[HN Gopher] Improbable Island, one of the largest and longest-ru...
___________________________________________________________________
Improbable Island, one of the largest and longest-running online
text adventures
Author : alentred
Score : 213 points
Date : 2024-01-25 21:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.improbableisland.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.improbableisland.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Was this maybe meant to be a link to the "What even is this
| website, please help me" in the bottom right? (Which it doesn't
| seem to be possible to hyperlink to).. as it is this just throws
| you into.. that mess.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Throwing you directly into the mess is completely intentional
| camel-cdr wrote:
| Does anybody know what the total word count is?
| blep_ wrote:
| No.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is cool. I really enjoyed choose-your-own-adventure books
| when I was a kid a long time ago, part of the fun being that as
| you were flipping to the page you were supposed to go to, you'd
| come across wild sections of text you hadn't quite visited, and
| it became a game to see if you could navigate all possible paths
| of the book. The really clever ones would have tantalizing pages
| that were unreachable paths just to frustrate you, or would trap
| you in infinite loops.
| smusamashah wrote:
| It talks about building your own shrine as a player owned place
| using some drag drop interface but I can not find any more info
| on that. Not in the wiki or image search on Google.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| From what I can tell 'shrine' is being used metaphorically to
| describe a player 'Place', and the drag-drop part might be a
| Place Program? There's not a lot of documentation without
| jumping in.
|
| I haven't played but I've read way too much about it since
| following Dan on Masto/Fediverse. Someday if I ever have time
| and bandwidth again I've really got to get on there.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| I'm sure the game is good, but (not to say it's bad, just haven't
| had the time yet) the only part I've browsed for a significant
| period of time so far is the code of conduct, which I think is
| absolutely amazing and helped form a lot of my thinking around
| online communities: https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php
|
| Edit: HN user drewzero1 also linked a long Mastodon thread
| written by the admin,
| https://mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/109354147264054179, which is
| equally critical reading. I cannot recommend both highly enough.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| A few years ago the admin Dan ("Caveman Joe") wrote a massive
| thread [1] about what he's learned about online communities,
| moderation, and dealing with users in general (both good-faith
| and bad-faith varieties). I thought it was worth a read for
| anyone thinking about creating or moderating any online
| community. It felt kind of like a peek behind the scenes of
| that code of conduct.
|
| There were some hard-earned pearls of wisdom there, and I'll
| have to read through it again when I have some time.
|
| 1: https://mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/109354147264054179
| howenterprisey wrote:
| Yes!! What an amazing thread. That and the CoC above should
| honestly be read together. I've added a link with credit.
| serf wrote:
| I'd rather my CoC not try to replace a mental health advocate
| or psychologist.
|
| 'Appendix A' is particularly egregious.
|
| I understand the dark patterns of psychology that an
| administrator should be on the look-out for; it's another thing
| to task the player-base with the witch hunt through
| explanation.
|
| P.S. I think it's noble that you read the CoC before product
| usage, and I wish more people -- including myself at time --
| would do that.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Id go further and say the CoC has 0 impact. The first rule by
| itself is absurdly long. No one is reading that. Its not
| shaping anything. It's for the writer.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| How do you know it doesn't have an impact?
| grey413 wrote:
| Well, the writer is the community manager, so at the
| minimum they are reading the CoC. That in itself shapes
| their moderation, which shapes the community.
|
| However, in my experience core community members will read
| things like this CoC, at least partially. They also be
| fairly involved with discussions about it, which go a long
| way to shape a community.
| Auguste wrote:
| I disagree. I've never heard of this game before, but I
| just read the whole CoC and it made me want to give it a
| try.
|
| I respect that the developer went to great lengths to
| outline their expectations in such clear detail. It sounds
| like a cool community to me.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> No one is reading that. Its not shaping anything._
|
| That may well be the case.
|
| But in any online community, eventually some people are
| going to get banned. And many people - even those who
| aren't getting banned - prefer it if the banning is
| conducted according so some sort of written document, even
| if they've never read that document in detail themselves.
|
| Other online communities with far more lightweight rules
| are also available, for people who prefer that :)
| patcon wrote:
| In the 1000-active-user forum I managed, the small subset
| of ppl who feel ownership of the community (maybe 20 in my
| case) ABSOLUTELY read the CoC. it's a small minority, but
| those who read it are often prominent and engaged ppl, and
| they lean on it to make decisions and advocate for actions
| under their spheres of influence. Not everyone needs to
| read something in order for it to be impactful
| howenterprisey wrote:
| The CoC explicitly tells you to go see a mental health
| advocate or psychologist instead of taking it out on the
| game.
|
| That aside, the general population absolutely must be
| educated on these behaviors. The admins can't be everywhere
| at once, and the amount of surveillance to replace players'
| eyes and ears would have to be enormous and the very
| definition of a nanny state.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _we make our decisions based on the spirit of the rules
| rather than the letter_
|
| That's precisely the kind of thing that turns people off codes
| of conduct.
|
| "Here are published rules, in incredible detail. They sort of
| resemble the real, unpublished rules that are actually used for
| decisions."
|
| > _Brits, please don 't use the word "fag" in reference to
| cigarettes (or at all)._
|
| LOL. 100 y-o grannies, don't call your cat character Silky P__y
|
| > _When we started this game in 2008, our code of conduct was_
|
| Oh, _that 's_ what's what one of the ... longest running means?
|
| That's like yesterday!
|
| I once played EOTL for a while in the middle 1990's. Looks like
| that exists in some shape.
|
| http://www.eotl.org
|
| Still using plain telnet, and recommending TinyFugue as one of
| the ways of connecting it, wow. (That's what I used.)
| howenterprisey wrote:
| >That's precisely the kind of thing that turns people off
| codes of conduct.
|
| https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
| kazinator wrote:
| > _The person didn't break any of the rules -- how dare you
| ban them?_
|
| Very simple: articulate new rules which cover the behavior,
| and publish them.
|
| Alert the user that their former behavior is _now_ against
| the rules.
|
| Have a meta-rule that anyone who triggers the above
| workflow more than twice will be banned.
|
| There is also this alternative: say that there are hidden
| rules that are completely unrelated to the written rules,
| even in "spirit". You can be removed from the community for
| any reason, without any explanation, by the powers that be,
| due to any behavior they find displeasing.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| Twice? Seems like that'll get argued about endlessly, at
| the very least.
| kazinator wrote:
| Even if so the arguments can get settled, any agreed upon
| changes made, and the discussion archived. Next time
| someone runs into it, you have that to point to.
| varjag wrote:
| _Very simple: articulate new rules which cover the
| behavior, and publish them._
|
| You essentially argue for common law: an enormous corpus
| of precedents that is impossible to navigate without
| dedicated lawyers, is a pain to arbiter and _still_ does
| not preclude injustice.
| hkt wrote:
| To continue the comparison, some of common law's
| shortcomings can be overcome with an entity like the UK's
| law commission, eg, rewriting statute (or the code of
| conduct) to incorporate changes based on new precedent.
| Which does appear to somewhat be what has happened.
| lmm wrote:
| I don't see that post as a convincing argument for codes of
| conduct. Indeed it's a pretty good argument for _avoiding_
| codes of conduct, e.g. the below:
|
| > That's why I mostly now make quasirules like "don't be a
| dick" or "keep your vitriol to your own blog". The general
| expectation is still clear, and it's obvious that I reserve
| the right to judge individual cases -- which, in the case
| of a small community, is going to happen anyway. Let's face
| it: small communities are monarchies, not democracies.
|
| > I do have another reason for this, which is based on
| another observation I've made of small communities. I've
| joined a few where I didn't bother reading the rules, made
| some conversation, never bothered anyone, and then later
| discovered that I'd pretty clearly violated a rule. But no
| one ever pointed it out, and perhaps no one even noticed,
| because I wasn't being a dick.
|
| > So I concluded that, for a smaller community, the people
| who need the rules are likely to be people who you don't
| want around in the first place. And "don't be a dick"
| covers that just as well.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Why would you possibly want a contract of social norms
| enforced by the letter instead of the spirit? That sounds
| awful.
| kazinator wrote:
| To see if I could create a thoroughly well-debugged, robust
| set of rules that accurately distinguishes unwanted
| behavior, yet minimizes the amount of subjectivity.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Minimizing subjectivity, is subjective. English is lossy
| and interpretation is subjective. There is always going
| to be a spirit vs word issue, in any contract.
| klyrs wrote:
| So you're ridiculing somebody who's done the work, on the
| basis that you might like to attempt to solve the problem
| from a position of idealism?
| lmm wrote:
| Why would you possibly want a contract of anything enforced
| by the spirit instead of the letter? The whole point of a
| contract is to be explicit, to spell things out. If you're
| going to enforce social norms according to their spirit
| (and you should!), writing out a pseudolegal code is a
| waste of everyone's time (and, in my experience, actively
| harmful to the social health of your community).
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I don't know if you're actually looking for an answer,
| but after having managed a small 1,000 person community I
| think the "spirt of the law" makes a lot of sense. You'll
| get a few community members that are great, but then they
| want to be helpful and will start trying to micromanage
| other community members. They'll see a rule like "Please
| keep discussions on topic for the channel". And then if
| somebody asks a question about C++ in the programming
| channel (instead of the C++ channel) the "helpful" member
| will tell the person that they're posting their question
| in the wrong channel.
|
| As the manager/moderator of a community, I appreciate
| that this person is just trying to help. However, having
| somebody disregard your question and then tell you you're
| doing stuff wrong can be a major turnoff to newcomers. In
| this specific case, it's against the spirit of the rules
| because it's a one off scenario. Now, this rule is
| helpful for the members that like to post memes
| everywhere, or talk about school or politics or religion
| in random channels. For these repeat offenders, I can
| point to the rule and politely ask them to move the
| discussions to a more appropriate channel. As with all
| laws in even real life, the rules are great for the black
| and white areas, but the majority of situations are gray.
| And it's in those gray situations where we can operate
| within the spirit of the rules rather than the letter of
| the law.
|
| Edit: also, to respond to your last statement. The code
| of conduct is there so that moderators have something to
| reference to repeat offenders. It's much easier to tell
| somebody they're banned because they repeatedly broke a
| specific rule rather than ban somebody because of
| personal distaste. I don't see how having a code of
| conduct could ever be harmful to a community? How would
| that harm a community in any way?
| lmm wrote:
| > The code of conduct is there so that moderators have
| something to reference to repeat offenders. It's much
| easier to tell somebody they're banned because they
| repeatedly broke a specific rule rather than ban somebody
| because of personal distaste. I don't see how having a
| code of conduct could ever be harmful to a community? How
| would that harm a community in any way?
|
| It harms the community precisely because it's easier. A
| moderator will ban someone they don't like, blame it on
| something ambiguous they twist into a code of conduct
| violation, other people will point out that there's a
| double standard because they didn't ban someone else who
| broke the same rule much more clearly, pretty soon
| allegations of discrimination are flying.... And you also
| get the opposite problem where a moderator won't ban
| someone who's doing a lot of harm to the community
| because "well, they technically haven't broken the rules
| yet...".
|
| Actually applying human judgement and taking
| responsibility for it is psychologically harder, but it's
| vital for moderation that's actually going to work and be
| respected, IME. I think we're pretty much on the same
| page about what moderators should _actually_ do with what
| you said about "grey situations" and "spirit of the
| rules". But if you pretend you're following a clear
| written code when you're actually expecting to have a lot
| of ambiguity and exercise personal judgement, you're
| creating a mismatch of expectations that causes problems
| (like your example of community members micromanaging
| each other). Better, IME to make it clear that while you
| may have some agreed guidelines, moderation isn't going
| to be according to a legal code.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > Better, IME to make it clear that while you may have
| some agreed guidelines, moderation isn't going to be
| according to a legal code.
|
| Yes. Some would say, it's almost like using the spirit of
| the rules ;)
|
| In all seriousness, your theoretical example of why code
| of conduct can be harmful to a community has nothing to
| do with the code of conduct. It sounds like it's just an
| unhealthy community with unhealthy moderators. Remove the
| code of conduct and the same scenario would play out. The
| only difference would be members crying out about how one
| member was banned for such a reason and another member
| who did the same thing wasn't banned.
|
| And lastly, in my community at least, it doesn't come
| down to personal judgment. Unless a user is spamming or
| spewing racial slurs, the moderators meet and discuss
| whether or not the behavior of the user is ban-worthy,
| temp ban-worthy, or inconsequential (in the former case,
| the moderator who notices such abrasive action can take
| immediate action). This way we can at least remove some
| level of bias by ensuring that there's consensus.
|
| Who knows, my community might just be small enough and
| inactive enough that I haven't run into the flaws of the
| code of conduct. This is all off topic anyways though, so
| I'll leave it at that.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't want my interactions online to be like a contract
| negotiation... or have to be litigated like one.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Because the spirit is always in conflict with itself.
| Humans cannot be reasoned with.
|
| This is not even anywhere near settled either, thats why
| various legal experts apply multiple different
| interpretations of the law, which is the ultimate form of
| this argument.
|
| And no, just because you say it is so, does not make it so.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm quite convinced that the person who wrote that code of
| conduct is entirely happy with turning people who take issue
| with that rule off the game - see the linked Mastodon thread
| and it's linked thread giving the advice about any community
| management to "remove the people who don't like being there",
| and it would seem that in this case would include turning off
| people who are unable or unwilling to figure out the
| community norms without a detailed set of explicit rules that
| leave them plenty of room to push past the community norms by
| exploiting ambiguities or loopholes.
|
| Would you be happier about it if they didn't try to explain
| how they operated? Because most places mods finds way of
| "working around" the rules for behaviours they don't like but
| that may not technically violate rules. There's slack and
| ambiguity in any wording.
| zilti wrote:
| LOL whoever wrote that CoC has a worse case of snowflakism
| than the local college reading club and a Trump rally
| combined, yet has the audacity to tell others to go see a
| therapist? That's bold.
| fenomas wrote:
| > That's precisely the kind of thing that turns people off
| codes of conduct.
|
| I don't know if you've ever moderated a large community, but
| if you do it by the letter of any law, people _will_
| endlessly probe for loopholes and argue over edge cases. I 'd
| imagine the wording you quoted is there to head off such
| issues, not because the moderator loves vagueness for it's
| own sake.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Seconded. I was a moderator for a subreddit with 120k
| readers. If you want to see what the outer limits of your
| rules are, enforce them as written and the community will
| be more than happy to show you.
|
| It's much better to be flexible and operate case by case
| within some common framework. The people who look would
| accuse you of subjective favoritism also do it when you
| enforce to the letter of the rule, so you're going to get
| flack for it either way.
| jerf wrote:
| That's another of the unwritten rules of moderation, I
| think: You WILL get flak. There is no scenario where you
| get no flak. Therefore, you must not treat not getting
| flak as an end goal, or you might as well just turn the
| moderation power over to your biggest assholes and cut
| out the stressful process of being the middleman for
| their asshole decisions.
|
| The question for a moderator is, _who_ is giving you the
| flak? If it 's the sort of people you don't want in your
| community, whoever that may be for your community, then
| you seem to be on the right track.
|
| A private message to the mods from an asshole pulling
| every psych trick out of the book to hurt you in that
| private message is not a sign of failure; it is a sign of
| success. It can take a bit of emotional adjustment to
| _feel_ that as a success and not a failure, but it 's
| doable. The more vicious they are in that post the more
| they are proving you didn't want the there anyhow.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _The people who look would accuse you of subjective
| favoritism also do it when you enforce to the letter of
| the rule, so you 're going to get flack for it either
| way._
|
| No matter how precise the rule, it's possible for someone
| to make the baseless accusation that you're deliberately
| singling them out to apply the rule to them, while
| letting the behavior of others slide.
| graemep wrote:
| > Brits, please don't use the word "fag" in reference to
| cigarettes (or at all).
|
| This highlights (in a small way) one of the issues with codes
| of conduct in an international context. A lot of things are
| culturally, linguistically or generationally specific.
|
| So a code of conduct, unless it is very loose, has to pick a
| dominant culture that sets the rules.
| slily wrote:
| > Support of Gamergate, racial supremacist groups, the
| redpill/incel movement, or any other hate group - including,
| and especially, hate groups that have gained political power
| such as the Donald Trump administration - is a direct challenge
| to the lives and well-being of other players and will result in
| a permanent ban.
|
| I don't know man, I don't care about your TDS, this is just
| eyeroll-worthy. Pure political soapboxing.
| hoten wrote:
| Setting boundaries or requirements for a community they
| manage is different from lecturing unwantedly on politics.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I mean, it's not particularly surprising that it's a lot
| easier to manage a community if you just find every political
| split point, pick a side and then remove the people on the
| other side.
|
| I think we used to call that sort of thing "gatekeeping"?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Gatekeeping is about group identity. You're not a real A
| unless you x, y, z.
|
| Choosing who you let in to your spaces based on criteria
| you choose is just the normal thing to do.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I don't think that's how the term has been actually used
| so far.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| It's how I see it used.
|
| There's even a large subreddit dedicated to pointing out
| and mocking gatekeeping and they pretty much all fit that
| definition.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/gatekeeping/
| rantallion wrote:
| Of all the things you could label as gatekeeping, I don't
| feel that excluding hate groups is one of them. We should
| never be tolerant of the intolerant, otherwise intolerance
| wins.
| jstarfish wrote:
| That's a shame. I thought this much was progressive:
|
| > Do not roleplay racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise
| bigoted characters _in public-facing or semi-public areas_
| (emphasis mine)
|
| Too good to be true?
|
| > hate groups that have gained political power such as the
| Donald Trump administration
|
| That's not a hate group, that's the other half of the entire
| country that doesn't toe your party's line.
|
| And it'll probably happen again because this sort of
| sophistry has made life an insufferable pain in the ass.
|
| Like or hate Bush/Clinton/Obama, nobody was kicking you out
| of a community because of your political affiliation. I miss
| the inclusiveness of the 90s.
| morsch wrote:
| > That's not a hate group, that's the other half of the
| entire country
|
| We have historical evidence from many countries that those
| need not be mutually exclusive categories.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| So why add the unnecessary category?
| Propelloni wrote:
| > Like or hate Bush/Clinton/Obama, nobody was kicking you
| out of a community because of your political affiliation. I
| miss the inclusiveness of the 90s.
|
| The 1990s weren't more inclusive, quite the opposite. But
| the groups you are talking about just all at least tried to
| work with the community. They actively sought out common
| ground and were willing to compromise. Today's populists,
| e.g. Trump, say the aforementioned community is not the
| real community, they are all crooks, or pests, and in fact
| only the populists and their followers are the real
| community and everybody else is the enemy and needs to be
| locked up, denied citizenship, or be exterminated. There
| can't be compromise. It is a big part of their sales pitch.
|
| Witness how so called moderate Republicans are treated --
| you know, the ones who seek to work within the community
| and are willing to compromise -- they call them RINO
| "Republican In Name Only", i.e. they are not _real_
| Republicans. There are more examples you are probably aware
| of. I, for one, can see how this makes it really hard for
| all involved to find some common ground to work together,
| don't you?
| meekins wrote:
| The CoC doesn't ban supporters of specific political agenda
| or party line but it is a banned topic. Anyone who's been
| on the internet in the past few years knows how passionate
| these supporters can get. That's a magnet for heated
| political discussion that very quickly gets uncomfortable
| for everyone else. It's impossible to be inclusive to
| certain minority groups while allowing promotion of
| politics directly against them.
| jl6 wrote:
| If a community intends to exclude certain political
| affiliations or classes of people, I'd want to know about it
| up front.
| adamrezich wrote:
| they really listed "Gamergate" _before_ "racial supremacist
| groups" lmao
| klyrs wrote:
| Wow, I'm the opposite. I probably sunk triple-digit hours into
| this game, and never bothered to interact with another soul on
| it. The code of conduct is _great_ now that I 'm reading it.
| smusamashah wrote:
| As you have played it, does it have player owned
| places/shrines which can be built via some drag drop
| interface? I couldn't find any more info on it except what's
| there on the About page.
| ddingus wrote:
| You are not kidding! I just sent a quick note to CMJ in
| recognition of what I must call a sustained, exemplary act of
| community management.
|
| Reading that was gratifying.
|
| That team should feel really good about their work.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| The code of conduct immediately made me realize that this place
| will be cliquey and run by rules lawyers who take delight in
| making a billion subcategories for the sake of empowering
| themselves to ban. I've never seen an instance where this was
| not the case.
|
| Anything that needs to write paragraph after paragraph for what
| could be summarized in 4 to 8 rules, especially with weird, no
| doubt completely irrelevant to the game itself "DRUMPF
| GAMERGATE VACCINE" clauses on top of that, is not something
| anybody who values their time should involve themselves in.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Or it's a community that's successfully kept itself alive for
| a very long time and "simple" rules get interpreted wildly
| differently so over time you're naturally going to build up
| at lot of explicit rules around edge cases.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| I've never seen this before but I instantly love it! It has real
| Kingdom of Loathing vibes for me.
| hoten wrote:
| KoL really scratched an itch for me for many years. It's too
| much of a time sink for me these days (I've replaced it with
| other time sinks...), but the studios newer single player games
| are quite fun with the same charm!
| harimau777 wrote:
| The game's wiki is amazing! It cleverly manages to avoid
| excessive spoilers while staying (mostly) useful by mandating
| that 20% of all content must be lies!
| RugnirViking wrote:
| thats.... actually incredible? I think more game wikis should
| strive to something like that. Whole genres of games have been
| irrevocably changed by omniscience.
| its-summertime wrote:
| A while back, I had multiple people respond to my support
| request, with impeccable results, no back and fourth responding
| to automated messages. Which easily puts the game well above the
| bar set by many others.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| amazing.
| fermentation wrote:
| Some basic searching says this is based on an even older game
| called Legend of the Green Dragon. Looks kinda cool honestly.
| Anyone know if the writing is okay?
| 0xEF wrote:
| You can try the game without logging in.
|
| The writing reads like tolerable fanfiction, so it's not
| stellar, but cringe moments and needless cussing are still
| present to some degree.
|
| As someone who used to write room descriptions on MUDs, I can
| say I I remarkably difficult to strike a balance between
| immersive writing and functional prose that English speaking
| persons of different comprehension levels can engage with. We
| also had to be mindful of screen readers for sight-impared
| players, the idea being keep your descriptions informative and
| short without being boring.
|
| I'm not a big fan of Impossible Islands writing, but they have
| my respect for it because it is quite the task to please an
| audience like that.
| savolai wrote:
| Anyone hook this up with a GAN yet to keep it peaceful yet make
| it visual?
|
| Plus translations.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Tried it, didn't like the feel of it.
|
| Text adventures are wildly different from one to another and
| personal taste. This one didn't grab me.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I really just deeply do not care about the code of conduct but
| the game seems cool. I mean, the writing is very bad, but the
| thing's got spirit
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Is this a MUD? Can it be accessed through telnet or a MUD client?
| gustavorg wrote:
| No, it's a text adventure, an RPG, online, in a browser.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| My main complaint - choice buttons extend faaar too far to the
| right
|
| I'm clicking the website to be sure it's in focus, but keep
| choosing an action
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(page generated 2024-01-26 23:02 UTC)