Ask the Mods questions about the Forums!

[Arco123]

1 minute ago, Gargamel said:

Some days, I'm browsing just like I always have, posting stupid uniformed, possibly slightly inaccurate, help in the variety of questions threads.  Other days, We're busy enough that I don't get into the forums on a casual level.    Also depends on the amount of time I have for the forums that day.

Still playing my 1.3.1 career save, when I do play, with 80+ mods to it.   KW rocketry, Final Frontier, bunch of others.   I have dabbled with 1.7, but my bandwidth limits my downloads, so I haven't touched 1.8 yet. 

A little off topic... I run a 1.8 game, 100ish mods with 15000 patchs. It hurts with the loading times but holy. It's crazy once you get inside.

[LittleBitMore]

A question I forgot to include in the last post, for any mod: the Moderator Lounge has been mentioned. How different is it from the normal Lounge?

[adsii1970]

One of the threads I've enjoyed is this one, the "Ask the moderators" thread... Even before I was a moderator, I'd come here to see what my forum idols would pass on to me. It's an honor, or at least it is for me, to be able to answer these questions. I'm not speaking for the rest of the moderators but just for myself.

On 12/23/2019 at 11:41 PM, Arco123 said:

How do you guys clean the forums when there are so many topics? Do you have a bot or something that helps you flag ones for human inspection?

As @Vanamonde mentioned earlier, all new accounts have a certain number of posts which must be approved by a member of the moderation team before they can "freely" post without such moderation. But we (the moderators) are in fairly constant contact and using various moderator resources, pass on tips and concerns to each other about posts which can go off the rails at any moment. We also rely on user reports of wayward posts, too. So, in a way, the self-policing of the entire forum community is what allows us to be successful. And we appreciate and thank you for that.  

 

1 hour ago, LittleBitMore said:

Question for any mod: how do you personally play KSP? Favorite mods? Types of craft you especially like to create? Types of missions you run often?

[Snip]

In my 1.7.3 game:

In this version of the game, I am only using scatterer, OPM, Kopernicus, Distant Object Enhancement, and Stock Visual Enhancement. All my craft are pure stock - which is the first time since .18 that I've played a KSP version which is this stock. I only have the mods because they add environmental things and effects into the game that I've always felt the stock game misses.

I prefer to play Sandbox games - I've always enjoyed defining my own mission objectives. Right now, I have a bunch of new "Kerbalnauts" who are trying to earn their skills in a variety of missions - flight, spaceflight, and even oceangoing. I think it is more fun to set my own parameters. I also like creating craft which have function. Right now, in 1.7.3, I am working on a type of orbital shuttle platform to ferry cargo from LKO to low Mün orbit. Is it cost effective? No. But is it fun? Oh, yeah! This version of the game and this particular save is all about development of the technology, talent, and craft needed to play Kerbalstyle!  

In my 1.3.0 game:

This is my favorite version of the game and is what I also am using as the base game for my KSP fan fic, I have a lot of mods (including those above). Most are parts packs and a planetary pack I have been working on (and off) for about the last three years. It contains a lot of aircraft, space shuttles, standard rockets, and some "sci-fi" inspired craft. Same way I play above, but this one has been going on a lot longer and with a lot of mods.

2 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

Question for any mod: outside of the Welcome Aboard subforum and posts which require moderator action, how often do you use the forum like others do?

Sure do. Unless it is either mid-terms or finals. Then I only log in for about thirty minutes a day here and about thirty minutes on Steam where I am also an administrator for the official KSP Steam page. I pretty much do the same job there as I do here - moderation (oh, and I use the same user name there, too). But...

I spend most of my time, when I do have it available, here in this forum. And unless I am forced to act as a moderator, I pretty much do what the average forum member does - discuss topics where I can be the nerd that I am, look at some really nice screen shots, and even play some forum games! As mentioned earlier, I am working on a fan-fic story and have an image repository where I toss random images out. So, as I said above, pretty much everything everyone else does!

51 minutes ago, LittleBitMore said:

A question I forgot to include in the last post, for any mod: the Moderator Lounge has been mentioned. How different is it from the normal Lounge?

Well, I'm really not supposed to say what we have in the moderator's lounge. @Dman979 gets a little testy when I tell others about our ping-pong table, vending machine, the likes machine, and our newest edition, the pizza-on-demand-contraption...

No, seriously. We do have a moderator's lounge where we have various threads about the forum, a "how to moderate" guide for us newer moderators, threads where we discuss the nominations for thread of the month and thread of the year, and a few others I really cannot recall and for those that I can, I can't say.   But all in all, that part of the forum is so we can be better moderators for this forum.
I hope this helps you out.

 

[Vanamonde]

I play stock, both because it avoids the nuisance of updating mods, and to keep myself acquainted with the base game that we all have in common. I usually play career, for the same reason. I therefore start a new save for each version that comes out and so have not played very far into a campaign for quite some time. I can't remember the last time I went beyond landing probes on Eve and Duna. 

I participate on the forum while I'm moderating it. While looking around for problems, I also try to answer questions or join in a discussion. 

The moderator lounge subforum is mostly business. We have policy discussions and post notices to let each other know about problems to watch for and stuff. We also have a moderator chat, though, which is where we make dumb jokes and insult each other. 

As for my avatar, @Supernovy likes playing with semi-rhymes and made me a banana-themed pic because it sounds vaguely like Vanamonde. I started using it as my avatar. And then several other nice people have made banana-themed pics for me, so I swap them out as my avatars periodically.  

[Gargamel]

4 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

How different is it from the normal Lounge?

It's really not....  

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

We also have a moderator chat, though, which is where we make dumb jokes and insult each other. 

Oh yeah.... that's what I meant

[Legolover]

14 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

I play stock, both because it avoids the nuisance of updating mods, and to keep myself acquainted with the base game that we all have in common.

 

Same, I used to have mods but for some reason I preferred to have KSP vanilla... don’t ask why...

[Snark]

21 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

Question for any mod: how do you personally play KSP? Favorite mods?

I play KSP, a lot, fairly often, pretty much to the exclusion of other computer games.  I'll dabble in other games from time to time, but usually get bored with them within a few days or weeks.  KSP is what I keep coming back to.

21 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

Favorite mods?

My favorite mods are mine, of course-- that's why I wrote 'em.    Other than my own mods:

• Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.  This oughta be stock, in my opinion.  Simple, elegant, gets the job done.  It's a don't-play-KSP-without-it mod for me.
• scatterer - it's just so pretty.  I'll play KSP without it, but only if it's temporarily unavailable due to a KSP update or something.
• TAC Life Support - I don't run this in every career, since I don't always do life support.  But when I'm in the mood for a life-support game, this is my go-to solution.
• For some careers, I'll run Kopernicus with some solar-system-altering mod.  I like trying out various ones.  Examples I've enjoyed are:  Outer Planets; New Horizons; Galileo's Planet Pack; JNSQ.
• Occasionally, for variety's sake, I'll play a career that has some gameplay-altering mod or mods tossed into the mix, such as Karbonite, Karbonite+, Extraplanetary Launchpads, etc.

21 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

Types of craft you especially like to create? Types of missions you run often?

Pretty much all over the map.  This is where my variety comes in.    I tend to fly rockets almost exclusively-- I'm not a spaceplane guy, I just don't care for 'em, so I tend not to build them unless there's some strong reason to (e.g. Laythe).

My typical KSP career goes like this:

1. I pick a set of mods, and get a "story arc" in mind (which may be influenced by which mods I'm running).  What does "done" look like?  What's the goal of this career?  I decide all this in advance, before I even launch my first vessel.
2. I then spend a few weeks working my way through the story arc.  All the missions are in service to the overall goal.
3. Once I achieve the goal... I'm done.  Time to spin up a new career. 

My typical KSP career runs a month or two IRL-- they're definitely "closed" story arcs, not open-ended goes-on-forever things.  That's a big part of how I keep KSP fresh and interesting for me; I'm always starting new careers, and I alter the goals and mods each time to keep each career different from the others.

21 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

outside of the Welcome Aboard subforum and posts which require moderator action, how often do you use the forum like others do?

Pretty often, as you can see from my post count.    I really like the KSP forums, and hang out here a lot-- this is basically the only Internet forum that I spend any time at all in.

(I've been a bit scarce and haven't been posting as much over the last couple of months, as I've been quite busy IRL, but I'm still around and reading the forums quite a bit, and expect to be writing more again once things IRL settle down.)

20 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

A question I forgot to include in the last post, for any mod: the Moderator Lounge has been mentioned. How different is it from the normal Lounge?

Completely, other than the word "lounge". 

It's basically just a forum where we post moderation-related stuff that's only visible to us (and Squad), not to the general forum population.  Discussion of proposed policies, organizing TOTM nominations, discussion threads for particularly sticky/controversial issues that come up, a thread for letting other moderators know in advance if we'll be absent for a while, that sort of thing.

 

[Geonovast]

On 12/28/2019 at 5:40 PM, LittleBitMore said:

Question for any mod: how do you personally play KSP? Favorite mods? Types of craft you especially like to create? Types of missions you run often?

At first I was all about exploring the system, landing on nearby worlds, etc.  I once drove a rover around on the Mun for probably close to 24 IRL hours just for the sake of driving a rover around on the Mun.  Actually getting stuff to orbit was generally a one-shot rocket that wasn't all that pretty.  Although I've only been to Jool a few times, the only Joolian moon I've landed on is Laythe, and I have never been to Eeloo.

Then I really started paying attention to real life launch vehicles, specifically the ones focused on reusability.  Now a large portion of my time in KSP is spent building, launching, and landing launch vehicles.  Click the animated gif in my signature to see how far I've taken that. (caution, there's about 1,000 screenshots in that thread.  Not recommended for people on mobile or Hughesnet).  I need to re-do that mission sometime and make it better.  I think the next thing I'm going to work on is a spaceplane that launches on top of a pair of Falcon 9 clones.

My favorite kinds of mods are ones that focus on orbital construction.  Konstruction!, DockRotate (as a supplement to Konstruction!) and KIS/KAS are vital.

 

On 12/28/2019 at 5:40 PM, LittleBitMore said:

Question for any mod: outside of the Welcome Aboard subforum and posts which require moderator action, how often do you use the forum like others do?

Quite often.  I was here for a little over 2 years before I got brought on to the moderator team.  I'm not as active as I once was, mainly because I don't play KSP as much as I used to.  But I'm still here quite a bit, I do read a great deal of the forum even if I don't participate in the threads.

[Stone Blue]

Is it just me, or did the Condensed/Expanded buttons for displaying threads just stop working?
ie Condensed doesnt work... everything is expanded with the Condensed button selected... vOv

[Gargamel]

9 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

Is it just me, or did the Condensed/Expanded buttons for displaying threads just stop working?
ie Condensed doesnt work... everything is expanded with the Condensed button selected... vOv

I vaguely recall seeing something like this stone, but the general consensus of the mods is, we're not sure what you're referring to...   more details perhaps?

[Stone Blue]

5 hours ago, Gargamel said:

more details perhaps?

"A Picture is worth a thousand words..."

This is what it is *supposed* to look like for me in Condensed format:

I'm on a laptop, I have poor vision, and prefer not much clutter on webpages, so I have always browsed the forums with the "Condensed" setting, so it just gives me thread titles only, not the post previews...
On a refresh/reload of my Unread Threads page, all of a sudden, everything went expanded, and then switching between the Condensed/Expanded buttons did nothing, everything stays expanded.
Again, not sure if its just me, or if something happened with the forum... vOv ... maybe an update, or a hiccup...
But at this point, with no other responses, but yours, I have a feeling its *not* the forums?... vOv

EDIT: OH... and I even uninstalled Stylish, which removes my dark forum style, and the behaviour was the same...
I dont have many FF add-ons, but i disabled or removed them all, just to see if it *was* something that simple on my end... vOv
I will probably poke around the issue some moar today... vOv

EDIT2: Again disabled all 4 of my FF addons, completely cleaned my cache, and same issue...
Then tried the page in a fresh, clean install of Chrome (no addons), both logged in and logged out of the forum... Same behaviour...
Not so sure it *is, just me*, anymoar...

Happens with *any* selection listed under the "Activity" tab in the main header

Edited January 1, 2020 by Stone Blue

[Brigadier]

16 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

Is it just me, or did the Condensed/Expanded buttons for displaying threads just stop working?
ie Condensed doesnt work... everything is expanded with the Condensed button selected... vOv

The Condensed/Expanded selection doesn't work for me, either.  The behaviour just started yesterday, as far as I can tell, with no changes on my end in browser or installed software.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Brigadier
Grammar

[Stone Blue]

7 hours ago, Brigadier said:

The Condensed/Expanded selection doesn't work for me, either.  The behaviour just started yesterday, as far as I can tell, with no changes on my end in browser or installed software.

Yup... was yesterday evening for me, too... also no discernable updates/changes for anything on my end... vOv

EDIT: Soo, not only the issue with the Condensed/Expanded buttons, but theres no longer a "Load Moar <stuff>" button at the bottom of the page, to load topics further back than an hour or two... vOv

Edited January 1, 2020 by Stone Blue

[Gargamel]

@Stone Blue & @Brigadier, I've bumped up the issue up the ladder.  We'll just have to wait and see if they can fix it.

[Stone Blue]

Thank You @Gargamel

Edited January 2, 2020 by Stone Blue

[StrandedonEarth]

On 12/29/2019 at 1:06 PM, Snark said:

Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.  This oughta be stock, in my opinion.  Simple, elegant, gets the job done.  It's a don't-play-KSP-without-it mod for me

I agree one thousand percent. Hopefully Squad can add it to their list of QoL features to get done. If they can add the ability to edit action groups on-the-fly, they should be able to add this. As long as they can figure out how to do it without stepping on the original mod creator's toes.

Snark up the pressure on Squad to do this, please!

[Arco123]

Question: How do behavior/restriction points work? I haven't seen any users with them and I'm wondering what they do and are.

[Gargamel]

46 minutes ago, Arco123 said:

I haven't seen any users with them

And you won't.   That info is kept confidential between the individual member and the mods/admins.

But basically, you are given points for repeated violations of the Community Guidelines.  Accrue too many, and your posts may need to get approved again, or as a last resort, temporary or permanent banning from the forums. 

We really try to work out issues prior to handing out points, points are reserved for users who just don't seem to get the message.  

While there is a recommended scale of punitive actions vs amount of points earned, there is quite a bit of discretion involved with it.  We try not to discuss the point scale, as it could lead to some trying to game the system. 

[Beetlecat]

On 1/1/2020 at 11:52 PM, Gargamel said:

@Stone Blue & @Brigadier, I've bumped up the issue up the ladder.  We'll just have to wait and see if they can fix it.

Confirming I'm seeing it too -- was wondering if I had a dodgy browser cache or weird setting that tripped as of the year-date change.

[Arco123]

I know the rule no roleplay but I'm wondering if letting people in my topic: 

 Have a point system where they can buy backups and Craft. As well as pick a spot and attack someone. I'll do it in the game itself but I'm only allowing them to do that and change part of their faction when necessary.

[Vanamonde]

@Arco123, the problem with roleplaying is when people take the roles too seriously and turn in-game conflicts into on-forum feuds. What you're suggesting doesn't sound like that would be a problem, though do please keep an eye on the competitiveness which might arise. 

[Arco123]

Thank you. I'll make sure they behave. Also, this is mostly on google docs to keep some info and forms on that. 

[Brigadier]

On 1/1/2020 at 7:34 AM, Brigadier said:

The Condensed/Expanded selection doesn't work for me, either.  The behaviour just started yesterday, as far as I can tell, with no changes on my end in browser or installed software.

It seems to be working now.  Thanks.

[Geonovast]

@Stone Blue, how's it looking now?

[Stone Blue]

13 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

@Stone Blue, how's it looking now?

:thumbs_up: ... looks like its back to normal...
THANK YOU PEEPS SOOOO MUCH!!