Bill Phil

Indeed it is.  Mr. Rolfe has come to KSP (not really  ).

Roleplaying is never a moderation nightmare if everyone is held to the same rules of decency. In character or out.

The two guys in question who moderate the Bay 12 Games forums? Toady One and ThreeToe, aka Tarn and Zach Adams, aka the sole developers of Dwarf Fortress. I mentioned that last bit in the post, I believe. They develop full-time, they are sustained by the community's donations because the game is free, and it is far easier for them to bring the hammer down on something than sort out the crap that can and does happen with regularity at times, and oddly it's pretty much never in roleplay sections. The one time I fell under that hammer, indirectly, was when the My Little Pony and the Dwarf Fortress fandoms had the misfortune to collide in one series of threads, and after a group of like-minded idiots decided it would be fun to discuss kraken in context of how it would be classified in terms of fanfic genre classifications, the whole train was axed and we in our entirety were prohibited from having ponythreads in the general discussion section. Note, the MLP forum games, the MLP mods, and anything else related stayed. It took a kraken discussion to ban one fandom from general discussions, and even that was not a blanket ban. Here on the forums a-la Squad? "All you fandoms are a strain on our moderators, so kindly go elsewhere", "All you roleplayers are a strain on our moderators, so kindly go elsewhere". It's kinda back to my tongue-in-cheek "Squad is evil" thing, because it's funny how your attitude towards your followers changes when the continued supply of money those followers are giving you is contingent on that attitude.

Also no, a good roleplayer would not use [INCHAR] tags. A good roleplayer in a roleplaying thread, would denote when he is out of character. ((Like this, for instance, you i^&#(#nt $#(k. Sorry. Out of character! :P))

Heh, data storage. The biggest drain on data storage is Add-On Releases, yet somehow nobody takes an axe to all the mods that were made back in olden times for the alpha version and haven't been maintained for years. "But people spent time and effort creating those things!" - surprise, so did the Rocket Builders! "But there are still things there that might be useful to someone!" - as if a piece of community history can only be useless. Roleplay would not amount to even a noticeable fraction of everything else going on on the forum, honestly. Between modders, tech support, general discussions, and the Lounge, even the mass mindless Forum Games section is only sixth? I think? In the overall section size lineup.

The problem with a 'like' is that it's faceless, and you don't know whether it was given "just because" or because there was a good reason for it. Half the likes I got since the likes became a thing, were "just because", from posters who were pulled along by my complain train and gave out likes willy-nilly just to pointlessly make it more obvious that they share the same opinion. Those rep points are useless to me, I don't want to have "rep" for making a complain train. In the old rep system, I would have been repped maybe once by each such poster, to show me that they are like-minded, and those I would have respected. These 'likes'? Not nearly as much.

And thing is, I can't forget about the forum. I use it to get news and things about the thing I actually care about, that is the game the forum is about. Plus I spend most of my time in front of the laptop, and the forum's sitting there in speed dial. And recall, perhaps if my attitude towards Facebook wasn't an indication, that I do not spend time in social media, so wasting my time on Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, or whatever it is people also use nowadays, is also not an option. I am left with spending my time buried in my Steam library (which is not so good a use of time when I'm not supposed to be distracted), or posting stuff on various forums. And this used to be one of the few forums I was comfortable being on. So... yeah.

Pft. Kraken. Okay. Let's say it was kraken. Silly forum auto-censoring. But it was a very naughty tentacley kraken.

Things can be moderation nightmares all the time. Our forum is probably more volatile than theirs. *cough* Science Labs! *cough*

A good roleplayer would still specify whichever one is which.

Like's aren't faceless. You know who's doing it. They're wordless. But, in some cases they also respond to you. And reps can equally be wordless. How can you prove that it's "just because"?

Also, technically, this forum is media, and social. So this forum, even when it was vBulletin, was social media.

The one and only moderation nightmare on my memory occurred when one of the forum sections, purposely left as directionless as possible, gradually turned into a monstrosity on the levels of 4chan's /b/. Squad nukes a forum section for a few users insulting others and using an audacious defense against moderators. Toady One nukes a forum section for turning into the spawn of Internet Hell.


Also Sturgeon's Law means that the vast majority of things you encounter in any given place on the Internet will not be so good as to memorable. As such there is no need to make the rep system more streamlined and obvious. The "like" lowers the entry point for reputation from "that's really good[/]! how do I rep this person?" to "heh, I kinda like that. *click*".

Things can be moderation nightmares all the time. Our forum is probably more volatile than theirs. *cough* Science Labs! *cough*

Maybe not so much more volatile as less desensitized. Dwarf Fortress is often a game of casual atrocities, like capturing and farming (sentient) mermaids only to kill their offspring and harvest their valuable skin, scales, and bones to make tradeable crafts. That's really an old example, but it's one people tend to remember the most.

How can you prove that it's "just because"?

Beginning with how they're liking literally every post I make in the thread regardless of quality of content?

Also, technically, this forum is media, and social. So this forum, even when it was vBulletin, was social media.

I classify forums as rather different than what I term "social media", because of how they're structured. They're not an arrangement of 'houses' that each participant occupies. They're a themed guesthouse, a public messages board linked by topic, rather than a collection of blogs. In that regard it was probably unfair of me to list Reddit, but I don't really remember when I was last there for any length of time, so I'm not sure if the arrangement I saw was what all of it is like.

Also, these things could really use an edit button. And a preview button. Sorry for messed-up formatting, the forum seems to have taken offense to me doing it manually.

Wow! Cool! Thanks man! 

On the phone it looks similar, at least it does to me... 

Speaking of which, how do I convert it from mobile to desktop version...?

I expect to get used to the look of the forum.  Navigability and functionality are more important to me.

That's a good question.  Usually there's a link or button.

It's not fully functional yet. Kasper isworking on it.

There's nothing to navigate. The forums are still not accessible by standard users while mods do the final tweaks.

Okay... That's fine. Although I would have waited until it's all finished before opening anything, if possible.