Why Word Chains got locked?

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Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 4:45 am

Is it due to some content on this subforum or?I made another thread and I am waiting for authorization but I will delete it by myself if I do not get it after all talks end.
Last edited by {censored} on March 21st, 2021, 6:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by dvgrn » March 21st, 2021, 5:54 am

{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 4:45 am
Is it due to some content on this subforum or?I made another thread and I am waiting for authorization but I will delete it by myself if I do not get it.
Kazyan locked Word Chains because someone reported it as a thread with a very low signal-to-noise ratio. There's still some ongoing discussion about whether it makes sense for the conwaylife forums to continue to support noisy Sandbox threads like Word Chains.

It seems like a Discord server would be a much better place for content like that that is completely unrelated to cellular automata. There have been several silly Sandbox squabbles recently, resulting in posts getting reported, which just means that moderators have to do more pointless cleanup work.

The Sandbox was intended to be a place where newcomers could experiment with rules and patterns (e.g., using LifeViewer) without worrying about notability issues... not so much a place where people can come and make random large irrelevant messes "just for fun".

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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 5:56 am

dvgrn wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 5:54 am
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 4:45 am
Is it due to some content on this subforum or?I made another thread and I am waiting for authorization but I will delete it by myself if I do not get it.
Kazyan locked Word Chains because someone reported it as a thread with a very low signal-to-noise ratio. There's still some ongoing discussion about whether it makes sense for the conwaylife forums to continue to support noisy Sandbox threads like Word Chains.

It seems like a Discord server would be a much better place for content like that that is completely unrelated to cellular automata. There have been several silly Sandbox squabbles recently, resulting in posts getting reported, which just means that moderators have to do more pointless cleanup work.

The Sandbox was intended to be a place where newcomers could experiment with rules and patterns (e.g., using LifeViewer) without worrying about notability issues... not so much a place where people can come and make random large irrelevant messes "just for fun".
What ratio?And even more important,who reported?
I do not have Discord, that is going to be a problem. Also,I cannot see myself getting it anytime soon.
Is there a way to unlock a thread?
I think we should have at least a few games to relax with and that Word Chains are a very welcome addition. Maybe a moderator approval can allow games to exist?
It has over 4000 posts,if you have not locked it yet it is a bit strange now, without any warning.
Word Chains is also often related to cellular automata because we sometimes use terms there.
Some threads like Philosophy are quite nice and I think that they should stay here.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 6:29 am

They got unlocked!
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by dvgrn » March 21st, 2021, 6:34 am

{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 5:56 am
What ratio?
The term "low signal-to-noise ratio" is a common expression. As the forum rules say, the conwaylife.com forums are intended to host discussions about cellular automata -- they're not a chat or microblogging platform. So "signal" in this case is a post with some new information about a CA topic, and "noise" is posts with no such information.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 5:56 am
I do not have Discord, that is going to be a problem.
Solving that particular problem is not one of the missions of the conwaylife.com forums.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 5:56 am
Is there a way to unlock a thread?
Certainly, but someone would have to explain why Word Chains isn't just a noisy distraction from the intended purpose of these forums.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 5:56 am
I think we should have at least a few games to relax with and that Word Chains are a very welcome addition.
It has over 4000 posts, if you have not locked it yet it is a bit strange now, without any warning.
Irrelevant threads with constant activity and thousands of posts have several bad side effects. Those bad effects have been showing up more and more recently. This is partly because the software that runs the forums is somewhat limited and difficult to adjust.

Problems Have Been Getting A Lot Worse Lately
Among other things, Sandbox posts keep ending up at the top of the new-posts list, just because there's no easy way to exclude Sandbox posts from that list. And moderators are now having to waste time on Sandbox posts that get reported, because various Sandboxers seem to like to get into silly irrelevant squabbles as they're playing these games.

So ... people who actually come to the conwaylife.com forums to see CA-related content, are having to sift through more and more irrelevant garbage in the new-posts list, to find what they've come here to see.

The moderators are all volunteers with a long-term interest in cellular automata. I'm speaking only for myself here, but I think that none of the moderators really volunteered to spend any of their time mediating disputes that bear a strong resemblance to toddlers kicking sand at each other, that have nothing to do with cellular automata whatsoever.

To Make A Long Story Short...
It's very likely that nobody has even the slightest inclination to go and dig through thousands of lines of ugly PHPBB code, to figure out, implement and test any kind of workaround for treating Sandbox posts differently from other posts... just so that a few people can play Word Chains more conveniently on conwaylife.com.

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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by Sokwe » March 21st, 2021, 6:47 am

Dave makes some excellent points here. I have personally decided to unlock the word chains game thread, but I'm also requesting that people limit their use of it to about one post per day. I also suggest that anyone who wants to play this word game more than that should seek out a venue that's more suitable for it.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 8:16 am

I have got a historical and problem - solving idea:what if no more threads can be made in The Sandbox but posts still can?This would solve many problems.
Good idea?
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by yujh » March 21st, 2021, 9:03 am

Never, since you can make as much posts as you'd like to.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 9:18 am

yujh wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 9:03 am
Never, since you can make as much posts as you'd like to.
I think about topics, you still can make as much posts as you want,or at least as far as it is legal.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 11:01 am

dvgrn wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 6:34 am
To Make A Long Story Short...
It's very likely that nobody has even the slightest inclination to go and dig through thousands of lines of ugly PHPBB code, to figure out, implement and test any kind of workaround for treating Sandbox posts differently from other posts... just so that a few people can play Word Chains more conveniently on conwaylife.com.
You should have said that earlier, moderator. And not in that way.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by dvgrn » March 21st, 2021, 11:29 am

{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:01 am
You should have said that earlier, moderator. And not in that way.
Heh, the official terms and conditions of my work here as moderator say that I can use five paragraphs if I want to.

If you have some objection to how I explained things, please be _much_ clearer and more specific. The two sentences above don't communicate any useful criticism, because you don't give me any way to guess what I "should" have done instead (in your opinion).

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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 11:36 am

dvgrn wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:29 am
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:01 am
You should have said that earlier, moderator. And not in that way.
Heh, the official terms and conditions of my work here as moderator say that I can use five paragraphs if I want to.

If you have some objection to how I explained things, please be _much_ clearer and more specific. The two sentences above don't communicate any useful criticism, because you don't give me any way to guess what I "should" have done instead (in your opinion).
Your way is somewhat violent and unopen.
I became red in face and somewhat hot from smiling to the UGLY code.
Would you accept prohibiting to make new topics in The Sandbox while posting is still (mostly) limitless?
Also,I have a moderator helpers group,be nice to me if possible. Give me lessons,but not this way.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 2:07 pm

Sokwe wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 6:47 am
Dave makes some excellent points here. I have personally decided to unlock the word chains game thread, but I'm also requesting that people limit their use of it to about one post per day. I also suggest that anyone who wants to play this word game more than that should seek out a venue that's more suitable for it.
Per man or per whole forum?
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by bubblegum » March 21st, 2021, 2:37 pm

dvgrn wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:29 am
Heh, the official terms and conditions of my work here as moderator say that I can use five paragraphs if I want to.
If we have to speak about your official terms and conditions, you are not allowed to use less than five paragraphs.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:36 am
Your way is somewhat violent and unopen.
I became red in face and somewhat hot from smiling to the UGLY code.
Would you accept prohibiting to make new topics in The Sandbox while posting is still (mostly) limitless?
Also,I have a moderator helpers group,be nice to me if possible. Give me lessons,but not this way.
I find it hard to believe that you're not just reaching into a finite but arbitrarily large assortment of Scrabble tiles and using the first real words you see. It's not "violent" or "unopen", it's just explaining a lot. I'll give you a pass if you're terrified of explanations, but chances are, you're not, so…

You're also behaving like a specific toddler kicking sand here (Hubi). Ugliness in code (other than JavaScript) is subjective; there really was no need to emphasise it so much. You also don't need to smile, look at or know the existence of any code here until you're allowed access to it, and with your actions here I can guarantee that'll be halfway to never.

The structure of the Sandbox currently is floods of threads with like four replies each, and then a few threads of floods with like four thousand each. Prohibiting thread creation but letting existing threads grow infinitely would result in a lot of unhappy Sandboxers and no real change looking from the outside.

dvgrn is being nice to you, that's a requirement. Just because you wanted to feel extra-important doesn't mean he or anyone else has to treat you like you have Royal House of Orange blood in your veins or whatever it was called. The only lessons you'll need here are on how to be a good and likeable member of the community.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 2:07 pm
Per man or per whole forum?
Per user.

EDIT to below: Fine, took off one word.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 21st, 2021, 2:39 pm

bubblegum wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 2:37 pm
dvgrn wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:29 am
Heh, the official terms and conditions of my work here as moderator say that I can use five paragraphs if I want to.
If we have to speak about your official terms and conditions, you are not allowed to use less than five paragraphs.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:36 am
Your way is somewhat violent and unopen.
I became red in face and somewhat hot from smiling to the UGLY code.
Would you accept prohibiting to make new topics in The Sandbox while posting is still (mostly) limitless?
Also,I have a moderator helpers group,be nice to me if possible. Give me lessons,but not this way.
I find it hard to believe that you're not just reaching into a finite but arbitrarily large assortment of Scrabble tiles and using the first real words you see. It's not "violent" or "unopen", it's just explaining a lot. I'll give you a pass if you're terrified of explanations, but chances are, you're not, so…

You're also behaving like a specific toddler kicking sand here (Hubi). Ugliness in code (other than JavaScript) is subjective; there really was no need to emphasise it so much. You also don't need to smile, look at or know the existence of any code here until you're allowed access to it, and with your actions here I can guarantee that'll be halfway to never.

The structure of the Sandbox currently is floods of threads with like four replies each, and then a few threads of floods with like four thousand each. Prohibiting thread creation but letting existing threads grow infinitely would result in a lot of unhappy Sandboxers and no real change looking from the outside.

dvgrn is being nice to you, that's a requirement. Just because you wanted to feel extra-important doesn't mean he or anyone else has to treat you like you have Royal House of Orange blood in your veins or whatever it was called. The only lessons you'll need here are on how to be a good and likeable member of the community.
{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 2:07 pm
Per man or per whole forum?
Per user, obviously.
I know,but I did not like specifically the last paragraph. Sorry for that part.
Please do not speak like that. A careful observer would see that I am indeed a calm and and peaceful being and I do not want anything of the things that you said.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by bubblegum » March 21st, 2021, 2:43 pm

On the random posts thread: I'm concerned that rather than just not posting randomly, people'll post randomly elsewhere in the Sandbox, as there is no definitive container within the Sandbox for them anymore.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by dvgrn » March 21st, 2021, 10:58 pm

{censored} wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:36 am
dvgrn wrote:
March 21st, 2021, 11:29 am
If you have some objection to how I explained things, please be _much_ clearer and more specific...
Your way is somewhat violent and unopen.
I became red in face and somewhat hot from smiling to the UGLY code.
Hmm. I'm thinking that it's possible you don't understand what I meant about having to "dig through thousands of lines of ugly PHPBB code". You seemed to react to the word "ugly" for some reason that you haven't explained clearly yet -- or at least, that I don't understand clearly yet.

This forum is "powered by phpBB Forum Software", as the tagline at the bottom of every page says. Nathaniel Johnston set up these pages over a decade ago, and he is still the only administrator of these forums. That means he's the only one who could theoretically customize the forum code so that Sandbox posts would work differently.

I can't speak for Nathaniel, but I would guess that he is very unlikely to spend much time attempting to make any such custom changes. These days he is usually very busy teaching and writing books and raising young children, and so on and so forth.

This means that many of the recent suggestions about "let's set up the Sandbox so that it behaves differently in such-and-such a way"... are mostly just wishful thinking. Sometimes maybe there's a checkbox somewhere on a phpBB settings page that Nathaniel could check, or maybe an optional module that he could download. But for many of the suggested changes, I don't think there's anything like that that would work -- someone would actually have to reprogram the forum software. For many changes that would be a very time-consuming project; at least, I'm fairly sure that it's very tricky to adjust that code without breaking something. And again, it's something that only Nathaniel could do anyway.

So... realistically we're going to keep using the features of the existing forum software, one way or another, and work within those limitations.

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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by {censored} » March 22nd, 2021, 2:12 am

I know and understand. I just laughed at ugly.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by MathAndCode » March 25th, 2021, 4:04 pm

Personally, I would rather have the (non-cellular-autonoma-related) word chains thread locked than have the random posts thread locked. My main reasons for that are because many posts in the random posts thread are related to cellular autonoma, discuss the forums, or continue discussions that started elsewhere in the forums but don't fit where they started well and because it arguably serves a useful purpose, e.g. I've seen a user ask for and receive help with glider syntheses there.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by Schiaparelliorbust » March 26th, 2021, 2:06 am

MathAndCode wrote:
March 25th, 2021, 4:04 pm
Personally, I would rather have the (non-cellular-autonoma-related) word chains thread locked than have the random posts thread locked. My main reasons for that are because many posts in the random posts thread are related to cellular autonoma, discuss the forums, or continue discussions that started elsewhere in the forums but don't fit where they started well and because it arguably serves a useful purpose, e.g. I've seen a user ask for and receive help with glider syntheses there.
I very much agree with this. I think the random posts thread was a good place to talk about CA and conwaylife stuff that didn't fit anywhere else. We could have made a rule saying anything that didn't have to do with either of those wouldn't be allowed there. When I first reacted to Word Chains I did it out of feeling and reacted a bit too much. Random posts was much more necessary.
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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by GUYTU6J » March 26th, 2021, 2:49 am

As we have so many alternative threads we can just keep the original 238-page one locked and allow only one of these to be used.

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Re: Why Word Chains got locked?

Post by dvgrn » March 26th, 2021, 10:25 am

GUYTU6J wrote:
March 26th, 2021, 2:49 am
...we can just keep the original 238-page one locked and allow only one of these to be used.
How does "Random posts 2" sound?

Maybe just use that one.

We can save the old locked random-posts thread as an object lesson in Just Don't Do Stupid Stuff.

If the Sandbox goes back to being a lot closer to self-policing, then probably moderators will be happy to go back to not paying attention to the occasional irrelevant word-chains game (or whatever).

There have just been an awful lot of silly Sandbox posts getting reported recently, often when they didn't really have to -- on top of the normal run of valid reported posts due to our usual slow-salvo of new spammers.

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