Tinytalk Episode 017: WWORAA
Submitted by javelin on Wed, 2008-01-30 00:02.
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Tinytalk is a podcast about MUSHes and other text-based virtual worlds, and the players who play them. In this episode:
- [00:00] Intro
- [01:10] Interview with WORA admin Rasheem
- [14:25] Javelin on WORA
- [16:35] News and Notes
Links to stuff mentioned in this episode:
- When online RPGs Attack (WORA)
- Obviously Grimy's Des mélodies à faire danser les ours album
- (Read bboard 1 on M*U*S*H for information on Elvira's "Managing your MUSH" working picnic on Sunday, Feb 10)
If you have mushing questions you'd like answered, or suggestions for future shows, send email (or audio files) to tinytalk at javelin.pennmush.org. You can also leave a voice message at 206-333-1542.
Tinytalk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License .
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Re: WORA
Glad to hear you got to talk to Rasheem. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he didn't sound like a mouth-breathing troglodyte or a sulfur-fuming demon. However, I'm not sure I buy into the philosophy of "a lot of WORA is garbage, but if you sift through it, you'll find treasure."
If I've got to swim in a sewer on the offchance I'll bump into a diamond ring, I'm still going to come out smelling like a sewer.
WORA is good for what it really is: A bitch board. It's a great no-holds-barred place for people to say whatever they want, whether it's true or not, about the games they love to hate.
If it ever wants to go beyond that, it might actually have to make some compromises in the volume of venom it allows - and I'm not sure it would survive such a change.
Basically, WORA has the most
Basically, WORA has the most active and interesting MUSH discussion going on right now in a forum. So I think it's good for a lot more than a bitch board. The amount of good discussion probably has a lot to do with the by-traffic of people bitching about games.
There definitely are forums out there where the culture is more positive and just as active and interesting, but the MUSH community doesn't have one.
Good TT, Javelin.
And Fox News had the most viewers...
...but that doesn't necessarily guarantee a mark of quality. There's no denying that they satisfy something that's otherwise missing in the MUSHing community, and I think that's valuable in and of itself. But do *I* intend to spend any time there? Nope.
It's not that I don't think I could learn anything from WORA - I'm always learning. But my time's valuable and I'd just as soon not waste it sifting through someone else's garbage trying to find a useful nugget of wisdom.
Great show, though. I enjoyed the interview.
I want to make it clear that
I want to make it clear that it's extremely easy to get to the good stuff on WORA.
It's a forum with threads, not a 48-hour coke-fueled chit-chat with some guy you met on the street who happens to be a great game designer.
That's good to hear...
...and, as I said, I think WORA serves a valuable purpose. I should make perfectly clear that even if it *were* nothing but a place for people to vent about games, I'd consider it useful. I just wouldn't consider it useful to *me*. That WORA also generates the occasional constructive thread, I think, is a good thing.
For many visitors to WORA, though, the vent threads may be the good stuff. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Outlets are good.
How do you know how easy it
How do you know how easy it is or isnt to find useful things on a place you admit not going to?
I'm honestly curious? Do you have special internet powers where you can sift through valuable and invaluable information without even looking at the site? Do you have a machine that does it for you? Lackeys or sycophants?
I meet a lot of people with the same attitude. Wora is very much filled with valuable information. You just need an epidermal layer that is thicker than tissue paper.
Hmmm...
I figured I could take Rasheem's word for it, since he said during the podcast that you could get to good stuff in WORA *if* you looked past everything else.
The thick-skinnedness ought to work both ways, don't you think? :) I can't see why folks would want to be so defensive about the fact that WORA has a combative and vitriolic reputation. It was well earned.
If other people can get past that and enjoy the nuggets of good information WORA can provide, then that's fantastic.
Very interesting interview
Very interesting interview (in general I've enjoyed all the TinyTalk stuff and I'm sorry it took the 'controversy' of WORA to make me comment).
I've been an off-and-on lurker on WORA for years so it was particularly interesting to have the history of its various incarnations distilled. It is indeed, for better or worse, the most dynamic place on the Internet to discuss MUSHing. I'm better for reading it, personally (even if I still don't have enough to say - or a thick enough skin - to post there much).
I've learned things about the hobby, role-playing and staffing, what works and what doesn't, that I never would have picked up anywhere else. I found the two games I'm most active on right now through WORA. On one of them I got my first staffbit. The idea of the place as a 'black list' is particularly wrong-headed. There really is no such thing as bad publicity. If you get your name out on a place with about 2,000 members you're going to get some response.
The question of whether WORA is good or bad seems to depend a lot on whether one has been mentioned there in a negative context or not. :P Rasheem was correct in that it's probably neither. It's a resource and people can use it more or less as they please, which is both what makes some leery of it and its appeal.
Brody: It's not so much the
Brody:
It's not so much the "combative and vitriolic reputation" that people take exception to, I don't think. Perhaps it's when you said: "If I've got to swim in a sewer on the offchance I'll bump into a diamond ring, I'm still going to come out smelling like a sewer." If you're going to draw an analogy like that, I think it's fair to say you're going to make people defensive.
You can look at WORA's Semi-Constructive Board without even having to log-in. The rules on said board make it clear that flaming should be kept to a minimum. I'd wager that if you'd bother to take a moment and visit -- without logging in -- you could likely confirm this statement. Plus, you could probably find some interesting discussion fairly quickly. whirlwind moderates this part of the forum, and it would be difficult to find 10 people on WORA -- that place so maligned for its malcontents and misanthropes -- who would say a bad thing about whirlwind.
Rasheem may be one of the admins, but he is neither the sole contributor nor the most prolific one. You could take his word, or you could take the word of others -- Wretched and Ide, for instance -- who neither flame that often (I don't think I've seen either do much of this) nor troll others. WORA is not a valuable resource /if/ you look beyond the bile; it simply is a valuable resource to some, period. You could keep to a single board or section, and get little but good discussion and some advice.
If you'd bother to try instead of making conclusions on gross assumptions.