Posts made by WTFE

Sometimes you just can't pack your camel.

@Jeshin said:

As to the phrasing, I'm probably not going to change it.

What a surprise.

There is a certain amount of salesmanship going on and yes I know you (most of you?) find it distasteful but it is what it is.

And what it is—given the 384 messages deep evidence provided—is poor salesmanship.

Talk to you in 2 weeks.

<insert something sarcastic>

Sorry. Screwed up when mandatorily re-logging in after the gratuitous change of the week. That was obviously me, but thought it should be clear.

@Thenomain said:

They do link the article to the discussion forum for it, but the articles I've read have been very Mud-centric "and this is how you do things" kind of way.

Ah. I stand corrected then.

I must be old, because when The New York Times posts an article on facts I don't jump into the comments to give my opinion. Reporting is to report. The commons are the commons. I'm kind of surprised that people have been posting reactions, which knocks a little wind out of my sails on that front, but I still don't think it's very inviting.

Well, frankly, I've found their entire performance here as uninviting as I could imagine. I mean I'm not even married to the MUSH format (I started in a heavily-modified Diku and have played loads of games with heavy automation) and I find their approach here so fucking grating I want nothing to do with them. And I'm their target market (unlike hardcore MUSHers).

He we are about 360 messages deep and the fact that their approach isn't working here is so painfully clear that my seven year old son could figure it out. And yet, when faced with this, their reaction is to double-down and try harder.

We really need an "ignore thread" paired with an "ignore user" feature in this board…

@crayon said:

I'm not sure what we can do to encourage article discussion any more than we already have with the article discussion threads. They don't tend to attract too much discussion, but it's something we've been working on. If you have any ideas for gearing articles more towards discussion and debate, I'd love to hear them.

From what I'm gathering by reading comments here (I still refuse to actually visit the site based on the attitudes displayed by Jeshin and now you), the part at the bottom that says "comments" is turned off and you have to go to a completely different part of the site to dig up the thread that discusses an article.

I'm sorry, citizens of planet Zapplemoos, but this is not how we human beings work. What you're doing is the equivalent of this:

A: …And this is how we foobie the gizmos.
B: I think I see, but did you consider…?
A: <holding up hand> C'mon, B. You know better than that. We have a room for discussion and feedback. I'll meet you over in building C, third floor.

You may want to consider instead of turning off comments, repurposing them into, you know, links to the thread. Or even better, how 'bout making the comments section also go into the threads and get the best of both worlds?

Oh, sorry. That's a "science fiction is better than fantasy" thing. Feel free to ignore it. Like you've ignored every other suggestion made to you.

Ah, I see we have a butthurt hipster! My day is complete.

Atom. For when you want to fire up a 250MB web browser to edit 16KB of text.

I just can't stop laughing. I know, I'm childish.

Headline writers. What would the world be like without the wonky, zany antics of these?

@Jeshin said:

If the connection isn't there, then it isn't there but the "bluntness" isn't exactly the way to go about convincing someone short on time to invest more time in trying to connect with you.

You seem to have this relationship backward. You are trying to convince others to go to your site. I'm not particularly in the market for a new site to go to. I'm not intrinsically opposed to it, but it's not something I'm actively seeking. It really is incumbent upon you to make your site attractive.

The bluntness here is me explaining to you why, after 18 pages of your blather, I'm not even remotely interested in opening the front page of your site. And as I said, there's a very good chance that where I'm bluntly telling you, others are either not bothering to tell you or are more subtly telling you. (Others like @Thenomain or @Three-Eyed-Crow or @Autumn or even @Alzie, for example, whose subtler attempts to tell you what might be going wrong for you got blown off.)

That's four people in the last three pages alone who've (mostly) politely told you why what you're doing isn't working here. And one who's being far more blunt. So that's five people who've actually spent time trying to help you improve your technique so that you can actually attract new participants. Your response?

It's alright not to like me.

Yes. You're ever-so-open to input. I'm sure your site is a great place to exchange ideas instead of being merely preached to.

The funny thing next to the name that looks like a stack of 4×4s in a stockyard is the categories link.

@Jeshin said:

That is incorrect.

Yes. You are very obviously open to the input of others and don't just gloss over it without seeming to want to engage in any meaningful way.

I am saying that I have limited time and that when typing up a post I am more likely to keep it self-contained on other websites because I cannot be freely debating over 10+ forums.

Then don't expect the people on these other web sites to want to come to yours.

If you'll go back and read this thread you can see I dedicated a lot of time to debates, questions, and researching things I wasn't familiar with. I no longer have the free time now that I did a few months ago.

What I saw was you doing the textual equivalent of waiting for your turn to talk. I have seen nothing from you (nor the other one from your crowd, if @crayon is such) that shows you're open to actual input or dialogue. Your "debate" has consisted entirely of saying, in effect, "that is incorrect".

And that's fine. Your life and all that. But it is specifically your performance here that makes me not even want to open your web site.

I'm sure you're stinging at the loss.

So if it's between coming off as a little "just so" and leaving a productive debate unfinished because of the hours in a day. I opt for the "just so" approach.

There's another approach: if you don't have time to engage, just keep your mouth shut until you do. How's that for a strategy? It has the advantage of not turning people off, but the disadvantage of you not being able to hear your own voice.

When my time (or Crayon's time) frees up I expect we'll be a lot more open to discussions where the turnaround times on our posts aren't measured in weeks >_>.

Well, in the mean time, keep on making your site look about as appealing as a plateful of undercooked balut. I wish you well in your endeavours, but they'll be progressing without me (and likely a few others who aren't as blunt and confrontational as I am).

@Jeshin said:

Truthfully I think the primary gap to bridge is that we're much more likely to discuss topics freely and with less "this is how it is" style writing on Optional Realities itself.

OK, I'm going to try to keep this polite. (I may fail.)

You're here, presumably, given that this is in the "Adver-tis-ments" section of the board, to get people to want to come over to your community. And yet here we have you saying, basically, that you're more open to different opinions there than you are here.

Do you genuinely not see how stupid this is?

I have thus far refused to go to your site—to even crack it open and look at it—specifically because of the behaviour of the people from your site over here. By being so dogmatic, rigid, and inflexible, and by sticking to a definition of game that specifically excludes the styles played by most people on this board, you are actually being off-putting. You absolutely do not come across as inviting discussion. If anything you should be more conciliatory and flexible when you're out of your domain than in. You're in effect acting as ambassador for your site, after all. And right now, Mr. Ambassador, your site is smelling like the Platonic Form of web sites that need to be avoided at all costs.

Now maybe Three-Eyed Crow is right. Maybe the problem isn't that you're intractable. Maybe the problem is that you're a salesman. If that is, indeed, the problem, you might want to consider toning down the sales persona a notch or ten. Aggressive sales techniques work fine if you're going for one, short-term sale instead of a long-term relationship. (Their use makes you a dick, but if you're comfortable with that it's a great strategy.) The thing is ... participation in a community is pretty much by definition a long-term relationship. If you're genuinely interested in such, perhaps you may wish to rethink your approach to building these.

Damn. There go all my plans.

@Usekh said:

There are MU*'s that work combat on how quickly you can type? Sure you are not looking for MMOs

I've seen worse than even that. Castle Marrach's dueling system (its only combat system) was timing based. If you knew the rules and approximate time frames for various actions in the game's system (needless to say if you weren't game staff you never saw those; I had to infer them since I was largely hated by the staff) you could time attacks to slip in during the periods when the target was undefended.

Once I worked out how the system worked (hint: they did a bit of a ripoff of the old En Garde game by GDW) I worked out a set of reactive client macros that watched for key things the game system emitted as clues and did careful timing of forced responses. So I could pose like crazy, doing any damned thing I liked, but when someone attacked my timed macros would launch an attack (based on estimated lag that was manually adjusted) that would score me a hit FAR more often than I should have scored given my poor levels of skill.

@Woragarten said:

What WTFE wanted to say was that HARP is an excellent game for the needs of a heroic adventure toolbox which may or may not have a setting built in.

No, I'm pretty sure I said what I wanted to say. Let me know when you want spawn.

@Woragarten said:

Want more rules? Look at HARP, basically Rolemaster Lite with Talents.

I love you and want my wife to bear your children.

@Coin said:

I want a PONY.

Done!

Board wargames, China style.

I'm ending my 15-year dry spell with board wargames by buying "DIY" versions of them. They're ... interesting.

Banksy, roommate.