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Mark Phillips


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Just about ready to import the old fora.

What to do about the in-character boards?

It would be too much work to convert JForum to display character names rather than real names. Whole armies of additional database tables, blah blah.

I've played with adding the text [In character as XYZETC:] as a header to the message. But it kinda grates, in part because I'm not sure every player wants to be identified as the author of certain characters.

But on the other hand, if a character is behaving obnoxiously, does the author want to be saddled with that?

What do y'all think?

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Mark Phillips


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[In character as Poobah]:

heya! here's what an ic post would look like, if we ask mark to prepend character names to ic messages.

talkin' about imported legacy bbs messages, natch.

whattaya think?

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Lisa Chau



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Don't import the IC messages. Archive the boards, leave them available.

Chiensha, Moorea, Vicodin, Xanax, Zoloft.
Joshua Finken


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I also think the old forum should be archived. Non-active archiving.

I do think that people want to separate themselves from their characters.

tough call.

If players only had one or two characters it would be easier, but TC breads new characters with its always evolving scenery. Many personalities can be tied to one person, and a rude character should not identify the behavior of the person posting. As it were.

The problem I see is that anyone can pretend to be anyone. There is no tie to me pretending to be someone-elses character. =\
The tag-list of characters we all added stops that, but not for someone who does not add it, or someone who does not post in the forum.

If it was possible to make the poster-ID invisible if you check an "in-character" button, the above paragraph would be a problem. If we had someone who did not play fair. It would solve the player/character issue though.

Just thinking out loud.

Triad City Characters: Andor, Zensekai, Saul, Yourk

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Mark Phillips


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There's something to be said for letting certain of the old boards die and starting afresh. Re-reading some old threads while testing, there's an awful lot of snarky crap typically from the same small circle reappearing frequently. Often using shill accounts pretending to be different RL individuals. Maybe it's better to start clean. The new forum software offers vastly more capable moderation.

Yet I'd hate to see the Lore, Suggestions, Builders, Game Wardens and maybe even General BBS's made less available. There's good stuff for newbs in there; and in the new format they're more easily searchable.

So it really is a tough call.

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Mark Phillips


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Hey! - I lied. Found a fairly simple way to display TC character names instead of SM player names. Tested, working. This makes imports from the IC boards vastly more intuitive.

I think it won't be that hard to allow IC posting, as in the legacy boards. Researching.

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Joshua Finken


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Fantastic! Keep us posted!

Triad City Characters: Andor, Zensekai, Saul, Yourk

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Mark Phillips


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More research. Not hard to display the TC Character name of an IC post instead of the RL name of the poster. Done.

Pretty crazy to tweak everything else that would be necessary for fully IC boards. For example, the Author and Last Message columns of the listing of posts within a topic expect a "user" object which knows nothing about TC characters.

It would be doable to change all of this. But, I'm not sold that it's good bang for the buck.

There's an earlier, brief discussion of the value of IC boards in the legacy Players BBS. What do y'all think? Is it worth a week of dev time implementing them? Or can we make do with OOC boards?

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Joshua Finken


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The legacy boards go back and forth with legit IC posts and clear OOC posts as i see it. I don't think we need more IC than OOC.

I took a look at the post about IC/OOC. I came away thinking that people don't want to be tagged inconsiderate if their IC personality gets a negative response.

Anonymity

Also, as it stands now. There is no way to tag a player with their in-game character inside this forum is there? I have not played with the IC board. Is that up?

[Edit]
See? This post is an example. You have no way of telling who i am inside TC.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012.08.03 19:24:11

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Mark Phillips


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I kinda like the way it's working now. The posts which were made IC display with the TC character name on the left, instead of the usual user first/last name, karma, etc. But the standard PM and Profile buttons remain, so that when you click on them you're taken to the user's information. So the IC posts aren't anonymous, but the user's identity isn't stuck up yr nose. I'm trying to test the daylights out of importing because I want to do it just once, correctly. Super close to ready, maybe tomorrow.

When I do the import I'll back up the database immediately before, so that if we decide we hate something it'll be possible to roll back to the state just before the import.

Re future IC posts. We can create a protocol for that, where, say, you put [IC CharacterName] in the subject and/or the first line of yr post. But there's no real way to force people to be honest about actually owning a character or not.

I suppose we could automatically append each user's real list of TC characters to their messages...

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Joshua Finken


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But that sounds like what you were trying to avoid all along. I like the precaution, I don't want it to turn out to be a month of work. =/

Triad City Characters: Andor, Zensekai, Saul, Yourk

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