Posts made by WTFE

My idiot son just scored top tier in a nationwide combined prize examination for maths, Chinese, and English.

Maybe he's not quite the idiot I thought he was….

@Ganymede The problem I have with that line of thinking is that things like the Traci Lords case start to rear their ugly heads. Traci Lords was underage when doing her most famous works. WAY underage. Like scary levels of underage: 15 when she started and 17 by the time she quit the industry. She accomplished this through the use of fake ID and a ... how to put this? ... body developed well in advance of her actual age.

People went to jail over this. And despite committing a serious crime in stealing and forging a birth certificate, and despite having committed active fraud--to the point of lying to police investigators--for a period of two years, she wasn't one of them. This is fucking idiotic. Essentially people were thrown in jail for not being psychic while a fraudster was given a pass. This despite the fact that they had, in fact, done due diligence and had engaged in "objectively-reasonable [industry] practice" to determine if their actress was of age.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

Morally I think it's a fine defense, given the sheer volume of business in things like fake ID out there. Any law that requires psychic powers as its sole means of protection from prosecution is a stupid law.

Have you ever asked for ID before having sex? If so, I think there's a hole in your defense.

Personally, no. I've never been the kind of guy who set out to "get laid".

I have associated with people who have done ID checks before getting it on, though. Which is utterly pointless given how easy it is to get a fake ID.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

I can see that. And morally I feel it's a shitty defense.

Morally I think it's a fine defense, given the sheer volume of business in things like fake ID out there. Any law that requires psychic powers as its sole means of protection from prosecution is a stupid law.

But at the same time, it's the way that was phrased, re: the potential jury member.

Of course this doesn't appear to apply in this case. I don't see any hint of due diligence from the perp.

Sorry. Legal fiction to maintain here. Alleged perp.

@Ganymede I have no experience with it. We're talking the past tense though; any particular reason?

@faraday said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@WTFE Electric Soup lasted for 5+ years. If you consider that to be "died on the table" that's your prerogative I guess.

"Lasted" if you view "perhaps the 10 worst individuals in MUSHdom dominating all conversation playing procedural judo to remove any hint of criticism or accountability" as "lasting".

@faraday said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

…I regarded [Electric Soup] as a success while it lasted.

Literally everything is a success while it lasts. Even if it lasts a few microseconds. What you said up there is basically the equivalent of "the operation was a success until the patient died on the table".

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@WTFE said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@surreality Yeah, I saw that afterward. I took a look. It's going to go the way of the other board, I suspect. (I wish I could remember the name of it. Spin-off of OGR before it died.)

Electric Soup? It's the main one I remember. What it suffered from is what I'm afraid MSB would suffer from with stricter moderation on...how mean people can be, I guess. The gloves were on all the time, and so some VERY bad ideas and dumb statements (women sometimes play male PCs? MY WORD HOW STRANGE AND SHOCKING) got by with basically no critique whatsoever. Some people will interpret any criticism, no matter how constructive, as an evil, and then discussion just dies. Also, yeah, the people flagged on WORA as abusive staffers posted a lot, which was a bit lulz.

That was it. Electric Soup. Anybody who wants to make a nicey-nice MUSH-oriented forum had better pay close attention to Electric Soup and see why it failed so spectacularly.

A related data point on the nicey-nice…

The Lua programming language has an IRC channel (#lua on Freenode) that's a bit of a rough-and-tumble place. It can be crass, and much of the discussion has nothing to do with Lua when nobody has questions about the language. (When people ask questions about the language they tend to get rapid, expert answers. Then conversations turn back to the rough-and-tumble off-topic norm.)

This nature of the channel offended one of the users. He tried to topic-cop for a while and got frustrated at his efforts being ignored (and, indeed, often mocked). He went off and made his own channel (#lua-support) which banned off-topic speech, mandated civil conduct, etc. The channel was elevated to a primary resource alongside #lua (and #lua-fr for French users) after a brief wiki edit war.

This was a couple of years ago. As of this writing, #lua has 266 users logged in and is hopping. I've checked its activity for the past half hour and it's hundreds of messages. At least a half-dozen newbies asking technical questions got assistance in that time, and some advanced questions have also been debated. In that same time frame #lua-support has 18 users logged in and has had ZERO activity: not even a question!

I have, in the past, kept a bit logged in for weeks. And in that time saw less purely technical activity IN TOTAL than an hour's worth on off-peak hours in #lua.

This is a pattern I see over and over again.

Now, I have seen the other direction work as well. #haskell vs. … I think it was #haskell-newbies or something? The main #haskell channel was not only off-topic and a bit rough-and-tumble (albeit not as R&T as #lua), it was also a place where Asperger's-afflicted geeks showed off how obscurely they could do anything. So someone new to Haskell would join the place, ask an innocent technical question, and get increasingly bizarre and inappropriate solutions. The new channel had a bit of a nicey-nice policy (albeit without the ban on off-topic), but it also had a major value-add: it banned the "fuck with the newbie" behaviour. Which meant newbs could ask questions and get serious, useful answers instead of the ever-expanding mindfucks of Asperger's at play.

That channel is thriving. Indeed it occasionally eclipses the original in activity and it almost always eclipses it in terms of useful content.

There's a lesson in here for anybody who wants to make an MSB-alike that's nicey-nice: if your sole selling feature is "it's like MSB but we ban negativity" you will almost certainly fail. If, however, you find some value to add (a game database/wiki, say) and aren't as harsh in the nicey-nice as most such sites tend to be you may actually grow and eclipse MSB.

But I'm still not holding my breath.

@faraday said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

What is your alternative? Having a purely "make nicey-nice" board?

Actually yes, that would be the alternative.

Then make it. SHOW US that it will work because…

…it was tried once umpteen years ago and failed…

…is the only data point we have on this and I'm not of a mind to go off and make a nicey-nice MSB alternative because I'm fine with MSB as-is. You're the one who isn't, so get out there and show us that nicey-nice is a good foundation for a community board. It's a whole lot more constructive than whining and railing at what is.

I'll be here waiting for the explosive growth in the user base putting MSB to shame. I'll be waiting for a long time if history is any judge, though.

@surreality Yeah, I saw that afterward. I took a look. It's going to go the way of the other board, I suspect. (I wish I could remember the name of it. Spin-off of OGR before it died.)

4. Harassment and disrespectful behavior of any kind will not be tolerated on or in relation to this site. We are all adults here, and admin expect adult behavior. This means following the golden rule: If you can't say something nice, then say nothing at all.

This here is the killer, I suspect. "If you can't say something nice about Mr. Hitler then just hold your tongue, young man!"

On that site it would be considered a bad thing to expose VASpider's predation. Or Custodius'. Or the Clique That Ate MUSHes. Nicey-nice as a policy works iff all participants in the activity are nicey-nice. We know all too well that this is emphatically not the case in the real world of MU*ing.

@faraday said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I respectfully disagree. I believe that having the Hog Pit expressly encourages such behavior, and the absence of moderation tools for anything but the most egregious spambots and trolls IMHO is tacit encouragement to continue. But I understand your POV.

What is your alternative? Having a purely "make nicey-nice" board? It's been done. It died from neglect because the only people who went to use it were the people generally pointed to on … I think it was WORA III then? … for their abuses in games.

If, however, there is a huge majority of MUSHers unwilling to speak up on MSB because of the nastiness, you can tap into that huge mine of good ideas just awaiting expression by making your own MSB-like board without the 'Pit. I suspect that would be more productive than trying to change the way MSB was explicitly designed.

(I also suspect it'll go the way of the other nicey-nice board, mind…)

@Derp said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I think that part of our problem, as a culture, is that we're convinced that there is some One True Right and Only Way to do things.

There is. For me.

We design our games around this idea.

Were I to overcome my distaste for the codebases involved (hint: not gonna happen) I would design my game around the One True Right And Only Way (for me) to do things. Doing otherwise would be idiotic.

And that is not a singular community. That is a creole of different beliefs, cultures, etc, and we come here because we can use a sort of lingua franca to try and reach out to each other.

I've never encountered in my entire life a community that wasn't a creole of different beliefs, cultures, etc. I'd go so far as to say that the very definition of a community involves some amount of diversity. "Community" ≠ "echo chamber".

Given that ... perhaps it's time we tried to figure out how to make it easier for the folks to make their own games …

Part of the problem here is the shitty nature of the code bases. MUSHcode, for example, resists modularization and, to top it all off, comes in three major subtly incompatible dialects.

@Issac: I'm not @Admiral, but here's a few points I think could stand some expansion upon or improvement.

1. WTF is a "CyberSphere"? I mean sure, it's a MU* of some kind, I get that. Presumably. I even get that it's probably some form of cyberpunk. But a bit more information is necessary if you want to get people interested. Information like: genre, setting, and theme, for example. As a simple guideline, think up a few W5 (Who What Where When Why) questions that a person who might be interested in your game might ask and answer them in your ad.
2. WTF is a Tier 3 Character? What's the difference between a Tier 3 and a Tier 2 or a Tier 1 or a Tier 7,234,199? You might as well have said "And if you're looking at making a geflooglebarndle, let me know..."
3. This leads to the broader question of what you mean by character tiers. Perhaps a brief overview of that might be in order?

There's a few more such ideas, but they're all variations on the theme of "WTF are you talking about?" And while I suspect that many of those questions are answered on the Wiki you linked to, what you've got here doesn't even give much of a reason to check out a Wiki. (Nor does it make it clear that you've even linked to the Wiki.

So here's an example of something, off the top of my head, that would be better than what you wrote (and is yet still largely inadequate; I'm just not writing copy for free here).

Hey, everybody. CyberSphere, an RPG MOO set in a dark, violent future, is looking for more players. The game is conflict-driven, in the main, with player conflict being at the heart of expected play, although there is also a large PvE factor. For more information, tap our Wiki or just log in at cs.netsville.com, port 7777.

Be aware that we have a tiered character generation system. You can check out what that means on our wiki, and if you're going to make a Tier 3 character, ping me in game; I'm willing to help!

Thanks for reading and we look forward to seeing you in CyberSphere!

Still not great, but a whole lot more effective than what you gave us to begin with. I'm sure you can see what I'm getting at now and make something even more compelling!

@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'.

You're doing the "MSB Hive Mind" fallacy here.

Scotch distillers admit all scotch actually tastes the same

I KNEW IT!

@il-volpe Ah, I didn't check. Maybe.

...

Yep, that's the one.

There was a Firefly game that ad a really hilariously bad video ad. I think they pulled it though because of the high comedy it generated.

@Carex said in Game of Bones:

Well, that works for you but if the point of the exercise is to reach a wider audience and attract more players, this would be something to reach new people who don't share your tastes. Not everyone in the world is the same.

Why the flying FUCK would a game runner want to attract people whose tastes aren't shared by him or her?! Jesus that's an asinine thing to say!

Take my notional "Red Mansions" game. Twat like you would be telling me I should broaden its appeal for people who aren't interested in ancient Chinese manners dramas. Despite that being, you know, THE FUCKING GAME I WANT TO FUCKING RUN.

Am I smelling 4chan again?

@Thenomain said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@WTFE

You forgot about cabana boys and pie.

It is my pleasure to remind you.

Don't make me break out my booze collection again.