Custom Descriptions

[BZR]

I prefer the idea of free forms. Non english player can type the description in his language and additionaly in english, as it is easily translatable to any other langage, if written properly.

What about a combination? Things like tall, short, fat, brown-eyed should be hardcoded, though. It won't be too much work. About 30 texts to translate. Tatoos and having no legs can be left to write in the free form.

[SekoETC]

Does not too much work mean that you'd be ready to code it soon?

And catpurr, even though I feel tempted to ignore you, naturally people shouldn't write in the descriptions that they have items that they don't really have. That would count as abuse and either people would just ignore it as they could see it's bollocks, or you'd get contacted by PD. Just like people can write in emotes that they're a robot but it doesn't mean that it was allowed or true.

[catpurr]

And catpurr, even though I feel tempted to ignore you

I consider this terrible you even mention this, same for you *Wiro, and also dudel, this is not trolling. Sometimes if discussions go unquestioned in a certain direction (known as "group think") with nobody even taking a certain valid position, I take it, since it should be taken to make an intelligent discussion. This doesn't mean I want if whole-heartly, or even care that much about it. And its in no way in common with that is considered trolling, if you care to look up the definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Advocate

In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who takes a position he or she does not agree with for the sake of argument. This process can be used to test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses in its structure.

For example about descriptions, this was long not implemented, because people thought there where reasons for it (language issues, racism, etc), not because nobody cared to do it. Suddendly everybody swings over without a reasonable discussion, and if someone takes a point you "tempt to ignore him", "call him a troll" or "ask him to just stop". This is aweful IMHO.

[catpurr]

I know a few players that like to kill bilingual player characters so I think that's just as bad.

So how about that, now writing your description in two languages gets you possibly killed?

[SekoETC]

Yeah but in the older discussions it was either suggested that all descriptions would have to be pre-approved by moderators or people could report abuse, leading into a question of what if the person changes the description after it's reported and before it's reviewed. Emailing new and changed descriptions to PD would mean records would be kept in people's inboxes so they wouldn't burden the database. Many email service providers have unlimited mailbox size nowadays, so if someone for example reported that a character was originally described as a scarred redhead and changed into a smooth-skinned blond after the description was used in wanted posters, someone in PD could search their email with the character's id and get a whole history of their edits in one click (at least Yahoo mail allows searching like that).

And racism can happen even without descriptions. In some places people get killed if they don't respond to a greeting because there's reason to believe they don't understand the language. If someone wanted to conceal their language, they could leave the description blank or ask somebody to translate it into the enemy language, and no one could blame you for that because characters can't see the text, only the appearance of the person. And it would make sense if people from different language groups looked somewhat different, even if you couldn't for example tell a Spanish and Portuguese charrie apart before they started talking (and maybe not even then), you would still notice they look different from for example a Swede.

Giving people limited options restricts creativity and even if there were checkboxes and such, I'd still like to see a free-form text box.

[Dudel]

catpurr, being the "devils advocate" only flies if you're NOT being an asshat about it.

Once you ARE being an asshat, as you have been, then you are trolling.

However, I should know better then to feed trolls.... I can only tolerate so much stupid and/or ignorance from one person.


MOVING ON....


I honestly see no problems with the way Seko is describing EXCEPT that it creates even more work for PD and.... well I'm not going there.

Wish there was a way without having some hard-coded ugly drop downs (even if this is the best idea) that restrict players to what is or isn't. I'm not a fan of restriction but to be 100% honest that is the "best bet" to avoid problems.


But, again, I see no problem with the way Seko describes it. Not to mention that even writing something in your own language could "get you killed". I mean... I know PLAYERS (not characters) who get upset and mad at characters for not spelling, etc in "manners they should". So a monster death typo fail of a description will send people off the deep end, anyway.

[catpurr]

Dudel, did I tell you looking up what "troll" actually means?

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

If you like the argument or not, it was definelty on-topic and in no way irrelavtn and off-topic.

Again also "troll" is something people throw as argument around, without realizing what it means.

And yes this is offtopic, as well as calling me a troll was. Calling people stupid or ignorant, THIS IS TROLLING. Well I should know better than feed the trolls.

[Piscator]

Please people, try to not escalate the situation.

The problem, catpurr, is that you don't advocate, but rather just cry "no". You stated quite clearly what you see as a drawback of the suggestion, but I still fail to see why that should outweigh the benefits or why your model should be better. It would perhaps help if you could elaborate on your concerns a bit more.

edit: Yes, you all should know better, so stop it.

[catpurr]

How about this, descriptons are in english and english only. Point.

(Same as you ought to emote in english, when multiple players are present)

[BZR]

Does not too much work mean that you'd be ready to code it soon?

It depends what do you mean "soon". If this year - then yes, I'm ready. If this weekend, then no, thanks.

[Piscator]

How about this, descriptons are in english and english only. Point.

(Same as you ought to emote in english, when multiple players are present)

No, you are supposed to emote in a language everyone understands (and even that's not an obligation), not necessarily in English. And I also completely fail to see how English-only would be better than everyone-as-they-wish.

[Snake_byte]

Catpurr, Believe it or not, Not all players in Cantr can read or even speak english... It's not even the most dominant language on earth...

[SekoETC]

People should write primarily in their own language and secondarily in other languages if in a bilingual or multilingual environment. Like I said up there, I think people from different language groups should look somewhat different even though others shouldn't be able to specify which language group is in question until the person speaks. So if there's for example a town where several people speak Polish and several others speak English, if a character has their description only in Polish then an English player might read it and think the person looks ethically different even if they couldn't understand the details. And if someone looks like a foreigner, people would be more inclined to believe that they don't reply or answer questions because they don't understand and not because they're being intentionally rude or asleep.

[catpurr]

People should write primarily in their own language and secondarily in other languages if in a bilingual or multilingual environment. Like I said up there, I think people from different language groups should look somewhat different even though others shouldn't be able to specify which language group is in question until the person speaks. So if there's for example a town where several people speak Polish and several others speak English, if a character has their description only in Polish then an English player might read it and think the person looks ethically different even if they couldn't understand the details. And if someone looks like a foreigner, people would be more inclined to believe that they don't reply or answer questions because they don't understand and not because they're being intentionally rude or asleep.

So can we have nationality as visible trait then? 'You see a german man in his twenties?'

[Snake_byte]

Some Nationalities cannot be told apart from others right away but I think something like this would be beneficial as well...
Maybe more like "You see a man in his thirties not of this area".