Posts made by faraday

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

So is the "[citation needed] but all proof/examples from the past are invalid 'cause they're old" argument.

If "all proof/examples from the past" boil down to "this one group of folks tried something once a decade ago and it failed" then yeah - I'm not going to consider that a very compelling argument.

If you don't like that place, don't read it. But don't try to decide for the rest of us that it has no value, and we'd all be better off without it.

I'm allowed to have my own opinion about whether such a place is a bad thing for the community just as much as you're allowed to have an opinion about whether such a place is a good thing. I'm not deciding anything because I'm not in charge. What I'm asking for is moderation to keep the dang hog pit posts where they allegedly belong.

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

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

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

[citation needed]

http://www.oocities.org/idealisticgamersunite/

The "OMG somebody tried this once 15 years ago and it didn't work therefore nobody should try this again ever" argument is getting tiresome. Games and forums fail for all kinds of reasons.

And frankly, if the community can't manage to have a forum without being awful to each other all the time? Then that says something about the community.

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

"Yo, there's an angry screed full of completely unfounded false accusations being made here." <-- this is not a microaggression and it's not a mere difference of opinion.

Yeah, I agree. These are not microaggressions, they're full-on, "call you a stupid a-hole to your face" levels of aggression that IMHO have no place in the constructive section. But we see it all the dang time.

If it could be confined to the Hog Pit, then I wouldn't mind so much. (I'd still mind on a philosophical level, but only with as much care as I give to obnoxious Reddit forums... out of sight, out of mind.) But as things stand, it just flat-out isn't. It's in our face constantly, even in the constructive section, and it's freaking exhausting.

I can understand if the mods don't have the bandwidth or motivation to deal with it. I can understand the thinking that it's better to air the toxicity in public than private (even if I disagree with that). But let's stop pretending that this is some kind of unsolvable problem.

Set standards. Enforce them. It's not fun, but it's also not rocket science. Civilized Discourse is a thing. Moderated forums exist - heck, our games are basically this. Most of us wouldn't tolerate people talking to each other on the public channel or BBS on our games the way people talk to each other here. Accepting it is a choice, not an inevitable conclusion.

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

MSB isn't a democracy. If I thought not having a Hog Pit was the best option for us as a community then that's what we'd have now; no, what happened is that I was convinced to go that way based on the arguments made at the time.

Just to clarify my comment about voting ... I wasn't meaning to imply that you blindly cater to the whim of the majority. My point was that the majority want this. If the majority of posters were willing to limit their criticisms to mature, fact-based commentary ("Hey, I advise y'all not play on this game because the staff constantly shows favoritism to its inner circle and here are examples...") and the majority of posters were willing to limit their responses to mature rebuttals ("I think you're wrong about that because here are my reasons...") then we wouldn't need a Hog Pit. But sadly, that's not what the majority wants. So threads even in the constructive section devolve into childish spats of "you're a jerk!" "no you're a jerk!".

Nobody (that I've seen) is asking for a happy rainbow sunshine place where nobody disagrees or criticizes. Very few people are even calling for the destruction of the Hog Pit. All some of us are asking for is more moderation in the constructive area so that people aren't afraid to even post for fear of being dogpiled. Because that's a thing that happens here. As @surreality and @Derp pointed out, people are made to feel like crap for sport. People are driven into silence, unwilling to post. People are reluctant to even come to the forum because of its reputation. ("Wow, you're on MSB? Girl, why?!?!" is something I hear regularly.)

You feel those things are necessary evils in order to have a forum that supports free speech with no apparent hint of bias. I respect your right to make that decision because you are the moderators of the forum. Most of the time I manage to bite my tongue and not complain about it. But if, on a thread like this, opinions are solicited about the moderation policy, I'm going to speak my opinion that the current policy is a Bad Idea for the MU community.

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

Sure it does. But most highly professional jobs don't have this as HR tend to go down on them like a ton of bricks.

This. You can't prevent people from being jerks. What you can prevent is people displaying jerkish behavior in your space by being intolerant to such shenanigans.

That said, we had like a 50-page thread on this very issue not that long ago and the overwhelming sentiment was that folks relish having a place where they can display jerkish behavior in peace.

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

If you try to moderate that away, you wind up like IGU: Dead for years, and no one gives a damn.

Yes, some of us give a damn. We've just been outvoted. (to wit: look at the poll)

The admins would probably already know this, but just to clarify anyway - my low grade is nothing to do with them personally, as I like them quite a lot. It's just a philosophical disagreement about the decisions to have a mostly-hands-off moderation policy and a hog pit section.

@Arkandel -- I was able to get my browser working again just by clearing old browsing data. Might have been some bad cached javascript somewhere.

In Chrome for Mac, it was Chrome -> Clear Browsing Data -> Cached Images and Files.

@krmbm said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

I love AresMUSH, but it would take someone that could code a whole different stat system to pull it together.

I agree, but you can do that. I mean, you're going to have to code up a whole different stat system whether you pick TinyMUX, Evennia or Ares. I don't think the effort to do so is going to be orders of magnitude different no matter which one you pick.

@bobgoblin said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Not being uber familiar with Ares I'm not sure if such a system is feasible; however it has been what I've experienced as closest to the book feel as I've come across and is very simple to implement.

I don't think the choice of servers is important in system design. Ares, Evennia, MUSHcode... they're all just attributes stored in a database and commands to use them. There are other factors that can drive your choice of servers, but the system mechanics are a negligible concern.

ETA: Unless of course you're looking for an already-bulit implementation, like FS3 for Ares, or Theno's WoD for Tiny, or Dahan's Star Wars for whatever MU it runs on.

@Arkandel They're Javascript errors. Changing themes didn't help (which isn't surprising). Looks like bugs in the latest version of nodebb.

• In the chat window as you type it continues to say 0/1000 chars and gives: Uncaught TypeError: o.updateRemainingLength is not a function (And it gives that error when you click send too).

• When loading a thread and it tries to go to your last read position: Uncaught TypeError: i.init is not a function

Technically there are no errors when you reply, but I'm guessing the fact that it doesn't refresh is related to the init failure when the thread was first loaded.

Yeah I had the same problem on both Chrome and mobile Chrome. Had to open up the "See all chats" in full screen to get it to work.

Possibly related - I've also had a problem where regular threads don't refresh after I post a reply, so it looks like the reply isn't working.

@tnp said in Now Open! Welcome to Lovecraft:

Because there's an 'amount of RP' threshold to keep my interest. When it's not met

Yeah, I sympathize with @Botulism but this is not really something you can put on the players. It's a game. Can you imagine if you booted up a video game on Playstation or something at it was all: "Sorry, you can't play right now for (reasons)." How many times would you try before you just threw up your hands? It takes a minimum critical mass to sustain a game. It's unfortunate but it's the reality.

@cobaltasaurus said in Star Trek?:

Anomaly and Gamma One!

I thought Anomaly was ship-based? I seem to remember starship console code and stuff, but maybe I'm getting my games mixed up. Forgive me - it's been ages.

@mr-johnson said in Star Trek?:

@faraday Poor, poor Chief Obrian.

Hmm? I don't follow. O'Brien was a bit-player on TNG because who wants to write stories about the transporter operator on a regular basis? To make him viable as a main character on DS9 they basically had to put him in engineering, which is one of the "main" departments on Trek.

You can make anybody the focus of a story once in a blue moon, but most MU players want more to do than that.

@lotherio said in Star Trek?:

For that matter, who actually thinks that Ensign Blueshirt down in Stellar Cartography is ever going to have anything interesting to do on a routine basis?

I'd have a blast with this concept.

More power to you, but I daresay you're in an extreme minority there. I can't see most MU players enjoying a scene sitting around a console talking about star measurements. Now occasionally you could work the cartography in as a plot hook of course... "We need to go (here) for mapping.... oh no, the shuttle has crashed!" or stuff like that. But as day-to-day meat and potatoes MU RP? I can't see it. There's a reason why every main character on every Trek series has been in one of the more "active" departments.

@rnmissionrun said in Star Trek?:

Usually, the person in charge is the game owner, and the only important players are himself, his harem and a few friends (all high ranking officers). Everyone else is basically an NPC whose RP consists of filing reports with his CO. If you're lucky you might get invited to some of the captain's big scenes. But you'll never be the hero. As Ensign Blueshirt down in Stellar Cartography, the toughest decision you'll have to make all day is whether you're going to dust underneath the consoles, or just the tops.

That has absolutely nothing to do with it being a single ship and everything to do with it being a crappily run MUSH. Who wants to play a NPC filing reports? For that matter, who actually thinks that Ensign Blueshirt down in Stellar Cartography is ever going to have anything interesting to do on a routine basis?

You can have a single ship and still make it interesting. You could also do a single space station - I'm surprised nobody's done a DS9 game honestly, as I think that's the Trek setting most conducive to being a MUSH setting (and similar in vein to Babylon 5, which was a successful MU way back when).

Trek according to the starship model has a problem of expectations, because the show basically shows the senior staff doing everything and everyone else doing nothing. That's fine for a TV show with a limited cast, but abominably stupid from a military standpoint. All you have to do is make it work more like a normal navy would, and suddenly a much broader swath of crew members have opportunities to go on away missions and get involved in adventures.

@bobgoblin I think some places took Reports to an extreme and expected it to be written up in an IC, professional and detailed manner. That’s just annoying. A pithy OOC summary can convey important plot details to players and staff who weren’t there, but hardly anybody wants to read (let alone write) a realistic AAR. They’re long and dull.

@lithium said in Real life versus online behaviors:

@faraday said in Real life versus online behaviors:

Have hog pit posts really cost anyone RP?

Yes, they have.

It was more a rhetorical question than a "has this ever happened in the history of MSB" question. Obviously the impact to RP is not big enough to keep people from posting there, or the place wouldn't still exist.

@arkandel said in Real life versus online behaviors:

On a MUSH or even MSB the pool is so much smaller, and possessing a recognizable identity is super important - your reputation matters, which is one of the reasons being an oldbie often conveys advantages either formally or otherwise.

I don’t think it matters as much as you think in some respects. I mean, how long did people play on Serenity? Or that crazy pants supers game that had a gazillion flamey posts here? Have hog pit posts really cost anyone RP?

MU players are shockingly tolerant to bad behavior. There’s also the illusion at least of being able to start fresh because we have no global screennames or other player identity. (And it may in part account for why so many MU players are resistant to such identity tracking.)

The reaction in most cases is just to be more insular, rather than actually confronting the bad behavior. So even when there are consequences, you don’t get the “you’re a jerk so I’m not going to play with you” feedback.

@arkandel said in Real life versus online behaviors:

I hate it because it implies some people are only civil normally for fear of retaliation, which is a dumbass reason to act as a mature adult should.

But that's just human nature. As @Three-Eyed-Crow pointed out earlier, a TON of humans will act to whatever extent they think they can get away with. In regular society there are boundaries - social norms - that are not really "enforced" but have power because people care about the consequences. Peers thinking less of them, social ostracizing, etc. Those boundaries don't naturally exist online, so online communities have to create them. Without them, well... :points to hog pit, or Reddit, or Facebook, or....: