Hmm... well, this was fun. Out of the loop for a bit and then kaboom, shitstorm. So, for starters, I wasn't made aware of what we'd been handed until after it had been published, at which point I said "huh, that's neat," and went to bed. But there seems to be a lot of unhappiness over it, so I'd like to sort out what happened and why and see if we can get everyone on the same page.
What happened prior to the publishing of the logs and mails and whatnot: ANN was approached by disgruntled member of IRED who had some stuff they wanted published. [To clarify - there was no infiltration, this was provided to us by a current member of IRED. That said, if you want to give us an award for worst infiltrators of the year, we'll take it. It'll give me something shiny to give my gf to show that we're going steady. Aaaannnyways...] The directorate of ANN gave it a quick read-through, edited out most of the stuff about RL (As I'm not part of the ANN team or the corp Directorate, I'm not in a position to apologize for them, but I will anyways. Sorry JR about the bit of RL that slipped through), and published it. A small blurb on ANN was written and that was it.
What happened afterward: One of ANN's readers linked the article on IGS and said some stuff about how this would be the downfall of IRED. Frankly, we all know that it won't be the end of IRED, they've been around for years and probably aren't going away any time soon. This then led to a bunch of people shouting "Down with this sort of thing" and basically spewing OOC vitriol on the IGS. While I mean no disrespect to any of the people involved, I find it hard to believe that their characters would suddenly behave that way if not for the feeding frenzy that was started. This really does seem (to me) like OOC bleeding right back into IC.
Unfortunately, ANN failed to do what it needed to and dissociate itself from the statements of the OP immediately, because in addition to not planning to put it up on IGS, we actually have a corp-wide ban on IGS posting in effect in order to keep some of our more impulsive members from getting dragged into arguments they shouldn't be in. So rather than heading this off when there was a chance, the echo chamber got going and we've seen where that ended up.
[ As an aside, I believe that this should demonstrate the distinction between Anshar and ANN quite clearly - as I have been the only reliably active member of Anshar for the last couple months and I had no knowledge at all of this going on. ]
On to the other issue, and were most people seem to have a problem with what was published: The dreaded Content.
The fact is that a lot of what ANN was given was OOC logs and mails from various channels. Understandably, posting these logs as part of the dump on an IC news site could be (and was) seen as a breach of the IC/OOC divide. My question is this: How would you have handled it to maintain the integrity of that divide? We've recently seen the growth of a couple of immersionist RP corps where all meaningful discussion is done IC and it would therefore be possible to release IC logs of their plotting and scheming. But what do you do with an organization like IRED where everything internal occurs OOC? If we were to cut it down to strictly IC, there'd be nothing. At least, nothing from the logs we were provided by the aforementioned disgruntled IRED member, we did have a leftover log from Stars End when JR chatted with Nikita about harassing LDIS.
For example, let's say that I'm in a corp. Let's say I'm even a member in good standing, not a spy. It comes up in discussion in corp chat to screw over another corp for whatever reason. However, the discussion doesn't technically occur in character - we're not sitting around a table /emoting our way though it, we're chatting in corp. Now let's say that my character has a conscience and decides to go and tell someone about this plan IC - or maybe goes and blabs about it on IGS or in a public bar or something. Was this a breach of the IC/OOC divide?
The other question then: How should something like this be handled in the future?
Not that I expect there to be a future event like this for us, but fate has a sense of humor, so who knows. ANN understands that this was mishandled even if they are still a bit surprised by the rather vitriolic response from all corners and intends to learn from the resulting clusterfuck.
Would you prefer to simply see such OOC logs never published? Should they be more heavily edited to exclude most of the OOC?
What parts of these OOC logs are viable information IC?
What parts of OOC logs in general are viable IC?
Should I be ignoring IC the fact that someone might be plotting to betray me simply because the plot is 'strictly OOC'?
How many people have actually read all of the logs in question? I haven't yet.
Hoping we can turn this towards a more civil discourse now that everyone's (hopefully) done calling Milo a dick.
Thanks,
Orthic
The Stone-Faced Old Man
Author
Topic: Information Leak / I-RED Disclaimer. (Read 11473 times)