Note to fantasy authors

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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Nanohedron »

Peter Duggan wrote:If someone texts me, I spend 10 minutes laboriously concocting a short reply...
That literally made me laugh out loud. :lol:

If texting were driving, they would've taken away my keys long ago. I still poke-poke away with my index finger; still haven't learned to use the two-thumbs method yet, and I keep forgetting that I can do the fluid swipe-from-letter-to-letter method if I insist on the one-finger approach. The nice thing is that there's a prompt line below the text field that I can pick and choose from, rather than prompts being imposed upon my text as if the program thinks it knows what I intend.
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Nanohedron »

s1m0n wrote:If I'm remembering correctly, MTGuru led the last migration, though was a few years ago now.
Actually, we've had another (maybe even two?) since. Dale handled it (or those). He was worried for the demise of the Board, but things went so smoothly that nobody even noticed.
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by s1m0n »

AaronFW wrote:... making sure the smilie-faces make it over OK.
No, leave the smiley faces. Please.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Tunborough »

s1m0n wrote:
AaronFW wrote:... making sure the smilie-faces make it over OK.
No, leave the smiley faces. Please.
But it wouldn't be at all the same without at least :thumbsup: and :poke: .

:D
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by s1m0n »

Ha! Between my browser and the forum settings, I don't actually see them in posts any longer. I do see them bouncing around like idjits on the left of the posting.php page, and that's more than bad enough.

I see posts as text, so instead of a smiley, I see :smileyname. Just as inane, but less irritating.

When I object to smileys, and somebody pulls this move (as some a-ho always will), I get to file them under "jerk" without having my eyeballs seared.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Wanderer »

Nanohedron wrote: No, no, you missed it. Take another look at the fat separator thingum: the juices (analogous to water) indeed sit on the bottom, and the oils (analogous to gas) float on the top, just as you said. That's what the separator's design is built to take advantage of when you're in the kitchen making your gravy or demi-glace or whatnot.

Never mind the damned facts about accessibility and such; I knew that already. The principle works. :twisted:

Geez. Can't even crack wise around here...
I know how a fat separator works :) I was just pointing out that I'd need like 15 foot long arms to get down to the water ;)
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Tunborough »

s1m0n, I hold to my opinion that the little GIF files you so despise are an asset to the board. They help fill in information that a text-based medium loses in the absence of tone of voice and facial expression.

You may continue with your opinion to the contrary, but it is ill-served by your descent to ad hominem.
s1m0n wrote:Most of the time, I'm trying to understand other people as complicated people with complex motives. Humans, in other words. Everyone deserves to be understood as a human being.
Yes.
Quite.
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Nanohedron »

Tunborough wrote:... I hold to my opinion that the little GIF files ... are an asset to the board.
(Finding I need to preface that when I say "you" in the following, I'm not meaning you personally, Tunborough, but am using it in the sense of "someone".)

I would be adrift without my winkie smileys, if I had nothing else. I cannot rightfully expect everyone to know when my delivery is wry or tongue-in-cheek otherwise, and it often is, because that's how I roll. And when my delivery is intended to be wry or tongue-in-cheek, I can see pretty much every time when it's open to misinterpretation; so to forestall that in such cases, and because I want to keep to my writing style, enter the winkie smiley. To do without and say that it's up to the reader to get it flies in the face of the very concept of communication; my public posts here are not just for the anointed few who are somehow kith and kin to my sort of mind. I wouldn't even know who such people are in the first place, and that's a lonely place to put myself in.

For those who think smilies are beneath their dignity, then fine. But as far as I'm concerned, that's like saying the nuances of face and voice, so essential to optimal human social communication, are beneath you as well. Don't think that if people don't get that your intent was tongue-in-cheek, they are somehow deficient. That is a huge mistake, and a disservice. If they don't get it, the problem ultimately rests with the writer. Yes, sir.

If you think that my use of smileys is merely silly, childish, and an indicator of my being bereft of taste, then fine. But in that case the fact is that you have made an uninformed presumption, based merely on your prejudices, as to my sincere intent in using them.

It hardly needs to be said that posts on a message board are not the same thing as doctoral theses. The former are social; the latter are not. There is a time and a place for everything. Of course smileys may be overused to the point of inanity, but we don't see a lot of that here, thank goodness. People tend to use them judiciously for the most part, and that is how I think they are best applied, that application being to assure the reader, when assurance seems called for, of the writer's humor and good will. :)

Take for example my use of the snarky :twisted: smiley above in my earlier reply to Wanderer: without it, one might understandably assume that my tone is one of needing to be right at all costs. But that is, in fact, far from the case. So, that sort of smiley is intended to give a mollifying effect to my words, much-needed if I am to be understood properly. And I do want to be understood properly without having to overstate things.

Then of course there are those few who seem to have no clue whatsoever as to what the various emoticons mean when they use them, but what can you do?

To date I have known only one person who could do without smileys every time in clearly and successfully communicating wryness, and that is Dale. He has the uncanny knack for it, and I've often marveled at it. But comparing writing styles, it's clear I'm not him. Nor would I try to be.

So: If for no other reason than I personally rely on them from time to time, the smileys stay. I think that just about covers it.
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Nanohedron »

Having said that, I will now embark upon a rant about the current craze for emojis. I don't get them, nor do I see how many of them, such as the famous personified turdpile, enhance communication. At least smileys are intended from the start to serve an actual function of giving nuance. Here's an example of what I mean: There was a series of texts on my phone where out of the group it was said that someone was going skiing, to which someone else replied with a downhill-skiing emoji. Just that, and nothing else. It disappointed and irritated me because in context it meant absolutely nothing. What purpose did it serve? Can anyone tell me? I got nothing. All I ended up with was that my time and attention had been wasted on an inanity. Sure, it was a social act - bless their pointy little head - but for me it fell flat.
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Peter Duggan »

Nanohedron wrote:Having said that, I will now embark upon a rant about the current craze for emojis. I don't get them, nor do I see how many of them, such as the famous personified turdpile, enhance communication. At least smileys are intended from the start to serve an actual function of giving nuance.
Totally with you there, but personally also stick to a very limited choice of basic smileys and even avoid some of these on some boards because I don't like the particular auto conversions in use (not always well-matched to the 'traditional' text version meaning) or the effect on line spacing (you'll have noticed my smileys sometimes getting their own closing line?). Sure, I know you can disable them, but I'm OK with simple pictorial conversions when they don't get too big, fancy or ugly. But let's not forget the subtlety of the smiley's birth as a text rather than graphic medium. If others want to send smoke signals through rows of little pictures I might not 'get' and sometimes can't even decipher, fair enough, but you won't see this from me!

:party: <- I quite like this one, but it's too tall to go in one of my paragraphs!
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by david_h »

Agree about the usage of the smileys here, and emojis anywhere. My bugbear is the increasing use of pictures (icons) rather than words in user-interfaces. I guess it's OK for people whos first written language has trained their brains to remember the meaning of thousands of little symbols but I grew up with three dozen or so. They work quite well for me in combination when I am not in a hurry.

Having looked left at the smilies I'll admit there are more than I can manage without the mouse-over text. But there are not enough :D - some places have a quizzical sideways look that is not quite :-? or :really:
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by s1m0n »

Oh well. It's like a lot of things. If we wanna attract younger users, we're gonna have to bend. Like it or not, popular culture has moved on.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Nanohedron »

david_h wrote:Having looked left at the smilies I'll admit there are more than I can manage without the mouse-over text. But there are not enough :D - some places have a quizzical sideways look that is not quite :-? or :really:
Before I was a mod, we used to have a Hitler smiley. Yep. No idea what purpose that served. Needless to say it got the boot before long. We also had an eye-rolling smiley (I assume that's pretty close to what you're referring to, david_h) but over time the Powers that Be deemed it to be just plain rude, so out it went, too. I'll admit that there are times when I wish we still had it, though. :twisted:
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by Nanohedron »

s1m0n wrote:Oh well. It's like a lot of things. If we wanna attract younger users, we're gonna have to bend. Like it or not, popular culture has moved on.
...said the man who refuses to use smileys. :wink:

Not entirely sure what you mean by this. Trust me, C&F already has plenty of members in their twenties. Plenty. Sometimes I'm actually a bit surprised at it, so I'd say we're not exactly hurting along those lines. And also bear in mind that although most Chiffers now typically don't set foot in the Pub at all for whatever reason, activity here as compared to the past isn't a reliable indicator of anything but shifting interests. Activity in the music forums OTOH seems to me to be roughly about the same as it ever was. Again, being mobile-friendly may make some difference, and this is what I'm hoping we can apply and find out. If nothing else, it's good to be current. :)

We're not lacking for new membership, either. I can't definitively say we average a new member per day, but it's close, give or take. Today we had two new signups, with a third being a spammer who got shown the door. IIRC I had four applicants yesterday with three of them good, but of course it's not always like that. Still, I can also say it's not out of the ordinary, either. If new members aren't participating, who can say why? Maybe it's the mobile thing again. As far as the members themselves go, we're able to vet this stuff to a reasonable degree of reliability; to be activated, all accounts must indicate in their profile an acceptably informed and reasonably serious interest in Trad music and/or Trad instruments, and these accounts range from beginning whistlers to advanced fiddlers and pipers. Anything less is out the door. Even if you may be legit, a flippant introduction definitely doesn't earn points with us, so lurkers take note, if you're thinking of joining. On occasion we may not catch a spammer or other undesirable right away, but that's seldom indeed because usually they're too lazy to try that hard to fool us. But just in case, we next have the three-first-posts screening method which is a good additional firewall, so if a spammer gets through that, it's even rarer still. Admin likes to keep things Chiffy around here, and legitimate membership material definitely keeps on coming, so that's not an issue.

If your post is in reference to emojis on the other hand, the user in my story above was in her fifties and a mother of two, with one whelp in college and the other already graduated and married off. If emoji use like that is "keeping up", I confess I'm dubious about it. I see that particular case as a backsliding from language made worse by the fact that nothing really needed to be said in the first place. If she meant, "That's cool," then "That's cool" would by far have been better. She's perfectly capable of it. But just a picture of a skier? No. Nooohohohoho. It means nothing at all. If it were in reply to "What are you doing tomorrow?", the situation would be different because although still inarticulate, at least then the emoji makes communicative sense. But that's not the case, here. If popular culture moving on today means moving on to flapping mere inanities about like that, I'll keep counseling against it and take my lumps, thank you.

In short, I think emojis are better not to be adopted by C&F for Board usage. Being already in play, emoticons OTOH are acceptable (if you're unclear as to the difference, look it up. I've blackened this page enough already. :wink: ). If you want to label this conservativism as "a certain retro charm", fine. I call it not going overboard in sucking up to the wildly careening bandwagon of the madding crowd. C&F is not Facebook, Twitter, or phone text. Nor do Admin intend that it should ever be anything like them. Rather, if we are to make such comparisons, it is a refuge from them.
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Re: Note to fantasy authors

Post by david_h »

Nanohedron wrote:... We also had an eye-rolling smiley (I assume that's pretty close to what you're referring to, david_h) but over time the Powers that Be deemed it to be just plain rude, so out it went, too.
No. I was thinking of something less judgemental than :really:, something like "I am not sure about that". Maybe its some of the usage of :really: that puts me off using it.
Nanohedron wrote:Again, being mobile-friendly may make some difference, and this is what I'm hoping we can apply and find out.
A Poll maybe? Or does the board have statistics on the device types that open pages?
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