@orathaic

TBH, the only person he really needs permission from is Kestas. Last time I checked, there is no privacy policy on this site.

@abge - as far as i'm aware, the stance Kestas takes is to allow pretty much anything on the forum. However as he encourages 'self-moderation' this mostly implies that our 'self-moderated' permission is being sought.

this is all probably relevant to the discussion of our community&cultural norms.

@orathaic

Yes, which is why I think it was very polite of Thucy to ask us, instead of just doing it. I'm just saying your post about permission is moot because it isn't needed.

not by us as a community, but it is needed by his supervisor, because you can do things in your personal life which you're not allowed do in the name of 'science'... (i was at a vaguely interesting ethics panel lately on the use of human cells in Art, do/should artists go through the same ethical permissions that biology researchers have to?)

Generally it is not considered ethical to do an experiment on people without their consent and knowledge. Though this presents some issues with getting good data...

Well, my personal view of ethics aside, I still think that Kestas' permission should be enough to satisfy any ethics issues. It is his site and he owns the content. And, as I said earlier, all information can be made 100% anonymous because of the nature of the forum.

Why do I get the feeling that this thread *is* the event? :-)

Well thanks for ruining it, Draug.

Also, The Game.

lmfao....

@abge, i don't know that i can agree with you.

As a member of this community Thucy has certain rights, responcibilities and priviledges, but as a antropologist he has a seperate set of rights, responcibilities and priviledges. I don't know that we would afford the same amount of welcome to another antrophologist (though Kestas' rules would be the same, ie pretty free and open, i don't know that he has claimed any copyright of the material we post, i beleive we remain owners of our posts as do any authors... )

i'm pretty sure that while we are an open bunch, and would welcome most investigators, NOT asking for our permission would be tantamount to an invasion.

I agree 100% we may not like it, I'm just not sure what sort of recourse there would be for us.

I'm not saying there is recourse. However it is a scientists duty to act ethically in their endeavours. There is something called the Declaration of Helsinki, 'a set of ethical principles for the medical community regarding human experimentation'.

It is equivalent to the Universal declaration of human rights, and a responce to Nazi-Super-Science... eh, i mean, experiements on humans which were deemed immoral.

Twixt, a guy who ran a "social experiment" by being a dick in City of Heroes, was allowed to publish although he did his research without informing and consenting.

how did he get ethical permission? i'm actualyl interested, i know you have to publish the decision of the ethics committe IF they approve and you go on to publish (but not if the decide against giving approval...)

I'm not sure, I'll have to look it up.

Here's an article, which links his published paper.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university_professor_be.html

I didn't bother to read into it too much because the whole situation just infuriates me.

Damn it, abgemacht! Now I lost!

From reading it, i'm not sure if he was doing science or just playing a game in an annoying way - which he later decided to write an article about.

That's like writing a book about your expierences on webdiplomacy, and as i said i think we hold the right to our own posts, i think we have every right to write about our personal expierences.

His play in this cases seems to have been inline with the games intent. (it's like players getting annoyed in diplomacy when they are stabbed, which does happen, but our 'culture' happens to reply with, 'yeah, what did you expect when you opened yourself up for a stab? idiot!')

Still if Myers intent was to explore 'play and punishment' (see the paper he wrote: http://www.masscomm.loyno.edu/~dmyers/F99%20classes/Myers_PlayPunishment_031508.doc ) then doing so without informed consent is questionable at best....

*I note it is not medical research, so the helsinki declaration probably does not apply, even the APA guidelines on psychiatric research do not apply, this being antropology... and closer to politics than to medicine/biology*

He was exploiting bugs in the game, but my real issue comes in him trying to play the innocent card. He was much more acerbic than he lets on. He paints this image of everyone just coming at him with death threats and whatnot, but he gave that sort of crap as much as he received it, from screencaps and such I've seen.

maybe hewas just trying to fit in...

the bugs aside, he claims he was just going against the social conventions (but not the rules) of the site. It is entirely like some social group playing diplomacy (ie friends) and being care-bears - then meeting someone who stabs them for the solo. That would be totally against their social conventions but not the rules of the game.

Where my comparison fails, however, is when this guy has his behaviour 'corrected' ie when some people try and explain to him that he's breaking a social convention and he ignores them.. he doesn't want to be part of the group, and it is no surprise that they reacted like this.

In fact i think his piece of research is probably not that interesting...

Yeah, it basically amounts to "This guy got paid to research that if you act like a dick, people won't like you."

@thucydides

PM me I'll be happy to help.