For a company that declared its intention to open-source its MMOG almost one and a half years ago, Cyan is still awfully closed (and arguably closed-minded) about actual discussions. A recent revision to the forum policies does little to remove ambiguity and might even make matters worse. These two bits, combined, hardly sound like an inviting atmosphere for third-party content:

Discussions of or links to or the presenting of reverse engineering or exploits of any Cyan game (MO:UL and its variants expressly excepted) are not allowed. This includes tools used for the modifying of or distributing of copyrighted materials such as game executables, game data and game code.

[..]

Linking to webpages that break these forum policies for the purposes of getting around the forum policies is not allowed.

You might mistakenly think that, as the focus is on “hacking” MO:UL, rather than other Cyan products, this is okay:

As the plugins and code are released for MO:UL, discussions about the plugins and code are allowed for the purposes of learning and improving MO:UL, its variants (e.g., MORE, MO:ULagain, MO:UL Open Source), its plugins and its program code. The fine line here is if the discussion compromises Cyan’s other products (e.g., Uru: Complete Chronicles, Hex Isle, MQO), which is not allowed (see below).

Marten provides a good summary on why the above paragraph is essentially meaningless. The feasibility to actually use Cyan’s own released plug-ins is so limited it may as well not exist in a community sense:

As I understand it, the only legitimate tool available for Age writing at this time is the 3dsMax plugin. People who’ve tried to use it have reported that it is buggy, it is unusable without 3dsMax 7, and 3dsMax 7 isn’t sold anymore, and of course, we’ve been asked not to use the plugin without a legitimate copy of 3dsMax. Given these problems, it should be understandable if the GoW isn’t directing people to use this plugin, and instead continues to promote an approach that is not endorsed by Cyan.

Furthermore, there is no legitimate platform for testing and experiencing fan-made content at this time. But nobody wants to write Ages and not be able to link to them.

In other words, even if you and the other members of your pet project all happen to have 3dsMax 7, which cannot be legally obtained any more, you have bugs and limitations to fight with, and have absolutely no means of testing, much less deployment. The free, working, community-made and -maintained and easily available alternative, on the other hand, is not allowed. Neither is discussion thereof. Nor is linking to third-party sites containing discussion thereof!

For some inexplicable reason that hopefully does not spell out incompetence, Cyan continues to waste its reputation, and its fanbase’s time.

Sadly, another fine Uru-related discussion has been closed.

Yesterday, Ian Atrus posted two requests to remain on topic: Despite that, this thread persisted in derailing itself, although some valiant attempts have been made to post on topic and keep the thread alive. Other factors in choosing to lock this thread are:

• This thread was a poll: That poll is no longer producing any significant data.
• Recurring ad hominem attacks, taunts, mocking, etc.
• The thread was about bots in MOUL in general, not about whether OHBot is a good or bad thing – that should be a separate thread

That post by Ian Atrus? Presumably this one.

Coming in a bit late… just a few reminders, since the situations seems to have calmed down for now.

• As others have said, no one can ‘demand’ things in Uru or speak for all the community. If you think OHBot violates the ToS, open a support ticket or PM someone at Cyan; shouting on the forums is hardly going to work.
• Also remember that this is a discussion thread for bots in general, not just about OHBot – though it is natural he’s being taken as example, being currently the only one in MOULa.
• Last but not least, keep it civil boys, whichever side you’re on.

So to summarize, it appears the alleged issues with the course of discussion are:

1. People making demands.
2. People speaking for everyone.
3. Lack of civility; in particular, “recurring ad-hominem attacks, taunts, mocking, etc.”
4. The poll “no longer producing any significant data”.
5. The thread having been “derailed” into a discussion about OHBot, rather than bots in general.

For the first two, I can really only think of one particular individual, whose odd behavior was described earlier today more aptly than I could by Whilyam. Since Ian Atrus’s post, I don’t actually see any of the two problems, and even before that, I can’t find examples of someone else doing so. Incidentally, the thread starter appears to agree with those demands and exaggerated sense of importance:

And FWIW, I echo most of the sentiments expressed by CrisGer. I hope Cyan Worlds changes its TOS to prohibit automated robots in MOULagain.

Moreover, the only type of language that I believe might qualify as “taunts” was the assertion that OHBot (and therefore presumably his creator, OHB) was “harassing” people, which once again came from the same aforementioned oddball regular. I’ve been asking around, and I would love for someone to point out to me where all this “lack of civility” supposedly resides in the thread. I’ve found it neither aggressive nor yawn-inducing; it has, as it should have, ignited some necessary discussions.

The fourth item has got to be a new forum rule that has yet to be publicly stated since I cannot find it anywhere, which may be because

1. stating a rule before enforcing it would make too much sense, and
2. the rule does not.

I suppose a case can be made that collecting data within a given time interval is of occasional interest. “Are you going to vote for Obama?” isn’t as interesting a question to answer now in April 2010 (unless referring to possibly reelecting him two years from now) as it was back in 2008. However, such a limitation makes no sense for this discussion, as “What do you think of automated robots in MOULagain?” can be answered equally well today as it could when the thread was started a mere four days ago, and more importantly, the person who posed the question made no mention of such a limit.

ACT NOW! SUBMIT VOTE BUTTONS ARE LIMITED!

Or something like that.

Finally, the derailment. This appears to be something Ian Atrus understood better than Mac_Fife, the moderator who ultimately locked the thread:

Also remember that this is a discussion thread for bots in general, not just about OHBot – though it is natural he’s being taken as example, being currently the only one in MOULa.

Emphasis mine.

Is Susa’n trying to tell us that her decision to create a thread about bots in Uru just days after the first bot appeared inbecame publicly noticed in¹, uh, Uru was purely coincidental? And even if it were, wouldn’t it still make perfect sense to discuss the merits and downsides of a bot using the only actual example of such a bot? And isn’t it a good thing that its author has been very receptive to feedback?

I’ll take the conceitedness of quoting myself regarding what’s really going on, at least as far as Susa’n is concerned. (It doesn’t appear to me that the moderators who made the final call to lock the thread really formed an informed opinion of their own.)

I’m so disgusted by the ad hominem attacks (personal insults, name-calling, mocking, taunting, etc.) and the self-promotion of OHBot that this thread has devolved into that I have asked the moderators to close my own thread.

Sounds like the thread you’ve created hasn’t turned into the communal back-patting feedback loop of approval² you anticipated. Instead, it turned into a (sometimes too intense) discussion about the merits and downsides, almost as if replies were to answer the titular question “What do you think of automated robots in MOULagain?”.

I also see no “self-promotion”, but rather a very reasonable, listening, open-minded bot author.

This is why I don’t understand the notion that the critics’ goal is to have veralun demoted.

1. As OHB points out, OHBot had been around since late February. I would argue, though, that it wasn’t until Rand Miller’s appearance on the 28th that many people began noticing. OHB says the amount of people the bot spoke to tripled following that. ↩
2. Credit to Capella for this clean version of the term circlejerk. ↩

I hadn’t planned on writing about this, but my earlier tweet is getting more attention than I had expected, and people probably deserve an explanation on what I’m referring to, and why I felt compelled to make this public statement:

We’re being served a vapid marketing fluffpiece by Cyan. It’s especially insulting coming from someone who used to be close to the fan base.

I was referring to a MO:UL Forums topic by RAWA, Forum Moderation Update.

My concern is equally with the content of the post as it is with the choice of words. The copy is full of PR clichés, like “We greatly appreciate the ongoing support” and “we at Cyan Worlds would like to express how important the support of our fans is to us”. This coming from a man who many fans have been in a dialog with — through the Lysts, private e-mails and other venues — for over a decade. There’s a very odd disconnect between the mode of expression (which appears to address the media, or potential customers) and the claim that RAWA is trying to approach Cyan’s “fans”.

That disconnect is strange, unexpected, and probably unnecessary, and it’s hopefully not a precedent for how Cyan intends to talk to us in the future. Assuming they still intend to go through with their plans on making explorer-created ages a prominent feature of Uru, and of open-sourcing the client and server codebase, I would expect more direct channels of communication; RAWA’s post, on the other hand, suggests they’re retreating into a colder, more corporate-like company-customer-type of conversation.

Secondly, the post is upsetting for how little it actually says. Whilyam has said pretty much all there was to say in Ending the Nonsense; I also made a comment on that, part of which I shall quote:

Finally and to get back on topic, nobody will be surprised, but I certainly agree. Veralun seems to have lost sight of what I believe forum moderation ought to be about: to encourage and foster discussion, not to impede it. His quote that “this is a forum and it is not the right place for a dialogue” has either translated poorly from Dutch, or shows a bizarre, complete misunderstanding of a forum’s purpose.

I’d like to add something (at least) Free Bird and I discussed a while ago: the forum rules appear to be treated too much like steadfast rules rather than as what they ought to be, guidelines. In other words, the moderators (and perhaps veralun in particular) act too much like law enforcement and too little like people who blend into the background unless they feel there is something they can do to improve the quality and mood of discussion.

RAWA’s post does state, albeit in a wishy-washy manner, that mistakes have been made:

The administrators and the moderators have been in discussions to address the concerns that posts have been edited/removed for the wrong reasons and/or have not been accompanied with a reason for the edit / removal. Moving foward we will be making a greater effort to follow the protocols laid out in the forum rules and will be taking further steps to ensure that it is clearer which rules have been violated.

…but while moderation without proper notification is a particularly egregious example of problems, I have a feeling Cyan either doesn’t grasp how a forum ought to be run, or doesn’t want to admit wrongdoing. He continues:

As forum members, you are encouraged to re-read the forum rules so you can be sure that your posts adhere to those rules. This will help make our moderators’ jobs in enforcing the forum rules even easier.

This is accompanied with a (repeated) link to said rules, as if to suggest that those who voiced their concerns failed to find them, much less read them. It may be hyperbolic, but I don’t feel it unfair to state that this, combined with the impersonal language employed, is insulting. Virtually all of the people this post truly addresses have had to do with the community, and very likely RAWA in particular, in some form or another. They don’t need to be talked to like strangers, and they don’t need to be told how forum works. Chances are they know much better how a forum should work; some of them have been involved with running their own for far longer than mystonline.com has had one.

Attempts to talk to veralun, to RAWA, to others and to the general public weren’t about raising a stink, about having veralun demoted, or about wanting to ignore rules. They were about long-needed reform, and about a clear message from Cyan that it will either spearhead or at least support such reform. Sadly, the above topic was so astonishingly vague that it isn’t entirely clear anything at all has changed or will change, or even that Cyan has in fact recognized the existence of problems; problems that, to a lesser form, have existed for years, and are starting to become escalated now that interest in Uru is increasing and the prospects of fan ages and open-sourcing becoming more tangible again.

To have those forums arbitrarily delete, lock, censor or unexpectedly accept threads that offer any true form of discussion whatsoever (with such unthinkable attributes as disagreement!) was tolerable, though painful for a few years, but it’s less and less acceptable. I would much rather see Cyan admit that they’d like to focus on their own profitable products, which makes perfect sense, than have them continue to pretend and very half-heartedly run forums with inconsistent, user-hostile moderation. It’s bad enough for existing fans, but particularly uninviting for new ones: ask a question about a fan Age, and you can roll a dice on whether you’ll get deferred to the Guild of Writers (who are about creation, not exploration!), tolerated, or deleted — sometimes with and sometimes without any notification.

Thus finishes my incoherent rant, in hopes Cyan will a harder look at what they’ve doing (or, rather, been failing to do).

Marein reviews fan-made Uru Ages in anticipation of open sourcing. Parts 1, 2, 3.

Update: Part 4.

Some time in the last year or two, domain names asking a simple yes-or-no question have started popping up.¹ The earliest examples I can think of would be Is it friday? and Is it Christmas?, neither of which have a hard-to-guess URL.

While an almost absurd amount of minimalism (coupled with unorthodoxly large font sizes) is typical, such sites have become somewhat less devoid of content recently. One such example, Are the iPhone APIs public yet? by Peter Hosey, even goes so far as to detail the provided answer in several paragraphs. An RSS feed alerts you when the answer changes (which, by now, it has).

And then there’s MORE. Uru, and the inevitably coupled Cyan Worlds, has been a rather tragic story especially for us more involved fans, and the most recent (vague) prospect has been MORE. With the indefinite hold of that, fellow fan vid has been asking “Is it MORE yet?”.

You can question, as I do, the effect (or lack thereof) this may have on much of anything. If the goal is the change the answer to the question, whose responsibility is it to do so?

Well, I have taken it on my responsibility to at least pose the question at a more public, permanent place. Is It MORE Yet?, in addition to giving a straight answer, also encourages visitors to do something about it, even if it is so little as to read or reply to vid’s thread.

After so many years, it is easy to give up hope. I personally find, as a hidden gem on the site suggests, that the goal isn’t quite as clearly defined as “just bring Uru online again”. But I’m also interested in everyone else coming up with their own answers.

1. Has anyone coined a term for these yet? ↩