The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

The way I see it, the majority of the community seems passive on these matters, unwilling to put their big-boy/girl/nonconforming boots on and dive in. Other times, helping seems like an arduous task. My second post on the Board was about my need to feel like I'm contributing, but it took a great act of will for me to even type this. This is why I propose the following command structure:

*A handful of people to be elected Community Managers. Those in this position are responsible for calling votes, approving proposals for the community, and if worst comes to worst, banning members.

*Several minor community roles are to be created. These roles may be things like running weekly CAHQ games or teaching the ropes to newbies. Roles should be simple things that make our community feel more like a community. Everyone who has been around for a few months is encouraged to take up a role.

*Some representatives. Those who do not wish to partake in votes or discussions can instead put their support behind representatives. Representatives vote on behalf of their supporters. This is far from ideal, but as-is we have a rather large participation problem, and need to grease the wheels in some way.

Since there is some doubt about how many Boarders even look that far down the page, here is a link to follow.

Since Tomash is currently only allowed to post in that one thread, I advise against taking the discussion up here. Please continue commenting on the original thread. Thanks in advance for your – yes your - participation.

HG

This appears to be the original meaning of the Italian word confetto, while the small pieces of paper called Konfetti (German) or confetti (English) are coriandolo in Italian. Sergio Turbo could tell you more about that. Also, throwing sweets as well as Konfetti is still a thing in German carnival.

HG

(On a meta note, I suspect people generally don't scroll this far down the Board. If that's the case, could someone either link to or repost this further up the front page?)

So, I've looked over this thread and some of the discussion from March, and I've noticed that there's a general sentiment that there's something wrong with the PPC's social dynamics. That is, something about how we view each other, interact with each other, or what we do or don't do as a community is causing a serious issue.

However, no one seems to quite agree on what the problems are, let alone the solutions. I've heard (this is not a comprehensive list):
- People being too deferential to oldbies
- People expecting the oldbies to run the place
- The newbie-oldbie split in general
- Newer people not participating in the community like previous new people did
- Direct democracy failing, in general, because people don't engage with discussions like this one
- The community being too forgiving of bad behavior
- The community tending to ignore bullying when it occurs
- Live chats being a cause of drama and problems by their very nature
- A group of people having wound themselves too tightly around Iximaz's feelings
- A spade of recent incidents eroding everyone's trust in each other, especially when it comes to private information

We've already decided that sweeping bullying/harassment under the rug is an issue, and we seem to be doing a decent job (see the Bram thread) of changing our behavior (or are we?). However, as the recent posts in this discussion have shown, other general issues appear to exist.

So, two questions:

1. What, if any, are the social dynamics of the PPC that are or could become problems?

2. Who should do what to solve those problems?

Then, when it comes to the people or group specifically named as problems, here's what I've heard:

- Ekyl (Brink): Ekyl and Iximaz seem to be satisfied that the matter is resolved (or at least that appropriate apologies have been given), so there's probably not much more to discuss here

- Ekyl (DIA ownership claims): Ekyl's said he sort-of did this in the past and that it won't be happening again. It's unclear (but likely) that this counts as a resolution.

- Ekyl (being manipulative/insincere): There's a general sense that Ekyl's words often come off this way, even if (as a lot of people seem to believe) that wasn't intended. Ekyl has been given advice on how to avoid giving off this impression.. It's unclear that this counts as a resolution.

- Scapegrace: No clear consensus. Can we get a few more opinions?

- HerrWozzek and Nord Ronnoc: They've apparently mutually decided to stay away from each other, which should resolve things

- Granz: Has apologized and acknowledged that the second chat server was a bad idea. It sounds like this has resolved the issue, but it's not entirely clear given how few people are in that part of the thread.

- Huinesoron and Neshomeh: The general sense seems to be that they're good people who put a lot of work into the community, and that they're not controlling evil dictators who prevent their friends from getting banned or anything like that. They've also come up in discussions of the newbie-oldbie split, but the general feeling is that there's not anything much they can do about it.

- The witch-hunt: Heck if I know. The thoughts I've seen seem to be that no one needs to get banned over that, that it was bad, and that the people who did it shouldn't do it again. Unfortunately, the people who can accept apologies for what happened there aren't around anymore, so it's hard to declare that resolved.

So, that's what I've heard. Not a very short summary, but these weren't short threads either.

On a personal note, it might be a good idea for the people who've been told they've come off wrong when apologizing during this to retry their apologies, taking the advice they've gotten into account.

- Tomash

Have a look at Luke's burning Jedi Academy, and tell me it might not run in the family.

--Aegis, encouraging wonderfully ridiculous fanfiction.

We're gonna talk about taking a whole planetary system and setting the orbital interactions to music and we're not gonna talk about this?

"Everything has to be fandom related these days" indeed. :P

I will be free before 12:00 Eastern Times, and After 18:00 Eastern Time.

I'm too lazy to go back and rewatch the match, but if I remember right, I panicked, realized I didn't have any good counters, and started forcing AI to switch out and doing my best to annoy him into losing. Sometimes it works. :P It's a good backup when things go sideways.

I had too many sweepers to really make the hazard thing work, but no matter; next tourney, I'm planning on a Rapid Spin+Haze team to irritate everyone even more.

My team got trounced by a six-year-old earlier today, so they need time to recover their morale anyway. ^_^

(Well, he spends so much time playing imaginary Pokemon fights that just involve him declaring that his Pokemon wins everything that I thought a proper battle might do him good...)

How are you fixed for tomorrow?

hS

A few things came up yesterday and so I myself am actually pretty busy today. I may or may not have time to go today either.

It helps if you have a lot of very defensively-oriented Pokémon on your team; because entry hazards, status effects, &c do set percentages of the target's HP as damage, you can outlast the opposition and stonewall everything they try. I don't know that it was Ix's initial strategy, but it's always worth a go. =]

Phazing, btw, is the term for forcibly switching out an opponent's Pokémon through moves like Dragon Tail, Roar, and Whirlwind.

I was watching... it must have been your battle with EAIUO, Iximaz. Was the thing with repeatedly forcing his pokemon to switch out/into a bunch of entry hazards a strategy you planned, or one that came up as an emergency response when things went sideways?

hS

Though I'm pretty sure they're mostly for cake decoration.

If you email me (huinesoron@hotmail.com) when you're around, my phone should buzz me and let me know.

I'm going to have to battle /from/ my phone, actually, and have had to reconstruct my team on there. I may have gotten some of the genders scrambled; I don't think you've got anything that matters for, but if you'd like me to check my previous battle logs and make sure, let me know.

hS

Or at least, if it isn't, let me compliment the members of the PPC for their skill at inventing new and exciting stuff to be used in forums and role-plays.

-Twistey

And let me provide more cake. Namely a black-hole chocolate one (with red berries, of course).

And here comes a black-hole chocolate cake.

The election here... was a nightmare.

The left had the problem of Hollande's bilan, Macron's candidature, and pretty obvious dissension. When Hamon won the primaries elections, it didn't really netted him the support from the left, his irect opponent (the bad looser) Valls deciding to trow hs lot with Macron from a distance, while the far-left Mélenchon tabled on this to get the fourth place for the first turn (and was an incredibly bad loser too). I thought about voting for Hamon, but after seeing polls only giving him 10%, I switched for Macron.

At the right, Fillion won the first primaries elections from the right ever, clean and fair and square and all (I'd have preferred Juppé), but right after that, revelations about the way he paid his wife for doing pretty much nothing with public moneys and other skeletons just jumped from the closet (real problems, but convenient timing). He was still third, but lost, and now the right isn't looking good either.

So, with the two traditional parties not looking good, the far right cow had this big opportunity, against a 'new' candidate who managed to place himself at the center. After that, between a bad campaign, a bad TV debate with Macron, her own legal matters and chosing another candidate as Prime Minister to steal more votes, she lost without getting her minimal objective of 40%, and her party isn't lookin good either, good news.

The bad news is, she lost, Macron didn't exactly win. He still has the legislatives to win, with a rather rookie formation, and he will announce who his Prime Ministerr would be Sunay or Monay, and this guy will officially be the one leading this battle, an I can tell you that will be a vicious one.

As for Trump news... I rejoin the idea this guy had a fairly conspicuous timing during the election. A pityAnd of course Trump is ungrateful and never heard about the Watergate and Nixon. You cannot listen the radio without hearing about boomakers telling his odds to finish his term are dropping.

That was an underwhelmingly simple solution. I got a three page story and the whole thing fit in quite nicely, too, so nothing wrong, there.

Well.
That was underwhelming.
Jolly good!

Also I don't know why you added that last part now I'm real curious except you can't answer it because it's NSFW why must you taunt me like this Key, is this revenge for what I did to your garage?

But ability to do detailed responses will be limited, crazy couple of weeks at work.

As far as the convoy goes, I was planning on trying to swing north to hook up with the Thornbird, possibly with some 'silent running' with the wedge down to try to avoid any potential Peep ships lying doggo in the convoys path.

Elcalion

That is all.

Never fear, your friendly neighbourhood acoustician is here!

You're correct, some of the notes are "out of tune".

This might be because they're putting actual data in and it isn't perfectly in whole number ratios (but close enough that the system is still stable). But even if it was, some notes would still sound out of tune according to our modern tuning system. This whole issue is what acoustics and musical theory calls "temperament", and basically relates to how in tune you want/need music to be for different intervals or for playing in different keys.

The resonances that the planets are locked into are based on the harmonic series, where everything is in whole number ratios to a fundamental tone (in this case, half the frequency of the furthermost planet). The higher notes in a harmonic series are slightly "out of tune".

Basically, musical intervals sound 'consonant' to our ears if the frequency ratio is in whole number ratios, and if the numbers in a ratio are small. So an octave (e.g. C-C) is a frequency ratio of 2:1, and a fifth (e.g. C-G) is a frequency ratio of 3:2.
By adding in extra ratios, you can fill in the other notes of the scale, e.g.
C = 1/1
D = 9/8
E = 5/4
F = 4/3
G = 3/2
A = 5/3
B = 15/8
C = 2/1

The issue with using this tuning is that the intervals between the individual notes are not constant (if you divide the ratios together, e.g. D/C, you end up with tones and semitones, as expected, but there are actually two different 'sizes' of tone). So some intervals and some notes may be nicely in tune, but other notes or intervals sound out of tune.

This is all fine if you only ever play major scale music in one key, but if you tune a keyboard to C major in the above tuning scheme (which is called just intonation) and then play in a different key, the intervals will now start off on a different note. Say we tried to play music in D major on that keyboard: the fifth D-A would have a ratio of 1.481, while the fifth C-G would have a ratio of 1.5 (3:2).

In short, using tuning based on whole numbers of frequencies means that only some intervals sound consonant to our ears, and that some ratios (especially if the whole numbers in the ratio are large) will sound "out of tune", and this gets worse for more complex intervals, or where you go over multiple octaves (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_comma for more detail).

This is also why modern pianos use "equal temperament" tuning - every semitone is equally spaced so that pianos can play in every key the same way, but it means that some intervals are very slightly out of tune. It's a compromise between being perfectly in tune in one key and the ability to play in any key. Singers and chamber musicians (e.g. string quartets) tend to use the "just intonation" tuning if left to their own devices without a piano.

Elcalion, harmonious