Zoop

I had the same issue today, but the fact that it was TDM made it more or less a non-issue. If anything, being in a relatively small and intimate game against a number of skilled and respectable opponents made the entire thing all the more exciting. That said, I do love the massive flustercluck games as well. :3

I think I read that the combat is fairly action oriented, rather than simple WoW style point and click type stuff? I'm admittedly not very familiar with the game, with most of my knowledge of it coming from some of our mutual acquaintances that play it. I'm curious, is there a lot of angst over the fact that the game went free to play? I remember a lot of folks acting like Team Fortress 2's transition toward the F2P model was the worst thing ever to happen.

Can do - especially since that will give @NewCalamity time to get his game fixed up so that he can participate as well. Everyone vs the MLP Forums staff, perhaps? Fighting against horrifying odds is always tons of fun!

There isn't one yet, actually. You could always start one, or post in the favorite MMO thread. As an aside, I have enough premium credit on Tribes to rent a private server for a weekend or so I think. Might have to consider the possibility of an organized game day for forum folks or such. :3

I have the rare ability to have an extremely good time even when being completely and utterly smashed, it seems. The first game I was tossed into had me on a team with someone that seemed completely new to the game against three people were were really good - rather than being frustrating, it ended up being nothing short of completely and utterly thrilling to a ridiculous extent. x) Boooo MMORPGs.

So, after an inexcusably long break I jumped back into the game today - did absolutely terribly right at the start, but by the end of the session had managed to bring myself back to the point that I was getting some MVP accolades and ranking pretty bloody highly. Was a ton of fun, and was invigorating as hell. If there are any other folks into Tribes around here, feel free to add me to your friends lists if you'd like to hop into a game together sometime - my username as listed on the list in the OP is Zoop. That said, have some fun montages.

The post timer isn't something that can be set for specific boards, sadly. While I acknowledge that it may be a minor inconvenience within the confines of Cloudsdale, where rapid posting is both perfectly plausible and acceptable (and something I've done myself on more than one occasion), cutting the timer down wouldn't really make any sense within the context of any of the other boards on the forum. If it takes you less than sixty seconds to make a post, navigate back to the board index, locate another thread of interest, read the existing posts within the thread, and type of your own thoughtful and quality response... you're very likely some manner of monstrous superhuman entity that far surpasses my own abilities in every regard. While I offer your capabilities the utmost praise and admiration, they are uncommon enough that the benefits afforded to cutting the timer down in such a way would be supremely limited.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention - Feld0 does his best to ensure that the only advertisements that are displayed on MLP Forums are unobtrusive and unoffensive. Advertisements that in any way pose problems or are an annoyance are blacklisted and prevented from appearing on the website. Because we rely on advertisements to help supplement our donations we vastly prefer that people tell us when they find an offending advertisement, rather than simply turning ads off. There is no reason to use an ad blocker on this website. If you don't care to see our advertisements you can simply disable them via your profile. Blocking advertisements outright is not a good thing to do. I'd recommend you read this post that Feld0 wrote up some time ago on the topic of adblocking.

Megathreads as a whole aren't really an ideal way to approach something of this sort, I think - you'd have people attempting to carry on a dozen conversations at once, with what I can only imagine to be very poor results. As for the idea of a dedicated debate board... I think we'd need a significantly larger amount of qualifying threads before it'd be worth investing in another sub-board. I think the best course of action for people that aren't interested in such threads is to simply not click on them, to be honest... something that I personally practice quite liberally when it comes to certain key topics.

You are shocked! I've actually searched around the IPS Marketplace and the internet in general regarding IPB mods that would make this possible, and have come up dry. It might be something that Scoots could do some day, but given how massive his workload is I don't know if it's something that he could realistically work on.

TL;DR is a dirty, sinful word. An axe to any fool that dares utter it in anything but the most extreme of jest. D:

am... am I that predictable, starshine-sempai?

As stated earlier, this was done quite some time ago - the only present change is the addition of the formal rule. All members under thirteen were given temporary suspensions until the time of their thirteenth birthday, per the date of birth provided. Some have since returned, while others have suspensions lasting for several years from now. It was not a matter of choice.

Pristine is a great word, and to me has an extremely 'clean' sound to it; I blame the '-tine' Other than that, I'm a fan of things like shenanigans, tomfoolery, prevalent, and - perhaps most importantly, as a complete and self contained response to anything ranging from mildly amusing to astoundingly stupid, 'wat'

That was considered, but it was ultimately decided that it was vital to keep the rule simple, and completely free of any potential for misunderstanding - be it intentional or unintentional; additionally, it would open the door to people making claims of bias, saying things like "well, this person's comment on his warning wasn't that much different than mine, but he didn't get in trouble!" The difference is minimal enough and has so little of an impact that it was decided that there was no sense in not simply tightening it down to the point of being completely and utterly waterproof. And the warning points given would reflect that. Both off-topic and backseat moderation warnings carry light warning point payloads that reflect the non-destructive nature of the posts that receive them; this is no different. Any warnings given for a polite status would be more a reminder of the rule, with a light bit of weight to them, rather than a raging dragon of instant and eternal banmation. That's not really a valid point, I don't think - if it were, we'd have no grounds for going against NSFW status updates because... well, the NSFW stuff could very well be relevant to the person's present status. :x And in the ensuing discussion, the warning will be discussed as has already happened. Clamping it off at the start prevents such situations from ever happening or arising. Don't worry - I realize that, and don't think that you're trying to be a jerk. We realized going into this that this change would probably have a decent number of folks confused, or otherwise unhappy; which is why I'm trying to respond to everyone's concerns as much as possible. Likewise, I apologize if I've seemed a bit frustrated myself - sometimes it honestly that people don't care to read my explanations, or give any attention to my posts explaining our stances and reasoning. That said, criticism in and of itself is not something that is frustrating to receive, nor is it anything that we want to discourage. Feedback is important even in cases where we're fairly firmly set in a particular direction. I realize that I'm unlikely to change anyone's mind about the rule, but I do hope that through a bit of discussion and perhaps a bit of debate that I can at least make people understand why we decided on our present path, and sort of thought process went into it - like many things here (the character minimum being another example), even if it seems like a sudden change that came out of nowhere, it was not a change that was made lightly. The first thing we look at when we consider any changes to policy or rules is 'what can go wrong, and what can we do to minimize it?' - with that in mind, in this particular case we decided that simple wording that was completely lacking in loopholes, questionable situations, claims of personal bias, etc, was the best way to proceed. GAWD, RACCOON, WAY TO BE A COMPLAINER. GOSHHHHHH. >:[ Like that? :3 You don't have to be outwardly 'mean' to spread the seeds of Chaos and Discord; quite the opposite actually. The people who cause the most problems are often those that do so without the need for capital lettering or four letter words, after all. Nah, I think it was intended more as a general statement rather than being targeted at you specifically, to be honest.

Everything I know about German war machines I learned from World of Tanks... and great sensei NewCalamity. Come at us.

Guess what? I don't much care for it either. A lot of people on the staff don't... so why do we have it? Because without it, this place was being overtaken by image macros and posts that lacked content what-so-ever, to the point that many folks that were making good and thoughtful posts were moving to other forums, and specifically talking about the crap quality of discussion here. I don't like the character minimum. I like that reputation even less. Since you're admittedly a bit new to the forum (and there's nothing wrong with that!), you missed the firestorm of discussion that occurred when the minimum was implemented. With that in mind, even though it probably won't do anything to change your mind, here are a couple of staff posts on the matter that might help to shed some light on the situation. They're big, but I would recommend reading them for the sake of gaining a full understanding as to why things were done in the way that they were. Post one: Feld0 Post two: Key Gear (Scootacool) Post three: Key Gear (Scootacool)

We don't give warnings for criticism. That said, is it completely outside the realm of possibility that people may simply agree with our stance on certain things because they legitimately agree with the direction we've taken? Since the minimum age requirement was put into place (something that is fairly standard across the entirety of the internet, I should add), there has been an age check put forth before all new registrations on the forum. Sadly, it is exceptionally easy to lie about your age. That said, I for one do make a point to look into such things a bit when I believe someone may have lied about their age - sadly though, there's often nothing for me to look into beyond the date of birth that they specified upon registration. I'm not going to claim that I enjoyed going through and suspending everyone that was below the minimum. We have things the way they are for the sake of consistency - we don't want a situation where people can claim that we came down hard on one person for a status update or two, while having ignored another entirely. "It's only okay sometimes" just does not work very well, and would only make things worse. As it stands, the rule is crystal clear - there is no confusion, there is no bias. To be technical, the warnings themselves remain on record though the point values decay. One of the primary reasons that we moved to a warning oriented system was to ensure that we had records of all infringements associated with a specific account, complete with notes and other information. Promotes good communication, which has proven on many occasions to be absolutely vital so far as we've continued to grow. If the warning isn't fair, a moderation dispute is the only action that matters. It will either be overturned, or the warning - and the reasoning behind it - will be explained in excruciating detail; it isn't a yes or no affair, whenever someone comes to me regarding a warning I break it down for them. Not only that, but making a public status update isn't exactly the same thing as simply talking to a friend about it - it's more along the lines of going into a crowded public space and yelling about it. Do you complain about your mum to your friends in front of your mum? I won't disagree that venting is useful; God knows I do plenty of it myself, but there is a time and place. That is what this rule is about. Time and place. If we're a brick wall that is unwilling to listen to reason, and that are happy to allow the moderation to do whatever they like and give whatever unfair warnings they want, complaining to your friends isn't going to do anyone any good or change anything. If that is what we are, and that is what we are doing, then why is anyone even here? You're right, there are no fights in most tickets because most tickets are mundane, but with that said, I don't get shy about confronting people when things aren't done properly... thankfully, however, I can count the number of times I've had to do that on two hands. I think you've hit the nail on the head, sadly. And it is nobody's goal to prevent you from doing that - the last thing I want is for anyone here to be stewing in anger alone with nobody to talk to; but that doesn't change the fact that there is, again, a time and place for everything. There are some things that people simply do not talk about in the open in front of the entire planet; this should be viewed as hardly being any different. Everything you've listed as being a point of annoyance has been completely and utterly vital to our continued growth. The age limit was necessary to prevent us from being a potential target of legal action (even as far-fetched as it that may sound, I do not want Feld0 shouldering any unnecessary legal liability for anything), the character limit was necessary to keep this place from turning into Twitter (and, I might add, has helped to stave off a lot of complaints we were seeing elsewhere about the quality of discussion here plunging into the depths of the ocean). Speaking specifically on the warning system, it was necessary beyond words or measure - the old "system" may have worked when we were able to keep track of nearly every member, and when we personally knew almost every member, but as the forum grew and that turned out to be completely and utterly impossible, it became completely and utterly necessary to have a means by which we could keep records of rule infractions and have a general baseline for when some manner of punishment was necessary. The old "system" was good only for allowing trolls and people with malicious intent to linger longer than they should have honestly been allowed to, due to a lack of collective awareness on the part of the staff brought on by a lack of a means by which we could keep records and notes regarding member behavior. If we were to dump the present system at this point, I would resign, leave, spit in the general direction of the server, and never look back. The age verification used by IP.Board comes in the form of a pre-registration check; once that check is passed during registration, users are able to enter whatever they like in the age field. Requiring people to enter some random numbers wouldn't keep anyone from lying about anything unfortunately. While we do not have any established warning levels for this rule (this could change depending on how things go), so far all of the warnings given for breaking the new rule have been extremely light in terms of points given. Our goal is not to slap eleventy zillion points onto someone for every little off-hand mention of warnings; it is more to give them a reasonably gentle (depending on the context) prod to the shoulder as a general reminder that some things are not appropriate to be discussed in open sight. None of us are trying to be dicks or evil tyrants; rather, we're just trying to do what we can to keep this place comfortable and enjoyable for everyone here. You might be surprised at how many reports "I got a warning!" status updates and threads bring in, with the most common report comment being some manner of request that the drama being created through them be stopped. If we did not truly believe that this change would be beneficial to the community as a whole, it would not have been suggested internally or implemented in any capacity. That said, even if people disagree with the rule, I hope that they will at least give us credit for being willing to discuss and debate it and its merits openly and candidly, and for not attempting to put an end to any and all criticism.

I'm going to quote a statement that Feld0 made regarding the idea of comparing MLP Forums to a political state, and/or complaining about freedom of speech That said, how many places, if we truly wanted to completely stifle criticism we'd close down the feedback board and axe the moderation dispute system completely. We have avenues by which criticism is accepted, and rules regarding how and when it can be given. I have not been to many communities that don't have similar policies, though said policies are sometimes unspoken, rather than being spelled out for everyone to see like ours is. Honestly, compared to some folks we're pretty cuddly when it comes to our policy regarding complaining about certain things. That said, let me quote a portion of Platinum Server Management's Terms of Service. Pretty harsh, huh? Makes us sound like a bunch of kittens, if you ask me. I think you misunderstand. Warning complaints, disputes, etc, and similar can only be done via moderation disputes - it doesn't matter if you're civil or not when complaining or talking about them in public. I'd like to touch upon one last thing before I finish up over here... and that's freedom of speech. I've seen a few people comment about how this new rule goes against freedom of speech, with the suggestion (in some cases) that we're miserable tyrants for it. My suggestion for anyone that feels that way about this rule, or any of our rules is to read this article, Free Speech in Online Communities: The Delusion of Entitlement. It is extremely long, but it does a good enough job of summing up why such statements are nonsensical that I don't feel the need to write anything special on the subject myself. At any rate, I love all of you. <3