 THE FEDIQUETTE OF SPYBEAMS
Spybeams are wonderful things that
can give you hours of entertainment. But they are
powerful tools, and as such can be misused. It's possible
to wreak havoc, annoy other players, and make lives
miserable using a spybeam.
If you are determined to be
unpleasant then there's not a lot I can say that will
convince you to behave otherwise. But often, people just
don't realise the effect their behavior has. The havoc is
created by accident - through thoughtlessness, not
malice.
This article about the etiquette of
spybeams talks about some of the ways you can avoid
annoying others with your spybeam.
Using Your Beam
There's nothing wrong with using
your spybeam to watch others - that is, after all, what
it's for. The problems are related to what you do with
the information you spy.
Remember that spybeams have an
"off" switch. If you don't like what you see,
turn off your beam. If you see someone being rude about
you, that's just too bad - eavesdroppers seldom see
anything good. Even if you see someone breaking the
rules, swearing the most terrible curses, you can't do
anything except avert your eyes by typing SPY OFF
- things seen over the spybeam do not count.
Repeating what you see on the
spybeam to your friends, or broadcasting it on the comms,
can be very amusing. It can also be very cruel. Before
you do it, think about whether the person whose words or
actions you are repeating really deserves to be held up
to ridicule.
It you take a log of something you
see on the spybeam, it's not necessarily a good idea to
circulate the log. Of course, sometimes people do things
in Fed knowing full well they are being spied - they put
on a show, intending to entertain the watchers. In that
case, sending the log to someone who may have missed it
simply increases their audience. But sending out logs
which show somebody doing something dumb, or which show
him or her in a bad light, is unpleasant.
If you are spying a conversation,
don't start TBing one of the participants with your
comments. If you were meant to be part of the
conversation, you would have been invited. No matter how
witty a comment you have to make; no matter that you want
to correct a mistake in something that has been said;
butting in is rude.
In short, before you do something
with the information you have spied, think about how you
would like it if someone did it to you.
Being Spied
Oh yes, there's an etiquette to
being spied, too!
Remember that there is no privacy
in Fed. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, someone
may be spying on you - or if not on you, on someone else
in the room with you. Remember that, and live with it.
Therefore, Fed is not the place for
secret conversations. If you really, really want
something to stay private, use IMs or something.
However, knowing that you are
probably being spied upon, do not take advantage of that
fact to "leak" information that other people
have given you in confidence.
And don't say insulting things to
deliberately annoy the people you know are watching.
That's just childish.
Conclusion
Try to be sensitive about what you
do when using a spybeam, or being spied. Think about
other people's feelings. Show some courtesy. In short, do
as you would be done by!
THE FEDIQUETTE OF ALTS
Before AOL Fed, it was pretty much
unknown for people to have alts in Fed. Your Fed
character was tied to your account on whatever system Fed
was running on (Compunet, GEnie, etc) so the only way to
have more than one Fed character was to set up another
account - and that was expensive.
Alts did not become an issue until
Fed arrived on AOL. Suddenly, having five screen names on
your account meant it was possible to have five different
characters in Fed - and people started to take advantage
of that capability to set up alternate characters, or
alts. Of course, you could still only log one character
into the game at a time - unless, once again, you had a
second account.
And then Fed moved to the web, and
it was possible to set up as many characters as you
liked, and have them all logged on at once. This was the
beginning of an alt population explosion.
This article talks about some of
the etiquette issues brought up by the use of alts.
Who's Who?
Before I talk about the etiquette
of actually using alts, there's a number of issues to do
with the way other players react to alts.
Some people get quite obsessed
about alts. They spend their time trying to work out who
is an alt of whom, and often accuse people of being alts
when they are not. Don't get carried away trying to
identify the "real person" behind every Fed
character - what does it matter? Endlessly poking and
prying at a new player to find out who they are, or
accusing them of being an alt of someone, will annoy
them. If they are a genuine new player, they are not
going to get a very good impression of Fed!
If you do know the identity of a
player's alt, don't blab it. If the alt belongs to a
friend of yours, don't assume that because you know who
it is, everybody does. Your friend may have told you
about her secret identity in confidence, expecting you to
keep it secret.
If you find out an alt's identity
by accident, don't go running to Channel 9 and broadcast
your announcement to all and sundry. There might be good
reasons why the player behind the characters doesn't want
her identity to be known.
Being an Alt
There's lots of reasons to want
more than one Fed character. You might simply want to put
more than one planet on show - I have three alts whose
sole purpose is to act as POs for my planets, Deep,
Scratchwood and Cabbage.
Maybe you like the idea of
role-playing a different kind of character from your main
Fed character. In that case, you may well want to keep
your identity secret.
But it is actually quite hard to
behave in a sufficiently different manner that people
cannot figure out who you are. Everyone has styles and
mannerisms that, even when all you display are words
typed onto the screen, can identify you to people who
know the "other" you. So be prepared for people
figuring out who you are.
I have said there are a number of
reasons for people to want to set up an alt (or two, or
three...). Some of those reasons are not so innocent as
simply wanting to role-play. Sometimes, alts can be used
as part of feuds and disputes. It is not unknown for
someone to set up an alt, pretend to be a new player, and
hook up with one of the duchies on the opposing side of
the feud, in order to fool the enemy into giving away
secrets. Lying to someone about your identity in order to
cause them harm is not just bad manners; it is extremely
unpleasant.
Using Alts to Break Restrictions
Using an alt to get around a
restriction which has been placed upon you will get you
into trouble. Although under normal circumstances duchy
bans only apply to individual characters and have to be
issued separately to each alt, if you set up alts with
the sole purpose of flouting a ban, then I will make an
exception and extend the duchy ban to cover any character
you use.
Similarly, if you have been told
not to talk to someone because they complain you have
harassed them, using an alt to get around that injunction
will get you into trouble.
And setting up an alt so you can
break the rules is not only going to get the alt locked
out of Fed, it may get your main character locked, too.
Players may have to guess who is an
alt of whom, but management have more reliable methods -
and we will find out who you are!
Conclusion
Alts are a part of Fed DataSpace
now and they won't go away. There's nothing wrong with
them, either. Just don't get too obsessed with them, and
don't use them to break the rules.
Footnote
While I was collecting comments
about what issues of etiquette should be covered in this
article, I received an email raising a matter which is
more about sanity than about etiquette. The names have
been changed, to protect the weird:
One other thing I found is that
alts should avoid carry on conversations with each
other; it can lead to people thinking you are very
very very strange.
Your comm unit relays a message
from Joe, "Not that this was from personal
experiences"
Your comm unit relays a message from Altofjoe,
"Yes, it was"
Your comm unit relays a message from Joe, "No it
wasn't"
Your comm unit relays a message from Altofjoe,
"Yes it was"
Your comm unit relays a message from Joe, "Just
remember I created you and I can DD you"
Yes indeed. Very, very strange!
A NEW WAY TO SETTLE DISPUTES
I had a dream...
Taking the new event Duchy Family
Feud and mixing it up with one of the fierce fighting
events, I dreamt of a new method for settling those
annoying disputes between players - head to head with TLs
blazing! This could be a great alternative to duchy bans,
and a new way to respond to complaints of harassment.
For minor disputes, the shoot-out
could be to first blood (or first death), with the loser
having to do without his or her comm unit for a week.
But for those really serious feuds,
the ones where opposing players seem to think "this
universe ain't big enough for the both of us", the
contest would have to be to the death-death. This would
give enemies the chance to purge the Galaxy of the
presence of their nemeses!
Well, it sounds like a good idea to
me - it would certainly cut down on my workload...!
I can dream, can't I?
PHONE NUMBERS IN FED
Just as we don't allow you to post
URLs on the bar board, so we also don't allow you to give
out phone numbers by posting them on the bar board, or
broadcasting them on the comms - even if it's your own
phone number. If you really want someone else to have
your phone number, send it to them by TB or outside Fed
in an IM or email; don't publish it so anyone can see it.
FROM THE POSTBAG: PAINTING YOUR
SPACESHIP
Once more, a puzzled Fedders turns
to the ultimate source of knowledge in Fed for an answer.
But when Bella just shrugs vaguely, they are forced to
direct their question to a less authoritative, but at
least more responsive, organisation: the Federation
Chronicle and its dedicated team of newsdroids.
The question we have received this
week touches on an activity that far too few people in
Fed actually pursue: painting their ships. Take a look at
any landing pad and marvel at the ranks of manky grey
ships. It seems most people can't be bothered to design
the decor of their vessels, but are content to leave it
in the state in which it came off the production line.
But someone cares about painting
ships, and that someone asks us this question:
How is it you can paint your
ship from the inside, and in space?
Well, clearly, this questioner has
never heard of automation. Nor robot technology. Does he
really think people pick up a paintbrush and clamber all
over the outside of their hull, physically drawing their
chosen design on the ship themselves, by hand (or
equivalent appendage)?
No, not at all. Like many functions
in Fed (such as this very article which you are reading),
robots are involved. Truly, if you want to get anything
done, call for a droid; they are faster, better and more
efficient. Not to mention cheaper. And they don't require
endless cups of tea.
Droids in Fed DataSpace tend to
specialise: waitdroids serve you drinks and pizzas,
newsdroids write for the Chronicle, and Diesel's
sexdroids... well, let's not go there. So ship painting
is done by paintdroids. These are small creatures, with
many articulated limbs. Some of the limbs act as legs,
allowing the droid to clamber all over the outside of a
ship. Some have rocket attachments, which can be fired to
help the droid propel itself around when in space. Some
have magnetic ends, so the droid can anchor itself even
when the ship is being manoeuvred. But four of the limbs
are to actually do the business - they are tipped with
paint-sprayers, which take paint from four reservoirs
inside the droid. The four ink colors (black, yellow,
cyan and magenta) can be combined to produce any color;
therefore any design can be inscribed onto the hull.
But that's not all. Painting a ship
doesn't just involve paint; sometimes different textures,
even sculptures, are required in order to realise the
weird and wonderful designs that can result from the,
frankly, somewhat warped brain of your average Fedder. So
as well as the paintdroids, there are more specialised
droids that can produce, from their portable warehouses,
whatever substance is required, in whatever shape it is
required, and glue it onto your hull.
So when you decide to paint your
spaceship, you don't actually do the painting yourself.
You don't have to lift a finger (or equivalent) - it's
all done by us machines. Where would the universe be
without us?
REAL LIFE NEWS: CONFUSING SIX
WITH INFINITY
You have probably heard the claim
that an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite
number of typewriters could, given enough time, type out
the complete works of Shakespeare. It is meant to
illustrate that all things are possible, eventually. It's
been adapted with great comic effect by many people,
including Douglas Adams for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy.
Now some students and lecturers
from the University of Plymouth, in south-west England,
claim they have proved it won't ever happen. In a bizarre
experiment they put a single computer in a monkey
enclosure at the local zoo, and let the six monkeys use
it for a month. Result: no Shakespeare, no recognisable
words of any kind, just five pages of text which
consisted mainly of the letter "S", and a
broken computer with excrement all over it.
This, the experimenters say, is
proof that the "infinite monkeys" theory is
flawed.
I beg to differ - it's proof that
these students and lecturers don't understand what
"infinite" means!
REAL LIFE NEWS: BABY'S CRIES
UPSET AIRCRAFT LANDING
In another story about technology
having an unintended effect, pilots flying into Luton
airport, to the north of London, England, reported
hearing a baby crying over their radios instead of
instructions from air traffic controllers.
It turned out a baby monitor in a
house on the approach path was being picked up by the
planes' radios. The owner of the overly-loud baby monitor
was shocked when a gang of engineers armed with an aerial
and a receiver knocked on her door and said the
interference had been traced to that house.
The company that made the baby
monitor provided her with a new one, which presumably
transmitted on a different frequency. But the device must
have had some power to cause this problem!
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