We're breaching people's privacy

Community Larp discussion
#21

This is specifically for photos which have already been made public.

As for the general issue: its up to the photographers. They don’t work for NZLARPS, we don’t own their photos, and we can’t dictate to them where they post them. It also means that specific privacy concerns are largely their problem, not ours (though GMs should be warning people that they may be photographed and that they should talk to the photographers if required).

In my experience, the photographers are already on top of these issues. They don’t post photos which make people look bad, will take stuff down on request, will avoid photographing you if you ask them to, and seek consent for wider republication. That’s not the same as getting explicit consent from everyone to post their photos online though, which is why a standard notice on signup forms is required.

#22

[quote=“IdiotSavant”][quote=“Helikaon”]I was referencing paid lists. Many, many times I have seen issues of payments received but not registered be resolved because people have read the list, and then said “I have paid, is this list up to date?” or even things like “I put down bunking but am tenting here”.

The best way to resolve this, as far as I can tell, without lists, is to have the GMs liaise with every individual player and chase up payments.[/quote]
They should be doing that anyway. I certainly do.[/quote]

This is an unreasonable and discouraging approach to take with GMs running a game with 200+ people in it.

I agree that there should be a disclaimer, though, then people will just complain about either favouritism for those who are being individually emailed, or will cry foul about not being able to attend if the rule is “no permission, no attend”.

#23

They should be doing that anyway. I certainly do.[/quote]
This is an unreasonable and discouraging approach to take with GMs running a game with 200+ people in it. [/quote]

Chimera manages. But if other events hold themselves to a lower administrative standard, they have only themselves to blame for the time they spend fixing the resulting mistakes.

#24

[quote=“Walter Hamer”]

Also, any citizens advice bureau is able to offer free legal advice.[/quote]

They told me they can provide free general legal advice to all, but also said they can give specialized legal advice to non-profit organizations. They’ve said they can help us with what we need either way so all good.

Hannah

#25

I would like to acknowledge Anna Klein’s extremely timely response to this issue. This issue was raised yesterday at noon, and she implemented an update to the Chimera site that evening.

This is a great response to an issue we all, as a community, must own. Anna’s professionalism is an example all of us.

#26

What ? The realistic proposition is that participants are asked agree to public “paid/accommodation arrangement” lists because this is easier for the GMs. If there are some participants who wish to be more private, then the GMs can handle these on a case by case basis, there is no reason to suggest that that we have significant number of larp participants who really care about this.

The long term solution is a generic web site that handles all of projects event management. This way you, as a participant, can log in and privately review your payment status, and not have to parse a public list of all paid-up attendees.

#27

[quote=“Mike Curtis”]
The long term solution is a generic web site that handles all of projects event management. This way you, as a participant, can log in and privately review your payment status, and not have to parse a public list of all paid-up attendees.[/quote]

I had one of these running a year or so ago, free for any GM’s to use and no-one did.

#28

[quote=“Mandos”][quote=“Mike Curtis”]
The long term solution is a generic web site that handles all of projects event management. This way you, as a participant, can log in and privately review your payment status, and not have to parse a public list of all paid-up attendees.[/quote]

I had one of these running a year or so ago, free for any GM’s to use and no-one did.[/quote]

I think you’ll find that’s about to change :stuck_out_tongue:

#29

An opt-in situation for the Photos issue is really just not practical.
First off, each person will have to individually shown the photo. Now, on most photos there will be more than one person, so basically you’re breaching other people’s privacy by trying to protect someone’s privacy to confirm if a person gives their permission.

I reckon doing what most companies do is probably one of the easiest things to do: Add a disclaimer, and have anyone who wants to discuss said disclaimer contact you. Sure, some people might not like it, but what’s more important, preventing a few people being annoyed, or preventing a lawsuit?
And if the administrative part of GMing gets too taxing, then people will be more reluctant to GM I reckon. Just my thoughts =P.

#30

I don’t know the capabilities of Diatribe, but can you create a locked forum that’s only visible to people who are signed in? Could just be called ‘Registration and Payment Status’ or something and each game can post their admin there?

Would limit the name sharing to the general community rather than the whole world.

#31

[quote=“amphigori”]I don’t know the capabilities of Diatribe, but can you create a locked forum that’s only visible to people who are signed in? Could just be called ‘Registration and Payment Status’ or something and each game can post their admin there?

Would limit the name sharing to the general community rather than the whole world.[/quote]

It’s possible to create a forum that only registered users can see.

Anyone can make a Diatribe account though, so a dedicated stalker who registered could still see such a forum.

#32

I’m thinking more of the scenario someone else mentioned of a prospective employer type finding your name in a random Google search, rather than a determined stalker :smiley:

#33

While such a solution would be welcome, we’ll need to educate GMs to use it. And the problem isn’t just Diatribe - as the conversation has moved to faceSpy we’re now seeing paid-lists being posted there as well.

#34

We could create a private communications sub-forum under each game forum that wanted one, only visible to people participating in that game. The lists could be posted there. That would prevent random people who register on Diatribe seeing the lists.

However, that would require someone (likely the GMs of the game, but possibly also other delegated users) to keep the list of users with access up to date.

It wouldn’t protect anyone’s privacy against visibility to other participants. But it seems like the proposed solution is to continue with public lists and just inform everyone in advance of them. It would be more private than that.

As a side-effect, posters who are shy of posting things to the entire world may like to post in a private forum that everyone in the game can see. That way their exposure is confined to fellow participants.

#35

Another idea for sign ups is to allow people to pick a name to be displayed for the sign up confirmation. That way they could put their own name in, a nickname, character name, major NPC name or just pick ‘anonymous’.

Sign up confirmations aren’t the only time player names are displayed in diatribe but it does seem to be the most prominent offender.

It would be a bit of a pain for the treasurer, but hopefully it’d just mean picking a different column from a spreadsheet.

#36

Just felt like adding, from recent unpleasant experience, that getting in touch with old players from six months or a year or whenever ago, because you’re about to publish the larp and want to give them just credit as beta-players and/or ask for pics is vile. If they don’t answer, did my e-mailed query get stuck in the spam folder? Are they not answering e-mail for other reasons? Is this simply something they don’t want to be bothered with? (It was hard enough getting in touch with some of these players the first time, alas. Everybody has lives, godammit…)

So yeah, the next game I run is going to have a section on privacy in the sign-ups. Probably with a note about whether they’re okay being credited if anything gets published. And their feelings on pictures.

I think having the option of a handle for public use, as Derek suggested, might be appreciated.

(Incidentally, if anyone reading this was in Tesla’s Wedding/Perambulate We Merrily, would like to be credited for their help as a playtester, and hasn’t yet given permission - drop me a line, okay? Cheers.)

#37

So just on this note, I was searching for an old thread, and my search results included lots of posts about banning Adam (which was completely unrelated to my search terms).

That’s the kind of thing that a potential employer might find, and might impact his RL opportunities. And that’s kinda stink.

I tested it by doing a google search on his full name, plus Auckland, and the third post in the Google search results is the post about his ban, complete with what he was accused of - which could really likely put off an employer if they saw what was written.

I think disciplinary stuff should really stay within the community it affects, and not potentially impact someone’s life outside of the community. So maybe additional considerations around privacy in situations like this need to be considered.

#38

On the one hand, this outcome is a natural consequence of acting in a manner that is so negative that a Society revokes your membership. Perhaps natural justice will be best served by, in the event that Adam P is allowed to re-join the Society, the National Committee make a similarly public announcement ?

I really do not think such information is covered by the Privacy Act. However, for argument’s sake, let us assume we wanted to keep this information within the community. The only way I can see this working would be if we had a special page on the nzlarps.org site that is only accessible to members. However, what would we do if someone wanted to discuss it on diatribe ? We would need a special NZLARPS forum for members only, and ensuring only members have access to it would be a maintenance nightmare. We would probably have to automate membership of the forum via a script that interrogates the NZLARPS membership database, a non-trivial matter.

#39

I don’t think that it’s the Societies place to influence ‘natural justice’ in applications outside of NZLARPs.

I think NZLARPs has every right to take disciplinary matters into their own hands, but in conversations about privacy I think it’s valid to consider how the Society can do so in such a way that it doesn’t impact the individual outside of the Society.

#40

I think transparency is important. We have always made our minutes and decisions public, and what we don’t want to do is lose the history of this decision or have it occluded.