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Well, to be fair, the events of this evening appear to have rattled a few people. I don't pretend to understand it but I'm prepared to cut those folks a little slack and let them rail, if they feel the need to vent.Quote:
Originally posted by Excalibre
It's a global announcement, so it appears in all forums. A modicum of civility is probably appropriate, but considering the general state of things tonight, well, see above.Quote:
Originally posted by Glazer
Yep, that sounds about right.Quote:
Originally posted by Excalibre
I don't consider it over the top to expect mods and admins not to use mod and admin powers to belittle posters. I don't want a staff that walks on eggshells, but you know what? Better a staff that does than posters having to. But I'd bet you that it isn't something the staff, or most of the staff at least, would have to walk on eggshells about. Most people get the idea of private versus public information.Quote:
Originally posted by Excalibre
Don't you make me quote Uncle Ben (Spidey's uncle, not the rice dude).
I would rather be at a place where no one is walking on eggshells.Quote:
Originally posted by Julie
I guess I just really don't see why this matters. I don't think it makes Oakminster look any worse; and personally, I consider anything that the mods are privy to to be at best "private" but definitely not "secret". This place is small, the mods make up like ten percent of the population. So I guess for me this is a useful heads up anyway. And since this is at worst mildly embarrassing (and I can't really imagine any circumstances where it would be anything worse than that), I don't see the issue. I just don't see why invisible vs logged off is an issue at all, why people presume they have some right to have that be kept secret. Sure, if I have an email addy kept visible only to admins, I expect them to keep it secret or give it out only very advisedly, because that's a much bigger deal. This? Eh, nuthin'.
Whoa-when was this?Quote:
Originally posted by Q.E.D.
Excalibre, there is such a thing as "an excluded middle?" You don't have to walk on egg shells, but you don't have to stomp the shit out of them either.
First off, I can't believe that this whole thing went off and ended in the time that I was away from the computer. Sheesh guys, a little premature. :P We didn't even get to have mod army's picking sides and facing off against each other and starting splinter splinter boards!
I am sorry for anyone who was upset, I think it was pretty fucking funny myself.
I don't want to get too into it here, but what you are talking about there...that's just a mafia game. That isn't even an unusual or crazy happening in a mafia game, it's just a fun one. That kind of crap is why we play.Quote:
Originally posted by Inner Stickler
QED linked the post, it was when he left because enough people told him they weren't amused by his "pit rating" thing or his attempt to turn "fuckwit" into a meme that it finally clicked with him that, while he thought the whole deal would be his claim to SDMB fame, everyone else thought it was lame and annoying. I personally suspect he wasn't planning to leave, and was hoping people were going to spring up to beg him to stay.Quote:
Originally posted by Guinastasia
I can tell my mileage varies here but I don't think this is an issue at all. It's not "excluded middle", it's just something I don't care about and I kind of think it's counterproductive to worry about it. I can see I'm basically alone here, and that's cool, but I'm still right and you're all still wrong. :)Quote:
Excalibre, there is such a thing as "an excluded middle?" You don't have to walk on egg shells, but you don't have to stomp the shit out of them either.
I think I'm very glad I missed all this.
Guys, a piece of advice. An April Fool's prank on a message board is a lot like a fart joke. Some people will like it, others will be offended, and many will think it should never be publicly aired. So before you pull the trigger on something like this, really think it through. The Law of Unintended Consequences says that things will happen which you could never anticipate.
I remember a few years ago when Illiad, drawer of User Friendly, had an April's Fool joke that started about a week before, saying that Microsoft was going to sue him into oblivion. A lot of readers were really upset. Many offered to help with legal expenses or offered their own services as lawyers, others wrote some really nasty letters to Microsoft ... Illiad meant it as a joke, but a lot of people were genuinely upset because they thought it was real. Later, more readers were upset because they felt they'd been made fools of, and not in a way that let them laugh along with the joke.
I know you all meant it in fun, but the timing sucked. The wounds of the breakup from the SDMB are still too fresh.
Really? Do players usually post nonsensical things and then claim to have been drinking often? I got the impression that he was either trying an odd strategy or having a bad reaction IRL to something that day and what happened just now made the second possibility seem more real. I don't appreciate being jerked around like that, even if it is a joke.Quote:
Originally posted by NAF1138
I haven't been following that game, but whatever that was, it wasn't this April Fool's joke. The idea didn't even pop up until Tuesday morning.Quote:
Originally posted by Inner Stickler
How was I supposed to know that?
I have no idea. I don't know why Winston did whatever he did in that thread, either. I was just pointing out that whatever reasoning there was, it wasn't related to this event.Quote:
Originally posted by Inner Stickler
But I didn't know that they weren't related until after the fact. Never mind. Apparently I am tuning to a different radio station than everyone else.
Honestly, the disclosure is very minor. If the response was "yeah, I guess technically I shouldn't be giving that information out. Oops," I probably wouldn't have bothered responding. But to dismiss it entirely is dumb. For me, it doesn't really matter how minor the offense is or how little it actually hurts; part of having integrity is doing the right thing even when it's really small. Q.E.D. and I apparently have different philosophies on this. The way I think about it, this board is more or less run on the honor system, and because of that, I feel like the people in positions that could be abused oughta make an extra effort to assure everyone else that they're not abusing anything, no matter how minor.Quote:
Originally posted by Excalibre
Man I hate living on another continent, I miss it and only got to read the remaining thread.
So, with the caveat that I didn't live it as it was unfolded, I found it pretty fricking funny, with Liberal going all over the top just after he had setting down.
I do think I would have believed it fully, since, as it's been pointed, Winston's behavior in the mafia game was strange, to be mild, and still recent, and we don't know how much of what he said there is true. So it would have been painful to read live.
I understand how it can upset people though.
On a forum of mine, a couple of folks pulled up a prank, creating a dummy account and posting "blog entries" of my life, including stuff very very few people could have known, using an ironic/strange/journalistic tone.
I was made aware of that by a friend calling me at the group I was hanging out, thinking it was a banned poster who had reappeared. So I dropped all activities and came home in a hurry to log to the internet and have a look at my forum. It's only by thinking about who was with me when the events took place that I figured it all out, and then gave a call to those persons to be sure.
But I received messages and a phone call from friends concerned about the whole affair, and being all WTF, since I then played along with the prank.
(The folks who did that ended up revealing themselves months later to be total assholes though, so I don't know if my little story is of much help haha)
I have updated the Mafia thread with the situation.
Q.E.D., don't reveal when users are browsing hidden again.Quote:
Originally posted by Q.E.D.
I am really, really glad I don't work in an office with some of you guys. If pranks don't make you feel frustrated and uncomfortable, they aren't pranks. And if you can't laugh at yourself for those feelings when you later find out you've been pranked... well... don't drink the coffee in my ER tonight. :)
Hmph, I missed all the hooplah. Thank fuck for that. To me, April Fools' jokes are generally a waste of time, and only very rarely funny. That said, lots of people seem to enjoy them, so I say let them.
I was stressed out while it was happening, but when I learned it was a joke, I thought it was great. I literally laughed so hard that my son came up to see what was so funny.
We were punked and the whole team did a good job
[...forwarding to What Exit?... ...removing Excalibre from ignore...]Quote:
Originally posted by Excalibre
This was my reaction too. I like this place for the community but I also come here to be entertained and for a few hours yesterday evening, boy was I ever entertained!Quote:
Originally posted by jali
I wish I could say I figured it out but that would be a lie. It was only at the very end that I said to myself "Hmm, March 31st, could this be...?"
I might be strange but I think it is a good sign that the entire staff, plus one prolific poster who has in the past been accused of attracting drama, were able to get together and demonstrate what could happen when people take message board drama a little too seriously.
It was like a dress rehearsal of what NOT to do, and the fact that everyone involved was down with it actually makes me feel more hopeful about this place going forward, not less.
It honestly would have been funnier if it had gone down as planned.
The original April Fool idea, as Winston explained it to me, was for him to jump into the McNutty thread about me in Jibba Jabba and begin attacking me as part of a meltdown. I was supposed to create drama as a distraction while the mods divided into factions and fought among one another. Winston was good enough to ask my permission, so if I had said no, it would not have happened. But I thought it was a great idea.
And then, suddenly, a majority of the mods who were supposed to participate went offline. No one realized this until the shit had fit the fan, and Leander had already fueled the snark board. So here we were with something like two mods available for a plan that had counted on half a dozen.
Unfortunately, one of the two mods was that great facilitator and peacemaker, What Exit? The other was The Flame. There was no way these two were going to break apart and start slinging insults at each other. They kept waiting for more mods to arrive. And inexplicably, no one had thought to inform QED.
But meanwhile, Winston and I were moving full speed ahead. I was sparring with Leander, at first doing Lib-2006 with him, and then moving into a bizarre sort of new wave psycho babble conversation that seemed to flip his lid. He brought up my slow death for the umpteenth time, but this time I responded with something like, "I hear you saying that you want to be my lover," or some such.
The only reason I picked up on Leander while Winston attacked me was to make things seem more ordinary. The tiff I'd had with Winston (which we've both put behind us) was not nearly as well known as the years of enmity that Leander has had for me (and frankly for all of us in general as his nonny personality on the snark board).
Well, as that all unfolded, Winston was doing his best to be batshit insane. At this point, there was supposed to be a mod fight, splitting into factions — those who defended me aganist Winston's attacks and those who took his side. I was supposed to dwindle to nothing as the mods took over — kind of like a human fading away as the gods of Olympus begin to wage war.
Failure to inform QED was an obvious fatal flaw, as was the inexplicable abandonment by several mods. I say "inexplicable", but it could have been the scheduling, which called for the McNutty thread to be closed at 7:00 and things were busting out about an hour early. It was a mistake in the strategy, really. Once shits starts on a message board, it moves very quickly.
Anyway, if it hadn't been for Chimera, Sarahfeena, Jali, and so many others in the McNutty thread, I probably wouldn't have participated. But it gave me a very timely opportunity to put into practice the advice I was being given. For the first time, I recognized what I was "doing wrong" even as I was doing it, like engaging Leander and demanding attention. That was a huge step for me, and will help me in the future.
I do believe things would have been a lot funnier had they gone as planned. But a mistake here and an oops there, and soon most people knew. The only consolation, I suppose, is that the snarkers didn't know until the very end that I had been involved. They thought I was really having a meltdown, and were trying to speculate on how I would react when it was over.
So if we did nothing other than fool them, it wasn't a total loss.
Oh, well. Now you guys will know and be able to plan better for next year! :lol:
Not picking on you, BS, but here is part of the problem. Many people don't like feeling frustrated and uncomfortable. That's why they don't like pranks. That doesn't make them stuffy old librarians (not the fuckable kind as Exy pointed out). That just makes them people who don't like to be pranked.Quote:
Originally posted by Boozahol Squid, P.I.
Is that so hard to respect?
Lib: I also think the joke would have been far better recieved if it had actually occured on April Fool's Day.
I hate office pranks. I hate being made to feel frustrated and uncomfortable. I don't like watching other people put in that position. I have little understanding and no appreciation for that sort of prank.Quote:
Originally posted by NinetyWt
But this? No-one was singled out, it was all text on a message board, and no matter how much I squint I just can't see the harm anywhere.
Christ on a rocket, I wish this board can become a place where this sort of thing can be done occasionally and afterwards everyone will just laugh it off and go on with their lives.
No beatings, no notes, no members singled out. It was for me as much as anyone else. In fact it was for the staff more than the general membership if you'll believe me.Quote:
Originally posted by Glazer
Sorry if I was miscommunicating there, I was talking about real-life pranks.Quote:
Originally posted by Harlequin
This, I think, was different (from real-life pranks). It still managed to upset some people's sense of order.
When Winston made the first 'fool' posts in McNutty's thread, I was the only other mod online. At first I hung back, thinking "this isn't going to work with only 2 of us - I hope some others come online soon". All the while people were responding to Winston's posts and filing 'report post's.Quote:
Originally posted by Liberal
The idea as Liberal describes was that the mods would divide into two factions: What Exit?'s and Winston's. With only 3 around it was inevitable that there'd be two on one side and one on the other.
Giggles. This was an amazing piece of April foolin', too bad some parts of it didn't come together, but complicated plans are, well, complicated.
I'm sorry not everyone thought it was funny, but, myself, I really like to be on a message board that's about having fun, instead of being on a mission from God.
It really was suppose to, things kicked off too soon. 7pm EST was April 1st GMT. That was part of the joke.Quote:
Originally posted by NinetyWt
I at least really am sorry we lost Oakminster over this. A few other might think he is too thin skinned but I liked having him around. He added to the message board and I still hope he is better at pranking then I am and will return to let me know I have been whooshed again.
That's what I mean. I hate real-life pranks and I can't see how this has any but the most shallow similarity with them.Quote:
Originally posted by NinetyWt
You're absolutely right. But I was singled out, and it was an honor I must say. It's the first time anywhere that I've really felt like an integral part of any online community. I owe great thanks to Winston especially, who contacted me and asked me if I'd like to play along. You can't imagine how therapeutic it was for me on so many levels.Quote:
Originally posted by Harlequin
Oh, okay, 'scuse me. More coffee for me, then.Quote:
Originally posted by Harlequin
See? That's why your being one of only two mods available for faction forming would never have worked. You're the facilitator, not the faction maker. And under 99% of circumstances, that's a wonderful thing. :)Quote:
Originally posted by What Exit?
Next year just make hatesfreedom an admin.
See, there you go. This is my fault. It was suggested to make him a moderator for the day and I thought that was too dangerous and offered up the rudiments of the idea we went with.Quote:
Originally posted by Cluricaun
Well I thought it was a good joke. I know people don't like getting....gotten, but that's part of a successful joke. It's not much of one if nobody falls for it.
Actually, I think I can. Good for you.Quote:
Originally posted by Liberal
It's not hard to respect, most days of the year. But on April Fool's Day (or the hours leading up to it, depending on time zone), it's a cherished tradition. I mean, I hate giving candy to those obnoxious little porkers who live down the street and run through my rose bushes all the time, but I shell out on Halloween every year without complaint, don't I?Quote:
Originally posted by NinetyWt
How can you call it an April Fool's joke if it doesn't happen on April 1st? That part makes no sense at all.
ETA: But now that I see that it is, I would hate to be a stick in the mud. I think I'll try and participate in the fun also! Hence my new sig.
I dunno, we don't get so many trick-or-treaters out where I live. :)Quote:
Originally posted by Boozahol Squid, P.I.
Some people won't make a fuss about pranks, but when you think they're 'laughing it off', in reality they're grudgingly putting up with it. That's where the rub comes in about 'having fun' ... not everyone has the same idea of what 'fun' is.
Of course, this board will come to have a certain 'flavor', and if folks find that they don't enjoy that, then that's part of it - part of the 'growing pains' of a social site.
That depends where in the world you are. It was April 1 in the East, and almost April 1 in the UK & Europe when the joke began.Quote:
Originally posted by Truth and Beauty
I'm getting into the spirit of it now. This is fun!
How many board posters do you have in The East? But duly noted. I plan on April fooling till the last second of April 1st anywhere in the world!Quote:
Originally posted by TheFlame
Guys, this troll (that's what it was, really) could have been so much better. Please, plan better next time. You have 364 days left.
Grading, on a scale of 1 to 10:
Originality: 1
Execution: 1
Humor Factor: 1
Cleverness: 2
Effect: 6
"...I'm offended as a comedian!" -- Jerry Seinfeld
Ok, I missed this whole thing, and apparently the threads involved have been deleted permanently. So WTF happened? Liberal gave a pretty good summary, but it seems like there was more, like mods being sent to Room 101 and a splinter board? Can someone sum this up for me?
Lib, I'm glad to hear that this was a positive experience for you.
That's why I think this prank is great, because it involved you two, precisely, at that time. It feels like community building to me.Quote:
Originally posted by Liberal
I don't know.
This just didn't strike me as funny, and I feel like a wet blanket saying that.
I want very badly for this message board to be a success, and seeing all this in-fighting (when it was a "joke"), just made me worry a lot.
Kudos to all for having a sense of humor, but it kind of freaked me out.
Yeah, it's not at all like we're expected to entrust our privacy to the attitude of a guy who posted his own freakin' password hash on the SDMB once... You wagered that it was absolutely impossible to reconstruct your login data. You were cocksure that it was perfectly harmless to disclose this type of information.Quote:
Originally posted by Q.E.D.
You still owe me 100 bucks, by the way.
No matter how seemingly insignificant our hidden online status is to you, it's hidden. It's supposed to be our decision to disclose it to the public, not yours. I fully understand that sometimes, authorities can screw up and unintentionally do stupid things. If they learn from it, and things improve. However,
This.Quote:
Originally posted by McNutty
If there's one thing I'm totally fed up with, it's giving power to authorities who keep insisting that there's "nothing whatsoever to worry about".