Posts made by Arkandel

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

If you don't want to do the stuff that is clearly in the job title, then don't take the job. I and respect all three of you, but damn, the 'but we do not want to do the things that we are here to do' arguments make my eye twitch.

I don't mean to be facetious but you are making two erroneous assumptions here.

1. What you think has to be done is what we are here to do

and

2. There's a line of qualified people waiting to administrate MSB if we weren't here

I never set out to administrate a forum. I did it because someone had to. @Auspice and @Ganymede didn't volunteer either, I personally asked them to help me.

I am taking threads like this seriously, and I respect the hell out of some folks posting in it, but there is only so much I'm willing to do. Heavy policing of every thread is simply not going to happen.

Do we want toxicity outside of the Hog Pit? Hell no. We're doing what we can about it, but it's not as easy a problem to solve as it might look without causing other, potentially larger issues.

@lotherio said in Good or New Movies Review:

@arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

My threshold is 7.0,

That's kind of high, I had to check my favorite 'horror' movie of all time to see where it lined up; 7.3 whew. Its really suspense genre, and the ending is a little wobbly, but I love it; The Changeling.

Oh, but 7.0 is my minimum for everything, not horror specifically. To be honest though I only watch specific horror movies after I've heard enough word of mouth to figure they're going to be great.

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

Why take the comments seriously if you feel if they have no merit. Play in your circles, if you are having fun and those you usually interact with are having fun with you, fuck the haters.

While this is sound advice, we can't help, or fix, or correct people - it's not in our job description. And I get it, if someone's talking shit about you, the urge is there to look and see what they had to say.

That's a separate MSB function, by the way... the ability to confront these things out in the open. Too often on a MU* - sometimes with good reason or at least for good intentions - these things are handled privately or without very good visibility, but the forum is here for those who want to out them anyway. Or it's a matter of people complaining about each other over pages and closed channels, semi-privately, where partial truths and misinformation can spread out of someone's control.

One of the functions Hog Pit plays is allowing this kind of ... let's face it, very confrontational kind of discusion, to take place in an open way. While it's not always going to go the way the OP wants, and it definitely won't necessarily grant them the closure (let alone justice) they want, it's at least there.

It's not much, but nothing we do here is.

My threshold is 7.0, but you have a point about little known horror movies.

I meant to watch The Ritual but the imdb.com grade was pretty average, yet word of mouth (not just here) is pretty good.

I wonder why.

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

Their interest in that stance plays a major factor, and if Ark at the top, and his team in general, are gonna burnout on trying to achieve it, then it's probably not worth the headache of the switch.

It's not the headache that I mind, it's the nitpicking. This whole thing about administrating microaggressions seems so petty that I can't get myself interested enough to even read some threads - I'm just too lazy for that (stop gasping, @Coin). If something serious like harassment happens I definitely intend to get involved, but the he-said she-said bullshit... about some random clash of personalities, not so much.

On a certain level it also bugs me that this is needed at all. You guys shouldn't need an adult in the room - there are some really intelligent people here. Many of you run games of your own, you run businesses, you're taking care of your shit. Isn't it demeaning to require a staff of three folks to make sure we're not treating each other like shit for the most inane of reasons, in a tiny hobby of text-based make-belief games almost no one even knows exist?

On another level... well, I am on MSB a lot. It's not because I'm an admin, it's because I genuinely like you all. I like the debates we have and prize the constructive threads we come up, going into depth about designing new things and reimagining old ones. Having to interrupt that to go grumble because someone (often the same person I'm engaged in a reasonable, interesting discussing elsewhere!) called another person a fuckhead is just disrupting. Not dishearting, but it takes me out of that headspace and damn... I wish I didn't have to do that.

But I do. I still don't know why, but I do.

This requires both a clear eye to self and a willingness to speak plainly on their parts. I figure they've got at least 50-75% of that down pat. (<3 Please don't kick me off MSB o ye gods amoung mortals!)

If it was someone else I'd have assumed amoung was a typo or a spelling mistake. You made me google this crap up, and - not surprisingly - it was not. You will pay for that indignity.

@packrat said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

So say you are an Andoran Lady.

You have an income of (random number) 1000 Crowns a year.

That's what I was thinking, yes. The following parts are tricky though, especially if we want the overhead for staff to be as light as possible (which we dooo):

1. How do we, as system designers, ensure a faction won't be screwed over either because the player in control of it lacks the OOC skills needed to administer its economy efficiently? Do we let them get in a hole? Because just like RL once you're in a hole the probability increases you'll stay in there for a while.

2. How do we deal with OOC alliances? Say you're playing the Andoran Lady and I roll a Tairen merchant who gets 200 Crowns a year... and I donate them to you, yet almost never play.

3. How do we deal with dinos? Remember, XP may be capped but resources are stable (more or less). So you've been playing for a year and you've been securing alliances, etc... so by now your income is 9000 a year. You can outspend newcomers nine to one! And, as noted before, the resource pool is finite - it's a zero sum game. When you make more others make less. This could either encourage politics or become... messy.

Thoughts?

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

People do love their fake popularity.

I can think of nothing MUSH players - in general - want more. Not XP, not bonuses on their dice, nothing. This above all.

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

As @surreality and @Derp pointed out, people are made to feel like crap for sport. People are driven into silence, unwilling to post. People are reluctant to even come to the forum because of its reputation. ("Wow, you're on MSB? Girl, why?!?!" is something I hear regularly.)

For dogpiling within the Hog Pit itself my advice is... don't be in it. (Generic) you don't need to opt-in, so stay out!

For having it done outside of the Hog Pit, which is a concern I often have - I want the toxicity to be contained - I'm open to suggestions. What can we do as a compromise between censorship or the appearance of clique-ism by the admins, yet keep cliques from doing their thing to their enemies of the day?

Most of the time I manage to bite my tongue and not complain about it. But if, on a thread like this, opinions are solicited about the moderation policy, I'm going to speak my opinion that the current policy is a Bad Idea for the MU community.

And you should speak your opinion, not just on a thread like this but anywhere.

As far as I'm concerned if MSB plays a significant role in the community it's by ensuring that it simply exists. MU* are islands by default; you play with Steve Rogers today and he's great, then tomorrow he's gone. How do you find them again? How do they find you? People leave the hobby then come back, they screw up and get their act straight, games open and close... but this forum is always here. I don't want anyone to feel like they don't belong, and I greatly dislike the idea someone might be aghast by the notion others frequent this place because of a reputation we have.

Yet to be honest, if we have such a reputation it is because we've earned it, by definition. All I can say in our collective defense is that there is also an upside to our existence which hopefully justifies its downsides.

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

Yes, some of us give a damn. We've just been outvoted. (to wit: look at the poll)

Although we've discussed this sort of thing in private I wanted to make a public comment here.

MSB isn't a democracy. If I thought not having a Hog Pit was the best option for us as a community then that's what we'd have now; no, what happened is that I was convinced to go that way based on the arguments made at the time.

At first what I was concerned about was censorship. It used to be MU* were heavily 'moderated' and I intentionally put that word in quotes; the truth is they were censored. Many still are. There are consequences for speaking against those who run them, which is a large reason why this forum exists - if there is something to be aired then it can be, and neither my views nor @Ganymede's or @Auspice's matter. The more we intervene the higher the chance someone will social engineer their way into ensuring certain narratives are less visible than others - as we are human ( * ). MSB values free speech - with very few exceptions ( ** ) you can speak your mind whether you like us or we like you.

But also the Hog Pit exists because cliques are a thing in this hobby. I don't want anyone having to second guess whose side we're on - because it frankly doesn't matter. That's not a luxury which, by nature, staff have on most game; they need to make calls, assign traits, bestow ranks and positions so their favor carries weight. On MSB it simply doesn't matter if we're besties since I, by design, can't do much to help you if you screw up. Yes, that also means I can't do much to help you if you're the one getting screwed over. But you don't want me as part of a clique and I don't want the appearance that I might to be in one, as there shouldn't be such a thing as 'forum politics'. We need to be peers or this system doesn't work.

Finally, I appreciate the honesty in this thread. I didn't ask you guys to evaluate us as human beings, just as administrators on an internet forum, and constructive thoughts are always welcome even (or even especially if) you disagree with some of the choices made in running it.

(*) Okay, two thirds of us are human.

(**) Come on, not being openly racist isn't too much to ask.

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

Can I change my vote?

What other futuristic technologies will you people ask for, flying cars? We don't live in the future, getouttahere.

@ganymede Yesterday it was insane. Just crazy.

To get into our building since the plows' contract had ran out we had to grab on the rails to walk the remaining 20-30 steps from the parking lot up to the door. Failure to do so meant you just fell down almost immediately, there was zero friction on the ground.

It'd be funny if it wasn't our own ass that met said ground.

@auspice Twice you have attacked me and this isn't the Hog Pit! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING @AUSPICE IF THAT'S EVEN YOUR REAL NAME.

This is a really good read.

https://work.qz.com/1242801/gms-dress-code-is-only-two-words/?utm_source=qzfbarchive

@shincashay I live in Toronto.

I rest my case, and screw you all people who're in places you can walk without slipping and falling on your face because there's black ice everywhere in April.

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

Part of me believes that Arkandel put this up because I'm beating him in the popularity contest of votes.

I transcend popularity.

The other part of me knows that it is because I predicted that Lonzo Ball would suck.

And you were wrooong.

@auspice On production, as @Thenomain has taught us.

@auspice I just set up the poll plugin (helpfully named nodebb-plugin-poll2 just so we'd know it's not the same as nodebb-plugin-poll) a few minutes ago!

@lotherio Woops! I hadn't noticed that. Well, sorry folks. The plugin eats your anonymity!

This is a mostly anonymous poll (i.e. there's probably a way to do so but I will never go look how anyone voted).

Yes, this is mostly up because I want to test the poll plugin but while we're at it...

@cupcake That's weird. It seems to be working for me on Chrome v 65.0.3325.181 on Windows.

I'm sorry guys, all I can do is offer client-side suggestions here. If the server branch is current I'm not sure how else I can help until a new version comes out.

I just took out some custom JS we have inherited from before I took over, but otherwise I don't want to debug these templates manually since then I'd need to make sure they work in every subsequent upgrade as well.