Suggestion for New 'About' page

[Inquisitor]

The about page should contain the following:

The Why and Theorem pages should be deleted.

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Why eXiles?

Because we choose to be apart from the herd.
Because we refuse to exploit in games we play.
Because we refuse to grief other players.
Because we never forget it's just a game.
Because we want to be a part of guild where friendship, fun and honor come before loot.

We are exiles by choice, and proud of it.

What is this "Arbiter" thing?
The Arbiter is chosen by the entire Shattered Star community (the entire membership count is offered the poll, from all of the games we play) through a vote. The Arbiter is sort of the guardian of the community, ensuring things run in the intended way and the community works. This includes establishing a permanent home and domain registration (as well as working together with the technical administrators to keep the sites operational and useful), establishing appropriate discussion forums as required, and driving consensus throughout the community to avoid division and segregation of the overall community in order to facilitate people congregating and enjoying themselves.


It's only a game, musings by a member: This is optional, I am not sure I love the prose here, but you all seem to like it

Its only a game.

That gets said a lot. It gets used a lot to defend peoples actions when they do something that upsets someone. Sometimes its close cousin gets used: its only an internet forum.

To a great extent, its very true. Nothing in a game should cause grief, games should be entertaining, enjoyable, relaxing, challenging. They shouldnt be mean spirited and they shouldnt make you angry. If it stops being fun, stop doing it.

HOWEVER, we play games together for a reason. This is a safe haven for us. A place to shield ourselves from the jerks, the dicks, the people who get enjoyment from disappointing others, the folks who feed off of anger and pain. You know who they are, each game type has them, and each forum seems to attract its share. Were all here because we believe were NOT those people. Were here because we believe were better than that, and we believe we have surrounded ourselves with likeminded folks.

Sometimes, however, we make mistakes. Sometimes people arent likeminded, and that causes tension. This is our haven though, our sanctuary, our home, in a philosophical way. I dont know about you, but when people come into my home and start yelling, upsetting my guests and my friends, I get a little angry.

This, this place, is not just a forum and the games we play may just be games, but we play them together to avoid the trolls and the fools. So, while it may just be a game in any one instance, the way we have chosen to play that game means we take our relationships seriously. We take THIS seriously. Its our haven, our sanctuary, our home.

Words of advice, though, try not to take individual games, game mechanics, or game happenings too seriously, remember we are all here for the same reasons (or should be) and cut each other a lot of slack. Dont let any ONE game, any ONE act, any ONE mechanic, destroy the good will and friendship we have (or are trying to) build here. If it stops being fun, stop doing it, even if for only a short while.

If anyone actually has a problem, for goodness sake, tell someone, dont let it fester and then leave in some kind of fury after months of buildup. We may not be able to fix it, but at least we will try. Give us a chance, its a good bet you are here because we do share that vision of playing games to have fun, and if your fun is being ruined by someone or something, Id rather try to fix that than lose a comrade. The internet is full of jerks, the good people are few and far enough between. Again, we may not be able to fix it, but you can be sure well make some kind of attempt. It is only a game.

Anyway, that may not make any sense, and it may seem contradictory, maybe it is, this is all a very fragile balancing act. Remember that people take it seriously beyond the simple game mechanics, and remember that we are all here to have fun.

[Anubis]

I will put this in place asap, at the very least to see how it looks. Give me a day or two, there are a couple of pressing issues on the BB3 front I need to address tonight. I'll post here when it is done.

[M.Steiner]

How about we add a page for SSX related media?
Be nice to have a dedicated page on the main site where we can display things like the Xbox theme, sig images, wallpapers and stuff like that for peeps to use without having to search through the forum for them. Worked quite well when i did that on the NC site back in the day.

[Anubis]

I like the idea - it sure beats people having to hunt through the forums to find any created images/backgrounds all the time. I'll experiment a bit with it in the next couple of days now that I am working on the Main Site. I'll yell at you when I'm ready to sort out exactly what to try displaying.

Thoughts from anyone else are welcome in the meantime

[Messiah]

Great idea MS.

[SSX-Killjoy]

Gallery 2 is pretty easy to setup and has integration for phpBB, although I am not sure of the current status for phpBB3. Just a thought, but it provides movie, image support.

[Anubis]

I am not sure we need a full gallery system, but it is certainly an idea to keep in mind. I would have to research it's status for BB3 and how exactly it works - but it is something I will look at once the transition is completed.

Thanks for the idea

[Anubis]

To update - both the new About page and a Media page have been put into place within the Main Site Redesign and, as suggested, the Why and Theorem pages have been removed.

However the changes will not be put into place on the current layout, as we are now in the 'gearing up to change' stage, and I would rather spend the next few days carrying out final batches of testing etc rather than creating new pages and integrating them into the existing site only to be taking them down in a few days time.

[W11chter]

I just noticed this. I'll offer some typographical corrections, as my noble contribution. This post isn't meant to be snarky, so don't take offense.

Under Why Exiles.

We refuse to grief other players.

Grieve is the verb.

Under It's Only a Game

That gets said a lot. It gets used a lot to defend peoples actions when they do something that upsets someone.

Peoples should be peoples, though it's not a very pretty sentence either way.

They shouldnt be mean spirited and they shouldnt make you angry.

Mean-spirited.

Were here because we believe were better than that, and we believe we have surrounded ourselves with likeminded folks.

Like-minded.

Sometimes people arent likeminded, and that causes tension. This is our haven though, our sanctuary, our home, in a philosophical way.

Like-minded. The second sentence might read smoother as, But this is, in some sense, our haven, our sanctuary, our home.

Dont let any ONE game, any ONE act, any ONE mechanic, destroy the good will and friendship we have (or are trying to) build here.

Perhaps easier to read as, Don't let any one game, any one act, any one mechanic, destroy the goodwill and friendship that we have been working to build here.

Give us a chance, its a good bet you are here because....

Period after chance.

[Stracius]

In reference to game terms, I believe griefing is more proper.

Grieving seems only to be in reference to oneself, while grief can be used as an action verb (i.e. "You are causing me much grief with this post", not "You are grieving me with this post".) Griefing, while not a word in the dictionary, has been created and has evolved into a word that describes a specific behaviour in gaming - to cause grief. Grieving has another meaning (and is used with an object, btw), and doesn't cover that. It's also much more recognizable.


Just my thoughts

[BlackDove]

No, it's griefing. That's what it's called.

The hyphens and stuff... yeah. I'm sure people would forgive us for overlooking that.

[W11chter]

*Shrug* Okay. I just read through it and out of habit noticed things that I wasn't familiar with. Do what you will.

[Anubis]

I'll look through and apply your corrections, save to "griefing" for the reasons already stated. Thanks for pointing them out, always nice to be sure the content reads well as well as fits the page

[Kon]

While I think that Ed did an amazing job writing up the new About page, I just noticed this line here:

"Because we want to be a part of guild where friendship, fun and honor come before loot."

It struck me that this particular part is a little WoW-specific, and even though it may be easily understood by those who play other MMOs, many people might not understand the concept of "loot." I also think that the use of the term "guild" sort of weakens the idea of us being a community, and more than a simple gaming clan. I must say that I like the version Anny put on the front page better:

"We want to be a part of a group where friendship, fun and honour come first."

Though, I might change "group" to "community." I think it has a better ring to it. Thoughts on this?

[BlackDove]

Personally I think Society works best.

You know. As in, Shattered St...

Oh.

Wrong thread.

[Stracius]

Guild was fine, and I think group is just as suiting. No need to change it even further, it's just semantics. As for the "loot" thing, good luck finding anyone willing to visit these forums that *doesn't* know what loot is . No point in catering to the lowest common denominator - anyone who doesn't understand will quickly figure it out.

[M.Steiner]

Only just noticed this so i'm not sure if it was like that before but part of the writing for "It's only a game.." on the About Us page is not displaying correctly for me.
As you can see in the screenshot there are 111 dotted all over the place. In firefox it looks like a little question mark and in IE it's a box. Is this a problem on my end somewhere or with the page? Does it look like this for anyone else? All the other page's look fine, as does everything else on the about us page, it's just the "it's only a game" section. oO

[Anubis]

Wow, that's definately an issue - good spot. Wasn't like that when I uploaded it, I wonder if the server switch affected it.

Basically, it's my fault since I wasn't using character codes to display the apostrophes. I'll fix that this evening, thanks for pointing it out

[M.Steiner]

No probs

[Anubis]

Issue should be fixed now

[BlackDove]

Your failures only speak about your character.

[Anubis]

Your failures only speak about your character.

Remind me why I haven't banned you yet.

[BlackDove]

Because I'M the one giving YOU orders.

Now FIX MY WEBSITE.

Show

If you post that you've fixed the website, that proves my statements true.

[Kon]

So is the news feature fixed yet, or are you slacking off on that, too?

[Anubis]

So is the news feature fixed yet, or are you slacking off on that, too?

I've confirmed the issue, but it'll probably be after the Easter weekend before I can get it seen to. Shouldn't be more than a few days though.