Sep 21, 2015, 8:04 AM

@Alzie said:

So, why are we still having this discussion? They said they wanted to treat this place like twitter and announce their new posts. Move on. They're certainly not interested in addressing the discrimination inherent in their website's design and that's perfectly fine since none of us are involved in paying for keeping it on the net. Ya'll are acting like anything they say about anything means anything.

I think discrimination in this context is kind of ridiculous, but in a very basic sense, stripped of connotation, it's accurate. Our criteria for games is discriminatory. We are discriminant. In much the same way a man who loves chicken might discriminate by going to Popeyes. Why does this need to be addressed? @Thenomain has tried to articulate a reason, and if there is a compelling reason, I'd really like to hear it, but so far nobody's really offered one that I've found sensible. Rather than giving a reason, most people have opted to insults, or just opted out.

@Thenomain said:

You did. It's on your first page.

I'm not seeing it. Maybe it's because we've refined our mission statements to ensure language matches intent, though I don't think there's been any significant change (@Jeshin should be able to clear this up, I imagine), but what I'm reading is:

"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 death as a feature. While many call this genre of game an RPI (Roleplaying-Intensive Game), Optional Realities is dedicated to all text-based Roleplaying Games of this nature, whether they be MUDs, or MOOs, or MUXs, or MUSHes, or RPIs, or any of the other sub-genres that we've divided ourselves into over the years."

I think that's pretty clear as far as the focus of our community goes. It doesn't really delve into the 'automated systems' component of the criteria, but that's borderline implicit in the genre mention and in the permanent death feature itself.

@WTFE said:

is that you stop shitting over here where you hold the people in such obvious disdain that you won't even actually discuss your goals or basic principles

I don't hold this community in general in any sort of disdain, though some of the individuals in it are particularly unimpressive. Let me basically summarize how this has gone:

  1. People get upset about our criteria for community partnership.
  2. We elaborate on the criteria, explain why we have them, and reiterate that our community has a focus group but is inclusive of discussion in a much broader spectrum.
  3. People continue to debate our criteria, though I'm skeptical that they could name three (3) (that's your thumb, index, and middle fingers when you need to count off to double check, @WTFE) games that have applied that we've actually rejected.
  4. We again explain that our community has a narrow focus group but that we're inclusive of broader discussion topics, insofar as we can be while still having said focus.
  5. We go back to rote advertising because the debate's about run its course.
  6. The thread blows up with insults because we've stopped engaging with a debate that's no longer interesting and that has long since ceased to have a point.

@WTFE said:

Yes. The inclusive "if you're not matching our specific idea of what games are, you can go to the back of the bus^W^W^W^WOther Games area of the board" approach.

Can you go ahead and break Godwin's Law, since you've already gone ahead and started analogizing building a community around a core focus group while incorporating discussion of concepts with broader ramifications to Jim Crow laws?

@WTFE said:

That's 390 opportunities for you express your interest in this community and actually start participating in it. 390 opportunities that you not only ignored, in some cases you practically spit upon.

I've engaged with several members of this community, but at some point enough becomes enough. If you're upset that your vitriolic attacks aren't getting enough attention you're just going to have to live with it or learn to be a more interesting person to converse with because so far you've been about as interesting and engaging as a tree stump.

@Thenomain, if you're interested in chatting somewhere that hasn't slowly transformed into a public restroom, I do respond to chat messages here when I have time to stop in. It's unlikely I'll be putting too much effort in responding directly in this thread, though, unless I see a particularly interesting point.

In any event, just to make some final points before I mentally sublimate @WTFE into some sort of attention-hungry tree stump...

@WTFE said:

See, this is why I think you're a yapping little shih-tzu. Dude, I fucking LINKED to my first post in this thread. Please point to where I called you names in it or where I insinuated that you are in some way awful people for targeting a specific subset of games. (Hint: this is not possible.)

@WTFE said:

You're here, presumably, given that this is in the "Adver-tis-ments" section of the board, to get people to want to come over to your community. And yet here we have you saying, basically, that you're more open to different opinions there than you are here.

This is a strawman. We have limited time here, as Jeshin immediately expressed afterwards. Further, it's not that we're not open to different opinions so much as those opinions haven't been made in a particularly compelling way. I understand what @Thenomain and recently @Sunny have been trying to express in that catering to a specific focus group while still engaging in a lot of broader discourse can send mixed messages. That sort of criticism and discussion is appreciated and I think there's a lot we could do to be more clear about what, exactly, the community we're building is, or is supposed to be.

@WTFE said:

Do you genuinely not see how stupid this is?

Hey, look, here you are immediately calling us stupid in your very first post based on words you inserted into @Jeshin's mouth.

@WTFE said:

where I insinuated that you are in some way awful people for targeting a specific subset of games.

Right here. Also in your very first post. Hey, look, I read it.

@WTFE said:

By being so dogmatic, rigid, and inflexible, and by sticking to a definition of game that specifically excludes the styles played by most people on this board, you are actually being off-putting.

Hey, look, here you are immediately starting to attack us for sticking to a narrow subset of games within a genre that only appeals to a minority percentage of people on this board. If I make a Digimon MUSH and advertise it here are you going to come throw a fit in the thread because the majority of this forum's participants prefer Pokemon? Get the fuck over it, man. I don't really care if you think it's somehow ideologically reprehensible when Pepsi advertises in a neighborhood where most people prefer Coke regardless of the fact that some Coke-drinkers might like a few Pepsi products.