Coalf

This has started slowly moving into complaint territory starting with Berry and I'd like to remind everyone this is an application, questions are more than welcome.

Being a lore manager doesn't necessarily require.....

Thank you IncognitoJesus for trusting me. Now, let me explain something. Okay over multiple discord messages I have come to this rumor that I plan to kick staff out and replace them with my own. This is nothing but false. As of now I do have my eyes set on people who I think are slacking in their jobs and could be doing more, that's true. YET I don't plan to set them off, I plan to inquire WHY this is happening and if it's properly explained and within reason I will leave them to it, no trouble. I don't have issues with people being busy IRL, I have issues with people holding onto their seat just because they want to. This is exactly one of the reasons UT sunk, because people are unwilling to let go of things, I don't want that to happen here. I don't plan to kick people out, my whole point is to EXPAND the fucking lore team not thin it down even more than it already is, that's completely against what I'm trying to gosh darn accomplish people.

Thank you for your further explanation and clarification. I myself wanted to clarify to EVERYONE ,this message isn't just for Ally, that I don't consider myself a martyr angel who has come here to purge the Belzebub called Jackboots and throw him off his throne in hell to save all the sinners. It's just as selfish as it is selfless.

Ally I would lie if I said this is done for completely selfless reasons, partially I DO want to be a Lore Staff Moderator, while it's not something I'm going to crack a cold one about, it's something I would like to happen and would be very happy if it did.

Oh shit sorry Brutish I missed you there. I hate to do this, but Aboshehab is now a headmin for longer than he was a mod or admin. Nobody really questioned that and it turned out beatifuly, Abosh is an amazing head administrator and I admit I would have fucked up on MANY ooc things in which he himself has shined brightly. But he had no experience either did he? Still I know it's hard to trust me with this and thus I try my best to answer all the feedback I get and aknowledge it. And as I said, while I dislike some of the lore I have to concede to the fact it's subjective, the lore I don't like tends to be disliked by me becaue that's not personaly a thing I would have done and is impossible to change unless I literally steal someones job. So I went for the jugular. Then how am I supposed to change something I dislike about a species if I can't moderate that species? How can I change the meta narrative if I'm not in charge of it? By screaming my opinions in Moderator Discord instead of Public Aurora Discord? Why should my suggestions in Lore_chat be taken less seriously than in lore-staff-chat? Because I don't have a purple name? Because i'm not a friend of someone? Because I don't have authority? The fact is people are being taken at face value as of now until they start getting involved personaly and PMing people or making a fuss about it as I'm doing now. If someone wants another player banned, they make a ban request. I want someone replaced but not banned, well what do I make? Staff Complaint so we can slander each other for 10 pages and get it locked? Ban Request? I don't want Jackboots gone I just don't want him as a manager. Thus an application.

And this is acceptible? "Do it yourself" is a good deflection? No, it isn't. It's volunteer work I understand that but in the end you're doing it because you want to and if you're not willing to listen to someone and just going to bat him off with "Do it yourself" well at that point, why are you doing it? If I cook and someone dislikes my cooking, I can't tell them to do it themselves, I have to judge if the dislike is warranted or unwarranted and continue from that. Again, I am not criminally offended by lore, but by his Managment, becoming a lore writer would make no sense in that case. EDIT: I deleted the responses to questions I thought of as off-topic vague psycho-analysis and my more mean response and meme response which I should avoid if I'm trying to keep this things serious. Original post can be found here:

I think a recent issue with a change to Dominia.... You mistook it, I frankly I don't care about you as a lore developer, YES I AM UPSET at many things but these things are NOT the reason I made this. I've complained at a lot of things privately with other people, just like you got this information from a third party so I got information from other third parties and many times I got the "Just make a staff complaint," talk. But I don't want to kill you Jackboots, I see what you're with lore sometimes I am upset but in the end I frankly can't bring myself to care about these changes because they AREN'T WRONG but they're DIFFERENT to what I would like. If you look at this application you see one thing, about 2-3 lore handling questions, rest are in regards to staff. I think want to replace you as a Staff Manager not Lore Manager. Frankly even if I DO succeed I won't be changing unathi mechanics at all most likely, the only thing I've hoped to change and speak to ByGone about is to split Kois phoron and Real Phoron into two categories so it's less of a pain in the ass for Vaurca to obtain and less of a strain on other players to secure it for them. Because you're not a pleasant person in power to deal with and I don't want to join your team.(Personal experience, I know you have many friends and to some of your friends I speak to myself and they often managed to explain to me your ideas in a way where I had to concede and say "Yes I guess he's right.) I engaged with you on discord in serious discourse, both in PM's and in lore-chat which often gets misinterpreted, driven to satire or derailed by you getting bored of the conversation and talking about something else. Additonally the forum allows me to: A: I like to think majority of the players saw this, now they can think, talk and debate about these topics without it dissapearing on discord in 10 minutes. I'm not saying my ideas are correct, but from the support I've received so far I like to think they are. B: It's both polite and a powermove. I didn't want to make this a complaint for reasons Schev and CoolBC demonstrated, I.E trying to urge people into a shitslinging festival, this is a discourse. It also serves to say that hopefuly you'll stop using a "Do it yourself" excuse to dodge criticism. I didn't like it, well here I am, doing it myself as you suggested. C: I'm no orator and english isn't my first language, thus I often fail to explain my points in heated debates like discord where I don't get the chance to change my argument 10-20 times before it gets off topic. So logicaly the forum was my choice. AND YET To say that I, Coalf, thrice the biggest meme voted do not suffer from the same issues as you, well that would be a hypocrisy. Conspiir doesn't trust me and I see why, because of my vocal dislike of vaurca, my often memetic nature and flagrant display of vulgarity and still. I'm not a Lore Manager, my words weight a lot less and Conspiir is again a great tool to show this. He isn't afraid of me screaming "Delete Vaurca" as Coalf the moderator, he's afraid of me screaming "Delete Vaurca" as coalf the Lore Moderator. Thus I would hope to fix up these memetic hole and I regret I'd have to actually become semi-serious in the future. If you don't regret it, what stops you from hiring the same people in the future? You had plenty of chances to ask other people for their opinions about individuals, you've received opinions but it seems from an outsider perspective that hiring lore writers is less of a "Who do we want on the team" and more of a "Who do I want on the team". Again I'm an outside observer and it's the feeling I get, I can be completely wrong and I apologize.

I already spent majority of my day outside of college on aurora due to being a massive IRL loser and I'm determined to try my hardest, if I cannot I have no issue with throwing the towel into the ring and letting someone better and with more time back into the seat, or Jackboots again if he would wish so at the time were this to go through. Well i'll see if it's warranted first, ask my lore team what they think about X and Y lore and if it turns out to be legitimate, well yes I'll concede, having shoutfests in Lore_Chat about being right is much different from actual criticism when I'm creating something as I've already shown (I think) with my literaly works on Aurora and guides that i've created. My proudest achievement would be helping in memeing Dominia into eventually being picked up as an idea by Zundy and becoming a major faction from what was previously one measly planet. Also getting flashbangs into armory. And as I've described before the Fanfiction subforum (in hindsight horrible name) is also of my design. I'll shrug and go play a round or two. The fact is by putting this here my pleas have been heard and the issues raised are issues which a lot of people clearly agree on as shown by this feedback I've received and the actual debates I've sparked. That's why I had to include it's not a meme in the additional notes.

I am curious about this. It was simply an example and re-reading it I realize it was somewhat of a poor example, but it serves its purpose to show that it's a game. Additionaly walking around official large branches TRAINED to deal with you like Odin and accessing branches smaller that are frankly unprepared is also a common trade tactic, while Odin could state later that the negotiations done by the captain are moot they'd be admitting their captains are improperly trained. Not a bad explanation huh? In a game where a non-specific team of red-suited individuals can act as a protection team and the crew believe them because it was faxed from CC, I think we can pretend that someone would want to contact the station they want to trade with directly rather than through hoops. One of the things I would LOVE to push, this "Aurora is just a spec in the universe" serves to enhance the world but that has recently led to what I believe is skimping out on aurora where we just have 360 normal round days and then 5 special "You have care about the lore now" days. I'd like to perhaps post-pone or even cancel these bulky antag events and rather replace them with smaller, less important events that still no less have a bearing on the aurora universe. VIP tours aren't the only thing, legit bandit raids (For my favorite unga bugna maglights), corporate espionage (for those scientists who just LOVE printing random things and shoving them in faces of other people), relief missions (We've had this one event before where wounded "NPC's" were sent to Aurora as a nearby ship exploded and medical was tasked with helping them) etc. etc. These rounds should bring those people that don't care about the lore into the lore at large, but SLOWLY. I find these giant bulks we have are loredumps where someone new either has to give up making sense of it or read 23 wiki articles which just causes information overload and just serves to scare most people away from the lore. (in my opinion)

Thank you for your opinion. I hope I can earn your trust in the future.

I'd suggest you read the additional notes then.

That depends on what you're looking. It's clear our synthetic intelligences are explained as a sci-fi would explain them, with echelons(ichilons? can't remember) and circuits. But then juxtaposed is a literal wizard who's explained as "Yeah it's there." Politics have the finnese and tacticality of near real-life politics. But we also have walking sentient mushrooms. Three battling factions on a planet locked in gritty combat. But walking cat people. It's an absolutely mixed bag. In the end? Future Fantasy (got this from extra credits) with Science-fiction elements. If I were to compare this to something it would be Metal Gear Solid, a series that isn't afraid to go TOTALLY fucking insane yet is always somewhat loosely based on realism but sometimes with fantastical elements. I'd like to keep that in a tight hold, one thing I have learned that if you leave an exploit in a system, someone, somewhere will abuse it. So I want the lore team to keep the same chokehold they have held up to now. Same regarding abilities, nobody likes a mary sue. Suspension of disbelief is a bit iffy, some people are willing to handwave a crystal that's made out of a compressed star yet won't accept people calling a brain surgery that makes you stupid, lobotomy. We have different jobs, we come from different places, some things that seem to us like completely acceptible might sound bonkers to another bigger profesional in that field. It's a matter of perspective but as it stands I think people should certainly be more lax regarding antagonist gimmicks as they're there to spice up rounds. I said I don't want to gripe on Jackboots lore, but I guess I won't avoid it. Sadly yes, Unathi Favoritism is one of things why I've come to make this application and yes, I do believe someone who is directly responsible for a species shouldn't be in charge of the entire team at once as one is inclined to either pay too much attention to their species or to try and compensate for that and not pay enough attention. Continue my work as a moderator? Yes, I see no issue in that as I would have access to both modchat and lorechat, thus I would be capable to see if mod team has issues with certain players and address it and vice versa. Plus it would break off some of the secrecy and behind the scenes. I touched on that previously, it's important to stay involved but remain a neutral party. I can't say with certainty if he's doing too much or too little as I don't see into lorechat. But this application came into reality because from outside perspective it seemed like there was enough done, just wrongly. I'd say the head lore manager shouldn't actually involve himself in lore as much, as I said before he should be the stamp, not the letter. The final "Yes I agree" instead of the "No we're doing this instead" But responsibilites feature: Making sure Lore Writers are active, Overseeing how the acceptance of whitelists is going, Removing/Accepting staff and listening to issues of overall narrative from players and writers. Soon™

Hey there. Loow here...... Now I have to say that while....

Please, I said don't turn this into a smear campaign, this is a legitimate application it's not aimed to destroy jackboots reputation or question the going on behind the wall. At worst this is meant to provoke thought and discussion at best I'll be up there with the stars. Thank you.

How many lore devs.... How would you encourage activity..... How would you respond to loredevs sliding into inactivity?.... How much autonomy are you comfortable giving.... How do you play on improving transparency..... What is your stance on accessbillity vs depth..... I think you're conflating the idea of Aurora.... Wiki development is also very active.....

Addendum: The bug with "Protect X robot" was still patched out yet still events played second fiddle to the normal antagging we see every day, this is not how it should have been.

A very short but perhaps the hardest question here. The main issue I think is that we push things in bulks in these "Antag events." The thing is to a (I dare say) majority of players this doesn't matter, they played with a traitor that had a gimmick yesterday but they should care about this traitor now because someone OOCly said that this weeks he's special? I personaly think we should stop striving for these "Bulks" of massive events and focus on having semi-regular antag/lore events atleast once or twice a month. The fact is not everything is station shattering and not every lore event has to involve the station exploding, I applauded the foreshadowing in the newscasters before but now i'll curse it, we can use this foreshadowing ON THE STATION. Simply arrange yourself an extended round and move in for trade negotiations, if the captain is too much of a dickhead well that will affect the station in the future. It puts weight behind player actions, implies there are consequences and struggle that they're part of, instead of the narrative going to the left while the playerbase wants to go tow the right. For example the last antag contest, you know who won MAJORITY of the actual events? Anti-synths. But pro-synths won anyways, why? Well from the sheer number of normal traitors fulfilling their objectives! This isn't engaging, that's just annoying, everyone who fought, roleplay and stubornly fought in those objectives was outclassed by someone who stood in a lobby with a "Protect X IPC" objective. Additionally the issue is, the station itself isn't important enough, Phoron as a resource is being skimmed over as everyone "having reserves" and there being atleast 2 other reliable sources of phoron making the station itself un-important and thus giving less reasons for antags to do antag stuff in there. With that I'd like to increase the importance of phoron, either by making it simply more scarce which would require price adjustments, making it be only available in the romanovich cloud (which sadly impacts other lore) or simply making the station not be about phoron but about something else although this last one is a bit too drastic and something that I'd only consider as a dream.

These two kinda fall in together so I'll group them up. The answer is cutting excess threads. The forum is full of red herrings, debunked lore or just things that are plain wrong and as you said we have newscasters that are kept alive simply because Jackboot himself is updating them. This circles back to more Lore Writers, more writers means more ideas, more ideas mean more materials and more material means more news to report. For example the Bieselite times was an excellent idea, but it's hard to make someone write minor articles about a city on Biesel when they can't bring themselves to write an article about their own entire species once a month. Now we can say "Well they're just human," correct but if they had someone who they could rely on, who could help them with this it wouldn't be such a problem, thus we come back to increase of loredevs. I don't plan on deleting outdated or un-used newscasters as they can be used later. The wiki itself is in a steady uphill climb, ever since we've had that wonderful wiki team they've taken full reign and started working the wiki into being an actual wiki instead of a labyrinth. But lore writers should be responsible for their own wikies, this is why I wish once again to split power as updating the wiki for ALL the human factions has to be an exhausting task each time the lore shifts.

Yes and if you want to become part of the lore team, there is this forum, which I'm on. To quote myself "It's about trust, if you don't trust me well then I have failed you as a person and maybe in the future I'll fix that, I can't really say anything that would change your mind besides "I swear I'll be good boi"." As I said, I accept your criticism, I accept not everyone here trusts me, I accept not everyone here likes me and I accept this was sudden. It's the nature of the world. Yet it is also extremely petty to respond to criticism with "do it yourself" or "this is silly", he wanted me to do it myself so here I am, trying to do it myself. I accept there is someone more qualified than me with a better plan too, and I sincerely hope that this stirs enough waves for them to apply instead of me so they can try it and see what they can do. In the meantime, I'm here in their stead and maybe with practice I'll become that qualified person.

I've thought about this for quite a while and realized one thing that seriously needs to be done and that's numbers. The fact is only the lore team has not changed since the year 2014, the 2014 where this server got on average about 20 people. This numbers has DOUBLED and the amount of lore we now have has basically tripled. The wiki has for a long time been un-manned, forum is scattered with out-dated or outright false information and lore writers aren't always available to answer questions. Thus I'd hope to create a sort of "Additional Loredev" rank to be implemented, these people will help with whitelists, updating wiki pages specifically aimed at their expertise and helping with debating and creating lore. Everyone on the team most likely has someone a "Plan B", someone they trust and know understands the lore and discuss it with them in private in order to get good, honest opinions. I hope to get these people into the proper places so they can help without stealing the spotlight from the maintainers. Times change and we have to with them. Actual team of adults? No. Neither did you have any tangible idea that I wasn't going to just randomly ban people when I was put into mod-position. Same applies to me being a head whitelister, I can abuse that position very easily, I would assume it would take weeks before someone discovered I was un-whitelisting players randomly or just giving my metabuddies whitelists. It's about trust, if you don't trust me well then I have failed you as a person and maybe in the future I'll fix that, I can't really say anything that would change your mind besides "I swear I'll be good boi". Well now I fell insulted. No I don't plan on deleting the vaurca, frankly I know they aren't drooling retards, I read the lore I actually read the lore after YOUR fanfictions JUST to see what the hell is so great about them, I didn't find it. I don't like Unathi lore that much either and I quite often disagree with Jackboots on things, I also dislike some faucets of human lore again I disagree against those too. I also say glass adhomai, human pride galaxy wide, hail dominia and fuck synths. Doesn't mean I want to delete those. They're a hated minority, they fill their niche purpose better than any unathi or Tajara could, I feel like they're a bit hamfisted into our universe to be relevant but I don't plan on fiddling in that. The only true issue I have is bound and their abuse as basically lawless borgs. But no I don't plan on changing vaurca in any way as ByGoneHero seems to be gripping the reigns firmly and reducing the amount of chucklefucking to minimum.

Ckey/BYOND Username:Coalf Position Being Applied For (coder, mapper, spriter): Head Lore Manager Past Experiences/Knowledge: I've been moderating this server for longer than I've been a player at this point, I've dealt with plenty of ahelps regarding lore issues, character development and such details. Alongside that I used to mentor on BestRP which also required a staunchable role experience along with species knowledge. Lastly I'm part of the crew that manages head whitelists, thus I already have experience with it. Examples of Past Work: The fanfiction forum, while underused, is originaly an idea born of my head for people who want to leak their creative potential but don't want to be choked by lore restraints. I can count myself to one of the proud members who helped bring Fred104's Dominia into not only official lore but creating a major faction out of it as the original idea of a tribunal, mindwashed populus and "tolerate our enemies beyond our borders" came from a brainstorming session we've had. I've also provided feedback on many applications wherever I could and working as a Head Whitelister gave me additional experience in how to truly judge people. Preferred Mode of Communication (Skype, Steam, etc.): Discord, BYOND pager, Forums are the best Additional Comments: Yes, this is a serious application, yes I wish to replace Jackboots, no I don't want to turn this into a smear campaign against JB so please stay on topic. And to people asking why I'm doing this. Because yes, I do think I can do a better job.

Alright, appeal accepted.

Alright, you spoke on discord already and I see you're not just making excuses. But the issue isn't only the slot blockage, the bigger issue here was you were the AI a role that can literally make or break any round, we don't have issue with the AI ahelping "Going away for 10 minutes for food" making a "Going into maintenance" announcement and AFKIng for 10-15 minutes, because players know the AI is gone, we know the AI is gone and we can plan around that, same applies to heads. If you feel like you're going to be AFK for longer than 20 minutes, please wipe core or cryo yourself. Furthermore I need you to understand that even as this is getting appealed that if we see you AFKing and SSDing in the middle of the round without going cryo we're going to be escalating the ban and future appeals will only be harder.

https://pastebin.com/G2KAPzTj The interview.