sorry to hear you say that Ryan you're a great contributor here. i hope that you reconsider and stay around for a while. remember that you have the option to "foe" somebody if they're offensive, which will block all of their posts so that you won't see them when you're logged in. unfortunately that wouldn't work for a visitor, but maybe there are some browser plugin options that would block offensive language. i wish there were more female members here too, because i understand a lot of those mysterious creatures play tetris. seriously though, if we're offending a group of people to the point where they don't want to join or participate, then that sounds like a problem. if we're trying to alienate people, then we're scared of the competition.
tl;dr: I don't think we can generalize here. (PS: Seconded on the Laura-signing-up-here front!) EDIT: It appears that some have misinterpreted this quote as an attack on Ryan. Laura was joking that colour_thief wasn't being offensive _enough_. The key word in that line is "post." Sorry if there was any confusion, I didn't mean to offend. :<
See, if we're turning away girls like that, then I don't really have a problem. Personally I'd prefer the members here to not be so uppity, easily-offended and lacking in a sense of humour to "not want to be involved" with us and to be "turned off tetris" just because of stuff like that. I swear, the majority of the girls I know, both online and offline, would have no problem with such stuff. I know this because I've been in conversations with that sort of nature to them, and at worst they've not minded and at best they've joined in. I would argue strongly that the type of girl who is reasonably keen on video game, or keen enough on Tetris to actually fit in with most of the conversation, is also the type of girl who would really not take much offence to any laddish and euphemism-laden chat. I'd also like to point out that even a "IRC quotes" page on the wiki would almost certainly not be the first thing anyone would see on this site. And if it was, it'd be because they were looking for that sort of thing, because IRC quotes are rarely SFW.
Those rules are just the default phpBB rules, they're not actually written by the forum owner/moderators. The actual rules (i.e. not a prefab registration blurb) can be found in this thread: Forum rules.
What is offensive is very subjective. If someone posted something illegal, that's one thing. Maaaybe if it was nearly unanimous among us that something should be censored (thinking of Ghetto here), then I might take that seriously. I really am sorry you and your friend find some of the content here disturbing, and I wish I could do something to make it right. Please understand that while I want everyone to be able to enjoy TC, freedom of speech comes first. And when you are for freedom of speech, you're for freedom of speech you don't like, too. That said, most of us here are pretty mature. You won't find too many people making racist statements, posting obscene pictures or comments, or getting into childish flame wars--especially when compared to a lot of other forums out there. (Yes there happens to be an obscene picture in this thread, but that is most definitely to poke fun at you.) And when someone does say or post something in very bad taste, I can almost guarantee that they will become very unpopular among us (thinking of something that happened here recently). Please try to keep it in perspective. You find one topic out of a thousand offensive. That's not so bad. I like to think some of those other thousand topics were pretty valuable to the Tetris community, and maybe a few of those valuable topics wouldn't have been so valuable if people weren't totally comfortable with being able to say exactly what they want to say.
I voted against bringing it over to a regular wiki page. Not because I find the quotes offensive in any way, but rather because I think it's tangental. A wiki should stick to the subject at hand not to saturate the content. If you want to have a sandbox for tangental or unrelated content, that's what the user pages are for. But that's my opinion.
The IRC quotes are not at all representative of the majority of intelligent tetris discussion that goes on in #arika. The sort of discussion that occasionally goes on between a group of males of similar age in a single-sex environment is obviously going to be disturbing when presented outside of that particular social situation; you'd have to be extremely obtuse to think otherwise. Why use a person's behaviour in one very specific social situation to pass judgement on that person's social conduct generally? If you were given a peek into perhaps the 2% of sexually oriented behaviour that occurs in bed at night between husband and wife, you'd have to be pretty silly to think that they were depraved enough to behave like that at all times, regardless of where they were or who else was around. If their little kid suddenly ran into the bedroom (as little kids are bound to do), do you think they'd carry on with whatever they were up to, or would they moderate their behaviour pretty damn quick? Similarly, the IRC quotes give a peek into the 2% of sexually oriented discussion that goes on between males in the (previously) single-sex environment of #arika. All of us, without exception, are mature enough to moderate our behaviour should the social situation change; if we were to suddenly receive a flood of women, older members, or younger children (who weren't just there to deliberately annoy us, i.e. Ghetto), we would all try to make them feel as welcome as possible. As for the quotes being on the wiki, I pretty much agree with Lee N; they should not be moved to a main wiki page. However, it makes little sense to have 3 people doing essentially the same thing on 3 different pages. Why not have some agreement that only one person's user page should be used?
"only people comfortable with porn" makes us sound like every other thread is NSFW. #arika doesn't represent the forum to start with, and the quotes page in the wiki is a single page. None of the quotes are really that graphic, there's no linking to indecent images, and it's a tiny fraction of the entire site. There are three user pages, and this thread. Out of the dozens of other wiki pages and 1200+ other threads on the forum. Since when did such a small fraction of the site dictate when a large fraction of the users are required to be in to? I would say the most obvious thing about TC is that it is a forum which is welcoming to all sorts. The only exception would be people who cheat and post fake scores, or the spambots. I'd really like a logical and reasoned argument to how exactly the most prominent discussion topic after Tetris is pornography. I reiterate my point again about the likelihood that one of the first dozen or so pages a new user reads on this site will be one of the IRC quotes pages.
I don't want to repeat on someone, but I want to say: First off all, I'm not bothered by this page. Secondly...this is only one of not few pages where things are related to porn...and okay, if people are bothered by this page, I can understand...however it does NOT represent the forum like many others have already stated. About the ''IRC Quotes page'': Before this topic had been made...I didn't even know it existed...without the links I actually still don't know how to find them. What do I want to make clear by this?: A new person at this forum would probably NEVER find these pages without being told about.
@ryanheise: If our community is based on porn, I've apparently been looking at different forums than you have. I've been playing horrible video games (music games, Tetris) for more than half of my life and I would say that this is probably the most on-topic discussion board that I have ever seen. The community works actively to recruit new members, and does most emphatically try and scare away new members. If you didn't already know, the Seattle representatives of TC evangelized TGM more than you could ever imagine at SakuraCon. We were giving many people information about the game, and focused on explaining that while TGM is difficult and deep, the game is fun at all play levels. We also advertised TC quite a bit, saying that it is the definitive source for Tetris information and by far the most friendly community. Have you ever been around any other gaming community? Surely if you had you wouldn't say such things. Another thing is that, as Rosti said, #arika does not in any way represent the forum. #tetrisconcept is the official forum channel. I'm deeply grateful for this community, as it has provided me with all the information I've ever wanted right when I asked for it. It's also full of friendly and kind individuals who do not hesitate to make me feel welcome. If you are offended by porn, that's alright because . I'm a little surprised that you are stating that we try and scare off new people given that you came to the community with the intent of getting feedback on Tesselate. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but surely you of all people would realize that the majority of TC members would like nothing better than to see TGM and Good Tetris Games (that's my new term for good games, regardless of TTC affiliation) succeed. People gave feedback about your game, and in turn it improved and expanded its feature set. Were you scared off? Did people laugh at Tesselate and call it a pile of shit? Of course not! would justify your statements; however, as it stands I see nothing to back up that statement. IRC quotes are not representative of the TC community; while maybe offensive to some, they are humorous to a large majority of users and as such should not be censored. If you don't want to look at IRC quotes, don't look at them. The only thing I could possibly understand is a disclaimer next to the quotes pages informing of the potentially offensive content within. I came to this community as a 14 year old wanting to learn about the TGM series and improve my overall Tetris skills. I did that, and met a bunch of really cool people in the process. I don't see anything wrong with the site. Sorry for rambling, less than 4 hours of sleep in the last 2 days but hopefully something I said makes sense.
I can back Kevin up on this. We both came from mostly reading and posting on music game forums (though Kevin was far more prolific in that community than I have ever been). I can safely say that this community is far nicer, more supportive, and easier to enter than any other gaming community. I remember remarking to Kevin that if you asked a Bemani player for advice at getting better, they'd say something like "JUST HIT ALL THE NOTES YOU FAGGOT", while if you ask the same thing on tetrisconcept, people will be more like "oh, I had trouble with that too. Here's a few tips. Actually, heck, I'll make a new wiki page for you." This is clearly exaggerated, but I think it shows what I think of this place.
you should see the forum i frequent most, it's for a piece of music production software, and it's very thinly moderated. nearly unmoderated in fact. this company is not a small company at all, in fact it's a major player in the audio world. new users get really frustrated and try to report users all the time, but it is looked at like a social experiment in chaos and only moderate what they legally have to. Off Topic threads abound, and threads get jacked so far off topic it's actually great. the forum members can successfully rid the place of trolls themselves. users are never banned. bottom line: censorship can suck my ding-a-ling
Not really an exaggeration, actually! Especially when you consider that it has happened before. On the subject of I AM OFFENDED BY THIS BOARD *RAGEQUITS*, I am laughing my fucking ass off. Seriously, 3 pages of random quotes from a nonofficial channel that aren't even linked anywhere and suddenly RAGE ON THE INTERNETS?? Man, what fucking rock have you been living under? I'll be honest in that TC is pretty much the most on-topic community I've visited. That isn't to say it's the best (most definitely not), but if you wnat to talk Tetris, there's no better place. But getting offended because someone made 18+ jokes on teh ircs? Boo hoo. </being an asshole> On the quotes, why not just put them on the Wiki under "#arika culture" and put a "Warning: NSFW" box at the top?
To go back on topic: considering the poll is almost tied, how about unifying them in a single main wiki namespace page, BUT... not linking to it from anywhere.
