Posts made by surreality

@Cupcake I think the broader idea of shaming, ultimately, isn't so much what this place is about. It is a factor -- or it is in the cases of people capable of experiencing it, but as mentioned... that's not really everybody, so it's not terribly effective.

Generally, just telling someone 'hey, you're doing a crappy thing, here's why' is going to work just as well if someone is the kind of someone disinclined to doing crappy things.

More often, people just justify it, try to turn things around into 'look at how I am being victimized oh noes handwring (sometimes out of an attempt to dodge blame, and sometimes because they have the self-awareness of the average turnip and zero desire to examine their own behavior ever or question their rightness)', or already know they're doing something crappy and don't care. Totally useless in such cases.

The only time traditional shaming works in these cases is if they're trying to keep it a secret -- and that's ultimately more a case of exposing the truth in most cases I've seen rather than trying to humiliate someone.

In that last case, I think the boards have traditionally been useful. There are a lot of people who will talk a good game, and are charismatic enough to play spin doctor or manipulate any given situation enough to get away with murder for ages -- until someone posts a log, or enough people who have encountered the same thing in multiple places all come forward at once and a fuller picture can be seen.

That experience may humiliate someone in the process -- but it doesn't tend to be the real goal.

@mietze I actually only know of her through too many quote memes on pinterest, if it makes you feel any better. They do tend to be pretty good quotes, though!

@mietze She's a popular TV talking head, kinda like Dr. Phil if he had a soul.

@mietze I think, to some extent, it comes off a little bit like this: "This hugely important person who has done real studies and stuff says this is pointless."

I don't actually think that's the intention, but I had to read a couple of times to get around that impression, since I don't think that's what the intention was at all.

(I think the intention was, "Hey, I just read this thing, and it makes me wonder how it relates to what goes on here. What do y'all think?")

@Griatch They don't make the changes in game, but on their own personal wiki pages. When they change their personal page, the change flows through the rest of the wiki without any need to go through and update all the other lists. (Super helpful not having to track that down when data appears in multiple places.)

One of the things you aren't as likely to see are the forms to generate the character pages (or location pages/etc.) since I'm not sure if they're visible without a specific login to edit stuff. (I can make you one if you'd like to peek. ) For folks who are unfamiliar with making pages or wiki markup, it's a huge help.

It also ensures the data is presented in a uniform fashion (and with drop-down options, it means things like a typo here or there aren't going to be as much of a problem as it could be) which helps create the lists/gives the pages themselves the equivalent of attributes that can be referenced elsewhere throughout the site/etc. which is pretty huge.

It's pulling things from/pushing things to the game that's been... not something that happens much. The news files are written on the wiki and pulled over to the game, which makes edits/quick changes/additions far easier. I'd love to have similar functionality for more complex things, but we don't have that (at the moment, honestly @Thenomain worked a miracle just getting us that far as it is).

But, essentially, that's why 'working with mediawiki itself' might be something to peek at, or nudge some developer toward peeking at. Reproducing all of that would be a nightmare for one of the native django-wiki developers, I'd think, since they all are aspects of things dozens of people have cobbled together over about a decade.

@Griatch Take a peek at BITN's -- not everything is working quite as planned there, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

bitnmux.com is the link.

The various faction lists and such, along with the character listings, all auto-populate and so on, as people make changes.

It makes an enormous difference in how the data is organized and presented, and how much direct maintenance is required. The DPL caches only update once a day behind the scenes without a manual refresh (which is not necessary unless someone is bitching that something hasn't shown up yet in which case I just do it in seconds), but once it's set up, there's no need for someone to go through and edit or adjust the pages every time something changes. Hugely helpful.

@Griatch It isn't just the markdown I use, actually. I do a lot of template creation, and use an unholy lot of DPL. While there might be other workarounds or methods with more direct integration, those work and work incredibly well to make the information accessible wiki-side. (Also, semanitic mediawiki and forms. Forms are a big thing from the wiki interface end.)

@Griatch said in Telnet is Poop:

@surreality said in Telnet is Poop:

@Griatch Any idea what the possibilities for integration with mediawiki are with that?

Gotta be honest, having an 'in page' client that matches the look of a page is something I'd be all over; it'd just likely be more than a little complicated to pull off with the way mediawiki functions. (There are potentially some imbed workarounds, or widgets, that could be constructed, though. Maybe. Possibly.)

While I'm not super aces on some of the specific look/effects (flashy things make something a full no-go for a number of players) the concept is A+.

Django, which Evennia uses for Python database- and website integration, has a slew of wiki apps you can plug in to your website. I'm sure some can support mediawiki format if you must have that. I admit to not having personally tried any of the third-party ones myself so some trial & error would be needed - but per definition the wiki database tables would be available from within the game since game and website share the same database (Evennia is after all its own webserver).

So, while I wouldn't say that integrating a wiki is trivial it's certainly doable, and you wouldn't have to do it from scratch.
.
Griatch

Interesting. It would need to be mediawiki for my purposes, though; there are too many far-too-useful extensions and functionalities to it that are generally not present anywhere else.

@Griatch Any idea what the possibilities for integration with mediawiki are with that?

Gotta be honest, having an 'in page' client that matches the look of a page is something I'd be all over; it'd just likely be more than a little complicated to pull off with the way mediawiki functions. (There are potentially some imbed workarounds, or widgets, that could be constructed, though. Maybe. Possibly.)

While I'm not super aces on some of the specific look/effects (flashy things make something a full no-go for a number of players) the concept is A+.

I'm putting this out of order for a reason to break up the quotes to slim down the responses.

@Kestrel said in The Shame Game:

I think it's rather dismal to make sport of one's grievances.

@Kestrel said:

The 'culture of bitching' that's been explained to me as an integral part of these boards, while perhaps cathartic for some, is really not something I consider healthy or productive for anyone involved. Why bitch for the sake of bitching? Why get angry for the sake of being angry?

Frankly, you're reading into things. This is what you're looking at:

@ThatGuyThere said in The 100: The Mush:

@Kestrel
One thing I think you forget is that this place basically exists for bitching. Granted in current form it is far more constructive then past edition but it is still the offspring of WORA.
So yes most conversation here is in the negative it is most likely going to be like that for any game.

'Exists for bitching' does not mean 'exists for bitching for the sake of bitching' or 'getting angry for the sake of being angry'.

That is you reading into the statement and not what is being said. You are adding these negative connotations and assumptions 100% on your own that are nowhere in the statement you are citing.

Both of the things you're noting are, in fact, things that people were rapidly running out of patience with on WORA. It's why things are considerably different here, yet both places serve a useful purpose:

@Kestrel said:

Say and feel things because you actually feel and care about them. That, I think, is worth a lot more respect, and will make you feel better to boot.

Oh, hey, that's a quote from you, too, huh?

So's this one:

Naming and shaming people does serve a purpose, and a good one at that. I'm a firm believer that if something or someone is bothering you, you should not keep it quiet, but shout it out. Preferably politely and constructively, but beating around the bush is just as unhelpful as flinging shit.

On an actual game, this is generally considered bitching. The level of criticism, the depth of conversation, and the blunt commentary is generally not welcome on the game itself.

There are reasons for this.

1. Plenty of people simply don't care one way or the other and you're cluttering up their screen with a pile of OOC conversation on a channel or similar that they give precisely zero fucks about. That's annoying as hell and pretty rude to other players. The same is true of positive meta-discussion of the game for many. 90% of people just don't even want to hear it either way and to force it on them while they're trying to chill out and play a game on a channel is pretty fucking crass, selfish behavior, especially at the lengths to which people discuss something to death here.

2. ...but negative meta-discussion of a game can also create a commiseration spiral or breed needless paranoia. That's also generally not a good thing.

3. Historically speaking, most games don't even allow this kind of discussion on the game itself or on forums for the game. The Haven thread is a current example of this. Games don't typically ban people for this shit now, because more actual adults run games these days than was once the case, but this was dazzlingly typical in yon days of yore.

So while you can attempt to shame this board with a holier-than-thou analysis, it's not really having the impact you think it will. That, or you grossly misunderstand what you were told and read far too much into it (read: a pile of negative things that were not said).

I think it's more commonly warning and venting, as others have mentioned.

I can say I have gone there, though, on this specific board, in one specific case: Sovereign.

This is because I'd observed his behavior long enough to realize there was nothing anyone could say that would ever cause him an actual lick of shame -- but that if someone seemed to be trying to do so, he would not be able to resist sticking his dick right in the guillotine as he thinks he's smarter than everyone around him, and he'd hang himself for sheer shamelessness in his awfulness. (Which is, roundabout, back to the warning part. Nobody was going to believe it if they didn't see it, because the guy was so unbelievably horrible to people.)

@Arkandel said in New Player Onboarding:

For example the very first part of doing anything on a game...CGen. Anyone who's played an RPG could fill out a character sheet and over the web you can actually show them a character sheet then have them click on the dots or whatever they're increasing and it's all visual right there on a page. On a MU* they need a collection of arcane-looking commands, sifting through help files and asking on channels, right at a time when they might (and most likely) never have used either a command-line interface, know how to look at help files or know how to use channels.

Oh, and graphics. Making things actually pretty to look at. I don't need to tell you why that's important to gaining new users for a service. Have you seen some of the wikis folks like @surreality have been making? They look pretty damn neat - but they can't do much to improve the black screens with un-enriched text on them.

I'm actually working on something that's a wiki-based CG-ish thing. I can't directly integrate it with the MUX right now, but I can make a form for CG, similar to the forms used for BITN's player pages. It can output a pretty sheet for character pages, and a CG-'paste me into the MUX' script for staff to use on the MUX itself. It needs a lot of debugging, and most importantly due to limitations with mediawiki itself it can only be used for games going open sheet, but it is something that, in very limited form, is not totally outside the realms of possibility.

If/when it's possible to integrate that with a game directly? WIN. But there are at least some things that can be done, though they still need human eyes on them to check for pre-reqs and such as there's only so much of that it's feasible to do from the wiki side.

(Also, thank you. I try!)

@Autumn said in CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.:

I heard several people express that they just weren't clear on how they should behave IC, not just in terms of attitudes that people find awkward or uncomfortable today but in terms of everyday language and behavior. "How are we supposed to talk?" is a pretty basic question, and if people don't have an answer they feel comfortable with it's going to be problematic.

Having peeked some at KD's wiki, I think borrowing a page from their policy (at least in part?) may help here.

1. They have a PILE of resource information about the world/setting available.

2. They have a policy that notes, summarizesd, "Don't be a nit-picking dick about people making unintentional IC faux pas based on the trivia, and don't passive-aggressively 'correct' people on these points". (At least that's the read of it I got.)

This is good stuff, and they are an excellent example to follow for settings outside everyday experience. Lay out some basics for the alternate history, throw in some links to important current events in real history if you're keeping them, and encourage people to explore this -- but encourage them to do so without the fear of someone being a self-righteous windbag getting in their face about it if they goof.

That last bit really is pretty huge. People are a lot more willing to try new things if they are aware that the environment does not coddle mean-spirited pedantry flung at them if they make an error.

Think of it in terms of learning a new language. If all the native speakers sneered and started mocking you when you flubbed a word, sure, you might learn that word -- but what you really learned is that all the native speakers are assholes.

@ThatGuyThere Well, we are technically land animals.

@ThatGuyThere said in The 100: The Mush:

I eat and enjoy many species of fish but if someone was offering "fish" I would decline in a heartbeat. Much like i would is someone offered me "land animal."

Try the soylent green, it's delicious.

@Chime This sounds excellent!

I have a couple of not-in-use wikis up for sandbox work, and it's worth the $10/month to me to run one on digitalocean toward this end, and for sandbox/dev needs on the wiki integration stuff. (If we can figure out how to get a moo set up on there it might be worth a tut thread here to go alongside the MUX one; I think that thread truly did help contribute to the new games going up and if it makes people more willing to try it out? I'm absolutely game.)

I keep meaning to make a 'Wiki-In-A-Week' site anyway with useful templates folks can copy, setup tuts, and some basic instructions for wiki admin newbies for games in plain language, so this might help me get off my rump to do that.

I have the basics of a system that can get thrown around for experimenting that's free to use (and even when it's done it's going to be creative commons) so there's no one who can/will yell about us automating anything of theirs in crash testing the idea or get anyone called by a lawyer.

@Chime said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

Thoughts? Is this the sort of thing anyone actually wants? I mean when I was talking about it before most people were like 'ewww, moo?'

Really, truly, very much want. I am Not A Coder, but if there is anything I can do from my end that would help, I would happily do so.

If you want to know what the 'big thing' most people I ever talked to cited as 'why I hate MOO'? You'll probably want to spit.

The lack of MUSH-style %r and %t for linebreak and carriage return. No, really. The MOO substitutions, and specifically the lack of those specific ones, gave people as much grief, apparently, as the command format, and they adapted to the command format better than the substitutions because the substitutions were so innately ingrained.

In my deepest, wildest dreams? Good integration with mediawiki in some form (to and from MOO).

My crazy fantasyland dream involved using mediawiki to set up templates (actual mediawiki templates, not cut and paste layouts) that'd look something like this:

{{Creature
|creature-dbref=#dbref
|creature-name=Guppylicious
|creature-type=Goldfish
|creature-desc=This is a monster-sized goldfish. It wants to eat your soul.
|creature-stat1=5
|creature-stat2=2
|creature-power-telepathy=no
|creature-power-superswim=yes
...etc.
}}

...and the game pulling those stats into an object, and dropping those template values into the object's attributes.

The reason why I pine for this kind of thing is that it can be done with forms in semantic mediawiki -- and that means super quick and easy data entry for creators who are not coders or are unfamiliar with MOO. The forms can have set values to error-proof it to some extent. (It would be pretty easy to keep these in a protected namespace that only staff can edit, too, or on a staff-only secondary wiki install exclusively for data of this type.)

It might even be possible to do a wiki-side chargen through a similar method. This could work with MUX, too, but I am too unfamiliar with SQL and related things to understand HOW to set up the code to pull the right things to the right places in the right directions -- or anywhere at all, actually. It's still way, way beyond me.

It just strikes me as something that would be amazingly helpful for creators and for players, lowering the bar for entry in some respects for true newbies in the hobby.

@Thenomain said in Pretendy Fun Time Games:

I generally only leave a game when I'm bored.

This is actually why I lean on 'variations in experience is more important than a balanced experience', for the record.

Even one's favorite thing gets dull as dishwater after a while if that's all you get.

@Auspice said in Pretendy Fun Time Games:

Funny enough, I just sidebar'd a bit in another thread about how much I hate how often 'my fun' is used these days. And 9 times out of 10 (in my own personal experience), it's used to excuse really shitty behavior. Sure, it's your fun, but this is a shared environment, yo. You don't go to a fancy restaurant and begin shouting your entire conversation (at least I hope not) because hey, other people.

The biggest reminder I always have, on a personal scale, of a 'my fun' person was someone who would mentally calculate out her char's future path... including how other characters are involved. Except she'd never tell those people. So when Bob would end up dating Suzie, she'd flip out at both Bob and Suzie OOCly because 'THAT'S NOT WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN' and go off and tell everyone else how Bob and Suzie ruined her fun because Bob was supposed to date HER... except she never told him any of this and just made assumptions.

My fun is all well and good... until it's negatively affecting other people. At which point: just write some damn fanfic.

The type you're describing seems to forget that once other people become involved, 'my fun' must necessarily morph into 'our fun', which is a partnership, not a dictatorship.

@Autumn said in CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.:

While I think it's totally plausible that the name was chosen for self-aggrandizing reasons, I had always just sort of assumed it was called "The Great Game" because they intended to center the game around geopolitical conflicts among the European powers during the end of the Victorian Era. But then, I am notorious for either "preferring to think the best of people" or "failing to notice the totally bloody obvious", depending on how nice you feel like being. More the latter than the former, in this case.

I have that same preference, on the whole, which is why I let them live here for over half a year.

As a result of that experience, 'behaving like a self-aggrandizing, woe-is-me-I's-a-victim-of-errybody an' I'm gonna show 'em all!' twit with as much subtlety as a brick thrown through a plate glass window really is the very best I can think of Spider.