Please don't forget to read the bulletin board. Enter +read from anywhere.

Since SpinDizzy was discovered, and it's society founded, public actions and interactions have been based on the Acceptable Use Policy;

Be a nice guy, give other folks a fair shake, don't be a jerk, realize that a wizard is never merely *suggesting* that you knock it off.

This has worked well for many years, and it's somewhat nebulous definition has allowed for varying interpretations of 'being a jerk', both by Wizstaff and by players. Occasionally, the chasm of interpretation has caused difficulties, so Findra has provided a clarification of the AUP as follows, which can be found on SpinDizzy by entering 'News Behaviour';

Every now and then it's a good idea to remind folks that we do, in fact, have an Acceptable Use Policy on this muck. Generally, it's fairly relaxed, but occasionally there needs to be some interpretation on the part of the wizards about how it applies to everyday life on the muck.

One such area where problems of interpretation occur is what is and is not considered suitable behaviour for a public area. The AUP has this to say:

"Be a nice guy, give other folks a fair shake, don't be a jerk, realize that a wizard is never merely *suggesting* that you knock it off."

So what behaviour would go beyond the bounds of the AUP? In simple terms, anything that is upsetting to another person. If you're in a public place, and it becomes clear that what you're doing or saying is upsetting someone else in the room, then clearly you should stop.

But what if you think that person is being overly sensitive about what's happening? Well, it really makes no difference. You're in a -public- area, and are obliged to modify your behaviour according to the people around you. Why? Well, consider how you'd behave if you were out to dinner with a bunch of your close friends compared to if it were your grandmother. Depending on your grandmother, I'd suspect it'd be quite different. Something that your friends would laugh at, might very well be offensive to your grandmother.

So how do we 'be a nice guy, and give other folks a fair shake'? Simply, if you're upsetting someone, you must stop, no matter whether you think they're being thin-skinned or not. From the other point of view, if someone is upsetting you, you should politely tell them this and ask them to stop. Asking someone (or being asked) like this is -not- a cue to start an argument about what is and isn't OK for a public place. If someone asks you to stop, there -is- no further argument. If you feel they're asking frivolously or maliciously, then take that up with a wizard, not with them.

Of course, what you do or say in private is your own affair - people can always leave if they don't like what's happening. But in a public place, everyone has as much right to be there as you do. If you want to carry on a conversation that someone objects to, you have lots of options. You can take it to another room, moves to whispers or pages, or just drop it and pick it up later.

So, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in public is really a sliding scale. What might be funny to one group on one day, might be offensive to others on the following day. Everyone expects to be treated with respect. Nobody should feel forced to leave a public area because they find themselves upset by the actions of others. Conversely, no-one should feel they can't discuss a reasonable topic in a public place. So please make sure you extend this same respect to those around you, and be on the look-out for when your behaviour crosses the line from being just off-colour and becomes offensive.

This policy document has been written to allow people to understand how the wizards will interpret the AUP with respect to behaviour. It does not lay out any new 'rules' nor 'rights'. The AUP is the basic criteria by which the wizards make their judgements.

This isn't a change in the AUP, it's just a guide to it's interpretation. It's important to remember that we are all guests on SpinDizzy. Just as we would abide by our host's preferences while guests in their home, we should be respectful of the Server Wizard's, and other Administrative Staffs' decisions while guests on their equipment and data base.

As the wizards prepared for another purge of idle characters, the possessions of long-gone characters were examined this week for the amusement they offer. The irony of tokens which claim to represent ancient and eternal characters who in fact visited the muck no more than a dozen times and disappeared forever again was not lost.

Myana, briefly seen vixen-taur, was noted for a hundred-object mansion containing principally ominous rooms promising doom and terror to any who see it. Those familiar with Myana were not willing to go on record whether such characterization was accurate. As an example, her magic shop interior features "clawmarks, toothmarks, and gouges in the wood and floors [ that ] signal that Myana's magic has worked up creatures of absolute terror here."

Bunny slippers Skyler had few reservations about the expected destruction of the room to the idle-purge. "Sure, the room warns that the magic spell locals 'can only be opened by the magical presense (sic) of Myana herself,' and Myana is nowhere nearby, but we're sure we can handle them," said the left slipper. The right slipper said the left slipper was welcome to handle them all.

Despite the risks, the wizards plan to go ahead with the idle-purge in several weeks. See the bulletin board (type +read from anywhere on the muck) for details. Such things as Myana's palace are particularly absurd uses of database space -- as Skyler noted, more than 100 objects including rooms, exits, and actions, were put to the service of rooms only a single person could expect to see. Much the same could be served by having just a bedroom, a library, and a living room, and to have descriptions claim the existence of other and rarely-used adjacent rooms. Such a style, relying on the ability of people to suspend their disbelief and let their imaginations fill in the niches, is emphatically encouraged.

Wizstaff considered leaving the absurd waste of data space intact as an example of how *not to* build and describe a place, but the lack of imagination and cleverness exibited, along with Myana's failure to bother with checking her spelling and grammar, made it a poor example of even how it shouldn't be done.

Spindizzy has two interweaving mail systems.

The simplest way to send a message is:

• page #mail <addressee>=<message><enter>

mail <addressee><enter> gets you into the mail writer. The first question is 'What is the subject of this letter?' That's the easy part.
Then it drops you into lsedit -- the general purpose text editor you might have run into with editplayer or editroom.
Type your letter. If you need a blank line, <enter>, put in three or four spaces, then <enter> again.
(There's a help for lsedit -- type .h on a line by itself, then <enter>.)
When you are done, type, by itself, .end Or, if you want to give up and not send it, .abort

qmail is identical to page #mail. qmail <addressee>=<message><enter> or page #mail <addressee>=<message><enter>

For more help, try mail #help, qmail #help, and page #help

Argon told folks, "I'm doing a survey to be published in @Action News. The question this week is, 'Why was the cake in 'MacArthur Park' left out in the rain'?

• Gilead chirps, "Because they ate the marijuana brownies first."
• Furi says, "Because it wasn't a cake at all. It was a box of starving, crazed weasels.(See also; Poor Party Planning)"
• Austin says, "It was sponge cake. They needed to stretch it to serve more guests."
• Effsey says, "It was a geneticly altered cake, capable of turing into King Arthur that would be accompanied by an Apple Macintosh. Just add water."
• Carlos parseltongues, "So that all the cats and dogs had something soft to land on?"
• Tanuki barks, "So that she'd have something to whine about, inspiring Jewel's career two decades later."
• Suri wonders if people actually go to McArthur park and leave cakes out in the rain...
• Boki squalls, "Cake is for gulls!"
• Tarka says, "Cause it was pink and tasted bad so no one wanted it! The cake that is."
• Butterfluff says, "It was a marketing ploy that went bad. They were intending to give out samples and take surveys."
• Lady_Ravenwolfe says softly, "For everyones viewing pleasure."
• Mouser hisses, "It very, very tragic story of wedding cake, drown here 1350 year ago..."
• Suri -- "The reason the cake was left in the rain is that it was on fire."

Dear @Action News,

How come your paper never has any sports scores? This is a furry paper isn't it? So why don't you give the scores of the dolphins, or the bears, or the jaguars, or the other furries that play sports?

If you want all furries to read your paper, you ought to have stuff all furries want to know. Furry sports is one of them.

Thank you.

Baseball Bunny

Dear Baseball,

As much as @Action News wants to cover all the news everyone wants to know, only a few folks want to submit articles for the paper. If you'd like to contribute a 'Furry Sports' column, we'd be happy to include it.

I wonder though if you realise that the Dolphins, Bears, and Jaguars are the names of Human sports teams. They aren't really 'Furries', they just use the names. The last really 'Furry' sporting event we know of was the Animalympics, and there has been no news of an encore of that.

Argon,
Editor, @Action News

Submitting a story or artwork for @Action News is easy! Just send it to newspaper@spindizzy.org or qmail or page Argon about it.
@Action News is published weekly on or after 12:01 AM Eastern Time on Sunday. Most any type of story or article will be accepted. Generally, we'd prefer things that aren't out and out lies or flames about other folks, and have a basis in the reality of SpinDizzy. Things that occur in public areas are fair game. The things reported don't have to have actually happened, (any more than anything that happens here does) but make sure you don't overstep the social boundaries and rules of interaction that we have. These are pretty broad guidelines, but we expect good sense to apply.

Thanks! Argon, Editor @Action News