RPR Archive Please welcome your new ruler...er...moderator!

If it's an offender, than you throw him out of your game or go find a new one. Denying someone the use of something just because someone else might be a complete moron about it is completely ridiculous. You haven't even given it a trial yet, you've just made some judgment based on a phantom offender stalking the halls of the RPF who might be a twit about a rare situation involving PVP.

If you have the power, then turn it on for a trial period, say a month or so. If you receive too many complaints, turn it back off and we'll know you were correct in your assessment. If there aren't any complaints, then everyone wins.

 

Aww, man, all the cool things I could do if I had the ability to edit posts way after the fact...

-Rotating roster
-Summary post of events in the thread so far
-Changes in the rules
-Changes to the character sheets
-Cleaning up spelling mistakes when I get back from class
-Posting maps
-FAN ART! (and other random works)
-Thread highlights
-Plot points
-In fact, I could pretty much make a sequence of posts designed to be place-holders for various front-page announcements, which I could then fill in at my leisure later on

So in conclusion: DAMN YOU INVISIBLE TERRORIST! DAMN YOU!

 

Every single one of those advantages, I would be more than happy to do for you now via PM....

It would be absolutely irresponsible of me to toss this tried and true system for something so abuse-inviting as unlimited edit times. There is a reason why this system has stayed the same for the roughly 7 years that this RPF has existed. Because its just not a good idea. PoT wouldn't do it. NP wouldn't do it. And I'm not going to do it. I refuse to try something this big just for kicks and giggles.

As to your argument about "a phantom offender stalking the halls of the RPF who might be a twit about a rare situation involving PVP," this is just not how I see it, and the issue is an absolutely subjective one. At risk players include newbies that don't know the forums, and PVP issues are quite common in the forum. Any lightsaber duel falls under this potentially abused category, as well as fleet battles, blaster fights, etc, etc.

As to what happens to abuse under unlimited edit times, I think heading this thing off at the pass would be far more preferable then the social isolation of bad players, who eventually get their feelings hurt, turn into baiters, flamers, and trolls, and generally cause drama in the forums. Plus any instance of caught abuse in game would have to be dealt with via GM, which would disrupt the games flow and be detrimental to the games.

Its not going to happen Light. The people who want to update their sheets, are oddly adverse to sending me PMs, and think this issue is a make-or-break one are free to run their RPGs offsite.

This RPF has done quite well for itself with finite edit times, and thats the way it is going to stay.

-I_H

 

Quit saying "abuse-inviting" unless you can point to a situation where the system has been abused. Right now, your position is just as much pure speculation as mine. Well, actually... I can vouch for having played RPGs on other forums with unlimited editing times, and have never seen anyone abuse the system, as even newbies can learn the ropes. It's a good system, and I believe that the vast majority of the players here will benefit or at least not be harmed because most of us here aren't a bunch of hacks.

And this is not "just for kicks and giggles", it's a test to see if you can make things more fun and user-friendly for the people of this forum. If it turns out that people will exploit the system and ruin things for others, you can turn the button back off, I can apologize, and we'll never speak of this again, having a past example of people ruining it for others.

I thought you liked innovation, so what do you have to lose by turning on an option for a few weeks to see if it does anything? Could you simply ask your higher-ups if such an experiment could be run? Because right now, aside from some hypothetical situations about things that may or may not happen, the only thing that seems to be stopping this is the fact that you're clinging to tradition as if it were a rubber raft in a sea of burning alcohol.

 

Can I at least get some other members of the audience to chime in here?

Otherwise, I'll just have to take this up with Hammer's successor.

 

Now, I can't speculate what the experience flow is gonna be like on Tide of Flames (although, I would imagine that if it's just a demo, the game would be rather short, and if we're gonna be wanted to be roughly 5th or 6th level for the real campaign, we'd probably have a pretty quick flow of XP...), but I can't imagine it'd be very...efficient?...easy?...not-a-pain-in-the-modly-ass? Yeah, that works... I can't imagine it'd be very not-a-pain-in-the-modly-ass to be regularly assaulted by 8 players needing you to update very detailed sheets for them. Wouldn't that distract you from the hawklike watch you're supposed to be maintaining over the RPFs as a whole?

At least, that's been my thought process when considering, then deciding against, bothering previous mods about this sort of thing. And in other cases, it's a tiny, minuscule detail, like a missed bracket somewhere that completely throws off your entire post and jars the heck out of you any time you backtrack through the game, which, in some games like System Lords or possibly ToF, and even more when you're GMing, happens a lot.

What I'm seeing about you're "You can always PM the mod" argument is that you would be happy to regularly update numbers in a dice-based CS or wade through someone's post looking for where that one bracket is missing. Correct?

I think we could at least stand to give it a shot, like Light suggested. A month or so of Perma-Edits, figure out if the Cons really do outweigh the Pros, maybe stage a Poll in the RPR, and decide from there if the system stays. Can a short test period really be long enough to completely unsettle the very foundations of the RPFs like you claim it will? I doubt it.

 

I wouldn't mind doing edits at all Sephy...

Its nothing more complicated than a copy-paste...

People give me their update. I delete the old thing, and put in a new thing. Instead of a person posting the end result on their own, they PM it to me, and I can take it part and parcel into the game.

Doesn't take more than 30 seconds to do.

As a matter of fact, any Mod can edit a user's post here. Its in our job description. There are a host of mods that hang around or use to hang around in the RPF. I'm sure they would be willing to help with any necessary editing needs as well.

---

I am seriously disinclined to do this, even in light of the "one-month will not hurt arg."

There is no reason to mess up a good thing we have here.

Plus, there is no reason (even if I decided that I didn't want to do edits) that updated sheets can't be posted in their own separate posts. It'll be nothing more than a tad redundant. There have been past games like Sith Trials that have done this, just posting updated character sheets during the body of the game proper with new statistics. My games have had alot of repetition (like statistics for Podracer), and it was totally not an issue. Just save the template on a word processor, make the changes, and post.

Which brings up another point that a GM can tie together outside resources like Google notebook or other personal websites to make what is, in essence, an editable post. Sith-I-5 did something like this for my scoreboard for the first Podracer, and it was good. It didn't require any change in the boards, and was able to function just as well.

The only boards on the JC that have unlimited edit times are FanFic. And thats for a reason to prevent abuse. If other mods don't feel its safe for social threads like the YJCC to have unlimited edit times, it applies even more so to the RPF, which actually is doing something constructive.

Plus I really really really don't want to wade through back-posts for flames. As in, a post could be clean on day 10, and then someone edits it on day 12 to have a flame, bait, or TOS infraction.

I can't legitimize even the risk of board-failure for something as small as a minor convenience. Remember, this would effect every player and every thread of the board that would be switched. Thats a huge slice of the community, no matter what board its done in.

Now if you want to pull some strings with the Mod-Squad to get a new, isolated forum for this test case, thats fine. But our community is stable now. I advocate nothing but the maintenance of a stable status quo.

[hr]

Lets move this thread back on topic though. This ain't the place for this sort of discussion. PM me, bring it up in the RPR, talk amongst yourself, etc. But lets keep this thread for its intended purpose.

-I_H

 

The iHammer Mod Hammer mod of Hammerdom hath spoken.

 

Kissing your ass?

On a more serious note I agree with Hammer - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

I'm not going to state my opinion on the current issue, because I think both sides have valid points and I don't care either way, but what I will say is that I don't believe in the whole "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," tenet some of you are referring to.

Think about it. If everyone went by that rule, we'd still be in the stone ages or whatever you want it call it. If it weren't for folks that put themselves out there and take a risk that may result in a failure or something truly remarkable, none of us would be here right now typing on a keyboard. We'd be writing hieroglyphics in the sand.

My point is, it doesn't hurt to try something. If it doesn't work, who cares? If it does, we're all better off. It's like they say, the guy that invented the lightbulb didn't fail 20,000 times. He just found 20,000 ways to not make a lightbulb.

 

Edison tried 20,000 designs for the lightbulb?!?

 

He did several thousand experiments with different filament compositions, yes. He was trying to find the composition that worked the best for the lightbulb, and didn't just settle for one that sort of did the job.

 

Guys....

This discussion. Here. Not the right place.

Next posts for this convo will get the edit...

If you alls really are aching to discuss this, take it to PMs, IMs, or Resource.

-I_H

 

For the record, that's why I avoided backing Light on the subject, I knew we would get shooed into a different thread.

 

Congrats I_H, This isnt a surprise of course, but you do deserve it.

 

I actually kind of itching for an Imperial_Edit. Like, I am expecting to attain one, soon. Or, I will be very disappointed.

 

Congrats, I_H, I know you'll be a great mod.