Replayability discussion

IfMUD is FAR better than Twitter for a group discussion. It’s not just the 140 characters - it’s the part where you’re either a) losing a ton of those 140 characters to replies and hashtags in order to build a conversation with other people, or b) confusing the heck out of anyone looking at your feed by making context-free comments.

(I’m fairly active on Twitter - @mossdogmusic, or twitter.com/mossdogmusic if you just wanna peek without having an account.)

OK, I think we can forget about Twitter, given that everyone who actually uses Twitter thinks it would be terrible. It only came up because I don’t use Twitter and so didn’t know it would be so terrible.

What about ifMUD vs. IRC?

Yeah basically I just want to click a link in the web browser and start reading/writing the chat. Should be as easy as adding a comment to someone’s blog post.

I’ve no idea what technologies, though.

We don’t bite, and the MUD is generally pretty tolerant of newbie mistakes. And non-newbie mistakes, for that matter. People have been remarkably laid-back when my proxy tests go horribly wrong and spam the lounge.

If you get completely lost, type “lounge” and then “say Help, I’m a newbie and I don’t know what to do!” and hopefully someone will be in the lounge and paying attention.

With the recent proliferation of web-based IRC clients you almost get that – the user still needs to choose a name unless they want to be WebIRCUser1234. But then, adding a comment to someone’s blog usually requires going through some terrible ad hoc registration process, so in those terms IRC is ahead of the game.

ifMUD (even if accessed through IRC) is a bit trickier because you need to sign up for an account first; you can connect as a guest but guests are sharply restricted in what they can do. IRC generally lets you connect as yourself first and then register and claim your name once you’re already connected. Although, for conversations that take place in rooms rather than channels, being a guest might be sufficient. Makes it hard to tell who’s talking, though.

I have gotten used to the IfMUD by now, but I must say I am surprised there doesn’t seem to be an IRC channel or Facebook group. Maybe I simply did not look hard enough.

There was a thread about an IRC channel: https://intfiction.org/t/interactive-fiction-24-7-chat-room-irc/6120/1

I don’t know if it got any action.

I was in there for a little bit, but it never had the momentum to carry.

Does that mean IRC wouldn’t work for TheoryClub? It seems like a critical mass is more likely on IRC if you say “A bunch of us are going to get together on this channel at this time to discuss this issue” than if you say “Here’s an IRC channel to hang out on.” I can see why a MUD would be more appealing if you wanted to just hang out (and in that case you’d have more time to learn how to MUD, too).

I think just about any chat medium can work if we decide to use it.

(Twitter is not a chat medium.)

I wrote:

Okay, I have experimentally done this. Jabber chat room “theoryclub@conference.volity.net” is now gatewayed to the #theoryclub channel.

I’ll leave this running for the next couple of hours. If it looks good, and people like it, I can set it up as a permanent service.

It’s running again, and will be until further notice.

Question about the Jabber chat room: is it possible to access it with mribbit?

Not familiar with this. Did you mean “mibbit”? The wikipedia page on that says “supports Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Yahoo! Messenger,[4] and Twitter.” So no.

Look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_XMPP_clients

Also, the Messages client that comes with MacOSX will work.

IF Comp post-mortem talk is today: 8 PM British time / 3 Eastern / noon Pacific.

The transcript from last night is now available at emshort.wordpress.com/if-discuss … st-mortem/ .

Thanks so much for this. I couldn’t be there, but am really happy to be able to read the notes.

Thanks for the transcript!

Next topic (Dec 13): since people are busy at this time of year, we’re going with the low-prep topic of “New directions in IF”, which can be “here’s my specific concept I want feedback on” or can be “here’s my pie-in-the-sky notion”.

As always, details at emshort.wordpress.com/if-discussion-club/ .

As a first-time visitor to the last discussion, I enjoyed it and stayed longer than I thought I would. I hope to see new and old people there this Saturday!

It seems like we touched on the idea of getting an idea out there last session. The main concerns were not spoiling it for IFComp (e.g. violating the publicity rule) and also on not wanting to reveal enough for someone else to run with our idea better, while still getting enough feedback. This is tricky, but I know just saying “I’d like to do X some day” in a public forum helped me to, well, eventually do X. Whether with Inform or other projects.

As a participant, I found the free-form discussion without too many rules is very helpful, especially as I had a short outline of things I wanted to say. So I recommend that to new people, though it’s not critical. Maybe only a list of 3 things is enough.

Also, this may be looking too far ahead, but how often will these topics be repeating? I’m asking specifically because I have a lot of ideas about testing (if only on bit mistakes to avoid) that I would like to share. In any case I want to go on record saying I wouldn’t mind repeating a general topic, as I think we can focus on specific sub-questions without overlapping a previous discussion. I suspect other people would not mind, too(?)

Now, obviously, I could write my own blog posts on testing, and some of the details probably belong there, but the real-time chat helps you feel you’re not shouting into a void.

Glad you liked it!

Repetition: I don’t really know. Some discussion topics have had people ahead of time saying “YES LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT!!” but then wound up with comparatively low attendance, while others have worked pretty well; but at least so far I wasn’t really planning to start repeating topics. OTOH if you have a particular angle on testing that you want to discuss, that might make a more compelling (and not-too-repetitive) pitch. I do have at least one person who’s volunteered to organize a future session (that is, do some advance research, have some examples handy for the topic, and be discussion-leader for it). If you or anyone else also want to do that, I’m definitely interested to hear about it.