Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
It's been around a lot longer than that. People were talking like that the day the Discord opened. It's been like that for a long, long time. And I see the same damn thing in other quests.
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
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- Tags
- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe (tomoe mami) diabolical laughter friendship is the best ship handholding identity crises microwaving tea gets you put in the bad place names are important the body is the fursona of the soul this is not the baked goods thread we don't talk about rionna what could possibly go wrong? who in the world is azure sanfrancisco?
The problem with this line of thinking is it doesn't address the fact that Nadia is an outsider. Is that really not an issue?
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
She's an outsider who's constantly exposing herself to other cultures and has been in Japan multiple times. If she has a problem with it, her own professionalism is called into question.
...and you don't think it's a solution to let people actually have things out, even if it's messy sometimes, instead of resorting to passive-aggressive sniping?
I'm not talking about her having a problem, I'm asking if that really doesn't change how the situation would feel for Madoka.
I would think "messy sometimes" is a severe understatement, if it results to the mods shutting down the thread and handing points+mandatory vacations.
LucidProp
Pocky Eating MafiaDoka
Good.
I already have something in store just for this moment!
It isn't the end of the world, you know.
You still have a in-built PM system in the forum if you really feel the need to vent mano-o-mano. There's also the chat threads to break away to and relax. Sure, it ain't Discord, but it's something.
kinigget
Best Demon
- Location
- People's Republic of Portland
I'm...fairly certain this passive-aggressive sniping is what "having things out" tends to look like
And if not, are you really suggesting that having a bunch of big fights all the time would be an improvement?
I...really don't know what to say to that
- Location
- Borneo
I've honestly always been intimidated.
You guys are always so detailed and....heated about vote semantics...
So I rarely vote, cause what if people expect me to hash it out too?
What if the idea I had in mind causes a shitstorm?
That kind of thing..
You guys are always so detailed and....heated about vote semantics...
So I rarely vote, cause what if people expect me to hash it out too?
What if the idea I had in mind causes a shitstorm?
That kind of thing..
- Location
- ⇙
@Firnagzen
Okay, so I'm not really all that active anymore here or on the Discord and while that might have something to do with the atmosphere in the thread, it's mostly because I'm doing my PhD and have far less time than before, so reading 10 pages or so and trying to filter out the important bits is time I don't alyways have.
I still read and enjoy the quest and honestly there always were heated disputes about relatively minor things even when I first got here at around page 500 or so. I mean the whole Sendai discussion was a right mess at some points.
One thing that would definetely help is to have more things taken care of by just having Sabrina act in character. By now she's a firmly established character, so we shouldn't need to micromanage her as much as we used to. That the thread reflects Sabrina's thoughts is still great and seperates this quest from others and should definetely stay a thing as it's one of the main strengths and draws of this quest, at least for me and probably many others.
There's also wording. I think we can trust Firn not to screw us over, if we just give a general direction of what we want to say and where we wnat discussions and conversations to go, only giving full wording in rare moments. A lot of arguments are about rather inconsequential wording changes, and I think by now Sabrina has her own voice so we shouldn't have to come up with specific wording as much as we do, which would also neatly tie in the above re: less micromanaging.
As for vote options I'm open for some suggestions on in-character things Sabrina might do as starting blocks for vote building, but I honestly think that the free form [] write-in is one of my favorite things about this quest. The option to do everything is of course also responsible for the slow pacing, but being given so much choice is a rare thing in quests and I love it.
Giving some general directions together with the write-in option and introducing a voting moratorium and maybe interfere when the vote length or detail gets out of hand (You already tried that at some points, but maybe it will stick this time), could work fine and testing it to see how if things work better with it is definetely something worth a try.
Okay, so I'm not really all that active anymore here or on the Discord and while that might have something to do with the atmosphere in the thread, it's mostly because I'm doing my PhD and have far less time than before, so reading 10 pages or so and trying to filter out the important bits is time I don't alyways have.
I still read and enjoy the quest and honestly there always were heated disputes about relatively minor things even when I first got here at around page 500 or so. I mean the whole Sendai discussion was a right mess at some points.
One thing that would definetely help is to have more things taken care of by just having Sabrina act in character. By now she's a firmly established character, so we shouldn't need to micromanage her as much as we used to. That the thread reflects Sabrina's thoughts is still great and seperates this quest from others and should definetely stay a thing as it's one of the main strengths and draws of this quest, at least for me and probably many others.
There's also wording. I think we can trust Firn not to screw us over, if we just give a general direction of what we want to say and where we wnat discussions and conversations to go, only giving full wording in rare moments. A lot of arguments are about rather inconsequential wording changes, and I think by now Sabrina has her own voice so we shouldn't have to come up with specific wording as much as we do, which would also neatly tie in the above re: less micromanaging.
As for vote options I'm open for some suggestions on in-character things Sabrina might do as starting blocks for vote building, but I honestly think that the free form [] write-in is one of my favorite things about this quest. The option to do everything is of course also responsible for the slow pacing, but being given so much choice is a rare thing in quests and I love it.
Giving some general directions together with the write-in option and introducing a voting moratorium and maybe interfere when the vote length or detail gets out of hand (You already tried that at some points, but maybe it will stick this time), could work fine and testing it to see how if things work better with it is definetely something worth a try.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
So, i think the general consensus is "For the love of fuck, stop with the micromanaging votes and trust Firn to write Sabrina properly"? I think this would take care of most of the issues, and I'd like to see this implemented BEFORE we do things like deleting discord servers and see what happens?
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
I really don't like voting myself, much less holding a voteblock. But I do it when I feel the better idea needs a few more votes of support, or when all the bandwagons are lacking in something I feel is important.
Don't worry about causing a shitstorm if you feel whatever you have to say is important and can have worth. Try to express your idea clearly, or if that's difficult, just make a joke ot of it; it's easier for people to ignore things that are put forward as jokes, while they can still consider the idea seriously if they see merit in it.
It helps if you try to frame your ideas in ceratin ways the thread will be more likely to accept.
Why, you can take a shitty idea, include a Mamihug into it, and then people will like the shitty idea!
Because people like mumihugs in the PMAS thread.
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The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
Nothing from Firn, so I guess I'll keep replying.
I felt like the fact that I was referring to Madoka's perceptions was clear from the context. If it wasn't, then I'll apologize.
I didn't really have time to respond to everyone individually, and other people were more demanding of attention. And for the past day or so I've just been too busy to post here at all (and a little too burned out to want to do so unless it was important).
Pretty much, yeah. I saw your post and was like, *nods* "Yeah, I can see where he's coming from." It was a valid point, but not one that changed my mind, because concern that Madoka will feel left out by being a non-MG is one of the reasons we brought her along in the first place and I still felt that was a factor. It may (and I think did) change the minds of others, and I don't have a problem with that. What's important to me is that all sides get a chance to be heard and all claims get fact-checked so people can make informed decisions.
I said that I try to refrain my tendency towards sarcasm for the sake of politeness. I don't always succeed. I certainly never called you names.
...you know one of those quotes isn't even from me, right? TheEyes and I both start our name with a "The" but we're two different people and don't always agree.
I felt like the fact that I was referring to Madoka's perceptions was clear from the context. If it wasn't, then I'll apologize.
I like the idea of a delay before voting starts. It gives people some time to talk things out and think things over before they start picking sides, instead of rushing to crank out votes and build a bandwagon as quickly as possible.
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...do you even realize what you're responding to. I'm saying that maybe if you don't want people to "run off to an echo chamber" as you put it, don't make vague threats of threadbans.
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Right. In this case, you, @Kaizuki, and @AuraTwilight, drop this discussion right now. It doesn't do any particular good to get bogged down on this particular point - forest for the trees, people. This is one point of the wider problem of general thread hostility.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
I already HAD dropped it, but agreed. More to the point, Firn, what are your thoughts on the idea of, instead of implementing everything at once, trying solutions one at a time? I like the idea of enforcing new voting rules and the like and see how that fixes the arguing before discords are shut off and bans are handed out, personally.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
*salutes* Shutting up now.
EDIT: I think this is a good demonstration of how better enforcement of forum rules on civil behavior could be invaluable in reducing hostility.
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kinigget
Best Demon
- Location
- People's Republic of Portland
Dude
Why so hostile?
Getting the people who refuse to behave out of the thread is a positive thing
You keep talking about having a place to vent, but the entire problem is that there shouldn't be a need for such a thing in the first place
I have never seen another quest where the player base was this hostile and this entrenched
Why do you keep acting like this is normal?
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Gardens of Enoch was the only thing that could compare to this I know of. It had vote weighting by argument quality and optimization was literally a matter of life and death. It was fun but the arguments were basically trench warfare. Lots of builds that never were, lots of discussion about our excessive devotion to Imperia, lots of discussion about the Strategist.
I think a sockpuppet tilted a build vote even.
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Okay, putting these two together because both are saying the same thing, and as much as I want to agree I think they're wrong.
Some of the biggest arguments in the last few months were:
- The Mami metabomb fiasco
- Talking things out with Sayaka about the Oriko reveal
- Madoka's moment of horror because we flippantly used the words "city-destroying Witch" instead of "Walpurgisnacht" in a vote
I think at this point I have to invite being made into the bad guy, as seems increasingly the case these days, and disagree with a bunch of people again. I think one of the problems here is that we can't seem to trust @Firnagzen to interpret our votes the way we want him to. I mean, I highly doubt that the thread consensus was to make Mami cry, or make Sayaka throw a violent tantrum, or to have Madoka look at us like we just had our head bitten off, but all of those things happened, and the thread consensus, each time, was that we needed to be super-Shadowrun-y with our votes for the next X turns or else we're going to fall even deeper down the rabbit hole.
Maybe having that not happen again is part of the solution here? I actually don't know anymore; I was supposed to be asleep two hours ago and I'm suspicious that this post is getting more rambly and ranty than it is persuasive.
I like this idea too, but it wouldn't have helped this case. I mean, the story post was on Wednesday, 3AM PST, and the post that started the most recent flamewar was on Thursday, over 36 hours later.
I guess I'm saying that there isn't any one thing that's going to work. Best I can tell we need at least three:
- Don't allow PMAS discussions outside of the PMAS thread (and possibly companion threads like that time we all went to a separate thread to argue over the Mami metabomb to avoid cognitive contamination). Basically, keep everything to the same medium.
- Enforce the rules on civil discourse.
- @Firnagzen, please please be gentle about interpreting votes, or maybe warn us if we're about to say/do something stupid.
- Location
- ⇙
I don't necessarily disagree.
I'd have to check the other two as they were a while ago, but at least "City destroying witch" explicitly happened because it was the exact wording of the vote and thus on the players, as they voted for it and noone caught it. I really can't see any fault of @Firnagzen in this one. If we vote for a specific wording or are flippant about eldritch monstrosities the consequences are on us. Maybe that is something that could be changed, but it's also not the core of my proposal.
Like right after the Mami thing my winnning vote was [x] Stay and Firn made an entire great update out of that. I'm not saying that specific wording doesn't matter in some situations, but we could use more general directions for most situations. Intent not wording, when we can get away with it.
AFAIK Firn only interfered directly once back in Sendai when the leading vote had us make a grief awning as rain protection right there in the open where everyone can see it, in hostile territory.
Thank you.
Tagged you because it doesn't do to tell only one half of an argument to drop it.
You know, I generally am. I only ding you guys when you say something specific and egregious. For example, the vote was specifically "[X] Ask if she knows any magical girls who might be willing to travel to Mitakihara to fight a city-destroying witch". I have encouraged, multiple times, for people to be concise about their votes and supply me with point forms.
As someone in said PM, that's grossly uncharitable. What was said, with Ugolino's permission, was:
With that said...
- To reiterate, I'm going to do my level best to tighten up the pacing. I'll allow it to slow down some for conversations such as with Nadia and important topics, but I will be pushing things on as much as possible. The exact manner that this takes place in, I'm mulling over: I kind of like the idea of fixed time slots.
- I'll add character/word limits on votes. Not entirely sure what values to have just yet, need to mull over it.
- I'll establish vote moratoriums after updates, during which discussion is permitted but not votes.
- On the specific topic of Ugolino, I'll enforce his separation from the thread entirely. It's a shame, but I am obliged to be even handed, especially in light of the next point:
- I am going to be significantly more aggressive about requesting threadbans for people to cool their heels. Consider this point onwards a clean slate in behaviour, and I ask everyone in this thread to keep this in mind. Try, just try, to leave the grudges behind and discuss productively, and yes, this goes for everyone. Should that not be enough, then yes, I will be handing out threadbans.
- The PM (well, the one I'm in) has been closed.
- I have been convinced to leave the PMAS server and channel up. It does create a barrier against people who cannot directly engage, I agree. I will do what I can to mitigate that - in particular, discussion about the current vote continues to be prohibited there.
- It has been put to me that there is a certain leeriness of bad/intrusive thoughts messing with Sabrina's head. That's fair. To be clear, I've never entirely just slathered the thread liberally into Sabrina's mind - I always followed general trends. But let me make it clear, for future reference: I do distinguish between significant engagement with a concept (and disgust thereof), and disaffected discussion. Only the former makes it in.
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Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
None of this is going to work. You're all trying to treat symptoms instead of the disease. This isn't about civil discourse. This isn't about where discussion happens. This isn't about how the votes are interpreted. This all boils down to fundamental differences in the philosophy of half of the thread from the story's themes and genres. Sabrina has been consistently operating under a particular genre and tone and philosophy of social interaction. The problem is that there's a presence in the thread that thinks we should be ESTABLISHING DOMINANCE, and they just keep fucking arguing for it, and despite the fact that they're continuously argued down and continuously presented with evidence that they're operating contrary to genre and narrative and tone and basic understanding of the characters they come back next vote to bring it up all over again. If you try to play a giant mech quest like you're a wuxia swordsman you get stomped into paste. If you try to play a shounen anime like a shadowrun you're going to die friendless and alone. If you try to play a magical girl classic like a mafia kingpin you're going to make all your friends witch out. This mindset shows up in every single fucking quest on SV, they're everywhere, they shit up everything. "Hard men making hard decisions while hard", "SV social", "witchbomb everybody lol", "a little trauma makes people more resilient", "get it all over with all at once", all of that shit. This'd be fine if we just had to argue it down once and we never had to deal with it again. But we don't. We have to shout them down every single fucking update. Every. Fucking. Time. I just want it to stop. I want to be able to read waffy idealistic magical girl without having to constantly argue down the same people arguing for the same stupid wrong-genre grim derp shit. I want to be able to read traumatized girls learning to believe in themselves again without having to constantly defend her from people that want to traumatize her because they think it'll be good for her. I want to be able to read the kid sorcerer tamping down his dark side and snarking with trolltastic wizards without having to argue with people that think that we should be throwing temper tantrums when people fail to kowtow to the reincarnation of the king of evil that might obliterate them if they dont't show proper respect. I'm just tired of it, and so is every other person that wants Sabrina to be unconditionally kind to people and friendly and hug everybody and be a genuinely nice person instead of Making Hard Decisions to Save Face In Front of Business Partners. There's not a single quest on SV that's safe from it even when the QM goes out of their fucking way with banners and colored text to tell people that it's not that kind of quest. Time slots aren't going to do shit to stop people from arguing that Madoka - MADOKA - is a hardened businesswoman that treats every meeting like she's talking to the fucking CEO of Bigcorp Corp.
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Mmm....
I think part of letting "Sabrina herself" have more control over the vote means letting her actually catch us when we slip up, @Firnagzen. As noted, knives come out when things feel important, when things feel difficult and when little minutiae matters.
There's an old argument in psychology about why dinging people for having bad ideas doesn't work: we don't have a "bad idea" generator that we can train our brains to turn off, we have an "idea" generator that we have to check to see if they work. In that regard, if it's possible for an egregiously bad wording to cause a trainwreck, then we're basically back where we're started: by analogy we don't have a separate "bad wording" generator we can turn off, but rather a general "wording" generator that we have to then check over to see if they have anything damaging in them. In other words, even though it seems reasonable for explicitly voting for a poor word choice to end up dinging us, the result is that we have to pore over every word for possible damaging details, and it's that checking over each word that brings out the knives, in large part.
The solution that gets used in, for example, Hollow Fake, is that even if the voters vote for something dumb, the character they're playing can simply say "no, not doing that, that's dumb". It does take some of the agency away from the players, it does mean we're playing a little bit more on "easy mode"... but honestly, I think that's part of what this thread needs, a bit more insulation from the character and a bit more of a safety net. If you spend all your time walking a tightrope, of course you're going to be a little short.
I think part of letting "Sabrina herself" have more control over the vote means letting her actually catch us when we slip up, @Firnagzen. As noted, knives come out when things feel important, when things feel difficult and when little minutiae matters.
There's an old argument in psychology about why dinging people for having bad ideas doesn't work: we don't have a "bad idea" generator that we can train our brains to turn off, we have an "idea" generator that we have to check to see if they work. In that regard, if it's possible for an egregiously bad wording to cause a trainwreck, then we're basically back where we're started: by analogy we don't have a separate "bad wording" generator we can turn off, but rather a general "wording" generator that we have to then check over to see if they have anything damaging in them. In other words, even though it seems reasonable for explicitly voting for a poor word choice to end up dinging us, the result is that we have to pore over every word for possible damaging details, and it's that checking over each word that brings out the knives, in large part.
The solution that gets used in, for example, Hollow Fake, is that even if the voters vote for something dumb, the character they're playing can simply say "no, not doing that, that's dumb". It does take some of the agency away from the players, it does mean we're playing a little bit more on "easy mode"... but honestly, I think that's part of what this thread needs, a bit more insulation from the character and a bit more of a safety net. If you spend all your time walking a tightrope, of course you're going to be a little short.
Oi. Way to strawman.
And while I'm at it, I'm sorry but you're playing a Madoka quest, dude. I'm really not sure what you're expecting, given the core material was... let's just sum it up with "written by Urobuchi", and leave it at that. Hell, Madoka itself was written in part as a reaction to its own author getting tired of thinking like Kiritsugu but not seeing any way around it.
Madoka is a subversion, but it's a subversion that acknowledges that the "hard man making hard decisions" has a real point that's not easy to avoid. Madoka's original description wasn't the "save the world from within the world" true victory I like to praise her as, that she developed into over years of writing: her original description was someone who insisted that black was white to the end, someone who ignored causality and broke the chains of fate. Urobuchi was that convinced that averting a bad ending was impossible when he started. It's not where he ended - but that mindset is as much a part of Madoka as that final arrow of light.
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