This is the first part of a petition regarding a method by which conference room messages might fairly be admitted to RP boards. I think (and we) are indebted to Gregory: he asked the right question:

QUOTE:

What makes CF quotes a special text that must be dealt in a special way?

My belief is that there are (currently) differences, which I explain below, but that there is a way to deal with those differences. I.e. "a special way" is both needed and feasible. In this post I address only the need/requirements/problem. In a subsequent post I hope to provide a solution, but some discussion of the problem would be helpful in the meantime.

Let me also point out that this sort of thing is difficult to get right, so if anyone posts abuse in this thread I'm not going to bother attempting to come up with a solution.

Messages posted in public RP boards have (at least) four (security) properties, which I'll call message authenticity, message integrity, context integrity and non repudiation, and these properties are necessary* for a prosperous RP.

The table defines them more fully.

Property	Definition	How it is Ensured
Message Authenticity	It is always clear to all who wrote a given message	Authors can only post messages when logged in + messages are tagged with the author's name, which is assumed to identify the author securely
Message Integrity	The message always appears as the author wrote it	Only the author (temporarily) and the mods can edit a message once it is posted + mods are trusted only to edit messages in a controlled fashion that does not change the meaning, except to remove prohibited content.
Context Integrity	The message always appears in the full context (previous messages) in which it appeared to the author when he or she wrote the message.	A message can't be altered once there is a response to it (except by the mods) + mods are trusted only to edit messages in a controlled fashion that does not change the meaning, except to remove prohibited content + authors are only provided with context integrity in respect of previous valid content, and should not rely on invalid/prohibited content in previous message, as such is liable to be deleted.**
Non Repudiation	The author of a message cannot validly claim not have written it, or not to have written it as it appears.	Messages are tagged with the author's name, which is assumed to identify the author securely + messages can't be altered except by the author and the mods + mods are trusted only to edit messages in a controlled fashion that does not change the meaning, except to remove prohibited content.

Next, let us see what happens with messages written in a conference room, then pasted onto an RP board as part of a RP message

Property	Definition	Why it is Not Ensured
Message Authenticity	It is not always clear to all who wrote a given message	The person posting the conference room message to an RP board can easily alter the text so that the message appears to come from someone else.
Message Integrity	The message does not necessarily appear as the author wrote it	The person posting the conference room message to an RP board can easily alter the message text + anyone in the room can edit the text prior to it being posted.
Context Integrity	The message does not necessarily always appear in the full context (previous messages) in which it appeared to the author when he or she wrote the message.	The person posting the conference room message to an RP board can easily omit posting some or all of the context, and can also alter the text and authors of the context messages + anyone in the room can edit or delete context messages prior to the message being posted.
Non Repudiation	The author of a message can always validly claim not to have written it, or not to have written it as it appears.	Since the previous three properties are not achieved, the author can always claim not to have written the message (or not to have written it as it appears) even if the message in fact was written by the author, exactly as it appears, and is presented in its full context.

So, I suggest one can't simply allow conference room messages to be posted to the RP boards: the RP-mods can't rely on the message(s) being as written by the authors and so can't do their part of the job, and the mechanisms by which editing of RP board messages is restricted do not apply in conference rooms.

Thus I believe additional mechanisms will be required if it were decided to allow conference room messages to be posted to the RP-board.


*These four properties are necessary but not sufficient for a prosperous RP; there is unfortunately an abundance of evidence for this...

**Actually, there is still a problem here: one might read the latest post in a thread, prepare a response, post it and find that the post one read (now the second to last post) has been edited by the author in the meantime.

Smelgar wrote:

QUOTE:
So, I suggest one can't simply allow conference room messages to be posted to the RP boards:

Clearly. In my view RP messages with CF quotations should be deleted with no explanation whatsoever.

CF stuff is unofficial stuff and posting it as RP breaches any RP rule.

There is only one exception required: If both sides agree.

For the rest, please remember that mods cannot check nations boards, so there is no general chance to see whether something was truely said or not.

Florian de Fecamp wrote:

QUOTE:
There is only one exception required: If both sides agree.

For the rest, please remember that mods cannot check nations boards, so there is no general chance to see whether something was truely said or not.

It needs to be "if all players involved in the posted thread agree". This has safety, but perhaps not fairness/liveness: in effect it allows players to repudiate their utterances by refusing to endorse publication:

QUOTE:

Y says: X said in the "Blah" in the conference room.
X says: no I didn't.
Y says: you're a liar (true, X did in fact say "Blah").
X says: prove it (and refuses to allow the conference room to be published).

Also, what happens if someone is offline for for a week, comes back, and disagrees with something that got published in the meantime, due to all available players agreeing...

But on the other hand, Smelgar, people may place some sensitive information about their nations, their interests, their intentions, I don't know. And friendships do change in this place, as you very well know.

So the risk we are facing here is obvious, if we don't enforce this obligation of having the parties agree on the publication of the stuff there. I mean, you know.

Also, from what I've noticed, people also use in CFs a certain language sometimes, or they tend to friendly banter each other (or others) and other stuff like this.

Correct - so people would need to (in some secure fashion) agree to possible future RP publication at the time they write the conference room message, not at the time it is proposed to to publish it. That way everyone knows at all times a given conference room thread will potentially appears as part of public RP.

Pragmatically, I'm attracted to Alar's solution....

For the reasons above, same should go for PMs as well, then. And there were issues in the past with the PMs.

So, should we ban 'em all? Who's to decide, Council, mods, Hoern?

pm are banned, if not both sides agree

In the RP boards we have "Written is written". I.e. at the time one writes a message to the RP board it is non-repudiable: one can't subsequently withdraw the message or render it non-RP. The reason for this is to ensure that if others' RPs react to the message, they are guaranteed they will not later get their RPs ruined by having the original message taken away (or modified such that the reactions cease to make sense). The removal of this rule or its waiver would act as a disincentive to people putting time into RP.

I disagree with Florian (obviously) and another reason is the rule "Written is written" is implicitly waived (or at least radically varied) in the conference room posts and PMs he would allow to become RP. As I see it, the rule with Florian's approach would become "written might be written, if everyone agrees later", for PMs and conference room posts. I see this as fundamentally different to "written is written", and so would not support it.

All that is written I am sad to say is false. RP mods can verify by requesting screen shots of the posts both prior and after. It is not hard to spot a falsified screen shot, and compare to a quoted section

Lastly is the witnesses with in the CF. For instance my CF Flo is in. He as a mod can verify this easily.

This only removes more rp and stretches more methods to not rp which there are already plenty with in Kh. I know many who refuse to even rp as is. They state their is no method to, and I agree with them. KH is already smothered on RP. Some get to break rules, and not others.

Proven time and time again. As it is a case of who can manipulate what in the mods minds. I have a few suggestions, but certainly disallowing and controlling a part of the nations board that Hoern already said was up to the ruler of the nation to decide is not one of them.