TRPG General Chat

Metool

1:00 AM

Ooh, Nice Answer badge.

doppelgreener

1:22 AM

@Metool Congrats ;)

I don't understand at all how this suggested edit happened

Metool

Wat.

"Clarity and Grammar"

(Ack, that "Rejected" bar jumps when you scroll down a bit.)

doppelgreener

@Metool Yeah, I'm surprised it still does that!

DuckTapeal

@Aaron I really wish that I hadn't looked at that image. :(

The Oracle

-1

Q: The difference between opiniondriven questions and expirience based questions

I can't even begin to explain how angry I am right now. I just spend two hours on making a question...Wasted. It is as if people have not understood that we are alowed to ask expirence based questions. You guys need to clean the rules up for everybody and make them CLEAR TO EVERYBODY! THE SOONE...

discussion

Metool

Oh boy...

wax eagle

2:02 AM

sigh, looks like we might have driven her off...that's no fun

doppelgreener

@waxeagle I was concerned about that a while ago; I don't think the way SE works ever really clicked with her.

The Oracle

1

Q: How do you delete your profile?

So how do you do that? The help center is no help at all. And I really really really want to delete my profile.

discussion

DuckTapeal

I've never understood the desire to delete a profile from a site.

Unless you're getting spam or something.

wax eagle

2:19 AM

@DuckTapeal some people want to leave in a huff

DuckTapeal

Fair enough.

Hmm. I've been reading the Downtime rules for PF, and it seems like they assume that the average gameworld has a workweek culture taken from the early 1900s, rather than using a medieval one.

Metool

Oh? Not hard to fault them, many players would only know that kind of week.

DuckTapeal

They have a sidebar talking about how the average worker has a five-day workweek, and doesn't work on the weekend. IIRC, that's something that didn't happen until last century.

Metool

Plus, it's not necessary to stay strictly medieval in fantasy. See urban fantasy and similar.

Metool

2:48 AM

See also settings with different calendars.

mxyzplk

So. That went poorly.

Metool

Anna?

DuckTapeal

If the setting had strong urban fantasy elements, or had a different calendar, then I'd totally agree. However, with the 'generic medieval' feel that the standard PF ruleset has, it doesn't make a lot of sense to modify stuff like that, especially in the generic rules.

mxyzplk

Yep. Probably worth a brief retrospective. If @sevensideddie, @jonathanhobbs, @phil, or @alexp are around you could join us

Anyone have any ideas on how we could help that kind of situation end more successfully? I've reviewed the situation, and it's certainly reasonable that the question needed closes/workshopping and no one was hostile or rude that I saw, but it sure escalated quickly.

DuckTapeal

Did Anna have any other questions that got closed? Or was this the first time?

mxyzplk

2:55 AM

No. 4 others with a bunch of upvotes

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/36521/…, rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/36308/…, et al.

the only other thing at all was the gambling one, someone said it should get broken up, but it didn't get closed over it

And the person who answered her meta post wasn't one of the ones commenting on her Q (I could see how that could be perceived as piling on).

I want to be clear that I don't think anyone acted wrongly, the question needed work, people were speaking their mind politely, no blame - but if there's anything that could make situations like that deescalate.

Do people feel like it's easy enough to reach out to the mods if they feel like other users are "dumping on them?" I guess she started that with the meta post but went from there to deletion before any of us even got there, this whole thing went from question to profile deletion in 60 minutes

hm. well, I was hoping to hook up realtime with the folks involved but looks like they've moved on already, guess meta'd be better for this now

DuckTapeal

Based on her answer history and how quickly she closed her account, my guess would be that she was having a bad day for unrelated reasons, and got upset when people voted to close her question, when she thought the question was valid.

Getting closevotes and downvotes on your questions is no fun, even if they're correctly done.

mxyzplk

@DuckTapeal I assume that's correct as well, and it's happened before, just wondering if there's anything we can do to allow for interaction between the freakout and the self-delete stages or if there's anything else we could do that would help deescalate cases like this. I would assume that if things had slowed down and some time had passed, it would not have "gone nuclear"

Lord_Gareth

3:21 AM

@mxyzplk Speaking from personal experience it can seem difficult for a user not on chat to gain access to the mods. On a forum one would simply PM a mod; for obvious reasons this isn't an option here, and the process for contacting the Stack as an overall entity is murky and non-obvious.

Like, giving honest answer to your question, no snark intended.

The process by which one can contact a moderator has significant amounts of mystery.

4

mxyzplk

@Lord_Gareth Yeah I was wondering about that. There's the obvious of putting in a meta post, throwing a flag, or pinging in chat, but all those require a certain level of understanding/sophistication about the site

There's no "contact the mods button" (new folks don't even know who a mod is, or what the diamond means, etc.)

Lord_Gareth

@mxyzplk Indeed. And the meta has a sort of vague, prickly hostility in it that's difficult to understand. People bring their serious face there, feelings get hurt, nit-picking is kinda at an all-time high.

So using the meta as a conflict resolution method is harsh on new users

mxyzplk

of course it's not like we carry pagers, so expectation of sub 1 hour response isn't valid, but...

@Lord_Gareth It's definitely not emotion friendly. It's more like "going to court"

Lord_Gareth

@mxyzplk Indeed. But that, too, is non-obvious and takes some getting used to.

mxyzplk

Here Is My Legal Brief On Your Post, Which Is Twice As Long As Your Post Is

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:27 AM

@waxeagle Im actually struggling to find a rules citation requiring a move action to take place all at once or that actions can't be broken up by other actions in 4e

Lord_Gareth

Overall SE could really use some transparency or at least more obvious educational materials about these options, when, and how to use them appropriately.

mxyzplk

So 1. some better more obvious way to reach out to mods, 2. maybe a little guidance about meta posts with some of that good ol' EQ stuff. "Sometimes someone is agitated and looking for a hug, not a legal brief"

@Lord_Gareth Yeah I agree, though "where..." It can be "hidden in meta" or "hidden in that weird help center we don't read either"

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk From what I recall, Anna's had a series of interactions with us involving a lot of closed questions and poor/downvoted/deleted answers. As a mod I think you're able to check just how much deleted content she has.

I would imagine this frustration with our site has been building up for a while with her.

Lord_Gareth

One thing Thole brought up earlier that I feel should be addressed as well - meta has this tendency to nitpick parts of questions and blow them up into the entire issue, ignoring the other parts of the meta question. This could maybe use some toning down.

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs Actually no, I mentioned that above - her other 4 questions are highly upvoted, no close votes, one guy mentioning one of them should be split but that's it

The rest of her stuff has been deleted, but by her

doppelgreener

3:31 AM

Does she have deleted questions or deleted answers?

(other than that one question)

Lord_Gareth

Heading back to movie now

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs One self-deleted answer from March 2.

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Really, wow. I thought there was more.

mxyzplk

nope. from a record point of view, all looks fine.

doppelgreener

I also think that two things went wrong in that meta question: my answer should have from the beginning suggested how she could ask her question better, to give her a direction to go in. I also think it was weird to have wax eagle offer a different reason in comments from what I stated, and one that confused me. That isn't trying to point a finger, just stating observations.

That would've been confusing.

But I'm not sure it would've been enough to drive someone to delete their account unless something else major was already going on for them.

mxyzplk

3:37 AM

Yeah. Some of this too is "when someone's upset, advice is not what they primarily want." Not to stereotype, but that's a common wisdom thing wrt women especially

Joshua Aslan Smith

you guys are talking about this I assume?

0

Q: The difference between opiniondriven questions and expirience based questions

I can't even begin to explain how angry I am right now. I just spend two hours on making a question...Wasted. It is as if people have not understood that we are alowed to ask expirence based questions. You guys need to clean the rules up for everybody and make them CLEAR TO EVERYBODY! THE SOONE...

discussion

doppelgreener

Yes

Joshua Aslan Smith

and then the follow up, how do you delete question

mxyzplk

Yeah, and all related

Joshua Aslan Smith

wish I could see the original question but not quite at 10k rep yet

doppelgreener

3:41 AM

@mxyzplk How else could we have responded?

mxyzplk

Well, that's what I'm asking. None of the activity was inappropriately rude or technically incorrect. But is there a better way for us to handle things like this that causes less escalation?

Is our culture of dumping a legal brief on people in meta potentially alienating?

Joshua Aslan Smith

I concur that regardless of how well or not well the original issue and then the meta questions were handled someone would only really go so far as a result of a really bad day, ongoing stress, etc. While I hope the user in question comes back I don't know that we should hold users responsible per say. Still a good learning moment maybe? Ive posted on meta before about how the about/help sections could be far more visible to users

mxyzplk

I'm not saying anyone did anything wrong (I started this thread off with that above), I'm looking for ideas for improvement.

doppelgreener

Well, I just mean... if someone's upset and not looking for advice, what else could we offer them on meta? (Naturally, absolute silence is probably not helpful - or could, maybe, be helpful to let them calm down, unless their question's getting downvoted and they're given silence...)

mxyzplk

Lord_gareth had two good points, which is that for new users it's not always clear who to reach out to - as noted people don't read the help center much or ream through meta, so it's a little unclear how to "contact the mods", and that perhaps we could handle upset folks with a little more EQ in meta.

DuckTapeal

3:46 AM

EQ?

mxyzplk

emotional quotient

emotionalintelligence.net/?gclid=CKm4kfee_b0CFSgQ7AodHAUA8Q

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk The whole "serious face" thing combined with the fact it's a place for Q&A not discussion probably makes it harder to apply that. xP

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs There tend to be some stock answers to that, though adapting to the SE format as opposed to in person is harder. The stock answer in person is "let them express their feelings, conduct active listening, stop trying to fix their problem, etc.

Joshua Aslan Smith

did this user ever hop in chat at anypoint?

specifically about this issue

mxyzplk

yeah I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying there may be something besides our pure Internet Ninja Lawyer Approach that could be applied.

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:49 AM

I know chat is meant to be more of a last resort than anything else since its so unofficial but Ive found chat to be a great resource for myself and to help others with workshoping questions and answers

mxyzplk

@JoshuaAslanSmith No, and I'm not sure that wouldn't have made it worse :-P

doppelgreener

@JoshuaAslanSmith I think she has been in chat a few times, but my memory is not the most reliable thing, and I have no idea how to locate a user's chat profile outside of chat itself.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@mxyzplk If basically we are saying, anything that could have been done could've made things worse (including not doing anything) at this point I think we're flagellating ourselves over what may have been a completely unsolvable issue on our end

Users matter and I think we've all been burned a few times here, but you take a break for a few days and come back

mxyzplk

Oh... Hey, looks like she's undeleting. Definitely it was a flareup and cooling off helps

@JoshuaAslanSmith I don't think that's what I'm saying.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Okay, Not trying to put words in your mouth.

mxyzplk

3:52 AM

There are enough complains about the experience of new users etc. on the site that "there's nothing we can do" is never a satisfactory answer. Like any problem, it's one that may require long term introspection and doesn't have a simple "push this button" answer...

Joshua Aslan Smith

I guess my point is do we know if she/he is an outlier or a representation of a trend?

Static Cast

hmm...

Okay 20 points

Joshua Aslan Smith

right so thales I think was complaining along similar lines

mxyzplk

It's common enough, as you can see from meta etc.

exactly

doppelgreener

It might be in part because when someone's experiencing grief and struggle with our Q&A system, the only way to get help is... through more of the same Q&A system they're struggling with.

mxyzplk

3:53 AM

and I linked his to previous ones.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I dont know I know my first answer on the site got negative votes, without comments and I was a bit upset about it, including a brusque (but not rude in anyway, and very on point) comment from Brian (the mod). I was treating RPG.SE more like a forum and personally invested in it to a degree that was silly before I had even learned how to properly use the site

it was a hurdle but one i had to overcome to actually become a useful member of the community

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs Yes. And some of that is us applying that Q&A remorselessly, even when someone's clearly upset. I think we might be able to finesse that a little better when there's clear emotional cues.

And/or have some other clearer paths to support/recourse than posting on meta.

Metool

@StaticCast [blink]

mxyzplk

I think Gareth's point about it being somewhat opaque for a newish user as to how to contact a mod is accurate

doppelgreener

@mxyzplk Yes, it is. I recall in my early days I wasn't sure how to contact anyone, wasn't aware of meta, and contact was the official site contact that wasn't a substitute for PMs.

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:57 AM

So I think Wax's comments are both polite and on point

@mxyzplk I can agree with this

mxyzplk

@JoshuaAslanSmith I agree

No one erred in politeness or fact, we're in the fuzzier realm of impression and empathy.

doppelgreener

@JoshuaAslanSmith I also agree

Though they might've been out of place on my own answer

I just dug this out...

@Thales On the difference between on hold and closed: meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/152515 — Jonathan Hobbs 41 secs ago

and I realised that another issue with our help & safety net here is that finding out the answers to a lot of questions about how SE works actually requires a lot of mastery of our system.

mxyzplk

@JonathanHobbs Yeah. And there's the complexities that 1) we don't have access to edit much of the help center, and 2) even if we did no one reads it, despite all the prominent popups for new users.

I guess I could see the system actually being smart enough to 'flag' things for you. Your wrote a question that got put on hold? Bing, notification for "What does getting put on hold mean" meta post.

like, contextual to activity.

doppelgreener

4:19 AM

@mxyzplk that could help :o

possibly also an "I'm having trouble argh!!" button of some kind.

The Oracle

0

Q: We could use some more pro-forma comments

I'd like to brainstorm some possibilities for the modal comment-interventions that we tend to do: Welcome to the site, but your question needs work because reasons Welcome to the site, but your answer needs work because reasons Please stop arguing in comments! Revise your answer instead of resp...

discussion comments

mxyzplk

4:38 AM

ok, added a second answer to the 'rude site' question with my thoughts from this retro. thanks all

Alex P

5:18 AM

@mxyzplk Sorry, I missed the thing earlier. Erm... It was a very, very broad question. I could kinda see the intent behind it, but I read it as being either "I want to make quests exciting" or "I want to make a long campaign exciting, and my default assumption is that it's all quests" or "Why do people like quests, exactly?"

(Hence me asking clarification in the comments.)

My impression of this site is that people take closing questions way, WAY more personally than people take thread closures on forums.

Because a question never stops being your question, while a thread just kinda becomes everybody's playground.

I've been noticing a freakout about both downvotes and closures recently.

Not related to any one user.

mxyzplk

@AlexP Yeah. Just brainstorming if there's anything we can do to help folks with that taking-it-too-serious issue.

Alex P

The needs to be more of a Help Center thing for "Hey, you just got downvoted/close-voted. It's okay. Nobody hates you and you didn't mess up in any way that actually matters."

5

Alex P

6:05 AM

Idle thought: I think this site tries to "workshop" questions too much, but also the tools for it are all but guaranteed to make you come off as surly and dismissive (character-capped comments, votes/flags that don't involve any actual interaction with the question asker at all).

There's a very strong urge to address the assumptions and misconceptions in a post.

In a constructive and informative way.

But doing so in SE format is sometimes hard.

Whereas if the post were a forum topic, you'd just see 20 posts of talking through the baseline stuff, and then the initial statements would be refined a bit and discussion could continue about those.

Trying to approximate that by replacing a pile of response posts with a handful of SE comments is... ugly.

Zachiel

9:52 AM

Uh, what? That must be why I'm bad at dating.
OTOH, my first reply would have been "closed does not equal to deleted. It's called 'on hold' for a reason"

Phil

10:13 AM

@mxyzplk If this is referring to the question that I commented on and voted to close yesterday, then I find this quite upsetting. In general I'm finding the site an increasingly unfun place to be at the moment for a number of reasons (some obvious, others less so and generally more complex). As such, although I would normally be happy to be involved in any conversation related to how things went, I'm not in a situation where I feel I can do that at the moment

BESW

12:04 PM

Oh, my. Looks like there was drama while I was at my meeting.

Anything in particular I should weigh in on quickly before I go to bed? Got another long day tomorrow too.

[skims chat and meta]

Welp, looks like people handled that as well as could probably be managed. I'll add that the person may not have understood about the "protect from bad answers until it's clarified, at which point the question gets re-opened" part of "on hold."

If nobody's dropped that into the relephant meta post in about 20 hours when I get back tomorrow night I'll add it.

Lord_Gareth

12:32 PM

Mornin' @BESW

BESW

[wave]

You have part of my sleep-drunk attention for maybe twenty minutes, tops.

Lord_Gareth

Watched Frozen, liked it

BESW

It was very shiny.

BESW

12:53 PM

Aaand I'm asleep. ttfn.

Metool

9:05 PM

Yup.

Alex P

Since Mxy asked for a "longer and more engaged" answer:

0

A: How should a GM deal with sexuality in an RPG?

Dealing with sensitive material as a group Certain topics may be offensive, uncomfortable, emotionally difficult, or just plain not fun for certain players. The best way to handle "mature" subject matter is to get in the habit of talking to your group members about your play experience in an hon...

The Oracle

9:43 PM

0

Q: Do Authors Overrule Users?

In literature authorial intent is kind of bugaboo. There're whole branches of criticism that ignore the author's role in his work entirely. Further, literary figures aren't prone to answering probing questions about their work. But role-playing game authors are more accessible. They write rules ...

discussion

KRyan

10:12 PM

@BESW I have a lengthy... rant against mxyzplk as a potential answer to the "Why are people so rude" meta question. I seriously doubt it's a good idea to post it, since people have not prepared any kind of case against him, so I probably won't post it, but if you're interested in seeing it, and possibly working it into something post-able, let me know

Zachiel

11:12 PM

Hark, the herald angels sing! After 10 years of D&D playing, I finally had my first experience-gained level up!

Metool

Woo.

Alex P

@Zachiel What?

Metool

@AlexP Earned enough experience points to level up, apparently.

Zachiel

Until now, the only level ups I did were "and I plan to have you level up once per session so when we end this prologue you'll all be the proper level for the campaign" or "I'm playing a NPC, now the group leveld up, time to make my own PC"

This time I've killed monsters and got quest rewards.

And I'm not sure about the last one -A. Einstein

Alex P

ah, gotcha

Zachiel

11:26 PM

All the rest of my D&D games have lasted less than one level - or I was the DM.

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