With this, I agree. However, expecting MUD developers to be mature and show respect for one another might be wishful thinking. MUDs are combative by nature, and there's no age limit on downloading a codebase.


Well, it made me laugh out loud. :lol:

I think most will see a certain irony in your response. Perhaps we can't prevent flames, but each of us can prevent flamewars by simply not responding.

Not entirely true, 'a lot of people' doesn't always have to imply that the majority is in favour of such a notion and I doubt it did in this case. 'A lot' is a flimsy counting term like 'several, few etc'. At least, that's the way I see it.

One very simple answer is to move the off topic stuff to the bottom of the front page. Then people can control the content they see with their own eyeballs. While you're at it, I think if you moved the codebase specific forums above the general forums, we'd get less ROM questions in "Coding and Design".

Point.

David, I apologise.

I missed the full quote:

There, now it can be seen where you jump from "a lot" to implying a majority.

Sorry for being hasty, sorta stuffed up this morning.

I've frequented plenty of message boards themed around a specific hobby which disallow topics such as politics and religion due to being emotionally charged. I agree, however, that the general board here should be further defined so that there's either one board that has general-but-MUD-related topics and no room for universally general topics, or a separate board for such that people can choose to ignore (since a fair number of people seem to want that). I voted against non-MUD conversation.

There's no need to apologize for a statement like that. :smile: Also, FWIW, the vote is 10 saying "completely disallow", 3 saying "heavily discourage", and 13 saying "just as valid" – so in fact the majority hasn't voted that it's just as valid. It's basically half-half saying "yes" and "no", merely with some "yes" votes stronger than others.


Not sure what you're implying here. I think the majority of active posters here are 18+ if not 22+; what kind of age limit did you have in mind?

Also, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect MUD developers to show respect. Most of the time, with most people, it works quite well. I guess there are just a few people who rub each other the wrong way from time to time. :shrug:

In other forums, I think these topics are almost universally verboten. Perhaps with good reason.

But unlike other forums, which generally pander to a wider audience, what we have here is a very select group of individuals. I think it's obvious that the average IQ around here is way higher than normal. Our personal backgrounds also differ greatly. Thus, I find the collision of our beliefs a fascinating thing.

There are people here I have 'known' for well over a decade. Before there was a World Wide Web, Richard Woolcock and Jon Lambert entertained me on usenet. To learn more about their beliefs, their politics, their backgrounds, these things flesh out the online characters of KaVir and Tyche.

As Martin Buber said, to understand someone, you have to stand under them. You have to put their beliefs on an equal footing with your own, or else you are merely looking down at them. And Erich Fromm is correct in proposing that to respect another you must first have knowledge of them.

Thus, I believe discussions of topics apparently unrelated to mudding are not, in fact, unrelated to our ability to work together as a community, and as many have proposed, without working together to build a community which will be appealing to others, all our code will be for naught.

I'm a little uncomfortable that people are making statements about the general IQ level here; I would say that there is specialization but I see no need to make statements about how much smarter than the rest of the world we are. I certainly don't see how intelligence levels would excuse us from what appears to be "good reason" or simply common sense for other forums, since apparently we have failed rather spectacularly despite this supposed increased intelligence.

I'm also not sure I need to know what everybody here thinks about various political issues, etc.. Indeed, this can actually get in the way of "build[ing] a community" devoted to MUDs. (Isn't that why we're having this conversation in the first place?) I find it interesting to share ideas, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the past few exchanges have actually been somewhat unpleasant all things considered. Many possibly fruitful occasions for collaboration are quite possibly forever removed at this point, or at the least one might say that much work would have to go into leaving things at the door when we put on our developers' hats.

It suffices to observe that one person tries to understand another, and others think that there is foul play going on. In an environment such as this, there is no longer interesting exchange of ideas; indeed, the "collision of beliefs" becomes something almost sinister, and certainly unpleasant. It's hard to say that anything productive is coming out of these conversations, if indeed one can even call them conversations.

I've been thinking about this for some time now, all the more so given recent events, and it's starting to be all the more clear to me that off-topic discussion simply isn't what I would like to come here for. I suppose that to some extent I deluded myself in the past thinking that it would be a good idea to discuss such things here, and I believe that I was wrong to try to do so. To those who care, I apologize for the off-topic discussions – even though I find them interesting, and apparently others do as well, this forum is not the place to have them.

The point? Well, the point is that these conversations have by and large been rather unhealthy for this site, and I'm seeing more cost than gain in having them. I don't want to "ban" the conversations because I don't really believe in that in general, but I think that people should think long and hard before starting lightning-rod threads, and other people should think long and hard before getting involved in such threads if not to say that perhaps the conversation is not appropriate.

I think the biggest problem has been that some of the topics were started without knowing they actually were lightning rods. And in at least a couple of instances in the past where it had been recognized that it was, and the topics locked before the war broke out, people still complained about the attempt to prevent just what you're talking about. So at least part of the issue is that, at least to us, it seems that those who complain that the topics are not wanted also revel in complaining when something is done to stop them. Mixed messages can come from both sides of the aisle. People complain when the threads are locked. People complain when they're not. So it leaves us wondering exactly what the people want.

Said with the best possible intention, the issues with how moderation has been handled have been discussed at great length, and perhaps the response to your post would be that there's a way of handling these things. For example, it's complicated when somebody involved in a discussion is also the person locking it. Well, we've been there before, so there's no need to say more I think.

David, I merely meant to imply that I find smart people more interesting. (at least, the smart people here, the smart people in Mensa are generally boring)

As to your personal feelings about off-topic subjects, it would seem the obvious solution is to simply avoid those threads.

Smart people are indeed usually more interesting, but I'm not sure it's entirely appropriate to give ourselves the smart person crown, or say that because we're smart, we should talk about subjects that historically have been very troublesome.

As to the bit about my personal feelings, well, my understanding is that this whole undertaking is a team effort, so I'm just trying to figure out what exactly it is that the team wants to do. If one group wants to do things that another group finds unacceptable, I do not think we will have made much progress as eventually the other group might get so tired of it that we'll get repeats of what we've seen recently. I brought it up because I'm trying to build consensus. There's not much point coming up with a "community solution" if only half the community thinks it's fair, worthwhile, or a good idea in general.

That's all we're trying to do as well - figure out what the community wants. But it seems we're getting a decidedly mixed signal. People don't want drama, but they want the topics which cause it to continue to exist, which in the end sends us the signal that people *DO* want drama. If you think it's hard to figure out what 3 admins want, imagine how hard it is to figure out what the other 800+ of you want :)

Well, I'd really hate to be forced to log off and watch Real Housewives for my daily dose of drama… :cool:


Seriously, though, I'd like to think there might be a solution that accommodates everyone.

:biggrin:

Well, the vote is now 17 for discouraging/disallowing (with 14 in favor of discouraging), and 13 for allowing. For whatever that's worth.

Maybe a productive line of discussion would be why such threads are important to the community? It's one thing to say "eh, let them happen", but it's another to say "we should be having these discussions". So far, Sandi has mentioned things like she finds them interesting; I infer that this implies she finds the gain higher than the cost, but that might not be what she thinks. I think the important question isn't so much if there is any gain (hey, I find them interesting too), but if the gain outweighs the cost of having them here.

It's quite possible, if not outright all but certain, that some people might be driven away from the site by all the noise, be they established members or new-comers. If I came to a site I expected to be specialized in, say, 3D graphics, and people were spending all their time talking about other things, I would not pay attention to the site. Actually, to be perfectly honest, if I came along a site like MB that I didn't know, and things were happening there like they have here, I wouldn't join that community. Maybe we should think about what this means for MB itself. In other words, by turning to ourselves for these discussions about each other's beliefs, I believe that we are creating a more insular community built around "regulars", cutting off newcomers who are not used to the culture or simply do not want to participate other than about MUDs.

Is our goal to build a MUD-related community, or a community that happens to have MUDs as a common point of interest? The two are quite different IMO.

I hope I speak for us all on staff, but it was always the intention to build a MUD-related community. The entire focus of the site is on MUD related issues. You'll get some differences in what we each think that means, but overall, it was never intended to be set up as a staging ground for political, religious, or whatever issues. We provide a place where off-topic material is welcome, because we acknowledge that even in a highly specialized community, people like to share other things that aren't necessarily MUD related. The unintended backlash from that has been a whole lot of drama generated by the political and/or religious type threads, so something clearly needs to be done. So far it appears as though a slight majority of folks want these topics officially barred, which I can't say I blame them on.

I find it interesting that while the initial results seemed to be in favour of keeping politics and religion, with a spread among the other choices, the last 7 votes are all against it.

Admins vote with SQL.
You didn't think this was a honest vote did you?

Well, I wasn't thinking of anything that nefarious. I did think it would be rather ironic if someone used a political tactic, i.e., 'Get out and vote', to keep people from talking about politics. :smirk:



Of course, there has been another poll in place all along. Just look at the 'views' column.