What I hate about KSP forums/IRC! (not a moan, don;t worry!)

[damerell]

10 hours ago, kiwi1960 said:

I get accused of lying when I say I'm 55 ... to youngsters wondering how an old geezer knew anything about IRC?
"Sonny... who do you think invented IRC way back when, yes, we pioneers of the internet!

I am an IRC regular and happened to see this. These "youngsters" consisted, in fact, of one person.

I am reasonably sure you are not a pioneer of the Internet since you would have been in your early teens at the time. I know you are not in fact part of a "we" that invented IRC, because IRC wasn't invented by a "we" but by one Jarkko Oikarinen - who also is not a pioneer of the Internet since he was about six years old at the time.

Still, why confuse the issue with facts?

(I'm not saying how old I am but my keyboard is 24 years old).

[jros83]

2 minutes ago, damerell said:

I am an IRC regular and happened to see this. These "youngsters" consisted, in fact, of one person.

I am reasonably sure you are not a pioneer of the Internet since you would have been in your early teens at the time. I know you are not in fact part of a "we" that invented IRC, because IRC wasn't invented by a "we" but by one Jarkko Oikarinen - who also is not a pioneer of the Internet since he was about six years old at the time.

Still, why confuse the issue with facts?

(I'm not saying how old I am but my keyboard is 24 years old).

I find it odd, dubious, and not the least bit telling that you are picking a fight with Kiwi over this point. Interesting. Very interesting. Bolstered by the fact that you make a point of hiding your age.

 

Kiwi illuminates a very a real issue with the internet community today. Younger folk have zero social skills and incredibly naive misconceptions, on average. There ARE exceptions. But they are just that. EXCEPTIONS. The fact that he riled you up enough with his post to start flinging poo, no matter how subtle you are flinging it, leads me to suspect that he struck a nerve with you. But I'm not here to flame or fight. Just pointing out an observation.

14 minutes ago, Rokker said:

Are you serious? Your only experience with the KSP IRC channel is when it was infested with people from the forums while the forums were down. I have been on the forums for 2 years now and have never seen what you describe except for last week and I have only really seen you on there in the last week. Also the person that told you your age was a lie is the least respected person in the IRC channel and we all essentially dislike him.

Again, another person oddly and tellingly taking this personally...

Edited December 3, 2015 by jros83

[Mjarf]

I've played MMORPG's online with people older than you actually, and I really enjoyed their company. They always had good stories to tell and also had a lot of insight. I'm 27 btw, so we're not all youngsters hehe.

[Val]

Another 42 year old here.

The first computer I ever interacted with was an Osborne 1 my dad used at work. In the early 80's he bought our first home computer, a ZX-81. A few years later it was replaced with an Amstrad CPC 464, and eventually a 25 MHz 386 laptop. Got me my own first computer, a 100 MHz 486 clone, when I started in College in 1995.

That's also where I got my first real exposure to internet. I'd been shown modems and BBSs, but never tried it myself. I remember marveling at the college's awesomely fast shared 64 kbit connection. Pages loaded so lightningly fast in the DosLynx text based browser. I was introduced to MUDs and IRC. Rarely used IRC, but played a lot of AustinMUD,

The college computers were upgraded to Windows 3.11 with Netscape Navigator and I saw web pages with images displayed for the first time, instead of just text with links to images, that you had to download separately and open in an image viewer. Which meant quitting the browser, because in DOS multitasking wasn't really a thing.

Those were wondrous times 

[UmbralRaptor]

The problem with the channel was a combination of: 1) a huge number of people unfamiliar with its norms and IRC in general, and 2) that we got no additional ops (beyond me doing some silly stuff towards the end). I've complained about this elsewhere, though things should be okay now.

[Engineer of Stuff]

I am one of the younger users of this forum, but I always assume everyone else is older than me (I am not one of the so called mannerless young people). 

There are a lot of rude kids out there, and they think that they own the internet.  Just ignore them and find people who understand the meaning of "Internet Courtesy". 

BTW, the KSP forum is one of the best on the internet. Most of the people here are respectful. The KSP community is just special that way!

[Randazzo]

It's amazing all the things I've forgotten about. DOS, Dial-Up, Geocities, ICQ...

My first exposure to a computer was a TI-99. It stored things (such as games which you had to program yourself) on cassette tapes.

[Rokker]

1 hour ago, jros83 said:

I find it odd, dubious, and not the least bit telling that you are picking a fight with Kiwi over this point. Interesting. Very interesting. Bolstered by the fact that you make a point of hiding your age.

 

Kiwi illuminates a very a real issue with the internet community today. Younger folk have zero social skills and incredibly naive misconceptions, on average. There ARE exceptions. But they are just that. EXCEPTIONS. The fact that he riled you up enough with his post to start flinging poo, no matter how subtle you are flinging it, leads me to suspect that he struck a nerve with you. But I'm not here to flame or fight. Just pointing out an observation.

Again, another person oddly and tellingly taking this personally...

Because he comes in and insult and judges a community I am part of and tries to turn people off from it by misrepresenting it because of one weekend he spent there.

And as a young person I see his point as just another of case of "When I was your age..." mentality that has been around forever.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Rokker

[jros83]

My father first had a home PC in 1985, when I was 2. By 3 he started me on it, baby steps. By 1988 I was pretty much independent in basic usage. In elementary school, when we had time devoted to learning PCs and Apples, I was bored beyond belief because I could have instructed it myself at the tender age of 10.

My first foray in to social media was *shudder* America Online chat rooms (of course, my father had no idea).

[Rokker]

9 hours ago, Kagame said:

And if it's Rokker you're thinking about.... he only trolls you till he actually gets to know you, then he's a pretty cool guy.

<3

Edited December 3, 2015 by Rokker

[damerell]

1 hour ago, jros83 said:

I find it odd, dubious, and not the least bit telling that you are picking a fight with Kiwi over this point. Interesting. Very interesting. Bolstered by the fact that you make a point of hiding your age.

Ever so telling, but you're wrong, kid. I could type well before you were born.

[Nathair]

2 hours ago, jros83 said:

CGA, EGA, VGA, and "oh my gosh so beautiful!" SVGA
Monochrome, 4 colors, 16 colors, 32 colors, 256 colors
Center joystick, then click button. Move joystick to upper left, then click button. Move joystick to lower right, then click button.
Sid Meier before Firaxis
LucasFilm Entertainment

I (52) used to run a local FidoNet hub on a machine with a Hercules graphics card.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, Rokker said:

Your only experience with the KSP IRC channel is when it was infested with people from the forums while the forums were down.

So much this. The tone, amount of traffic, and general level of discourse in #KSPOfficial during the forum outage is most definitely not indicative of the norm there. I perform operator duties there and I have had to perform more kicks and bans during that week or so than the whole year I've been opping combined. Try joining now that things have settled back to normal (more or less) and you'll find it's a very different experience.

It's a bit disappointing that more of the more helpful forum people chose not to stick around in IRC after the forums came back up, but I can understand it given what their initial experience was like there.

[Kerbart]

9 minutes ago, Nathair said:

I (52) used to run a local FidoNet hub on a machine with a Hercules graphics card.

Ah fidonet! Yes, I eventually upgraded to fidonet, since the BBS that I played VGA Planets on was using it  One of the advantages was offline email—Imagine that, you didn't need to be logged in to access your inbox, read emails and reply to them. Although to be honest, Bluemail offered that as well—but fido allowed you to send emails to the other side of the world, if you could deal with message delays measured in days, instead of milliseconds.

As for young people being rude nowadays? I'm pretty sure the terms “flamewars” and “trolling” existed back then just as much, I doubt it's a generational thing.

[Rokker]

2 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

It's a bit disappointing that more of the more helpful forum people chose not to stick around in IRC after the forums came back up, but I can understand it given what their initial experience was like there.

Which is why I am so "mad" about this post as jros83 seems to think. This thread will only serve to drive people away from the channel or reinforce their opinion of last weeks behavior.

[damerell]

2 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

So much this. The tone, amount of traffic, and general level of discourse in #KSPOfficial during the forum outage is most definitely not indicative of the norm there.

Although even so, in spite of the original complaint, exactly one person actually cast doubt on kiwi1960's age. And I'm pretty sure that person was not a newcomer during the forapocalypse.

IRC regulars will notice I am agreeing with Rokker. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

[swjr-swis]

Halfway into forties myself.

I still have my very first computer, my trusty ole Commodore 64, with tapes (5.25" floppy unit was too expensive at the time). Did my first steps in programming on BASIC and 6501 Assembler (64k to play with!). Dial-in BBS from home and a company CompuServe account for my first online experiences (btw, CSi did in fact have forums, and chats). MU* and TinyFugue for my first multiplayer experiences. Ahh the good ole times.

Why, back in my time...

[Rokker]

3 minutes ago, damerell said:

Although even so, in spite of the original complaint, exactly one person actually cast doubt on kiwi1960's age. And I'm pretty sure that person was not a newcomer during the forapocalypse.

IRC regulars will notice I am agreeing with Rokker. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

I believe that us agreeing is one of the seven seals that must be broken before the apocalypse.

[Torgo]

46 here. My first job was in 1985. My uncle was director of information services for a large company that was building a new office so they could consolidate their operations from four smaller buildings. I got to help install the raised floor in the data center, put the floor back together after the Halon test, and run what felt like 60 trillion miles of cable. One day, he wheels in this monster the size of a 55 gallon trash barrel, and tells me that this is a 20 megabyte hard drive. They had several of them, and I got to work with a couple of their guys who were transferring all the information from the tapes to the new drives. I think he just did it do distract me from the fact that I had to catalog, degauss, box up and haul out all those tapes after they were verified as backed up. 

First PC was an Apple ][. My mom had taken my brother, sister and I to her mom's house for Christmas. Being a stupid teenager at the time, I made the error of demonstrating that I was not at all pleased that it seemed I received pretty much nothing for Christmas when compared to what my sblings received. Parents were none too pleased with me, and let me know it when I got home to see my Christmas present sitting on my desk. Then I was told that I'd get the power cables for the PC and monitor sometime in February so that I could reflect on the error of my ways. (please note, language cleaned up to keep this forum friendly!). I finally got them on February 1st. That was the longest January ever. I think it had about 200 days in it. 

[Red Iron Crown]

Regarding the whole age thing, I have not found age to be a very good indicator of maturity and civility on IRC or the Internet in general. Some of the people I like talking to most in #KSPOfficial are teenagers or in their early twenties, some of those I find most troublesome/rude are of a more mature vintage (and there are examples of the reverse, too). It's a person's personality which determines civility and politeness, and that transcends age in my experience.

[WinkAllKerb'']

4 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Regarding the whole age thing, I have not found age to be a very good indicator of maturity and civility on IRC or the Internet in general. Some of the people I like talking to most in #KSPOfficial are teenagers or in their early twenties, some of those I find most troublesome/rude are of a more mature vintage (and there are examples of the reverse, too). It's a person's personality which determines civility and politeness, and that transcends age in my experience.

ages are so many thing ... my own change depending my current mood and mindset.

[Pronoes]

So your title was "Why I hate KSP" and your subject was "I remember when it was all fields around here". I don't get it personally, but it's got to be nearly nap-time for Granddad right?

31 year old who doesn't care about sex, race, sexual orientation, religious inclination, age, political view, social status, economic status, marital status, pet ownership, military service, car or your favourite flavour of lollipop. These things don't and shouldn't matter on the internet bar dating websites. Take a post on it's own merit rather than who posted it.

 

Having said that, you sound awfully offended because someone - you say 'youngsters' and 'kids' (I presume you checked all their ages before tarring them all as juveniles), accused you of lying in an internet chat room. Then you proceed to spout rhetoric and conforming to general (yet wrong), stereotyping of people over a certain age. "I remember when it was all fields..." "You don't know you're born.." "If it wasn't for us.." "During the war..." "Back in the day, we didn't have..."

I don't mean any disrespect, just irks me that people don't have better things to do than complain about being offended, (imho, a very minor thing - let's face it, there are far more serious things to be offended by). I feel humanity in general is getting too soft. Soon it will be illegal to hurt someone's feelings.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Pronoes

[Trann]

12 hours ago, kiwi1960 said:

I hate the fact that its mostly kids in these forums... but its worse in IRC!

The simplest solution is to not put yourself into places you "hate".

Edited December 3, 2015 by Trann
words

[Robotengineer]

31 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Regarding the whole age thing, I have not found age to be a very good indicator of maturity and civility on IRC or the Internet in general. Some of the people I like talking to most in #KSPOfficial are teenagers or in their early twenties, some of those I find most troublesome/rude are of a more mature vintage (and there are examples of the reverse, too). It's a person's personality which determines civility and politeness, and that transcends age in my experience.

 

This. Age stereotyping, be it aimed at old or young, is just like every other sort of stereotyping. 

[Hysterrics]

3 hours ago, peachoftree said:

As a 16 year old,  I sincerely apologize for some of the more immature people of my generation,  we're not all bad.  (I too wonder why it's not common knowledge that the Internet was popular in the 80s and 90s)

 

As for the idea that people of all ages can't play KSP (which is ridiculous) it probably comes from our parents,  some of whom may have played video games in their youth but do not now. (mine included) this makes the idea of someone older gaming feel strange to us,  hence the unwarranted negative responses on IRC

Agreed.

 

2 hours ago, Rokker said:

Are you serious? Your only experience with the KSP IRC channel is when it was infested with people from the forums while the forums were down. I have been on the forums for 2 years now and have never seen what you describe except for last week and I have only really seen you on there in the last week. Also the person that told you your age was a lie is the least respected person in the IRC channel and we all essentially dislike him.

As someone who just started using the IRC when the forums went down, who is that?

 

Quote

If you don't believe me that I am 55 years old, born in 1960... then that is fine... but keep your mouth shut! Us old people also invented hacking.... remember that

That's just a threat.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Sequinox