Recently it's been a room that's more-or-less full time discussion about MLP (and sometimes tangentially related topics), which is fine and something I love us having a space for, but it probably undermines its availability as an overflow room to shift into for serious topics. It also undermines its availability as an overflow room to move messages into, so as to shift the whole conversation, if it's highly likely those messages get interleaved into existing conversations.
My recollection is NAB getting used less often than this, and for actual overflowed conversations.
Feels like we need this to become TRPG General 2, and for a new NAB. Or for this to re-become the overflow room that's used for overflow topics, with a new TRPG General 2 created as a home for, among other things, extensive conversations about ponies.
(Which, again, are not themselves the issue—I don't want anyone, Derpy included, to feel bad about those conversations. Just that them happening so reliably in this specific space might be an issue.)
@Rubiksmoose I think the recent comment on our current meta discussion needs a good response from a mod. I know what I want to say, and if you read the comment you probably know what I want to say, and then we both know I shouldn't say anything else.
For the record, I chat here about FiM, and Ordinal Markup, and Doom, and the like, and not in the Sugarcube Corner or the like, because I would be overwhelmed by a full-depth dive into those channels. About a half-dozen participants and an expectation of incomplete familiarity with all the canons is the level at which I consider myself capable of participating in a conversation meaningfully.
I think the room can serve both purposes. I'm not totally seeing an issue unless the folks who congregate here normally are very concerned about the intrusions.
To be clear my concern is along the lines of "maybe we need to grow from 1 room + 1 overflow, to 2 rooms + 1 overflow?", so as to better facilitate these conversations while also better facilitating ourselves still having an overflow channel
@Derpy No, no! That wasn't the gist as I understood it and I frankly love having a place for this kind of discussion here. Not least because I'm tracking enough chats as it is that tracking the actual pony chatroom is likely not going to happen
@NautArch Well, like, I can't really invite someone to talk with me over in NAB about something so well when it's already presently engaged—and it being so frequently used as to be engaged the majority of the time is an issue.
@doppelgreener i can see that. We do handle a lot of cross conversation on both channels, but having a dedicated opt-in room might be a real improvement
It was originally Not A Bar because it was a place for casually unkind venting of a kind I'm told happens at bars after work.
Since then it's been used for volume overflow (if one topic is choking out others in the main chat), sharing links that aren't directly related to TRPGs but users might find interesting, and more recently it's been more formalized as an opt-in/overflow space.
But at the same time it's retained elements of all its previous applications; ponies are an overlap of "one topic choking out others" and "interesting non-TRPG links."
Right now, it looks to me like we need a "ponies/miscellany" chat and an "overflowed from main" chat.
Should we leave NAB as NAB, and make a new TRPG Overflow room that is the new "opt-in space we move to when it needs to be separate from (either) main chat"?
NAB continues being used the way it's currently being used (Derpy, ponies, all welcome) and ceases to be the spot we move difficult conversations into, or otherwise invite people into when we want to talk about it in a separate space
@NautArch Well, while I certainly value the thoughts and opinions of those who have made a culture in here, we should also consider how the other purpose is being served or not.
My appologies btw if messages come across garbled. Typing to sliced open finger is hard and I'm trying out voice at times.
@Rubiksmoose True, but my thought was this was the purpose of the room originally, but others have been active in it for other topics. Those topics now constitute the majority of activity here, so their considerations is paramount for me.
I feel like that's the path of least disruption, since it preserves the continuity of the ongoing conversations here; overflow conversations are, by their nature, non-contiguous, and thus more amenable to changing their destination space. But yes, I'd like to hear @Derpy, in particular, weigh in on this because they've put in so much work on room culture recently.
@NautArch [heavily bruised but otherwise mostly dashing actor] "I'm not a fight club, but I play one on TV!" [spits out a tooth into a glass of water, then takes a sip from it]
@NautArch Definitely opinions are important and wanted to reiterate that. Though I don't want to put Derpy on the spot either if they are uncomfortable. So if @Derpy you wanted to stay out or don't have the spoons, feel free to say so.
On the flip side, it sounds like at least some think that a new place would be better for opt-in regardless of whether the culture here would permit it. And I'm inclined to agree with that at the moment. It's hard to have an opt-in only channel that also hosts other fun stuff that people may want to follow and hang out here for.
@Rubiksmoose I think we ran straight into that last night. Someone said a conversation isn't even appropriate for NAB, which I took to mean worse things than just "well NAB is a place I like to hang out"—I took it to mean "this topic is so objectionable that we don't even want to hear about it in the room where we talk about things people might not want to hear about".
(I'm not sure what they meant, and I still really don't like what happened or what was said to me, but I'm being generous here with potential intentions.)
@NautArch @Rubiksmoose I mean, I am just a "guest" there. Found this room many moons ago, noticed that you are a lot nicer than ... the C++ Lounge for example ... and so I started chatting here too. What I mean is that I am perfectly fine with you using the room for what you wish, I don't have any pretense or claim on it. As I said, I have the other room if I need to move topics there, it is not like I can't manage.
@Derpy You've been around long enough that I think you've got squatter's rights, at the very least. We're asking for your input, that means we think your presence is valid.
@Derpy I would like you to remain comfortable as a guest here, and I'm very much inclined toward the approach of creating a new, separate overflow room and removing this room's designation as the go-to overflow room.
@doppelgreener And there may still be conversations that trend that way. I'm honestly not sure what to do when someone pushes the stop button here in NAB. But I think if something starts off in Main and comes to NAB. WHomever didn't want it in Main, should not come into NAB after.
@doppelgreener And we had a similar case a bit earlier where someone said (paraphrasing) I hang out here and I'm unhappy with this discussion that was moved here (with some additional layers that aren't relevant to this particular discussion.
@Rubiksmoose Yes, the overflow room needs to not be a default hangout. Like a meeting room at work. If it's just a room where a bunch of people are chilling out all the time, it isn't really a meeting room anymore.
@NautArch Unfortunately the Stack's handed us a bad hand with that particular mechanic, because everybody whose message gets moved, gets an anonymous invite to the chat it was moved to.
@doppelgreener This isn't a bad assessment. But people tend to congregate on their own as what happened here. I don't want to get into the habit of generating new rooms each time a room becomes something new. But I'm also not totally against that yet.
@Rubiksmoose This right here is why I think we need an well-defined opt in topic room not meant for just hanging out in (unless you want to consent to whatever may come in). The topic being discussed at that time was perfectly appropriate as an opt in topic.
@ThomasMarkov The problem I had was not with that topic perse was that it had crossed the line into arguing against someone directly who had wanted the conversation moved. It's not really fair to call it opt-in when people are talking about you and what you said. That's why I stopped it.
Speaking purely personally I don't love that the topic of a room changed such that we need to create a new room to serve the original purpose and would prefer that we created a dedicated space for those that use this room for other conversations.
@BESW I get that - I just wanted to point out that the "RPG crew" probably knows what this room was intended for far better than I do, so I am fine with request to move to some other place, be that a new room here, my room over at SciFi and so on.
However I also understand that I am not one of the regular users and won't object if we transition to this room being for the things it is being used for and creating a new overflow space.
@Derpy To be perfectly clear here, this isn't a "you" thing either. Plenty of people have used this space recently for lighthearted overflow and hang out for this reason.
@Rubiksmoose (this is what BESW refers to, I think, when saying Derpy's done work on room culture — it's become what it is, which is a fine thing to be)
@ThomasMarkov I think it was originally the first. But there seems to be basically universal agreement that the two rooms purposes are incompatible therefore we have moved on to the second.
@linksassin That's what Im seeing too. Which seems to be a pretty trivial question. Just make them new room and it shouldnt matter which room gets which purpose.
@ThomasMarkov That's what I'd think. Though I do think the least disruptive thing would be a new room with the opt-in purpose. Just because this room has alrready changed into something different and I think it is fine to leave it as such. Also, creating a new room means people have to intentionally join it anew. There is no risk of errant hang-outers.
I think the question has changed over the course of this conversation, and has gone through: 1. should we change something? - yes 2. do we need an overflow space still? - probably yes 3. which room will be the overflow space, and what happens to this room in regards to that? — we seem to be converging on "a totally new room, and NAB stays the same and ceases to be the designated overflow space" because it's undisruptive and embraces what the NAB has become.
@ThomasMarkov There is always a risk in moving communities to a new space. It can change the visibility and patterns of the space and has the potential to be disruptive in non-obvious ways. What I'm trying to assess it whether the risk of harm to the community using this room is less disruptive than changing the room purposes.
@ThomasMarkov Agreed. It's just feels non-intuitive to me to change the purpose of a room and create another room with the original purpose. But that is purely a process thing and no one is harmed by it.
@linksassin valid, though also "everyone, pack up your bags, we're demolishing this house, and you need to go live in this other, completely identical house over there instead" is weird to ask
@linksassin I'm inclined to say yes—it has gone from the kind of after-work bar where people vent, to the kind of after-work bar where people chill out and talk about their favourite TV shows.
I suggest: - This room stays named Not a Bar, but since the name is less important, it's free to drift as seems appropriate/funny. - The new room doesn't use Bar or Not-A nomenclature, so as to avoid confusion.
The new room's going to be its own place and anyone arriving later might not get the in-joke
@ThomasMarkov i think we've learned from Mos Eisley that if you name something after a pit of scum and villainy, that's what you get, so let's avoid that one lol
@doppelgreener Sounds like a reasonable suggestion. We probably also need to select new room owners for this room and the remaining chatizens can name it as they please.
Sounds like we are all in agreement to create a new overflow room tentatively named "Here There Be Dragons". Once separated each room can determine its room owners and exact purpose independently.
@NautArch the laser game was good. The nes port.... I consider myself lucky. I lived my childhod looking for a shop that sold it, thinking it was good. IT WASN'T - I was saved and didn't had to spend money on that. Really, it is horrible, trust me.
Not a bar, but plays one on TV
Not a bar, but plays one on TV