There should be a way for a large number of players, 50-100 or so, to label someone as a griefer via a pettition system. Someone thus labeled would be looked into by the admins, who would take action based on the complaints recieved, perferably something RP and related to what they have done to incite the ire of so many people. Most of the complaints in Lusternia are about one or two people - annabelle, narsrim, etc... Something like this for the extreme cases might help in that regard.

Just an idea.

Consider that Lusternia is business. People buy credits and thus are customers. That would be illegal.

Likewise, Lusternia and IRE games are not popularity contests. And if someone could rally 50 people who say they hate X, what if X could get 50 people who say they love X? It really is a poor mechanism.

I don't see how this is illegal, Narsrim. It is the legal right of any business in the US to refuse service to any person or group of persons for any reason at all. I could legitmately refuse you service because I didn't like the color of your hair if I am a business owner and the best you could probably do would be whine about it, leave and then try to slap a lawsuit on me for it. There are only a handful of federal reasons a business cannot descriminate against someone and any business can easily avoid those reasons by a carefully worded "You make people unhappy and we're refusing service of our 'business' to you" statement.

If 90% of the playerbase think X is a griefer, I don't see why the players can't ask the admins to step in and do something about it. It doesn't have to be permanent, it doesn't have to completely screw their ability to play the game, just their ability to do whatever that 90% of the playerbase thinks is griefing. Like, banning Annabelle from making alts, or you from entering Glomdoring.

If something is causing that many people so much misery, why is it allowed?

Yes, you may have bought credits, but what about all the people who are miserable because of what you have been doing? Do they just not count?

In the 1960's, California's Unruh Civil Rights Act was interpreted to provide broad protection from arbitrary discrimination by business owners. Cases decided during that era held that business owners could not discriminate, for example, against hippies, police officers, homosexuals or Republicans, solely because of who they were.

On the other hand, a California court decided that a restaurant owner could not refuse to seat a gay couple in a semi-private booth where its policy was to only seat two people of the opposite sex in such booths. There was no legitimate business reason for the refusal of service, and so the discrimination was arbitrary and unlawful.

It would be a very grey area.

It seems fair, if you can get 50 people in this game who think your a griefer or otherwise a bad influence on the game as a whole then you probably do warrant an investigation into your character. He isn’t saying you get 50 people to say I think mr x is a bad influence on the game and they get banned, he is saying you get 50 people who think mr x is a bad influence and then mr x gets looked at by the admin and if they think he really is going overboard then they take action as they see fit with the full knowledge that in this issue they are fully supported my quit a large number of players.

I'm not suggesting refusal of service or banning of players in any way, just fitting punishments that only serve to stop what is considered as 'griefing' by the majority of the active playerbase, and not even permanently. If you couldn't enter prime Glomdoring for an RL month, is that really such a heinous punishment?

As long as this system in itself is not used as a method to grief people, (which I see possibly happening) then it should be ok.

That's the problem. The assumption you are working on is that say 50 people equates to 90% of the playerbase. Likewise, you have to consider that while some players may get upset that I raid, I have never violated any policy by IRE or Lusternia. I haven't sexually harassed anyone, I haven't abused in game bugs to generate massive amounts of gold and botch the credit market (and note even those people were not permanently shrubbed), etc.

This would be a case of saying: Narsrim, you raid too much. For it to be legit, there would have be some method to prove this other that personal opinion. For example, if you compared the total raids of Daevos to Narsrim, how much more has Narsrim raided than Daevos? And how many more times much Daevos raid to be have raided as many times and thus be "on the same grounds."

I'd perfer the heuristic "How many players have quit permanently because of Narsrim over Daevos"

I think that the only way that this should be allowed is if the complaints don't all come from one org.

Narsrim just fears the system being used against him right off the bat.

If the number was 100 player complaints, or a percentage based off the size of the playerbase that currently equated to 100 players, I don't think it would be possible for all of them to come from one org. Of course, this is players, not characters - making alts wouldn't work for this.

I think A lot of people would fear this system being used against them. But as long as it's more like a behavioral review as opposed to " Hey Narsrim, 50 Gloms decided they don't like you, so you're banned", then I don't have too much of a problem with it

I see this as being fair to the business and to the players.

From the business point of view: Griefer 1 buys credits. Players and potential credit buyers A-Z think about leaving game because of Griefer 1. Get rid of Griefer 1 and keeper A-Z and in the end make more money and have happy customers.

From the player's point of view: A more enjoyable game.

My point being that it is nothing but idle speculation. Likewise, there are several psychological mechanisms not being considered.

If X raids constantly, X may be given the title of griefer

If X, Y, Z raid constantly (sometimes as a group, sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone), it is far more difficult to say X or Y or Z is a griefer, but rather there is the association of them as a group and as a result, individualism is lost.

Consider in the first example, X is Narsrim (which is usually the case, I raid by myself a lot).

Consider in the second example, X is Murphy, Y is Kaervas, and Z is Daevos. When it comes to Celestia, they have raided as many times as I have. However, they also get to hide as a "group" - Magnagora. Thus, it isn't that Murphy is griefing Celest. Magnagora is just raiding again and given its roleplay foundation, it has the justification to do so.





Interesting enough, I've already had my "review," and I'm good to go.

Like hell it would be. You said arbitrary. If I shop at Wal-Mart several times a month, pump in hundreds of dollars, and yet over time, start to do things like playing cops and robbers, mixing up items, or jousting on bikes, it's well within their right to throw you out for being an ass. Don't give me any of this "you can't discriminate against me because there's non-descrimination against gays/whatever precedent", when the issue isn't even about that. If you're going to compare discrimination against someone who's being a jerk, versus descrimination against someone for their race and or sexuality, then we need to get out a funnoodle and beat you with it.

Death by funnoodle. Classic

If you took this to court, you'd lose.

Wal-Mart is a store. A general and standard practice in a store is to purchase items. If you act outside this standard practice and say mixing up items, you could be removed. However, if you take the standard practice the extreme, Wal-Mart cannot remove you. For example, if you went to Wal-Mart 10 times a day and bought something, you may be "griefing" the cashiers, but you are not acting outside a standard practice.

Likewise, if I abuse a bug in Lusternia, I am violating policy on bug abuse, acting outside a standard practice, and thus am subject to punishment (shrubbing, etc). However, if I excessively roleplay or excessively raid, I am not acting outside a standard practice (and truly, you cannot argue that I am because the more you raid, the more you gain, and the more you are rewarded. For example, undead dwarven miners or angels on Celestia).

See the difference?

If the issue in this case is raiding, for example, there should be an objective mechanism to deter raiding. For example, if you raid X times, the former benefit to raiding is gone.

There is already a system to inspect for griefers, namely the issue system. EVERY issue you send will be checked by the administration for merit.

Or if you meaned that if X people said griefer that the person would be blocked regardless of admin judgement then you are creating a system that is wide open to abuse. To illustrate a Celestian decides they want to rid of Kaervas because he is to powerfull. He first gets some newbies to sign up in a campaign to make Kaervas look evil. Then he sees oh ok I need 10 more, I'll just give 50 credits to each 'veteran' that votes for it. Is this really the system you want? Issue works fine as it is now, so one or two people don't get blocked, perhaps IRE has good reasons for not blocking them.