, and, if they repeatedly report people incorrectly just take the button away from them and send them a standard email saying they must report via the forums from then on (all can be done with one little script that can be run by the PD members) or deal with them in the usual manner.

I think this is a good idea, not for the payers convenience, but so the PD can see who reported the CR breach and trace it to an actual character and time as well.

I've seen this in a few other games and it works well apart from the few idiots who abuse it and subsequently get kicked off the game or have rights taken away. If you make the penalties obvious then n00bs are less likely to abuse it for fear of loosing privaleges.

[tiddy ogg]

Newspawns die without need of reporting. As for malice/disruption, this is up to the characters to deal with, or, if they are religious, their god.

[Black Canyon]

I think this is entirely unnecessary and a bad idea.

I believe that the assumption is made that players do follow the rules and the incident that needs reporting is the rare exception. It is true that very minor mistakes are made all of the time in game... but because they are minor these mistakes are ignored or played off or around. The existence of this button would make these minor offenses much more likely to be reported, and the PD would then have to sift through tons of inconsequential reports to find the truly relevant ones.

[SekoETC]

I'm for this suggestion. Well maybe not a button for every character but at least a form inside the logged-in area.

Why?

- If every message to the PD would need to be sent inside the game, there would be no need for public adresses and spamming them would become impossible:

- We could make the form so that it can't contain html or pictures, that cuts of graphical commercials.

- The number of messages a player can send per day would be limited to one or max two.

- The sender would be totally trackable and identifiable, which is not the game with anonymous email addresses.

- Since new accounts are approved manually, one could not create a big load of accounts to spam. And even if they tried, it would take so long that the average spammer would get bored and quit.

[Chris Johnson]

PD not only deal with CRB issues but also with issues such as lost passwords and account approval issues - These latter situations couldn't be addressed by a logged in reporting system

[SekoETC]

Ok, could those have a form on the main page? With a box to enter email address in.

[Shaderon]

Nice idea Seko.... I am totally for this, the anonymous email address thing is just too easy to forge.

It probably would be possible to sort out the forgerys but having the real reports attributed to an IP address which is easily traceable and stamped on the report instead of going through the high level headers would be an asset IMO.