Titan System Revalation

[Vellos]

I guess I dislike voting because it changes the Titans from a judicial body to an executive one. I don't like the idea of deferring the actual judicial power down from the Titans; just maybe changing the composition of the Titans.

[Hossenfeffer]

Are there enough players not on any given island to act as an increased pool for Titans as has been suggested above?  I think the vulgarity assessment process works pretty nicely. 

If there is a call for Titan intervention on, for example EI, and three random players who don't play on EI (but perhaps do meet some other criteria) were selected to contemplate the issue, then pass on their recommendations to the Titans for that island, that might mitigate the likelyhood of abuse, while still exposing more players to the judicial process from the pleasant end.

[Indirik]

It would be extremely hard for a random sampling of players not familiar with a situation to make a decision on an issue. If you don't play on AT, how could you decide whether or not, say, a secession from Carelia was a strategic secession? All you have to go on is what the complainant gives you. Or should the random players be given access to the realm's messages? How do you deal with the potential loss of privacy to the other characters/players if that were to happen? Unlike Anaris, I don't have so much faith in random players keeping the confidentiality of the information gained, or the ability of other Titans to notice that it is potentially being abused.

I do like the potential for a broader Titan pool, though. It should really help move things along.

[Anaris]

Unlike Anaris, I don't have so much faith in random players keeping the confidentiality of the information gained, or the ability of other Titans to notice that it is potentially being abused.

I wasn't especially saying that I thought random players would be able to keep confidentiality: only that any deliberate abuse should be pretty easy to recognize and come down on like a ton of bricks.

I, too, think that the better idea is just to expand the Titans.

[Bedwyr]

Precedents would be extremely helpful.  Even for IR's, it's really nice to know that (for instance) offering incentives (as opposed to threatening disincentives) is allowed.  There are other things of that nature that would make life easier.

Expanding the Titan pool, especially by people with medal counts, would be very handy.  Another idea would be to let people vote for those they think would be trustworthy with those with high medal counts being weighted...

[DoctorHarte]

I like where this topic is going  I will contemplate an answer and edit this reply soon-ish.

[Geronus]

This is a very complex subject.

What I think is necessary:

1. Anonymity, for both plaintiffs and the Titans themselves. If a rating system is to be implemented, I suggest granting the Titans special aliases for their Titan roles. The true identities of the Titans should be known only to Tom, but the community could conceivably come to know and recognize certain prominent Titans by their aliases. Or they could remain totally homogeneous, known only collectively, and ratings could be assigned behind the scenes instead.

2. A system of recording precedent. Be this resource known only to the Titans or available to the community at large, precedent is a valuable tool for decision making. If available to the community, it could have the beneficial effect of reducing unintentional infractions. Granted, there is always the chance of rules lawyering, but everyone should have their day in court so to speak. Like real-life judicial systems, the rules (or rather, how they are interpreted) would be organic. They would grow and change with the community. People *should* have the opportunity to disagree with decisions and make their arguments known, and the Titans *should* have the opportunity to reassess precedent and deviate from it, provided they publish the reasoning behind their decisions.

2a. A system of appeals. This could be solely Tom, who would function as a sort of Supreme Court, or the case could go to an entirely different group of Titans. If the two groups disagree, Tom could again be the final arbiter.

3. A diverse pool of Titans. This could be based on the medal system, but I would hesitate to base such an important function on such an arbitrary rating system. Then again, I have trouble thinking of a better way to do it, so perhaps that would acceptable, with a decision-rating system to compensate.

Just thoughts, anyway.

[Tom]

I don't like where this discussion is going. Not at all.

The Titans are not a court system. And I will not approve any changes that turn them into one. Court systems work in the real world because of a large number of circumstances that we don't have in this game.

The Titans are not superior to the players. The only one who is superior to anyone in this game is me, simply by the fact that it's my server and ultimately I can do whatever I want with it.

Any changes to the Titan system need to be in the direction of simplicity. These are volunteers doing an unpaid job. They are not willing to jump through any hoops, nor should they have to.

The system suffers from being intransparent. Anyone who thinks that's news hasn't been here for the past years. Almost all complaints against Titans and the system in general are due to judgements coming out of nowhere for the accused, with no prior information or warning, no way to check what the complaint was or how the verdict was reached.
Ignoring point #1, there is a reason why courts are open and public.


A few good points were made that I agree with. Specifically that pseudonymity for the Titans would be a good thing, if only to protect them from bad blood.
I am less certain regarding anonymity for the one making a complaint. But I'm willing to give it a try, keeping it as an option or so.


I'm not willing to entertain this "let's turn it into a proper court" discussion. That is not going to happen, end of story. Forget about "appeals" and such nonsense. Hello, people, do you even realize what you're talking about? This is a game, damnit!

[Anaris]

Tom, unless my memory is quite faulty, you already approved suggestions to allow appeals to Titan decisions, by a different set of Titans. (I can dig up the dev list emails if you want.)

And while I can understand your antipathy toward courts and your desire not to make the Titans look more like them...what most of the replies have basically been saying is (as far as I read them), "We don't think that the Titan system needs to be replaced with an open discussion on complaints.  We just think it needs to be improved."

[Tom]

All the replies so far are basically saying "we want a court of law system".

And I'm saying that is not going to happen. It's one of those solutions that sound simple and good - until you actually implement it. And, don't forget that we've heard from about 10 people, but we have 1000 players. I am taking into account the many complaints about the Titan system that were voiced over the years, many of them by different people and repeatedly.

And, quite honestly, I'm trying to bring more of the community spirit back that made this game great, and which has in parts been lost. In part because we've thrown up so much bureaucracy.

I'd even want to bring it down even further, but that's too radical for the moment. The spirit should be: You have a problem with anyone, bring it up, talk about it, a solution will be found.

And we need a lot more of the "talk about it" spirit and a lot less of the "snitch" / "rat someone out" spirit that the current Titan system unfortunately conveys.


Now think about it from that point for a while.

[wraith]

This is Tom's game. Tom's rules.

In real life I would hate that but this is a game that I choose to play.

When people fail to adhere to the 'play as you would with friends' guidance then authoritarianism in the game is fine by me.

[loren]

Personally I've never had any problems with the way the system is setup now (like the scientific peer review) especially since you can ask for feedback now.  And I can't recall if it's still this way but only allowing Titans for continents they don't have a character on removes the dickish qualities of peer review problems of competing interests.

Then again, I've only rarely had problems playing with others.  =)

[Geronus]

I'd even want to bring it down even further, but that's too radical for the moment. The spirit should be: You have a problem with anyone, bring it up, talk about it, a solution will be found.

And we need a lot more of the "talk about it" spirit and a lot less of the "snitch" / "rat someone out" spirit that the current Titan system unfortunately conveys.

Unfortunately, BM is just too big and diverse for consensus-based enforcement of the rules. There are inherent adversarial qualities to the game (political and military conflict), and relatively few of its players know each other in real life. Not everyone will willingly adhere to the spirit of the game as conceived of by Tom. Some people just want to win, and are perfectly willing to abuse game mechanics and use OOC methods (like multi-accounting) to do so. Others want to role-play elves, pirates, ninjas or stranger things. Some people cannot escape their modern mindsets and conceptions of peasants (especially adventurers) as some sort of noble proletariat. Or shake the conviction that democracy is the best form of government.

Consensus will *never* be had in a community of this size. Every decision made will *always* make some people unhappy. This is inevitable. In SA that has all of 75 full members, that's exactly what happens. No matter what the Elders do, someone finds fault with it. And that's only 75 people! The only realistic way to mitigate this is to build a system that is both transparent and impartial, so that players can at least respect the process. Anything less will retain an arbitrary quality that is at the heart of complaints about the current Titan system, or so I believe. People get upset about the Titans because the process is so opaque. No one knows who might be under investigation and when. No one knows exactly what might get you lightning bolted. The whole process reeks of arbitrariness.

Personally, I feel that the current system is better than the originally proposed changes. I cannot imagine arguments over the rules being hashed out in this forum. One need only look at the 'Averoth OOC conflicts with GM' thread to see what the likely result of such a policy would be:

http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,394.0.html

Someone has to enforce the rules. If that makes them unpopular, so be it. However, I feel that a non-transparent and arbitrary system that is authoritarian in nature would still be better than hashing these things out via forum discussion. At least under the current method, the punishment comes down hard and fast and is then over. People's feathers may be ruffled for a time, but they will get over it (usually). If these things get debated in an open forum, everyone will get all kinds of worked up. Ugly things will be said, accusations will fly, and bad blood will abound. People will get much more entrenched in their positions, and feel that much more aggrieved when the ruling goes against them.

[Gustav Kuriga]

The suggestions that even mentioned a forum mentioned a closed forum being used by those not even affected by the decision in question, unlike your example, which is an open forum.

If it isn't done like this already, I would suggest having a group of 3 or 4 Titans look over serious/confusing cases. Not as a court, mind you, just to look at a particular issue from multiple viewpoints. It is harder to say an arbitrary decision was made when three different people all agreed on it. Now this would only be for major stuff or confusing cases (such as ones affecting a whole realm or characters in multiple realms), not for more routine stuff just affecting one person.

[Draco Tanos]

The main issue I see with public postings of submitted issues and the lack of anonymity of those who report the issues is that there will then be a witch hunt.

Say Gustav there (sorry Gustav, just your name was above mine ) was under a Marshal or General who started to order him when to log in, what types of units to recruit, and what class/subclass he is to be for their war effort.  Gustav files a complaint, the Titans realize that it's not kosher with the rules.  They smack the General/Marshal.

Now, let's say his name is published.  The Judge is good friends with the General/Marshal and decides to persecute him.  Oh, he won't say it's because of the complaint, but that will be the root cause.  And judges don't *need* reasons to punish, right?  But Gustav wouldn't have been targeted if his name wasn't put out there.  He gets fined.  He gets banned.  He gets a bounty placed on his head.

All because he lacked the protections currently given.

While it's all well and good to wish that such things would never happen, there are vindictive people out there and unless they mention their reasons in the game...  There's no way for the Titans or staff to know what's truly going on.  And if such persecution starts to happen, it's only a matter of time before people are afraid to report such violations of BattleMaster's most sacred tenants.