The Water Cooler - 2017-02-09

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9:02 AM

@RichardU But you like the wrong chocolate, I'm not sure that's wise.... :P

2

Q: I saw my boss having sexual relations with the secretary

Yesterday there was a heavy load of rush hour. Time of coding was rapid. It was already our time off out work when I started panicking rushing our project. Our boss was nowhere to be found and my project manager is busy doing calls. Then my project manager advised me to do some overtime that nig...

professionalism management work-environment ethics

Two more CVs required to try and stop this breaching HNQ... :)

With some edits I think it actually can be a decent question but right now it's just going to get opinions instead of actual answers.

9:51 AM

@AaronHall Depends on your role. There's quite a lot of "controlled functions#2 that you're not allowed to do without the requisite regulatory permissions. But a lot of what I do is internal and doesn't fall under that.

2 hours later…

12:20 PM

@Kaz so what you're saying is they're not asking you to get licensed, right?

I knew a guy who was in charge of marketing for a family of mutual funds, and they were insisting he get licensed, but there was a real regulatory reason for it, they wanted him to sign-off on marketing stuff - so it was really a part of his job description.

12:48 PM

@AaronHall Not right now. But that may be a thing in the not-too-distant future.

Personal ambition or did they mention it without you bringing it up?

@AaronHall Nothing specific. But they're heavily supportive of personal growth & training, qualifications, development etc.

Right now, I'm completing my maths degree as an ongoing project.

We may very well decide to add some relevant industry qualification on top of that.

@Lilienthal it wouldn't get to HNQ (maybe one of the most annoying things for trolls posting such questions, and most exciting for those who observe how these trolls fail to get what they want). For quite a while words sex, sexual etc in title block questions from getting into HNQ...

2

20

A: Why is "incest" a blocked word for the hot list?

The hot list is shown to visitors of all sites, including many who may not be familiar with other sites topics, etc. Questions containing terms which may be entirely on-topic for a given site, but which are potentially traumatic or risk meaningful distraction to others are blocked. The list i...

1:41 PM

@gnat Ah true. At least they got that part of the HNQ right. ;)

2:25 PM

"Trolls, trolls, trolls" everybody is a troll

1 hour later…

3:35 PM

@Lilienthal I think they tweaked this block after fiasco with this ELU question. I recall laughing all week it was stuck in HNQ. It was later edited to retroactively match views, votes and answers bu SE team probably figured that radical changes to legitimate questions are not the best way to handle their er sexual problems

@gnat What was the fiasco? It doesn't look problematic. Is there history there that was later expunged?

4:14 PM

@Kaz you probably better ask SE folks what they think about it and why they added sex to HNQ block after that question

@gnat That is clearly a case of an edit conflicting with the author's intentions. Perhaps the great shog9 can explain why that is an example of "if bad question makes it to HNQ, then your site has bigger problems", which is exactly what he says to defend the HNQ feature.

1 hour later…

5:33 PM

I was rather disappointed to find out that there is no easy way for the community to get rid of the so-called community managers, which means my "good riddance" comment has to wait until someone voluntarily resigns or gets fired. :(

6:11 PM

eh, surely there's a better way to get positive change there

6:27 PM

@MaskedMan Well if a particular manager is getting a lot of complaints through SE feedback, I'm sure it will show up in their performance review.

6:40 PM

I'm sure separating the "real" from the laughable complaints would be challenging

6:50 PM

Hmmm.

12 inbox messages. +200 rep.

I think I'll look at the site again tomorrow and just enjoy my evening instead :V

If only there were a "Not today!" button on the notification inbox that would just make everything unread again.

@Lilienthal something like this works: stackexchange.com/users/1042917/enderland?tab=inbox

I assume that particular URL won't work for me ;)

yeah, but if you go to your network profile there's an "inbox" tab

Good to know.

Oh dear. I made the mistake of opening the rep window. A Great Answer badge for an answer I posted just about 6 hours ago?

I guess I should have expected that to explode.

Good ole HNQ

7:20 PM

I feel like I've abandoned you all day...

The status quo is always that way for a multitude of reasons, which is why the justification for the status quo always sounds like a series of unrelated contradictions.

2 hours later…

9:33 PM

55

Q: I've killed my colleagues' characters during RPG session, now they won't talk to me

Introduction I am a software developer and I've been with my current company for about 4 months now. Initially I've generally stuck to myself but after a while (a month?) of getting to know everybody I've started spending most of my break time with a group of colleagues who share similar interes...

colleagues after-hours

That question is overly specific about the game being played and because of that it so as far as I can tell.

Answers seem to be assuming that OP "ruined" and ended a game which doesn't even end when characters die.

Yeah. If it didn't already have so many answers, I would've posted one saying this wasn't about the game. But that seems pointless now.

It might be worth generalizing and posting a new question to get more/different general answers, thoughts?

whoa boy and some of the comments are rude, lol

First two answers (disclaimer: one's mine) are perfectly applicable to general games and the butthurt that results from someone ruining the fun. The details of the game are secondary, the main issue is the aftermath.

The answers aren't at fault (they're not rude at least)

I think the question was set up for failure

"perfectly applicable to general games and the butthurt that results from someone ruining the fun" yeah, but that's not what happened in this situation depending on your option right?

In DND, when charachters doe, thye can be ressurrected, rerolled, etc. so players aren't out of the game

oops, i'm getting bogged down in specfics there. Point being, OP didn't "ruin the game" unless that group really doesn't like Evil players, in which case it's more the DM's failure for allowing him to roll it.

He ruined the fun, not the game. You can restart the game from before the events happened, but you can't get back the time or mood from before this event happened.

9:46 PM

For those reasons and more, I think it was a bad more to specifically describe the game in the question. :).

Also, you can reset or replay pretty much any game, it's not D&D specific.

Eh, like I said, Chaotic Evil characters are always somewhat likely to betray the party. You can't really say weather what he did was OK or not in general.

And you don't have to reset. usually you re-roll new characters or resurrect the dead ones.

Once again, we're bogged down in game specifics though :)

Since it ruined other people's enjoyment of the game (which is the basically only reason to play a game) he did something that was not OK. The specific game or reason doesn't really matter.

OP has NO reason to assume that would ruin their fun. They did not do A Bad Thing.

There are just too many variables at play here. The question should have been more general or moved to the actual RPG stack exchnage right?

You're falling into your own trap. Whether we think the game was or was not ruined, the players involved all feel that way.

And OP has been facing the consequences of that without recognizing that it was really a problem.

9:50 PM

The bad choice would likely not have been A Bad Thing, if the OP had realized that what he did was considered "not cool", which he should have since he mentions the other players were "disgusted" about what he did

Sure, and that's fair, but Lilienthal in your answer you jump down the OP's throat REALLY harshey about how they should have somehow known better. That's not OK.

The moment you see someone look at you in disgust, the next step is ask "crap, what did I do?". If he had done that, probably everything would've been fine.

@Erik That's a good point

For the record, I do agree that OP made some mistakes, and @Lilienthal I don't think your answer is bad or wrong, but I DO think that the community dropped the ball in general handling this question.

Lots of people seemed ready to assume they knew enough about games in general to persecute OP's action, but D&D isn't something like Monopoly where there are clear "dick moves" that apply to every game.

I think the only really big and preventable mistake the OP made, was noticing disgust from his fellow players and then A) not acting on it immediately to find out what was up and B) coming here still thinking he didn't do anything wrong.

and C) making an overly specific question with too much detail to crucify themselves with :-P

9:59 PM

Heh. I'm not sure if that's preventable given that this was his first question.

Indeed. Thanks as always for hearing me out here!

It's true though, that D&D is the kind of game that seems to invite these issues :)

It's hard to say the community dropped the ball when this is predominantly the HNQ influx that seems to be coming down hard on the OP.

I can't even imagine what the deleted comments must look like on that.

@Lilienthal Yeah, that's true as well.

Though @DoritoStyle I'm not at all saying that OP should have known better, what I am saying is that he did screw and what he should do now is realise that fact.

Because as keshlam also mentioned I get a strong "why are they overreacting, I didn't do anything wrong" vibe from his question.

10:01 PM

I think that question should have been edited or moved early, but maybe things piled on too quickly as usual with HNQ questions.

Which in a sense is true since it's All Just A Game, but at the same time the workplace dynamic means that OP should have thought things through a bit more. While it's understandable that he didn't and he's right to be puzzled by the rather strong reaction, we can't control how our colleagues react and the right move here is to be apologetic.

And I don't even think the question was that problematic. It's clearly defined and while longer than probably necessary, the question is also clear.

@DoritoStyle this is more than, saying something unwise at happy hour. The OP is describing a game with considerable investment from others. It's more than "a social event went poorly". — Monica Cellio ♦ 15 mins ago

Monica's comment there is actually also a good point.

While I think you can draw a clear parallel with other games or situations with a similar faux-pas, the emotional/time investment is fairly unique for something like this.

And remember, applying answers to the "general situation" isn't our holy grail. While questions are often too specialised, the fact that it's about a P&P RPG played with colleagues is something that comes up often enough to be worth answering.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I'm sure I'll be up to 30 notifications by tomorrow but I'm gonna have to call it a night. ;)

Chio

3

A: I've killed my colleagues' characters during RPG session, now they won't talk to me

Games have both written and unwritten rules. Each time a group of people play a game, they end up agreeing on unwritten and often unspoken rules and assumptions about the game. Some games of D&D involve backstabbing and inter-party conflict and chaotic stupid characters. Others don't. You app...

Now THAT answer gets to the heart of the issue, admonishes the OP, yet does so elegantly in a way that should open up their perspective about their actions.

Actually in retrospect it's a lot of the same things in Lilienthal's answer, just presented in less of a _punishing_ way.

10:31 PM

For completeness' sake, I added another answer focussed entirely on "it's not the game, it's how you made these people feel". I doubt it will get far given this is HNQ, but whatever.

And yeah, the answer by Yakk was also very good.

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