Sociopolitical Ramifications

Sociopolitical Ramifications (SPR) is a sci-fi furry MUCK, with an average of 60 to 80 furs connecting nightly (of which between 20 and 25 are usually between 10 hours and 25 days idle).

Areas
SPR's main 'city' has a computer theme with different areas named after different parts of a computer's hardware or architecture. Much of SPR's central and western landscape, as well as the MUCK's title screen, was designed by unci, a building wizard of the first years, who left SPR in 1999.

SocioSpace is a hard sci-fi minigame (similar to a MUD) built into SPR. This system includes combat, healing, and a spaceship system, programmed by the lead wizard for that area, Arian.

Wizards

 * Anputeti - MUF, no space.
 * Arian - Building Wizard (No characters)
 * Benjamin - Building/PR/Characters/Policy/HelpStaff!
 * DivineVixen - Chairfox
 * Drac - Wizard/Player and Player/Player relations.
 * Dru
 * Enzeru - General Stuff / Building / Space
 * Moment - Policy, coordinator, PR, denotational semanti
 * PuppyDog - MUF/MPI/ANSI/Technical
 * Serailyn - All-around Helpful Serailyn (MUF and more!)
 * Snout - Charreq, PR/HS, policy. Some building, MPI.

History
SPR was founded by Snout and DivineVixen on Sep 19th 1994 at 04:27:49 CEST, and was announced via @shout just before one of FurryMUCK's infamous six- to eight-hour database saves. The name SPR actually comes the parody comic of Tank Vixens, hence why the initial line when you connect is, "Oooh, say the words.." The phase also made an appearance in the anthropomorphic Sci-fi comic Albedo. On that first day, over thirty players connected, each of whom was given a wizbit to make it easy for them to build and attach things.

Murphy the MUFMouse was a wizard from opening day in September 1995 to his resignation in October 1996. Murphy built the original space station (then called SPR Station), the first solar system, and coded all the vehicle programs.

In 1997, during a fit of pique, the wizard Mystique chose to @purge, thus destroying everything that she owned, including the page program and the say program. At this time, Aerowolf (aka Winged) was given a wizbit (along with Kathalla) to help piece SPR back together from a backup that Snout started running on another port.

Eventually, DivineVixen had to step down as head wizard due to her player's fight with Multiple Sclerosis, leaving Snout in charge. Syvel chose this time to @purge, thus getting rid of a lot of functionality that the MUCK relied upon.

It was just after Syvel's @purge that CATerwaul chose to limit the MUCK to wizards-only, for a period of a couple of weeks. During this time, many inactive wizards were dewizzed, and several new rules and regulations went into effect -- including the requirement that MUCK-essential programs and objects needed to be owned by a new, wizbitted character named SPR, so that no @purge could damage the MUCK again.

Eventually, SPR came back for players to use, though its user base was much diminished (from a high of 191 characters connected, it now averages 60 to 80). Snout didn't want anything to do with the administration of the new MUCK structure, so he appointed three wizards to be "gods" -- wizards with the power to grant or remove wizbits. These were Natasha, Aerowolf, and Benjamin.

Due to internal friction (and a lot of miscommunication), Natasha ended up leaving. It was at this point that Aerowolf became pretty much the main God character. He made several unpopular decisions during this timeframe: Space became Arian's area to allow or banish people as he saw fit. Zinn was toaded and banished for alleged (i.e. disputed) violation of an order to stay out of Arian's space areas. Gud, DivineVixen's non-wizard character, was given a wizbit, and immediately began to violate SPR's rules of ownership, yanking possession of a BDSM-themed area from its owners. When Aerowolf de-wizzed him, he began to bad-mouth the administration of SPR in the park, and Aerowolf @toaded and banished him from what had been his own MUCK several years before.

(Ahem. Not entirely right. The owner of the area violated the local law, and was punitively toaded. What happened to the area I am not aware of, albeit, there might have been a delay in handling its purging, and for that, which is of course my responsibility, I, as the @toading of the player was my doing, of course apologize. However, there was of course never any attempt at forcibly stealing an area - whatever purpose would such an act serve, even if I had wanted to, it would have been all too obvious? Anyway, Gud is the #1 (god) character of the MUCK, comparable to the root account of a UNIX system, SYSTEM on VMS or Administrator on Windows. It is no specific person, and was of course not dewizzed. Also, the character I returned as was DV and nothing else. Yes, I made mistakes, of course, and was a little too unconcentrated and dictatoric, which I just as much as (due to a misunderstanding between myself and Snout, I thought myself to still be in charge, and since there other wizards also did, my great round table idea just made it worse) causing friction I of course regret, and chose to leave for 3-4 years until my health was better. By my own choice, of course, 'banning' a server wizard from SPR would have been...quite hard. :))

Aerowolf resigned as a wizard (much less head wizard) in November of 2001, amidst complaints that he was misusing his power -- among other things, Syvel asked for ownership of her programs back from SPR (Syvel having been removed as a wizard due to her @purging), attempting to revoke the GPL that she had originally licensed them under. Aerowolf refused, citing her prior @purge and her player's legal issues, as well as the GPL which allowed SPR to maintain its own copy of her programs.

Physical location
SPR's server is physically located in Sweden. Therefore, SPR is not restricted by US laws. In particular, the use of the internet by children less than 13 years old is restricted in the US.

However, rules 0.1 as well as 1.1 of the SPR policies imply that anything you do is subject to:
 * 1) Swedish law
 * 2) international law, and
 * 3) any laws which apply where you are

Soliciting RL sex with those under the age of 15, or in some cases, 18, is not legal in Sweden.