Posts made by Darinelle

I'm all for training, but "online ninja training" kind of makes me go "wut"?

Martial arts with your stepdad sounds pretty cool though. My parents ruthlessly kept me away from everything violent or martial for most of my life. Which is why now I'm such an easygoing, laid-back, gentle and non-violent person.

@2mspris What is this I don't even....

@Coin - I've got a place for your katana right here, baby...

@Coin No, no - I only date actual ninjas. (Or maybe I just don't date.)

I love when people tell me how they're ninjas. I love it. I once had a guy try to impress me by telling me he was training to be a ninja. In a park in South Florida. And you know, they weren't like - doing any of the climbing or jumping or shit, just the straight up fighting and sparring like REAL ninjas.

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Staff Transparency has two main branches that should be addressed separately.

1. From a STer perspective, I think that scenes that involve judgment calls should have real reasons for being judged that way. Be they rolls, or considerations, or even a log of the discussions and agreements between all involved. And if those judgments are questioned then it needs to be discussed openly, with all the reasons for that call also discussed freely between all participants. There should be no judgment made on a STing scene that has reasons that cannot be discussed openly, with the caveat that sometimes reasons cannot be discussed while the scene is going on.

As an example, I recently ran a plot where one of the people involved thought I was being completely unethical based on the roleplay that they could see. I responded as best I could while the plot was going on, but quite honestly full and open discussion couldn't be had until after the scene had closed. In the end, I had logs, rolls, and numbers to back up what decisions I made, but to reveal all those to the person who thought I was behaving badly would have meant giving the person information of other people's IC dealings, or alternately giving away the end of the plot before it was a fait accompli.

After the plot ended, we had a long discussion about what was going on behind the scenes and why it looked, from an IC perspective, that certain things were unfair. I think (I hope!) the conversation ended in a good place, and the person who thought I was being unethical doesn't think so any more. Which is nice, as I like this particular player. That being said, that sort of transparency sometimes has to wait until after the fact, or the people involved in questioning would have to recuse themselves from the plot, in order for it to be fair to everyone playing. But I think you SHOULD be able to explain what you did, and as a STer you should be WILLING to explain at any point, so that people feel they have real answers. They may not be answers the players LIKE, but they should be able to get answers.

2. From an OOC perspective, regarding player complaints, allegations of metagaming, and other problems - I don't think it's a good idea to force the person making the complaint to be named publicly. It's easy to say "well, you should be strong enough to stand up for yourself," or "if it's really a problem, you'd be willing to publicly say it's a problem" but the reality is that just isn't true. To Thenomain's point, a lot of women are afraid to stand up for themselves, or to say things are a problem that definitely are problems, and more often than not I've heard the "well, if you won't speak up then it's not a problem" is a rationalization I've heard by some of the worst, most abusive staffers I've seen as to why they won't do anything about what is a known problem. (Note that I'm not speaking of Ganymede obviously, having never staffed with her) Sometimes protecting those who are abused and afraid means keeping their problems anonymous.

What I do believe though, in matters of OOC Transparency, is that disciplinary actions should be made public. If someone is given a 2 week ban from a sphere, it should be posted to that sphere. "So and so is taking a break for 2 weeks, for disruptive behavior/player abuse/metagaming/whatever." Or if someone is banned from the game that should be posted as an announcement. "So and so is banned from the game for alt-cheating." You don't have to go into every sordid detail, but if you make a decision to ban or suspend someone, have the balls to say why, and let people know publicly that Something Was Done. Too often even when staff takes action against someone, no one knows it actually happened so it looks like staff is doing nothing. This creates a culture of distrust, and a sense of "well, if nothing is going to be done why bother complaining anyway?" And then that leads to a spiral of misery where the playerbase no longer trusts staff, even if staff is trying to take action. If you complain, and you here "this was handled" - I think that's also not enough information. If you complain and instead you get "I spoke with so and so directly about his repeated attempts to OOCly pressure people to TS him, and let him know that this is not okay, and he is suspended for 2 weeks from playing this character and has been told that he may not address this issue with anyone he has pressured in this manner," then that's better. It sets specific guidelines and expectations, so that the people involved know where the line is now, and feel comfortable knowing you do too. And then you post on the board - "This person is suspended for 2 weeks for trying to pressure people OOCly to do things ICly" - and the game knows that you'll take action to protect the playerbase. And if said person comes back and does the same thing, then you get to ban them forever and no one is surprised.

@Cobaltasaurus - So far we've done a pear cider and a pear-strawberry cider. The next batch is apple cider I think (all of this hard cider, not just for drinking like juice). We've learned a lot (the huz and I do it together) so far about how long it needs to sit and such. And I think we're going to try a standard honey mead this month or next, and the next batch will be hard apple cider - and then the batch after that will likely start with a roadtrip to Asheville during the apple harvest, to start with really, really fresh juice. Once we bought the stuff that we use to brew, it's a cheap hobby - neither of us drink very much, so what we make takes a few months to go through. But we're having a lot of fun with it, for sure!

I'm thinking about getting into the SCA again, which is something I try every so often - if I do that we'll probably brew more so we have things to share at events!

@Seamus - this is awesome. Culinary school is on my list of "things I'd love to do as idle rich, but don't want to do for a living because exhaustion. Do you work as a chef or baker, or just do it for fun?

Throughout the process, continue to be very, very grateful for those people with a passion that matches yours for your project. Those who contribute time and effort should be thanked, not treated like contractors - be they theme, code, or buildstaff.

@Cobaltasaurus - That is really beautiful.

As for my contributions - I cook, and I bake. And I crochet sometimes. And I brew - cider, so far, but probably branching into mead here directly.

@Glitch - I could TOTALLY do that.

aaaahahahahahahahahahaha.

I couldn't even finish typing that with a straight face.

I'm actually starting to like it.

I'm fairly certain this means I've gone mad.

I was wondering who you were in another thread and now I KNOW! You are so awesome!

Chrome works for me fine on MSB but I'm using an ancient Galaxy (like - the first version ancient).

My favorite new urban fantasy right now is by a guy named Craig Schaefer - the books start with A Long Way Down, and there are 3 of them in the series. They're quick reads, and my only complaint at present is that there aren't more of them.

You might also enjoy John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" (and the following books) - it's more sci-fi than fantasy, but I found them to be a damn fine read.

@somasatori said:

Best SimCity ever.

Suddenly I want to play this game... likely based on completely erroneous conclusions.

No rush, Chime. I know you're busy! And this isn't... THE MOST CRITICAL THING EVER, it's just making me crazy. Crazier. Something. Drive safely!

@Chime - there is definitely interest. There is so much interest. There is ALL the interest, I am a veritable font of interest. My problem right now is that I know very little about MediaWiki and CSS in general, so while my googlefu is strong and I'm perfectly happy to read documentation and slog my way through tutorials, I don't know what questions to ask because I don't know what things are called half the damn time. I'm learning a lot at least, but all the things I've learned still haven't enabled this one change to be made.

In any case, I would be more than happy to talk best practices and all sorts of things - here, in Skype, hell - pretty much wherever and whenever is convenient for you. My schedule's pretty flexible.

@Glitch clearly you are my hero. Thank you.

Maybe this isn't MUSH code but for the love of fucking god would someone tell me what tag, reference, name, whateverwhatever on whatever fucking page of the fucking wiki I need to go to change the goddamn color of the motherfucking pagetabs on a fucking wiki site? Jesus H, it should not be this hard. I just need to type: background color: transparent, but I don't know what the everloving howmanymoretimesdoIhavetosayfucking place is to PUT it, or what to label this as?

As in - where it says Page, Discussion, Read/Edit/View History - if I want to make this NOT a white background, what designation is this? It's not body, or background, or...

This is why I missed WORA. Having a place to ask questions like this.

Dammit.

(I've been editing the MediaWiki:Common.css that should apply to all skins with some very basic changes, I just don't seem to know where to go to change the background color of those damn basic tabs. Header isn't the answer either. @#$()*&#$)

Thanks for putting this back up. I found I actually missed the constructive parts more than I thought I would.