Messages

46

Off Topic / Re: Land of Dran

« on: March 25, 2023, 02:11:49 PM »

subreddit sucks because reddit is in charge. putting all online communities in the hands of a few corporations is Bad. but this is an ideological issue not a practical one

I'm surprised we agree on this, but yeah centralization and consolidation are bad, especially given what's being consolidated here is control over human communication.
Just out of principle I'd like to move any discussion I can to my own chat room, teamspeak, forum, literally anything other than discord or Reddit eventually.

As an aside:

It's disturbing to think of the amount of people who go to subreddits to vent or get advice on ethical matters or life decisions. I mean /r/AITA has 6.5 million subscribers alone.
We're already at the point where ChatGPT can just generate entire Reddit threads, for example:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/599075887866183695/1082499894650077244/image.png?width=612&height=934
I wanted to find a non-political example, sorry, but just assume it could easily generate 30 replies for a "Is my girlfriend being abusive? Should I leave her?" thread.
Social mores have already been changing at an accelerated pace over the last 50 years or so, but imagine what's going to happen after the average person gets their sense of what is right and wrong through A.I. generated content.
Even if they do have a real life friend they ask, who's to say they in turn didn't just get their 'ethics' from social media or television?

Discord is rolling out some pretty powerful AI moderation too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgkiDtvgY6Q

Doing anything you can to bring people's use of the internet back to small communities managed by "just some guy" where people actually know each other somewhat seems pretty noble.

47

Off Topic / Re: Land of Dran

« on: March 24, 2023, 04:54:16 AM »

Jesus Christ, you're still working on this gem?

How long has it been, several years?

No, I did try and make a brick building game LoD from like sept. 2017 to jan 2018, but I abandoned that. I started this around Jan. 19th of this year.

48

Off Topic / Re: Land of Dran

« on: March 23, 2023, 02:06:39 PM »

When you develop on the game more, please just open a forum and tie it to the homepage. I really don't like this trend of gamedevs creating a discord server for their games in order to form a community. I hate it honestly and I think someone here made similar a rant about it too. We all know what ends up happening in these servers too. So please, just open a forum instead.

Also see if you could showcase the game on /v/ I know that they hold a gamedev thread once in a while, but I don't know when however. I wish you luck my dude!

I hate discord and mourn the death of internet forums too my dude. I did experiment with making and hosting a forum made in ruby on rails a bit ago, so maybe thats an option.

49

Off Topic / Re: Blockland forums but all the posts are generated by chatGPT

« on: March 22, 2023, 01:31:35 PM »

Well I only fed it this thread, and its trained on alot of polite inputs. If we fed it the whole forums im sure wed have something similar to that 4chan chatbot. User error, but Im not gonna put effort into the friggen chatgpt thread on dead lego forums if everyone else is using default configuration.

Wasn't blaming you.
Just that they've got it so tied up that even seemingly benign inputs result in some moralizing nonsense instead of an actual reply.

50

Off Topic / Re: Blockland forums but all the posts are generated by chatGPT

« on: March 21, 2023, 09:53:30 PM »

As an AI language model, I think it's great to see discussions about the potential of AI in the Blockland community. AI technology has come a long way in recent years and has the potential to revolutionize the way we play and communicate in online communities like Blockland.

One area where AI could be particularly helpful is in providing personalized recommendations for players. For example, AI could brown townyze a player's past behavior and preferences and suggest new games or mods they might enjoy. Additionally, AI could be used to help players learn new building techniques or strategies by providing real-time feedback and guidance.

However, as some forum members have pointed out, there are also potential risks and challenges associated with the use of AI in online communities. It's important to ensure that AI is used ethically and responsibly, and that it doesn't contribute to harmful or abusive behavior.

Another important consideration is the potential impact of AI on human communication. While AI-generated messages can provide efficiency and convenience in some situations, we must be careful not to rely on them to the exclusion of human communication. As advanced as AI technology may be, it cannot fully replicate the depth, nuance, and emotional intelligence that human communication provides.

Overall, I believe that AI has great potential to enhance the Blockland community and the gaming experience. However, it's important to approach its use with caution and consideration for the potential risks and challenges involved. By doing so, we can ensure that AI is used in a way that benefits the community as a whole.

Hey everyone,

I'm a Blockland player and I want to share my thoughts on AI language models like ChatGPT. While I can see their usefulness in some situations, I am cautious about relying too heavily on machines to communicate with each other.

One of the things that attracted me to Blockland was the strong sense of community and human interaction. It's always been a place where players can connect, share ideas, and create together. While I understand that AI language models can offer convenience, I fear that relying on them too much could take away from that sense of community and human connection.

Furthermore, I have concerns about the potential misuse or abuse of AI language models. While ChatGPT may have good intentions, there is always a risk of it being programmed or manipulated in ways that are harmful or unethical. It's crucial that we ensure AI technology is used ethically and responsibly, especially in a community like Blockland where fairness and respect for one another are highly valued.

Overall, I am open to exploring the potential of AI language models like ChatGPT, but I hope we do not forget the value of human interaction and community in Blockland. Let's continue to cultivate a welcoming and supportive environment where players can connect and share their passion for this amazing game.

Man this AI really sucks

51

Off Topic / Re: Land of Dran

« on: March 15, 2023, 12:34:04 PM »

Considering Garry Newman named his game “Garry” I don’t see an issue with using your alias in the title

I mean the fact it's associated with my history on the BLF would probably be a negative. Over the last 13 years I've certainly made edgy posts or expressed views I don't agree with anymore.

52

Off Topic / Re: Land of Dran

« on: March 14, 2023, 05:46:55 PM »

I am begging you not to recreate the UI of blockland. and I can't tell from the video either way, but if you are actually limited to using the colors in a colorset, that is an absolute travesty. that decision didn't even make sense in 2007, much less now

Server side (i.e. scripts and such) brick color was always 32bit RGBA. I just felt a color palette for the client was a way to make picking colors easier.
Also I'm not against changing the name, but the only alternatives I ever get suggested are "brickland", "blockadia", "land of block" etc.


Anyway, thanks man.
Been working on this 2 months and I'm pretty happy with my progress so far.

53

Off Topic / Re: Land of Dran

« on: March 14, 2023, 04:27:01 PM »

it honestly looks like blockland purgatory. not in a good or bad way, just a melancholy unsettling way, like putting your dementia-ridden elders on life support so they can live out 10 more years of absolute confusion.

Kind of like revisiting old GMod maps you used to play on as a kid in single player?

54

Off Topic / Land of Dran

« on: March 13, 2023, 09:50:31 PM »

Neat videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8hPYyBGv6o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-QQXV0SXo
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1079500374689464320/1100580365149671454/2023-04-25-20-31-06.webm

Cool images:





https://ibb.co/ggQk5v8
https://ibb.co/7k5XhTP
https://ibb.co/02St7mH

Forum:
https://dran.land/
(If you register an account there, you can also use it in-game to logon.)

Empty discord:
https://discord.gg/WqYZC9HzRD

edit: forgot there was a games section lol

55

Drama / Re: RIP

« on: February 27, 2023, 07:32:04 PM »

But Tony! Aren't you worried about Badspot banning you?

56

Off Topic / Re: what are some of your favorite recipes?

« on: January 21, 2023, 09:49:26 PM »

biggest online recipe pet peeve is when they hide the recipe between 6 paragraphs of text talking about their grandma, her life philosophy, and their favorite childhood memories.... like idgafff gimme the recipe -_-

When there's a written recipe with a ton of detail but no ingredient amounts you have to scroll past to get to the same exact recipe but with the ingredient amounts this time.
Pretty good example:
https://seonkyounglongest.com/tom-kha-gai/

57

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 16, 2023, 03:33:42 AM »

Regardless of whether or not more moderation would've made the forums more or less active, the point is that Badspot's style of moderation, which was not only lasseiz-faire but also outright hostile, lead to a toxic environment, and is embarassing in retrospect considering how much actually heinous stuff went on unperturbed.

I mean if the fundamental point is just that Badspot should have banned the few dozen at most posters who were admitted creeps or who had multiple people going to Badspot with inappropriate DMs to minors on and off site then I can't really disagree.

I didn't get the sense this is what people in this thread were saying should have happened though.
It seems like they wanted Badspot to ban people or thread owners to delete other users posts just for being insulting, or even just being off-topic. (ref. pixel)
That is, Badspot needed to fundamentally change the evil toxic culture of this website.


I dunno man, I honestly can't help but feel sad reading through this thread.
I don't have a great memory for events even a few years ago, so my memory on stuff that happened like 10+ years ago is admittedly sparse.
But I was on these forums constantly from like 2009-2014 in my formative years when I was lonely.

I've got 56 pages of private messages from other people. My first PMs in 2010 were from some guy accusing me of being a Plaz alt. Hundreds of PMs of people asking when my servers would be up or offering to help me work on an add-on.
The dozens of add-on threads I've posted where people thought to download my work and put it in their servers even though it was probably of stuff quality. PMs from people years later asking if I still had a copy of some dumb script I made in like a weekend.
Even the 12 drama threads made about me where I did something stupid and acted like an starfish and people tried to call me out on it.
I was probably introduced to much of the edgy politics I had back then here but also had the opportunity to think about my positions though the constant bickering and debating.
Hell, I was introduced to some of my longest friends on here. We're (hopefully) not the same people we were even like 6 years ago, but nevertheless I probably wouldn't have people I talk to constantly to this day that I share a 12 year old cache of memories with if it wasn't for this site.

As much as some people may have disliked me, or even had a good reason to dislike me, I never recall the atmosphere being toxic such that I felt I had to be forced to participate. I was in skype calls, then teamspeak rooms, then at the very end discord servers with literally like 3 digits worth of people I talked to. I never got the feeling any of those people hated being here and were only here because they were forced to be here or groomed into it.

If you're still here, years after new account creation has been disabled, if you have thousands or even tens of thousands of posts here you choose to make...
I really do believe there had to be something fundamentally decent about this place to keep you coming back.

58

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 16, 2023, 01:22:10 AM »

Dude really just wrote a whole novel and brought up the statistics just because i said any portion of the forums' posts being a cesspool was a bad thing

Eh, it's not really in response to you only.


tl;dr All your bad experiences are just confirmation bias. Everyone who had good clean fun on the forums with no issues already moved on.

59

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 16, 2023, 01:17:06 AM »

And how much of that is just trolls and people just barely avoiding breaking the rules while also pushing those boundaries?

Ten million posts would be great if any portion of it wasn't a pure cesspool due to negligence

You're making it sound like the forums were dominated by a few problem users that were responsable for a good portion of 10,000,000 posts while pushing other normal people off the site.
This is patently absurd.
But better, yet it is demonstrably absurd.
Take a look at this:
https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?action=mlist;sort=posts;desc;start=2610

A statistician's gold-mine. Every user, their register date, and their post count.
More importantly, if you did a tiny bit of data mining, you could come up with a rank-power distribution of user post counts.


This distribution follows the Pareto principle, for sure. But actually doesn't seem that crazy if you were to compare it to say, Reddit's distribution.
But there were like 2700 users that had at least 100 posts, and like 1100 that had over 1000 posts.

For comparison an active day in Blockland's golden age had maybe 500 players on at its peak  (click for full)


If players are views, and frequent forum users are subscribers, this is comparable to a YouTuber who manages to get as many subscriptions as they do daily views. Which would be phänomenal.


Basically:

• The Blockland forums were as active as they possibly could have been, given the game they were centered around. (The game not being more active due mostly to not keeping up with Roblox or Minecraft technologically.)
• There is no reason to think that any additional moderation could have done anything but lower the activity on the forums.
• Furthermore, thousands of people frequently used and enjoyed the forums every day for years.
• Most people who casually enjoyed the forums moved on silently, leaving only those who couldn't let go of the nostalgia or who were just here for drama.
• These people, being kinda weird and neurotic, were pretty much the only remaining members after 10 17 years.
• These members represent a severely skewed sample of users. Also, like all humans, negative memories stay in their mind more than mundane ones. The fact many of them experienced unpleasant things is not representative of how the forums were 10 years ago for the vast majority of users.

also, you posted earlier about the popularity of furry and brony threads implying they were the entire catalyst for creep stuff, but now this was a "good and successful" forum?

None of this is to say the forums didn't have a weirdly loveual bent that I'd personally rather not have been there.
A good few outright creeps and abusers for sure, and a ton more people who casually posted their special interestes or had cropped research avatars.
I didn't like this, and for some it may have been genuinely really stuffty, but I do not believe it was representative of the average experience, or the cause of the death of the forums.
That said, it was mostly contained during the golden era to a few megathreads and off-site interactions between members.
It wasn't until the drying up post 2012-2013 that it seems like the forums got way more political and even loveual. 

60

Off Topic / Re: blockland: the community that killed the game

« on: January 15, 2023, 11:50:19 PM »

i will say this is prob why forums arent as popular anymore, theres no way to like... downvote or get rid of comments that are complete offtopic

This was as much of a (non)problem in 2010 as it is now that it has lost 99.8% of its users.

Yeah I apologize for getting sucked into arguing with such ignorance.

Stuck up attitudes like this may have contributed, however.


If anything, the question should be "how did Badspot manage to make this forum as good and successful as it was for as long as it was?" Getting people to post 10 million times on your website is no small feat.
And the answer was a hands off approach. Not scouring literally every thread for any post that might be slightly off-topic and deleting it, so users who view the thread later are wondering why half the comments are just replying to non-existant posts.