Best posts made by Ganymede

@smile said in Something Completely Different:

You said you were going to clarify he was only helping with the technical side of things. But he seems to be admining.

No, I said he was doing tech advising and staying out of the fray. The "fray" was the constant and continuous attacks leveled at him in the Hog Pit at the time.

Looking back at the thread opened to attack him, he did very little to defend himself, something which he was more than capable of doing. He did precisely what I asked of him.

Derp has been helping us out since we migrated into Digital Ocean and got set up again. He is quite literally responsible (along with Testament and Faraday) for why we still have all of the old posts and transported successfully (because the rest of us at the time were not technically-literate).

But, yes, he has also been a third voice for mietze and I. His recent post of our new Code of Conduct was something all three of us worked on diligently for a few days. He announced the opening of the locked threads on my request, as I was at work; he posted up instructions on how to ignore categories, threads, and users as well because I asked him to.

There are still many issues to work through. That's why I am looking for people interested in joining the team. Voices are important.

I realize that I am coming off as terse and standoffish, and I apologize for that, but I am still processing recent events and am trying to be as effective as I can now that mietze is stepping back for a well-deserved break.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

It's one of those questions you can't say no to without being the bad guy, and those suck.

Like, I get shit being derailed for actual emergencies, but that doesn't strike me as an emergency.

This is absolutely, empirically, objectively not an emergency.

This is, without a doubt in my mind, a ploy for Him to get some action from Her.

See, this is how the conversation would have went with me, without a doubt.

Friend: Hey, a friend of mine is fighting with her boyfriend and she doesn't have a car. Can we give her a ride? It'll just be a quick detour.
Ganymede: I don't want no random bitch in my car, what's wrong with you?
Friend: She's not random! I've known her for a few months now.
Ganymede: She's random to me, dork. Are you trying to fuck her?
Friend: No.
Ganymede: Then, no.
Friend: That's really shitty of you.
Ganymede: No, that's really shitty of you. We planned this day a while back; I took a vacation day for it; and now you want to interrupt it to comfort this girl who's random to me when we planned this so we comfort each other by re-living our glory days. If I was sucking your dick on the regular, you wouldn't even think of doing this to me.
Friend: So, you're saying I should just blow off my friend because you say so?
Ganymede: No, I'm saying this because you're blowing me off.
Friend: I'm her only friend.
Ganymede: If she told you that, she's lying. Even if it isn't, you're still blowing me off.
Friend: This is an emergency.
Ganymede: No, it isn't, and you know it isn't, and if you want to blow me off to get some pussy, I can understand it but will remain super pissed at you for making me waste a vacation day.
Friend: You could hang with someone else.
Ganymede: And I may be doing that for the rest of our lives. Have fun being the wet shoulder for some emotionally-unstable train-wreck.

@misterboring said in Something Completely Different:

This makes me think you feel like you owe him some level of community moderation authority just because he's good at the tech side.

I trusted him enough to bring us from there to here. Since I laid out my expectations of him and all staff, I think he's done well.

As I said before, what happened in the Politics section was a failure of leadership. I should have laid out my expectations: that we don't get involved in political debates or discussions unless asked to do so. I am not going to presume that he was or should have been aware of this expectation because I have been heatedly involved in these very debates before, but it is something I have pulled away from since taking over for Arkandel and is something I think is important to follow. I have always believed in the maxim "unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments", so I believe it is unfair to remove him for what happened there. Instead, I take responsibility for that and I will continue to do so.

I am not and will not debate your opinion of him. I will simply repeat my position on the matter. I do not feel that I owe him anything except an apology for letting him get shellacked for my failure to lay down ground rules before letting him man his desk.

@greenflashlight said in The Work Thread:

I would argue, dead serious, that staying on a sinking ship is worse than self-destructive: it teaches the ship's captain that they can let the ship keep sinking because fuck it, you'll bail it out for them, so they may as well bring in some more bodies to drown down in the hold after you've gone under for the third time.

Double-posting because I can and because the above is true.

We've known each other for, like, seven years, kk. Given that my partner is in the health industry, I have to tell you this sincerely: look out for yourself because no one else will. If your hospital managers aren't protecting you, they will never protect you and you need to get out to a place that will. Thankfully, as you are probably aware, the industry is starved for good nurses, so you should find a landing spot pretty easily.

And, hey, what a good time to consider traveling, right?

@glitch

Whether I did the community a disservice will be seen in what it becomes. There is more to the community than the people that I banned or who walked off to start something new. This is something mietze believed in, and she made me believe in the same.

You see the results of my actions and judge me for it. That's fine. But I think we saw and see the community differently. And I am not so vain to think that my departure, whether in shame or hubris, will do anything to fix what I saw as broken.

@faraday

Yeah, that seems kind of stupid.

If the assignment is to distinguish and contrast argument styles, then there's no reason that you can't compare MLK's "American Dream" speech to Shakespeare's "St. Crispin's Day" speech. Hell, compare and contrast Ned Beatty's speech (as Arthur Jensen) from "Network" with Jack Nicholson's (as Col. Nathan Jessup) from "A Few Good Men". It's not about content: it's about style and it's about how and why these speeches are (probably) embedded in our memories.

Any study on George Wallace should be on how he should be pilloried and forgotten for being anything but a hopelessly backward man, to join the many that seem to hold us back these days out of their fear.

@greenflashlight said in Something Completely Different:

To people who perceive it as an injustice, "Hey guys please allow this injustice to carry on until I can consult with someone who actually matters (unlike you) about whether this actually is unjust" isn't a super reasonable request.

I asked everyone for the opportunity to talk with mietze about what was going on. Mietze has already explained things from her perspective. I knew that she had other things going on and that the protesting was triggering her and causing more stress. I told her I would do what I can to quiet things down.

We talked about shutting the place down for a couple of weeks, but she shot down that idea. In the end, we decided that I would do my best to get everyone to hold off so that, when she was ready, she could go back, review the record, and we could deal with the situation together. I told her to take all the time she needed.

Ultimately, I think I failed.

To me, there were four matters that arose contemporaneously, which I'll address in no particular order. First, there was Derp's and Roz's elevation to staff, the former of which was met with loud skepticism. Second, there was the matter on the Politics board, which led to demands that Derp be removed as staff. Third, there was the locking of the "Admin Derp" thread, which was connected to the first matter and raised the issue of whether threads attacking members or admins were permitted. Finally, there was farfalla's banning for continuing to communicate with a member who asked them to stop communicating with them.

The first three are all interwoven. Regarding the thread, I concluded that a thread targeting a member or staff did not violate our Rules of Engagement, so mietze's lock on the topic at issue was lifted. I also concluded that it would have been unfair for me to dismiss an admin to whom I failed to communicate my expectations, but still had a long talk with Derp about what my expectations of him are. As such, I stated that I would not remove him for what happened on the Politics board.

The matter involving farfalla is what I believe set off the firestorm. Some people felt that it was a borderline call; some people felt that the complaining member instigated the matter; some people felt that I was too punitive. We had previously banned another member for paging someone who told them to stop (Ortallus), so a ban as a consequence for continuing to PM someone after they tell you to stop should have been no surprise. Further, when someone tells someone else to stop, they should stop. That said, farfalla's ban is still being review and may be lifted under the circumstances.

As an aside, after farfalla's ban, Meg asked if farfalla would be given access to her account so that she could take a log of the conversation. This request was granted, and farfalla was unbanned for 24 hours for that purpose, on the condition that she not communicate with anyone through the account (thus respecting the effect of the ban).

If the injustice is the ban, then, as I said, it is under review. Staff agreed to review all bans levied out of the event. We have not yet made any decisions, but we intend to complete the review within the next few days.

Whether the protesting was reasonable is I think a matter of opinion, as is my decision to ban those who were doing so. All I can offer is an explanation, tell the community what we are doing now, and how we hope to restore faith going forward.

@Arkandel said in MUers in the news?:

For example: If you run an Anne Rice MUSH and you choose that in your setting, due to supernatural reasons, vampires can't have sex ("it won't go up, Cap'n!") then I can't play my vampire gettin' it up anyway. If I did so it'd go against a hard rule (sorry...) that makes no sense to violate. So staff would be justified in telling me that no, I can't do that in RP - there are physical limitations of the universe involved that my character can't supersede.

While I am sure that the impotent have been derided in history, I think that this is far a-field of what we have been trying to express.

To answer the question posed before about what is wrong about wanting to run a game that is monoethnic, I say that we have a word for people taking steps to create a word that is monoethnic, fantastic or not. That word is "racist." Were someone to want to create a fantasy world where adults engaged in sexual relationships with children under the age of 13, we would have another word for it. While I am sure some will think it unfair to liken a person who invents a fantasy setting that is monoethnic to a person that takes real-life steps towards creating a monoethnic culture, the word itself -- "racist" -- is apt and accurate, just as it is apt and accurate to call a choice "racist" while simultaneously pointing out that the person making such choice may not be so.

So, I'll say my piece: creating and enforcing a monoethnic game are racist choices. To me, it's that simple. If you want to avoid that particular reputation, choose otherwise, but people in the United States have been making these kinds of choices for generations, while trying to hide under the cloth of "I didn't mean to be."

@tooters said in Mourning a character, how do you do it?:

A character of mine just died ( or more accurately, was rendered unplayable). It was for a very justified IC reason that I knew about when making the character. But even if it wasn't, I genuinely wouldn't care.

I have a similar mindset if my PC is dead or unplayable as a result of my actions.

I get fussy when my PC is killed or rendered unplayable by someone else because they are having a snit.

@Misadventure said in The Case Against Real PBs:

So far got lots of disagree but not much reasoning shared about the question put out there.

This may be because, as I wrote earlier, I think we're all old enough that we don't feel the need to demand that others change our minds on things which, although we believe are well-reasoned, ultimately are matters of opinion.

I can love and respect someone, and still find their opinion on things to be silly. There's no harm in using a picture in public domain, and so long as I am not financially-benefitting from its use a plaintiff cannot maintain a legal claim.

@bad-at-lurking

Maybe we play on different places, but my experience has been the opposite.

When I ST a solo event, it goes a lot faster, and the RP decision-making is substantially deeper.
I find it easier to manipulate the action to exploit a PC’s past and weaknesses one-on-one. And I would warrant the solo PC has a better experience that way.

I also question whether coming up with a model to justify the bias is a good idea.

@Kanye-Qwest said in RL Anger:

As long as there are fringe Christians who choose to be insane, hateful, dark ages LARPers, there will be a strong averse reaction to those fringe splinters of the faith, because those views are not victimless.

And now we know how mainstream Muslims feel.

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

so if you're brand new and you roll up a 40 year old, grizzled hunting veteran, should i explain to you as a new player oocly where to find everything because as a 40 year old grizzled hunter you would know all of that, without you as a person having to earn that knowledge yourself?

Yes, because I am not my 40 year-old hunting veteran character.

@thenomain said in How old are MU* players?:

SO.

OLD.

@bad-at-lurking

If staff did 1 scene for 1 players PC every day, then 30 players would have a scene once a month, or so.

As someone who averages about 1 scene every three months, due to my schedule, this would mean a lot to me and 29 other players.

I see what you’re getting at, but if you can only manage schedule 1 7-person scene once a week, you’re getting the same mileage. If you can engage your players consistently one on one, you may be able to encourage more activity by providing them with leads to get other players involved.

Just another perspective.

@auspice said in RL things I love:

"She filled her dress like a bunch of sleeping kittens. I just wanted to pet every part of her."

Yes, well, I remember Oogie Boogie, so if a woman's dress looks like it's filled with kittens it is equally likely she is just a burlap sack filled with vermin.

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

i mean you can find some of that stuff in helpfiles, but i'm not going to personally give you the digs on every single location to hunt every great beast in the entire world just because you rolled in as a 40 year old character.

Why not?

Here's where your game is not as immersive as you'd like it to believe. The character should have that knowledge (unless you dispute that), but the player does not. Your position breaks immersion because it makes no sense to have a 40 year-old hunting veteran not know where good hunting grounds are.

(This presumes you can roll in as a 40 year-old hunting veteran in the first place.)

As Arkandel says, roleplaying is an abstraction. Your position is simulationist.

@paris

Oh, sure, but sometimes I wish that when I feel that way it isn't for what often seems like the stupidest reasons imaginable.

Therapy. I need therapy.

@arkandel said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

What's much harder to implement - and in fact, perhaps counterproductive to - is allowing anyone to actually be more powerful than most.

When you say "most," to whom are you referring?

This is important. Being "a great and powerful wizard" that is more powerful than NPCs is likely the objective of many players. Being "the greatest and most powerful among great and powerful wizards" is a more difficult objective for players, but one that many still seek to be despite the propensity for toxicity that such an attitude often brings to a game.

On BSG:U, it was clear that you were a "great and powerful" soldier or pilot. Only a small handful of people bitched about not being "the greatest and most powerful," which made gameplay pleasant. Frankly, our marine teams should have been heavily-outmatched many times, but we made it through with few casualties most of the time (unless the dice or Faraday were being extraordinarily mean).

Contrast that with Fear & Loathing, where everyone wanted to be "the greatest and most powerful" and restrictions on who could be a Guest Star, and there was more cattiness and drama than Eartha Kitt presiding over the Gay Haters' Ball. (To be fair, this sort of drama-llama level is customary on Vampire games.)

I posit that making Tiers available to all without application or requirements levels the playing field. I like the way Fate's Harvest has done it. I can play my murder mouse happily knowing that there are other murder mice out there, but each player only gets one.

@ghost said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):

Oh, and...
@Admiral not the Hog Pit. Take that attitude elsewhere, please.

Excuse me, but that was my attitude, thank you.