Make MSB great again!

[Arkandel]

(I do apologise for the title)

Here on MSB we criticise everything, but I'd like to think that power can be harnessed for good as well as for evil! So let's use it to improve MSB itself.

How would you improve the forum? What would you do differently?

Before I give you the floor please let me offer a couple of guiding principles. Think of them as constraints - those won't change, but they can also be viewed as goals.

• The only content that's curated here deals with the utmost asshattery; misogyny, racism, sexual harassment, doxxing, real-life threats, spamming, etc.

• I'd rather have as little 'moderation' as possible. You shouldn't have to trust the people who run this place to do anything more than keep it running and not sell/abuse your data. Otherwise the forum is populated by peers and we're all equal here.

• I am lazy. Please create as little recurring work for me as humanly possible.

Having said that, MSB is sometimes accused of being too attack-happy and that's... a fair claim. To me though it's also a perversion of its original purpose, which was to succeed and not copy WORA; we should be criticising games out of love for the hobby in order to make them better, not because we are cynics who've seen it all and get off my lawn.

Ideally I'd like us - as the adults that we are - to handle our own when they go out of line, and allow members to be exposed to the level of negativity they're comfortable with. The Hogpit has worked to a certain extent but its... spirit, let's say, has been known to take over other threads.

So how do we reconcile all these goals and encourage constructiveness?

Make MSB better. Tell us how you'd do it.

[saosmash]

I feel like we just have the same damn fights over and over again. There's got to be a way to put a cork in round 111.

[Arkandel]

@saosmash said in Make MSB great again!:

I feel like we just have the same damn fights over and over again. There's got to be a way to put a cork in round 111.

What is that way?

Also, should we stop debating the same issues all over again? Do we know no new ideas will come up? If you come in late to a debate should you be told it's already been discussed?

[KDraygo]

@arkandel I agree that more moderation of content is not the answer. That is not what this place is, people should be free to speak their mind with the understanding that others are able to reply in the same manner, at least in hog pit. In the other sections, try to stay on topic with the proper tone as much as possible and if not, divert to hog pit.

The only "moderation" I believe that is needed is basically housekeeping. Keeping the place neater as was outlined here. This way people have more freedom to choose what they want to read and what they don't. If they choose to delve deeper into more heated discussion, it is their choice to head to the linked thread instead of having to sift through possibly pages of mess they don't want to see to find what they want. That may be a big turn off for some by itself.

[Misadventure]

A wiki to store the same old fight summaries, played by lists, MU* lists.

A link off any advertisement to a thread where people can go wild. I'd like to be able to find both the ad content and updates with ease, and make it easy to find the discussion about the given ad poster or place.

A reminder that phrasing things in the form of accusations, and not questions pretty much guarantees that your discussion is going no where.

[Lotherio]

Three things.

Easier to fork threads. One, as @KDraygo suggests, a thread in the pit or mildly construction from when its posted. Linked so folks know where to go to reply. Two, a category between criticism and hog pit, to have constructive, critical and outright flame (though it will just go as things go now, adding something this much extra will be ignored). Three, let folks rate on critical vs constructive instead up upvote and downvote, if folks could ignore the highly critical somehow, might lead to less mud slinging outside the hog pit.

Then again, it is what it is, you can add all the tools you want, but the history of here and its splendid predecessors, it will revert regardless. Look at recently, past few weeks sort of slow, then finally UH blood in the water pans out to something more concrete and its a feeding frenzy with more posts in less than 12 hours than the totality of a week or two combined and continuing. You can change the format but you can't truly change the community, though currently you have many lurkers and folks who would never post coming here, MSB gained some credibility, though the UH horror show (both staff side conspiracy, cover ups, and then the disgruntled players with pitchforks attacking anything remotely sympathetic to a 'hey, lets see what's going on'). The middle ground is often easily lost in favor of some level of sensationalism fed by hyperbole.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

The ad section is my only major complaint with the forum that I actually want to press for change on. I don't think it has any use at all as an advertising platform at the moment.

Various ideas for it have been tossed around. I definitely think the commentary on the games (which I still think should exist, it's not like I want people to stop being mean to games) should be clearly separated from the ads themselves and that separation should be enforced whenever it becomes a problem. I don't know exactly where the Yelp! stuff should go (maybe the Hog Pit, maybe its own subsection, idk).

And I agree these threads should be clearly linked so people can follow the conversation.

[Auspice]

I think two threads for games (ad / discussion) could be good. Maybe not in the Hog Pit tho. Mildly Constructive, but with a potential to move to the Pit if it gets too bad?

I only say because not everyone subscribes to the Pit. And requiring it to view discussion threads on games seems wrong.

[Arkandel]

@misadventure said in Make MSB great again!:

A wiki to store the same old fight summaries, played by lists, MU* lists.

Who would write the summaries? Would it be objective? Does it work for late comers who might want to debate things others happen to have seen before?

A link off any advertisement to a thread where people can go wild. I'd like to be able to find both the ad content and updates with ease, and make it easy to find the discussion about the given ad poster or place.

Alright, how about this then: Please feel free to create offshoots of advertisement threads in the Constrictive and/or Hogpit sections, and I'll edit the original posts as needed to include those links so it's easy to jump back and forth. That way you can choose the level of content you want:

• The advertisement thread is just 101 'what is this game about' with rather basic information primarily aimed to hype a MU* up, which I'll frown at anyone being more than slightly critical of,
• The Constructive thread where suggestions are meant to be made, and where you can be as critical as you want as long as you attack ideas and not people,
• The Hogpit thread where the gloves can come off.

Does that work?

A reminder that phrasing things in the form of accusations, and not questions pretty much guarantees that your discussion is going no where.

Although that's possible, at some point it'll become condescending as fuck.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@auspice said in Make MSB great again!:

I think two threads for games (ad / discussion) could be good. Maybe not in the Hog Pit tho. Mildly Constructive, but with a potential to move to the Pit if it gets too bad?

This would be my ideal, since I think there's real value in lurkers or randos who just follow a link to the forum reading the commentary sometimes. People who might not want to opt in can still find out what's going on to some degree.

[Meg]

@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:

@misadventure said in Make MSB great again!:

A wiki to store the same old fight summaries, played by lists, MU* lists.

Who would write the summaries? Would it be objective? Does it work for late comers who might want to debate things others happen to have seen before?

I will write all the summaries. They will be written in the style of the MSB Cliques thread. All my inherent biases will remain intact.

[SunnyJ]

Have some easy-to-find, constantly-updated list of games.

Keep the Hogpit in the Hogpit

Keep the Advertisement Threads free of nasty bashing (although I do feel like players should be free to post in them things like "Had bad experiences with this game. Will explain in the Hogpit").

[Arkandel]

@sunnyj The list of games can definitely be useful, but it's also one of the things anyone can do right now. Start a thread, make a list of games with their wiki address, MSB threads or any other synopsis you think is relevant then keep it up to date by editing that first post.

I'll be happy to sticky and make sure it stays clean. I just won't do it myself.

[saosmash]

@arkandel It's not really discussions I'm talking about, though. IDK how to describe what I mean, but it's not that we can't have discussions that touch on the same points over and over -- because sometimes that is indeed how new ideas happen -- it's just we seem to keep falling into the same pissing matches over and over?

[ThatGuyThere]

I object to the word again in the title of this thread, at what point was MSB great in the past?

[ThatGuyThere]

@misadventure said in Make MSB great again!:

A link off any advertisement to a thread where people can go wild. I'd like to be able to find both the ad content and updates with ease, and make it easy to find the discussion about the given ad poster or place.

If we do something like this can we also put the add as on opt in group like Politics and various other things because if all the ads threads are is a set of commercials I do not see the need to read them here since I can read the same commercials if I care to on literally every game I play.

[Arkandel]

@thatguythere The dank memes.

[Lotherio]

@thatguythere said in Make MSB great again!:

@misadventure said in Make MSB great again!:

A link off any advertisement to a thread where people can go wild. I'd like to be able to find both the ad content and updates with ease, and make it easy to find the discussion about the given ad poster or place.

If we do something like this can we also put the add as on opt in group like Politics and various other things because if all the ads threads are is a set of commercials I do not see the need to read them here since I can read the same commercials if I care to on literally every game I play.

Some genius could combine this with @SunnyJ 's suggestion of a list of games. Opt in to see active games, a link on each one to any critique in mildly constructive or amusing constructive insights via the hog pit.

Oh, wait this takes work, and history has proven that any monitored list is just a lot of work that either is dropped by the roadside or just months behind like mushcode.com's list. Not monitored is just free-for-all on the mud sites (top mud sites, mudconnector), that while folks on those sites can critique and criticize in the their respective forums, there is no way for potential players to get freely offered critiques and criticisms.

But if someone could though ...

[Apos]

@three-eyed-crow Even though we have the mudconnector or mudstats, having a sticky'd post on the Ad forum just listing active games run by board members on here might not be awful, since it's probably games more relevant to what people here are looking for anyways than those aggregates. Might help make the ad forum more useful for the purpose you're thinking of.

[Ganymede]

@three-eyed-crow said in Make MSB great again!:

The ad section is my only major complaint with the forum that I actually want to press for change on. I don't think it has any use at all as an advertising platform at the moment.

Stop stealing my ideas.

But, yes, this. Keep advertising free-and-clear of negativity. Open up a Yelp! section for honest/dishonest reviews of the game. Mark clearly.

Most importantly, police each other politely.