I'm thinking of something that allows characters of level 20 plus to log feedback about other characters, which the imms can then refer to if they want. I'm thinking:

Feedback gargoroth + good rp while we ranked.
Feedback gargoroth - whined when I killed him and took one item.
Feedback gargoroth - for some reason, didn't attempt to defend inner when I raided solo
Feedback gargoroth + I'm a newbie and this guy took the time to help me learn to regear.

Each entry would be stamped with ip address and char name. Imms could use a command to list all positive or alternatively all negative feedback. This would allow them to better assess whether someone only rp's when they know their imm is likely around, is a regular griefer or someone doing a highly targeted looting for a reason, or whether their rp improves the experience for other players even though an imm has yet to snoop it.

We had a discussion about this tonight, and while it might be interesting to read mortal feedback on a character, we really struggled to see how this would change anyones behavior. It is such an easy system to scam that we felt it wouldn't be a decent basis to give rewards on. Feeback would turn into back-and-forths or circular compliments to allies. The Battlefield forum suggests that too many players think all their enemies are bad RPers and all their allies are good RPers.

I can't imagine it being anything but back-and-forth bitching feedback on enemies and flowery love on allies.

Although I'd note for the record that some chars are badly rp'd with enemies but well with friends.

Preventing abuse is definitely a problem, but there are a few things you could do to mitigate it. Taken together, they might be effective enough to make the overall system useful:

1. Dole out "feedback points" based on hours played. This causes characters to be judicious in choosing when to leave feedback and limits the influence a rogue character can exert.

2. Start all characters with a default number of "feedback points". However, in the output from the "show feedback" staff command, hide comments from characters that lack some threshold of hours played. Once the character reaches the threshold his past comments start to actually count. This prevents someone from rolling up multiple characters just to abusing the feedback system. In order for their feedback to count they have to actually play those characters for some length of time. The hour threshold should not be public knowledge.

3. Ignore mutual feedback between two character when it's the same type. If I enter negative feedback on you and you enter negative feedback on me then both comments are ignored. Same deal when the mutual feedback is positive (in order to nerf quid pro quo arrangements). Ignoring mutual positive feedback will result in some collateral damage (i.e. legitimate comments being ignored) but I could live with that.

4. Let sufficiently high level staff set an "ignore all feedback" flag on characters that they observe committing obvious abuses. This flag would be applied retroactively to feedback that was entered prior to the abuse being observed. Characters so flagged would not notice the flag being set. This is important, because it turns those characters into honeypots. The player keeps trying to abuse the system with that character but all his effort is for naught.

5. Let sufficiently high level staff set a "extra credible" flag on characters who have a record of leaving feedback that meshes with what the staff themselves have already observed. Let's say Zulg sees characters Isildur and Daurwyn acting like total douche bags. He then notices that Humbert has left negative feedback on both Isildur and Daurwyn calling out the same sort of behavior. So he flags the Humbert character as "credible" and all of Humbert's feedback now gets highlighted in the output from the "show feedback" command.

6. This is a no-brainer, but ignore all feedback between characters that have ever connected from IP addresses in the same subnet. This has the happy side effect of rendering it impossible for two characters that have used the same proxy server to leave feedback on each other.

If i was spending time implementing things for the MUD, i'd rather work
on something tangible that will make the mud more fun to play.

Besides the actual work on implementing all of these barriers you still have to spend
time going over feedback, interpreting it, hoping that it somehow makes sense
at the end and making decisions on it?

Yet more time spent behind the scenes with no obvious benefit to the players.

Make the reputation command usable to add or subtract a star by
player input (leave all the auto stuff the way it is) but if an
imperial character has a 0 rep with the fort he's not going to care.
and imms don't have to ignore whiny complaints ... wait MORE whiny
complaints or suckup stories of how cool bob's friend is. And the
players can have a little input. Make it where you can go rep bob
and see that bob seems to be well liked by empire though he is a
gnome.(or things like that) Only one star up or down per character
per character. Gives the players a little bit of individual input
but no severe game effect, a douchebag will get known as one even if
you haven't had dealings with him. It would make the reputation command
have a little pizzazz as well. I have no idea how much effort this would be to impliment, and if it is even enough different from the
above to be workable.
For less scamming you make it where it can only be done when both
characters involved are online and if you delete or con die your
'opinion star' dissappears. It could still be done but it would be
too much effort for most people for little gain and the most common
form of 'cheating' for this kind of deal would be easy to note 2 guys on the same ip repping up bob the gnome... etc...

Again just my 2 bucks.

-nt

n/t

Diggin' the short and direct! :)