Winter Update

Boy I've been busy. Real Life and Virtual Life are in serious competition for my time. Luckily I can spend some "real life work" time to do "virtual life work".

Begun This Crackdown Has…
Like it or not, the DJB is getting strict on some formerly loose policies. I know this is going to make some people cry themselves to sleep at night, but frankly I don’t care. Rules are there to help everyone, and those who break the rules citing that it’s ok because it was once approved by someone who isn’t around anymore are guilty.


The Wiki
Star Wars Realism. You’ve heard me bitch about it before, but now it has a bit of weight behind it. I’ve discussed it with a handful of the DC and have been given positive feedback paired with some serious interest in making it happen. It begins with Character Histories. On the Wiki we’ve started tagging articles that have problems. We’ll work with the author to fix these issues until they are at an acceptable state. Hiding behind the blanket of “The Shadow Academy approved it!” doesn’t work with anymore. The current HM knows there were many mistakes by previous administrations in letting things slip through, and much like how a pebble can cause an avalanche, these minor issues have gotten out of hand.

Character Histories are very important to the fictional realm of the DJB universe. Not taking it seriously is about as big an offense as cheating. By not bothering to formulate a decent, believable back story is a disgrace to the genre, the club and all those who participate by writing fiction. Those who write their backgrounds without a shred of regard for the Star Wars saga shouldn’t be allowed to be here.

I don’t mean to come off sounding like some sort of Star Wars zealot. This is the reasoning behind my thoughts. Imagine if you will a run-on competition involving a few members. One has no history written, one is filled with tales of single-handedly killing rancors through the Force when they were a child, and one person actually took the time to formulate a realistic-sounding background. The ability of the members to draw off each other is seriously hindered, and the quality of the run-on will fall in favor of the last person.

It doesn’t take long to come up with something semi-useable, but then again it’s difficult to not feel like a carbon copy. There are so many fallen jedi and orphans it’s amazing. My story? Fallen jedi… and a clone. Yeah it’s far from original but at least I took the time to think it through. Hell I even made it super confusing until recently. The history I had on my dossier up until recently was a combination of jumbled ideas and intentional deceit.

The Forums
The crackdown is going to involve a great many things. Signatures are getting ridiculous. Obvious spam posting is getting out of hand. The place just looks out of date.

Signatures: I’m going to start flagging people. I’m making a new User Class, and moving people into it who need to change their signature. The rules are posted, but I suppose I’m going to have to clarify or refine them. The reasons behind changing people’s signatures are as follows:

The sig shouldn’t be bigger than your post. This occurs more often than anything else.
It says an image of a certain size OR 7 lines of text. Frankly I think it should only be an image of the correct size or your ID line minus your medals and Shadow Academy stuff. We know who you are if you filled out your forum profile correctly. There’s a link to your dossier under your avatar.
Image size restrictions are not there because we have a problem with disk space – they are in place because we don’t want the formatting of the forum to get thrown off. Plus, believe it or not, some people are on dial-up.

Spam: Unfortunately I had to be a bad guy and squash people’s fun. I’m all for people doing whatever they want for kicks, but when it directly affects my work I tend to get mean. The Dark Brotherhood of Spam were an unofficial group in the DJB who were competing with each other on who can get their post count highest. They started annoying me when they’d make useless posts all over the forums, so we opened up the Spam section to tally post counts. They had a website outlining all their participants, their mission, and their accomplishments. I gave all the DBoS people 31337 posts as a post count. I gave them all the 1337 5p4mm3r title. I was clearing out the trash and rebuilding the forums to accurately calculate their counts, so it was just some fun for them before they all got bumped back to their proper number a couple days later. They made me an official part of their little club but I really didn’t want that, so they removed me. It was nothing personal, but “spammer” is up there with “prison rapist” on my list of un-cool titles.

They wanted a Wiki article, and that’s where I had to start drawing the line. They were an unofficial piece of the DJB, and thus really had no reason to be up there. Plus it made it seem like the DJB was rewarding people for being a nuisance. I ignored the request at first, thinking that no response meant they’d given up the idea. I even asked someone to tell them I didn’t think it was a good enough subject for a wiki article. I tried to be nice about it, but then they got approval from Jac. He had no idea I had already refused it, so I don’t really blame him.

In the end they decided to just give up, disband the unofficial group, and go back to being normal members. I hate to ruin people’s fun, but when that fun is at the expense of many hours lost on my account I get angry.

The DC
The DC’s been kind of quiet, so I don’t have much to say on them.

GM: We had some conversations over the last month that had nothing to do with the DJB, but as for the DJB stuff, everything’s doing well.

DGM: He’s had his hand in a lot of stuff recently, but most of it is secret. I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you.

HM: Talked to the HM here and there, but overall it seems the SA is doing well with its new format.

HRLD: He’s been busy. New robes and sabers, yay! Everything’s looking great.

SCL: Believe it or not, we don’t talk much, and when we do it’s usually not DJB related. I taught her some of the inner workings of the Forum Admin interface, but other than that it’s been quiet.

Tribunes: I rarely speak with any of them. They all seem to be getting along just fine with their respective positions.