The Overtober Overlution
Sent: Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:22 pm
From: Tzan
Overwatch is deleting your forum.
Tzan is our resident Old Guy, a distinction he earned after his quadruple heart bypass a couple years ago. He's probably not actually the oldest guy on the forums, but heart surgeries count more than decades. When Tzan speaks, I like to imagine that it's in a laconic drawl like Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski, even though he's actually just an architect in Boston and actually I kind of hate The Big Lebowski.
Well it's true. I took a look, and yep: Shadowscythe thought it would be funny to give mod powers to the biggest troll on the forum, and Overwatch immediately turned around and used those powers to delete some 70,000 posts today, more than double the casualties of The Almighty Benny Deletes The Entire Goddamn Board For No Real Reason Act of 2010.
So, naturally, I went over to the BrikWars chatroom to see what everyone had to say. It was a packed room, unsurprisingly. I wish I'd started logging the chat earlier; a lot of people with a lot to say before I quieted them down and reminded them about what's really important: namely, that I got retweeted by Feminist Frequency today.
That was an immediately successful derail for a half hour or so; everybody's got a strong opinion one way or the other about that, and it gave me time to consider my response.
Quantum: Didn't you do a halloween costume for wyldstyle?
rayhawk: yep, that was my unwitting anita sarkeesian cosplay I guess
rayhawk:
Quantum: :D
BFenix: The beard touch was something
rayhawk: that was what sold me on it
rayhawk: without the beard, it wouldn't have been funny enough to bother
rayhawk: so anyway, back to the overwatch thing, now that I had a minute to think about it
rayhawk: I've always kind of prided myself on making the forums into a place where people had the space and the mandate to fuck up in ridiculous ways
rayhawk: including myself
rayhawk: and when faced with decisions between doing the obvious thing, the smart thing, or the incredibly stupid thing, I try to always do the stupid one
rayhawk: so scythe making overwatch a global mod is exactly the kind of boneheaded idea I try to encourage
rayhawk: and overwatch destroying everything so that we're forced to rebuild from the rubble is pretty brikwars as well
rayhawk: welcome to the 2,015th rekonstruction
BFenix: Every year is a Rekonstruction after all
Quantum: Solid
ishnox: Yeah i always interpreted the forums as being intended to run on the same logic the rulebook does
ishnox: ignoring fairness and well-intent in favor of funny and awesome
rayhawk: it's a tricky balance to strike sometimes
Colette: I think rayhawk put it well that one time
Colette: trying to bring order to the brikverse is like reducing entropy
Colette: possibly successful locally and temporarily, but ultimately futile
rayhawk: the old LUGNET crew is having an online reunion on facebook right now, it's been putting a lot of things into perspective for me
rayhawk: like the reason I set up the forums the way I did
rayhawk: and why I designed brikwars to sabotage its own rules
Quantum: oh?
rayhawk: LUGNET was a great forum for a decade or so, until the guys who had to be right about everything flooded out everyone else
BFenix: Sounds like 0937
rayhawk: every thread became about whether people were living up to their standards and doing lego and LUGNET in the ways that they approved of
Quantum: Mm, I've grown to really, really dislike those kinds of people.
rayhawk: they even managed to make the forum owners give them admin powers. and that was it
rayhawk: everybody was squeezed out
rayhawk: so, I thought I would try to make a forum where that would never be the case
rayhawk: and the game, too
rayhawk: where people are rewarded for breaking rules and doing things intentionally wrong
rayhawk: naturally, I also had to do "doing things wrong" wrong, so that's how we got blitzen enforcing correct grammar for awhile, and colette laying down rules for correct behavior
rayhawk: it's been a funny experiment
Scratch: will you publish the results of the experiment with your dissertation?
rayhawk: bw2010 will be dissertation enough
rayhawk: when I finally get around to writing the foreword, it'll be all about the forums and how different the brikwars experience is now compared to 2005
rayhawk: so maybe it'll work its way in there
rayhawk: probably not. who knows
Quantum: There's something a touch beyond merely experimental.
Scratch: nice
Colette: is it different?
Colette: the game itself doesn't feel that different
rayhawk: absolutely. can you imagine what brikwarsing was like before anyone could post photos online?
Scratch: you were playing brikwars when you were 6 colette?
Colette: touche
rayhawk: the rules aren't that different. but the difference to the experience is huge
Quantum: The community that has grown up around it.
rayhawk: we had a community before, but the internet wasn't set up to give us a shared experience
Quantum: Right, yeah.
rayhawk: if you took photos, it was on a film camera that you then got developed and scanned into a brickshelf folder weeks later
rayhawk: there was no immediacy
Colette: now we have chatroom battles
Quantum: There's a physical evolution. But I think the wonky "rules" of our weird little society has created a social evolution as well.
Quantum: It's a fairly unique experience, really.
rayhawk: oh there's my family reminding me that I was supposed to come home an hour ago
Colette: lol
rayhawk: good luck coping with the overpocalypse everybody
Quantum: whee
BFenix: *sob* Will do
Scratch: I've built a bunker in the new people's forum
ishnox: Y'know, I'm pretty sure overwatch is the mascot of BrikWars
ishnox: The fact that he doesn't play, or even seem to own any lego, only reinforces this fact
Quantum: Not even his final form
ishnox: he gives no fucks about quality posting, or obeying rules
Scratch: he's this rekonstruction's mascot for sho
At first it looked like Overwatch been caught halfway through a scorched earth campaign of total destruction, with his mod privileges revoked by Shadowscythe just in time, but on closer inspection the deletions were more surgical than they looked - only the off-topic threads had been destroyed. In reality, it was Overwatch's fait accompli answer to the question that's been plaguing the forum for the past couple weeks, about what to do with the weight of accumulated forum lore that's preventing new people from feeling free to contribute.
I didn't have the guts to perform the amputation myself; I didn't even have the guts to give mod powers to someone else who I knew would do it. But what I did have was a policy of promoting complete numbskulls to modship, who would be dumb enough to then go on and unwittingly give mod powers to the kinds of guys who get the job done by sheer force of giving no fucks whatsoever.
Targeted self-sabotage: working as intended.
So hats off to Overwatch; sometimes a clean and ruthless break from the Gordian Knot of accumulated history is the best solution. With that in mind, I've gone ahead and deleted all the blog entries from the past year. Onward and upward! No looking back!
From: Tzan
Overwatch is deleting your forum.
Tzan is our resident Old Guy, a distinction he earned after his quadruple heart bypass a couple years ago. He's probably not actually the oldest guy on the forums, but heart surgeries count more than decades. When Tzan speaks, I like to imagine that it's in a laconic drawl like Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski, even though he's actually just an architect in Boston and actually I kind of hate The Big Lebowski.
Well it's true. I took a look, and yep: Shadowscythe thought it would be funny to give mod powers to the biggest troll on the forum, and Overwatch immediately turned around and used those powers to delete some 70,000 posts today, more than double the casualties of The Almighty Benny Deletes The Entire Goddamn Board For No Real Reason Act of 2010.
So, naturally, I went over to the BrikWars chatroom to see what everyone had to say. It was a packed room, unsurprisingly. I wish I'd started logging the chat earlier; a lot of people with a lot to say before I quieted them down and reminded them about what's really important: namely, that I got retweeted by Feminist Frequency today.
That was an immediately successful derail for a half hour or so; everybody's got a strong opinion one way or the other about that, and it gave me time to consider my response.
Quantum: Didn't you do a halloween costume for wyldstyle?
rayhawk: yep, that was my unwitting anita sarkeesian cosplay I guess
rayhawk:
Quantum: :D
BFenix: The beard touch was something
rayhawk: that was what sold me on it
rayhawk: without the beard, it wouldn't have been funny enough to bother
rayhawk: so anyway, back to the overwatch thing, now that I had a minute to think about it
rayhawk: I've always kind of prided myself on making the forums into a place where people had the space and the mandate to fuck up in ridiculous ways
rayhawk: including myself
rayhawk: and when faced with decisions between doing the obvious thing, the smart thing, or the incredibly stupid thing, I try to always do the stupid one
rayhawk: so scythe making overwatch a global mod is exactly the kind of boneheaded idea I try to encourage
rayhawk: and overwatch destroying everything so that we're forced to rebuild from the rubble is pretty brikwars as well
rayhawk: welcome to the 2,015th rekonstruction
BFenix: Every year is a Rekonstruction after all
Quantum: Solid
ishnox: Yeah i always interpreted the forums as being intended to run on the same logic the rulebook does
ishnox: ignoring fairness and well-intent in favor of funny and awesome
rayhawk: it's a tricky balance to strike sometimes
Colette: I think rayhawk put it well that one time
Colette: trying to bring order to the brikverse is like reducing entropy
Colette: possibly successful locally and temporarily, but ultimately futile
rayhawk: the old LUGNET crew is having an online reunion on facebook right now, it's been putting a lot of things into perspective for me
rayhawk: like the reason I set up the forums the way I did
rayhawk: and why I designed brikwars to sabotage its own rules
Quantum: oh?
rayhawk: LUGNET was a great forum for a decade or so, until the guys who had to be right about everything flooded out everyone else
BFenix: Sounds like 0937
rayhawk: every thread became about whether people were living up to their standards and doing lego and LUGNET in the ways that they approved of
Quantum: Mm, I've grown to really, really dislike those kinds of people.
rayhawk: they even managed to make the forum owners give them admin powers. and that was it
rayhawk: everybody was squeezed out
rayhawk: so, I thought I would try to make a forum where that would never be the case
rayhawk: and the game, too
rayhawk: where people are rewarded for breaking rules and doing things intentionally wrong
rayhawk: naturally, I also had to do "doing things wrong" wrong, so that's how we got blitzen enforcing correct grammar for awhile, and colette laying down rules for correct behavior
rayhawk: it's been a funny experiment
Scratch: will you publish the results of the experiment with your dissertation?
rayhawk: bw2010 will be dissertation enough
rayhawk: when I finally get around to writing the foreword, it'll be all about the forums and how different the brikwars experience is now compared to 2005
rayhawk: so maybe it'll work its way in there
rayhawk: probably not. who knows
Quantum: There's something a touch beyond merely experimental.
Scratch: nice
Colette: is it different?
Colette: the game itself doesn't feel that different
rayhawk: absolutely. can you imagine what brikwarsing was like before anyone could post photos online?
Scratch: you were playing brikwars when you were 6 colette?
Colette: touche
rayhawk: the rules aren't that different. but the difference to the experience is huge
Quantum: The community that has grown up around it.
rayhawk: we had a community before, but the internet wasn't set up to give us a shared experience
Quantum: Right, yeah.
rayhawk: if you took photos, it was on a film camera that you then got developed and scanned into a brickshelf folder weeks later
rayhawk: there was no immediacy
Colette: now we have chatroom battles
Quantum: There's a physical evolution. But I think the wonky "rules" of our weird little society has created a social evolution as well.
Quantum: It's a fairly unique experience, really.
rayhawk: oh there's my family reminding me that I was supposed to come home an hour ago
Colette: lol
rayhawk: good luck coping with the overpocalypse everybody
Quantum: whee
BFenix: *sob* Will do
Scratch: I've built a bunker in the new people's forum
ishnox: Y'know, I'm pretty sure overwatch is the mascot of BrikWars
ishnox: The fact that he doesn't play, or even seem to own any lego, only reinforces this fact
Quantum: Not even his final form
ishnox: he gives no fucks about quality posting, or obeying rules
Scratch: he's this rekonstruction's mascot for sho
At first it looked like Overwatch been caught halfway through a scorched earth campaign of total destruction, with his mod privileges revoked by Shadowscythe just in time, but on closer inspection the deletions were more surgical than they looked - only the off-topic threads had been destroyed. In reality, it was Overwatch's fait accompli answer to the question that's been plaguing the forum for the past couple weeks, about what to do with the weight of accumulated forum lore that's preventing new people from feeling free to contribute.
I didn't have the guts to perform the amputation myself; I didn't even have the guts to give mod powers to someone else who I knew would do it. But what I did have was a policy of promoting complete numbskulls to modship, who would be dumb enough to then go on and unwittingly give mod powers to the kinds of guys who get the job done by sheer force of giving no fucks whatsoever.
Targeted self-sabotage: working as intended.
So hats off to Overwatch; sometimes a clean and ruthless break from the Gordian Knot of accumulated history is the best solution. With that in mind, I've gone ahead and deleted all the blog entries from the past year. Onward and upward! No looking back!