Speaking of posting something in the context of a discussion, do you have any Vaulted movies you want to see moved to Moons?
Well, as I wrote earlier, I don't think any Vault movies should be moved to Moons. I think that the current Mooned any% and 100% movies should be elevated to Vault status. IMO.
This is one of the reasons why I love this forum. It annoys me to no end in other forums when someone would want to post something in the context of a previous (old) discussion, he will be berated for "necroposting" (which is a completely silly thing to complain about IMO.)
The point in the Vault/Moon distinction is to resolve the fundamental conflict between two very different aims of tasvideos: to entertain its viewers, and to be an archive of tool-assisted speedruns that catalogues the fastest possible completion times for every game. Hence the Moon tier is set up to house movies that get to exist on the site because they are entertaining (and who cares what crazy goal choice those movies might have, as long as they're entertaining?), and all other movies go to the Vault.
I fully agree that TASVideos should be inclusive in that every game deserves a TAS (unless there's a very good reason not to accept one). However, I do not like the fact that there's a "dump" category where all "boring" runs are put, semi-hidden away. "Vault" has almost become a synonym for "garbage dump", which is not right IMO.
Setting the world record completion of a game, and thus getting to the Vault, should be a rewarding achievement, not a punishment for choosing the wrong game.
I suppose that my point was, which has been discussed in another thread in the past, and as arkiandruski seems to be pointing out, that the Vault ought to contain all any% and 100% TASes, and the Moon ought to contain everything else.
It should not be a question of everything going to the Vault by default, with a few select ones being elevated into Moons (as seems to be the case in this very thread). Perhaps they should be completely distinct categories altogether. And getting to Vault ought to be much harder than to Moon, where the standards of qualification are significantly less strict.
But yeah, I'm just repeating that past discussion.
Not really on topic, but I'm still of the opinion that the reputation of the Vault and Moon tiers ought to be reversed (with name changes to reflect it.)
Getting to Vault ought to be a hard-earned privilege. After all, a run can get there only in a very narrow set of circumstances: It has to be an any% or 100% game completion, and it must break all existing records. In other words, it has to be the best of the best. And only two runs at maximum (any% and 100%) can reach this privileged top position.
The Moon tier should be the "dump for everything else". If a run does not qualify for the privileged position in the Vault, it might nevertheless be published by being relegated to Moons, where everything else is dumped as well. Getting to Moons is not a privilege; it's the dump where the run is thrown when it doesn't qualify for being the best of the best.
Just my opinion.
"This makes me feel good, therefore it must be true" is a surprisingly common argument.
Just count how many times the word "feel" is uttered in that video.
Not even once have I heard it from somebody who radiates cheerfulness and charisma.
Then perhaps you should watch some videos of Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Well, good thing we can engage in productive activities, such as repeatedly telling somebody we don't even know that they're wrong on a random internet forum dedicated to an incredibly time-wasting, inconsequential hobby. Right?
If you were intelligent about it you would contribute something meaningful to that research instead of repeatedly and intrusively saying the equivalent of "what you're interested in is stupid, you're wrong, and I insist that you're the one biased. I will repeatedly confront you for appreciating something over/instead of the widely-approved matters".
You mean like the links I provided in this post?
The internet is full of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. The world is not becoming better by making people believe in them. We do not become better as people by believing in woo.
What really grinds my gears is when people are so gullible as to actually believe that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of scientists and aficionados from all around the world, from different countries, cultures, ideologies and philosophical stances, are somehow in a huge world-wide conspiracy and have, somehow, all agreed on hiding something, or lying about something.
That kind of thinking is completely delusional. It is literally a physical impossibility. Even if you tried, you could not have the entire world-wide scientific and amateur community agree on the same lie, on keeping something hidden, with none of them starting open discussions about it.
All these conspiracy theorists and their believers are highly biased. They want to believe that, for example, some photographs are genuine, even after clearly showing to them that they are not. They are not interested in knowing the truth. They are only interested in bolstering their own beliefs.
And as I have already said twice, it's really sad, because the real world is already full of wonder and awe. The real world is interesting. There is a ton of things we can learn from the real world. There is no need to believe fantasy.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And when I see minds being wasted, it makes me angry.
The pic provided underneath that quote was also eye-catching.
I really can't understand why you are so eager to believe in fiction, when there is so much marvel and awe in the actual real world.
Are you even able to see your own bias?
Maybe it's just me, but I'm still of the opinion that the bsod image just doesn't work. It's not very recognizable without the blue color nor the typical shape of the overall text, and there is too much text to be read in such a short period of time.
I think that joke doesn't really work because it's hard to understand what's going on. The text is badly cut, and there's a lot of it, and without color and seeing the whole picture it's hard to associate it with a bsod. Also, it has so much black that it'll probably take a bit too long time to draw.
I've actually heard a little of the Piltdown Man hoax. So they, apparently, tried to get away with combining an orangutan jawbone with a human cranium? Wow. Crazy how long that went without being refuted.
The actual story is a bit different from the "headlines" version (especially the one promoted by creationists.)
Especially creationists love to paint a picture of that incident such that scientists were all excited by this new "missing link", and were boasting how it proved human evolution from apes, and then 40 years later they were put to shame when it was discovered to be a hoax.
Reality is a bit different. In fact, quite many biologists doubted the veracity of the alleged fossil from the very beginning. And one of the major reasons was that it did not fit any of the predicted human evolutionary patterns. The "Piltdown Man" skull was an oddity that didn't fit.
But the technology of the time wasn't sufficient to verify whether it was a genuine fossil or a forgery. For this reason it was kept most of the time locked in storage rather than displayed. Many doubted its veracity, and most biologists wanted for technology to develop sufficiently to test the alleged fossil.
And then, about 40 years later, they finally could test it. The result surprised almost no biologist.
No, I don't have any kind of personal issue with you. I have no recollection of what you may or may not have done in the past, nor do I much care.
However, I do have an issue with the topic and how it's presented. (Not this topic in particular, but in general these types of topics.) I especially have a problem if these topics are presented in an echo chamber with no criticism welcomed.
I appreciate and advocate reason, skepticism and proper science. Hoaxes and conspiracy theories can be an interesting topic, but only in the sense of studying how the human mind works, and what can fool people into believing them. (They can also make for great fiction, but that's a different tangent altogether.)
Promoting hoaxes and conspiracy theories can be damaging. It misleads people into believing falsities, and I take that seriously. I hate people misleading other people, especially when it's done using all the logical and argumentative fallacies in the book. I value truth over fantasy, and I detest people who would try to convince other people of fantasies and hoaxes.
In the meantime (for those who are interested in this topic), I've uncovered a couple of more New York Times articles about alleged discoveries of giant skeletons. I'll update my first post here later on, to display the new content.
Ah, the 19th century New York Times, that bastion of trustworthy and reliable peer-reviewed science.
If it's printed on NYT, it must be true. If it was printed there over a century ago, it must be doubly so.
Btw, I have a bridge to sell you, if you are interested. I can give you a New York Times article about it.
Some people want to believe these hoaxes, or at the very least consider them within the realm of possibility, because it excites their imaginations, and it, perhaps, makes the dull, boring real world seem more interesting and exciting.
I think this is sad, because it incites people into actually believing falsities, hoaxes and fairytales (rather than just taking them for what they are). It's even sadder because they are missing on actual reality, which can be extremely interesting all on its own. You don't have to resort to conspiracy theories, hoaxes and fairytales to find wonder and amazement in the world. Reality can oftentimes be much more interesting than someone's imaginary tales.
For example, during the past decade or so I have been really interested in astrophysics. (It has always been an interesting subject, but it hasn't been until the last decade or so that I have started to really look into it and reading stuff about it.) I find it really exciting and interesting. We have a small glimpse of how the universe really works, and we can actually measure and test it. We have an understanding of what makes things move, how gravity behaves and what interesting effects it has, how stars form and what their life cycle is, how elements form, and so on and so forth. We have predicted and found all kinds of really weird stuff that happens as a consequence of the simple laws of physics that govern the universe, and in many cases we have been able to corroborate that these predictions have indeed be true.
Why would you want to believe in fantasy when reality can be so much more exciting and interesting? Why would you want to believe some hoax, when you can find out things that we can actually corroborate via observation, measurement and testing? Why would you want to believe in imaginary tales, when reality is wondrous and weird all in itself?
Cast aside those fantasies. Educate yourself on how the universe really works. That's a much more interesting and productive subject.
Double standards in using or not using other tags is bad idea.
I was not suggesting double standards. I was suggesting fluidity rather than rigidity. Considering things on a case-by-case basis. After all, we are doing this for the benefit of the audience, so we should give them what they want.
Either way, what exactly would make it a "bad idea"? Bad idea how?
I think it is very significant that rules about this tag must work exactly the same way and for improvement to ultra-mega-popular and famous games series like Mario, Sonic, Metroid or Zelda, and for improvement to the most boring runs from vault.
Why? This isn't a competition. We do this purely for the enjoyment of the public. Thus we should take into account what the public is most interested in.
Draconian strict rules that are the same for everybody are for competitions (especially ones with prizes or fame). This isn't one.
(With this I don't mean that we should start outright shunning or ignoring the less popular games/runs. I'm just saying that some flexibility in the interest of the public is perfectly acceptable and even desirable.)
I'm not a fan of the fourth criterion (every TAS of a game is of interest to that game's speedrunning community)
It's not a question of whether the TAS would be deemed interesting, but whether the improvement would be deemed interesting compared to the previous one.
Some games, and TAS improvements to them, garner more interest from the wider community than others.
and the the first criterion is pretty arbitrary (why 10%?)
Because it's a nice round number that's easy to remember.
But seriously, though, it's to make it easier to make a decision on whether to grant the tag or not. It could be like "if the new TAS is at least 10% shorter than what it's replacing, it gets the tag by default unless there's a good reason not to." And likewise: "If the improvement is less than 10% shorter than what's replacing, and there's nothing else that makes it notable, then it does not get the tag by default, unless there's a good reason to."
Just an idea. When guidelines are clear, it makes people's jobs easier.
