AthasMUD

I agree with your second statement.

I highly disagree with the first (bolded) statement.

There is rarely any successful interpersonal mediation in a online MUSH or MUD environment. I'm not talking about professionalism from staff - that is extremely simple to get right, and many millions of people have managed to present professional facades in unpaid volunteer positions, on and off the internet, all over the world. That's not what I'm talking about. The only reason Armageddon staff keeps whiffing on professional standards, is that Nyr, Adhira and Nessalin were/are all failures as human beings.

What I'm specifically addressing is that it is a HUGE waste of resources to try and meditate between two players having difficulties with each other. It's not possible, and it is a HUGE waste of time. I've seen it first hand. (I staffed on a couple WoD mushes with ~150 people playing prime time each night). This is also true when it comes to mediating in many situations in RL. You're not helping anyone. That's the biggest mistake people make with friends and family. The insane, idiot assumption that others actually want your input. They just want someone to bitch to about someone else, that they never want repeated and don't care as much about as you might think.

There's only a very few, highly specific incidences in RL where mediation is a successful and viable tactic. That is when the mediator has authority (financial, legal or otherwise) to enforce a final verdict. A manager at your job can successfully mediate between two employees. A specially appointed arbitrator by the court can. Both sides need an incentive to cooperate. When legal/financial stuff is at stake, they often find the motivation. There isn't enough 'authority' or 'stakes' in an online game to curb this behavior from immature people.

In an online forum, two people who would ordinarily be mature enough to let mediation settle their differences, would not be the problem children to begin with, who are the kind to sap and demand staff's attention. Most reasonable people only go to staff when they encounter what they believe to be actual cheating.

Instead, in 99.99% of all cases, either one side is a jerkass or a drama whore, or both are. There could not be a bigger waste of time than trying to play referee for those types.

The best you can do is enforce a strict IC Actions = IC Consequences policy, attempt to dissuade OOC cliques as best you can (the best thing you can do is set an example since staffers and their friends are always the worst offenders), and let them settle their differences in game.

And yeah. To go to ibu's point that I agreed with. Try not to make it so that you're more concerned with NPCs and NPC secrets, than you are with PCs and their opportunities.

The drama was often worse on WoD mushes, because of the highly prolonged, rules lawyer nature of combats (hours to resolve a duel), the extreme competitiveness and often PK happy atmosphere, and the complete lack of in-game OOC barriers (unlike Armageddon where there's no channels, or OOC 'tell' commands, except staff side). I would often deal with them by simply restricting people to IC interaction only, and the first person to make it OOC, was automatically in the wrong, regardless of circumstances. WoD mushes were also afflicted with the same phenomena of staffers being more concerned with their ultra-kewl NPCs and end of the world metaplots, than actually creating interesting and sustainable conflict. Those games have always had boards like this one, to air dirty laundry, as well. (WORA, back in the day).