Talk:Tapestries MUCK

Corrected total numbers per White. Taps Max: 870 Removed inaccurate FurryMuck user count. Made small grammatical changes.

Forgot to login
I did the gerund correction.

A reputation for strictness
I would like to note that this MUCK's wizards are known for strict enforcement of all rules - and for creating rules to cover all situations, regardless of whether a new rule is necessary. There is given no leeway given in any wizard's interpretation of rules, and all rules apply equally to all persons and places on the muck: no actual judgement need be exercised, since, as it were, every decision is already made by the law.

This is in contrast to maintaining a form of "common law", which is built from both rules and case histories, so that current decisions can be made based on previous information, the context or meaning of a rule can be clarified with every decision, and there need be no more rules than absolutely necessary.

Personally, I believe that this stems from the BDSM culture on which Tapestries is based, and the kinds of personalities that such things attract. "Rules are good; rules without favoritism of any sort are better; if there is no rule for something, then there needs to be one; all the rules are for all the people."

This is not to say that such things are bad. However, I would suggest that creating rules for the sake of covering all situations will lead to the loss of those who harm no-one, but who are harmed and unnecessarily restricted by rules which are written and applied far too broadly.

I will close my statement of opinion with a quote and a question:

''A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery''

How could the number of rules be reduced, while maintaining the kind of environment most folk enjoy - or is what exists now the kind of environment the wizards meant to create?

-- Siege 02:27, 30 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Surely this merely means that free will has been taken away - which is, as I understand it, the ultimate objective of submissive philosophy? :-)


 * "Common law" is expensive in terms of time to police. We have seen how much time such things can soak up on WikiFur. Perhaps this is simply one method used to reduce the workload. Remember, Tapestries is an awfully busy place - I just popped on and saw almost 700 people (and those were just the people online this moment - I don't know what their total user base is). It's reasonable to assume that at least a few of these are going to do something troublesome within the next week. It may be that the admins only have an hour or so to devote to that sort of thing. If so, stated rules strictly applied may be the fairest method of dealing with the situation in the time available. -- 03:53, 30 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * If the rules are too complex, people will not bother to read them, and are more likely to break them. The problem of law complexity is worse in real life where new laws are made all the time and it would be really hard to follow all laws that apply to you. Most people act by "common sense", in MUCKs or RL, and most manage to avoid any conflict with the law that way .... --Unci 10:07, 30 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * As has been emphasised by a recent real life encounter by a friend, even the authorities will not bother to read and remember all the rules if they have an excuse not to. -- Siege 13:20, 3 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * The general design of the Tapestries rules is to prevent people from being jerks. Rules lawyers will find no tolerance for their rule-skimming activities as WhiteWizard considers the person's intention before making a decision. -- Loiosh


 * The policies are not actually as complicated as they look. A lot of the policies revolve around procedure and advice that are not actually rules related or are edge cases that you don't have to worry about unless you own a public zone or are seeking a NCO or some such. A good deal of the material in the policies is just informational as well. This dates back to the fact that at one time the policies were the only way we had to describe the Muck before the website was in common use. No, really. :) Tapestries MUCK is older than fur.com, we didn't always HAVE a website. In fact when we insisted that people use a web browser to register their characters many told us it would be the end of the Muck... personally, I like to think that our gamble on this 'web thing' paied off though. ;)


 * Anyway, it's my goal now that we have the Wiki up to rewrite the policies from scratch to streamline them down into smaller chunks, pulling out things like the mission statement, theme, and other misc info into linked but not required reading so that people can get through the actual 'TOS' quickly. --WhiteFire 11:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous wizards
What's the point of having anonymous wizards? --Unci 21:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think so that the staff can roleplay in peace and not have to deal with technical questions or disputes when they are not on duty. --Nidonocu - talk [[Image:Trans 168.png|16px|Nidonocu]] 22:27, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * That is part of it. The other half of that is that it becomes impossible for them to be 100% neutral (or even close to it) when their identities are known. This is especially true when it's someone you know that needs to be disciplined for causing others trouble. --WhiteFire 11:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't particularly value the fact I couldn't really know who the staff was, for that and other reasons, I left. --Chibiabos 22:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I would like to point out that the head wizard, myself, is publicly listed in several places, including the policies. The other two active wizards are anonymous for the above stated reasons. Regardless, hope you find fun wherever you end up. --WhiteFire 11:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

A punish all for the actions of a few policy
Tapestries has a long history of punishing the entire playerbase whenever any individual or small group of individuals violates a programming loophole, or insecurity.

Typically they plug the loophole by reducing functionality of the MUCK server. This has been done with the @force command, the disallowance of any sort of zombie objects, and "nerfing" the MPI scripting language to be fairly incompatible with other Fuzzball MUCKs.

This sort of policy has also reared it's ugly head in other ways, such as the removal of entire areas of the MUCK because some of the patrons of those areas were acting in a way the Wizards found unacceptable. Instead of punishing the actual offenders, the entire world was punished by the removal of an area. The biggest example of this would be the removal of "The Tavern", created by Doris.

The Tapestries Wizards, especially WhiteFire, have time and again exampled their distaste for actually administering their world, by creating automated systems to handle nearly all player requests, and the policy of simply punishing everyone when someone breaks a rule that they don't feel like enforcing on an individual basis.
 * Unsigned: Most people consider automated support to be a plus, rather than a minus. Where is lacks in personal touch, it makes up for it in promptness of response. If you are refering to the ticket system, remember that just helps get the ticket into the hands of the first availble wizard, rather than waiting on a specific wizard to have time to answer it. The work is still done by the wizard. --WhiteFire(talk) 22:12, 15 March 2012 (EDT)

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-I'd like to point out that it is incredibly difficult to administrate any group of people, let alone a group of adults role playing anthropomorphic characters in a BDSM universe. Programming loopholes have to be plugged, if it is exploitable it will be exploited. Sometimes the administration of one person is difficult especially if you are close to that person, especially when there is a small knit group around that person. The attempt to be a neutral force to avoid favoritism unfortunately creates situations in which you adversely affect the whole population. I would advise whoever wrote the above to recognize that administration is not an easy process and that taps access is a free service, not some god-given right. 207.47.201.6 03:29, 26 June 2009 (UTC)Dervacor

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I don't think the word 'portmanteau' is used correctly here. I believe that 'BDSM' would be an acronym. 'BonDomSadoMach' would be portmanteau.