ABSTRACT

In September 1993, tiring of the harassment my female identity received on IRC,2 I read of MicroMUSE, a MU* reputed to be “nonviolent, noncompetitive and collaborative” because of its mission as an educational tool for children (Leslie 1993: 34; Kelly and Rheingold 1993).3 Fascinated by the possibilities of self-representation and drawn to a more decorous environment than IRC, I logged in as a guest and shortly thereafter became a registered citizen of MicroMUSE. Within weeks I observed social conflict in this allegedly tranquil community to rival any I had seen or studied in real life as a social scientist and practitioner of mainstream western dispute resolution techniques. For the next two years, first as an ordinary citizen, then as a non-voting member of the governing body, more recently as a voting and technically powered director (in MUD parlance, a Wizard), I observed and participated in the community’s interpersonal conflicts, enacting roles of audience, aggressor, target, investigator, reporter, confidante, judge, and conciliator. In this chapter, I report what I learned during that period about the problems, strategies, and techniques of maintaining social order in cyber communities. In particular, I assess the application of well-established real-life tools of conflict management to virtual disputes.