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Torture Reports

Started by Eirikr, September 10, 2013, 12:52:19 AM

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Eirikr

So, I keep forgetting to ask about this: Torturing gives you a random assortment of letters a captured character has received. For the most part, that makes sense... but why does torture net you OOC messages, too? It seems to me that those should be excluded... Was it just difficult to code?

Forgive me if this has been a topic before.

Anaris

Because if they didn't, people would just put stuff they wanted to protect from torture into OOC messages.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Eirikr

Quote from: Anaris on September 10, 2013, 01:02:52 AM
Because if they didn't, people would just put stuff they wanted to protect from torture into OOC messages.

Ah, okay. That makes sense. Since torture also nets you a range of letters, it doesn't really have an impact on "success", either, right?

Chenier

Quote from: Anaris on September 10, 2013, 01:02:52 AM
Because if they didn't, people would just put stuff they wanted to protect from torture into OOC messages.

Which would obviously be an abuse of game mechanics and thus justify sanctions... Not a valid reason, imo.
Dit donc camarade soleil / Ne trouves-tu ça pas plutôt con / De donner une journée pareil / À un patron

Anaris

Quote from: Chénier on October 20, 2013, 11:36:47 PM
Which would obviously be an abuse of game mechanics and thus justify sanctions... Not a valid reason, imo.

Please don't necro month-plus-old threads just to bitch about game mechanics that go back nearly a decade.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Penchant

Quote from: Chénier on October 20, 2013, 11:36:47 PM
Which would obviously be an abuse of game mechanics and thus justify sanctions... Not a valid reason, imo.
So you are trying to say a much better idea would be for volunteers to constantly read through ever single OOC message to make sure no one is abusing it? I think not.
"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
― G.K. Chesterton

egamma

OOC message should only contain information like "heading out of town for the weekend" and "you can refuse to become marshal via the politics tab". There should be no reason why you would care that someone else received that information via torture report.

Eirikr

Quote from: egamma on October 21, 2013, 04:08:30 AM
OOC message should only contain information like "heading out of town for the weekend" and "you can refuse to become marshal via the politics tab". There should be no reason why you would care that someone else received that information via torture report.

The original question was posed with the opposite purpose: Because the torturer doesn't (shouldn't) care about OOC messages (due to that very cited content), they shouldn't appear in torture reports. It was never aimed at protecting others' OOC messages, but rather (potentially, depending on the algorithm) increasing the efficiency and realism of torture reports. (After all, I can't imagine a noble yelling out that some voice in his head was trying to talk to other voices in other nobles' heads.)

In a major sense, getting an OOC message is wasted information for a torturer, especially if they could have got another letter instead.

Dishman

Quote from: Eirikr on October 21, 2013, 06:42:00 AM
(After all, I can't imagine a noble yelling out that some voice in his head was trying to talk to other voices in other nobles' heads.)

It makes a strange kind of sense....wouldn't you expect someone being tortured to spew a bit of nonesense at times?
Eoric the Dim (Perdan), Enoch the Bright (Asylon), Emeric the Dark (Obsidian Islands)

Orobos, The Insatiable Snake (Sandalak)

De-Legro

Quote from: Dishman on October 21, 2013, 11:22:45 AM
It makes a strange kind of sense....wouldn't you expect someone being tortured to spew a bit of nonesense at times?

Yes, in fact the "information" gathered by torture is famously unreliable IRL
Previously of the De-Legro Family
Now of representation unknown.

Chenier

Quote from: Anaris on October 20, 2013, 11:37:52 PM
Please don't necro month-plus-old threads just to bitch about game mechanics that go back nearly a decade.

For some reason it looked like a new post. I don't really go looking through old posts for the sake of bitching.

Quote from: Penchant on October 21, 2013, 01:01:03 AM
So you are trying to say a much better idea would be for volunteers to constantly read through ever single OOC message to make sure no one is abusing it? I think not.

This is a non-sequitur. Do we currently have volunteers spying on IRC and MSN too, for the sake of catching people communicating IC info OOC, though OOG means? No. So why would this change require that?

Public OOC orders and the like are... public, so there'd be plenty of witnesses available to denounce it. No need for a secret police there. Private OOC messages are no more hidden than primate instant messages OOG, so no point in setting up a secret police there either.
Dit donc camarade soleil / Ne trouves-tu ça pas plutôt con / De donner une journée pareil / À un patron

Anaris

Either way, the solution here is simple: OOC messages should be caught by torture reports at exactly the same rate as IC messages, but they should not count against the number of total messages to be caught.

Thus, if you get 1 OOC message in a torture report, you will be guaranteed to get 1 extra IC message as well. And if someone's trying to send IC information in OOC messages, all they will do to torture reports is make them more informative.

This is not a trivial fix, I suspect, but it should be the kind of thing we can do alongside converting torture to Doctrine.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Tom

Actually, that's trying a technical solution for a social problem.

People who intentionally use OOC messaging in order to hide information from potential disclosure through torture are the kind of people that are not playing a game with friends, they are playing to win and they don't belong into the game. The solution is not to include OOC messages in torture reports, the solution is to kick people out of the game who are playing abusive.

Eirikr

Quote from: Tom on October 21, 2013, 05:36:28 PM
Actually, that's trying a technical solution for a social problem.

People who intentionally use OOC messaging in order to hide information from potential disclosure through torture are the kind of people that are not playing a game with friends, they are playing to win and they don't belong into the game. The solution is not to include OOC messages in torture reports, the solution is to kick people out of the game who are playing abusive.

Honestly, this was one of my original thoughts, but it seemed a little extreme. Second chances and all of that, especially during times of diminished user base. It may also be quite difficult to enforce.

The technical solution is (potentially) a happy medium, IMO.

Anaris

Quote from: Tom on October 21, 2013, 05:36:28 PM
Actually, that's trying a technical solution for a social problem.

People who intentionally use OOC messaging in order to hide information from potential disclosure through torture are the kind of people that are not playing a game with friends, they are playing to win and they don't belong into the game. The solution is not to include OOC messages in torture reports, the solution is to kick people out of the game who are playing abusive.

Right—because we always have perfect reporting of people doing bad things in order to help their realm win.

It's a nice theory, Tom, and I do not in any way oppose making it clear that sending IC information OOC for the purpose of avoiding torture is a serious offence, but I also don't see any reason not to implement the technical solution.

The problem is, you can say this about nearly any potentially exploitable part of the game, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ever close exploitable loopholes.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan