I get that you two have bad blood with @Ghost or whatever. I can respect that. But derailing a thread about how to generate more positive interactions with some thinly veiled ad hominems isn't gonna fly.
Go do that on the other forum.
If you want to get into a more heated talk about the criteria for judging sincerity and whatnot, might I suggest the Debates and Reviews section of the forum?
If you tap the three dots on the right-hand side of any post, there is an option that says ‘Flag This Post for Moderation’ or something similar.
I think that it’s also important to note that neither of us want to shut down discussions on matters. There’s been a lot of talk and speculation on that line of thought given recent events and the changes to the Code of Conduct, but none of this is meant to shut down questioning, or even disagreement. We’re both open to ideas, and we’re just as capable of being wrong as anyone else is. None of what’s happened in the last few weeks has been intended to stifle discussions on matters.
We’re still willing to engage in good faith with the people who have shown they’re willing to engage us in good faith in turn. Civil discussions are always welcome, even if people don’t agree. But the loud, noisy spectacles aren’t going to get anyone anywhere. They frustrate both sides, and ultimately are a very ineffective way to get us to see that the person advocating those positions is attempting to be reasonable.
We may not agree with you. You might not get the resolution that you’re looking for. But neither of us are trying to hide the ball, either. We both believe in open communication.
But just hurling random insults and vulgarity and insisting that we concede to your demands is absolutely, in no way, going to get you the results you want.
You might think you're being clever here, but you're not. Stop. Now.
@saosmash said in Review of Recent Bans:
@macha I really thought, genuinely, that since more than ten years had passed your behavior might have changed and that you might have grown out of some of your patterns. But we really should have banned you from our game when your player management thread reached the end of its second full page.
I can only hope that your demonstration of yourself to the community over the course of this contretemps has showed the gaming community enough of who you are that, in the future, you won't be able to manipulate other staffers and hurt other games the way you hurt ours.
Bye!
You asked a question. She answered the question.
There are ways of engaging in this conversation that don't require directed personal attacks. When we updated the rules, we meant it.
I get that you have strong feelings on this, but this kind of stuff isn't going to fly. Especially not in this part of the forum.
Knock it off.
Upon review of the bans levied as a result of recent conduct, we have decided to unban the following users' accounts:
All other bans shall remain in place.
You could change this system to be:
"Wanted to _________________ but it kind of got out of hand."
Just fill in the blank.
I don't believe any final decisions have been made. But it's not an idle topic either. There are still discussions happening on the subject. I expect that a final decision one way or another will be coming down the pipe in the near future.
MSB is still pretty anonymous truth. be told. Unless you post something to a playlist or use the same handle on a game where it would be known, there is really nothing to tie you to any character on a MU. Some very clever people might pick up on things based on OOC comments, writing style, etc, but for the most part, if none of you ever told me who you played, I'd have no clue.
I went ahead and added this to the quick navigation links at the top of the page, after the Muxify link. It's the little booky lookin' dood.
Might try to find a better icon for Muxify. Dunno.
Welp, it was in the 90s day.
We are predicted to get a foot of snow tomorrow and temps n the 20s!
My plants!!!!!
I am going to do what I can to protect them, we will see, it will be an epic battle to save plants.
Buckets! The big 5 gallon kind if you can find them, or like -- whatever size buckets you have in the Euro-zone. Just put them right over them to try and help protect them from wind and frost.
@hobos said in Magic in games:
It depends on whether you want things to be balanced, too.
As a long-time fan / runner of Mage, in particular, I really think that a couple of definitions are key: balanced and overpowered.
What do you mean by overpowered? If you mean that Mages can do a very impressive thing in a very short time, then yes, they are more powerful than, say, a werewolf or a vampire. But that big flashy magic comes with some tradeoffs. They can't do it as often, and the magic go-juice that makes it run (in Awakening, anyway) is a bit more limited than Essence or Blood or whatever emotional go-juice changelings run on. And it takes more of it, if you play it right. Also, reality itself fights back.
So they can get some pretty high spikes in power but they can't do it as often, as efficiently, or as safely as some of the other splats.
Does that balance? It depends on what you want to see out of it. If run absolutely according to the rules, it tends to work out pretty nicely. No one side has a clear advantage over teh other unless the Mage has been given a LOT of time to prepare and gather their materials and things without the other side catching wind and taking any action.
In terms of the larger discussion, I think an important question is: do you want power to look more like a flat curve or a bunch of spikes and troughs? If you want something consistent with no surprises then Mage probably is a bad choice, and you should probably go with something like a DnD-style system. If you want something with a lot of punch but limited ammo, then something like Mage might be good.
And all of this assumes that you don't want them to, long-term, have special advantages. If that's not the case, then the calculus changes a bit.
Marnie Schulenburg, soap opera actress, breast cancer.
Just as a quick update to this thread for the people following along at home: copy/paste uploading seems to be working again.
@rightmeow said in Something Completely Different:
Of the banned, You are saying a lot about their behaviors on a forum they are banned from. So in effect, you (general you) are talking behind their backs too.
Not weighing in on the substance of the above arguments, but just wanted to point out, in case there was some kind of misconception -- they can still see this. Every part of the forum is now visible, even to guests and those not logged in, save for the Admin sections. They can see this just fine. They just can't post here about it.
So I'm not sure that this qualifies as 'behind someone's back' in the same way that the Hog Pit used to be, where you couldn't even see it unless you knew exactly where to look and the magic steps involved to be able to see it in the first place.
The reason for the change wasn't that people were too mean. The reason for the change was that it usually devolved into just browbeating and name calling and shouting people down via sheer pressure of numbers.
Your standard dogpiling, bullying scenario.
To steal a quote from someone else: "MSB follows WORA's spirit still. It is a safe place where MUSHers can post criticism of games without fear of reprisal from the game owners. It was a place to call out the bullshit of games and players under the anonymity of another identity."
But the hands-off approach to moderation eventually just turned into a few very vocal minorities shouting down every user that disagreed with them in some pretty dramatically shitty ways.
And that's what the new Code is meant to curtail. You can argue. You can disagree. It can get heated. But it's not going to just devolve into a series of dogpiling personal attacks anymore because people think it's a no-holds-barred section where anything goes.
In short: we don't expect everyone to get along all the time. But we're enforcing a bare minimum of civility and boundaries for those kinds of debates.
@kalakh said in Something Completely Different:
This is silly. This is proof of the problem.
This wasn't Ganymede. This was me. The decision was made to change the name. The old blurb was not in line with the new Code of Conduct. So I redid the blurb.
Could probably be less verbose, but frankly, I wanted to get it up and opened again more than I cared about whether it took up any extra space or whatever, and having it there is a good reminder that the rules changed.
If someone can figure out a shorter way to say that, I'm all ears. I'm not married to that blurb. It just does what it needed to do.
IGNORING A CATEGORY
If you don't want to see a category, there's a very easy one-step solution. On the main cateogory page, at the top right, you'll see a box that says 'Watching', or something similar. If you click on that, you'll see an option that says 'Not Watching' or 'Ignoring', like so:
If you change this to 'not watching', the topics will show up in Recent Posts, but will not show that you have unread topics.
If you change it to Ignoring, it will neither show you Unread topic notifications or show up in Recent Posts for you, which means that you have to deliberately go into the category to see it.
IGNORING SPECIFIC THREADS
Pretty much the same procedure, but the icon is different. Inside of a thread, in the right hand corner, you'll see a bell icon, like so:
Pretty much the same options. Pretty much the same effects.
BLOCKING USERS
Ignoring / blocking users can be done from that user's profile page. It'll be, for example,
This is how you now control your MSB viewing experience. Categories will no longer be hidden behind groups that you have to track down and join, and know you have to track down in the first place. But the opt-out is easy, and you can fine-tune your own thread-following experience.
If you run into issues, let me know and we'll work through them.