Na na na na internet arguments.
@Proleric
'course breaking modules is not OK. It’s just literally impossible for us to prevent for real, Proleric, and the cure may well be worse than the disease. :-/ Viewing game modding as a subset of software development - take graphics drivers and operating systems for an example. They have to get updated all the time for a reason, and it’s not because it’s realistically feasible to write all code ever written in such a way that it remains compatible with every product ever produced. I’ve lost about twelve hours of drawing work yesterday because GIMP saved a corrupted file, which googling the issue suggests had something to do with an ongoing bug with out-of-date operating systems. The resulting “NOOOOOOO” was loud, but the thing to do about this wasn’t for me to try to make the GIMP developers be held responsible for never producing bugs, or to attempt to have their development shut down, or stick to optimizing their program for my operating system specifically. It was for me to file a bug report so that they can use the information to fix the bug going forward - for which I need them to keep doing what they’re doing. If they put their shit down, throw their hands up, and give up in a huff, y’know what we get? Unsupported overrides, which people are probably still gonna install, but for which we won’t have anyone to hand the bugs over to.
Avoiding override-pack-induced module-breakage hereabouts, or reducing the chances of it happening, rests on individual compliance on part of the creators - for which attempts to enforce compliance via social pressure might even be contraproductive, as there’s considerable evidence that punitive environments are stifling for creativity (having a negative impact on the community as a whole socially, as a “fun and games”-place (We are not a company; we are not getting paid. Rather, people here are doing this stuff for fun, in their free time, playing with a game they paid for), as well as on the “tangible value” it produces in favor of the commercial venture it at least indirectly supports) and “Screw you, you snobby tyrants! Now I’m gonna do it on purpose JUST TO PISS YOU OFF!”-pushback from the targets may well result in spawning skilled hostile actors who deliberately sabotage us. What would you have us do to the people who disobey any such rule if we instate it?
::sigh::
the details text-reduction thing is awesome
I don’t know what went on with you and Shadooow back then, or prior to it between you and those players, Proleric. But I’m going to need to hear something different than “(X) is morally wrong” to justify a course of action, especially when the course of action is punitive in nature; I need the “(X) isn’t working out well because (reasons A, B, C). To improve (X), I propose better solutions (Y) and (Z), which are supported by (reasons D, E, F) and come with pitfalls (G) and (H), for which further suggestions are requested”-variant, or I won’t be able to follow the reasoning that led to the conclusion, much less start to try to assess it’s impact or evaluate possible alternatives, which is something I need to do to form an opinion on whether to take a supportive stance on it or not. We can call what I do verbal trickery and manipulation if you like, but I make my thought processes, my arguments, and my biases, clear enough that they can be addressed and refuted (or improved) in detail, and it is up to each individual person who reads them to decide whether they agree or disagree with what I’m saying - or whether they will give a damn what I think at all. My grandiose self-importance is not necessarily a reflection of what anybody else thinks about my thoughts.
As is, whenever we’re talking about the moral aspect of tolerating the negative impact script or game mechanic overrides can have on modulebuilders, I’ve got a nebulous picture of the lot of us taking up a habit of treating people poorly if they mod the game in any way we don’t Officially Sanction™, and I’m super uncomfortable with that thought. I’d consider the negative impact of that change much, much worse than the fact that modulebuilders need to ask players who submit bug-reports which overrides they have installed and default to telling them “Turn off your mods, and then try it again, I only support the unmodded version of my module” if they want to be sure that they will not be hunting any invisible bugs. This will still be the case even if we take all override packs off the Vault right now (they’re still available elsewhere on the internet!) and shun all (potentially game-breaking) override pack creators we have. The overrides are already out there, and they have been out there for years. At this point, we can’t pull them back. We can discourage creation of new override packs, but we just plain can’t take the risk of players installing game-breaking overrides on top of actively-maintained modules away again. It’s there, and it’s there to stay.
Also, what our game mechanics modders do is fascinating work which not many people hereabouts have the skills to do in the first place. Shutting down development in game mechanics overrides would mean cutting off an unpaid “research branch” in a field in which we have relatively few “researchers”, and it comes at the definite cost of everything that it could produce down the road. Doing this because it comes with a risk of inconvenience that cannot ever be taken away completely even then, and which can be massively mitigated via application of common sense on part of all actors (which is something they stand to greatly benefit from cultivating if they do not already possess it as it will aid them in all aspects of their lives going forward) does not strike me as a good tradeoff.
But, I just don’t speak for any override creator other than myself, Proleric. :-/ There’s no point in negotiating this one out with me on a “Community Values / Things Everybody Should Do” kind of level. If you want people not to produce content in form of override packs without arguing them into a corner where they throw their stuff away and leave altogether, you’ll need to to convince them one at a time. Skillpoints in Persuade can help with that, sometimes.
Or you can take it to the moderator/admin team, and talk it over whether you want to switch to a more authoritarian model and enforce compliance via punitive measures, including but not limited to kicking people out if they produce script overrides or whatnot. :-/ Those are pretty much the two options if you’ve got your heart set on the “Shut down the override production” thing. Carrots, or sticks. Or both.
But if the original problem is “Modulebuilders are losing lifetime to bugfixing because override packs can create game-breaking bugs at the player end”, then prosecuting override packs and override pack creators isn’t actually the only solution. Another way to do something about this problem could be rerouting the module bug reports and help requests into the forums here, for instance, where the community at large can help answer them, taking a good lot of the customer support workload off the module authors’ backs. This would actually create the opportunity for us to teach the players how to fix their own override- and module-related problems, and possibly get them interested in modding themselves, integrating some new people with newly-acquired bugfixing knowhow into the infinite pits in which we languish. Also a win-win, perhaps doubly so because it promotes skill and knowledge gain for everyone as well as the kind of freely cooperative behaviour this place thrives on, without threat of social ostracization for nonconformity hanging over anyone’s head.
Amusingly, especially the people who have experience with how overrides work are the people most qualified to bugfix this stuff, so we’d actually want to encourage people to tinker with this stuff, in this scenario. I like this concept. 
It’s … can I say… sophisticated. Ha! Subverted!
… yes. It’s true. I admit it. I feel like I’m very witty, much of the time.
@TheStoryteller01
Fair’s fair - if we don’t alert one another to dangers we perceive, we won’t be warned. “Some spices can have negative effects when consumed, be mindful what you put in other peoples’ food!!” is relevant side information in a discussion about spice preferences. … also, you never know who’s allergic to what. 
It’s very possible to accidentally poison people. Definitely something any hobbyist cook should know about.
::sigh:: ::foreheadrub::
OK, prepare thyself, because now I’m going to preach at you, too. 
I’ve gotta. I preach at Proleric to be nicer to people all the time, I can’t let you go un-preached-at here.
One of the bitterest things about having expectations for peoples’ conduct is that we only get to choose our own actions and our own words. Even if we personally highly value politeness, for example, another person may not. They’ve probably made negative experiences with it that they want to distance themselves from. Duplicity is pretty widespread.
When we scorn someone for not acting in accordance with our standards and expectations, when we ridicule and reject them, we do not live our own values (unless our values are that scorning and ridiculing people is great, I guess, in which case ::confused headscratch:: uh. Maybe I didn’t think this argumentation through as much as I should’ve). In every instant we spend acting in a way that is not in adherence with our standards and our expectations, what we put out into the world is not what we value, but ridicule and derision. In one of the most real ways we can, in that way, we democratically vote that there should be more scorn in the world.
People get their ideas about what the rules of social conduct are from being raised into them, generally by making experimental attempts that are positively or negatively reaffirmed, and by observing and then mimicking the behaviour of others. Don’t reject people for not automatically meeting your expectations for their conduct; in much the same way, you’re probably not meeting theirs, and they get to make their own decision on what and who to be; it’s their vote, to do with what they will. You get to decide who you are, not who they are.
Visual: Two building blocks with very little overlap.
|--------|
|--------|
If you push them together like this, they’d teeter, and break apart. It’s just not stable. There’s not enough common ground. Generally, they tend to get into an argument over who should shift into whose direction, too, and both of them grump about it because oi! Why should I change if you won’t?! and Who the heck even are you to me that I should alter myself for your sake?!.
But go about it like this…
|--------|---|
|---|--------|
… and maybe both of them can be left with more than they had before. 
I can vouch for that being around logickers has been helping me calm down a lot over the years, becoming more stable in turn. It’s worth giving people a second or third look, after the first “whut! CULTURE CLASH!”-double takes. It’s probably especially the people with the most differences to us that we stand to learn from most.
If someone has a different perspective than we do, they can see angles that we can’t. The thing to aim for isn’t to make people identical, to form a homogeneous group, amass the like-minded and reject everyone who thinks differently, but to pull vastly different people together into a cohesive whole that can work together for mutual benefit. Fighting like this does not help with that. It does not exemplify the conduct you expect from others, and it does not make the other person a whit more likely to consider your arguments valid, nor offer them much of anything other than the information that they should feel bad about being who they are. Who wants that?
… … but, mind you, I expressly mean this in a “social conduct on the internet or in nonthreatening circumstances” sort of way. If someone’s coming at you going “YO, I’M HUNGRY AND YOU’RE MADE OF MEAT”, then HOLY SNAP, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SHOW GRACIOUSNESS AND UNDERSTANDING FOR THEIR PERSPECTIVE. Gotta keep one’s priorities in order.
@TheBarbarian
What the fuck, TB. Just… what the fuck. You should knock it off too, you jerk. You’re probably escalating this stuff, making it bigger by funneling more attention into it. You’re not good enough at Social Conduct™ to be qualified to offer this kind of advice, or you’d know better.
I would like to formally apologize for my part in derailing your thread in this way. 
We’re probably not making a very good impression, here. FWIW, it’s… it’s just a pretty long-standing, unrelated argument.
On a serious sidenote, given the most recent few messages… do you two think you can take this to a positive or at least neutral conclusion of some sort, make some gestures of concession and respect (if not for one another, then for Olivier_Leroux’ thread, please), or is this gonna hit a point where it needs to be flagged for misconduct? Remember, we’ve got a code of conduct section about respectful treatment of one another, too. As well as one about not expecting one another to be perfect, or all-knowing. I like those sections.
fuck, I’m tired. Short messages are unfair. Y’know I spend hours writing this shit, and then nobody reads it because it’s too long and reading the short gripe-messages and then immediately griping back in an escalating gripe-spiral is way faster and way easier. That’s frustrating.
