@three-eyed-crow Well, let's try doing that again then.
Just remember - the constructive section basically means we can say an idea is dumb, but not that the person is dumb.
In other words it doesn't mean we can't hurt anyone else's feelings if they just can't take criticism well.
@jennkryst it's trivial for me to setup a media wiki and only give edit access to a few reliable folks curating the content for the explicit purpose of updating links to MU*'s sites and MSB threads.
However it's probably more convenient to have it in a thread here, just so it stays in-house so to speak. Maybe. If a good idea comes up we can discuss it, I can set up anything we need (*) as needed.
(*) Remember - I'm good, but I'm lazy.
If anyone does want the undertaking of keeping such a thread active I'll be happy to offer any amount of administrative support they need for that purpose.
There is one more thing I wanted to bring up and this thread is as good a place to go over it as any.
The 'MSB effect' in regards to damaging/killing games has come up before, and I hate it. The very idea that this forum is important 'because it can bring down a MUSH', whether right or wrong, is abominable. It's not what the place is about, or for. If our ability to damage games was the measure of its success I'd be looking to pass it on to someone else today since that's not something I want to invest any time into.
Now and then dirty laundry is aired here. That's one of our functions, we give an uncensored floor from which to voice complaints without the possibility someone might silence them. As such MSB (and WORA before it) has created some embarrassment for bad players and staff in many MU* who perhaps wouldn't have been forced to face the consequences of their actions to the degree that they did, and who say their reputations being tarnished as a result. They might overstate the opposite but they care - recent events, laced with repeated condemnations of the fake news people post here on a MU*'s channels only confirm it.
But I really don't want that to be the forum's legacy. We're hobbyists in a tiny community, and our reputation should - maybe not now, but in the future - reflect the fact we genuinely like games, and that when we criticize them it's due to the fact we care. "Bringing games down is the polar opposite of that - which conversely we can't, that's an effect that's exaggerated at best - and definitely nothing to be proud of if we could.
Pardon the rant.
@sunnyj The list of games can definitely be useful, but it's also one of the things anyone can do right now. 
Start a thread, make a list of games with their wiki address, MSB threads or any other synopsis you think is relevant then keep it up to date by editing that first post.
I'll be happy to sticky and make sure it stays clean. I just won't do it myself.
@misadventure said in Make MSB great again!:
A wiki to store the same old fight summaries, played by lists, MU* lists.
Who would write the summaries? Would it be objective? Does it work for late comers who might want to debate things others happen to have seen before?
A link off any advertisement to a thread where people can go wild. I'd like to be able to find both the ad content and updates with ease, and make it easy to find the discussion about the given ad poster or place.
Alright, how about this then: Please feel free to create offshoots of advertisement threads in the Constrictive and/or Hogpit sections, and I'll edit the original posts as needed to include those links so it's easy to jump back and forth. That way you can choose the level of content you want:
Does that work?
A reminder that phrasing things in the form of accusations, and not questions pretty much guarantees that your discussion is going no where.
Although that's possible, at some point it'll become condescending as fuck.
@saosmash said in Make MSB great again!:
I feel like we just have the same damn fights over and over again. There's got to be a way to put a cork in round 111.
What is that way?
Also, should we stop debating the same issues all over again? Do we know no new ideas will come up? If you come in late to a debate should you be told it's already been discussed?
(I do apologise for the title)
Here on MSB we criticise everything, but I'd like to think that power can be harnessed for good as well as for evil! So let's use it to improve MSB itself.
How would you improve the forum? What would you do differently?
Before I give you the floor please let me offer a couple of guiding principles. Think of them as constraints - those won't change, but they can also be viewed as goals.
The only content that's curated here deals with the utmost asshattery; misogyny, racism, sexual harassment, doxxing, real-life threats, spamming, etc.
I'd rather have as little 'moderation' as possible. You shouldn't have to trust the people who run this place to do anything more than keep it running and not sell/abuse your data. Otherwise the forum is populated by peers and we're all equal here.
I am lazy. Please create as little recurring work for me as humanly possible.
Having said that, MSB is sometimes accused of being too attack-happy and that's... a fair claim. To me though it's also a perversion of its original purpose, which was to succeed and not copy WORA; we should be criticising games out of love for the hobby in order to make them better, not because we are cynics who've seen it all and get off my lawn.
Ideally I'd like us - as the adults that we are - to handle our own when they go out of line, and allow members to be exposed to the level of negativity they're comfortable with. The Hogpit has worked to a certain extent but its... spirit, let's say, has been known to take over other threads.
So how do we reconcile all these goals and encourage constructiveness?
Make MSB better. Tell us how you'd do it.
The Gifted wasn't bad. It has potential... let's see how well they can balance the screentime for all those different muties, though.
@autumn YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW sendmail IS THE BEST
@auspice I don't know that I'd take up on that offer, or even that I like it, but it's fascinating.
Forum e-mails ought to be playing ball with sendmail now. If there are any issues validating new accounts or receiving digests please let me know and I'll look into it.
@social-diseases said in FCs on Comic MUs:
It really is. Places that allow absolutely anything end up having little to nothing of quality. They're always slapdash, crude, and often incredibly contradictory in every context because they're trying to allow for any possibility in an attempt to attract players.
And it's also easier to set up since it's essentially a sandbox.
Frankly to me certain kinds of games are impossible to play. If I don't know some basic fundamental things are set in stone (such as the current public history and roster of the Justice League) then it's all silly. Do we know what the Skrulls are? There should be a definite answer to that. Hell, is there just one version of the same character? If there's an adult and a teenager version of Peter Parker around there'd better be a thematic answer, rather than "well, two people applied".
And don't get me started on mixed universe approaches, especially when they are poorly documented ("so there was a rift, and here we are!"). Ugh.
I am told new user e-mail validation isn't working as expected. I'll need to look at it tonight - in the mean time I'll validate those users manually. It sounds like a sendmail issue.
@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:
@arkandel said in FCs on Comic MUs:
@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:
I mean, unless you're Alan Tudyk, you get only one Disney animated character. And you get only one Marvel character.
Chris Evans.
Those movies don't count.
Josh Brolin.
@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:
I mean, unless you're Alan Tudyk, you get only one Disney animated character. And you get only one Marvel character.
Chris Evans.
@surreality Self awareness comes at a premium. Usually you have to fuck up, and have others tell you, and drill it into you until you actually get it. It's not always the same kind of fuck up, either.
When I was head staff in games a long time ago I lost perspective. I was more authoritative than I should have been, listened to input less, did things that sounded good to me because I could and I had no idea since people still played it. We kept running into recurring issues because of these directions - massive red tape was one of them - but I didn't want to hear that I was solving problems by introducing larger ones.
It's not easy to spot these things when you're directly involved. And when you are staff there is always criticism, much of it unwarranted, which means distinguishing between legitimate concerns and general whining becomes even harder.
These days I don't staff. When I do I prefer being someone's right hand - I'm better at that than being in charge. I like myself more, too, which comes in handy.
@thenomain Migrating from an older dumpfile might be challenging by now. I had issues using the current redis flat file over the weekend when nodebb was running its upgrade scripts for it, and that was just over a relatively small versions gap. Note however that this could have been caused by memory restraints (this is running on a 2GB host) while having to load process it at the same time.
WORA was using SMF if I remember correctly? I'd be curious to see if the current version of the platform would load the data from it at this point.
@kanye-qwest Also keep in mind character 'tiers' affect the impact alts can have on a game.
For example if I have Superman and Batman, my BFF has Flash and Green Lantern and another person has Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter... well, there goes the JLA, all owned by a tiny clique.