RE: @main
This argument will never be resolved, it's the nature of @main, but lately it has to be said: I am completely in favour of turning @main off for everyone, forever. Yes, it inconveniences the vocal few, but let me try to put some arguments across.
If you want to learn something, go to Pront and ask in all chat. Half the people who would answer are there anyway.
If you want to sell something, make a merch alt and sell it in Pront. 90% of the merchants are there anyway. It takes roughly 12 minutes to make a basic vend slave. This will likely take you less time than selling it on @main and you will get more money for it, not to mention having a vend slave.
If you want to buy something, go to Pront. 90% of the merchants are there anyway. Or go on the forums, where better deals are to be found anyway.
If you want a party, talk to the people sitting in Pront. They should go do something anyway.
There is no situation where something can not be done in all chat in pront just as effectively as in @main. And if you want to talk to your friends, start a ventrilo server. It is not hard, and the worst case scenario is that you learn something. And you stave off RSI for a while from all the typing you'll save.
But there is a fininte amount of time that I need to log in, get sorted at my desk, and hit Alt+1 for @main off. I hotkey it, because it's important. And even then, I normally end up reading something completely idiotic and uninformed on main. I rarely log in and see "main: can someone help me with X, please" but have all too often seen "main: two unrelated things! It's a (political party/social group/economic system you hate for no informed reason) conspiracy!" or something otherwise so incredibly ignorant that it hurts me to think this is the generation that I will have to hire/teach in the forseeable future. I suppose it's easy enough to turn @main off, but think that these people are the first impression newcomers to the server see. If I was a newcomer to the server, potentially with a semi-large group of people who were looking for a new home, and I logged in for the first time and saw the idiotic garbage that I saw last night, I would have logged out before I hit the end of the novice grounds and told my friends right away "Don't bother going to HeRO, the community is stupider than a brain-damaged bag of sand. Let's go elsewhere". Thankfully, the person who found HeRO for us did not see this, and a large number of us (tired of idiots on a previous server) came here where we came to really enjoy it. I would not doubt, however, that we have lost people explicitly from them getting tired of the blanket stupidity factor.
As has been discussed often in other forms, and quoted by a better orator than I: "I sucked it up because that's what you do when you're a grownup playing with kids" but maybe if we want a relatively mature community who helps people out and wants to make this place better, it might be an idea to look at the image that is projected by default to newcomers.
@main attracts these people because it's an instant audience, and they want to be noticed. And even though a GM can moderate, they can't always be around. Spammers, trolls, emo arguments: all go away a lot faster when there's no instant audience.
And if we can't kill it, at least consider:
Main should not be a place for political discussions, because you are going to irritate someone who likely knows far more than you do about the subject. Ditto for religion. These are things that are personal for a reason, because in the grown-up world people are not as nice as on the internet. The worst thing that can happen here is someone gets angry at you and a flamewar starts. If you do that in some places you will be beaten and/or killed for saying the wrong thing, despite what you might think is right. I live near one of those places, and you'd be surprised where that is (hint, it's not the middle east).
Ever see the threads making fun of people on 4chan? Ever hear about the people who got fired from their job for a stupid picture on facebook? This happens when you treat the internet as your own personal attention factory. Want to bet that I'll be screening every single one of my job applicants on facebook? Heck yes. Don't like it? Don't post incriminating, personal garbage on the internet. Unfair or not, it happens.
Just because it's a game doesn't mean that people don't take it seriously. People take strange things seriously. Think of this as practise for dealing with people in the real world. People who can fire you. People who can fail you. People who will have direct say in if you get a job. People who you might have to get a job reference from some day to get another job. If you screw that up, life can suck a lot more. Practise early.
Just because many people will generally give a bit of leeway when dealing with kids does not mean it's going to last. If you want to get some lulz, that's fine. But sometimes, if you make adult comments, you'll get treated like an adult. And from what I've seen, the world is going to eat you alive. Especially you, the person who I talked to yesterday. Your life is going to suck when you grow up and can't get over all this immature, uninformed hate.
@main argument off.
|
