Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.
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@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
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.
Yes. After the initial ad post, lock it. A mod can create a Q&A thread in Mildly Constructive and a Game Review thread in the Hog Pit and link both of them in the ad itself.
People can have the choice of going to read the reviews which can be positive or negative. The Q&A should be only for exactly that: Q&A.
And no moving posts. If someone crosses the line outside the Hog Pit, warn them and delete the post. If they continue, ban them for increasing amounts of time. If you're going to moderate the board, you need to moderate it. That means consequences for violations. Theoretically, everyone here is a relatively intelligent adult and should be able to follow simple rules. Or failing that, at least learn from being punished.
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@tnp said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
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.
Yes. After the initial ad post, lock it. A mod can create a Q&A thread in Mildly Constructive and a Game Review thread in the Hog Pit and link both of them in the ad itself.
Why does the mod need to create the thread? If people want to ask questions, they can create their own discussion thread. If they want to get down in the muck, they can create their own Hog Pit thread.
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@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@tnp said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
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.
Yes. After the initial ad post, lock it. A mod can create a Q&A thread in Mildly Constructive and a Game Review thread in the Hog Pit and link both of them in the ad itself.
Why does the mod need to create the thread? If people want to ask questions, they can create their own discussion thread. If they want to get down in the muck, they can create their own Hog Pit thread.
Again, speaking to 'everyone here is a relatively intelligent adult,' I don't think we should even need to lock the ad thread.
'Don't post in ad threads unless you are game staff.'
Simple rule.I want game staff, as a whole, to be able to post relevant information in a game thread.
If it's not relevant information?
It gets deleted.If someone wants to make a discussion thread? They can make one.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@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.
There are posts in this thread suggesting that basically the entire forum (with the exception of the Pit, should it be allowed to exist) should operate at a very polite / moderated level. It has also been part of the longer discussion about moderation that goes beyond this thread.
Again, I really don't care how its organized. But its important to clarify that 'highly moderated discussion with almost no criticism' (which seems to be your / @surreality's / etc's preference, and don't think is bad, to be very clear) is very different from 'criticism OK but no flaming' which is different from 'poo and gifs.' Everyone can have all these things, as far as I'm concerned, but we should be cautious of any of them being removed or diminished.
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Re: ad threads -- Fate's Harvest. It had a couple of actual reviews, and turned into pages and pages of people bitching in full panic mode about Spider, and YET ANOTHER retelling of all the stories. Nobody was talking about the game itself. So much so that I made a Spider thread in the HP and asked people to keep it there, and leave the ad thread for game discussions.
And people lost their shit about that, too.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
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.
It's the latter that gets moved, and should be moved -- because it has no place in an ad or constructive thread.
I'm not sure how I feel about deleting things. I don't think completely unfounded accusations about others (read: deliberate attempts at character assassination with zero basis in reality) should be allowed to stand anywhere on the forum.
This is not OK and it's gone on a whole lot.
I should not be able to post something like:
Jane is a useless slut who just whores around for attention and doesn't give a shit about cheating if it benefits her but she'll scream bloody murder if somebody is given something she isn't because she's so insecure she can't stand anyone else ever getting attention so she'll stalk and abuse them in pages because she's a narcissistic rapist.
Joe is a soulless piece of shit who should be locked up, he makes little kids fuck dogs and tries to convince people he's the smartest person in the room when he's actually a dumb piece of shit.
Sue tries to deliberately sabotage any game she's on because her family life is crap because her husband cheats on her all the time and she can't stand being anything but the center of all male attention on every game she's on, this is mostly because she's a rotten person and it's no surprise he cheats because she's such a slovenly cow and so self-righteously full of herself.
Jack is always lying about everything and is in cahoots with Jody. They can't be trusted. They pretend to be enemies but it's really a long con and you stupid shits are all just fooled by it because you're so fucking stupid you can't see through their transparent ruse. They go to games together and then fight all over the channels thinking they're being so clever and funny but this just proves they're sad shitsacks that can't hold a job or they wouldn't have time to do this over the endless games they've done this shit on.
I mean, seriously. We have someone this past week making similar claims about me and most of them are still there. All of them are patently false. But this is OK? No, it's kinda not. And it wasn't OK when he did so to Ghost or Cupcake or any of the other people he did it to, either, and I said so then, too -- but the poster was allowed to stay around continuing to do it over and over and over with the insistence the rules just didn't apply to them, they didn't respect the mods, and had every intention of continuing on in this way no matter where they were on the forum, without any proof of their fucked up claims, and so on. This is the kind of raving, unsubstantiated, patently false bullshit that doesn't deserve a home anywhere on the forum.
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I think it's fair to say that people are going to lose their shit no matter what choices the mods ultimately make. I am of the opinion that this should not be a deciding factor in what they end up doing, cos seriously.
In order of importance for me:
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What CAN they do, mentally, emotionally, and physically? What do they have time and energy for?
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What board do they want to run? What does that look like?
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What role do they want this board to have in the community?
You'll notice that nowhere in there do I even include my own desires. I honestly think that as long as we ultimately get some clarity and consistency with the above, as long as these things are communicated, whatever we end up with would be great.
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@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
There are posts in this thread suggesting that basically the entire forum (with the exception of the Pit, should it be allowed to exist) should operate at a very polite / moderated level. It has also been part of the longer discussion about moderation that goes beyond this thread.
That's... actually been my understanding of how things are supposed to be from the moment the Pit was created. Vitriol was to be confined there. Personal attacks were to be confined there. They haven't been... like, at all.
Again, I really don't care how its organized. But its important to clarify that 'highly moderated discussion with almost no criticism' (which seems to be your / @surreality's / etc's preference, and don't think is bad, to be very clear) is very different from 'criticism OK but no flaming' which is different from 'poo and gifs.' Everyone can have all these things, as far as I'm concerned, but we should be cautious of any of them being removed or diminished.
It's possible to offer constructive criticism, and that's what I think people are talking about. There's a difference between 'this is just a pile of shit' (which people still do) as criticism and 'the way they have the economy set up is unbalanced and makes the game hard to play, and the staff pressure to engage in TS is pretty creepy to me' which is not exactly light or gentle criticism. The latter contains useful information that the poster can ostensibly substantiate, the former really doesn't. It's just a slap from out of nowhere for no stated reason.
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@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
Again, I really don't care how its organized. But its important to clarify that 'highly moderated discussion with almost no criticism' (which seems to be your / @surreality's / etc's preference, and don't think is bad, to be very clear) is very different from 'criticism OK but no flaming' which is different from 'poo and gifs.' Everyone can have all these things, as far as I'm concerned, but we should be cautious of any of them being removed or diminished.
That's not my position, which is why I was trying to clarify. As @surreality mentioned, criticism != personal attacks. I am in the "criticism OK but no flaming" category. That's just not what we have today in the constructive section, which is what I'm griping about.
You would think that with competent adults, "criticism OK but no flaming" would not require heavy moderation but, well... points to the internet.
ETA, and not directed at bored particularly... I'm just kind of irritated that every time this discussion comes up, "mudslinging should be kept in the hog pit, if there even is one" is being misconstrued as "happy rainbow unicorn land where nobody says anything negative ever". Literally nobody is suggesting the latter.
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@faraday That, yep.
There's also the huge difference between "I don't like <thing> about this game," which is also totally chill as a stated opinion, and "this game is <thing> and that makes them completely stupid and everyone who likes that is also stupid."
(This gets back to the One True Way-ists thing somewhat, but also hits on the whole 'wishlisting' problem, where a lot of people want something that will conform to what they personally want... and if that's the only way they can be happy, they probably need to make their own game and not try to force other people to make an existing project conform to their personal wish list.)
ETA: Dammit, @faraday, your edit makes me wish I could upvote something twice again.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@faraday That, yep.
There's also the huge difference between "I don't like <thing> about this game," which is also totally chill as a stated opinion, and "this game is <thing> and that makes them completely stupid and everyone who likes that is also stupid."
True, but unfortunately just like personal criticism there are a lot of different ways someone can offer their opinion, some more passive aggressive than others.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
ETA, and not directed at bored particularly... I'm just kind of irritated that every time this discussion comes up, "mudslinging should be kept in the hog pit, if there even is one" is being misconstrued as "happy rainbow unicorn land where nobody says anything negative ever". Literally nobody is suggesting the latter.
Maybe because on literally every other board I have been on regardless of topic from TV shows to sports to games when there is a rule about how negative thoughts are expressed, that rule gets used to attack any negative thought put up regardless of how it is expressed. So until I see that work I will not believe it is possible. To paraphrase Harry Truman, I might not be from Missouri but if you want me to believe that you will have to show me.
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@arkandel Some of those ways are valid in civil discourse, and some aren't.
Those examples aren't unclear.
"I don't like giant monsters, so I don't like this game because it has a lot of focus on giant monsters showing up all the time."
"I don't like giant monsters because they're stupid, anyone who likes them is stupid, and that means this game is stupid."There's zero call for the latter.
ETA: The former is an opinion. The latter is an attack.
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Suffice it to say, I think given the variable tolerances of different people for different levels of criticism, I don't think you want what you claim you're asking for, or it's not realistic. Split the hairs however you want, on language and what is 'constructive' and what isn't, but people will react to things very differently. Your very ongoing line of complaint basically proves that the forum that exists can't suit your needs, which is why I think it's perfectly reasonable to create a new one for you.
We can go back to @surreality's last game project thread as an example of this, where basically any level of 'I don't like this theme element' or 'I think this won't work' was interpreted as 'you are the destroyers of all hopes and dreams.' Heck, even ignore my interactions with her, since I'm obviously satan or whatever. She reacted this way to @Arkandel too, in the same discussion. I'm pretty sure you all regard him positively.
So call the kinder forum whatever you want to satisfy that it sounds like it's focused on mature, intelligent discussion, but you want a (more) heavily moderated forum where people are very limited in the degree they can dissent or criticize the primary poster. Hell, @surreality even created a prototype for what I'm describing in her thread, where she tried to limit the scope of discussion but people didn't feel she had that authority. Create a forum where she has that authority!
Seriously, I'm really not your enemy in getting what you want, but you need to be realistic about what you're really asking for.
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@bored In the spirit of this conversation at least can we refrain from framing it in a way that it targets another person?
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@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
She reacted this way to @Arkandel too, in the same discussion. I'm pretty sure you all regard him positively.
ahahah
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@arkandel I'm really not trying to target them or be negative (like, really truly, honestly, I'm not), but pointing out they represent a pretty specific end of the of viewpoint specturm. Their argument is 'the constructive forum is already this, but people are terrible and keep it from working.'
My argument is they have a fundamentally different view of what 'constructive criticism' even means.
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@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
We can go back to @surreality's last game project thread as an example of this, where basically any level of 'I don't like this theme element' or 'I think this won't work' was interpreted as 'you are the destroyers of all hopes and dreams.' Heck, even ignore my interactions with her, since I'm obviously satan or whatever. She reacted this way to @Arkandel too, in the same discussion. I'm pretty sure you all regard him positively.
Okay, no, @surreality and I get into it a lot, and I can't even remember who it was being such a jerk on her thread forever ago, but IF IT WAS YOU or if it was someone else, there were specific areas of feedback that were being requested and WHOEVER IT WAS literally just kept ignoring it. I OFTEN DISAGREE with @surreality about where lines of reasonable discourse are, and I kind of figure I'm in her mental group of unreasonable dogpilers, but you're super misrepresenting what happened on that thread.
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@roz Suffice it to say, I disagree with your interpretation, and saw the whole thing as a spiral of criticism and defensiveness that got increasingly more hostile. However, even at the time, the vast majority of it was totally within the bounds of that forum's mission, up until the point we declared blood vendetta and pox on one another to a hundred generations, or whatever (but that was already several pages in).
So my point remains that no, the current forum structure doesn't actually fit what they're looking for. They want a vastly more heavily moderated version of that forum. Which is fine and I support them in. But to me it really suggests 3 levels of 'politeness'/moderation, not 2.
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@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
Suffice it to say, I think given the variable tolerances of different people for different levels of criticism, I don't think you want what you claim you're asking for, or it's not realistic. Split the hairs however you want, on language and what is 'constructive' and what isn't, but people will react to things very differently. Your very ongoing line of complaint basically proves that the forum that exists can't suit your needs, which is why I think it's perfectly reasonable to create a new one for you.
We can go back to @surreality's last game project thread as an example of this, where basically any level of 'I don't like this theme element' or 'I think this won't work' was interpreted as 'you are the destroyers of all hopes and dreams.' Heck, even ignore my interactions with her, since I'm obviously satan or whatever. She reacted this way to @Arkandel too, in the same discussion. I'm pretty sure you all regard him positively.
So call the kinder forum whatever you want to satisfy that it sounds like it's focused on mature, intelligent discussion, but you want a (more) heavily moderated forum where people are very limited in the degree they can dissent or criticize the primary poster. Hell, @surreality even created a prototype for what I'm describing in her thread, where she tried to limit the scope of discussion but people didn't feel she had that authority. Create a forum where she has that authority!
Seriously, I'm really not your enemy in getting what you want, but you need to be realistic about what you're really asking for.
@Arkandel, I actually don't mind being an example, because I think it is an effective example of the problem.
@Arkandel claimed that having areas that only one faction could access -- the example being a single bar for water-breathing folk -- would destroy the game. Full stop. This is demonstrably untrue and has been proving so for decades over endless games; many games do this, have done this, and continue to do this now and it does not destroy the game.
This was also the first response in a thread that asked specific questions; this was a question wholly unrelated to any of the questions asked. So from post #1, the questions asked were completely ignored, and the tone was set that they could be completely ignored and 'this is a free for all' was established by a well-respected member of the community.
@bored, you claimed that you hated a thematic element 'because it is only ever stupid end of the world plots'. When told there was no intention for any end of the world plots, or anything involving those aspects of the inspiration, you kept banging on endlessly about it anyway as though this had not been said at all. I'm not the kind of person who spends a ton of time building something just to drop people into the middle of 'and now you have to work against impossible odds before everything explodes!' -- it's completely contrary to the 'I want people to be able to build and add things to this world' principle I was working with as the entire basis of the project. "Ha ha now staff's going to come in and smash all of your creations!" is about as contrary to that goal as one could possibly get.
p.s. I don't think you're satan at all -- I joke about you 'being my favorite grudgewank' but I don't actually have a grudge. I do think you were going way too far into personal attacks and deliberately reading nasty whatever into things, but if that was a sin that marked someone for all eternity around here, nobody would be talking to anybody any more. You often make a lot of good points; I think you dig in your heels on an overblown negative view of someone sometimes that isn't accurate, but again... kinda common and not some huge years-long reason for war to break out.
@Roz I can PM it if you want on that point; I've seen you stand up against that stuff more than a few times and have no qualms saying so, or that it's appreciated when you do.
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@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
My argument is they have a fundamentally different view of what 'constructive criticism' even means.
Look, when people are throwing around insults like "that's the stupidest thing I've heard", "this is exactly what's wrong with MUSHing", "clearly you can't do simple math", "trash like @surreality" and my personal favorite: "clearly you're just an asshole"... none of that is in any, way, shape or form constructive and yet I could go hunt down specific quotes for each and every one of those things from the "constructive" forum. I'm not going to, though. The mods know what we're talking about. I have repeatedly pointed to the Rules of Civil Discourse as the yardstick I favor, and "never criticize anybody" is nowhere in there. You may not think what I'm asking for is realistic, but don't put words in my mouth and claim I'm asking for something that I'm not asking for.
