This "No OOC" nonesense.

[Vivi]

Like him or not 1337 brings up a great point. There are whispers and you can now log in multiple handles unlike long ago (in fact I frequently do when rping). You can easily either whisper people you wish to speak to or log into an ooc and ic room at the same time. If anything this seems like it should be less of an issue then it used to be.

But hey, thats just one suit of armor's thoughts. *shrugs*

[Kade]

Both sides have plenty of options/alternatives. Captain Obvious a little less, everyone.

Focus on which side is more conducive to RP.

[Furr]

Both sides have plenty of options/alternatives. Captain Obvious a little less, everyone.

Focus on which side is more conducive to RP.

How about you shut the fuck up?
Seriously, I've about had it with your shit. Always kicking over the stew, and crap. And you're not really constructive in anything you've done.
Dragged out discussions to the point where all that's left to do is facepalm and deskface, and when your way isn't had, you resort to namecalling, tantrums fitting a little child, cheating and lying.
Prove me wrong, please. Prove me wrong, Kade, and I will retract my opinion of you.

Until you can prove yourself as someone not to be met with scorn and distrust, you shouldn't say anything in this forum.

[Auvic]

....Herp.
So I actually wasn't going to say anything along those lines - but regardless of the bad impression Furr has of you, Kade, I suddenly realized that your post makes no sense at all as soon as you realize that one side is trying to convince the other side that their side doesn't, in fact, actually exist.

Regardless, I'm not sure what constructive discussion your post offered.

allmyconfusion.jpg

[Silent.Kamikaze]

Keyboard Warriors unite!
With your powers combined, I am captain planet!

[Soja]

I've been here eleven years. Count 'em. That's more years than you have fingertips. As long as that has been, we've had this understanding in all rooms outside of the Main Hall: got any OOC? Keep it short or keep it to yourself. If you needed to vent OOCly, you could do it in the Main Hall where that sort of thing was expected.

"Acting OOCly" was fairly commonplace, but people were usually respectful enough to keep it to a minimum, either because they just had to make a crack about something that happened in RP just then or to say hello or goodnight. That's alright. When it carried on for long periods of time, that was not alright. All rooms aside from the designated OOC ghettos have always been reserved for RP.

They are not your personal lounges or OOC hangout joints. This is the way it has always been, first informally and then by rule; and no one has taken issue with it until recently. If you want an OOC hangout joint or personal lounge, you are implored and encouraged to create a room of your own.

I reiterate that this has never been a problem. Thus the problem is not with the policies but with the individuals. If I want to RP, I'll find a way to RP. I don't need OOC interaction or OOC discussion as a basis from which to launch my RP. To diagnose this single issue as the root cause for a decline in RP is to ignore a lot of other factors, such as outside commitments from RPers, other activities and alternate hobbies, and the fact that some people just outgrow or move on from RP as a method of recreation.

As for donations, I'm sure other people will step up where others step back. It's been like this ever since declaring our independence from WebRPG/RPGHost.

[Inquisitor]

Both sides have plenty of options/alternatives. Captain Obvious a little less, everyone.

Focus on which side is more conducive to RP.

How about you shut the fuck up?
Seriously, I've about had it with your shit. Always kicking over the stew, and crap. And you're not really constructive in anything you've done.
Dragged out discussions to the point where all that's left to do is facepalm and deskface, and when your way isn't had, you resort to namecalling, tantrums fitting a little child, cheating and lying.
Prove me wrong, please. Prove me wrong, Kade, and I will retract my opinion of you.

Until you can prove yourself as someone not to be met with scorn and distrust, you shouldn't say anything in this forum.

Shut the fuck up, Furr. You've never been relevant at all to the chat, you're just some weird Danish dude who creeps on women and gets overly angry for no reason on the internet.

Soja sums up the point nicely. And to insert a point I've made previously in the past: enforcing the OOC rules in the Pub made the room total jump a good 10-20 people a night on average, so enforcing the rule CAN be successful. The bigger issue seems to be the death of freeform RP over all, not just the arena or whatever. To be fair though, the Arena never had a lot of people to begin with...

[TheMadHatter]

I want to apologize to everyone. I had thought the situation was because a new mod was showing off their new, shiny badge so to speak, and it doesn’t seem to be the case. Everyone seems to be behind this, that the mods should strictly enforce the no OOC in rp rooms at all time. So I’m going to step down. I’m sorry if I was wrong for what I said before.

On another note I was discussing the other day why people don’t use the forums. It’s sort of hard to have any discussion without getting ripped apart. Are the personal attacks really necessary? Telling people to shut the fuck up doesn’t come off as adults having an intelligent conversation. 

[1337]

Both sides have plenty of options/alternatives. Captain Obvious a little less, everyone.

Focus on which side is more conducive to RP.

How about you shut the fuck up?
Seriously, I've about had it with your shit. Always kicking over the stew, and crap. And you're not really constructive in anything you've done.
Dragged out discussions to the point where all that's left to do is facepalm and deskface, and when your way isn't had, you resort to namecalling, tantrums fitting a little child, cheating and lying.
Prove me wrong, please. Prove me wrong, Kade, and I will retract my opinion of you.

Until you can prove yourself as someone not to be met with scorn and distrust, you shouldn't say anything in this forum.

You forgot duping fake votes in a mod poll as well.

[MadMusician]

This includes the no OOC when there's no RP going on, Auvic. Considering that the room mods allow OOC when there's no OOC, it's already very much a invalid room for you to try to point out. I will attribute your mistake to ignorence rather than stupidity.

My challange still stands.

Then I'll point at the Children of the Gods or whatever RPs they are at the bottom of the room listings that create RP_OOC rooms in order to separate their OOC from their IC rooms.
Best part is, all of those rooms are user-made.

I'm still not 100% sure what your issue is, or what you're trying to prove, MM.
Also, your passive-aggressiveness seems a bit on the heavy side, might wanna chill out just a little.
y u so mad srsly?

And, uh - do I need to pick every bit of your first post apart, or do you have any intention of responding to anything that doesn't pertain to your arbitrary challenge that doesn't really probe anything at all?

Actually, don't even try to pick my arguments apart. You usually don't make any sense while doing so.

Oh, and Childern of the gods? They allow OOC when there is no IC too. (I haven't seen them for a fair bit though, but RPs come and go rather quickly on TK. 85% of them, anyway.)  You think I haven't done my homework before I throw up an argument? And I do beleive I stated -create- a room, not say one in existence.

Either accept or decline. It's simple. But don't try to use other people's work as your posterchild. It just continues to prove my own points anyway.

[nodthenarb]

o_O Wow. Wasn't actually expecting this. Ok, first off, I just posted this to get my opinion out there and myself heard. I found the whole thing mildly irritating, and wanted to speak my mind about it. I wasn't trying to get anything changed, I wasn't trying to change peoples' minds. I stated this. I wasn't even planning on touching any of this again, but for this:

And on a personal note, in light of such stupidity, I will be stopping donations to the Keep. I haven't donated alot, granted, but I don't feel it would be a good thing to spend what little money I have supporting this. Sorry.

By the way, threatening not to donate unless you get your own way? Extremely childish.

LEARN. TO. READ. I stated that i neither wanted nor expected any kind of change as a result of my post. I was stating my opinion. I was NOT making a threat. I was stating that due to my dislike of this rule, I would no longer be making donations. I even went on to say how I hadn't made many donations in the past. I've only ever donated 20-50 dollars here and there. What I DID say was that i have very little money, and that it is no longer worth it to donate to this site, due to my disagreement with a new rule that in my opinion fixes nothing and is highly restrictive. People disagree with me. Great. That is life. But I'm not going to make some stupid threat over this. So I will say it one more time:

LEARN TO READ, OR SHUT UP.

Thank you, that is all. My apologies for any irritation.

[Soja]

... New rule.

I'm just going to say I chuckled a little there.

[nodthenarb]

well, new to me XD my bad. I keep forgetting it has probly been around for a while. I just got net back about a week ago after a 10 or so month absence.

[Silent.Kamikaze]

Its not a new rule, but it has only recently been so strictly enforced. Ive been here five years, or maybe six, and I had never seen it be enforced like it has been lately. Maybe you old people have, but Im speaking from my experience only.

[Vivi]

Yeah its probably one of the oldest rules of the site actually, as stated before, enforcement of it died off for a little while, likely in part to the dropping of the person limit and the older staff spending less time around, I don't really know.

[1337]

tK is the only place I know where people can make such a big deal out of such a retardedly simple issue. It's really as easy as just typing /to username before your message... That's it... This is... I have no more words for this. Or funny images... Actually, maybe not hold on... let me look... Okay, this one works.




***

[Pitch]

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait....Back to the All or Nothin' days!? Enforcing strict separation of OOC/IC?!


OH MY GOD, YES PLEASE! I have missed so much being at work all the time! <8D As another long time veteran, this makes me stupid-happy. The neophytes wont realize it, but back when the rules were absolute, there was a lot of RP. It was kind of awesome. Why? because you had no choice -but- to play in an IC room. And to all people whinging about the arena being desolate...what do you want? More disruptive OOC in it? Pfft. And don't try to explain to me how it works or worked in there; I was the moderator. I know it through and through. And it was rare for people to actually uphold the unspoken rule of "Shut your trap during posts".

So, with that said: GIVE 'EM HELL!  /excite

[Kade]

The moderator that failed.
I ain't even mad. Strictly speaking, Pitch never achieved her 'goal'.
So if this policy is plan B.
And plan A was Pitch.
Then plan B just seems like a hundred times more of whatever plan A was packin'.

Nonetheless, more RP sounds good. If it works, cool. I'll love you. But so far...
it isn't,
and hasn't,
for months.
Probaby why nodthenarb feels the way he does. Ten month absence? Sounds about right.
There's much less RP in thatonedefaultroom now than there was before.
And I doubt the staff can afford a plan C, so...
Pardon my french,
but shut up and make plan B work, please.
All I care about now is RP, not the path we take to get there.

I want results, not ideologies. But that's just me.

Edit: Do any of you guys RP in default rooms regularly? How regularly?
Edit: And which ones?

[1337]

Hey look, I'm Kade. Look at me say things about stuff like my opinion matters anymore.

He thinks he's people.

[HitlerTony]

I'm trying to figure out how this is even considered an issue. It's obvious that, and I know this has been said before, many times, logically, over and over, BECAUSE SOJA AND DIRR JUST EXPLAINED IT QUITE THOUROGHLY, IC rooms= IC, IC rooms =/= constant OOC. Sure, the occasional " wanna rp?" "lolsure" "ok" kind of stuff I can understand, but breaking out into a holly jolly ass conversation in a default IC room isn't and never will be allowed. People, stop getting on the moderators who tell you to silence the OOC in an IC area, it's -their- -motherfucking- -job-. If u mad be mad in whispas. Otherwise, do yourself the favor and stop OOCing in an IC area. It's in the AUP for a reason, pah'tna.

[Furr]

I'm trying to figure out how this is even considered an issue. It's obvious that, and I know this has been said before, many times, logically, over and over, BECAUSE SOJA AND DIRR JUST EXPLAINED IT QUITE THOUROGHLY, IC rooms= IC, IC rooms =/= constant OOC. Sure, the occasional " wanna rp?" "lolsure" "ok" kind of stuff I can understand, but breaking out into a holly jolly ass conversation in a default IC room isn't and never will be allowed. People, stop getting on the moderators who tell you to silence the OOC in an IC area, it's -their- -motherfucking- -job-. If u mad be mad in whispas. Otherwise, do yourself the favor and stop OOCing in an IC area. It's in the AUP for a reason, pah'tna.

This. :thumbsup:

[Pitch]

The moderator that failed.
I ain't even mad. Strictly speaking, Pitch never achieved her 'goal'.
So if this policy is plan B.
And plan A was Pitch.
Then plan B just seems like a hundred times more of whatever plan A was packin'.

Nonetheless, more RP sounds good. If it works, cool. I'll love you. But so far...
it isn't,
and hasn't,
for months.
Probaby why nodthenarb feels the way he does. Ten month absence? Sounds about right.
There's much less RP in thatonedefaultroom now than there was before.
And I doubt the staff can afford a plan C, so...
Pardon my french,
but shut up and make plan B work, please.
All I care about now is RP, not the path we take to get there.

I want results, not ideologies. But that's just me.

Edit: Do any of you guys RP in default rooms regularly? How regularly?
Edit: And which ones?

What "goal"? You mean getting people quiet during RP? Because that happened. :|

[Moondog]

The moderator that failed.
I ain't even mad. Strictly speaking, Pitch never achieved her 'goal'.
So if this policy is plan B.
And plan A was Pitch.
Then plan B just seems like a hundred times more of whatever plan A was packin'.

Nonetheless, more RP sounds good. If it works, cool. I'll love you. But so far...
it isn't,
and hasn't,
for months.
Probaby why nodthenarb feels the way he does. Ten month absence? Sounds about right.
There's much less RP in thatonedefaultroom now than there was before.
And I doubt the staff can afford a plan C, so...
Pardon my french,
but shut up and make plan B work, please.
All I care about now is RP, not the path we take to get there.

I want results, not ideologies. But that's just me.

Edit: Do any of you guys RP in default rooms regularly? How regularly?
Edit: And which ones?

Tell you what, let's  all get together and, as far as enforcement of OOC goes, hold a vote- OH WAIT A MINUTE

[Fu]

I'm torn between finding it amusing and just sad that so many people in the threads of the politika section of the forum devote their energy to arguing about how strictly and whether or not 'no OOC' should be enforced in IC default rooms.

Why?

Why are those who call themselves roleplayers not out there taking advantage of this blanket protection and consistently roleplaying? The Arena, and every other default IC room is being watched in order to destroy the slightest hint of OOC. This is a perfect environment for those goofy, no-strings-attached roleplays, or the serious, involved storylines that some of us crave. Why is it that when I log in over the past few months the roleplay has become scarcer and scarcer? I'm sure everyone has their own theory on the why of it, but there are more questions raised. Why are we arguing about the why of it instead of doing precisely what everyone against OOC supplies as their mission statement: remove the OOC so that roleplay can be fostered.

I can't be the only one who has noticed that the "players" are more attracted to arguing about the problem than actually reaping the benefits of one moderator's compulsion to silence the OOC. The reality is this: the climate of the Keep isn't what it was eleven years ago, or even what it was only six years ago. As far as I understand it this chat was created and has been maintained to connect roleplayer to roleplayer, but what use is it now when the players are gone and only the argument remains?

There have been plenty of motivational speeches and more than a share of grandstanding from every side, but the only thing that seems to be happening is that the drama and conflict that should be played ICly is being enacted OOCly.

I'm certain this will only incite more argument, but it needs to be said as I don't believe it is being communicated clearly by anyone.

You can blame individuals coming from other sites and becoming major OOC problems. You can blame the loss of the older player base. You can blame overall laziness and the preference to avoid conflict. There is one piece of information that I think is very important and, while it has been mentioned, it is not being mentioned enough or in any way that clearly connects dot A to dot B: The moderators backed off and faded into the background and left the majority of the chat to fend for itself, relegating themselves to the default OOC rooms.   I am not saying the moderators should be expected to roleplay full time and never haunt the default OOC rooms. I am saying, retrospectively, that they should have been expected to do their job.

In the last three years or so the Keep has seen a significant increase in OOC. I believe it has everything to do with the loss of the moderator presence. How else could those from other sites come in and create the climate we have now? Some of the departures of those older players can be pinned on the injection of new blood, of the acceptance that OOC was the new norm. And how can you expect the average user to do anything other than learn to /ignore or simply tolerate the OOC when the moderators seemed to prefer to lurk in the OOC_Lobby rather than police the default rooms. There is also something to be said for that new blood, because it is now a representation of the current user base, and relevant to the Great Debate. As I see it, there are two main options. That lone moderator can continue to battle the OOC with the main support of the other moderators being mostly on the forums, or the current lineup of moderators needs to change, assuming that everyone agrees that roleplay is the main concern. This is, after all, a roleplaying site.

When was the last time Ezra logged in consistently? Syn? I haven't personally seen Drew regularly in quite some time. Moondog has been on consistently, and his support of Familiar in the actual chat is anecdotal. Robochrist and Vivi make every effort to deal with every problem they are offered, but I have never seen them directly engage anyone over OOC. I used to see Irrationalist enforce the 'no OOC' rule when someone asked him to, but where has he gone? Where is SSS, for that matter? And why are there so many moderators that have been granted the leave to stop doing their job? No one could ever fault a moderator for having a life beyond the Keep, but when a majority of the moderators are not regularly logged in over an extended period of time they should be asked to step down and modship should be offered to someone who has the time and energy required to give the position a measure of justice.

The underlying issue is that the moderators have allowed OOC to be prevalent in the default IC rooms for years and now they want to reverse that unspoken allowance. ( Whether or not that is actually only Familiar and the rest sort of seem to support her is remain to be seen. ) Did you expect no backlash? No conflict from the new blood and those accustomed to the OOC? You cannot sit there for years on end and smirk and make snide remarks, or throw up your hands in resignation about the rampant OOC, and then suddenly expect that you can log in and effectively eradicate what you let grow.

Yes, you are moderators and on the chat your word is law, but little respect can be summoned for what you're doing because the reason it's a problem in the first place is the blatant lack of enforcement in the past, if that's not clear by now. It is this reason that you have players like Nodthenarb who is being left with a sour taste at the poorly executed change in operations, or Kade who wasn't shut down and given the correct expectations for what the Keep was when he first migrated here. There's me, too, and I feel like I'm caught in the middle. Half of the people I prefer to play with are pissed because they feel the abrupt enforcement is hypocritical and nothing more than one person's need to be more important than they really are. The other half I prefer to play with seem to be more interested in being righteous about silencing OOC than actually roleplaying. Why this argument is more important than simply using the chat for what it was meant is beyond me, but if these things have to be addressed for the players to refocus then it's worth looking at. I noticed the development of the “Ombudsman,” and I’m not saying I disagree with the idea. I am saying that I don’t think that’s enough. I obviously feel the main problem is with inconsistent enforcement and that the majority of the current moderators should be asked to step down: the position isn’t lifelong and sometimes a well-orchestrated turnover is exactly what an organization needs to get back to what’s important.

There’s always the third option, which is do nothing constructive and continue to argue, or now that a new angle has been raised: argue that to death. The only thing that everyone seems to be in agreement on is that the current climate on the Keep is different. ( Yes, if you’re talking about how things used to be, you do, by default, agree with that statement. ) Perhaps what is best is to take a look at adjusting things to either suit the current population or make changes that will revive the Keep of old, as many of you seem to remember as being better.

[1337]

tK Politics summarized bellow.