This whole Endeavor has gotten decidedly less engaging and more boring. There’s no incentive to be active within the thread so it’s basically just turned into people checking in twice an hour and due to the way the rules are structured all they really need to do is show up 2 minutes before the hour and stay until 2 minutes after the hour and post twice and they’re done for a whole hour. I originally thought this was going to be a lot more social and we’d all be hanging out
@jbartus that was last night and early this morning, when there was no reason to be elsewhere doing shit.
I’m planning on getting out for a bike ride (I’d like to get in at least 10 if not 20 miles today, so as to get in at least 35 miles this week, and it is supposed to rain later).
@baqui63 me too I very rarely eat breakfast so I splurged a little bit it’s probably been at minimum 3 to 4 months. Things don’t hurt you as long as you do them in moderation
@jbartus I have breakfast every morning… I take high dose niacin (1 gram, twice a day) and if I don’t take it with at least some protein I suffer from flushing (think like a really really bad sunburn all over your body, where it hurts to even move (tho without the cancer risk) or what women complain about when they say hot flashes (but possibly worse). A protein shake with 12-15 grams of protein is all I need, but skipping the shake is not worth the pain.
well folks. went to the store and forgot my phone at home. on the plus side though, did find the kid a bike helmet with dragons on it. good luck to the remaining competitors!
@baqui63 i had it all planned out. i’d get there, wait a couple minutes, make a post, run in with the kid and get a helmet and then haul ass back home. got there, realized i didn’t have my phone so just wandered around the store for a bit instead. also hit trader joe’s while i was over there. they no longer sell the frozen lamb koftas i really like.
@baqui63 not sure why i am still reading this thread and posting replies, but i am
my comment was in response to what i interpreted from your response “tho the ones above should also qualify” to resume the “replies count the same as posts”, maybe i mis-read you
it was not in response to the post you had made.
i’m sure this is thrilling news at this point in the game
Not sure what I meant with the “replies above should also count” (at the time I wrote that, I’d already decided I was out, so it really didn’t matter).
ok, am I still in this or not? I need to know, because if I’m not I’ll stop playing.
re: Abortion rights: I am pro-choice for just about the same reasons that I am pro-gun and pro-free speech, etc. Basically, it is none of my business what someone else chooses to do as long as their actions are legal and do not hurt me and mine. While I personally would probably choose not to have an abortion, there are no possible circumstances that I can envision where it would be my choice to make. Enough said. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to their opinion, but shouldn’t waste anyone’s time trying to change mine; let’s just agree to disagree.
Alternate universes are a much more interesting topic and much more worthy of discussion. For them, I’ve not really made up my mind at all.
@DMlivezey I believe I spoke too harshly; for this I apologize. I am certainly interested in understanding opposing positions.
Thus, I’m not uninterested in your views and why you have them, but I’m tired of pointless arguments, where people who don’t understand a given position argue against it rather than arguing for the opposing position. In short, explaining why you think you are right is fine but explaining why you think I am wrong is likely questionable at best. In my experience, it is very rare to find someone who is able to argue their position without showing disrespect for opposing positions (I consciously try to avoid this and fail more often than I feel is good).
I guess I am just tired of people that are unwilling to accept that they might be wrong, especially when given complicated issues like these.
@baqui63 it seems you’re assuming i have an opposing position to yours, and perhaps also assuming i would attack your position in presenting mine
i only posted this because, along with politics and religion, the topic is another third rail in our culture and @jbartus was feeling bored, so this could have taken care of that problem, but it was a tongue in cheek suggestion for a topic
i’ll send you an email outside of the forum, since this topic is admittedly, in the Meh. forum world, considered
@jbartus It is a 16" oscillating stand fan (similar to this, but Honeywell and no remote and from 2006).
This season, the fan started making groaning noises at the extreme ends of its oscillation, quite loud on one side.
I basically disassembled it completely, cleaning out all the dust and dirt and redistributing the existing grease inside the crankcase (there was enough, just not where it needed to be). I also cleaned up a few burrs and rough edges. The fan’s oscillations are now silent (i.e. same noise whether oscillating or not).
I do have a 52" ceiling fan that I last used two or three apartments ago. I really should put it up in either my bedroom or my my living room. I wonder if either location has a properly installed/braced box for a fan (saving me the need to install one).
@baqui63 I should do that with my pedestal fan, it’s pretty noisy too. I must admit when it’s come to fans I usually run them for a few years, get fed up with them, and replace them.
So apparently I won, hooray for being the biggest loser. ‘But wait, you won!’ you might say, and you’d be correct, but what did I win? I won a contest whose only requirement for victory was to have no life to the point that you could best your opponents in being present on an online forum. If that’s not being a loser I don’t know what is. So yeah, I’m a loser and I will wear my crown with… I don’t know if it’s pride but it’s sure as hell something. Perhaps shame.
Either way, thanks for organizing this ah… shindig @DMlivezey whose name I misspelled for most of the contest. I’d also like to thank my opponents: @baqui63, who kept playing even once they’d eliminated themself; @carl669, who forgot his phone or I’m sure he’d have made things interesting; @narfcake, who probably slept better than all of us; @compunaut, who just kind of gave up; and of course @chops and @ignorant, our non-starters who got me excited that there’d be more people to talk to before fading back into the mist.
It was fun last night guys, I hope everybody else kind of enjoyed their Friday night, I did actually really enjoy bantering about rule technicalities and discussing the merits of canned foods and the like, but boy was it lousy on day two. Let’s not do it again, or at least if we do do it again let’s find a way to make it engaging and stimulating so people want to be here hanging out. The first thing I can think of there is to eliminate, with malice, the loophole with time blocks. I dunno how we do it, we can brainstorm somehow, but the ability to basically disappear for 55 minutes without consequence really killed it IMHO.
I also thought the rule creation thing was fun, maybe we could make part of the contest require making new rules every hour or something that everybody has to abide by. Fun ones like having to post with a certain theme or with a certain meme or gif type at least once every hour or something. Set it up so that we can collectively eliminate rules after they’ve existed for at least an hour but have some kind of limit on it like two rule eliminations total throughout the entire 24 hour period to discourage casual rule elimination. We could also have some sort of arbitrator to ensure that the new rules are suitably zany and fun, maybe give that role to vox populi to try to encourage non-participants to come and hang out and join in on the fun of it.
I dunno, those are some ideas, maybe good ones, maybe not, but they’re the ones I have. Thanks for listening to me give this awful meandering speech with your eyes. See you next time!
TL;DR Woo, I won. Thanks peeps. Let’s not do this again or if we do find ways to make it more fun.
@jbartus my previos post just disappeared, so here goes again.
congrats, but we both know who the real hold out was , the only one who could edit the score sheet
you have some great ideas there to build on our successes, and in the end - abject failure, so go for it
one of the ‘lessons learned’ (as we say in corporate aMeh.rica) for me was to be sure to spread the moderation/score keeping around, so all can enjoy ‘that fun’, and get @baqui63 and others interested to write that script
there was some interest in an event July 4 weekend while organizing this traveshamockery
@DMlivezey we should look at party games and figure out how to integrate some of the things that make it fun. The rule creation idea is kind of stolen from party games I can’t think of with some adaptations to suit our game format.
@jbartus Did I just give up? Or did I play as long as I could? Maybe they’re the same thing - BUT AT LEAST I PLAYED ALONG at least for a little while. I think we need more participants (at least at the beginning); then topics would be more wide-ranging
/giphy AT LEAST I PLAYED ALONG
@compunaut that wasn’t really a criticism! But you did kind of just choose to lose, you didn’t even file your nap chit or anything. No offense was meant!
Also, you were part of the fun group Friday night, nothing to apologize for!
I note it ended for me as I predicted (sleep was not the issue, but rather simply forgetting to play).
I believe the boredom (lack of activity, etc.) was a direct result of the requirement that posts be made during arbitrary time blocks. If instead, the rule had been “must post or reply within X minutes of your last post or reply” (as I and others believed it to be initially) we would not have had the bunching up of replies at the top or bottom of the hour.
I do grant that the moderator’s job (@dmlivezey, @jbartus, etc.) was made easier by divvying the time into these arbitrary 30 minute blocks and also by not counting replies, as well as the unnatural requirement of manually placing a timestamp at the top of a post (by the time I write and proof-read a post, at least a few minutes have passed).
This is why I believe that there are a minimum of two prerequisites to improving the game if there is to be a future run:
1- we need an automated way to parse the entire topic and generate a list of usernames and timestamps, perhaps also with a character count.
2- the maximum time between posts needs to be smaller, perhaps as little as 10 minutes.
3- no arbitrary time blocks. Time limits are based on the time of a previous activity, not the clock.
There are other things I was going to say, but cannot recall atm. If I reread the above, I may think of them again.
@baqui63 (Yes, that’s actually three prerequisites.)
Another suggestion, would be to allow each player to extend their time limit in some way for one or two posts (a “brief nap”) but there needs to be a cost to using this, perhaps something like the score-script also gives some other randomly chosen (by the script) player double the extension.
Or perhaps to have the script pick a random limit every third or fourth post, varying say from 10 to 20 minutes.
@baqui63 I wasn’t even really a moderator, it was kind of like ‘you can be the moderator while I’m asleep’ but I had no access to even edit anything
I agree with all of those points although I wouldn’t mind if it started with a 30m requirement and then ramped up to require more frequent interactions as time goes on as a means of creating eliminations. I do think the arbitrary blocks created most of the eliminations by forgetting because it became less of something you had to worry about, the pressure was off, you just had to show up within the next hour give or take. If that were eliminated I think we could set up a cool system where the requirement might start at 30M but it would decrease over time to mandate more frequent interaction as the time elapsed, creating a new means of elimination as things accelerate and people can’t keep up and driving ongoing conversations rather than arbitrary posting for the sake of posting.
I think a script is probably the most practical means of making this all workable though, otherwise keeping track is like a full time job for someone who isn’t in line for a prize or anything. I will have to give some thought to things but it shouldn’t be too hard to build a script to pull profile activity from a list of participants, limit it to the thread(s) for the event and pull time stamps, then it just needs to be taught to generate a database of timestamps and compare them against the period to create a dynamic scoreboard… lots of work though, I’d want to know there was serious interest before investing that kind of effort.
@baqui63 so the way we played was a 1 hour time between posts, not 30 as originally intended (but not specifically stated), hence wiggle room
it doesn’t matter how it’s counted from that perspective, blocks, or from last post, it’s just how long of a duration you allow, if you allow 10 minutes and the rules get re-negotiated, it 20 minutes, and so on
i hadn’t planned on modifying the rules, but i also didn’t want to come across as a power monger and
/giphy dictator
or ruler of the world, so we started pretty early on friday, modifying the rules because folks were tired and thought a nap chit, as the phrase was ined and developed, was reasonable and the rule changes kept rolling from there, with super majority votes in many cases, maybe all cases, no unilateral decisions (as i tend towards, i fear)
as i probably mis-quoted during the match, or maybe it was after, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, so the fact that you and @jbartus are throwing out ideas to improve the game means to me, it was not a total abject failure, which was a real possibility when i awoke from that bad dream one morning and typed out that first post
july 4 seemed a popular choice of some of those interested who dropped out before we got started, and if you and @jbartus make it less about staying up around the clock, with respect for all timezones, it would be better
oh, and the scripts would be awesome - i offer no skills in writing code but requirements development and test cases perhaps, but hey did you see the post about the Meh. API?
@jbartus, you still owe me your address, or tell me "foxtrot oscar foxtrot foxtrot indigo delta oscar novemeber tango whiskey alpha november tango yankee oscar ukelele romeo charlie romeo alpha papa, inspired by
@DMlivezey using acronyms inside of phonetics is a particularly cruel form of torture. I’ll get you my address just gotta figure out the details thereof.
@jbartus i dont’ think that’s phonetics, but i get your point, let the torture continue
hang on, was it you who keyboard mashed and I was supposed to decipher, or another SCM participant? i was going to get on that but then got distracted by score keeping or drinking, i don’t recall which
just to clarify, you’re saying you don’t know your address? just razzin’ you, i’ve been moving apartments like it was the next clampdown
Yes it was me and you weren’t required to but you joked about having started trying to so I challenged you to complete it with a translation that made sense. It was my fake cat in the QTR 1 thread… best of luck if you want to try it again.
Say, new game idea for next time, Acronym Creation, someone vomits a handful of keypresses and we all try to come up with funny acronyms to fit.
I do know my address but I have to decide which address I want to give you especially given I will not be here a week from now.
@FroodyFrog Ha!, though most still meant less than usual. If it weren’t for the late dinner, I would’ve been out even earlier.
And yes, I did enjoy it, as I was posting even after I was out. My altruism score is down after all the post whoring, though. For that, I’m blaming @dashcloud.
@FroodyFrog My altruism score took a hit (0.3 points!!) from this so that kind of sucks and today was just kind of painful but last night was pretty fun up til ~1 AM. We need to get more organized for the next one though if we want it to be a success. Come up with things to keep people engaged and stop em checking out for big periods at a time. I’d definitely consider doing something like this again but it would need some work to polish off the hard edges.
@jbartus Hmmm… not sure what my altruism score was prior to yesterday at 8PM, but I think mine is higher (is 0.4 now).
You could just go thru the four threads and star every post/reply not yours (unless your’e into autoatralation, in which case, just go for all of them).
I just starred everything in the QTR 4 topic and now my score is 0.5. Wasn’t all that hard (watching BRA v ECU).
@carl669 maybe next time, if we have a next time, we can build out some stuff to keep it interesting. I don’t think any of us were much interested past 16 hours in
@carl669 nobody even made it to 24 hours, maybe if there was another tie the imperial emperor would have tacked on another 24 hours, but the format fell apart once we all decided a nap was in order
i find myself taking every ‘slightly negative’ comment personally, even though we all modified the game together
@DMlivezey don’t take it personally. we really do appreciate you organizing. it’s hard to pull off something like this online anyway. it’s easy to keep people awake for 24 hours if there’s in person interaction. but, online, when there’s other distractions present (like my 3.5 year old), it’s next to impossible.
either way, it was fun and thanks again for score keeping!
@DMlivezey don’t take it personally, it was a first try at it, we learn from this time to do better the next, it’s not a personal failing, just a learning experience. As @carl669 said managing something like this online is hard which is why out of the box thinking is crucial.
@DMlivezey Some time periods have pre-determined themes, others done differently (like: first post gets to choose, Theme Poll/voting, cat shirts, worst woot!, etc)
@jbartus, if you had the choice, hypothetically speaking of course, would you rather have less stuff in original packaging, or more stuff that’s had the packaging stripped to save room?
Are you trying to say I’ve won? Is that it? Everyone else has pulled out?
/giphy easy button
@baqui63 nope, not saying that at all
Nope, not to be, @baqui63 comes in and hits one at the buzzer, to use a non-steel cage match allegory
wait, is that an anllegory, or something else?
@DMlivezey no eye dear.
@DMlivezey analogy
@jbartus yea, that sounds more like it
1405, new thread woo. The final stretch has begun!
It’s down to two now, right?
@narfcake not sure, did carl miss?
@jbartus I didn’t see a post from him in the past half hour.
This whole Endeavor has gotten decidedly less engaging and more boring. There’s no incentive to be active within the thread so it’s basically just turned into people checking in twice an hour and due to the way the rules are structured all they really need to do is show up 2 minutes before the hour and stay until 2 minutes after the hour and post twice and they’re done for a whole hour. I originally thought this was going to be a lot more social and we’d all be hanging out
@jbartus that was last night and early this morning, when there was no reason to be elsewhere doing shit.
I’m planning on getting out for a bike ride (I’d like to get in at least 10 if not 20 miles today, so as to get in at least 35 miles this week, and it is supposed to rain later).
@baqui63
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just calling like it is. Nobody’s posting really so no conversation is going on it’s just… boring.
@jbartus not arguing… it is boring…
@baqui63 you could put an end to it let me win LOL
@jbartus isn’t @dmlivezey still in it as well?
@baqui63 @jbartus Weekends are always slower here. Always.
Of course BOTH of you could just call an end together, which throws a whole new twist into things!
@baqui63 i’m still in, but i’m not eligible for the grand prize anyway, so when it’s down to one and me we have a winner
@jbartus tru dat, i just reached that conclusion earlier, but in fairness, i was the first one up this morning, at least in absolute value time
1431… posting something because I’m supposed to.
This was my brunch:
@jbartus not bad. way more carbs than I normally eat, but to each their own.
@baqui63 me too I very rarely eat breakfast so I splurged a little bit it’s probably been at minimum 3 to 4 months. Things don’t hurt you as long as you do them in moderation
@jbartus I have breakfast every morning… I take high dose niacin (1 gram, twice a day) and if I don’t take it with at least some protein I suffer from flushing (think like a really really bad sunburn all over your body, where it hurts to even move (tho without the cancer risk) or what women complain about when they say hot flashes (but possibly worse). A protein shake with 12-15 grams of protein is all I need, but skipping the shake is not worth the pain.
@jbartus did you cook that up or go out to a local establishment?
looks delicious
@DMlivezey I bought it at an establishment, hence I was mobile.
@jbartus Denny’s?
@duodec yes… not the best option but the nearest one.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
well folks. went to the store and forgot my phone at home. on the plus side though, did find the kid a bike helmet with dragons on it. good luck to the remaining competitors!
@carl669 hmmm… a likely excuse!
Cool about the dragons tho.
@baqui63 i had it all planned out. i’d get there, wait a couple minutes, make a post, run in with the kid and get a helmet and then haul ass back home. got there, realized i didn’t have my phone so just wandered around the store for a bit instead. also hit trader joe’s while i was over there. they no longer sell the frozen lamb koftas i really like.
/giphy disappoint
@carl669 hmmm… never had lamb kofta. The kebab places around here do beef and chicken as both tika and kofta, but lamb is only tika.
Hmmm… if I weren’t making dinner for the gf in about four hours, I’d ride over to one of the places and have that for food.
1453 the troups are getting restless, who will be the first to
/giphy blink 182
1459 And yet another (timestamped) post just under the wire, tho the ones above should also qualify.
Hmmm… washer needs a second spin cycle, and one of the fans needs some attention (been groaning when it oscillates).
@baqui63 nope, that train left the station
real post, or you get your only competitor to vote you back in
socialism at it’s finest, or maybe communism, or am i thinking of consumerism?
@DMlivezey wait… what was wrong with the above post?
It was in the timeframe (posted at 2:59 PM EDT… hover over the “said xx minutes ago” to see this)
@baqui63 not sure why i am still reading this thread and posting replies, but i am
my comment was in response to what i interpreted from your response “tho the ones above should also qualify” to resume the “replies count the same as posts”, maybe i mis-read you
it was not in response to the post you had made.
i’m sure this is thrilling news at this point in the game
/giphy KNOT
@DMlivezey ok thanks.
Not sure what I meant with the “replies above should also count” (at the time I wrote that, I’d already decided I was out, so it really didn’t matter).
/giphy feeling thrilled!
1502 obligatory post to my remaining fiends
so to get past the boredom, what are your views on abortion rights, or multiple universes?
1521 abortion-rights seem like a really controversial topic to be discussing
1531 yea, well Thou said you were wonderful tonight and tomorrow night
Well at least it wouldn’t be boring.
1533 @DMlivezey eh? I don’t follow that at all. Wonderful?
@jbartus yea that was just random nonsense, disregard, I’m not going to check timestamps since I’m on the phone
hmmm… I may have missed the cutoff.
(Got busy with the fan)
@baqui63 that’s a shame
@jbartus yup looks like we have a winner, at least among the non-moderators, since it appears @baqui63 did miss the 1500-1530 slot
i appear to be the longest holdout for posts, since it seems @jbartus may have stopped after clinching the grand prize
so i’ll retain the bragging rights and @jbartus will get the loot
/giphy grand prize
ok, am I still in this or not? I need to know, because if I’m not I’ll stop playing.
re: Abortion rights: I am pro-choice for just about the same reasons that I am pro-gun and pro-free speech, etc. Basically, it is none of my business what someone else chooses to do as long as their actions are legal and do not hurt me and mine. While I personally would probably choose not to have an abortion, there are no possible circumstances that I can envision where it would be my choice to make. Enough said. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to their opinion, but shouldn’t waste anyone’s time trying to change mine; let’s just agree to disagree.
Alternate universes are a much more interesting topic and much more worthy of discussion. For them, I’ve not really made up my mind at all.
@baqui63 no interest in others’ views duly noted
@DMlivezey I believe I spoke too harshly; for this I apologize. I am certainly interested in understanding opposing positions.
Thus, I’m not uninterested in your views and why you have them, but I’m tired of pointless arguments, where people who don’t understand a given position argue against it rather than arguing for the opposing position. In short, explaining why you think you are right is fine but explaining why you think I am wrong is likely questionable at best. In my experience, it is very rare to find someone who is able to argue their position without showing disrespect for opposing positions (I consciously try to avoid this and fail more often than I feel is good).
I guess I am just tired of people that are unwilling to accept that they might be wrong, especially when given complicated issues like these.
@baqui63 it seems you’re assuming i have an opposing position to yours, and perhaps also assuming i would attack your position in presenting mine
i only posted this because, along with politics and religion, the topic is another third rail in our culture and @jbartus was feeling bored, so this could have taken care of that problem, but it was a tongue in cheek suggestion for a topic
i’ll send you an email outside of the forum, since this topic is admittedly, in the Meh. forum world, considered
/giphy taboo
@DMlivezey Ok. I’m looking forward to it.
1602 gotta run into a service, will be back later to provide my input on @baqui63, but not able to now
1629 and yet another post on the basis that I might still be in this tho I think not.
fan is almost done.
@baqui63 hope the fan turned out well
@DMlivezey The fan is now working better and oscillating silently.
@baqui63 I assumed you were working on a ceiling fan. This is an oscillating table-type fan? What did you do to improve it?
@jbartus It is a 16" oscillating stand fan (similar to this, but Honeywell and no remote and from 2006).
This season, the fan started making groaning noises at the extreme ends of its oscillation, quite loud on one side.
I basically disassembled it completely, cleaning out all the dust and dirt and redistributing the existing grease inside the crankcase (there was enough, just not where it needed to be). I also cleaned up a few burrs and rough edges. The fan’s oscillations are now silent (i.e. same noise whether oscillating or not).
I do have a 52" ceiling fan that I last used two or three apartments ago. I really should put it up in either my bedroom or my my living room. I wonder if either location has a properly installed/braced box for a fan (saving me the need to install one).
@baqui63 I should do that with my pedestal fan, it’s pretty noisy too. I must admit when it’s come to fans I usually run them for a few years, get fed up with them, and replace them.
@baqui63 isn’t it a good feeling to take something apart, figure how it works or what is wrong and then put it back together?
1655 not sure if this thing is still going on since I am not adept at phone Meh.
Did I win yet?
@thismyusername
@thismyusername u were so close
1726 checking in again, but I don’t seem to have my screen refreshing, kinda between errands
so, no one made it the entire 24 hours, even with the modified rule set, but @jbartus receives the grand prize shipment
let me know your address by whatever means you wish, and the crap will be on it’s way, my spouse is overjoyed…
thanks to everyone for playing, @baqui63, @carl669, @narfcake, @compunaut and of course @jbartus
1648 So I stopped worrying about this when @baqui63 said they missed so either way we’re done I guess.
Oops thought I posted this hours ago. Apparently never hit Say It
yea, that time stamp did look a little off
@jbartus don’t forget to get me you mailing address
The following is a victory speech
So apparently I won, hooray for being the biggest loser. ‘But wait, you won!’ you might say, and you’d be correct, but what did I win? I won a contest whose only requirement for victory was to have no life to the point that you could best your opponents in being present on an online forum. If that’s not being a loser I don’t know what is. So yeah, I’m a loser and I will wear my crown with… I don’t know if it’s pride but it’s sure as hell something. Perhaps shame.
Either way, thanks for organizing this ah… shindig @DMlivezey whose name I misspelled for most of the contest. I’d also like to thank my opponents: @baqui63, who kept playing even once they’d eliminated themself; @carl669, who forgot his phone or I’m sure he’d have made things interesting; @narfcake, who probably slept better than all of us; @compunaut, who just kind of gave up; and of course @chops and @ignorant, our non-starters who got me excited that there’d be more people to talk to before fading back into the mist.
It was fun last night guys, I hope everybody else kind of enjoyed their Friday night, I did actually really enjoy bantering about rule technicalities and discussing the merits of canned foods and the like, but boy was it lousy on day two. Let’s not do it again, or at least if we do do it again let’s find a way to make it engaging and stimulating so people want to be here hanging out. The first thing I can think of there is to eliminate, with malice, the loophole with time blocks. I dunno how we do it, we can brainstorm somehow, but the ability to basically disappear for 55 minutes without consequence really killed it IMHO.
I also thought the rule creation thing was fun, maybe we could make part of the contest require making new rules every hour or something that everybody has to abide by. Fun ones like having to post with a certain theme or with a certain meme or gif type at least once every hour or something. Set it up so that we can collectively eliminate rules after they’ve existed for at least an hour but have some kind of limit on it like two rule eliminations total throughout the entire 24 hour period to discourage casual rule elimination. We could also have some sort of arbitrator to ensure that the new rules are suitably zany and fun, maybe give that role to vox populi to try to encourage non-participants to come and hang out and join in on the fun of it.
I dunno, those are some ideas, maybe good ones, maybe not, but they’re the ones I have. Thanks for listening to me give this awful meandering speech with your eyes. See you next time!
TL;DR Woo, I won. Thanks peeps. Let’s not do this again or if we do find ways to make it more fun.
@jbartus Congrats! Boston Strong!
And congrats to all the contestants who took part in this crazy death match! Now get some rest.
@jbartus my previos post just disappeared, so here goes again.
congrats, but we both know who the real hold out was
, the only one who could edit the score sheet
you have some great ideas there to build on our successes, and in the end - abject failure, so go for it
one of the ‘lessons learned’ (as we say in corporate aMeh.rica) for me was to be sure to spread the moderation/score keeping around, so all can enjoy ‘that fun’, and get @baqui63 and others interested to write that script
there was some interest in an event July 4 weekend while organizing this traveshamockery
/giphy winner
@DMlivezey we should look at party games and figure out how to integrate some of the things that make it fun. The rule creation idea is kind of stolen from party games I can’t think of with some adaptations to suit our game format.
@jbartus Did I just give up? Or did I play as long as I could? Maybe they’re the same thing - BUT AT LEAST I PLAYED ALONG at least for a little while. I think we need more participants (at least at the beginning); then topics would be more wide-ranging
/giphy AT LEAST I PLAYED ALONG
@compunaut that wasn’t really a criticism! But you did kind of just choose to lose, you didn’t even file your nap chit or anything.
No offense was meant!
Also, you were part of the fun group Friday night, nothing to apologize for!
@dmlivzey, @jbartus, @carl669, @narfcake, @compunaut, @chops and @ignorant…
I note it ended for me as I predicted (sleep was not the issue, but rather simply forgetting to play).
I believe the boredom (lack of activity, etc.) was a direct result of the requirement that posts be made during arbitrary time blocks. If instead, the rule had been “must post or reply within X minutes of your last post or reply” (as I and others believed it to be initially) we would not have had the bunching up of replies at the top or bottom of the hour.
I do grant that the moderator’s job (@dmlivezey, @jbartus, etc.) was made easier by divvying the time into these arbitrary 30 minute blocks and also by not counting replies, as well as the unnatural requirement of manually placing a timestamp at the top of a post (by the time I write and proof-read a post, at least a few minutes have passed).
This is why I believe that there are a minimum of two prerequisites to improving the game if there is to be a future run:
1- we need an automated way to parse the entire topic and generate a list of usernames and timestamps, perhaps also with a character count.
2- the maximum time between posts needs to be smaller, perhaps as little as 10 minutes.
3- no arbitrary time blocks. Time limits are based on the time of a previous activity, not the clock.
There are other things I was going to say, but cannot recall atm. If I reread the above, I may think of them again.
@baqui63 (Yes, that’s actually three prerequisites.)
Another suggestion, would be to allow each player to extend their time limit in some way for one or two posts (a “brief nap”) but there needs to be a cost to using this, perhaps something like the score-script also gives some other randomly chosen (by the script) player double the extension.
Or perhaps to have the script pick a random limit every third or fourth post, varying say from 10 to 20 minutes.
@baqui63 I wasn’t even really a moderator, it was kind of like ‘you can be the moderator while I’m asleep’ but I had no access to even edit anything
I agree with all of those points although I wouldn’t mind if it started with a 30m requirement and then ramped up to require more frequent interactions as time goes on as a means of creating eliminations. I do think the arbitrary blocks created most of the eliminations by forgetting because it became less of something you had to worry about, the pressure was off, you just had to show up within the next hour give or take. If that were eliminated I think we could set up a cool system where the requirement might start at 30M but it would decrease over time to mandate more frequent interaction as the time elapsed, creating a new means of elimination as things accelerate and people can’t keep up and driving ongoing conversations rather than arbitrary posting for the sake of posting.
I think a script is probably the most practical means of making this all workable though, otherwise keeping track is like a full time job for someone who isn’t in line for a prize or anything. I will have to give some thought to things but it shouldn’t be too hard to build a script to pull profile activity from a list of participants, limit it to the thread(s) for the event and pull time stamps, then it just needs to be taught to generate a database of timestamps and compare them against the period to create a dynamic scoreboard… lots of work though, I’d want to know there was serious interest before investing that kind of effort.
@baqui63 so the way we played was a 1 hour time between posts, not 30 as originally intended (but not specifically stated), hence wiggle room
it doesn’t matter how it’s counted from that perspective, blocks, or from last post, it’s just how long of a duration you allow, if you allow 10 minutes and the rules get re-negotiated, it 20 minutes, and so on
i hadn’t planned on modifying the rules, but i also didn’t want to come across as a power monger and
/giphy dictator
or ruler of the world, so we started pretty early on friday, modifying the rules because folks were tired and thought a nap chit, as the phrase was ined and developed, was reasonable and the rule changes kept rolling from there, with super majority votes in many cases, maybe all cases, no unilateral decisions (as i tend towards, i fear)
as i probably mis-quoted during the match, or maybe it was after, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, so the fact that you and @jbartus are throwing out ideas to improve the game means to me, it was not a total abject failure, which was a real possibility when i awoke from that bad dream one morning and typed out that first post
july 4 seemed a popular choice of some of those interested who dropped out before we got started, and if you and @jbartus make it less about staying up around the clock, with respect for all timezones, it would be better
oh, and the scripts would be awesome - i offer no skills in writing code but requirements development and test cases perhaps, but hey did you see the post about the Meh. API?
@jbartus, you still owe me your address, or tell me "foxtrot oscar foxtrot foxtrot indigo delta oscar novemeber tango whiskey alpha november tango yankee oscar ukelele romeo charlie romeo alpha papa, inspired by
/giphy carl 699
@carl699
but you’ll be pleasantly surprised i bet, i found some good ones today
@DMlivezey using acronyms inside of phonetics is a particularly cruel form of torture. I’ll get you my address just gotta figure out the details thereof.
@jbartus i dont’ think that’s phonetics, but i get your point, let the torture continue
hang on, was it you who keyboard mashed and I was supposed to decipher, or another SCM participant? i was going to get on that but then got distracted by score keeping or drinking, i don’t recall which
just to clarify, you’re saying you don’t know your address? just razzin’ you, i’ve been moving apartments like it was the next clampdown
@DMlivezey it is.
NATO Phonetic Alphabet
Yes it was me and you weren’t required to but you joked about having started trying to so I challenged you to complete it with a translation that made sense. It was my fake cat in the QTR 1 thread… best of luck if you want to try it again.
Say, new game idea for next time, Acronym Creation, someone vomits a handful of keypresses and we all try to come up with funny acronyms to fit.
I do know my address but I have to decide which address I want to give you especially given I will not be here a week from now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus it’s cool, it can wait till you return if that’s easier for you, send it to my username at gmail once you figure out what you want to do
Too distracted to read all 4 threads, but it seems to me that @narfcake won, since from what I understand he got the most sleep
Nah, congrats @jbartus
Now comes the most important question: Did y’all enjoy yourselves?
@FroodyFrog Ha!, though most still meant less than usual. If it weren’t for the late dinner, I would’ve been out even earlier.
And yes, I did enjoy it, as I was posting even after I was out. My altruism score is down after all the post whoring, though. For that, I’m blaming @dashcloud.
@FroodyFrog eh.
I certainly didn’t get any less sleep as a result of the game and there was some good conversation prior to the nappage.
@FroodyFrog My altruism score took a hit (0.3 points!!) from this so that kind of sucks and today was just kind of painful but last night was pretty fun up til ~1 AM. We need to get more organized for the next one though if we want it to be a success. Come up with things to keep people engaged and stop em checking out for big periods at a time. I’d definitely consider doing something like this again but it would need some work to polish off the hard edges.
@jbartus Hmmm… not sure what my altruism score was prior to yesterday at 8PM, but I think mine is higher (is 0.4 now).
You could just go thru the four threads and star every post/reply not yours (unless your’e into autoatralation, in which case, just go for all of them).
I just starred everything in the QTR 4 topic and now my score is 0.5. Wasn’t all that hard (watching BRA v ECU).
wait a minute. isn’t this going on for 48 hours?
@carl669
They cut it down to 24 hours, otherwise I’d have loved to partaken in part 2.
@carl669 maybe next time, if we have a next time, we can build out some stuff to keep it interesting. I don’t think any of us were much interested past 16 hours in
@carl669 nobody even made it to 24 hours, maybe if there was another tie the imperial emperor would have tacked on another 24 hours, but the format fell apart once we all decided a nap was in order
i find myself taking every ‘slightly negative’ comment personally, even though we all modified the game together
i think i am going to go pout now
/giphy pouty face
@DMlivezey
/giphy Pouty McPoutyface
@DMlivezey don’t take it personally. we really do appreciate you organizing. it’s hard to pull off something like this online anyway. it’s easy to keep people awake for 24 hours if there’s in person interaction. but, online, when there’s other distractions present (like my 3.5 year old), it’s next to impossible.
either way, it was fun and thanks again for score keeping!
@DMlivezey don’t take it personally, it was a first try at it, we learn from this time to do better the next, it’s not a personal failing, just a learning experience. As @carl669 said managing something like this online is hard which is why out of the box thinking is crucial.
@jbartus @carl669 i feel a little less
/giphy verklmpt
now, thx for the pick me up
carl - you defs have to focus on that kid - never decide you need to do something online instead of interacting with your child
/giphy unsolicited advice
@DMlivezey as if the decision would even be up to me. just like any 3 year old, if he wants attention, he knows how to get it.
The idea of themes during certain time periods (like West Side Story) seemed kind of fun to a nerd like me
/giphy nerd like me
@compunaut
There were themes? Ooh. What kind? (Besides West Side Story)
@compunaut agree themes is a good idea, so
2a) vote on themes
Google forms is pretty easy to use on the fly, maybe votes and ideas could be shared that way
if these details aren’t worked out and written in detail, in advance, there will grumbling
@DMlivezey Some time periods have pre-determined themes, others done differently (like: first post gets to choose, Theme Poll/voting, cat shirts, worst woot!, etc)
@compunaut @DMlivezey
Even if I’m not by the second steel cage match competition, I agree with this idea on how to pick topics.
I was just being a goober when I suggested a rule requiring @carl669 post with West Side Story references xD
Anyhow, they could definitely be fun. I’m too tired to work out ideas and share them tonight but I will try to contribute some ideas tomorrow.
@jbartus
this is post 100, for no other reason than to be post 100
@jbartus, if you had the choice, hypothetically speaking of course, would you rather have less stuff in original packaging, or more stuff that’s had the packaging stripped to save room?
@Yoda_Daenerys
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Surprise me?
/youtube resurrection
/giphy you know how to do it better
@jbartus @baqui63 @compunaut @carl669
ready to drum up Meh. Steel Cage Match v2.o?
/youtube follow up to the ideas
@Yoda_Daenerys I honestly don’t think I could handle another one even if I wasn’t as insanely busy as I am right now. That was a brutal day. X_x
@Yoda_Daenerys that depends on when and if alcohol will be provided
The End
wow, i kinda (but not really) enjoyed that…
/image enjoyed that
/youtube enjoyed that
/giphy enjoyed that
another round?