@Shalvenay I hear the trick is pretending that you're not sure who's doing it wrong. "Hey, wait... maybe I'm wrong but I got the impression that we said (yada yada)"
I personally loathe having to use tricks but this means I just go the "I don't care if you hate me for my behavior" way that's causing me problems later.
That's fair. The "trick," then, is to get to a place where you can honestly think "I'm sure I'm right, but that doesn't mean I'm right, so maybe I'm wrong."
Personally I'm a lot more comfortable in fraught conversations if I'm not feeling self-righteous or convinced that I must have the only truth of the matter.
I'm usually very convinced that there might have been misunderstandings and that there might be something that we (as the parts) interpreted differently, but I'm not really ready to accept that the readying I got was not a plausible one.
Like "yeah, it's possible I found a different meaning than you intended, but I'm pretty sure it's a valid one" (and I end up feeling dumb when it is not)
If you're reading a different meaning than was intended, then you're wrong in the context of knowing what was intended, whether the reading was reasonable or not.
Saying "Maybe it's wrong, but I think this is what you intended to say" is very different from saying "Maybe it's unreasonable, but I think this is what you intended to say."
he has, in my experience, been more than happy to throw his weight around, which is an awful lot because of his score and diamond, to try to tell people who disagree with him on those points to get lost
and he has succeeded a number of times
I know people who have left, and I know people who have not joined, because of his behavior
so if I get defensive when mxyzplk brings up the subject of this tag, it's because I see it as yet another attempt by mxyzplk to drive off those who disagree with him
@BESW I am telling you this because I haven't the time, or frankly the energy, to do anything properly about it
because the system makes that very difficult
but, for example, you have an answer that I commented upon
which I tried to do nicely, though I don't know how successful I was in that
but it's worth knowing ahead of time that this discussion, specifically brought up by mxyzplk, is something that I see as a thinly-veiled attack, and I feel very defensive as a result
I have responded as little as possible because even just seeing the discussion raised in the meta feed has made me quite upset, and I am trying to respond calmly because I know that there are a lot of relatively neutral parties who are merely seeking what's best for the site
I understand your frustration, and I've had some poor interactions with him too. But a meta post made by a moderator asking for citizens to weigh in on policy? That's not coming from Mxy personally. If you think that's an attack, then it's equally an attack by SSD and Wax.
If it were posted by either of them, it'd be just as much coming from Mxy as it is now.
And you do recognise that nothing in that conversation has been about banning RAW questions, just about whether having a specific tag is useful on the balance.
Then talk about why the tag has value, and say that one of the values is that it's a defensive talisman against attempts to derail rules-focused questions.
doesn't seem like a "legitimate" value, though; that begs the question of why we need that, and that means demonstrating that mxyzplk actually does have an axe to grind, which means dredging up evidence that, once again, takes far too much time and effort to get
I haven't seen anyone actually say "The RAW tag is beneficial to the site because X, Y, Z." I've seen broad hand-waving about RAW-focused questions being useful, nothing about why it needs a tag to do so.
@Forrestfire That is a personal attitude which we can have opinions about, but it is not "proof" that Mxy is launching a campaign against things he doesn't like. It's just proof he doesn't like them.
and even assuming that the tag is problematic -- the source of the low SNR is a naming issue, not that we have a tag for such questions in the first place.
@KRyan what I'm saying is that the problem isn't the concept of having a tag as a bucket for such questions -- it's more than likely the name of the tag. people start typign "rul" and get rules-as-written then latch onto it, it seems. I dislike raw as well -- and there indeed were, I pulled a couple of them out for my post
any and all concern that there might be a mistaken usage of the tag goes away if you use that
but there is still a problem that rules-as-written is what people call this concept
that's frequently something of a trump in the discussion of the appropriate name for things, as far as I can tell (I am not overly familiar with tagging theory)
So, there's a lot of confusion going on. I'm seeing multiple sometimes-conflicting reasons that the tag is a problem, and I'm also seeing multiple sometimes-conflicting reasons that the tag is necessary.
And yes, the folksonomy concept makes me wary of re-naming something from a common term. Of course, common terms in the RPG community are so often fractured in meaning that it's harder to support.
And, yanno. We just recently killed an entire category of question--not just a tag--because folks weren't reading the tag and answering in accordance with it.
And no, it doesn't work fine under challenging the frame. It should! But in practice I've seen people rip answers apart for failing to adhere strictly to the letter of the RAW tag.
because it sounds like we need to put the equivalent of a "legal hold" on comments on answers to questions in rules-as-written and then sit back for a while in order to be able to analyze the problem
Is mxyplk being on record saying the following: "You know what? It’s time to bring back some of the pejorative terms of gaming 20 years ago.
Rules lawyers. Munchkins. Power gamers. Monty Haulers. You’re on notice. Somehow your filthy habits have become mainstreamed, over Gary Gygax’s dead body apparently. But you’re not welcome, around here at least."
not indicative of his opinion about the tag and the fact that he has an ulterior motive?
I am concerned that a man like this is a well-respected moderator on a site dedicated to talking about tabletop rpgs
when he has such vitrol and animosity towards a significant part of the gaming community and to the idea of putting importance on the game's rules at all
@Forrestfire that's a very...shallow line, and yes, that is his opinion. Rules lawyering I feel is something that won't go away any time soon without a radical shift in system design philosophy -- if you want to never deal with rules lawyering again, play FATE ;)
@Forrestfire But has he done anything to abuse his position as a moderator toward those motives? These accusations have been levelled against him before and the worst that can stick is "He's very rude sometimes, but has been cleaning his mouth up lately."
@Forrestfire I'm also not sure if the appeal to authority in that quote is even correct, in a sense -- there are systems that behave radically differently with regards to each of those four categories than his baby (aka AD&D) does -- so it's not right to universally categorize each of those four headings as a problem
Regarding RAW and the tag thereof: I support it being renamed slightly if necessary ("rules-as-written-only" or "literal-rule-interpretation" or something), but if it was outright removed I'd see it as a sign that the people who have an active distaste for caring about the rules have won
and would no longer consider rpg.stackexchange a welcoming site to be on.
I have GitP if I want a hotbed of passive-aggressive hatred towards that playstyle; I don't need another one
@Forrestfire One of the first questions I ever asked. I used the tag, specifically stated that I'd already made a ruling and did not need other people's suggestions, specifically stated that I was just looking for what the rules actually said about it, and I still got highly upvoted answers and comments telling me that I shouldn't worry about the rules.
There isn't a question about whether a hatred of RAW has won or not. It's just a question of how prepared you are to put up with it.
The tag will always be ignored, because the anti-RAW is a vast majority, considerably more vocal, and perfectly willing to ignore any and all requests to stick to the rules, regardless of the reasoning.
Sure there is: if someone posts a subjective or houserule-based answer on such a question, it should be voted down. Or removed, depending on how militant the mods are.
a way to tag or flag an off-topic answer could work too, assuming people used it.
@Miniman come to think of it -- I think that's a poor example -- it's asking for a RAW interpretation on something the RAW actually explicitly renders irrelevant in most cases.
@Forrestfire Yes. This is what should happen. Sadly, this is what doesn't happen, and probably never will. For this reason, the tag is sadly pointless.
@Shalvenay I would say it's actually a good example - there's no ambiguity, no fuzziness, it's just "What do the rules say?" "This is what the rules say." If the site can't manage to be RAW in that situation, where would you expect it to be possible?
Popup window: "This question is asking for only rules-as-written answers. Does your answer have houserules and personal interpretations instead of actually relevant information?"
1. some newbs accidentally into rules-as-written looking for rules when they shouldn't be hunting for rules to begin with, but latch onto the first thing they find anyway.
2. other folks (mostly newbs?) assume that querents are doing 1. instead of using rules-as-written as intended and ignore the tag
as noted above, there's a large contingent of people on the site who either don't care for the concept of rules or are downright insulted that others do
ideally, an answer would have both the RAW and suggestions on how to improve it with houserules (if the RAW is broken)
@Forrestfire why is that? is it a sign of a deeper cultural break? are these people saying the RAW lens is useless because of bad past experiences with DMs or other players using the RAW against them? or are we talking about people who work with systems where the RAW lens is unnecessary?
@Forrestfire the charopt-vs-roleplay people are sucked into the Stormwind Fallacy -- and that's a very fallacious piece of reasoning. I have RPed with, and RPed myself, characters that are fairly hard counterexamples to the "charopt precludes roleplay" line of thinking
@Forrestfire this is a red herring IMO -- sometimes RAW breaks, just like any other ruleset -- bugs happen! (it's my argument against magical law enforcement, for one :P)
a great many of the questions on this site are D&D and Pathfinder related, as well, which means that all sides of that particular aspect of this cultural clash are out in full force
@Forrestfire this case, however, is something where rules-as-written shouldn't appear to begin with -- it's superfluous for systems where the RAW lens changes nothing (such as FATE)
@Forrestfire now, this is the weird case, though -- I'm really not sure what to do about systems that are that extreme in their dysfunction to the point where the RAW lens is rendered useless
@Forrestfire I personally would stay away from the RAW tag in say WoD, but I suspect there may be cases where it's necessary, despite the pile of sloppy system goo in the answers.
@Miniman indeed -- sometimes you want to ask about RAW because you're trying to decipher the origins of a ruling at your table, or trying to figure out if there's a rule you're missing as the DM when going to make a ruling (a nagging issue for anyone who has incomplete mastery of the system)
@Forrestfire indeed -- that is very interesting, yet something that doesn't come up in many games. (it's something that even the NWN RP server I play on doesn't support -- the server won't let you write texts in any language other than Common unless you can translate by hand)
(even though the support for IC languages on the server is quite good otherwise)
I just hope we didn't send @nitsua60 running away with that tag debacle, though -- I was looking forward to sharing a few of my own head's creations with him :)
so...the character. middle eastern descent -- in fact, a member of the bin Laden family
quietist Salafi (sp?) though -- definitely not from Osama's branch of the tree!
so rather conservative as far as the branches of Islam go, but inwardly focused more or less
(so, definitely the type to wear her hijab every time she's out of the house, pray on schedule 5 times a day, etal)
as to her job? commercial pilot, with oh, a thousand hours or so under her belt and a couple of jet type ratings. also, a strong safety advocate (both aviation and otherwise) -- if nothing else, she wants everyone to have a safe Hajj
@nitsua60 ah. with regards to the character? I figured I'd share her with you because she seemed like an interesting mix of traits -- something "outside the box" in a good way if you will
you've been around longer than me--does the term "burninate" have a specific action attached to it? Like is there a magic "burniniate" button somewhere that removes all instances of the tag without bumping those posts? Or is it just the colloquialism for "hey, I spent the weekend nixing them all."
@nitsua60 the way I see it is that it's really dependent on the dragon -- some are inclined to be shy to humans, others relate to them quite readily
I actually think that it could be an interesting conversation -- I wonder what draconic lore related to flying topics is like -- whether it be aerodynamics, weather, etal
I could see them having some of the same lore as human pilots do -- like "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground" and some of the same concerns, too -- like icing and thunderstorms
