Ghost Admins

[Courageous]

I've had this idea in my head for a while, which is sufficiently far down my priority stack that I know I wont get time to implement it. It works like this:

Similar to Slashdot Moderation, players are randomly offered the ability at signon to become a "Ghost Admin". If they elect to become a Ghost Admin, they are randomly assigned to an online Staff member. They both automatically follow this Staff, and are entirely invisible. They can also see every single command and game action made by the Admin.

This should serve to keep all staff members honest, as its a well-understood phenomonon of human sociology that people who think other people even MIGHT be watching tend to be greatly more honest.

C//

[Peoharen]

I favor staff of a higher level reading logs of a lower staffmen.

What I do ingame is of no concern to a player.

But allowing a gm to pull a couns log, or seer to pull a gms etc., sounds good.

I think I already made the script for it too. I say "think" becuse I am too lazy to test it...

[Courageous]

Well. Such a system, properly configured, sees to the needs of the shard's owner, not necessarily his admins. It could very well be that devs and owner are excluded, or (more obviously) certain commands are excluded regardless, such as password setting.

C//

[David]

I think it is an interesting idea...

[daat99]

Originally Posted by David

I think it is an interesting idea...

It is interesting but I wouldn't want to see that implemented in the distro nyself.
In my opinion having a "lower ranked" person spy on "higher ranked" person is a bad idea.
If you don't trust your staff than you shouldn't hire them.

However I could see a good point in making a "watcher" access level.
A watcher is a person that can only [goto other staff locations, is always hidden and see all the staff online (even hidden) including every command they do or what they say.
He won't have the ability to modify anything or tweak any game-related stuff (spawns, items, etc...).
The small difference between what I suggest and the original idea is that with the original idea everybody can be a "ghost", with my idea the admin specify which players have a "watcher" access level and they'll always be watchers.

P.S.
Anyone who is lower than admin shouldn't be able to see/know who the watchers are or if they're online or not (they won't add "online users" count).

That's just my point of view on the subject

[Courageous]

Sure. The difference between assigned watchers, and randomly picked ones is pretty slim, though. We were talking about this on the chat channel a bit. The real idea here doesn't depend on their being any watchers at all. Rather, it depends on the notion that staff think there might be watchers, one of them could even be randomly assigned to them right now. Ooooo-eeeeeh-ooooh. Spooky.

I rather prefer the random assignment to a single staff member notion myself. Audit "this particular staff" for a while, or buzz off. Whether or not it were a permanent watcher is a different issue.

Random selection would be rare. How rare? Well, as admin, you just wouldn't say. I got the idea years ago, thinking about a well-known sociology experiment that proved that people who believe they might be being watched behave more ethically than those who do not so believe.

As for your idea for permanent watchers, I suspect you wouldn't get many to sign up. The random selection technique has the appeal of it always being a novelty to every new shard member. Presumably, shards have a slow churn of new players.

This approach would really only likely work for a larger shard.

Anyway, quibbling aside, this just goes to show that such a system ought to be configurable in a variety of different ways.

C//

[Anti-Basic]

Interesting Idea, but not on the Distro. Or have the ability ot turn it off. Too many people wouldn't want it.

Easiest staffing solution: Only hire people who live nearby. Then, they screw up, you can kick their A$$

[Asmir3]

Hell yea but there may not be lot of staff that are nearby that you could hire.

Originally Posted by Anti-Basic

Easiest staffing solution: Only hire people who live nearby. Then, they screw up, you can kick their A$$