Lest we forget, This was not that long ago, in the context of human history.
The despicable acts of one religion cannot be justified or even ameliorated by the despicable acts of another religion.
Also, I believe the point of Angerfist's post wasn't the legitimacy of the claims , but whether or not Bisqwit's signature is offensive, and does that warrant a requested/forced removal.
I must agree that it may be a good idea to avoid controversial statements in signatures, especially when they deal with subjects likely to cause provocation.
Come now Krysimys. It's not like Christianity is without it's problems with women.
You should put things in perspective. How many Christian countries do you know who flog and even stone women to death for things that are not even considered crimes at all in most civilized countries? The same cannot be said from many muslim countries (just as an example, make a search for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani). And these are actual governments, not just some radical minority groups.
Solution: hybrid system. You vote yes/no/meh on Tech and Entertainment separately.
I don't remember now if that exact solution has been suggested in the past, but I wouldn't be surprised if had been discussed.
Another idea which has been tossed in the past (and which I think deserves consideration) is having a 5-value voting system rather than a 3-value one (like the current one is). I think the specific suggestion was "no, weak no, meh, weak yes, and yes". It's quite common for people to be a bit indecisive about a submission, but leaning towards one side rather than wanting to be completely neutral or not caring either way. In this case they are in the difficult situation that they only have two choices, either 'meh' or one of the extremes. A "softer" mid-way value (weak no, weak yes) would be ideal for them.
I do agree with Warp that when voting on a submission, you should vote for that submission and not something kind of related to it. But that is exactly what mz is doing so I don't really see why he gets all the flak :S. As far as I see, mz does not like seeing the same run over and over again, he does not think the new SM64 is different enough to justify a publication so he votes no.
Imagine that someone disliked platformers and thus consistently voted "no" on all submissions made for platformer games, not because the run is bad per se, but just as a matter of principle. The voting wouldn't be anymore related to the specific run, but it would be a kind of "single-issue voting", where a generic dislike for some phenomenon is poured onto individual submissions, with no fault of the submission itself or its author. While that would be permissible, I don't think it would be the polite thing to do.
mz has the right to vote as he wishes, and express any opinion he wishes. That's a given. However, if someone's voting becomes akin to vandalism (I know I keep using that expression, and it's a rather strong word, but I think it's relevant), I think it starts going a bit too far. Even if this "vandalism" (or whatever you want to call it) doesn't affect the end result, it's still going too far. All I'm asking is that if someone is not happy about the driving principles and policies of the site, he express his opinion properly in the proper group, as matter of respect and courtesy to the community.
(In fact, that would be a much better way to get one's opinion to discussion. Some random "no" votes on some random submissions isn't going to get your opinion known. Well, not usually at least.)
You care about the frame count; I don't. That's it.
I find that claim to be rather ironic, given that I have been one of the loudest proponents of diminishing the importance of raw frame counts when rating movies for their technical quality (which doesn't mean frame counts should not be taken into account at all; I mean that it should be just one of several technical aspects of the run, when rating it for technical quality).
The SM64 submission is a significant improvement over the currently published run on TASing techniques besides raw frame count. And reading the comments on the submission thread, it's also quite entertaining to many.
I have always been a big fan for classifying things into logical hierarchies, so this suggestion doesn't immediately sound like a bad idea.
What concerns me, however, is how this change would affect the usability of the front page. If someone has the custom of glancing the front page of the website for a quick review of what's new, would this split make that harder or more inconvenient? Or could this split be designed so that it actually makes it easier to get an idea of what types of new publications there have been recently? Any ideas/suggestions what the front page would look like after the split?
The flaw is that it's not different enough from the previous movie; I've written this many times already.
Then how much different must it be in order to be acceptable, in your opinion? Seemingly your standards are pretty high if the Mario64 run is not "different enough". It's one of the submissions with the largest amount of improvement over the currently published run seen in a long time, especially considering how polished the current run was thought to be, so I still think your protest vote is completely misguided and out of place.
Cardboard wrote:
Not to be an asshole here, but isn't the purpose of voting no that it should be a protest?
Protest against some site/community policy? No. (Because that's the issue I'm talking about.)
Some people are casting "no" votes to some extremely popular submissions, but not because they find the submission faulty or unworthy of publication
I find the new Mario 64 unworthy of publication, I already wrote why. I never voted No as a form of protest. I said I don't think it's a good idea to keep having 4329439437843092 TASes of the same Sonic/Mario/Megaman published everyday on the front page, so that SM64 TAS shouldn't be published in my opinion.
You see, that's the core problem: You claim that you are not voting "no" as a form of protest but because you think that this run in particular is not worthy of publication, and then immediately in the next sentence, instead of enumerating the flaws of the run in particular, you state that you voted because you don't like the general trend of the site publishing numerous runs of the same game in quick succession. In other words, the reason you vote no is because you are protesting against that trend. Hence you are contradicting yourself.
Your protest vote is doubly misguided in that this game in particular has not had any updates in a very long time (the current zero-stars run is almost exactly 2 years old, which is quite a lot). Hence your argument that "popular games get updates too frequently" does not make any sense in this case in particular, because Mario64 quite clearly does not get frequent updates by any rational measurement.
Hence you are casting a "no" vote as a protest against a trend that has little to do with Mario64 runs. My point is that if you want to protest about something you don't like about the site, please do it in the relevant group. At least have that courtesy.
Also, you've stated your opinions as if they were facts.
It's laborious and redundant to write "in my opinion" in front of every single sentence. It can be inferred from the first usage to apply to the rest, so it shouldn't be necessary to add it everywhere.
My problem is not people having differing views of what they consider a good and enjoyable TAS, and what they find boring and uninteresting. People are entitled to their opinions, and they have the right to express those opinions (and I'll defend to death their right to do so, in the words of a great philosopher).
My problem is when people express their protest in a place that's not proper for such protests. The voting system of an individual submission is not the proper place to protest against the general trend of the whole website/community. The author of the submission is not guilty of the general trend, nor does he deserve his submission to be abused in this manner. This is especially egregious when the person making the protest readily admits that he doesn't actually have any arguments against the submission itself, that he is just abusing that particular submission to express his opinion on something else. I consider this kind of behavior tantamount to vandalism. (And if you read the submission thread you will see that there was more than one person voting "no" as some kind of protest.)
(Personally I also disagree with the arguments presented in the protest, but that's a different issue.)
As a side note, about the voting question (I have expressed my opinion on this in the past, but please let me summarize):
"Did you like the run?" might feel like the proper question at a quick glance, but in fact, it's not. It's the incorrect question. For example, a submission might be quite enjoyable and entertaining, but it might blatantly break a rule in such way that makes it inadmissible (for example using a hex-edited savestate or an emulation bug). Hence the answer to that question is of little consequence.
"Should this run be published?", however, asks the correct question. You might like the run, but you know it should not be published eg. because it breaks a rule so badly it makes it inadmissible. Hence you can answer "no" without having to lie.
The latter question also contains the "did you like it?" aspect as well. This is the entertainment part of the voting. The run might be technically admissible, but boring as hell. Hence you can vote "no" on the grounds that the game is not good TASing material.
Also, IMO the meaning of the question changes when the submission is an improvement to an existing publication. In that case the meaning of the question becomes "is this run an improvement to the previous run?" (in other words, does it achieve the same goal faster and with less flaws?)
This may serve as a reminder, but if you wish to continue to receive faster seeding from other users in the swarm, UPDATE YOUR CLIENTS! It is extremely superficial that you receive the most secure, reliable, and up-to-date version available for your BitTorrent client.
Would you please go into more technical detail on why updating your bittorrent client would improve seeding?
(This is not a counter-argument. I'm just curious.)
Do you understand that what you are doing is akin to vandalism? You don't have any actual objections to this submission in particular, but instead you are abusing the voting process of this submission to make a generic "protest" against a trend you don't like. You are boycotting this submission in particular, without any fault of the author of the run, because of dogmatic reasons that have nothing to do with it. What did the author of this run do to deserve such boycotting?
If you want to express your opinion, why don't you write an article on a group which is more on-topic for that subject matter?
Some people are casting "no" votes to some extremely popular submissions, but not because they find the submission faulty or unworthy of publication, but purely as some kind of protest against the general trend of "re-publishing" existing runs with minor improvements, and this even sometimes when the improvements in the particular run being voted for are in no way minor (as is currently the case with the Mario64 submission). In other words, the "no" vote has nothing to do with that submission in particular, but instead it's intended as a "protest" to a more general phenomenon. (Some such people even readily admit that "I don't have any objections to this submission in particular, but...")
Personally I find this kind of "protest voting" akin to vandalism.
If you want to protest against some policies or trends of the site, do so by writing your opinion in this group (or whatever group might be most relevant to the point). Don't vandalize other people's submission voting by denigrating their efforts. Don't use people's submissions as a forum for your petty "protest", please. Write your protest in the groups which are most suitable for them. If you don't have any specific actual arguments against the submission itself (what flaws it has and exactly how should it be improved to be worthy of publication), then abstain from voting if you don't want to vote "yes" for dogmatic reasons. Voting "no" is especially egregious when the submission is actually a very clear improvement on the existing run, which has not been previously improved for years (as is the case with Mario64).
As a side note, I also disagree with some of these people's arguments for the protest. "It doesn't look different enough to me" is a stupid reason to vote "no". It doesn't have to look "different enough". It's enough that it's more optimized than the existing run. We try to achieve perfection here, and if an existing run contains imperfections and flaws, fixing them is the goal.
Also, "doesn't look different enough to me" is a stupid argument for another reason: It implies that it isn't any less entertaining than the previous run. If the entertainment value is the same, but the newer submission is more optimal, that's a good reason to replace the old one. The entertainment value remains, but the run gets more optimized, so we get closer to the ultimate goal. That's a rather huge reason to vote "yes". Voting "no" on such a submission is just plain stupid.
Naturally someone had to vote against, just so that it wouldn't get an unanimous vote.
(Edit: Hmm, re-reading my sentence it makes it sound like I was the one who voted against. It wasn't me. I voted for.)
So once again, exactly how would static pages be "done right"?
Probably exactly how we're already doing it.
Non logged in users and web bots are being served static content 99% of the time for the site itself.
I advise studying Wiki: CacheControl.
I don't really understand how caching makes the pages static. It makes them cached, not static.
Of course you could define "dynamic page" to mean "the content is generated from a database or algorithmically every time the page is requested". However, I wouldn't say that's the definition of "dynamic page". The contents are still generated, rather than being hard-coded (as would be with a static html file), even if this generated content is updated only every 10 minutes.
(One could even go so far as to say that if you are requesting a .php file rather than a .html file, the page is dynamic because a PHP script will be run to give you the content, even if that content is always the same.)
I suppose that in the end it's a matter of definition, but at least to me "static page" means a hard-coded html file which is modified manually.
Done right it would be mostly static (the main pages) + the forum, which any shared hosting provider can handle competently enough.
I have to comment on that. How exactly would static pages be "doing it right"?
The site consisting of static pages would be a nightmare to administer. If you haven't noticed, all pages in the site are editable by editors: Anybody anywhere in the world who has been given editor rights can just go and easily add or modify text and other contents to any page, using their favorite web browser. This allows people to easily eg. write articles, create lists, enhance or fix existing information, etc. Moreover, it allows people to rate movies. And more still, much of the contents of the site are very dynamically generated from a database, including movie lists (with all their details), submissions, statistics lists, and so on.
Exactly how would the site contents be achievable with static pages? Every single html file would have to be edited by hand, and its contents would be fixed (because that is, after all, the very definition of "static page"). All the data of, for example, a given movie would have to be entered by hand. If you wanted the data of the same movie in more than one page, you would have to manually add to each such page. You couldn't create movie lists or statistics dynamically on-the-fly. Submissions would have to be handled by hand, and their publication status updated manually by modifying the relevant html files directly.
It would also be a versioning nightmare. If two admins modify the same html file at the same time and both then upload it to the server, the first admin's changes will be lost. And this assuming that any sane person would even want to administer such a nightmare of static html files. The site would die very quickly because nobody in their right mind would have motivation enough to do this.
The reason why we have so much up-to-date content is because the website is highly dynamic, generates content based on a database and is editable by anybody directly using their browser.
So once again, exactly how would static pages be "done right"?
Tangential to your post, but I was wondering if anybody is using any kind of commonly-used versioning system, such as svn or git, for collaborative TASes.
The benefits of using such a versioning system would be pretty similar to the benefits of using one in a software project, such as:
- Versioning itself, of course. Which means that nothing which has ever been submitted to the versioning system is ever lost. Accidentally deleted or modified a file which you didn't intend to, and noticed that only three months after the fact? No problem: You can revert the old file from as back as you want. Or simply want to check how something was done three months ago, was modified, and now you can't remember it anymore? Same process (after reverting to the old version you can re-revert to the newest if so desired).
- Commented history of the project, in the form of submit messages (of course this requires that every submission has a proper and descriptive message).
- Multi-redundant backupping. No need to worry about your hard drive dying or lightning making your computer a molten piece of metal. All the important project files will be safely backed up in the versioning server and the computers of all the people who are participating in the project. And, as commented above, the backupping is incremental, as any version of any file ever submitted can be restored if needed.
- Branching. Want to test a new idea without having to mess up with the main TAS files, or creating multitudes of ancillary test files (which are typically named "therun_test.smv", "therun_test2.smv", "therun_test2_tmp.smv", "therun_test2_tmp2_new.smv" and so on, and after a week you don't even remember yourself what they stand for)? Create a new branch from the current main branch, safely do anything you want in that branch without messing with the main branch, and if it works then merge to the main branch, or if it didn't work, just let it be (it will then exist as a testament of your test, and you could eg. refer to it if it comes up in later development, so others can check it out).
If, as the submission thread states in the publishing notes, the reason was to "keep our options open" and because the old run was outdated, I understand the reasoning, but I don't agree with the conclusion.
If the reason for a run to "obsolete" another run in a completely different category is, indeed, because the old run is "outdated and doesn't use the more recently found techniques", then it feels like some kind of excuse for unpublication.
There's an informal "no unpublications" rule at tasvideos: If a run has been published, it will not be "unpublished" no matter how outdated and obsoleted it gets, if nobody makes a better version of the run (we have seen this at least with LoZ:OoT). This "a run in a completely different category 'obsoletes' the outdated run" seems to be some kind of loophole around this informal rule.
The actual person who broke copyright was the person who made it available to download, not the person who downloaded it.
In Finland simply downloading copyrighted material from an illegal source is illegal (at least that seems to be the case, as almost nobody really understands the new Finnish copyright law, not even the people who wrote the law).
Nevertheless, nowadays it's difficult to find movies which you can simply download, without also sharing them. The sharing part, at least, is illegal in most countries with common copyright laws.
Second, copyright infringement is a civil case, not a criminal one for small infractions. Thus, turning the person over to the cops would achieve nothing.
You don't report it to the cops. You report to your local version of RIAA.
