Posts made by faraday

@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, but it's hard to tell if having complaints both about silencing people by catering to SJWs and - at the same time - not moderating enough to push contentious behavior out is a sign we're doing something very wrong or very right.

Also not being sarcastic, but I think that's the reality any time you do moderation. You'll inevitably get complaints from both sides. Nobody likes being silenced, so they're gonna complain. And unless the board is 100% in alignment of what should be silenced, some of them are going to complain the other way.

The real question is not who complains more, but whether the net result is giving you the kind of forum you want to have. (Or, if you leave it to democracy - what the majority of members, not necessarily the majority of complainers, wish to have).

@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

@faraday said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

Haven't we proven time and time again that the community doesn't regulate itself?

I don't know that we have. I hope not.

What exactly is your definition of self-regulation then? Because people yelling "you're being a jerk" "no I'm not!" at each other until it escalates badly enough to get chucked into the hog pit is really not my definition of regulation.

Quiet admonishments to be nice only works if the people on the receiving end actually care. When the only consequence is the thread being moved to the free-for-all area, then there's actually no consequence at all to the offenders. The only consequence is that those of us who choose not to participate in the free-for-all area get cut out of the conversation.

@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

What I don't want is to make this forum unwelcoming to anyone who doesn't share my personal views.

But by allowing trolls to troll with thinly-veiled cracks, you're essentially making the forum unwelcoming to anyone who wants to have a non-troll-bombed conversation. That's where we are right now. The mods have to decide if that's where you want the place to remain. We can have another 20-page long thread about moderation but it really feels like we're just arguing in circles every time this comes up.

@arkandel said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

It's up to the community to regulate itself, which I'm hoping we can do, but which also puts everyone at the relative mercy of cliques.

Haven't we proven time and time again that the community doesn't regulate itself? Freedom of speech means you can stand on the street corner shouting horrible stuff; it doesn't mean you can do so in my living room. The person in charge (whether that's the home owner, business owner or forum owner/s) has to decide what level of discourse they find acceptable, which in turn decides what kind of environment they're going to foster.

@roz said in Open Sheets?:

All I'm saying is that both of these perspectives -- people who prefer closed sheets vs open sheets -- have pros and cons and neither is inherently indicative of player or game quality.

Totally agree. It's a preference thing.

I, for instance, love metagaming.

Trying to run into a new character for RP? Oh - look, your sheet says your guy is into playing basketball. So's mine. Let's run into each other on the basketball court.

Looking for story hooks? Wow - your guy's got a really interesting dark secret that intersects with mine. Let's work together to make a cool story about that.

It's only inherently bad if it's abused. When used for good, it can be great.

I can totally understand the preference of wanting to maintain the mystery and put blinders on to information your character doesn't know for immersion/easier tracking/etc. That's cool. This isn't a question of right or wrong, it's a question of different play styles.

And to the "why would you want to know the story of a movie beforehand?" comments (which I can't find now) ... for me a MUSH isn't like a movie that you're watching, it's a story that you're writing. I wouldn't sit down with a co-author of a novel all: "ZOMG don't tell me anything about those characters!" That would be absurdly ineffective. I understand not everyone views MUSHes that way -- it's the age-old story/game continuum. But it might help to illuminate why some folks would want to know more details while others might consider it more like spoilers.

@admiral said in Open Sheets?:

slow-revealing my character's quirks and motivations over time and giving people access to my sheet would give away far too much information about them.

Others have mentioned not wanting to reveal their powers for PvP or secret reasons (you're a secret Jedi ZOMG!) which I can understand even though I lean the other way. Your comment here though strikes me as more system-specific. In WoD or Cortex where there are codified Merits/Flaws/Advantages/whatever that can give away plot secrets (he has a dark past / addiction / whatever ... ooooo) it's more of a concern than in something like FS3 or Shadowrun where the most you're going to learn about somebody is that they have an hobby of reading Detective Novels. Most of the time, it really doesn't prevent you from doling out your character's "quirks and motivations" over time.

@admiral said in Open Sheets?:

There's no reason for open sheets in any circumstance anyways

Except of course for all of the reasons a half-dozen people have given in this thread.

@auspice said in Open Sheets?:

How often have people been banned from games because in PVP they tried to lie about their sheet and multiple staffers had to get involved to deal with the fallout?

Exactly - open sheets came about as a direct reaction to those sorts of shenanigans. It's not a magic bullet; it comes with some down-sides of its own (the mystique, etc.), but it's hardly an untenable solution. As with most game development decisions, it's a matter of understanding the pros/cons of each solution and deciding which one works best for the game you're trying to run. If there were a one-size no-brainer solution, everyone would already be doing it.

Yeah I think that we're talking apples and oranges a bit here.

"Open sheets" to many people means open stats.

Stats are generally not secret... unless of course your mild-mannered reporter is moonlighting as a superhero and trying to keep that OOCly under wraps.

Even then, though, I think openness is the best policy. It keeps players honest more often than it's abused.

@roz It's a little more complicated than that I think. There's a graph in that When Women Stopped Coding article that showed that women dropped off sharply in computer science while still continuing to head towards parity of representation in other traditionally "mens work" fields.

A lot of it comes down to opportunities. That article (and others) talk about how girls entering CS degree programs in the 80's and 90's felt behind because they hadn't had the opportunity to work with computers as kids, unlike a lot of the boys (who had grown up playing video games). Girls interested in computers were often teased or discouraged from that pursuit.

These days - I can't throw a rock without hitting a "girls who code" camp/club/book/etc. for my pre-teen daughter. Lots of the girls in her class are into code, and just as tech-savvy as the boys. There's now better representation in kids cartoons/toys/etc. showing girls in STEM roles, so they don't see it as just a "boys thing". It really is turning around.

(Aaaand this is probably veering way off topic but whatever.)

@misadventure Those are all good things, but I was speaking more in general about the workforce, not about a specific company's strategy. The root of the problem is in the pipeline -- getting more women to even consider computer science as a field of study and then career. You can't hire people who aren't applying in the first place. Given the groundswell of "girls who code" organizations and the increased interest in kids programs, I think we'll see the numbers start to creep up in the next generation.

@arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

But, as I said... anecdotal.

There's actually been quite a lot of effort lately put into studying this phenomenon. Various studies (here's one, and another) have examined the impact of stereotypes and culture in tacitly discouraging women from pursuing fields in computer science. There's also some research into the interesting effect that the introduction of the PC (which was initially marketed primarily towards men/boys) had on the gender distribution of the computer industry. The issue you're describing is very real: I can say from experience that it's sometimes hard being the only woman in the room.

So it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: How do you motivate more girls when they know that's how the workplace will be - especially given the high-profile reports of misogyny, harassment and discrimination all over the headlines? It's an interesting problem.

@thenomain Oh I thought you meant literally the Solaris arena stuff :). I get what you mean.

As an aside...My view is probably slanted by both Crescent Hawks and the inherent RPG/strategy mix of the way my family played even the tabletop game. It never had an arena feel. But I admit my experience was probably an outlier.

@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

"But Theno, Battletech is all about the arena battles!" And yet the 90s top-down game managed to make it more, much more.

Yeah the early Battletech stuff was anything but arena battles. Quasi-feudal politics, urban warfare, epic battles with dropships and aerospace fighters... the family drama of the Crescent Hawks story, the hardscrabble mercs of the original Mechwarrior. Ah, nostalgia.

@lithium said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

MSB is not the be all and end all source for all things MU*

Definitely not, but we're also a small community and likely to know about other games through word of mouth even if we don't play there personally. I'm sure there are some games not listed, but I wouldn't think it's a lot.

@auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

Maybe she's been warned before. And if she has? Then they did what they had to do.

I understand. I’m just saying that given the facts in evidence (two people being fired, the company’s statement, the lack of reports of her going on twitter rampages before...) the “maybe she deserved it for a pattern of behavior” argument seems pretty unlikely to me. Possible? Sure. Likely? Not IMHO.

I think it’s more likely that this is just another in a growing trend of companies sacking employees over one bad decision in response to internet mobs with torches and pitchforks. There have been plenty of instances of this. (To be clear, I’m not talking about those who are using social media to promote violence or hate speech or credibly accused of a crime or things like that. I’m just talking about garden variety Dumb Decisions that somehow go viral.)

I think that trend is a Bad Thing for society and that disadvantaged people are more likely to be hurt by it.

But at any rate ... I agree she was being a nitwit and out of line. I just think the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime.

@arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

But as everyone has noted, we don't know what was really happening within that workspace.

Absolutely, but we do have the company's own statement about the incident, and I'm just taking them at their word here.

"Their attacks on the community were unacceptable. As a result, they’re no longer with the company."

@auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

In the tweet where she RT'd him, a lot of her fans insulted him, lashed out at him, etc., and she agreed with many of them.

Like you said - that may have been deleted. I can only comment upon what was reported/what I can read on her thread.

But even so - calling somebody an idiot is not hate speech, nor is agreeing with somebody calling somebody an idiot. Unless there was doxxing, RL threats, etc. involved, I'm still not seeing how this is some horrific job-endangering action. She was rude, yes, and I believe people should treat each other better.
But do you honestly believe that should be a fireable offense? Or even if more than a "hey chill out on twitter girl" offense? If so then we will just have to agree to disagree.

@auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

She didn't engage in hate speech herself, but she sure did encourage it.

Also... are we talking about the same thread? The one I read was just her rant-replying to somebody whom she perceived as mansplaining and calling them an "asshat" for doing it. I don't think that's how people should treat each other on the internet, but that's still a far cry from "encouraging hate speech".

@arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

I am representing the company - or it could very easily, not to be mentioned fairly, taken that way.

Nevertheless I believe that "don't ever say something dumb that makes the company look bad or we'll fire you on your first offense" is an idiotic company policy. Counsel her, make her apologize if she's wrong, tell her to stop even vaguely representing the company on twitter... there are any number of reasonable approaches short of the "off with their head!" that the internet clamors for these days.

ETA in response to @Auspice's comment: Oh I'm not defending what she said, only her right to say it without getting fired IF that was the only thing she did. I really wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. Especially because I think the company would have said something about it in their press release instead of trumpeting what amounts to a zero-tolerance policy to talking back to customers on private social media accounts.

@auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

It may have been 'her' Twitter, but she was still representing the company while on it and she attacked a fan. Not just 'a fan,' but one who has been one of their community leaders.

There has to be some separation between personal and professional lives. She wasn't engaging in hate speech or any sort of illegal activity. Firing someone and taking away their livelihood because they were rude to one person on the internet on their own time and on their own private Twitter account is abhorrent to me.

Now if there was some kind of larger pattern, prior warnings, a company policy against engaging with users on your social media, etc. (none of which have come to light but admittedly we don't know the whole story) then that's different. But this happens time and time again and I think it's wrong.

@tyche said in General Video Game Thread:

Hopefully the next professional words she utters are "Would you like fries with that?"

The message this incident sends to any game developer - or any developer, especially female ones - is disgusting, and best summarized in the original article:

"If Reddit wants you fired, we’ll fire you. The quality of your work doesn’t matter. Your personal space, your personal social media, is not yours; you are on the clock 100 percent of the time. We own you. You’re not allowed to be yourself, you’re not allowed to get frustrated, and you’re not allowed to have your own space to breathe. Get out there and make sure the players have a good time. And make sure you smile while they hit you."

Anybody who thinks that employment on the basis of mob rule is a good thing... I just can't even.

@arkandel said in Preferred App Process For Comic Game:

In comparison an inactive person is almost a non-issue.

Agreed with all your points, and that's why I'm no longer in favor of those positions being filled by PCs.

It's like playing the lottery... you've got a 1 in many-thousand chance of it being Super Awesome, but most of the time you're just throwing your money away.