Spectator thread

[Narcizo]

I think this has probably been mentioned before but what are the thoughts on having a spectator thread for people not involved in a game to discuss the game. I realise that there's going to be a big worry about unscrupulous/desperate people peeking in the thread while they're still playing the game but I think there's a lot of advantages.

1) give new people who are looking in occasionally a chance to feel a bit more involved without actually having to sign up for a game - hopefully drawing them in more
2) a way for dead players to stay active despite being out of a game
3) a chance to limit Crimson and JAG's PMs to each other.
4) a chance for me to do my little vote tables without having to feel like a total, total nerd if I only PM them to Crimson and JAG (just a total nerd).

If we're worried about the integrity of a game maybe it's possible to create a sub-forum and then open the forum to people who request it/block people still in the game. That involves more work for Danny though and would probably require him to be upgraded to an admin which probably isn't on the cards.

[Lathum]

hmm, the survivor drama we had with Poli makes me a little worried about this

[Danny]

On the part regarding have a sub forum and blocking / unblocking people. I don't have those kinds of permissions and I'm sure that the forums admins would not be interested in constantly blocking / unblocking

[JAG]

I personally would love such a thread / subforum and I do agree it would be good for prospective players / fun for those who have died, but l don't know how you could get around questions about integrity and still have it be open to others without having a subforum where only those who died in the game could access the current thread about the game (aside from that not sounding possible, it would be a fair bit of work for Danny too). It would also probably be fun for those playing in the game to read after they die or at the end of the game.

P.S. Narcizo, still waiting for my vote table PM.

[bhlloy]

I think it would ruin the integrity of the game. Even if nobody ever once peeked, there would still be the question of whether somebody did. And god forbid the nuclear fallout if one person ever saw somebody still in a game in the thread and then they denied it and we all took sides.

Unless there was a way to lock it down, I don't think it would be a good idea. Just my 2 cents.

[CrimsonFox]

Sadly my PMs have been limited as I've been at 99% for awhile. Everytime I want to PMchat with someone I have to delete a bunch of crap.

Plus I've been back and forth moving and stuff but tryin to keep up. Hehehehe actually if you guys would have seen JAG and I's back and forth during week two of Cube, you'd have laughed your butts off.

It would indeed be fun to have a hideout where the out of games can lounge. Reminds me of the lounge on Dave Foley's Celebrity Poker Showdown where the people booted out sat and chatted and drank while the winners kept playing.

Most post death/nonplaying PM chats I've been a part of involve just blind speculation as to who wolves are (usually very mistaken) and chatter about certain posts and such. Just kinda like how people yell at the screen during movies---> "Don't go in there! Oh my God you're gonna die if you go in there...the killer's in that room! OMG I can't believe you did that!"

having an off site forum to do this would work for that and you'd have to get permission to be let in sure.

As far as cheating fears go... there have been games, even the cube and Xcrawl (Deutschbaag!) , where there were separate threads with forbidden entry and I never saw any cheating.

[CrimsonFox]

but yeah ...secret games with lots of needed secrets. Would be hard to asure they were..um...secret.

[Narcizo]

Dunno, maybe I have blind faith in people but I think if people are going to find a way to cheat then there are far better ways of going about it instead of looking at what some people who don't actually know anything are speculating about. I think the main problems would be a) the fear/suspicion that someone is doing it b) people maybe being frustrated with the game looking in the thread in a moment of weakness.

But like Crimson said - that's been a few games involving seperate threads and since Survivor a long, long time ago I don't think anyone has suspected any compromise in those. But I do take the point of secrecy and whatnot. My main concern is that all things being even active players tend to get knocked out of games sooner rather than later and that has an adverse effect on
a) how people play their game
b) general activity

While having a seperate thread/forum wouldn't remove this problem I think it might alleviate it somewhat.

But I realise I'm still a new (old) guy here and can be seen as self-serving. I don't want to step on any (more) toes so I'll leave it at that.

[Autumn]

I tend to fall on the "let's trust people" side of things. I'd rather have something fun, like this, than avoid it just because things might go poorly. I have read through some of the old threads where there were problems like that. However, I'll point out that I've been playing WW here for I don't know, five years? And I don't think we've ever had a serious problem since I was here with that sort of thing. I have the impression that we now have a community with established social rules and are less likely to have that sort of flame out.

But I can understand if people are wary - if it would ruin the fun for someone, wondering about if someone's cheating, then it's probably not a good idea. But we've had separate game threads a lot lately, for instance, or discussions about metagame, etc., and I feel like we've been able to trust each other.

[The Jackal]

I think Danny is the Joker

[Alan T]

I am against it because it will take posts away from this thread:

The official I was killed early in a game and need somewhere to vent thread! - Front Office Football Central

[The Jackal]

In seriousness I think this would be fun. I generally trust people, and I would hope that no wolves or roled villagers with info they weren't able to share in the thread would share anything in a thread like this. Speculation and such when you're really itching to say something.

[Tyrith]

I'm strongly against this. While I appreciate Narc's desire, game integrity has to be #1 on the list of things we care about, and this just brings up too many gray areas and temptations. It just takes one slipup, one weak moment, one accident, even, to create a giant mess for everyone. As interesting as I think something like this would be, I think we'd be better off if people just stuck to PMs.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

I'm strongly against this. While I appreciate Narc's desire, game integrity has to be #1 on the list of things we care about, and this just brings up too many gray areas and temptations. It just takes one slipup, one weak moment, one accident, even, to create a giant mess for everyone. As interesting as I think something like this would be, I think we'd be better off if people just stuck to PMs.

Posting my thoughts further after reading everything, I agree with this.

Game integrity has to come first. Additionally, as Tyrith mentioned, accidents happen as well. I know in the separate thread games, I've misclicked on the wrong thread before and while I have always caught it before reading, who knows if that would always happen when a thread is there constant in every game.

[JAG]

While I agree with Autumn, we'll also hopefully continue to add new players and in general, I would just be surprised if some people weren't uncomfortable about it (whether they would say or not).

I think I'll set up an offsite forum today for this where we can have the sort of admin rights where we can guarantee only the people who should have access will (those villagers who have died and/or people who are not in the game). It's not perfect, I'll have to keep swapping around rights with some frequency, the participation won't be open to guests, and to preserve my own integrity I won't be able to create the speculation thread for games where I'm still alive (I don't know much about running a forum, but I assume a global moderator can do anything), but it will at least be a start for those who enjoy doing it.

[Danny]

that sounds like a good solution Jag

[Autumn]

You should call it the Jagatorium

[Narcizo]

Aye, that sounds like a good compromise although I think you miss out on possibly attracting new players, but I'm not really sure how effective that would be anyway.

[hoopsguy]

Hmm, it seems that JAG will have to die early in games from now on in order to keep the "speculation forum" thriving? Bummer, I like playing with him.

[Lathum]

I just remember how Poli has almost brought the house down twice. We have really good momentum going again. I'm just not sure the risk iks worth the reward

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Hmm, it seems that JAG will have to die early in games from now on in order to keep the "speculation forum" thriving? Bummer, I like playing with him.

Obviously Danny will have to be admin of the forum as well and then it should be pretty well covered from day one onwards.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by Narcizo

Obviously Danny will have to be admin of the forum as well and then it should be pretty well covered from day one onwards.

Unless I am a wolf (or the joker)

[JAG]

Originally Posted by Narcizo

Obviously Danny will have to be admin of the forum as well and then it should be pretty well covered from day one onwards.

I don't thnk I can be barred from accessing anything on the forum with the admin account. A way around that could be for me to give the admin password to a subset of trusted users and once one of them dies or is not playing, let them take over the duties until I am killed off. The person who has admin access changes the pw so only they have access until they pass it off and so forth. That could be a way to mostly guarantee the speculation thread gets started early on, even if I'm not killed early (don't want to encourage that after all), as long as others are interested in doing so.

I created a forum to try it out: jagww.forumotion.com It seems like it will be able to do what we want. I created a forum for Current Game Speculation that has no guest / member access, only those in a special group (chosen by admins) can access it.

[Danny]

Honestly, it seems like it might be more trouble than it's worth.

[Tyrith]

Originally Posted by Danny

Honestly, it seems like it might be more trouble than it's worth.

I fully agree with this. Honestly, I'm not sure what it will accomplish that can't really be done with PMs, except having the speculation record open to viewing after the game - something I don't think is going to be a big deal to most people.

[CrimsonFox]

JAG, you may as well make me, Zinto, DV, mauboy, and J23 admins of it.
We're the ones going to be using it the most.

And yeah that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking. Either a chatroom or something (which you'd have to just hover in to talk to people if they were on which isn't as much fun I think) or just some little offsite thread that only certain people have access to. Very simple to set up a trial of that. And the GM of each game or someone not playing can be the admin of it.

[Zinto]

I wouldn't mind if the access of the forum was handled by the GM or the first person who was voted off/night killed.

[JAG]

Well anyway, I set up the forum and it wasn't a significant time sink or anything if it doesn't work out. Feel free to register and post if you're interested, if not it will fade to Bolivian and I'll just stick to PM'ing.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by JAG

Well anyway, I set up the forum and it wasn't a significant time sink or anything if it doesn't work out. Feel free to register and post if you're interested, if not it will fade to Bolivian and I'll just stick to PM'ing.

link?

[CrimsonFox]

Originally Posted by JAG

Well anyway, I set up the forum and it wasn't a significant time sink or anything if it doesn't work out. Feel free to register and post if you're interested, if not it will fade to Bolivian and I'll just stick to PM'ing.

actually as of november, the proper phrase would be "it will fade into Skyrim"

[JAG]

Free forum : JAG's Werewolf Forum

[JAG]

I should've called if SportsDigs WW Forum.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Zinto

I wouldn't mind if the access of the forum was handled by the GM or the first person who was voted off/night killed.

Don't really understand why JAG can't handle access. Someone has to be trusted and I don't think you can lock out the creator of a forum anyway.

[Zinto]

Originally Posted by Narcizo

Don't really understand why JAG can't handle access. Someone has to be trusted and I don't think you can lock out the creator of a forum anyway.

I was just throwing an idea out there if people are not comfortable with Jag running it. I trust anyone enough to be able to not peek at it if they have a chance since it ruins the game if they do so.

[Narcizo]

Can we sticky the link to JAG's forum somewhere?

And by "we" I, of course, mean Danny.