Team 8's 1-1 and Team 6's 2-2 and 4-1 blew my mind. The permasprint setup on 5-1 was wonderful as well; I didn't consider that method. That is some serious outside-the-box thinking, and a well-deserved win on that account alone.
I'll post more in-depth thoughts and detailed comparisons of my own for all the runs sometime later this week—there's a LOT to discuss there for sure. Technique use was all over the place among the top three teams, and degree of optimization seemed to vary wildly between sections. Absolutely fascinating how different the runs ended up being.
I'd like to once again thank Samsara for the amazing game choice. Who knew an obscure commercial flop would end up such a gem under TAS conditions?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The requirement of having to prove that there is a definitive maximum score. That might work for games where you can easily score high enough to max out a counter at something like 999999, but not for other situations. I never understood why score runs should be judged that way, it's like asking people to proof that the time for a speed-oriented TAS can never possibly go lower.
When was the last time you looked at that rule? I can't find the requirement you mentioned.
I think they're referring to the 2019-era wording on how scoring goals were handled. Which—I completely agree—was silly.
Thankfully, we've already moved beyond that, and the current intention is to move further towards unbinding score attacks from full completion rules and eventually treat score as a standalone optimization metric just like time.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Right, rather than parametric categories to search by, they are curated lists for which runs are selected manually.
As is always the case with significant rule changes, all relevant rejected submissions will be re-evaluated to see if they meet the new requirements; if they do, they will be accepted and published, so there's a high chance that GD will lose some more entries in the near future.
The revamp is meant to open the site to more potential goal choices; the list of newcomer recommendations still depends on the quality and entertainment value of movies rather than their goal choice per se, so it would be an entirely different discussion as to which of them will make the cut.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Dunno about a month, but our team is cutting it pretty close as well, with one member completely unavailable, another quite busy, and the remaining two sharing the time zone, so I'd be fine with any extension if only to give ourselves an extra breather (1–2 weeks would be enough for us). We're putting that time to good use, though; I'm extremely confident in our work.
FatRatKnight wrote:
Though I won't exactly make it that easy, so it'll be some sweet stuff at the top if our team misses first place this time.
You're on. :]
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Agreed. A normal mode run with warp glitches and a warpless hard mode run would be best.
mklip2001 wrote:
As long as this doesn't count as abuse of a debug code or anything (like the GT Code in Super Metroid), I'm all for it.
The rules have a specific provision allowing cheat or debug features built into the game so long as they're accessed in an unintended way, such as via a glitch. This is exactly one of those cases since the warp room that is normally accessed via a password (which wouldn't be allowed) is instead glitched into.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
On another note, I've thought that the inability to smell and taste is a common symptom among coronavirus affected patients. Did I miss something in your post regarding this or this isn't a common observation in other countries? This information came between 2019~2020.
These actually started being widely reported already after I had made my last edit to the post (for example, here's the corresponding edit to the Wikipedia article dated 26 March, a day after I had made my last edit at the time, citing the symptoms as "less common").
There was also some misinformation floating around at the time because the mechanics behind smell and taste loss wasn't well-understood. The initial reports quoted medical specialists saying the reason was concentration of the virus in the upper respiratory tract directly damaging local parts of the tissue responsible for olfaction. This was false. SARS-CoV-2 was later confirmed to be actively neurotoxic much like many other viruses, as well as causing indirect damage to all sorts of tissue via blood clotting (see thesetwo articles for examples). The information on this aspect of it has been very intermittent and took a while to arrive at a suitable level of verification because it highlighted overlooked general mechanisms of viral infections. You might have noticed anticoagulants being prescribed to patients and working extremely well relieving them of symptoms that they normally don't even treat at all (e.g. fever).
I'll need to clean the OP up a little bit and update it with new knowledge. It was mainly intended to provide an immediate digest for people to avoid misinformation and stupid mistakes so I kind of stopped when I thought it had served its purpose. But a lot of it has aged by now.
EZGames69 wrote:
All I can gather from those sources is that Bacterial resistance is caused by many things in human nature, not just modern medicine. So to say that modern medicine is problematic because it causes bacteria to be resistant to antibodies is just misleading.
Medicine isn't; its application is. For what it's worth, antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance is recognized by UN and its affiliated structures as a global threat. Indeed, the primary cause is the overuse of antibiotics because that effectively breeds stronger bacteria at a greater pace than new antibiotic research is able to keep up, and it becomes a race where the stakes are continuously driven up because the bacteria can mutate pretty much indefinitely and the same cannot be said with confidence about our ability to develop new antibiotics. The overuse in question happens routinely in underdeveloped countries, but if we're to look at it fairly, you could probably count the countries where that doesn't happen on one hand. For example, here in Russia, patients with mild COVID symptoms were pretty much at a greater risk of contracting a life-threatening bacterial infection if hospitalized than dying from COVID itself. Hospital infections are very hard and/or expensive to treat because their spread and continuous presence at a hospital is already indicative of their ability to survive standard hospital treatments. One of my friends who barely survived a tick-borne meningoencephalitis was killed by an AMR infection during recovery because the treatments did nothing to help the weakened immune system. These things are a real threat but they don't receive the attention they deserve.
AMR's sister issue is pesticide resistance which, similarly, breeds superweeds, which is another pressing concern because regular pesticides are by themselves a threat to ecosystems and human health, and adding a potential global food supply crisis time bomb to the issue doesn't help it at all.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
This virus spreads violently fast, however the mortality is very low.
Low compared to the most deadly viruses out there, sure. It's actually crazy high compared to any other globally spread virus of the last hundred years, give or take. I mean, how many viruses you know that have caused excess mortality of at least 3 million people worldwide in a single year? That is approximately 100 times more than the average annual fatality rate of flu and more than 10 times the annual fatality rate of battle conflicts worldwide. In fact, it's about close to a fatality rate you'd expect from a world war. I mean, sure, it's not the end of the world, but on the other hand, people in general wouldn't start worrying about any sort of the actual end of the world until after too late. There's little use in worrying at the point where you can't change anything anymore. That's the back side of skepticism.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Now you remember a certain country mysteriously having a surplus of personal protective equipment just ready for exporting at very low prices, for no reason at all?
If you mean China, they were already the world's leading supplier of PPE and had the largest percentage of population using it regularly for manydecades. And unlike all other major industrial countries, China is also uniquely equipped to shift its production efforts in whatever way its government commands. There is a very good explanation why China was able to get ahead of other countries' manufacturers easily. The perks of centralized control, if you will.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
What about the skeptics who will think the media companies are just exaggerating again and won't do anything until it's too late?
I think you're overestimating the power of the media companies. While it's true that they exert a huge pull over the population, it hasn't been remotely enough to get people in some of the most affected countries to vaccinate quickly and avoid engaging in behavior promoting faster spread of the virus. Some of this was due to conflicting messages, but otherwise it's just because it's simply not as powerful as some like to portray.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Also "flatten the curve" was a hilarious meme.
A lot of people died in places where hospitals became overcrowded and doctors had to choose whom to save. Aside from excess deaths that could've been avoided, it's taken a heavy toll on the doctors' mental health. Not very hilarious if you ask me.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I don't understand this sentence (the part after the dash). We don't expect emulation accuracy to get worse over time, so we don't explicitly invalidate gains new movies get from worse accuracy. Implicitly we do ignore such differences, but why does it affect priority of resyncs?
Not of resyncs per se; the way we treat emulation differences has made me think—perhaps mistakenly—that even if, say, there were two movies submitted independently and at the same time, with no discernible difference in gameplay, the movie made on a more accurate emulator would be preferred even if slower due to extra loading lag and such. If this is a correct impression then there is also no reason not to give priority to a more accurate movie if it is available.
feos wrote:
We don't disallow other people from resyncing movies to work on console. There's no explicit rule for resyncs, even though this thread was made so we could have one. The situation of console resync being added only happened once, and we can still tweak it as we need.
What we explicitly disallow (EDIT: I guess the better word would be discourage) right now is submitting such movies, but what I mean more specifically is having an updated movie be the base of a publication regardless of the procedure through which it was offered. There are some published movies resynced for console verification that have no gameplay improvements in the resyncs themselves but none of them are anything more than a sidenote on an existing publication at best.
Both the way the rule is worded right now and the way publications of runs later resynced to console are presented makes it look like we don't really want this kind of contribution and only reluctantly acknowledge it. I'm not saying that's how we treat it in reality—but that is how we project it outwardly via our documented policies and behavior. In this respect I also want the rules to read in a more welcoming way even if they don't exactly lead to a significant difference in operation. (Same motivation as removing references to words like "proper" or "serious".)
feos wrote:
Mothrayas and adelikat disagree with changing authorship here (even to co-authorship).
That's actually not what they're disagreeing with.
If you reread my initial post, I'm describing two different situations there: one where a movie is resynced without an attempt at improvement (in which case no change in authorship occurs at all) (1), and one where an improvement is attempted but sufficiently proven to be unattainable (2).
TiKevin83's submission is situation #1 for which no change of authorship is being discussed at all. Mothrayas and adelikat did not and could not disagree with co-authorship under the conditions outlined for situation #2 because that wasn't even set up for discussion at the time. What was being discussed was closer to situation #1.
What Moth explicitly disagreed with and dedicated an entire paragraph of his post is removal of the original authorship credit, which is not at all what I'm suggesting at any point, and would never do.
feos wrote:
How do we verify this?
On a case-by-case basis in a similar way as we handle other uncertain situations: by relying on the author's research and judge's discretion. Basically, what a judge would be trying to determine in this case is whether the new author's research offers a deep enough insight into the game that it proves they would've found an improvement if they were any, and hence warrant a joint credit for the work they've done. If it only relies on already-existing research, it would simply be treated as a regular resync; i.e. rejected and used to update an existing publication with a mention in the publication text and such if other conditions discussed earlier are met.
In other words, in this situation the new author already needs to demonstrate effort worthy of full credit to earn just the joint credit. Think about it from their perspective, too: when they set out to improve a run that falls under the situation we're discussing they don't know beforehand that they won't be able to find an improvement, yet they still put in all the work that would be necessary to find one. It's not their fault if there is nothing left to improve. But their effort still does contribute something meaningful despite that, so in my opinion a co-authorship is warranted in such case.
feos wrote:
I HATE this. We do not, ever, unpublish movies. We do not erase them from the database. If it was created, accepted, and published, it is a valid verified record. We are an archive of records among other things. We want to be persistent and reliable. And the work that was invested in it should not be undone. I'm scared to even think of other potential "reasons" to erase a movie from the site. The only reason this should ever happen is accidentally using an entirely wrong movie or having a movie containing illegal data in it somehow. Erasing it doesn't only say it's bad to have it on the site (we backwards-obsolete impossible movies that were proven to have relied on emulator bugs), it says it's dangerous to still host it! There's no reason to act like the pre-resync movies are that bad.
Okay, that argument itself is entirely fair, but I think it's somewhat misguided. The way I see it, we're already doing a thing that is very similar with the way we replace submission files when an improvement is made in the time window between submission and publication. As far as I'm aware, those do, in fact, get erased—or at least they aren't available in any way a regular user (or even one with slightly elevated privileges like myself) can access. I think we need some kind of consistency between this, because a resync to fix emulation issues without affecting anything else is, to me, no different from trimming unnecessary input at the end or something else like that: a minor fix not affecting the movie as a whole or its creative choices in particular.
I think it's entirely fair to have everything available in history as long as the superior version is the one the publication is based on. I'd love to hear more opinions on this from movie authors as well, but I think it's a very reasonable take.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I can't really express my potential fear of someone misusing this system who would try to resync very old movies which probably gets new windows of possibilities which the previous TASer didn't had as the emulator wasn't published at the time.
There is no real misuse possible with this because a TAS that is merely resynced without any sufficient evidence that no further improvements to it are possible will retain only the original author's credit, and everyone else will also benefit from a more accurate representation of the game in the TAS. Even when there is evidence that no further improvement is possible, the resync has to solve noticeable issues coming from emulation inaccuracy, and the original author will still keep their credit in any case. The original author is never harmed by this, and the audience wins every time.
Some examples of what can motivate people to resync TASes without remaking them would be console verification (when they're doing the verification themselves; this has actually happened multiple times) and TASers working on emulator improvements (Alyosha has been brought up before); in other words, situations where it's a byproduct of a greater goal.
Of course, people aren't going to be lining up to do this; it's still only going to happen once in a while. I'm just not okay with rules explicitly prohibiting useful contributions when there's really no harm in them.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Nach's stance is that obsoletions must contain actual gameplay improvements, so resync submissions shouldn't be accepted. But he prefers another way of recognizing efforts like this: adding an updated movie to the publication. That way, the current publication persists as perfectly valid (because not syncing on console doesn't inherently mean the movie is invalid, and console sync has never been a requirement), and the publication also persists with all its content. And at the same time, the resynced movie gets the proper place right in the publication module, duly supported by the site as an update of (still) the same movie.
This option doesn't seem to have any downsides, and in future, it wouldn't even need new submissions. But actual regulations will be decided later, when Nach is around next time.
This subject came up recently as I've been going through the Rules page to fix wording and inconsistencies. For the record, this is how the relevant rule looks right now in entirety:
If time is gained from using a more accurate emulator but gameplay hasn't been improved, such a movie will be rejected. However, if improved emulation introduces more lag, extends the cutscenes, or slows down gameplay in some way, yet the actual gameplay has improved, such a movie will be considered a valid improvement.
To reformulate, this rule disallows submitting resyncs and gives preference to longer but more accurate movies as long as there are gameplay improvements.
If a resync is warranted without redoing the movie from the ground up, the current practice as quoted earlier is for the authors themselves to upload it if they decide to redo it on a more accurate emulator, and for that movie to be added to the current publication without changing the encode or the final time listed on the publication page.
There are several issues with this.
1. Accuracy is downplayed. Despite being a more faithful representation of the game, which should always be preferred with all else being equal, the resync is essentially relegated to being a sidenote—even though in theory it should take priority since the rules invalidate gains made thanks to emulation inaccuracies. If there is an easy way to achieve this without remaking most of the movie, we have no reasons to disallow it.
2. Nobody is allowed to offer a resync on behalf of the author (under the original author's name, of course) if they aren't around. That situation has, in fact, happened in the past, when adelikat submitted a resync of Phil & Genisto's Circus Charlie in their name, having failed to find meaningful improvements. And it was accepted because the previous run was made on a horribly inaccurate, long-deprecated emulator, and there was an effort going on to replace all runs made on it with something better. This situation is liable to repeat in the future as TASes become better-optimized, and we'll likely run into it whenever we orchestrate new efforts to get deprecated emulators off the site and find other movies without known improvements.
3. It creates a potential for a situation where a submission can be rejected or be stuck in limbo simply because gameplay changes resulting from using a more accurate emulator are too minor or uncertain to be meaningfully classified as improvements (e.g. different RNG values), regardless of what name it is submitted under.
I propose changing it in the following way:
1. Minor resyncs where relatively few actions need to be taken to achieve sync on a more accurate emulator can be added to the existing publication as per the current practice, but the time and encode should be changed appropriately and the old movie file removed from the publication page. Having a less accurate movie made on a deprecated emulator alongside a more accurate one serves no functional purpose. A link to it can remain in the submission message for posterity. Such resync can be offered by whoever as long as the credit remains with the author(s) of the original movie. This addresses concerns #1 and partially #2.
2. Situations where a different author had genuinely tried to find gameplay improvements but failed, yet their effort resulted in a different (more accurate) time compared to the original movie, this is best done via a separate submission, and credit can then be shared between the author(s) of the original movie and the author(s) of the attempt at improvement. This addresses concern #3 and the other half of #2.
3. Once a movie is confirmed to sync on console, no future resyncs for it are necessary.
The rule would then be formulated as such:
If an improvement to an existing publication is made using a more accurate emulator, the timing difference coming from emulation accuracy will be discounted, and judgment will be made according to improvements in gameplay. Situations where a shorter movie would be obsoleted by one that is slightly longer because of the more accurately emulated lag, load times, etc., should thus be expected.
A submission made on a more accurate emulator that fails to improve upon an existing publication in gameplay will be rejected. An exception can be made as long as all of the following conditions are met:
1) the existing publication has no documented improvements;
2) the author of the movie intending to replace it has failed to find improvements but can prove their due diligence in trying;
3) the change of emulator has lead to fixing immediately evident presentation issues (wrong visuals/sound/game behavior) and/or made it sync on console.
The authorship will be shared between the authors of both movies in this case.
Note that if you would like to offer a resync of an existing publication on a more accurate emulator in order to fix said presentation issues and/or make it sync on console without looking for other improvements, you're free to upload it to Userfiles and notify a judge. If it is deemed warranted, the file will be used to update existing publication directly without change in its authorship.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
This is Dragon's Lair, except the lair is Titanic and the dragon is Mode 7. Otherwise just as glacially paced. I definitely would've preferred the English version as well just for more readable cutscenes, though.
What happens to the character after he bangs the roof with the pipe?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Pleased to announce that Team 7 is doing well; almost 30k rerecords made across several files including tests. Progress is steady and the results are looking good! The game has enormous depth in terms of both routing, movement optimization, and enemy manipulation, so we're still discovering new techniques and opportunities. This made us adapt the initial work plan in a way that, hopefully, will let us incorporate all of them and result in a much tighter optimized movie.
I'm really intrigued as to what other teams will come up with. Fully prepared to see routes and tricks nothing like ours—too bad it's going to take another two months before I can.
EZGames69 wrote:
I think this was an excellent game choice, even better than my pick for DTC.
Dat humble brag...
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
A horrible, horrible way to go. Once-in-a-lifetime talent lost to someone's desire for cheap entertainment.
The circumstances around this are infinitely aggravating, so here's a friendly warning:
This is regarding the Kiwi Farms thread in particular, which by now has over 30 pages of some grade A psychopathy. Having your skin crawl after a few minutes of reading is the least you should expect from it. If you're mentally unstable, depressed, have a bullying-related trauma, etc., DON'T go there.
This is what terrorism looks like.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Of course there is. The principle of luck manipulation is making something with low odds of happening guaranteed to happen by finding a sequence of inputs that leads to that result. Like with almost every other game, nothing in PoFV is truly random, and whatever the AI does is seeded from the player input, which makes the built-in replay system work in the first place. Since the actions of the player invariably determine the actions of the AI in the same way every time, it's a question of finding what actions of the player lead to a less favorable position for the AI. And as long as something can happen earlier, there is a sequence of input that will make it happen.
Finding that sequence or one close enough is achieved via trying out different actions at different times and going with whichever leads to the result the soonest. We have an extensive collection of movies that do that to a very significant extent (the Castlevania runs and most fighting/brawling games are great examples). In case with PoFV you can help that happen by setting up the enemy screen in a way that makes collisions more likely and this way reduce the volume of the total testing space you'd need to sift through in order to force the AI into a collision. But perhaps you can actually trick it into colliding with any bullet that passes close to it if that can happen at all.
Make no mistake, I don't expect it to be quick or easy, because I know for sure it won't be, and nobody here would expect you to find a truly optimal sequence for every stage. But in terms of the final result a publishable run must be much better than what an unassisted player could realistically attain even if they could dodge bullets indefinitely and without regard for their own safety.
If/when you decide to look into it deeper and use a better tool, do post WIPs in this thread so we can track your progress and give feedback. We also have a Discord if you're interested.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Ah yeah, I get what you mean now.
Anyway, I've watched parts of the replay so I can more or less tell how this would've played out.
In stages 1 to 3 you pretty much never chain and so struggle to keep up with this random unassisted Marisa Normal replay (note: watch on the unpatched game) I just found in terms of speed. This alone would be unacceptable by any standards, so I just skipped to the final stage to see what you do there.
In the final stage the lack of savestate use becomes especially evident since you're just keeping yourself busy surviving instead of aggressively setting up kill scenarios for the AI, for which Marisa is actually very well-positioned due to her Ex attacks limiting horizontal mobility.
If I remember the mechanics correctly, the ideal strategy for a TAS would be spamming level 2 spells (a risky thing to do in unassisted play) to have them reflected by the enemy onto your screen, reflect them back again via well-timed fairy and bullet chaining, and finishing off with a level 3/4 spell when the screen becomes sufficiently cluttered from the back-and-forth. At least that's the one thing that comes to mind considering the AI is a filthy cheater and takes advantage of TAS-like movement itself, and waiting it to make a mistake instead of manipulating it into making one is orders of magnitude slower. But manipulation isn't possible unless you can rewind to an arbitrary moment and try again.
So yeah, I'm afraid you'll have to remake it using Hourglass/libTAS (if you can get either to work) so you can take advantage of the rest of the TASing tools. Slowdown alone won't do.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
if it's worth the trouble in terms of an interesting playthrough, otherwise human impossible
Just no-miss by itself isn't impossible. Unless you mean to do something else, e.g. maximize kill speed and such. PoFV is a PvP game so you have plenty of opportunity to turn it into a speedrun.
Citizen564374 wrote:
The goal is finishing a full run on Normal difficulty without losing the round and without taking any hit at all.
It's a TAS, why go lower than Lunatic?
Citizen564374 wrote:
Second the whole thing goes over 78min total.
This sounds about ten times longer than it should, considering unassisted speedruns on any difficulty take only 8–10 minutes.
Also, in order to submit the file here (as in make a publishable submission) you will need to use Hourglass or libTAS and provide a movie made via one of them. And it will have to be done on an unpatched copy of the game because it's a submission requirement. One of the reasons is that everyone with the copy of a game and the emulator/TAS environment should be able to reproduce your replay without having to look for extra files which may have changed since the making of the movie and would hence require tracking down the specific versions.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I would like to kindly request everyone to stop responding to Acumenium's posts in this thread, and instead use it for its main (and only) purpose: providing feedback on the submission in question.
And yes, Acumenium, I've already told you that your attitude isn't going unnoticed. You don't simply disagree with other members—you're being rude (1) and repeatedly misconstrue or misrepresent their words (2) in threads where it doesn't belong (3) because you don't understand how things work but insist that you do (4), despite moderators telling you to stop (5). That's five things you're doing that explicitly aren't appreciated. And the staff are getting fed up with it.
This is your last warning before your ability to post is revoked.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Okay, two pages of derailment is more than enough. Let me reiterate the important points.
1. Freenode has been taken over by people who have repeatedly shown themselves to be of the unscrupulous kind. There is more than enough proof for this for everyone to find in this very thread, and by the time it runs its course there will likely be much more. Additionally, it doesn't matter what policy they have on the site if they condone the behavior they allegedly disallow or discourage, and also give people who indulge in it operator privileges. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
2. We are moving from Freenode to Libera. This is already past the point of a debate, the process is underway, and it doesn't look like anyone has any arguments against it. Great to have everyone on the same page for once. This thread was meant to provide information on the process and the background, and collect feedback on the decision. Not to discuss separate concepts.
3. This thread is not for the discussion of the free speech principles or their implementation. Please go discuss them in a separate thread if you will. Any further derailment will be removed.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
No. Nobody can be forced to listen to someone's opinions if they don't want to. They are free to stop listening, leave, or if they are within the private property of the unwilling listener, the speaker can be trespassed.
I have never said otherwise.
Your examples imply that if a public speech platform exists, everyone is equally entitled to the privilege of using it. That's how it works in a vacuum; in practice, people with consistently disagreeable takes are eventually marginalized because at some point nobody wants to listen to them anymore. This inevitably happens in every community; online or otherwise: workplace collectives, groups of friends, hobbyist communities, political movements. I won't give this phenomenon a moral evaluation, I'm just describing it for what it is.
Warp wrote:
Where your principles start playing more of a role is if you are offering a public forum for people to express their opinions, but then silence opinions you personally don't like. The forum might be your personal property and you may have 100% the legal (and even moral) right to ban anybody you want for whatever reason you want, but your banning actions reveal your attitude towards other people's free speech. If two people, other than you, are having a conversation in your forum, the conversation is relatively civil, no insults and threats are being posted, no illegal material is being posted, do you intervene if the conversation is about topics you abhor? Do you have an attitude of "this is my forum, owned by me, I decide what topics are allowed", or do you have an attitude of "as long as the conversation remains civil and legal, I'm fine with the expression of any opinion, even if I personally don't like it." Do you defend their right to express their opinions, or do you want to restrict what is being discussed in your forum because you don't like certain topics?
I support expressing opinions in principle, and I also don't mind stupid people being stupid. But I also recognize that some opinions are plain disrespectful, whether they come from ignorance or malice, and can (and have!) hurt people. I want to minimize that, and will ban consistent offenders; this is what moderators do. Between upholding a nebulous principle at all costs and keeping the community safer and free from toxicism and disruptive behavior, we generally lean towards the latter, because not every cost is justifiable. If what you're about to say is going to hurt a lot of people who did nothing wrong, maybe you should reconsider saying it publicly in the first place. Maybe it won't serve whatever righteous cause you have in mind. Maybe empathy is a better determinant of quality of opinions after all.
On a side note, I've actually conducted some experiments in the past with regards to community management. My friends and I had a Telegram chat for which I was the sole admin, and my idea was to make it completely free from any moderation. People were free to invite other people no matter who they were. At some point a small group of assholes has successfully killed all conversation in the chat because no-one wanted to talk with them being around. It simply wasn't pleasant for them.
Warp wrote:
- You are free to express your (non-illegal) opinions in a public forum without negative repercussions, and without being impeded or silenced. (Swearwords are not opinions. Not even if phrased as if they were opinions)
Note that hate speech is a criminal offense in many jurisdictions. We also have an explicit rule against it as feos has pointed out a number of times in this thread. Which by extension means that you don't support it either, assuming you're consistent in your following of the principles you quote.
In any case, the issue at hand is moving from Freenode to Libera because there's already more than enough reasons to do so. We are also already in the process of doing so. Do you have anything against that in particular, or are you just here to express your conceptual disagreement?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Warp, you're conflating the principle of free speech with entitlement to having your opinion be welcome. For instance, if I get on a phone call with you, and start going off about some subject that you don't care about, or otherwise make you bored or uncomfortable, you aren't in any way obligated to indulge me and keep listening to me. In fact, if this is something I'm known to do regularly, you are in no way obligated to even pick up the phone. My free speech rights won't be violated this way. You're just executing upon your own freedom to not listen and not be subjected to something that is uncomfortable. Freedom of speech does not in any way translate to desire to communicate, and it rightfully shouldn't.
Note that I'm not even touching upon any moral aspects here, just the utility alone. There are no universally recognized rights that entitle other people to do anything for you. Communication between people has other layers and protocols through which favors and disfavors are achieved. It's not just a matter of laws and principles.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The Vault is the tier for runs that don't meet the entertainment and/or user feedback standards but are still recognized as the best in their respective well-defined and common categories for the purpose of record-keeping (currently: any% and 100%, though we're looking to expand it with other common categories). I'm afraid it's completely orthogonal to the situation at hand.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I don't think this category works at all. This is, at its best, an any% with an added lackluster walljump showcase that runs out of any novelty value less than halfway through. SMB1 walljumps simply aren't that interesting of a trick to carry the entertainment potential for an entire category.
What would make it more interesting would be extending the definition of a jump to include zero-height jumps, i.e. simply jumping as little as possible. Which is a run that we already have, and it was well-received for what it was.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'm just now wondering if the Freenode staff are actively filtering discussions about moving away from Freenode in some way. We should probably assume networking issues over anything, especially since my connection has been acting up all week, but with what DeHackEd pointed out about Freenode staff going nuts, I'm starting to wonder what else may they be doing?
Realistically, it doesn't help to spend the time wondering why the message didn't come through, especially considering that it's IRC and it never explicitly guarantees that any message does. This time is much better spent repeating, reiterating, and duplicating the message in ways available to us to ensure that it does, in fact, come through to every remaining active #tasvideos user on Freenode.
We need to expedite the process because we (you in particular) didn't take a decisive enough course of action when we saw the writing on the wall several days ago. So now we have to do it under the threat of a channel takeover, which is much less convenient but no less urgent. Among the staff, you're the most staunch IRC supporter and the one who de facto took it upon himself to handle the IRC affairs. Do what needs to be done, Nach. Help people migrate ASAP.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
This is regarding the Kiwi Farms thread in particular, which by now has over 30 pages of some grade A psychopathy. Having your skin crawl after a few minutes of reading is the least you should expect from it. If you're mentally unstable, depressed, have a bullying-related trauma, etc., DON'T go there.
This is what terrorism looks like.