Posts made by Auspice

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

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

And call each other out. Not by attacking one another, but by a mere "Hey, that wasn't cool." Just like you'd (I'd hope) call a friend to task for being an asshole, pull someone here aside. It doesn't have to be out in public, but it can be in PMs or in your private chats / pages. We want to be a more uplifting, positive community? It begins with ourselves. Be better, yourself. Pressure your friends to be better. Start small.

It isn't even remotely like this, though. These people (for the most part) are not my friends - they're strangers on an internet forum. Moreover, they're strangers who by the very nature of the problem we're describing have demonstrated that civility and respect for the rules (and by extension other people on the forum) are beyond them. Someone with no authority telling other strangers on the Internet "that wasn't cool, knock it off" is most likely to be met by "hahaha yeah whatever" at best or "F you" at worst because these people don't care what we think. They may only marginally care what the mods think, but the mods at least have the authority to kick them if they don't listen. If there are flagging/downvote tools like on many forum software systems, I'll use them, but I'm not going to play Lone Ranger moderator. That's just not going to end well.

Oh, no, I get it. For sure. But a lot of the people on these forums also have friends on the forums.

I'm asking them if they see their friends act out of time to go hey, that probably wasn't cool. Like, I'm not close friends with @Derp, but we chat a lot. I'd say we have good rapport. Decent enough that if they were out of line on something, I'd feel comfortable enough messaging them to say 'That was pretty harsh, saying that. Cool off, yeah?'

@ashen-shugar said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Don't know if it may help, but maybe an option that requires a poster wait a full hour before posting in the same thread after their last post?

We do have it setup so new accounts have to wait an hour before they can post.

I am not sure about a setting to wait an hour before you can post in the same thread. For two reasons.

a) I'm not sure if the setting exists.
b) I'm not sure I want to nanny people.

I trust you guys, by and far. We're all adults. I know we have the capacity to do these things. Part of why we haven't is that none of us have been held to it. We're going to start being held to it. Both by moderation and by each other. Hold yourselves to it. And call each other out. Not by attacking one another, but by a mere "Hey, that wasn't cool."

Just like you'd (I'd hope) call a friend to task for being an asshole, pull someone here aside. It doesn't have to be out in public, but it can be in PMs or in your private chats / pages. We want to be a more uplifting, positive community? It begins with ourselves. Be better, yourself. Pressure your friends to be better. Start small.

Don't expect everyone around you to be better. Don't expect the mods to put tools upon tools or work themselves (this is a volunteer gig that comes with zero perks) to babysit you to be better. We are all highly intelligent people. We can do this.

I mean, if I Staff on a game, I do a lot of work, but I at least get to play that game and the players will generally thank me in the wake of doing that work. A lot of what I do here is answered with being shit on. It kinda blows. Of course the three of us aren't looking to stack even more busy work on. Will we mod? Totally (or I will, at least). Do we want to add tools or processes that add more busy work (like chasing down all of the staff of a game to add tags/groups?), no.

But one thing we can all do is like @Ashen-Shugar says: consider the person on the other side of the screen. Consider they don't come from the same place, means, etc., as you. Or try, at least. Also, sarcasm never translates well. Ever.

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

@auspice Belatedly, and may not be an issue with the new area; and probably not easily doable with this forum because it seems pretty lacking in easy code things, but what about for ads locking them to a group. The game owner would have to say MSBPoster 1, and MSBPoster2, are staff, could you add them to our group, and then if someone leaves staff the Game owner would have to contact you guys to have them removed from the group for official threads.

But you could also still allow random people to post because they just found this really cool game and want people to know about it and lock it up. If a game then wants an official ad made they could ask for a group. I mean if you are proud of your game and staffing, why not have a badge by their name?

Not sure if groups can work this way or not, but they seem under-used.

It's an interesting idea, but...

still adds to the whole 'pile of work for the moderators.'

I also def. wouldn't make badges on a per-game basis. That definitely adds a lot more work.

Now, I will consider, as I look at new forum software, the ability for someone to lock their own thread and add other poster permissions. That might help.

If I could lock a thread and add, say, Derp as an approved poster, that would help a lot.

But right now, I really want to be able to trust the forum at large to behave and keep to posting in approved areas without having to use other tools that require a lot of extra work on the mod's part. We're all adults. We should be able to go 'Oh, AnotherMUX put up an ad thread? I wanna talk about it. I should go see if there's a thread in Constructive.'

@testament said in General Video Game Thread:

Hellblade is another game I need to pick up at some point. But it was either that or Uncharted 4, which I had been meaning play for literally forever and never had a chance. Saw it used for 11 bucks and thew that in with it.

Hellblade is one of the reasons I really need a desk again. I had just started to delve into it before I moved.

It is an amazing game.

Update the First:

There is now a Game Dev Category. There are specific outlined Rules of Engagement.

Enjoy.

This board is to be utilized for Game Development discussions.

• Threads to discuss system dev, theme dev, et al
• Threads to discuss potential new games
• Threads to discuss code base potentials ("Would this base or this work better for my game?")
• and similar...

Discussions on this board should be kept to creative discourse. Disagreements are, of course, to be expected, but they should be kept to a professional capacity: disagree with the idea, not the person. Attack the idea, not the person. Posts containing personal attacks will be deleted.

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

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

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

Leave ad threads for the ads, ad updates, and maybe links to discussion posts elsewhere on the forum. Either lock it (if the functionality exists) or delete extraneous posts.

Yes. After the initial ad post, lock it. A mod can create a Q&A thread in Mildly Constructive and a Game Review thread in the Hog Pit and link both of them in the ad itself.

Why does the mod need to create the thread? If people want to ask questions, they can create their own discussion thread. If they want to get down in the muck, they can create their own Hog Pit thread.

Again, speaking to 'everyone here is a relatively intelligent adult,' I don't think we should even need to lock the ad thread.

'Don't post in ad threads unless you are game staff.'
Simple rule.

I want game staff, as a whole, to be able to post relevant information in a game thread.

If it's not relevant information?
It gets deleted.

If someone wants to make a discussion thread? They can make one.

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

The one area where we probably disagree is seeing the negative overwhelming the positive as an inherently bad thing.

It's the personal attacks and dogpiling. Negative reviews can outweigh positive, sure.

It's the fact that it becomes a dogpile of personal attacks more often than not... outside of the Hog Pit.

You know this happens. You can't deny that you've seen it. It's in our nature to just shrug and move on when you see a positive post. Or to just hit that upvote. But when it's a negative one? Oh boy, crack those knuckles and dive on in! How many people have joined in when it's even a game they've never played on but have just heard about?

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

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

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

Then that would be an argument for locking the threads to only the ads and legit q+a, nothing will ever convince me that allowing positive without negative as well is anything else but an attempt to allow others to blow smoke up my ass which is the exact reason I have have the entire ad section on ignore for months.

Which is why I'm proposing exactly that. Threads in which only the staff for the game can post informative information, along with links to threads for more expansive discussion at large (so that the broader discussion is not 'hidden').

Negative discussion and disagreements (so long as it is not 'down and dirty') is allowed in the Constructive areas.

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

I'm not sure why you're arguing about this. Didn't @Auspice bring up ad threads specifically to say "It might be time for us to just lock the ad threads to just their ads and let people discuss them elsewhere and we can leave links to the other threads"? She's already agreed to a thing that fulfills your wants.

Thank you.

ETA: F&L was an example of this. Someone posted a 'negative' review, but went into an extremely gross, sexually repulsive depiction of the game runners. Of course we weren't going to leave that in place. Isn't that precisely the sort of thing we stand up against? Personal attacks on such a scale? But people freaked out that we were removing negative reviews. However, once the initial fire died down, someone else came back and posted a negative review of the game itself (without personal attacks on the game staff, but on their methods) and that review stood. Reviews like that would be wholly acceptable in a thread in Mildly Constructive and could be discussed. This could remain in an open area, accessible by anyone, and be in a link right within the Ad thread itself.

I think this would satisfy what both @bored and @ThatGuyThere are asking for.

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

Perhaps an alternative.. Advertising an open game? Make a post in constructive criticism as well? For the idle chatter, enjoyment, /polite/ explaining of displeasure, etc. Then the first post on each one can have a link to the other.

And how would we police this? A number of game administrators barely touch this board except to post ads. How often do they not come back for days, if ever, before posting responses? That's why I'm also hesitant to lock the thread to just the poster and would rather it be to the game staff as a whole. That way if one of the fellow staffers looks in and goes 'Oh, hey, okay, I can answer these.' or two months down the line, a new staffer joins their crew and starts answering questions or posting about events, new grid/sphere openings, etc.

I'm not going to go hunting them down to smack them on the hand and go 'ah-ah, you didn't follow our rules. You have to go back and post a second thread, now.'

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

I was part of this I am a firm believer that if positive things are allowed to be said negative things should be as well. I have mush less of an issue with ad threads being locked to just the add or just q+a things but if positive opinions are allowed then negative ones should be as well.

Except I think we can all agree that the negative regularly becomes overwhelmingly vitriolic and often dogpiles.

The positive is often 'I'm playing here and I enjoy it for X reasons' whereas the negative is often 'I hate this place, I hate the Staff, and I think the Staff are a bunch of <insert personal attacks>' at which point there's pages upon posts of in-fighting and argumentative behavior.

That is why a number of people want it split off. Because it's never just a singular negative review. Well, okay, I have actually seen one or two well-worded, polite negative reviews. But they are incredibly rare and few and far between. More often it's a targeted attack against the game-runners that turns into a dogpile and rarely an actual broken-down review of the game itself.

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

Ex: Replies to advertisements should be things like "Sorry, how do I connect?" "Please link website" "I just started playing here, if anyone else wants to join" and other positive, helpful responses.

So this was suggested once before and the utter lashback ("How dare we not be able to say negative things about a game!") was enormous.

Never mind the sheer amount of work that would be involved if we tried to make it FAQ-style only where we stripped out, say, the last one ("I just started playing here") and it was only questions and answers ("Are Kerberois allowed?" "What's the website?") and mods had to keep moving all the inevitable chatter elsewhere because we'd have to pick and choose throughout.

I think if it was a blanket rule of 'Only the game staff can post in a thread,' it'd ultimately be easier to police because I could, at-a-glance tell if a post is a game staffer providing informative information ("Hey guys, here's a few new questions answered..." "We're launching a huge plot next week" "We'll be having some downtime tomorrow, sorry!") versus people just chattering on the thread.

It'd be a much more clearly defined rule and easier for us moderators to maintain. That way, we'd also avoid the other issue we run into: the concern of members of me or Gany (for example) policing in different manners.

Is it a touch draconian? Sure. But I think if when an ad thread is started someone (and some of y'all are v. active and would be on the ball about this) made threads in the Constructive and Pit areas, I or another mod could then drop a post in the ad thread linking them. Then the worries of 'But no one will see the terrible things we have to say!' are gone (because that's been the only worry I've seen; that the negative things won't be seen... no one's ever worried about the positive press )

@aria said in Good TV:

I'm two episodes into "Troy: Fall of City" and I can't decided whether it's objectively just not very good or if my recurring sentiment of ".......You cancelled Marco Polo but decided to pay for this?" is just spoiling everything for me.

I AM STILL SO ANGRY ABOUT MARCO POLO BEING CANCELLED.

esp because I mean hasn't Troy been done over and over and over and over

@roz said in How to use Potato MU Client:

@auspice said in How to use Potato MU Client:

@wildbaboons said in How to use Potato MU Client:

@shincashay No, that's the one that you have to remember to hit the button to check.

I like "on line" spellcheck

Get a Mac.

(I had to turn it off on my Mac because I fucking hate auto-spellcheck. How many things in the games we play are not 'standard' words? And then it goes and corrects it into something else. Pffff.)

I think they actually just mean active underlining as you go, not autocorrect. (Which I've also turned off, because while it's useful on my phone, it's super not useful on my actual laptop with an actual keyboard.)

Oh, that. Yeah, I keep the underlining on, on my Mac, but that whole 'LET ME PROVIDE THE WORD YOU WANT was bullshit, yo.

On Mac, it's OS-side. On Windows, I think it's app-side and might be tricksy to do.

@three-eyed-crow said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

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

@auspice I am still of the opinion that the Advertisement thread should be an initial post by the author and then locked, so the initial poster can edit it but no discussion about it. Put the discussion in other topics.

I've thought this for a long time and still think it, though I've come to the conclusion that MSB in its current form maybe just isn't a particularly good place for straight-up advertisements. Is there some board limitation that would make the original poster unable to update? Locked to OP and admins seems the ideal for these, at least in terms of them actually serving as ads.

So one of the models of forum software I'm looking at has 'pages' (web site pages) and even KB articles.

I am thinking if we use such a software, we could actually curate actual ad listings.

It'd be some additional work, but it would allow us to be more of a properly informative site.

@wildbaboons said in How to use Potato MU Client:

@shincashay No, that's the one that you have to remember to hit the button to check.

I like "on line" spellcheck

Get a Mac.

(I had to turn it off on my Mac because I fucking hate auto-spellcheck. How many things in the games we play are not 'standard' words? And then it goes and corrects it into something else. Pffff.)

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

@auspice I am still of the opinion that the Advertisement thread should be an initial post by the author and then locked, so the initial poster can edit it but no discussion about it. Put the discussion in other topics.

So I thought about that, too.

But I'd want other Staff on the game to be able to post, too, y'know?

And it to not just be one single big BLAH of a post.

So that a Staffer can come in and say:

"We just opened OCs!"

or

"We released Geist!" (I just really want Geist 2.0 okay hush)

or

"We're having a huge plot next week!"

or

"Here's a handful of new questions that have been answered..."

and if we're more heavily moderating, the three of us could go in and pluck any non-'official' posts in an ad thread and move them to one of the other (Constructive or Pit) threads as appropriate.

And as noted, there can be a post in the thread with links directly to related threads. Like say I put up an ad thread for Pugmire: The Hydrant. Then someone launched a Mildly Constructive thread to discuss Pugmire: The Hydrant and someone else launched a Hog Pit thread to discuss how much they hate Pugmire because surely it's just gonna be a bunch of yiffing.... one of the moderators could then go in and add a post on the original add thread linking to both the Constructive and Pit threads (indicating which is which) so that people can go and see that discussion.

From there, myself and any Staffers could add new posts in the Ad thread ("Hey guys, Cats are now allowed!" "Hey we're launching a new chapter in the metaplot next week, now's a good time to go through CG!" "Here's a bunch of new questions we've answered in the other threads..." and so on), but people would have those and direct links to the other discussions.

I think this would help people who come to MSB for the ads, but also help keep things from heavily derailing and/or causing those ads to just end up off in the Pit (as they often do).

@admiral said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Ghost is touring. The nearest concert? Houston. The day? A Tuesday.

I can't justify getting down there to see it on a work day. I want.

ugh. May 8th.

not nearly enough time to have money for a rental car or tickets or anything.

laaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

maybe next time.

@seraphim73 said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

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

I also think it may be time to officially made the Ad thread ads only. No discussion whatsoever. Want to discuss a game? Put up a Hog Pit thread (for the down'n'dirty) or a Constructive thread (for the random chatter). Keep the ad thread for details (the ad, any updates such as big events, opening of new spheres or OCs etc) only.
How's that sound?

Eh. I kind of like having general-overview sort of comments about the game from others. I also think that it's valuable to have Staff answer some questions about the game there in the ad thread (system, CvC or CvE focus, Can I Have A Gold, etc). I agree that it's really easy for them to get derailed, and it may be more effort moderating them than it's worth, but I think it's definitely worth something.

I've been kind of going back and forth on this. A lot of the time the 'innocent' questions either become a derail into unrelated discussions/theorizing or are used as an underhanded way to attack the game/genre.

It may be better served if instead people PM'd the game-runners or tagged them in other threads (the Constructive thread for the game) with their questions and then the game runners updated the main thread with an FAQ.

This might be a more focused model. And then, instead of people scrolling through four pages of back-and-forth, there's a quick FAQ right there to look at.

@admiral said in Good TV:

Ash vs. Evil Dead dies and garbage reality TV and shitcoms last forever.

Everyone who watches trash like Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother is to blame for the world's problems.

My rage is pure and infinite.

shhhh
go watch Lost in Space

@admiral said in Good TV:

@auspice I wish we still had downvotes. You deserve it. You ruined my life.

No.
Starz deserves it.

They ruined everything