Optional Realities & Project Redshift

il-volpe

You suggested that it wasn't fair-minded that only members of games that are part of our "connections" can submit articles. I told you that anyone can submit an article if they want to, including folks from this site.

Not at all. In fact, it took me a couple of re-reads to find the spot that might have given you that idea. Was it this?

@il-volpe said:

OR appears to have this thing going in where it's partners/privileged advertisers write these articles, and that's one reason they're privileged

This says nothing about who is allowed to write articles, only comments on who does write them, and suggests that maybe writing one probably gets you shifted up the docket in terms of getting reviewed to see if you'll be allowed advertising space.

Your reaction, interpreting that to mean that I think I'm not allowed to submit an article and find this interesting enough to cry "unfair!" is the very thing that makes me conclude that you believe I would want to submit an article. I don't want to submit articles to a gaming community that pays only lip-service to the sorts of games I want to play and will deny me the perks of writing articles (if said perks exist) and further, it makes me suspect you of being a bit full of yourself to see you respond as if wanting to write an article is the motivation for my remark.

I think that you're being over-sensitive in continually assuming that we're out to look down on you. We're not.

Hmm.

@Jaunt said:

This idea that their submission is slave-work, but that your volunteerism towards your game isn't because you're passionate about your work is inconsistent ideology, and that's what I'm getting at. I hope that makes sense to you.

I wasn't talking about them. I was talking about me, and other MUSHers. Your OR community doesn't serve our specific interest as fully as it serves the specific interest of the writers of your articles. See? So while they get the various benefits of volunteerism from writing the articles, the membership here does not. Yet you appear to believe (see above) that we want to write articles for you. When someone attempts to convince you to do work for no or minimal benefit, they are indeed operating a scam. Does this make sense now?

I think that you're being over-sensitive in continually assuming that we're out to look down on you. We're not.

Hmm.

As @Thenomain suggested, there needs to be a consensus about our language re-branding before we implement an improved mission statement. It shouldn't be an arbitrary change, or a knee jerk reaction, or a change that satisfies one administrator's ideas and not others. Once we reach consensus, it'll be changed. Since OR's been doing well for itself for the few months that it's been around, I think it'll be okay to last a few more days until that consensus is reached.

I expect that you will find that until you change it, people will continue to criticize it. This should not surprise you; you have administrated a MU, have you not?

I'm suspicious, because I am a suspicious bastard (or at least, display the persona of one on MUSB, sometimes) and my suspicious bastard persona says that the reason the mission statement reads like it does is that you folks want to grow your community by attracting folks from outside the focused interest in RPI MUDs, but you don't want to do the work of maintaining and moderating a community that serves all MU* types. Yeah, you may attract a few members this way. But really, this is like calling the 'Ladies' Sewing Circle and Anarchist Society' the 'Community Fibre Arts Club', and telling any knitters who come along, oh, sorry, the club's about sewing and anarchy, but you're welcome to hang out. The club may not want to admit it, and hell, it may not even reach the front of their minds, but other people are going to figure, correctly, that really the name is about drawing people in so you can convert them from monarchist crochet to anarchist sewing. This is not cool.

By the way, if/when you get around to changing the OR site, a word of advice: Run about it and add alt text to any important images, including the infographicy things with your mission statement on. They need to be machine readable. MUs are among the few games accessible to blind people, and it's not difficult to make it so all the important shit on your game and site works with their screen-readers. Actually, if you want to do ten minutes of research and write about that, that'd be an article worth having out there.

Alzie

@il-volpe said:

Accessibility yo

You say that like anyone makes accessible websites anymore.

il-volpe

True 'nuff. Though largely, you kinda need to go out of your way to make 'em inaccessible, unless your images are actually important content.

Jeshin

Hey

@il-volpe

http://optionalrealities.com/contact-us/

Our website since the 1st week has had the request to contribute an article on our contact us page.

Ninjakitten

@Jeshin said:

Our website since the 1st week has had the request to contribute an article on our contact us page.

That is sort of... actively not the point.

il-volpe

Possibly violently not the point.

Sunny

Wow. Just wow.

Jeshin

My point is that there is a portion of the website for people to submit articles. Which leads into a follow up that probably a third of our articles were written by people who were not active staff for any game at the time of writing such as Leah's staff ethics editorial and Sabrelon's Customer Service article to name the most recent ones off the top of my head.

EDIT - But I will admit I probably missed the point, I need to re-read some sections over again. So many words O_O

Jaunt

@il-volpe said:

I'm suspicious, because I am a suspicious bastard

I believe that about you.

@il-volpe said:

OR appears to have this thing going in where it's partners/privileged advertisers write these articles, and that's one reason they're privileged

Yeah, that's what led me to believe that you were suggesting our submission wasn't fair minded.

@il-volpe said:

Your reaction, interpreting that to mean that I think I'm not allowed to submit an article and find this interesting enough to cry "unfair!" is the very thing that makes me conclude that you believe I would want to submit an article.

Your conclusion is wrong. I don't care if you submit articles or not, personally. When we run out of guest content, we can always write content ourselves. But, if you want to (if it has personal value to you), you're absolutely welcome to. I do think that it's better to hear from a variety of perspectives.

@il-volpe said:

This says nothing about who is allowed to write articles, only comments on who does write them, and suggests that maybe writing one probably gets you shifted up the docket in terms of getting reviewed to see if you'll be allowed advertising space.

This is another very wrong assumption. Whether or not you write articles has nothing to do with whether or not you're added to our connections page and given a sub-forum. They have entirely different sets of criteria. Numerous articles have been submitted and published from people outside of our core community.

@il-volpe said:

I expect that you will find that until you change it, people will continue to criticize it.

Which is entirely fair. What's not fair is to say that we're completely unwilling to listen and/or change things based on reasonable, sound suggestions, which we've heard again and again from multiple users even though it's not the case at all.

I know that you understand the difference.

@il-volpe said:

By the way, if/when you get around to changing the OR site, a word of advice: Run about it and add alt text to any important images, including the infographicy things with your mission statement on. They need to be machine readable. MUs are among the few games accessible to blind people, and it's not difficult to make it so all the important shit on your game and site works with their screen-readers. Actually, if you want to do ten minutes of research and write about that, that'd be an article worth having out there.

That's a great suggestion. That's the sort of feedback that's very helpful to us.

Overall, I think that you've made some good points that would be super valid -- if they weren't based on wrong assumptions that you've made, which may or may not stem from you being overly suspicious (but not asking questions to gain a better understanding of policies).

The points you've made that are detached from those assumptions have been great.

I'm going to be 100% candid in regards to OR, here. I'm a candid guy. Just ask.

il-volpe

@Jaunt said:

Overall, I think that you've made some good points that would be super valid -- if they weren't based on wrong assumptions that you've made, which may or may not stem from you being overly suspicious

Oh, I think if you read back you will find that most of the 'wrong assumptions' I have made are things that other readers also feel you or other OR representatives have actively implied.

Either that or you've assumed that I've made a certain assumption, which is what my repetition of

I think that you're being over-sensitive in continually assuming that we're out to look down on you. We're not.

was about.

Actually, I only attribute one suspicion, that you've purposely (if perhaps not entirely consciously) misled people into believing that it's a community dedicated to all MUs* when it's not because that might get you some more users and convert 'em to the games you like, to me being a suspicious bastard. Truth is I'm a tediously patient guy and largely think well of people.

Thenomain

@Jeshin said:

I will admit I probably missed the point

Because there was more than one. This is the problem with conversation-by-mob-OMG. You did hit one of them.

Jaunt

@il-volpe said:

Actually, I only attribute one suspicion, that you've purposely (if perhaps not entirely consciously) misled people into believing that it's a community dedicated to all MUs* when it's not because that might get you some more users and convert 'em to the games you like, to me being a suspicious bastard. Truth is I'm a tediously patient guy and largely think well of people.

This, too, isn't the case. And hopefully that'll be more clear post revision.

Though, I don't think conversion is as serious as all that. As someone who plays vastly different types of text-based games, I don't think that you have to either play one kind or another. Regardless, we're not trying to lure folks with foggy language.

The reason our language is foggy is because it was aimed too specifically at our core user base, who understands its connotations.

Alzie

@jaunt It's not 'foggy.'

Optional Realities is a community and design blog for text-based, online Roleplaying Games, with a focus on character and story-driven games that include permanent character death as a feature.

This is pretty clear. Text based, Online RPGs with a focus on stories and characters that include permanent character death.

While many call this genre of game an RPI, Optional Realities is dedicated to all text-based Roleplaying Games of this nature...

You go on to say this is usually called an RPI but clarify that you totally aren't focused on that.

Where is it 'foggy'?

Jaunt

@Alzie

http://optionalrealities.com/connections-criteria/

Some people are confused about the more specific set of criteria. This language could definitely use some refining, and particularly the third criteria.

And, while I think many can extrapolate our intention from the three mission statement slides, others can't. The inclusiveness of the language in the second slide, as well as the use of the phrase "text-based role playing game" (a very broad term) in the mission statement, create the sense that our community is broadly inclusive. That's true and not true. We welcome discussion about any games, but our core content and user base is geared towards RPI-like games. Our statement about building bridges is geared towards the idea that RPI-like games don't need to be MUDs; there are also MOOs and MUSHes out there with the same design philosophies. That might mean very little to you, but it's a very inclusive/progressive idea in the RPI community.

In that way, I think it's the overall tone of the mission statement, and not the description itself that confuses some users here. Maybe not you, but multiple users have admitted that our mission statement appears deceptive in regards to our inclusiveness. It's not meant to be. It needs revision.

il-volpe

@Jaunt It is outright deceptive in the context of advertising outside of the RPI community.

Derp

@il-volpe said:

@Jaunt It is outright deceptive in the context of advertising outside of the RPI community.

This. It's pretty much your classic bait and switch, dude. It's only foggy because when called out on it, you tried to shimmy over to the other thing and be like 'Well, in light of the larger criteria, there are certain terms and conditions which exclude you from being eligible from the thing we said you were eligible for on the tin, sorry about that.'

Especially when you come into a community dedicated to MU's and start advertising your stuff as if it pertains to us when you very clearly seem to indicate that it does, but it doesn't, but it really does, even if it really doesn't.

il-volpe

@Derp said:
'Well, in light of the larger criteria, there are certain terms and conditions which exclude you from being eligible from the thing we said you were eligible for on the tin, sorry about that.'

I'm afraid I missed the 'sorry about that', and just saw, 'And this should not piss you off, why can't you understand that?'

Derp

@il-volpe said:

@Derp said:
'Well, in light of the larger criteria, there are certain terms and conditions which exclude you from being eligible from the thing we said you were eligible for on the tin, sorry about that.'

I'm afraid I missed the 'sorry about that', and just saw, 'And this should not piss you off, why can't you understand that?'

One of us has to be the nice one, dammit.

WTFE

I shared booze. This wasn't nice?

Thenomain

I'm willing to believe that Mudders genuinely don't understand how their description would be misunderstood, because this is a very human thing to assume, and has been assumed across all of recorded history.

I'm also willing to believe that some of their reaction to the lashback on this is "It's not for you", for the same reason.