My mistake. As I said, I hadn't read the post yet. I just updated quickly here. He mentioned in his post that it wasn't him who'd closed the thread, I just hadn't got there yet.


I think that this is one potentially reasonable method of dealing with trolls. There are many arguments that could be made as to whether or not it's truly the best method. But I think that discussion is a red herring more than anything else.


I think that judging people by motivation is extremely difficult. To state definitively that someone's motivation is the same from one moment to the other is a skill beyond me, so it seems a poor way to make decisions.

As to why a watered down post should be allowed to stay: Sometimes trolls have genuine grievances. They may be upset enough that the manner in which they originally express these grievances is inappropriate. In those cases, I think it's fair to delete such posts. However, if they then express those same grievances in a manner which is acceptable by community standards, I think that they deserve to be addressed.

To do otherwise indicates that the individual, rather than the inappropriate behaviour, is being targeted.

And on the issue of why it should be allowed at the point where *I* think the decorum is "just right": I don't know for a fact that it should be. But I can't express any opinion other than my own. I also feel that most people would agree that I'm a reasonable person, therefore the level of decorum that I believe is "just right" is probably in a very similar range to that of other reasonable people.

That strikes me as being exactly what BiffBuff did. He may not have been correct, but nothing he did in the last thread of his to be closed struck me as any of those three things. As I stated before, I don't think that the fact that he had previously tried to address the issue in an inappropriate manner is cause to refuse to address it when he meets the level of decorum expected on these forums.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

These things happen in war, even to the best alliances. Sometimes kills just don't work out. We all have bad days, and a single instance like this doesn't mean much about the alliance as a whole.

I don't understand why people come to AT to mock alliances about stupid things like this. It's petty and just makes you look like you haven't got a clue.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Yeah, it's pretty unfortunate.

There really was nothing in that specific thread which justified its being closed. And since the admins offered no explanation, I can't help but wonder at the veracity of the claims being made within it.

Had a reasonable explanation been offered, I feel that I would have happily given the game admins the benefit of the doubt. Had the thread been left open, I feel that such a magnanimous gesture would have been proof that there was no truth to the claims.

Unfortunately, as things lie, I can't help but feel sympathetic towards the claims BiffBuff was making.

*Edit*
I spoke too soon. Pang posted an explanation right after I posted this. I guess he closed the thread then wrote it. I haven't read it yet, but it is now there.

*Edit 2*
I've now read Pang's response, and am happy to give the admins the benefit of the doubt. It was much appreciated. (though I still don't see why the thread actually needed to be closed... a far more effective response would probably be to leave it open and let the community police itself. We won't let idiotic admin bashing stand for too long).

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I didn't see the other threads, so I can't comment on whether or not they should have been deleted.

However, I see nothing objectionable or inappropriate in this thread. I feel that the issues raised here are valid and that the inquiry is being made in a respectful enough manner that there's no reason to either ignore it or to not permit it.

I shall watch this thread with interest.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

So, you're asking if anyone has killed more efficiently than you, except for people who've made the choice to kill countries in a manner that's more efficient than yours?

Just so I'm clear.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

It doesn't, but that's not what I said. Pay attention to tenses. I even changed the punctuation to make my meaning clearer -- though grammatically my original post only had one possible correct interpretation as well.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Everyone on the forums, except for 2 or 3 people, seemed to be the most ardent of atheists.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

When did this game become so religious? I remember back in the day when there were great debates on the subject, but everyone on the forums except for 2 or 3 people seemed to be the most ardent of atheists.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

What makes you say that? I mean, apart from the fact that the study appears to be limited to Rockville, MD and took place in 1995, that is.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Yes, they succeed in driving without arrest. However, that's very different from your suggestion that "drunk drivers succeed in passing the checkpoints 87 out of 88 times". It's not like such checkpoints are always on the road... or in enough places when they are on the road that drivers will inevitably pass them.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

... they don't. That's not what was said.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Glad to have a new element in the game. Your site's colour scheme is pretty painful though.

Feels like a bad angelfire site from the 90s.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

... that might be one of the most worthless statements I've ever read.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I'm not being quite as cynical as you all seem to think... I'm not saying Americans will elect her simply because she was shot. However, I do think it's an event that highlights her and gives her a huge advantage politically.

In the same way that Rudolph Giuliani became a star in the Republican Party thanks to 9/11, she'll become a star because of this. Except, unlike Giuliani, she doesn't seem like a complete tool.

Look at it this way:

- She has 4 full years in Congress, and has at least another 4 before the earliest point at which she'd be likely to announce her candidacy.
- Her committee assignments include Armed Services and Foreign Affairs as well as the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
- She's a moderate democrat who's managed to hold a seat in a very conservative district.
- She's extremely popular in her home state of Arizona (11 electoral votes) where she was first elected to office in 2001.

Now, up until now she's done very little in Congress that I can see. But now she's a star. Any position she takes will be reported ad nauseum by the media -- and criticism of those positions will always be muted. She's got three substantive committee positions to weigh in on issues from, and will be asked to co-sponsor all kinds of bills by other members in order to bring more media attention to them.

Beyond that, she's going to be the first person news agencies try to get on when they need a democratic politician for panel discussions. Also, because she's so far right in what is (still) a very liberal democratic party -- she's going to be the person that Conservatives highlight as the "voice of reason" that other Democrats should take their lead from.

Again, this is assuming that she makes a full recovery. But she has 4 years to pile up legislative achievements -- and that won't exactly he hard with how many people will be begging her to endorse their bills. I'm willing to wager that she'll be credited with "hammering through" every major bill and "brokering" every major compromise that takes place in Congress over the next four years.

Both sides of the media will love her. All she has to do is avoid appearing as radical as Giuliani... who almost got elected despite being a complete nut job.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

*Rolls eyes*

Obama was a professional politician holding public office for 11 years before becoming President, and had been a University Professor and practicing civil rights attorney for 5 years before that (both of which he continued doing for several years after getting elected).

If by "little to no resume", you mean he hadn't spent his whole life with no real responsibility working in the Federal Congress, you're absolutely right. But that's a bullfluff definition.

There's plenty of things you can criticize Obama for... God knows I'm not his biggest fan... but to say he had no resume just shows your ignorance.


*Edit*
(And no, Pang, I don't... I have strong doubts that Palin could beat Obama. Their responses to Giffords' shooting definitively demonstrated how juvenile Palin will always appear when contrasted directly to Obama. That's hard to over come. I can't think of any other woman in the Republican party likely to mount a serious campaign for the nomination)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Anyone else feel like Giffords may, if she makes a full recovery, run for president in 2016?

I know, it's a long way off... but I get the feeling she may indeed become America's first woman president.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Oh, I suppose there is one difference. Internet trolls, you can usually ignore. They don't have enough of an ability to choose the circumstance in which they attack you.

These people show up at places where their targets are most vulnerable. The funerals of their loved ones. There's no way we can expect people to ignore them under those circumstances... and therefore no effective defence -- as anything we do in response will simply feed their "we made them do it" mentality and make them feel even more powerful.

So, while I have little sympathy for most victims of internet trolling, I have nothing but sympathy for those targeted by this group.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Dragonlance, they're not trying to achieve anything. They're literally exactly the same as the worst kind of internet troll. Hell, I think the term "troll" applies perfectly to what they do.

The entire appeal behind trolling is that it makes one feel powerful. Basically, if you can predict another person's response, you can make the claim (either to yourself or to someone else) that you "want" the person to react in the manner you expect them to. Then, when you provoke them, and they react in the manner you predicted, you suddenly have the feeling of having caused that to happen. In other words, you've taken "control" of their life -- and the more powerful that reaction, the more powerful the troll feels.

To take control of the life of another individual is the ultimate form of power.

What they fail to realize, however, is that you can't actually control something unless you can make them do whatever you want. If I can make a person sing, do gymnastics, be happy, be sad... and anything else I can think of -- that's when I actually have control. As soon as you realize that you want them to do something and can't make them, you're robbed of that feeling.

This is why it's so convenient for this group to be so ideologically pure. They can delude themselves into thinking that the reaction they're getting is the only one they could want. As a result, they never have to face the deflating fact that they can't actually make the person do anything else and, therefore, don't actually control that person.

In the case of internet trolls, this same phenomenon will usually take the form of "I'm helping him see the truth" or some such bullfluff.

There's no goal, they just want to feel powerful. But they have to lie to themselves to get that feeling, which ultimately only proves how powerless they are.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

1. We don't like FFA policies. (as dibs said)
2. We would have to fight wars to bring in reasonable policies. (as Lefty said)
3. War on FFA is exhausting. (as Helmet said)
4. We're old and tired. (my contribution to this thread)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

If it's just the bulbs (and not some electrical problem), you just replace the bulbs like you do when they burn out at home.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

If some alliance hadn't been approaching 100 members, this post wouldn't have been made. Let's not pretend SoF is special in that regard.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Yes, I can... that assertion really isn't there. The only assertion made in the original post is that "too big" exists... it then asks for opinions on defining it.

I thought that the language Tertius chose to use was markedly neutral.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Chevs, back off a bit man. Tertius' post wasn't condemning SoF. He was asking for opinions on a subject that's significant to the game as a whole.

This is a forum, we discuss issues here. You can call it babbling if you like, but it's why we're here. If you don't want to read it, go somewhere else.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

*Rolls eyes*

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Nuke, Rage was essentially a spam tag by the time it reached 300 members. At 500, no one was even pretending it was a secret.

They did some impressive things in those times, but we all know if three well organized 100 member alliances had FSed Rage together, Rage wouldn't have had a prayer even with a 200 member advantage.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Those are moot points.

Whether or not Alan Gribben is correct in his view of Twain is of no relevance to the matter of whether his motivations are "liberal".

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Internally, 100 members does not strike me as being a major issue. There were periods of time in Earth 2025 when we had 15 or more 100+ member alliances... most of whom were stable.

Beyond the 130-150 member mark, things seemed to become more difficult... as the number of alliances who managed to stay in that range for multiple consecutive resets was always limited. It seems like well organized alliances usually peaked at around 200 members. IX, UCN, MD, SOF, SOL, TIE... all of them were around 200 members when they were the dominant force on the server.

Any alliances larger than that were usually spam tags. Sometimes they were tags like "Triadz" or "Recycle Used Condoms", which everyone knew were created as spam tags -- other times it was alliances like Rage or Arrow, who everyone was impressed by until a leaner, better organized alliance revealed them to be a straw man.

In any case, I think SoF has a long way to go before it runs into insurmountable internal problems.

Externally, on the other hand, I don't know. Having more than 1/10 the server in a single tag seems... unfortunate. I suspect that such a ratio is not really sustainable in the long-term.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Dibs, I go to great effort not to "confound" people. On the contrary, I am careful to be extremely precise in what I say so that the point I am making is clear.

I am stating that "change" is not exclusively a liberal trait. In modern American society, you cannot assume that an idea comes from a liberal simply because it advocates "change" of one sort or another. That is certainly true when it comes to efforts to subvert racist sentiment. Those tend to find support across the political spectrum.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Why? Political correctness isn't something that belongs to any specific political affiliation. There is literally nothing in that article which indicates where the guy sits politically.

As odd as it seems, it looks to me like you're giving into the stereotype that all conservatives are racists... therefore anyone who takes a stand against what they view as racism must be the opposite of a conservative... a liberal.

That's bullfluff, though. And until you can explain to me how and why thinking of the word "fluff" as objectionable is a liberal trait, I'm going to keep calling bullfluff on the connection you've tried to draw between liberals in general and this very specific effort.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I don't actually see what makes you think that the publisher is a liberal Dibs. To me it seems like, because you're a conservative and happen to disagree with him -- you've made the assumption that he must be a liberal.

That's stupid... but I can't see any other reason why you'd be blaming liberals for this.

Not everything in the world is a right-left issue... I think that this is one of those cases.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Hey Noto, nice to see you mate.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I've got enough loot for the time being, but I do need to rescue the princess from the stables behind the castle. I know it's a detour, but could we do that on the way?

If you help me, I can confuse "Kessie, Queen of the Loot" in the castle with my "Guy with no clue" ability and let you take the drops.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I suspect that they would have followed up on them eventually. They must get a huge number of e-mails when something like this takes place, and I doubt that it's usually the most productive course of investigation. The resources they put into following up on e-mail leads like that are probably pretty limited.

If they get a hundred e-mails -- and only put a couple investigators on them, it's going to take a couple days to get through them all.

I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I appreciate rational discourse. Thanks trumper :)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Pang spoke to the FBI yesterday. I believe he gave them what we have and everything is sorted out as far as we're concerned with them.

As for the WSJ getting here before the FBI, let's remember that they have different priorities. If the WSJ doesn't get the information quickly, it may no longer be relevant enough to print or it may have been printed by someone else. There's a strong financial incentive there.

In the case of the FBI, however, time is not crucial. Loughner is in prison and will stay there. The only relevance that this information has in the near future is in court -- and that's long enough away that the FBI can take their time to investigate thoroughly.

Speed and thoroughness are not the same thing. My confidence in the FBI is certainly not lowered by the fact that the WSJ got here first.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I wish none of us needed to be told this.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I feel comfortable making this assertion now, so yes, I am sure that I don't want to wait.


I feel a bit like a media whore asking this, but you're the second person to tell me I've been quoted. Can I ask where? I haven't seen it. :)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Is that your way of saying that I'm long-winded? :)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I just read through the "Liberals responsible for Giffords murder" and the "Sarah Palin is a terrorist organizer" threads and thought that we ought to have at least one thread on this forum that was created to put the blame for the Arizona shooting squarely where it belongs:

Jared Lee Loughner is to blame for the shootings in Arizona. No one else.

I am not inclined to debate this with anyone, and (uncharacteristically for me) am not going to provide my long-winded reasoning behind the statement. It's the truth, and is self-evident. I'm embarrassed for those who've tried to put the blame anywhere else.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Really?

I remember being 14 and people commenting that I must be in my 20s... but why 45?

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I've never used Earth on a resume, or launched a project with real world benefits because of something that's happened here. However, I do feel like my participation in this community has had a strong impact on who I am.

I know for a fact that I'm a long way from the top in terms of hours invested in this game, however, I believe I'm the player who's spent the largest part of his life as a member of this community. That is to say, I started playing this game 14 years ago (as of next month) and I'm currently 22 years old. I'll let you do the math, but that's a huge portion of my life.

For all that time, within this community, I've wanted to be taken seriously. I always had my view-points (right or wrong) and wanted to be judged based on the merits of those views rather than my age. As a result of that, I learned to write in a manner which didn't reveal my age. Once I managed that, I stopped being treated with kids gloves by those I disagreed with and had to learn how to form a strong argument and defend it.

My style of writing, and then my manner of speaking were impacted by those experiences. How I look at things and analyse situations was determined largely by my interactions within this game.

That isn't to say that Earth was the only influence on me in those ways. There certainly were many others -- however, this game was a consistent one. If knowledge and skills that I learned elsewhere were of use to me within this game, I tended to hold onto them while many other things were left by the wayside.

The truth is that I can't really identify precisely what differences this game has made in my life. Obviously, I am the man I am and have no way of knowing what I'd be like if I'd never played this game at all. Maybe the changes would be big, maybe small. But I don't think that it's a coincidence that the things at which I excel are directly linked to skills relevant to this game.

At the very least, this place has been a sounding board for me where I could test my knowledge and skills in an environment that I knew wasn't taking it easy on me. For that, I'm thankful to have played this game.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Their facts are a little shallow, but I don't really blame them for that. There's no real reason why they need to report on what this game is, and so they're not going to take too much time learning everything.

To me, that article looks like a nod to this community. It would be very easy for an outsider to assume that the posts Loughner made on our forums are the norm here. That article waylays that assumption by reporting accurately on the response we've had since realizing that he was a member of our community.

Personally, I'm thankful that they've taken the time to do it and so won't begrudge them the minor factual errors on other counts.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

No one is anymore... the WSJ got the posts, anything else we see will almost certainly be rehashed based on their article. And since they can't just copy and paste what's already written, they'll rewrite it based on their understanding of the WSJ article. Imperfect copies of imperfect copies. More mistakes will continue to creep in.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

My assumption is that it's a circumstance that hasn't been considered and the ally loses MU in both attacking and defending the target.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

For the most part guys, I think we can relax about what might be read. There's nothing within our community that's worse than the rants and ramblings that are common in the comments of youtube or news sites. And, frankly, coherent and reasoned discourse is far more common here than in either of those other venues.

There's no reason to go out of our way to give the media access to private alliance sites... but I don't think we really have much to fear even if the media were to somehow access every forum related to this game.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I find this unfortunate, but hardly unexpected. I also think that the article deals with our community reasonably fairly. The quotes they chose from the forum here represent the overall feeling we have (rather than the outliers) and they haven't gone out of their way to demonize games in general or our community.

He was here. He posted his thoughts and most of our responses were reasonable to the situation. I don't know if those facts will hold as this spreads through other media... but the WSJ did a good job with that article. It's the truth, without excessive spin.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

You understood me perfectly.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.