@thatguythere Well that all comes down to whether you have good moderators with the willingness to draw a line between: "I think that attitude is bad for MUSHing" (Complainer: "Wah wah they're so mean to me" Mod: "Yeah, no") and "You're a crap-flinging howler monkey."
Stupid enter key, ETA: We handle this just fine on our game public channels, for the most part. I don't doubt we could handle it here. People just don't want to.
@auspice True, true. And heck, if there's one thing I'd be glad to have a disconnect about, it's erring on the side of "people being less horrible". (Shocker, I know.)
@auspice said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
I mean more allow/focus on NPCs being the ones to dish out the discrimination (rather than be on the receiving end).
Yeah that's what I tried on Sweetwater. PCs could have whatever views they wanted, and the NPCs would reflect the historical norms.
It really didn't work out too well. Only rarely did people emit NPCs reacting as historical NPCs would. And the prevalence of progressive viewpoints far overshadowed anything the NPCs did occasionally dish out, leading to a sort of weird cognitive dissonance.
Now I'm not saying it can't ever work. That's just my personal experience.
ETA: By the dissonance I mean... it's kind of strange when the theme says "the NPCs discriminate based on historical norms" but you've got your Native American outcast, your African American doctor and your lady gunslinger all openly attending the town-wide barn dance without a single PC saying a word or a single NPC being emitted giving them side-eye. Yet that's what can happen. I'm not saying that's bad either... it's not like, "oh no we need more prejudice in our RP". It's just a little disconcerting sometimes when there's a disconnect between theme and RP.
@rnmissionrun said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
If I had known that you were open to people running "private beta" games with AriesMUSH, I would have hit you up ages ago!
Not games plural - there's just one. And if you had to hear about all the times Kraken had to deal with horrible merge conflicts or redo his code based on me changing things, you might feel otherwise 
Anyway, he and @Seraphim73 have provided a lot of good feedback.
Back when I ran Sweetwater Crossing (a western), the policy allowed PCs to have modern sensibilities (making them outliers for their day and age) but permitted IC discrimination as long as it was kept IC.
Playing a female ranchhand, I was fully prepared to deal with era-appropriate discrimination. I saw that as an important thing that shaped the character and something I didn't mind exploring - even as a woman iRL. It was actually a little jarring when she would go around talking about her struggles in a town full of PCs who had no problem with her whatsoever. Off-camera discrimination just didn't resonate with people.
On the flip side, a situation arose where some PCs wanted to form a lynch mob to get an African American PC who was romantically involved with a white woman PC. Holy cow was that a horrible situation. Yeah, it's historical, but it was really uncomfortable (as, probably, it should be) trying to moderate that kind of thing. Not only did it pit the characters against each other, there was no small amount of anger and "You're a horrible person!" at people for playing within the game's setting.
So I can see both sides of the argument ... not wanting to sugar-coat history vs. not wanting to throw the worst parts of history into peoples' faces. But for me personally? I prefer fantasy/sci-fi settings where the discrimination is because "You're from Tauron" and not "You've got dark skin."
@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:
But I think we need to talk about this. This is important. I think I understand why Faraday suggests but one review post per game. But what about the game owners and their staff? Should they be permitted to respond to the post? If so, doesn't that imply the need for multiple posts in the same topic?
What I meant was one thread, like "BSGU Reviews" and then each individual can vote on a star rating and post a single review as a 'response' to that thread. Or just ditch the star rating and let the reviews stand on their own merits if folks are worried about it being abused.
Whether you allow staff to respond is a valid question, but I tend to think that in absence of any tools to support that, it's just going to end up in a "You!" "No you!" type of fight any time something negative is posted. Especially with other players and the peanut gallery chiming in.
Staff can post general remarks on their ads thread. And if there's something more to discuss like.... "Wow a lot of people don't like the XP system on BSGU, what's up with that?" then someone could make a different thread (in either the hog pit or constructive section, as appropriate) for people to discuss that further.
That's just my brainstorming on the subject, anyway. Not saying it's a perfect system or anything.
@bored said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
Glad to see another Ares game!
Full disclosure: Ares is still under development and has not yet been released. It's pretty stable - BSGU has been running without major issues for a long time -
but it's still a work in progress. Kraken and the 8th Sea staff have been working with me on sort of a "private beta" basis to help shake out configuration/customization and admin issues. (I'm not directly involved in the game though.)
@bored Thank you.
And in a constructive vein - I think the one thing we both agree on (and so have others) is the idea of an "Honest Reviews" section. We may differ a bit on our desired execution, but I think the core idea is the same - that players should have the ability to review a game outside the hog pit even if that review is negative.
I don't think forum software is the greatest way to record reviews, but since it's all we've got... one potential way to do it is to allow people to create a poll for a game with 1-star to 5-stars as the poll result options. Then limit people (by policy; I don't think the forum software can enforce it) to just one review post per game. No debates, no dumpster fires, just individual reviews.
@tempest said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
This is probably not the place for this, but how different is Ares from the standard FS3 stuff? Like, sheetwise is it still 4 attributes that go 1-4 and custom-input skills that go 1-12?
This page addresses What's New in Third Edition.
@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:
You complain about people telling you to leave if you don't like it, about 'splintering' things. But let's be honest, you want a forum that isn't this one, a forum to suit your friends. Getting rid of people who value the board as it exists is just as splintering, probably far more so.
I really wish you'd stop assuming that all of the dozens of people whom I've heard express concerns through the years were just "my friends". It's not accurate and it's pretty condescending.
I want a forum where people treat each other decently. That has nothing whatsoever to do with whether my personal friends would ever post here or not.
I see no inherent contradiction in believing both that splintering the community is bad and that fostering negativity is bad. I would love to believe there's a reasonable compromise out there. But if there isn't, then it comes down to a choice between the lesser of two evils and we're allowed to have differing views on which that is.
@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:
I'm still gonna go with 'a bunch of my (anonymous) friends agree with me!!' is always a bad argument. They're not relevant as long as they remain anonymous.
Look I don't know what you want from me here. It's not like I can provide specific citations to dozens of conversations had across a fifteen year period. They're relevant to me even if they are not compelling evidence to you.
I like to discuss things about MUSHing. Not just "game design" but random stuff like "What's your favorite scene" or "What would you like to see in a Shadowrun game" (which is not exactly design-by-committee but could spark some ideas) or @Arkandel's recent post of "How do you create your characters".
It saddens me that some portion of the players in this hobby feel alienated from these boards - and thus from the "cross-game community" that @Arkandel mentioned - because of the negativity here. It bothers me that I feel like I can't express a dissenting opinion without getting pounced on, as has happened in this thread. If you want people to post more constructive stuff, there has to be a constructive environment to post in.
Various people have said "Well if you don't like it, leave". Which maybe is the only answer here. But given how small the community is already, splintering it further doesn't seem like it really does us any favors. And frankly it's depressing that the response to "Can't we all just be civil to each other?" is, essentially, "No - so quit your whining or leave."
@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Do you actually have any examples of an MSB-origin grudges moving to game?
Yes.
@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:
I think you're taking a small handful of your own friends who may not like posting here because of badness and then generalizing that to way more people than you have any justification to do.
Quite obviously I have not done an extensive poll of all MUSHers, but nor is it a "small handful" of people. I have heard this attitude expressed by lots of players through the years, re: WORA and MSB. There's an equal number who are all "What's MSB?" and I'm not comfortable inviting them.
@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:
But we've seen how the more extreme rules of moderation that you and others specifically pushed for has had the actual effect of stifling it.
I have repeatedly supported a need for 1-star reviews as a PSA against toxic games (just in a different format than the current gangpile threads) and pushed back against the idea of having a "positive-only" ads thread. Don't blame me for the specific rules of engagement that I had no hand in crafting.
@krmbm said in Regarding administration on MSB:
What we know is that the people here use the Hog Pit more than any other forum. Invalidating actual statistics because they don't agree with your side of the argument is a pretty shitty way to argue.
"Past results show X but if we change Y we might get different results" is, like, the entire foundation of the scientific method. But sure, whatever you say.
@wizz said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Ultimately I think the purpose this whole conversation serves is to show what percentage of the board feels one way or the other, which to be honest is also a great barometer for "whether or not this iteration of the forum is a good fit for you."
Agreed. And I don't know how to resolve that. (ETA: Well, ultimately the mods will just pick one. I'm just speaking hypothetically here.)
We haven't heard from the majority of the people. We have a couple vocal people on both sides of the argument.
We have people who would leave if there weren't a Hog Pit. That is a fact.
We have people who don't come here at all, or are leery of posting anything here, because there is. That is also a fact.
Which is the majority? I honestly don't know. I do think that pointing to "well hog pit has more posts" is not really a valid benchmark of what the activity could be if the board had a better reputation across the community and more people weren't afraid of being piled on for posting a dissenting opinion.
@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:
How and why is it different from the exchange earlier,
The difference is in the tone. I do not believe I attacked you personally (and if I did, I apologize for I did not intend to). I just expressed a different opinion.
Sometimes people have polar opposite opinions. I believe it's ok to say "I think you're wrong" or "I understand that's your opinion based on your experiences but my experiences have been different" as long as it's done respectfully and civilly. That, of course, is also a matter of opinion and on this forum really only the moderators' opinions matter as to what constitutes being over the line.
@ixokai Uh yeah, when you start the response with "God I hate (your) response...", shout at me in all caps, and accuse me of being passive-aggressive and putting up a steel wall to discussion, I consider that a rant. What's your definition?
@ixokai said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Or I'm an idiot, quite likely. But that's what I hear to those words.
I seriously did not mean to be passive-aggressive and I certainly did not mean you're an idiot. You replied with a number of particularly emphatic points that sounded to me like you were stating them as objective fact. I was merely attempting to say that we have different opinions based on our experiences.
But this is kinda exactly the sort of thing I'm complaining about. I state an opinion about the generic hobby as a whole and get comments like "I have serious questions about your experience and history elsewhere" and a personal rant calling me passive aggressive. Seriously?
@ixokai said in Regarding administration on MSB:
That doesn't mean no one has a negative experience. But I deny this pervading negative aura that lays heavy over the hobby.
That's fine. I'm not on a crusade to convince you otherwise. But I'm entitled to my opinion based on my experiences as much as you are. There's a reason I only run co-op, niche, borderline-sandbox games.
ETA: I don't participate in MMO communities either because they are even more negative. The fact that something worse exists somewhere is irrelevant IMHO.
@ixokai said in Regarding administration on MSB:
You're painting with a broad brush and assuming that because there is a dark place (MSB's HOg Pit) and a subset of users snark there, there is a culture of negativity everywhere.
I didn't mean to say everywhere. But I have absolutely seen people leave games or start avoiding other players on games based on the negative stuff that goes on here. (ETA: And I don't mean the public shaming of horrifying behavior. I mean just the everyday 'You're an a-hole' stuff that goes on.) If you haven't experienced that, I'm glad for you. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Some folks are so sensitive to any criticism that they actually can't handle anything other than praise -- and most can agree that's not healthy -- so if we're focusing on making every sector of the forum a welcoming embrace to all sensitivities
For goodness sake, there's a difference between "criticism" and calling someone a "shit-flinging howler monkey". And the fact that this is even being debated is exactly the thing that's driving people like me away from this forum.