by Aquinas » Tue Nov 13, 2018 1:23 am
Short of time right now, but a few points to make about the previous experiment with Authorised Second Active Accounts (ASAAs):
(i) During the early stage, the experiment was limited to RP Team members. In retrospect, I believe this was a misjudgement on my part. It would lead to a significant amount of resentment, much of it directed personally at me (the only active Moderator at the time). I recall having to have several private conversations with players who were concerned about and confused by what was going on. I am inclined to believe any future scheme which gave "special treatment" to selected players would lead to the same issues.
(ii) A large number of players failed to read and follow the very basic procedure governing the experiment, and this made things tedious and time-consuming from an administration point of view. Contrary to the expectations of some, this problem was not just limited to new players or players less involved with forum RP. "RP veterans" were sometimes just as bad.
(iii) Not all participants used both active accounts actively on a reasonably prolonged basis. Some were relatively inactive with both accounts. Others were what I would call "toe-dippers", by which I mean, it appeared they had no real intention of using two active accounts on a prolonged basis, but were simply setting up another account in another nation in order to try to help them decide whether to remain in their current nation or move to the other one.
(iv) There were occasions when you had a player (or players) resenting what another player was doing with their second active account.
(v) I became (and I think Reddy did too) seriously concerned that the policy of permitting second active accounts in certain situations would undermine the game's general stance again unauthorised multi-accounting. If you have a policy which says "No multi-accounting allowed, ever", then that is a very clear and unambiguous policy which everybody understands. However, if you have a policy which says "Multi-accounting is allowed in certain circumstances...", then that "muddies the waters", so to speak, and may encourage less conscientious players to not bother to follow the procedures surrounding authorised multi-accounting. During the experiment, there were cases where players would create an active second account and then inform Moderation as an afterthought, rather than applying for and obtaining authorisation first. There were even cases where players would be caught out doing unauthorised multi-accounting, then protest that they thought what they were doing was within the rules because of the ASAA experiment.