Posts made by Arkandel

@pandora We'll clarify once we know ourselves.

I'd rather not have super detailed rules because that leads to people trying to play rules lawyer with them - the idea though is that it's an ad thread. An one-line negative review such as "I tried it and CGen took too long for my tastes so I left" is probably okay, but a 3-page long heated debate on it isn't.

What do you expect to find in an ad thread? Think of that.

The best solution is probably what several people have already suggested; one post, editable by the game's staff/owner with links to other posts in the MC or Hog Pit categories. The one thing I'd miss then is the chance for folks to ask quick questions directly ("are FCs more powerful than OCs?", "do you allow custom Bloodlines?", etc) to gauge if the game is right for them.

@surreality I still remember the first time I saw an R-rated description. She became a legend on Tyme, years ago, but there were nipples in her description and omg.

There was a scandal around the player in the end which got three staff fired then the game's owner giving up on the game overnight, but I digress.

... Then I played on Shang for a while, and whatever innocence I still had in me was nuked from orbit. Oh, the things I've seen.

I got an ovation at our weekly meeting for being the only person in the team with a 90%+ review rating and a productivity bonus.

... Sometimes I wonder where my productivity would be if I didn't spend half my time every morning on MSB but.

@sunny I think 15 years ago (or even earlier...) there was just... a sense of the unknown. No one really knew how things were supposed to be done, and that allowed for a lot of things which have been normalized since to not happen today any more.

When it comes to borderline antisocial behavior though the most fertile ground for truly horrid behavior is the promotion of the idea we are all terrible people but only some of us admit it or are brave enough to act on it. I don't know that even WORA started out they way it turned out in the end, but it was coopted by certain people as a venue to try and claim their attitude is commonplace and thus somehow acceptable. We certainly didn't know each other - there was no... history there. No reputation, nothing. We were just letters on someone else's CRT screens.

These days... well, we don't all have to like each other here; I'm sure I'm not some misguided souls' favorite person myself, and I don't cherish every single one of you the same either.

But that doesn't mean we are bad people or that we can't work together to help identify and isolate the fuckheads who sneak into our hobby and try to screw it up.

@sunny Well, they wouldn't be on MSB any more, just for starters.

Podcasts by a group that includes at least one person who's clearly there because they are friends with someone, and who offers no useful content whatsoever.

This morning I was listening to a TV show podcast. There were four guys in the group breaking down new series for the season, and three of them weren't bad - they didn't have a lot of insight but eh, it's 7:50 am, I'm driving to work, I don't need them to be brilliant. The forth guy kept offering this kind of remark: "I watched $show's pilot. I was entertained, but I haven't watched any more because I don't watch, you know me, I don't watch stuff."

What the fuck are you doing on a podcast about stuff to watch then!

I had a similar issue a couple of months ago with one of my Game of Thrones podcasts I actually did like a lot, but unsubscribed specifically for him. The rest of the cast (including a lady who was actually very detailed, I liked her analysis of the narrative) was pretty good; he was there because he was basically supporting the Dothraki. He had a real Dothraki fixation - any scene was about them - and he hated the Lannisters as if his own family was invited to one of their weddings or something. "Yeah, so Jaime was talking to this guy... what are you DOING? Who cares? You are going to fight DOTHRAKI, they are going to... they are going to kick your ass Jaime! All you got is your sister and some weak ass, like, soldiers and they have the best... the BEST... what are you doing? And dragons, holy shit they have dragons! What are you even trying to do!"

That's my minor peeve of the day, courtesy of it being a Friday and nothing can touch me now.

@collective I don't see any reason, except it didn't seem like Mildly Constructive material to begin with.

Also why would it have been any different if @Auspice had moved it from MC to the Hog Pit?

@faraday @Sunny - If one of you has verbiage you think better reflects on the current situation please feel free to offer some up. Else we'll have to go to some sort of lawyer for this shit and no one wants that door opened.

The Rules of Engagement were written by yours truly over a lunch break at work, typing with one hand while eating pulled chicken with the other. They are not exactly the Declaration of Independence - the Nic Cages of the future won't be spending any time trying to steal this stuff.

I hoped the spirit covered my intent but if it doesn't we can absolutely revise them.

@shelbeast I know. I didn't want to single you out, but I wanted a meaty quote to anchor what I had to say and yours worked.

I don't agree that the relegation to that forum was uncalled for. It wasn't picked because it was opt-in but because it was the correct one. Let me say that again - the reason it's in the Hog Pit is that things were already getting pretty personal even from the first couple of posts.

However and aside from that please consider this: Placing it in Mildly Constructive means we'd have spent the whole time trying to prevent people from personal attacks which go against the forum's rules, and since one of those attacks was bound to be aimed at a forum administrator (since we are gamers too, and two of us play on F&L) then that would have been called biased administration and that it looks bad.

You can see that, right? The first time I stepped in to tell someone to back off from Gany (which I'd only do because the forum rules say so, not because the lawbot can't tear someone to shreds without my help) I'd be accused as well of backing my fellow admins.

Well, now it's in the Hog Pit where none of us is any more sacrosanct than anyone else.

@misadventure To be honest I'm already spending more time looking under nodebb's hood than I want to. Unless there's a plugin for it we'll need to do it manually.

Also after this is first done once it shouldn't be too much work. It's not like we get new games every day.

@misadventure We've considered something like that already (I think @Ganymede was forcefully volunteered for it ). It takes time since that's a bit of work.

@mietze I realize appearances are important (and not just saying that).

But I also don't want us walking on eggshells. That won't work - we have lives (I'm active in the work-mornings, marginally so in the evenings and I barely check here over the weekend) but also we have track records. I trust @Auspice and @Ganymede to do their job as well as they can - and I felt in this case the implications of bias were unfair to say the least. This was completely following the forum rules.

What's more important though is that this was what people wanted. Sure, we're all learning how to do this, you all as members of the board and us as its administrators - but if you recall my initial inclination was to not have nearly any kind of interference. I'd just step in when someone was spamming or being a racist and that's it; you all pointed out there was toxicity, hostility and oftentimes just pettiness all over the threads, and I changed my mind.

That doesn't mean anything and everything we do is justified just because well you asked for it!. That'd be silly. It's why this thread exists - so you can voice concerns and point out our failures. We're absolutely making this shit up as we go along, in case anyone was wondering, so not only am I not worried about people reacting to it but kind of counting on it.

Keep us on the straight and narrow. Just in this case we didn't fuck up. We will, just wait!

@Thenomain you are right in that a Hog Pit thread will get personal regardless. I believe it was there from the start.

@thenomain Frankly my initial thoughts when I first saw the issue were, and I quote, "this is gonna be a shitstorm". People were getting personal right from the start.

It's definitely a Hog Pit issue. I haven't had time yet to read that forked thread but I'll say this - if the posters surprise me and it's a nice civil discussion we'll move it to the Mildly Constructive section. I'm not holding my breath on that one though.

@thenomain I didn't know I wanted this in my life, but now I feel I need it.

I wanted to clarify something here folks, and I think it might warrant its own thread. I'll cherry pick one post although it's not really about that one quote but generally speaking moving forward.

@shelbeast said in Fear and Loathing (Official Thread):

@auspice I think that, maybe, if someone other than someone gushing all the time about the game (indicating a clear bias), had made that call...

I would have made the exact same call. @Auspice has my full support in this, not that she needs it. It's in the forum rules - we don't go into in-depth discussion, particularly negative discussion, on ad threads.

Please remember two things:

1. We don't moderate on MSB, but we do try to make sure threads fit their categories. Since this one was moving into a more controversial direction it was split up into a different section of the site where it can be discussed at any length. @Auspice did her job.

2. The vast majority of the posters here asked us to maintain a more civil attitude and keep things on-topic. That's what we are trying to do. You can't have it both ways, guys.

Conversely, forum administrators can have any opinion about anything at all, just like everyone else. We don't censor, we don't edit or delete posts, but we do have thoughts of our own. In my case mostly dumb ones, but we do have them!

Thanks for reading!

@rnmissionrun I knew what was going to be in that video before I watched it

@ghost I was utterly shocked when I was talking to an Indian coworker a year ago and realised she didn't know who Superman was. She didn't even recognise the name.

But then it also occurred to me there was no film I could recommend that she watches. The original one maybe? But it'd look so dated now.

@thatguythere They can't afford a thousand cuts. Which is the reason TNG didn't do that either. In fact it's why there are so few action scenes - budget limitations.

In a way that's what drives plot - if you don't have space laser battles with weird CGI enemies you have talking scenes and dialogue through prosthetics, which is way cheaper.

@tempest I don't think I've written a new description in at least a couple of years. I recycle a lot of material.

The reason for it is that, typically, no one looks at you any more. They just check the wiki. It's nearly wasted effort, especially if you plan to change the description based on the circumstances - plus I pose my characters' attires every time anyhow.

@wildbaboons There was a new law being passed in California (or so Slashdot claimed last week) to prevent interviewers from asking what you were making at your old job.