Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.

[surreality]

@Apos @faraday Exactly that.

Beyond that, these kinds of threads are currently scattered amongst Ads, Constructive, and Shout in the Dark. That's not really helpful, and proves how much they don't really have a home. If (generic) we are serious about growing this hobby and improving things, having a designated home for this content -- and to encourage the creation of games and innovations in existing ones -- it needs its own space.

It is actively heartening to pop into some of the threads where people are brainstorming like this. Others, yep, personal experience included, become nightmares of 'I hate that and it's just stupid because it's not what I like' or endless 'unless it's just like <other thing> it's going to be a piece of shit' or 'this thing (that almost every game does with no ill effect) will completely destroy this if you allow it to occur!' kinds of garbage.

These are the kinds of things that aren't constructive, aren't well-thought-out, aren't even thought out on the most basic level, and yet... people end up responding to them at length to either clarify or reassure or just defend themselves from personal attacks piling high (ALL OUTSIDE THE PIT) based on the most absurd nonsense.

That gets in the way of someone making a game purely based on how much time is being wasted dealing with a parade of Chicken Littles and shit-flingers and One True Way-ists in addition to how annoying, frustrating, and discouraging it is. Especially since most of these people would never play there anyway -- so it's not even a matter of 'oh well you'd have to deal with this on a game from the same people, too'. Well, that kind of shit is generally not allowed to go on for pages on end on most games, and that's the case for a very valid reason.

How the same people -- and I'm talking about the communal pool of everyone in the hobby here -- can't internalize 'this would be shitty behavior on a game that would never go on like this without everyone calling it absurd and obnoxious' can think it's perfectly reasonable and not equally absurd and obnoxious here sometimes blows my mind.

We have space for absurd and obnoxious, and it shouldn't be in brainstorming/creation/concept/innovation threads.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

One True Way-ists

In my experience it's been the One True Way-ists who have instigated a lot of firestorms outside the hog pit. Because come on... if you say "X is the dumbest thing ever, it's everything that's wrong with MUSHing", that's about as much a glove to the face as saying to a Trekkie "OMG I can't believe people actually watch Star Trek. Yuck." Gamers are passionate about the things we like. And when people call the things we like dumb, we get worked up about it.

I think a great deal of drama in the constructive threads would be averted if more folks would just acknowledge that there is not just one "right" way of doing something. And yes, I'm guilty of it too sometimes and I don't mind being called out on it. I see that as something that more active moderation could address by nudging people to tone down the hyperbole. Because regular posters doing it just gets ignored (believe me, I've tried, and so have others.)

[krmbm]

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

But I'd want other Staff on the game to be able to post, too, y'know?

And it to not just be one single big BLAH of a post.

This is pretty much what RPG-D (http://rpg-directory.com/index.php) does. It seems to work for them.

[Thenomain]

@lithium said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@auspice I am still of the opinion that the Advertisement thread should be an initial post by the author and then locked, so the initial poster can edit it but no discussion about it. Put the discussion in other topics.

Would be super awesome nice if there was an automatic thread creation somewhere for that conversation.

[skew]

Sorry if this has already been said, didn't really want to sift through 250 whatever replies. But...

Anyone who knows me knows my opinion of MuSoapBox is quite poor. I think the value in this place comes from advertisements, how-tos, code posts, and other such things that are positive, helpful, and generally not opinion based. So my vote is if the administrators are looking to do something, police those areas a little more firmly.

Ex: Replies to advertisements should be things like "Sorry, how do I connect?" "Please link website" "I just started playing here, if anyone else wants to join" and other positive, helpful responses. Replies to questions about "How do I make TinyMux output a list in reverse order" should be technical responses, not people's thoughts and feelings about the posters intent with their code project.

[Auspice]

@skew said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Ex: Replies to advertisements should be things like "Sorry, how do I connect?" "Please link website" "I just started playing here, if anyone else wants to join" and other positive, helpful responses.

So this was suggested once before and the utter lashback ("How dare we not be able to say negative things about a game!") was enormous.

Never mind the sheer amount of work that would be involved if we tried to make it FAQ-style only where we stripped out, say, the last one ("I just started playing here") and it was only questions and answers ("Are Kerberois allowed?" "What's the website?") and mods had to keep moving all the inevitable chatter elsewhere because we'd have to pick and choose throughout.

I think if it was a blanket rule of 'Only the game staff can post in a thread,' it'd ultimately be easier to police because I could, at-a-glance tell if a post is a game staffer providing informative information ("Hey guys, here's a few new questions answered..." "We're launching a huge plot next week" "We'll be having some downtime tomorrow, sorry!") versus people just chattering on the thread.

It'd be a much more clearly defined rule and easier for us moderators to maintain. That way, we'd also avoid the other issue we run into: the concern of members of me or Gany (for example) policing in different manners.

Is it a touch draconian? Sure. But I think if when an ad thread is started someone (and some of y'all are v. active and would be on the ball about this) made threads in the Constructive and Pit areas, I or another mod could then drop a post in the ad thread linking them. Then the worries of 'But no one will see the terrible things we have to say!' are gone (because that's been the only worry I've seen; that the negative things won't be seen... no one's ever worried about the positive press )

[3543thrh67]

Perhaps an alternative.. Advertising an open game? Make a post in constructive criticism as well? For the idle chatter, enjoyment, /polite/ explaining of displeasure, etc. Then the first post on each one can have a link to the other.

[ThatGuyThere]

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

So this was suggested once before and the utter lashback ("How dare we not be able to say negative things about a game!") was enormous.

I was part of this I am a firm believer that if positive things are allowed to be said negative things should be as well. I have mush less of an issue with ad threads being locked to just the add or just q+a things but if positive opinions are allowed then negative ones should be as well.
Of the examples Skew used: "Sorry, how do I connect?" "Please link website" "I just started playing here, if anyone else wants to join

I find the first two fine foe a g+a perspective the last likely better suited for a constructive or shot in the dark or whatever looking for folks section is called.

[Auspice]

@icanbeyourmuse said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Perhaps an alternative.. Advertising an open game? Make a post in constructive criticism as well? For the idle chatter, enjoyment, /polite/ explaining of displeasure, etc. Then the first post on each one can have a link to the other.

And how would we police this? A number of game administrators barely touch this board except to post ads. How often do they not come back for days, if ever, before posting responses? That's why I'm also hesitant to lock the thread to just the poster and would rather it be to the game staff as a whole. That way if one of the fellow staffers looks in and goes 'Oh, hey, okay, I can answer these.' or two months down the line, a new staffer joins their crew and starts answering questions or posting about events, new grid/sphere openings, etc.

I'm not going to go hunting them down to smack them on the hand and go 'ah-ah, you didn't follow our rules. You have to go back and post a second thread, now.'

@thatguythere said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I was part of this I am a firm believer that if positive things are allowed to be said negative things should be as well. I have mush less of an issue with ad threads being locked to just the add or just q+a things but if positive opinions are allowed then negative ones should be as well.

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

The positive is often 'I'm playing here and I enjoy it for X reasons' whereas the negative is often 'I hate this place, I hate the Staff, and I think the Staff are a bunch of <insert personal attacks>' at which point there's pages upon posts of in-fighting and argumentative behavior.

That is why a number of people want it split off. Because it's never just a singular negative review. Well, okay, I have actually seen one or two well-worded, polite negative reviews. But they are incredibly rare and few and far between. More often it's a targeted attack against the game-runners that turns into a dogpile and rarely an actual broken-down review of the game itself.

[bored]

I still maintain that there's a value, and even a necessity for a critical venue and some visibility for it.

You can sit here and promote the rhetoric that criticism is always the monsters tearing down delicate creators, but we also have real examples of games run by the monsters. This whole moderation movement came in the middle of precisely a situation like that (see United Heroes or whatever it was called, a game that ticked every box from deleting all critical speech, to propaganda posts, to staffers sexually harassing players).

The forum needs to be able to handle that. As usual, I do not care about the how, I am ambivalent among different solutions. I do not begrudge anyone their more polite areas. But a publicly visible space needs to be available where someone can easily (and in accordance with forum rules) say that a place is a legit garbage fire when it's a legit garbage fire.

[ThatGuyThere]

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

Then that would be an argument for locking the threads to only the ads and legit q+a, nothing will ever convince me that allowing positive without negative as well is anything else but an attempt to allow others to blow smoke up my ass which is the exact reason I have have the entire ad section on ignore for months.

[Roz]

@thatguythere said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

Then that would be an argument for locking the threads to only the ads and legit q+a, nothing will ever convince me that allowing positive without negative as well is anything else but an attempt to allow others to blow smoke up my ass which is the exact reason I have have the entire ad section on ignore for months.

I'm not sure why you're arguing about this. Didn't @Auspice bring up ad threads specifically to say "It might be time for us to just lock the ad threads to just their ads and let people discuss them elsewhere and we can leave links to the other threads"? She's already agreed to a thing that fulfills your wants.

[Auspice]

@thatguythere said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

Then that would be an argument for locking the threads to only the ads and legit q+a, nothing will ever convince me that allowing positive without negative as well is anything else but an attempt to allow others to blow smoke up my ass which is the exact reason I have have the entire ad section on ignore for months.

Which is why I'm proposing exactly that. Threads in which only the staff for the game can post informative information, along with links to threads for more expansive discussion at large (so that the broader discussion is not 'hidden').

Negative discussion and disagreements (so long as it is not 'down and dirty') is allowed in the Constructive areas.

@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I'm not sure why you're arguing about this. Didn't @Auspice bring up ad threads specifically to say "It might be time for us to just lock the ad threads to just their ads and let people discuss them elsewhere and we can leave links to the other threads"? She's already agreed to a thing that fulfills your wants.

Thank you.

ETA: F&L was an example of this. Someone posted a 'negative' review, but went into an extremely gross, sexually repulsive depiction of the game runners. Of course we weren't going to leave that in place. Isn't that precisely the sort of thing we stand up against? Personal attacks on such a scale? But people freaked out that we were removing negative reviews. However, once the initial fire died down, someone else came back and posted a negative review of the game itself (without personal attacks on the game staff, but on their methods) and that review stood. Reviews like that would be wholly acceptable in a thread in Mildly Constructive and could be discussed. This could remain in an open area, accessible by anyone, and be in a link right within the Ad thread itself.

I think this would satisfy what both @bored and @ThatGuyThere are asking for.

[ThatGuyThere]

@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@thatguythere said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

Then that would be an argument for locking the threads to only the ads and legit q+a, nothing will ever convince me that allowing positive without negative as well is anything else but an attempt to allow others to blow smoke up my ass which is the exact reason I have have the entire ad section on ignore for months.

I'm not sure why you're arguing about this. Didn't @Auspice bring up ad threads specifically to say "It might be time for us to just lock the ad threads to just their ads and let people discuss them elsewhere and we can leave links to the other threads"? She's already agreed to a thing that fulfills your wants.

I realize I am in agreement with Auspice and didn't think I was arguing with her just stating my opinion on the matter being discussed. the quote were included to give my remarks context.

The one area where we probably disagree is seeing the negative overwhelming the positive as an inherently bad thing.

[Auspice]

@thatguythere said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The one area where we probably disagree is seeing the negative overwhelming the positive as an inherently bad thing.

It's the personal attacks and dogpiling. Negative reviews can outweigh positive, sure.

It's the fact that it becomes a dogpile of personal attacks more often than not... outside of the Hog Pit.

You know this happens. You can't deny that you've seen it. It's in our nature to just shrug and move on when you see a positive post. Or to just hit that upvote. But when it's a negative one? Oh boy, crack those knuckles and dive on in! How many people have joined in when it's even a game they've never played on but have just heard about?

[surreality]

@thatguythere said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The one area where we probably disagree is seeing the negative overwhelming the positive as an inherently bad thing.

I'm reading all this as 'in the constructive area, it would be, if it becomes overwhelmingly negative, it gets split/people can take that part to the Pit'. Which is more or less what happens now and isn't a bad thing really.

I dunno if we get a notice every time something splits, like 'discussion of the X situation has been moved to the Pit' or such, but something like that with a link to where it was moved would be helpful.

That would be enough to alert the prospective unwary newcomer that there is a major negative discussion going on with the ability to go look into it if they choose.

[ThatGuyThere]

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

You know this happens. You can't deny that you've seen it.

I do know this happens and have never denied it, I just don't see it as a bad thing. You spins the wheel you takes your changes is my basic philosophy in this regard.
Hell there is a reason I follow the old Wora maxim of not mentioning games I like when they aren't being talked about here.

[surreality]

@thatguythere You don't see it as a bad thing. A lot of us who are trying to get shit done sometimes really do.

[faraday]

@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The forum needs to be able to handle that. As usual, I do not care about the how, I am ambivalent among different solutions. I do not begrudge anyone their more polite areas.

Just wanted to note that nobody is suggesting that negative reviews be shunted off to the Hog Pit. Reasonable adults should be able to post a negative review: "I cannot recommend playing on this game because staff did (this bad thing, with facts)" without the entire thread turning into a freaking dumpster fire complete with people posting popcorn GIFs and random snarky commentary to egg on one side or the other. Sadly we've seen more of the latter.

Shifting gears... I agree with @Auspice. If it's an "Ad" thread then it should just be for game staff to post ads/announcements IMHO. There's nothing wrong with having a separate thread for Q&A and discussion (positive and negative, as long as negative doesn't get too deep into the mudslinging). Splitting up positive and negative commentary about the same game always struck me as goofy.

[Roz]

I feel like I'm seeing a lot of suggestions about pretty detailed requirements for mod actions along the lines of "peel off posts one by one and move them into the Hog Pit and leave a link back at the original post."

I've kind of gotten fully on board with the idea some others have brought up of just letting the mods delete posts and letting people recreate their own conversations. It'll let things run more efficiently, and it might actually get people to eventually learn to think more about what they're posting and where they're posting. And warning repeat offenders and the like. I know at least one of the Reddit subs I frequent has a policy of deleting subsequent posts from folks arguing about post deletions with a message of "Direct arguments about moderation to the modmail." That probably won't fly on MSB because people are pretty attached to getting to do things publicly, but idk, if not that then maybe at least a dedicated post if you really want to argue about stuff.

Leave ad threads for the ads, ad updates, and maybe links to discussion posts elsewhere on the forum. Either lock it (if the functionality exists) or delete extraneous posts.

I guess my overall feeling is that with limiting moderation bandwith, it's better to just be brutally efficient and let the posters take the extra effort of starting new threads elsewhere and leaving behind indications that there are threads.