This has been coming for a while, building up, listening to what others say. It's just taken a while for me to acquire the necessary level of exasperation to override my normal rather over-developed sense of tolerance.
We started TLI with very few rules. We didn't expect to need them. We had experience of running channels and running roleplays and we had this idea that everyone who came along would either come from other similarly established channels, or would come along knowing it was their responsibility to fit in with what was already here.
Obviously we were wrong to a degree, though to be fair, TLI has also become more complex and more closely defined since that early start. However, the basic premise that players would either come from other similar channels, or that they would come along prepared to learn and fit in, still remains valid. Or at least, idealistic.
So over the years, the rules have become long and spread onto multiple pages. Some of that because it's a convenient place to make a short description of how aspects of roleplay work. Most of it because of players who arrived with a lot of pre-conceptions about what they should be allowed to do and who haven't responded to a quiet word suggesting they do things our way. The net result, apart from making it a more difficult place to police, is that those players who do arrive with a well-adjusted attitude get frustrated at being treated like children.
Let's digress for a moment. I know that people arrive on IRC and become hooked on it for a variety of reasons. Some are in situations where they have limited opportunities to take part in any sort of social life away from their computer; perhaps because of family demands, limited mobility or just where they happen to live. Other people arrive here because they have a psychological disorder that inhibits them from normal interactions or they have a depressing life, and IRC allows them to be someone else for a while. Others just find it fascinating. Obviously not all of those people join channels such as TLI but, to some extent, they are all roleplaying already. IRC allows people to show themselves without the limitations of their environment or their disability and simply be seen for what their textual ability portrays.
Then we have the ones who take it a step further and actually roleplay characters and events that only exist in their imaginations. They may pretend to be wookies, or marines, or warlocks, or vampires, or they may just pretend to be ordinary people different to the one sitting at their computer. They may play out finding magic coins, or killing each other, or having sex, or living in a big house and polishing the furniture. But in all of those variations there are channels to support their desires and those channels are populated by the same mix of people who find their way onto IRC generally.
Some are your ordinary, everyday people who use the computer because of limited access to real-life recreation and interpersonal interactions. Some are people who simply see IRC roleplay as a development from table-top games. Some use it as an alternative to watching TV or playing a computer game in their spare time. Others are the unfortunate people who are either unable to cope with reality or who find themselves in intolerable lives from which they have no other escape. IRC has them all. Roleplay channels have them all. TLI has them all. A complete variety of people from different backgrounds, with a wide range of personal reasons for being here. That's without even going into the variations of personality types, from the well-balanced to the intolerant and the downright psychotic. I'm not even going to try and classify those.
But through it all, despite being accused of being restrictive, power-mad fascists, we do our best to adjust the environment to enable every one of those people to take part. Despite the insults, we often know and sympathise with those who have MS or ADD or ADHD or ABCD. We know that some people live in abusive home lives, or are stuck in crappy low paying jobs and have trouble making the rent on tiny, inadequate apartments, let alone meeting their cable bill every month. We know that a lot of people are online because they are lonely and desperate to form relationships. We know about those problems both from listening and, in a lot of cases, from having experienced them ourselves.
We do our best to make allowances. We do our best to be tolerant and to not over-react when a player loses it because they've had a bad day or a bad week or a bad life. But there have to be limits. Other people have those problems and manage to keep them under control. Other people have those problems and are sensitive enough to take a break rather than inflict themselves on everyone else when they know they're about on the ragged edge of self-control.
It's been said often that we are not psychiatrists. We can listen to problems but we can't solve them. And in the end, we have to give consideration to our responsibility to provide a place where the majority can relax, have fun, and get away from *their* own problems for a while. We have to live up to our obligation to those who *don't* create problems and who don't want to listen to yours. And in a broader sense, we have a much wider obligation to those who come to TLI ready and willing to play within the environment as it is, not insist everyone else fits in with their own selfish desires, without even the excuse of some alphabet soup disorder to excuse their actions. The growing list of rules and restrictions has been created, not because of our desire for power, but because of our attempts to integrate those who refuse to be good guests, either because of some problem or just because they are too self-involved to see beyond their own gratification.
I would like to see that imbalance swing back further towards favoring the well-behaved players instead of penalising them because of the anti-social minority. Ideally I would like to have the rules page the shortest page on the site. It would just say 'Read the web site, show respect for others, do as the Ops say and if you have any questions, ask first before you do it'. But that is no more possible than expecting 30 kids in a kindergarten class to all play nice together without squabbling and without crying and without arguing with the teachers. It would be nice but until the drug companies turn us all into mindless passive clones, it ain't going to happen.
Still, I do believe we can make progress some of the way towards that goal. I believe we can reduce the rules and I believe we can treat players more like adults. It just requires a willingness to face up to the fact that not everyone is capable of taking on the required level of self-control to survive in such an environment. It just requires the determination to be able to restrict who is allowed to play in here. It just requires both admin and players to actually read, understand and remember the first rule, which is that you are all guests here, and good guests get to stay while bad guests get shown the door. Permanently.
I'm up for trying.
Are you?