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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Random832 said:
There's no explicit rule of the forum against relaying the ideas of a threadbanned person as long as you don't also relay the toxicity. It's a gray area. And that's something that needs to be fixed. One way or the other. Either he's an unperson (as you seem to want), or people are allowed to talk to him and summarize his ideas and you'll need to stop complaining. We need a clear line to be drawn, either way..
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Actually I'm pretty sure there is such a rule, but I could be wrong.
 
Regarding how to make choices during the quest, maybe we could work off of a mix? We have default options we can go to with an extra write-in option at the end but a if person votes for it they have to explain why they feel the need to write it up? And with situations like when we had revealed what Kirika's Wish meant in regards to Oriko's precognition we have to think it up for ourselves, giving us the urgency that we need to work together to find the solution to this problem?
 
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AuraTwilight said:
So, I'm fine with cutting the PMAS channel of the discord server and keeping the rest; it's one of my main social outlets right now and there's much more going on than just PMAS at this point.

Another thing that keeps me, and probably others, from posting and voting is...like, votes get WAAAAY too fucking long and WAAAAY too overly specific. People sometimes wage wars over total multicolored multiedited abomination laundry lists that differ by like one or two lines on the basis of phrasing or something and I can't follow a fucking word of it due to my actual brain disorder, so i throw my vote to someone I trust and tune out until update time.

And that's bullshit, and causes a caustic atmosphere. Votes should be short and general, for the most part.
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Exactly. Guys, lets trust Firn. He is not going to screw us over about micro details.
 
The Narrator said:
I feel just the opposite. Participation is a realtime chat requires way more commitment than following a forum thread. A chat requires your constant attention to keep up and to type out replies as quickly as possible before events pass you by. A forum allows you to check in when you have time available, work at your own pace, and take your time crafting a response.
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The scrollback buffer lasts forever, and in my experience there's almost always been less content on the Discord per day than the thread. Plus you don't have to respond to everything.

My point though was that you can react to one thing and say one thing, and then have another thought a moment later, without having to gather all your thoughts together at once to avoid a ridiculous amount of double posting and spaghetti posting. You don't have to "craft" a response at all on a chat, you can just share your thoughts as they come to you.
 
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khfan21 said:
Regarding how to make choices during the quest, maybe we could work off of a mix? We have default options we can go to with an extra write-in option at the end but a if person votes for it they have to explain why they feel the need to write it up? And with situations like when we had revealed what Kirika's Wish meant in regards to Oriko's precognition we have to think it up for ourselves, giving us the urgency that we need to work together to find the solution to this problem?
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Yeah, if you're going to include write-in options, premade ones should not be the optimal responses. Reasonable, semi-competent ones, but seldom, if ever, optimal.

Justifying write-ins seems very similar to argument weighted voting. Given what's been happening in this thread, I'm not sure that's the best idea.
 
Conjured Blade said:
Yeah, if you're going to include write-in options, premade ones should not be the optimal responses. Reasonable, semi-competent ones, but seldom, if ever, optimal.

Justifying write-ins seems very similar to argument weighted voting. Given what's been happening in this thread, I'm not sure that's the best idea.
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Thank you for the constructive criticism, it's just I am trying to figure out a way to screen the write-ins so that nobody just backslides right back into what was happening before this all came to a head.
 
Random832 said:
The scrollback buffer lasts forever, and in my experience there's almost always been less content on the Discord per day than the thread. Plus you don't have to respond to everything.

My point though was that you can react to one thing and say one thing, and then have another thought a moment later, without having to gather all your thoughts together at once to avoid a ridiculous amount of double posting and spaghetti posting. You don't have to "craft" a response at all on a chat, you can just share your thoughts as they come to you.
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You don't have to respond to everything here, either. But if you want to respond to something, even if it was said an hour ago, you can.

As an object demonstration of why non-realtime is better for a lot of people, I got a phone call from work while I was writing his post, and because it's a forum, I was able to deal with that situation and come back to finish my thought. In a chat, I wouldn't have that option.


Random832 said:
I don't think anyone wants to participate with everyone else. "Demographic B", to borrow @Vebyast's term, seems to hate the idea of other people's votes winning. And "Party A" hates the things that Demographic B votes for.
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That's pure bullshit. You and @Vebyast are just demonizing your opposition rather than engaging in rational debate with them.

People disagree because people have different ideas about how best to handle things. People are supposed to consider different viewpoints and not just mindlessly go along with whatever they're told. That's why democracy exists.

Opposition groups are a good thing. It forces people to consider the pros and cons of ideas instead of just following the loudest voice. It promotes people to engage in discussion instead of just following the first bandwagon with a familiar name.

My vote is losing two-to-one right now, and you know what? I don't mind that much. Because at least the people voting against me actually stopped to think about their options and provided some reasoning why they made the choice they did. Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm right. I can see good reasons to go either way. But the decision is more likely to be right if people put forth various ideas and make a considered choice from the various options instead of just following the party line set down by a privileged few who are "more equal than others."
 
Agreed. I sympathize with people being upset at other people in the thread (I admit to being one of the people to vent and trashtalk in the Discord, to destress), but it's not helpful. Ultimately, everyone here wants what's best for Sabrina and the Quest. Stop demonizing each other.
 
Firnagzen said:
For the record, this particular discussion won't be relevant to Sabrina's mind state next update. Character growth and decisions, perhaps, but the current discussion is an OoC one.
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Serious question- Why in the world would you think it's a good idea to have thread discussion influence the PC's mindset under any circumstances ever? That seems like a terrible idea that penalizes people for talking about stuff. What possible benefit are you getting out of it as an author?
 
Briefvoice said:
Serious question- Why in the world would you think it's a good idea to have thread discussion influence the PC's mindset under any circumstances ever? That seems like a terrible idea that penalizes people for talking about stuff. What possible benefit are you getting out of it as an author?
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Incubators math discard math pets fuzzys Asunaro caw caw.

There has been exactly one instance of thread discussion not just adding flavor to Sabrina's thoughts. I also question the wisdom of that one instance, but all the other instances are just fun.
 
The Narrator said:
You don't have to respond to everything here, either. But if you want to respond to something, even if it was said an hour ago, you can.
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I've responded to stuff written *days* earlier in Discord. The difference you are imagining does not exist.

And the app manages history for you on the server. It's not IRC. You don't have to be online all the time to see what happened when you weren't there.
 
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Honestly? I think maybe the best approach would be to ditch, for the most part, the "gimmick" of this quest; discussion that shapes Sabrina's mood, thoughts, and character.

Sabrina has enough of a character now, and the thread seems to have no desire to change it further, so might as well set it in stone now, ditch the gimmick, and start aggressively limiting vote length now that there is a firm characterization that Firn can extrapolate smaller votes into full fledged updates.

Sorry you guys (myself included), we have proven ourselves unable to manage such a clever "meta-mechanic" such as this. Ditching it is now the only way we can hope to see this story come to a conclusion without completely burning Firn, and us, out.

EDIT: Oh, and no new meta-knowledge unless it comes from a canonical source.
 
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Okay, stepping back in for a moment: I haven't been in the thread, as in opened the thread and looked at a page, in months. I haven't actively participated in longer. However, I've been skimming some of the backlog, and I gotta say, I'm glad I left. I just genuinely cannot stand some of the posters and the ideas they float in the recent chat. If I had actually remained invested and stuck around instead of burning out, I would likely be under a threadban alongside Ugo because goddamn I would not have been able to remain even slightly civil with some of you people.

Things aren't nearly so unified as Vebyast's post might imply, but even just my brief skimming reveals a very definite divide in approach. The more I look the less sure I am that it's actually possible to "fix" the quest without first "fixing" the voterbase itself.
 
Briefvoice said:
Serious question- Why in the world would you think it's a good idea to have thread discussion influence the PC's mindset under any circumstances ever? That seems like a terrible idea that penalizes people for talking about stuff. What possible benefit are you getting out of it as an author?
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Because it's awesome. My vomit came out of Sabrina's mouth.
 
Kaizuki said:
And the real fact of the matter is that there's a group that was able and willing to describe talking to, comforting an obviously emotional young girl who is being hammered over the head with Bad Things, as, as coddling her.
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That's because people are strawmanning the positions that they don't agree with instead of engaging in real debate, and others are treating the strawman as their actual position. I have never said that we shouldn't talk to Madoka about her feelings about what she just heard or provide her with any emotional support that she might need. I said I was concerned that doing it right now, and basically singling her out among the group, might make her feel worse by putting her on the spot. I'm not concerned about coddling her, I'm concerned about her feeling like we're coddling her and thinking that it means that we don't respect her because she's the only non-MG here.

"Hugs" are not always the best solution. Sometimes people don't want to be hugged, or don't want to be hugged by someone that they don't know that well, or aren't in circumstances when they're comfortable being seen being hugged. I'm not anti-hugs. I'm just not sure hugs are the right response in this circumstance.
 
LostDeviljho said:
Okay, stepping back in for a moment: I haven't been in the thread, as in opened the thread and looked at a page, in months. I haven't actively participated in longer. However, I've been skimming some of the backlog, and I gotta say, I'm glad I left. I just genuinely cannot stand some of the posters and the ideas they float in the recent chat. If I had actually remained invested and stuck around instead of burning out, I would likely be under a threadban alongside Ugo because goddamn I would not have been able to remain even slightly civil with some of you people.

Things aren't nearly so unified as Vebyast's post might imply, but even just my brief skimming reveals a very definite divide in approach. The more I look the less sure I am that it's actually possible to "fix" the quest without first "fixing" the voterbase itself.
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This seem like a reasonable way of putting the dichotomy?

The System is an engineering problem that can be exploited for the good of all vs focus on keeping the main cast alive/happy?
 
The Narrator said:
That's because people are strawmanning the positions that they don't agree with instead of engaging in real debate, and others are treating the strawman as their actual position. I have never said that we shouldn't talk to Madoka about her feelings about what she just heard or provide her with any emotional support that she might need. I said I was concerned that doing it right now, and basically singling her out among the group, might make her feel worse by putting her on the spot. I'm not concerned about coddling her, I'm concerned about her feeling like we're coddling her and thinking that it means that we don't respect her because she's the only non-MG here.

"Hugs" are not always the best solution. Sometimes people don't want to be hugged, or don't want to be hugged by someone that they don't know that well, or aren't in circumstances when they're comfortable being seen being hugged. I'm not anti-hugs. I'm just not sure hugs are the right response in this circumstance.
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It is true, however, that none of this fits Madoka, her established personality, or her particular cultural background. :U And that we also actually have taken the time to comfort other people in front of her. This is partly why strawmanning has happened.
 
There's a reason I didn't name any names. This isn't a problem with any one person. This is an entire demographic. Demographic B rotates continuously. Right now it's one group of people. A year ago it was a different group. A year before that it was yet another group. It's a couple people at a time jumping in, making a suggestion, fighting for it for an update, and then never coming back. And I'm calling it a demographic because it's not just in PMAS. We saw it regularly in Ignition, arguing to just witchbomb Jade instead of letting Agneyastra deal with it. I see it in Xander Quest, with the people advocating that being just one more plus of Being Fucking Ganon won't hurt or that if people don't bow before Xander the quest should pick up its toys and go home. I see it in To Boldly Go, I see it in Imperatrix Mundi, I see it on QQ and Anonkun and fucking 4chan. There's a reason I called this asymmetric warfare and a quagmire. This is a goddamned insurgency, Party A is fighting against the goddamned natives, and Party A is turning into burned-out, PTSD-ridden veterans.
 
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