The dilemma here is

- FC allows for silent tracking simply because they have got no way to effectively police this.

- FC may ban an account for harassment if it conciders tells from it as spam

- For some people it's ok to track others if you just notify them of the fact they are being tracked.

- For some peope it is immoral to track others without providing a way for the player to protect themselves from tracking.

What do you think?


<sub>A request has been sendt to FC to clarify their position on wether or not a single tell from a bot resulting from an active command for each player recieving the tell does qualify as harassment. FC has yet to answer.

We will not put any functionality into the bot if it increases the chances having the bot banned, however infringing of privacy is a serious matter. Since I don't want to be tracked without giving my concent I am not sure if I can be part of the team that makes such tracking easier.</sub>

Anyone can add anyone to their friends list in AO and see their online/offline status. The player being tracked doesn't know. In my opinion this is a non-issue.

Tracking of players is designed into the Anarchy Online chat system, as it also is in AoC afaik.

As far as the ethical and moral issues surrounding it, it's ultimately in the hands of the bot administrator. We already provide the tools needed to track someone, because the game provides the tools needed to track someone, and we make use of this for very basic functions of the bot like logon/off announcements, auto invites, news and so on.

I know there are bots out there that effectively monitor all members of notable orgs on both or some sides of the conflict.

I strongly doubt BeBot will ever ship with something that would be considered to invasive, while at the same time i know of many orgs who would welcome with open arms more detailed player tracking to allow them to build stats of what times the org members are more active. The problem that arises from that is that there is a small step from innocent statistics to full tracking of individual players allowing you to for example say that Khalem was online 6 hours today, 12 yesterday, 40 hours this week, 200000 hours since i began tracking.

Ultimately it comes down to Funcom allowing and designing for this to be possible.
Funcom themselves actively tracks your online time and activities for their own internal statistical use.

I know some online character databases has kept track of players online time in the past, and i know firsthand that people have actually been fired based on the fact that said database showed them as having been online while alledgedly being home sick.

Loud and enthusiastic "Yes please!"... I've been asked several times for just such a feature, specifically I'd love to see a breakdown of monthly/weekly/daily usage, in raw statistical numbers (not who's on, but when 12 people are on, vs 4 people, vs 40 people, etc)

last I checked the online notifies on Auno was just for RK1. Onlineorg expands this to include both dimensions.