How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?
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Someone didn't read my full-post. Instead, they wanted to mansplain shit to me like I wouldn't understand that people could live in 'communal' spaces.
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I would run like hell from that sort of presumptuous ooc demand! That's a huge red flag.
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I think there is often a difference between ooc rooms in games that are small enough for everyone to be known to each other vs huge games. It seems to me that people get more stressed out when they have no clue who Mr. Woe Is Me I'm In A Crisis but less so when it's someone who everyone knows is a habitual whiner/attention seeker/let me masturbate my RL stuff real or manufactured all over you and this can be ignored without feeling bad at all.
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@surreality I wasn't saying it was a problem. I was saying it was a matter of different cultures. I suppose I could have made that clearer. The point is that a lot of mushes don't consider OOC chatter a problem.
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OOC chatter isn't the issue, its when it spirals off into a variety of topics that lead to ill-will among players.
That issue can be the fear that players are allowed to make power builds solely to kill anyone they feel like killing.The issue can be attacking someones political or social values directly, or just in their presence.
The issue can be having no place to go where you can deal with OOC things, without an OOC Quiet Room.
The issue can be discussing a disliked play style and creating a hostile environment.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure Yes. Which is something some games solve by disallowing OOC chatter or outlining clear rules, both of which mushes are not usually inclined to do. Again. A culture issue, one which you basically need an active babysitter or staff bans to solve if they get out of hand. Which is what I said in my post.
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How do these games address off game communications? I assume not at all, because it's impossible to police but you never know.
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I keep having staff ask for a LFRP flag, so someone must be using it. And a channel. And auto add to the channel when you set the flag. That person isn't me; the tools for finding RP are Who, Where, Hangouts, Directory, Map, Events, BBoards, and Faction Channels.
How do you keep the OOC Lounge from becoming trash? The same way you keep channels from becoming trash, the bboards, the scenes, and @mail: You stop the trash talk.
Players have some control over this, asking people to calm down or respect others, and for those who take that as their cue to troll you kick it to staff. If staff refuses to do anything about it, you've learned something about the staff on that game; not exactly a win-win but I'll take all the silver linings you've got.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Meg said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:
Someone didn't read my full-post. Instead, they wanted to mansplain shit to me like I wouldn't understand that people could live in 'communal' spaces.
No I read you post I just disagreed with it. Making a separate room for bunks strikes me as breaking IC reality when what happens in one bunk could be seen by all others. Separate places in one room would make since since whispered conversations could be held but people would still notice two people in one bunk from the rest of the room. So exactly why in IC reality would someone in center of bunk room not be able to see actions happening in Bunk 37-A then I will consider them to be separate room worthy.
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Yet, that wasn't what you posted. You can miss me with the condescending shit of 'well this theme has communal living' and actually respond the way you did in this part, then, if you had read it all. I can see a /point/ in this reply, rather than just talking down at me. Whether or not we agree on it.
Yes, ICly, you can see what someone is doing in another bunk. But having somewhere to put your charbit when you are logged in and don't want to interact with others is perfectly reasonable. Even if you ICly can see everything that someone else is doing, doesn't mean they want to RP with you. If they don't, they'll take it elsewhere. No reason to police this shit as being 'what is IC'.
Edit to add: If you don't think they'll take it elsewhere, you are wrong. I have seen a lot of people in Pern theme where you are post-Hatching and living in a barracks take scenes to gdocs or in a barely used part of the grid to spoof out to get a scene in with a particular person that is premised based on a wanted interaction. (A quiet moment between two characters that maybe had a relationship before, between a student/teacher, etc.)
Edit to add: Obviously I was speaking as a generic 'you'. If someone doesn't want to RP with someone (or anyone else except the person they /want/ to RP with), then that is the you I am referring to. Not @ThatGuyThere. Though I can see how he'd make the mistake.
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I vote Quiet Room. No pages, no connect or disconnect messages, no speaking, no emits. You show on +where/who as being in the OOC Quiet Room.
Okay, maybe pages.
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@Meg
Well then back to the topic of this thread instead have having on grid a room like bunk 37-a that exists only to contain a bit, why not have ooc lounge or ooc quiet room that do the exact same thing.I have never said anyone has to rp with me so nice attempt at a strawman. I am fine with them having their scene where ever, in fact I have often said on these boards people should never feel obligated to rp with anyone they didn't want to. I would much rather have OOC room to park my bit in than a private IC room unless private IC room both makes scene from an IC perspective and will be likely to see enough RP to make the hassle of building it worthwhile from an OOC perspective.
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Okay you two get a room in the Hog Pit and let us know how you really feel.
@ThatGuyThere I can't remember where I first encountered it, but the Quiet Room thing really is nice.
Maybe Theno or Cobalt coded it? It's clearly OOC, no mistakes of typing disturb anyone else, you can still do channels or group paging if you like.
Those and RP rooms are excellent IMO.
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@Misadventure
First place I saw a quiet room that wasn't also basically a freezer for abandoned characters was Haunted Memories. Though that was right after my working second shift imposed vacation from mushing so it might have become a thing before that. -
Tangent-wise, I'd say the bunk situation is more or less exactly the kind of thing places code was made for.
The OOC areas in and of themselves are really not the problem. People behaving like trolls or attention whores or brats or creeps are the problem.
These people will be a problem whether you have OOC areas or not.
If you don't address the actual problem -- the obnoxious behaviors -- you're going to keep playing a game of very indirect whack-a-mole as people take the behaviors increasingly underground, where it generally becomes no less prevalent or problematic, but becomes a lot harder to police.
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They don't-- do the same thing? Again, you didn't read my full post. There are a number of things you can do in a private room that you can't do in a quiet room, even by yourself. I've RPed scenelets with myself in a private room, even, because watching the pacing and doing the poses helped.
Now, whether you think it's worth it or not is another thing. But saying a quiet room and a private room is equivalent is just false.
And eh, places code vs a room is negligible. If you're saying it's ok for them to scene in a way that doesn't involve other people with places, what makes it so different to just give someone a private room? I mean, if that's a theme/feel choice, then that's the choice. But it is something to think about. I really don't get why some games are so resistant to private rooms as a default.
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@Thenomain said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:
I keep having staff ask for a LFRP flag, so someone must be using it.
Or someone thinks its a good idea, as I once did, but then finds once it's implemented that nobody actually uses it. I dunno. If folks use it, more power to them.
How do you keep the OOC Lounge from becoming trash? The same way you keep channels from becoming trash, the bboards, the scenes, and @mail: You stop the trash talk.
Yeah, agreed. I don't see why the OOC Lounge is any different from any other mechanism of OOC communication. If it's breaking a rule or creating an unfriendly environment, deal with the actual problem. If not, and it's just annoying someone, they can talk to the other player like grown-ups or move.
Edit to avoid double-post:
@ThatGuyThere saidFirst place I saw a quiet room that wasn't also basically a freezer for abandoned characters was Haunted Memories. Though that was right after my working second shift imposed vacation from mushing so it might have become a thing before that.
We had a dedicated Idle Lounge that operated like a quiet room back on B5 in the early 90's. Might have pre-dated that too though, I dunno.
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@Meg said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:
To me the difference is a private room is on the grid so it should adhere to IC logic. I see no problem with someone wanting a private scene using an anywhere room temp room or what ever but for something connected to the grid at large I do want it to fit the world. I don't care about them RPing privately but I do care about the grid making logical sense from an IC perspective.
Now I am perfectly fine with anyone who wants to make a private room having one that makes IC sense. And I even have one character out of the four, I play that has one. For him it makes sense ICly and OOCly, others to not because for whatever reason it does not (usually OOC not wanting to build it unless I will be scening there once a week.)
However I do not see private OOC rooms as a replacement for an OOC area, if someone wants one as just a place ot park a bit and wants to go through the effort of building one for that purpose that is fine with me., but don't try to sell me on that being a replacement for an OOC lounge or quiet room because for me they fulfill a completely different purpose. -
@faraday said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:
If it's breaking a rule or creating an unfriendly environment, deal with the actual problem.
If people being obnoxious pricks sometimes with others is an offense to be banned, I'd have no players left.
While I don't like or see the need for an OOC Lounge, I know others like to use it to meet others OOCly and chat, so I'd leave it. I'd create a Quiet Room for people that want to idle peacefully, but be available by page to others who may want to specifically RP with them. And if the chatting gets tart or combative or abusive, then just fucking deal with the abusive shits as if they were abusive shits, no matter where.
There's people fucking dying in South Sudan, and this is what we're wasting our times with.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:
@faraday said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:
If it's breaking a rule or creating an unfriendly environment, deal with the actual problem.
If people being obnoxious pricks sometimes with others is an offense to be banned, I'd have no players left.
While I don't like or see the need for an OOC Lounge, I know others like to use it to meet others OOCly and chat, so I'd leave it. I'd create a Quiet Room for people that want to idle peacefully, but be available by page to others who may want to specifically RP with them. And if the chatting gets tart or combative or abusive, then just fucking deal with the abusive shits as if they were abusive shits, no matter where.
There's people fucking dying in South Sudan, and this is what we're wasting our times with.
First of all, I never said anything about banning, I said IF it was a problem then deal with the problem.
Second of all, why does every single freaking discussion need to descend into hostility and profanity and insults around here? We're talking about whether to have a dang OOC room or not on a text game. If you want one on your game, have it. If you don't, don't. If you don't like to hang out in them, don't. The OP asked a legitimately constructive question but it only took three pages to descend to levels I'd expect in the Hog Pit not in Mildly Constructive.
Maybe I should start a new thread titled "How to keep MSB threads from becoming flame wars."
