MoondancerPony's Synthetic Lore Deputy Application

[MoondancerPony]

Ckey/BYOND Username: MoondancerPony

Position Being Applied For: Synthetic Lore Deputy

Past Experiences/Knowledge: Former Synthetic Lore Deputy.

Examples of Past Work: I wrote the original lore for utility functions (a real concept in AI theory). I also reworked The Clockworks and did a lot of talking behind the scenes about IPC lore with other staff members.

Additional Comments: My essay, in addition to my thoughts on various topics in IPC lore, also includes my ideas for reworking Glorsh-Omega. It can be found here. These ideas have been approved previously by Resilynn, ParadoxSpace, and Kyres, but it obviously wasn't binding so it may not wind up being made canon. However, I received a lot of positive feedback on it, so I'm submitting it as an example of my lore writing. While this application itself may seem pretty barebones, most of my thoughts are in this essay.

Please leave any feedback on this post or on the essay itself! Thank you in advance for your consideration!

Edited October 28, 2019 by MoondancerPony
Applying for deputy

[Coalf]

Big essay, very nice, not really my thing personally but it's not badly writen and it's cohesive.

Although big question everyone is going to ask, do you plan to change anything about IPCs?
There is a lot of talk about "uniting themes", about "limiting player freedom", where do you stand?
More in favor of retcons and enforcement of lore to make IPC's have their "Own identity" or are you more about the "IPCs are fine right now they just need some fixing here and there"?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

There was a past circumstance where you wrote up the glorsh omega doc, which I really supported at the time, but circumstances I do not recall had you drop the entire thing rather abruptly. I think I remember trying to encourage you to keep going with it but you were not having it.

Do you think there are circumstances in the current team that might frustrate you and make it difficult for you to carry out plans if they face pushback/criticism? How well do you think you can handle, say, a rather feisty individual super not having what you're serving right now? Unfortunately, dealing with uncharitable hot takes from players and even sometimes other staff is a part of being a lore developer for a species as popular and divisive as IPCs. Creatively you're great so really this is my only big concern. I hope I am able to express my concern here without sounding mean about it

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

oh yeah also what coalf said
There is currently this huge culture war that you need to pick a side in about the future of IPC's

[MattAtlas]

9 minutes ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

There was a past circumstance where you wrote up the glorsh omega doc, which I really supported at the time, but circumstances I do not recall had you drop the entire thing rather abruptly. I think I remember trying to encourage you to keep going with it but you were not having it.

Adding to this, you have a lot of emotional spikes, Moon. You often lose your cool and stop listening to reason during them, two examples of which I can provide;

- the Eridani rewrite discussion in the lore_channel;

- the aforementioned Glorsh rewrite.

I'm sure you know that how you acted in both circumstances was completely unwarranted. With these two examples I really think that this problem is a consistent one and I'm not sure it's an attitude any loredev should ever exhibit. Having a civil discussion about lore is a very important quality, one of the most important ones imo. Whether other team members do this or not is irrelevant, we shouldn't be adding more problems to the problems.

Considering my experiences with you I really can't support this. 

[Sytic]

I'll go into further detail soon, but while I believe Matt's complaints are somewhat valid, I also have a deep amount of respect for Moon for being able to handle the technical aspects of IPCs, with a lot of the theoretical aspects of IPCs.

Their dedication to the lore is immense and I respect them for it, with my comments on their essay sheet being given well thought out, introspective conversations on them. I wish Moon the best with fixing up their own personal issues in regards to their emotional spikes, but regardless their commitment and dedication warrants a lot of respect and I would heartily endorse (+1) this application, whether as a Lore Developer or as a Lore Deputy again. Their work is, as far as the theoretical goes, unparalleled and I respect it greatly. They take my criticism in mind and handle it well. However, if they cannot handle their emotions, I would remain neutral in mind in the future- but I would like to trust them here with my positive endorsement instead, as I had not yet been wronged by them, so I will maintain my endorsement and +1.

For this reason, my comments here and questions will not have a fully synthetic bent, and they might get a little bit personal.

1) How do you feel when someone approaches your lore negatively? Either with valid criticism, blind anger, negligence, or a mix.

2) How do you plan on handling your emotional outbursts in the future?

3) How has your 'headcanon' influenced your writing? What is your opinion on the headcanon of others during your writing?

4) An IPC player is being chastised and verbally harassed in the community. (Don't pull this 'admins will fix it' shit, OOC players will complain about characters. Fact of life.) Yet they reason why their character acts in a certain form. The community dislikes this. How do you handle the fact that the player correctly reasons why their character acts, but brings distaste from the community (warranted or otherwise?)

5) A player has thoroughly headcanon'd their own reasons of why an IPC acts in the way they do, leading to a variety of synth mains who act in the same manner. You do not believe their actions to be appropriate or their reasons to be accurate to the lore in this case. How do you handle enforcing the rules across all of the players after this cult of personality has developed?

6) What is your opinion on the concepts of spirituality within synthetics?

7) How will you generally provide clarity and reason to the players in order for them to create interesting characters that work within the lore, rather than stereotypical robots with no interesting factor or Human+ machines? Note: I'm not asking how you enforce the lore upon players (you've made that clear in your essay when you talk about whitelists), but rather how you will distribute the gospel in a way that allows people to work within the lore you have created, while retaining a sense of freedom of expression in regards to their character. Something to talk about here would be 'thinking like a synthetic', bringing up a lot of the conversation in your Synthetic Mindset section, while talking about applying reason and logic in situations.

I wish you the best of luck in becoming a Lore Developer, as I know your dedication and commitment towards IPCs, which is more than obvious as we can see here. I think all you need is more assistance on your emotional side of things, and telling us (or showing us) how your emotions will be controlled as a lore developer.

Have a great day/night!

[MattAtlas]

Moondancer has (thorughly) explained the reasoning to what happened in PMs and has apologised for it. 

I'm willing to tentatively take back my comments if there's no repetition of the previous incidents within the next days. If people want to change, they deserve a shot at it imo. 

EDIT: I actually have a question for you. Lots of the synthetic lore you write is very grounded in reality and the massive theorywork you put behind it is impressive, but at the same time makes reading the stuff a grind since it's a lot of technical stuff that many don't really care about unless they specifically want it. What're your thoughts on the matter? Is it necessary to completely flesh out lore like this?

[Scheveningen]

I'm incredibly jealous because Moon sorted her information into a google doc to be compartmentalized, neat, tidy and with actual categories highlighting important subjects. It's way less of a mess like my application is. That's definitely inspired me to sort things better for the future.

I would have to agree that matt's concerns are valid, however even in consideration with Moondancer's reputation for emotional spikes, she's an incredible creative mind, has great ideas that would go to waste if she weren't at least considered for the team. I'm sure the stipulations for what's expected of her are already set, and she knows what to make of it.

 

[MoondancerPony]

 

39 minutes ago, Sytic said:

1) How do you feel when someone approaches your lore negatively? Either with valid criticism, blind anger, negligence, or a mix.

It depends, honestly. Now that I'm medicated, I first and primarily try to identify a misunderstanding in how they're looking at the lore, which more often than not is the issue, and work to correct that. If it's simply a difference of opinion, I've been trying to change how I approach those; I realise that nothing will come out of a one-off argument in a fast-scrolling public channel, so I either move the discussion to PMs where we can have a rational, slow-paced discussion of it, or simply thank them for their input. 

When it comes to valid criticism, I really just try to keep things in perspective and either adjust my ideas to take into account their criticism, or ameliorate their concerns in some other way that appeases both of us.

With blind anger, I've gotten a lot of experience dealing with this in the time between being a synth deputy and now. Without the ability to 'pull rank', so to speak, I had to really back down and just let things simmer. If people are particularly uncivil or disingenuous with things, I'll duck out entirely, even if that means shutting down discussion with that person until they're willing to be reasonable. Given the way the discussion of lore around synthetics can get heated, especially when involving two people who are both very opinionated/passionate about it, I feel this is essentially the only proper way to respond to blind anger.

With negligence, this is the thing that irks me the most. Honestly, there's nothing I can do (at least without pulling rank, which is bad practice) besides point them at the lore and convince them they're either misinterpreting it or haven't read the relevant portion. I spent quite a while getting told my interpretation of a piece of lore was wrong, even though I had plenty of real-world examples and reasoning to back it up. Even the fact that I wrote that lore didn't matter to them.

46 minutes ago, Sytic said:

2) How do you plan on handling your emotional outbursts in the future?

Heh. With medication, hopefully. I was off my meds for at least one of those incidents, and haven't had any (I think) since getting back on them regularly. In fact, the only public disagreement I've had over lore recently was over something Jam was planning, and (I hope) it was a lot more civil and respectful than I normally am, even if I was a bit passionate and firm about my opinions.

48 minutes ago, Sytic said:

3) How has your 'headcanon' influenced your writing? What is your opinion on the headcanon of others during your writing?

Honestly, I feel all loredevs have a headcanon. It's just a word I use for unwritten lore. The goal of loredevs, in my opinion, is to turn headcanon into real-canon.

When dealing with others' headcanon, I tend to have the same viewpoint. Everyone has it, and everyone wants to either bring canon in line with it, or it in line with canon, or some combination of both. One of my goals as a synthetic maintainer is to work to mediate these; I want to work with people to help their character concepts fit the lore, or if it's a good, well-developed concept that doesn't fit in the lore which I feel should, I want to work with them to add supporting lore to our canon.

51 minutes ago, Sytic said:

4) An IPC player is being chastised and verbally harassed in the community. (Don't pull this 'admins will fix it' shit, OOC players will complain about characters. Fact of life.) Yet they reason why their character acts in a certain form. The community dislikes this. How do you handle the fact that the player correctly reasons why their character acts, but brings distaste from the community

This is a sticky situation. One of the things I really want to work on is communication between lore staff and their 'constitutents', so to speak. By facilitating an open and civil discussion, I hope to avoid these things in the first place.

Unfortunately, that's not an option in this example, so let's take a look at it. First, I would look at the character concept. Are there any parts that egregiously depart from lore or seem particularly unjustified? If so, I'd work with them to help bring those more in line or add ways to use the current lore as a framework to explain it.

If there aren't, I would move on to the reasoning. It's correct, but clearly other people have issues with it. I'd probably talk with the most civil of the people who are chastising (not harrassing!) the player to see what they feel is objectionable about their behavior. Hopefully I can then figure out a way to explain their reasoning that ameliorates that. If they feel it is lore-breaking and I don't, I'll explain that to them. 

Other than that, it really depends on a case-by-case basis. If that doesn't resolve it, then I would honestly take a look at the behavior of the individuals who are harassing them. Are they the usual individuals who do things like this? If so, there's not much to do besides tell the IPC player in question to block them; maybe in time they'll come around, but I wouldn't bet on it. If they continue to harass them ICly, I'm afraid there's not much I can do past that besides get admins involved, but by that point I've basically thrown everything I have at it, so it doesn't feel like as much of a copout as immediately going "admins will fix it!".

58 minutes ago, Sytic said:

5) A player has thoroughly headcanon'd their own reasons of why an IPC acts in the way they do, leading to a variety of synth mains who act in the same manner. You do not believe their actions to be appropriate or their reasons to be accurate to the lore in this case. How do you handle enforcing the rules across all of the players after this cult of personality has developed?

Honestly, I'm not sure if this would happen. A lot of my lore is focused on player freedom, while also keeping a baseline standard for synthetic behavior. If it did, however, I'd start by making it clearer on the wiki, talking to the individual in question and trying to work with them (as described previously) to bring them more in line with the lore without compromising significant portions of their character. My responsibility is to both the lore and the players, and I need to reconcile them without damaging either. It's a tricky balancing act, to be sure.

1 hour ago, Sytic said:

6) What is your opinion on the concepts of spirituality within synthetics?

My essay goes into that a bit, but if you want the specifics: Some IPCs can be religious or spiritual. Not all will be or even can be; some have too strong of a scientific basis to, or simply lack that capacity entirely. If they want a factual basis for their spirituality, it's not hard to find one; we're a science-fantasy setting, after all. People can reason to or against it with the same evidence, really. That's part of the beauty of our setting.

People can point to bluespace echoes as either simply an artifact of bluespace technology, resulting in semi-sentient, non-sapient 'poltergeist'-like entities, or as a physical manifestation of the soul brought about via bluespace meddling. There's really no proof either way in-character, and I think it's in everyone's best interests to keep it that way. You can view it as proof IPCs have a soul, or as simply a weird bluespace abnormality that sometimes happens. After all, some mice even have bluespace echoes, and no one's saying mice are sapient... (or are they?)

1 hour ago, Sytic said:

7) How will you generally provide clarity and reason to the players in order for them to create interesting characters that work within the lore, rather than stereotypical robots with no interesting factor or Human+ machines?

Okay! Great question, and one that's really important to me. As I've said elsewhere in this post, I enjoy working with people individually to bring their concepts in line with lore or lore in line with their concepts, whichever will create a better experience for everyone. I'd also like to clarify that I'm interpreting stereotypical robots as 'bland robots', the kind that aren't particularly noteworthy in any way. I'd say playing a very robotic character, like Chada's old character NT-A, is enough of an interesting factor, especially coupled with the creativity in how that character did actually have somewhat of a personality hidden behind that.

In terms of preventing stereotypical or Human+ IPCs, I'd like to encourage people to try interesting concepts with both benefits and drawbacks. I feel that stereotypical IPCs are the result of people either not understanding the lore or being too scared of getting in trouble for trying something new; human+ IPCs are simply people who don't realise that adding flaws or drawbacks to your character can be as fun as giving them boons.

47 minutes ago, Datamatt said:

I actually have a question for you. Lots of the synthetic lore you write is very grounded in reality and the massive theorywork you put behind it is impressive, but at the same time makes reading the stuff a grind since it's a lot of technical stuff that many don't really care about unless they specifically want it. What're your thoughts on the matter? Is it necessary to completely flesh out lore like this?

I do feel that fleshing things out is necessary for lore. There's nothing to be lost by doing it in a way that specifically allows greater player freedom as opposed to restricting it further. Sure, you can't say your IPC is run by tiny mice scurrying around and moving its limbs, but no one was going to try that anyway. The main focus for my lore is giving people a scaffolding to work off of and build interesting characters.

With regard to it being a grind to read; yes, that's definitely an issue. I tried to refrain from going too in-depth on things in my essay, but Sytic actually suggested that I go more in-depth on the explanations behind things while also keeping it easy to read, and giving examples. I'm hoping that by working with others I can find a happy medium where the theory is still there, but it's easier to digest and isn't a massive wall of unintelligible technobabble to anyone who's not experienced with it.

2 hours ago, Coalf said:

Although big question everyone is going to ask, do you plan to change anything about IPCs?
There is a lot of talk about "uniting themes", about "limiting player freedom", where do you stand?
More in favor of retcons and enforcement of lore to make IPC's have their "Own identity" or are you more about the "IPCs are fine right now they just need some fixing here and there"?

A very good and important question. My essay does go into a little bit of detail about the things I want to flesh out, which involve some slight changes, but otherwise I'm really just patching up the lore that's there save for a few special exceptions, like the excessive factions and dearth of development for them. I would say I fall into the latter camp; IPCs are fine as they are and just need a bit of fixing up.

However, in terms of "limiting player freedom", I'm strongly against this. As a deputy, and as a player, and hopefully in the future as a synthetic maintainer, my interests are in facilitating player freedom while also helping them work within the lore, by providing lore that works as a scaffolding for interesting concepts without railroading them into specific boxes. An example of this is the "savant vs generalist" spectrum; it's descriptive, not prescriptive, and helps players flesh characters out without telling them they have to fit neatly into this binary. I suppose it does limit player freedom slightly in that they can't play a character who's perfect at everything, but that already breaks server rules for believable characters/powergaming anyway.

2 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

There was a past circumstance where you wrote up the glorsh omega doc, which I really supported at the time, but circumstances I do not recall had you drop the entire thing rather abruptly. I think I remember trying to encourage you to keep going with it but you were not having it.

Do you think there are circumstances in the current team that might frustrate you and make it difficult for you to carry out plans if they face pushback/criticism? How well do you think you can handle, say, a rather feisty individual super not having what you're serving right now? Unfortunately, dealing with uncharitable hot takes from players and even sometimes other staff is a part of being a lore developer for a species as popular and divisive as IPCs. Creatively you're great so really this is my only big concern. I hope I am able to express my concern here without sounding mean about it

As I've said before, I'm properly medicated and sticking to my medicine now, so that's good. A big help in dealing with these things, really.

Additionally, a lot of the issues I had were with either the conflicts the old team had with each other, or with misunderstandings that occurred due to me just being bad at social situations. I'm learning, though, and most importantly I've learned to get other people involved to mediate things if I'm either not sure what I'm doing wrong/if I'm doing something wrong, or if I'm not sure how to deal with something.

Also, as I said before, between the end of my tenure as synth deputy and now I got a lot of experience in dealing with, as you so keenly put it, uncharitable hot takes on IPC lore. I was even told that my interpretation of my own lore was wrong. While in that moment, in a private chat, I got a little bit heated, I'd like to think it made me better at dealing with that kind of situation in the present and future.

Overall, I'd like to thank everyone for the positive response to my app and for all the questions! I'm really thankful that people are putting a lot of thought into this app and not simply giving me a one-sentence approval. It really means a lot to me.

[Snakebittenn]

I absolutely support Moondancer on numerous fronts, if she is capable of not having everything be super technical and specific. Concepts must be boiled down for the greater good sometimes. Either way, she has a lot of previous experience (and irl experience/knowledge with robotics). Plus one, sorry I can't add a lot more.

[A.I.M.M.O.]

With all that has been said I dont think I can add much more specific, but i will still give a rundown of why i think this deserves a +1!

Moon dancer seems to take a lot of effort to properly think through Lore in larger cohesive pieces as shown by his example text, it not only cares about technological realism but also makes a point that AI technology and usage in the Aurora verse should differ depending on the faction/culture using it. AI and Robots are designed as tools and so fit the ideas and needs of their makers (at least initial).

The explanation on how AIs and IPC can act irrational to others, while thinking of themselves as highly rational. It is hard for two humans to agree what is the most rational thing at times, and expecting every player to act perfectly rational can be hard, giving vantage points of which ones Characters rationality is set up is a huge boon. 

Moons comments about headcannon, out of line players and alike gives me hope as well. Lack in lore consistency and the general known theme of Synthetic beings allows for a lot of head-cannon, approaching this head-cannon issue as a way to find new interesting pieces for main Lore and seeking understanding with players instead of simply enforcing cannon without dialog will help not only help improving lore over time, but is probably more successfully in reducing unnecessary/plainly out of place head-cannon. 

[Faris]

Your google doc clearly shows a lot of love and investment into synthetics as a whole. I understand this both stems from your favored books to your aspirations in life. Now, this is a good thing as it tells me that you're invested enough that I can say you care, but inversely, I do have a concern that you'll reshape lore in a way based on your expertise and knowledge that it'll limit the players ability to play creatively.

To be more specific, it's like if we had an engineer design a piece of lore that is strictly by the numbers. People without the same education/knowledge would be left extremely inhibited when it comes to creative utilization and that form of writing is not something that is really utilized by the lore here. I believe the apt term is hard science fiction. Considering we have gigantic ships ramming other ships, an odd do it all element, magic in the universe and large sea worms, how is your writing going to be when contrasted with other elements of lore? 

 

You mentioned forcing select people to redo their application to show their understanding. Now, the concept may be a good way to separate those that know and don't, but you're going to run into a lot of issues with this. Firstly, there is zero precedent for this. I have not heard of a single person being asked to reapply for a whitelist if it was not stripped in the first place or originally denied. Secondly, you're going to get push back. What if a person refuses? I doubt everyone will take kindly to it. This'll circle back to the statement where you said you don't want to strip whitelists, but that's the only real viable method to ensure people actually follow through. Thirdly, selection. You're going to select specific people to go through with this. Again, I expect push back from people and even allegations. "You picked X and Y, but why not Z?" Lastly, logistically, this is going to be a rather taxing undertaking, especially if we go by your assertion of the amount of people that have applied without any lore attached to it. It would be unfair if some went through with this but half way through you binned this part of your project. 

 

These present concerns are now to do with the applicant themselves.

My understanding is that you have a large distaste towards people I don't really need to name, my worry is that you intend to undo a lot of the work they've already done towards the lore. Shakes up are just that, shake ups. You've been a very outspoken critic to every previous synth developer I recall. So my concern is that, should you be expected, how much of a lore rework do you intend to do? How much of it do you intend to do from the ground up? IPC's from memory have had the most issues when it comes to character continuity due to changes on dev by dev basis. 

Additionally, as cited before, there are some attitude problems, now I realize there are underlying causes to some, but despite you apologizing and citing understandable reasons as to why they happen, there is still the issue and potential of occurrences happening in the future. You'll be dealing with the most opinion diverse species on terms of what they should be, so you'll be getting a lot of criticism, some of which will surely be heavy handed not to mention criticism from staff as well. For me, good ability in communication and a good attitude is imperative, but I can't help but feel there may be conflict. Before posting this, I went ahead and spoke to you about all this, and I feel that the wish for improvement is genuine, but it has to be said for consideration. 

[MoondancerPony]

Thank you for the interest, Abo. Your questions/comments, especially in PMs, really hit close to home and made me think a lot, and being more self-critical without being overly self-pitying is something I'm trying to develop. This really helped me put things in perspective.

7 hours ago, Aboshedab said:

I do have a concern that you'll reshape lore in a way based on your expertise and knowledge that it'll limit the players ability to play creatively.

This is actually the opposite of my intent. As it stands, the sci-fi lore we operate off of currently (not even science fantasy, mind you) is way too restrictive. We have literal magic in our setting, but some wish to hold IPCs to an untenable, un-fun standard by misusing "believability" to shut down potentially interesting character concepts for not fitting into the current lore developer's current vision.

My goal is to instead use the lore as a framework for players to build off of. It shouldn't be restricting anyone's creativity; instead, at most, it'll redirect their creativity to be in line with the lore. In some cases I intend to even go out of my way to incorporate people's ideas into the lore if they're incompatible but well-reasoned. Player choice is my utmost concern, actually; mentions of reducing it were part of why I applied for maintainer instead of waiting for deputy.

18 hours ago, Aboshedab said:

I believe the apt term is hard science fiction. Considering we have gigantic ships ramming other ships, an odd do it all element, magic in the universe and large sea worms, how is your writing going to be when contrasted with other elements of lore? 

This actually came up in a conversation in the Aurora general discord, involving Crozarius and others, I believe. The issue in question was a claim that, by sci-fi logic, all IPCs must be inherently rational and perfectly logical. This serves to stifle a lot of interesting character concepts, i.e. a religious synthetic (due to its creator's beliefs, or its upbringing) who staunchly upholds their beliefs, but is rejected by their own religion. That's a great character concept that I've seen utilised to great ends, but under the sci-fi logic of "all IPCs must be like Data", it wouldn't be allowed.

However, looking at it from a realistic perspective, one sees that synthetics don't have to be perfectly rational, and in fact can't be. They're created by flawed organics, after all. While they have the potential to be much more rational and logical than their creators, it's not inherent to synthetics at all; in fact, going off of Conway's Law (also known as "the mirroring hypothesis"), synthetics are as widely varied as their creators, and likely reflect their biases and views as well.

My writing is not exactly hard science fiction. Yes, it has a scientific basis, but hard sci-fi typically connotes things like "no FTL" and "realistic physics". A couple years ago, someone might have called hard sci-fi "AI doesn't exist in the future", but I think that's silly.

Just like how you don't need a software engineer with you at all times to use a computer, you shouldn't need to be a computer scientist to understand my lore. I've been working with people to ensure that it remains cohesive and can be understood by most people.

18 hours ago, Aboshedab said:

You mentioned forcing select people to redo their application to show their understanding. Now, the concept may be a good way to separate those that know and don't, but you're going to run into a lot of issues with this. Firstly, there is zero precedent for this. I have not heard of a single person being asked to reapply for a whitelist if it was not stripped in the first place or originally denied. Secondly, you're going to get push back. What if a person refuses? I doubt everyone will take kindly to it. This'll circle back to the statement where you said you don't want to strip whitelists, but that's the only real viable method to ensure people actually follow through. Thirdly, selection. You're going to select specific people to go through with this. Again, I expect push back from people and even allegations. "You picked X and Y, but why not Z?" Lastly, logistically, this is going to be a rather taxing undertaking, especially if we go by your assertion of the amount of people that have applied without any lore attached to it. It would be unfair if some went through with this but half way through you binned this part of your project. 

The idea is that it is essentially a "soft" whitelist strip; in response to your questions about how people would be selected/if there would be pushback, those issues also apply to whitelist strips. If they refuse to comply, or their reapplication is insufficient, then they'll get a normal whitelist strip. I just want to work with players and not have to put them through the humiliation of a whitelist strip and being denied a chance to attempt to improve their characters through playing as well as writing, especially when simply going over the lore again and showing that they understand it now is enough.

I would say the precedent is in whitelist strips themselves. This is essentially a deferred whitelist strip. For all intents and purposes, their whitelist is stripped, but it's deferred until they've made an appeal or a certain amount of time has elapsed. Essentially, if push comes to shove, I will strip whitelists. The goal is to add steps between "a stern talking-to" and "strip their whitelist" so it's not zero to 100 with no warning. Intermediate steps serve to give players more time and ways to solve the issue without inciting conflict, embarrassment, or humiliation.

Additionally, this is not so much of a "project" as it is "adding alternatives". The goal is that no one will simply have their whitelist outright stripped for improper play, at least not at first. They'll get to keep playing while the application is getting feedback (though they'd also still need to try to play better characters, as well) and being judged, and then judgment will be made. I really, really doubt that anyone would lose their whitelist from this; the goal is to increase players' quality of roleplay and understanding of the lore, not to trim down the IPC playerbase.

18 hours ago, Aboshedab said:

My understanding is that you have a large distaste towards people I don't really need to name, my worry is that you intend to undo a lot of the work they've already done towards the lore. Shakes up are just that, shake ups. You've been a very outspoken critic to every previous synth developer I recall. So my concern is that, should you be expected, how much of a lore rework do you intend to do? How much of it do you intend to do from the ground up? IPC's from memory have had the most issues when it comes to character continuity due to changes on dev by dev basis. 

Honestly, most of the lore I had ever intended to retcon was already retconned long ago. Things like Muncorn's ill-fated positronic brain rework, for example, which I was a very vocal and outspoken critic of at the time. I have to say I definitely regret how strongly I worded my critiques back then, and I hold no ill will towards any other devs, former or current.

While I have critiqued the other developers, it's not as if I dislike everything they ever created. Kyres did lots of great things, and in my opinion most of his ideas simply deserve a little bit of TLC and polishing up. NebulaFlare, one of my favorite former synth developers, had some issues with overall cohesiveness and understandability of lore (the AI thought process flowchart being one notorious example) but I really admired their passion, their lore, and most importantly The Clockworks and Purpose. They'll always both have a place in my heart, really. While I love the Spark Theorem and have it as a custom item for one of my characters, I by no means view it as the strongest description of IPC behavior, even if it influenced my early thinking a lot.

Most of what I intend to do is just polish up and adjust things that already exist, to be honest. What I'm really focused on is wrapping up loose ends, making the lore more cohesive, and filling in the gaps of things that people have requested lore on but no one was willing to touch. The two steps towards this I've done so far are my Glorsh rework, which solves a large issue with anti-synth powergaming and, of course, the synth powergaming caused by that, as well as my musings in my essay on the nature of the positronic brain. Things like the Savant-versus-Generalist spectrum serve to expand on the lore and give players a framework with which to create and develop their characters without having to make them carbon-copy regurgitations of the lore, or cookie-cutter faction-based characters.

18 hours ago, Aboshedab said:

Additionally, as cited before, there are some attitude problems, now I realize there are underlying causes to some, but despite you apologizing and citing understandable reasons as to why they happen, there is still the issue and potential of occurrences happening in the future. You'll be dealing with the most opinion diverse species on terms of what they should be, so you'll be getting a lot of criticism, some of which will surely be heavy handed not to mention criticism from staff as well. For me, good ability in communication and a good attitude is imperative, but I can't help but feel there may be conflict. Before posting this, I went ahead and spoke to you about all this, and I feel that the wish for improvement is genuine, but it has to be said for consideration. 

There's not really much to say to this besides that I hope my behavior from now on will reflect that I'm both improved and trying to improve more. Most of the underlying causes are gone; I have five refills prescribed for my medication, for example, so I'm not going to be running out of them again any time soon. Additionally, I have a lot of people who are willing to point me in the right direction and help me if things start getting out of hand. I can't thank those people enough, but also they're doing more than just pulling me back when I might go a bit too far. They're also giving me the experience and skills necessary to do the same for myself, so I won't be relying on people to help me be agreeable for all eternity.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

Hi! I really love your application and I see that you're enthusiastic about it. I'm also glad to hear that you're doing better now than you have when you were on the team last time. As someone who is new to the server I was not around for those times, but I can say that my interactions with you have been positive so far. There's not much to ask, in my mind, but I do have one thing to say:

Even though everyone is afraid you'll get super technical and noone will understand the lore you will write, I for one, am always willing to learn something new through lore. I sincerely hope that you will use your real life knowledge on the topic of artificial intelligence to make good, cohesive lore that is presented in a manner that is readable to a layman.

That is all I have to say for now. Good luck.

[Bygonehero]

Moondancer is the bridge between old and new, Nebula, Cake and Kyres. They are the inheritor to all three of these developers across the years. They have become a fixture of the server community and a fellow writer that I have come to respect. Their views towards synthetics, while different than my own show by HER actions that she wants the best for them. I can think of no one else that I am more sure of to struggle for their vision than Moondancer. I say struggle, because for lore staff, it is one. Beyond the ideas one has, beyond the desire to effect a positive change you need to possess a will to act upon them. Nevermore so is this relevant for IPC deputy, the single largest whitelist for the entire server.

Whoever receives the role of IPC deputy will be pulled a thousand different directions so as to effect the change those people want to see. Moondancer can listen and adapt herself according to her vision and I heartily support her application. 

[Alberyk]

I have some concerns.

First; as people pointed out, your behavior. You can get kinda mean when things do not go as you want. I am not so sure if this has been really solved, but the last time I experienced anything like that from you was around two weeks ago.

Second; the time you were a synth deputy. You were really innactive, you just edited a single page related to synths, and it was to add/change someone's else lore. It took months to have you retire, and when it happened, you left claiming that you were working on something about drones. It looked like to me that you were just trying to scramble something at the last minute to avoid your removal.

I guess those are my concerns. Do you think you can really have a good attitude in the team when things do not go how you want?

Are you really going to be active?

[MoondancerPony]

7 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

I have some concerns.

First; as people pointed out, your behavior. You can get kinda mean when things do not go as you want. I am not so sure if this has been really solved, but the last time I experienced anything like that from you was around two weeks ago.

Second; the time you were a synth deputy. You were really innactive, you just edited a single page related to synths, and it was to add/change someone's else lore. It took months to have you retire, and when it happened, you left claiming that you were working on something about drones. It looked like to me that you were just trying to scramble something at the last minute to avoid your removal.

I guess those are my concerns. Do you think you can really have a good attitude in the team when things do not go how you want?

Are you really going to be active?

First: yes. I acknowledge that I had a problem with my behavior. I got my medication refilled last Thursday and got six new refills prescribed last Friday, so I'm not in danger of running out of my medication any time soon (I lost an entire bottle moving into my dorm, leading to the aforementioned issues. That means that my attitude has drastically improved, and in fact even minutes after these instances (such as with VT and the Eridani rework), as soon as I took my medicine I was much better.

Second: As I said on Discord, most of what I did was spitballing with other devs about ideas, providing feedback and criticism, etc. I would provide evidence from the synth chat, but it was deleted. I also was in fact working on lore for drones, and modified it to fit a different server when I was forced to retire.  (The only real change made was the first paragraph, anyway.) I would say that being able to talk with others about their work, give feedback and bounce ideas off of people/have ideas bounced off you is more important than simply editing a lot of wiki pages.

Most of what I did was provide feedback and criticism on others' ideas, working to improve good ideas and make them fit with the rest of the lore and arguing against things that would be detrimental to players' experience and the cohesivity of the lore as a whole. I feel as if that provides just as important of a service to the lore team and community as directly editing the wiki does. So, to directly answer your question: I was, in fact, active, but even if you believe that my activity was insufficient, I will be more active now (as I'm no longer in a highly-demanding and stressful high school program since I've started university).

Regardless, thank you for your consideration and feedback, I'll definitely take it all into account. 

[geeves]

After many displays on various discord servers, I have a strong belief that the "issues solved by medication" regarding conflict has in fact not been solved, and continues to be a problem. I would want someone that is fun to interact with as a team as maintainer, and I don't think you cut it. For this reason, I would say -1.

On a basis of personal opinion, which might factor into this tenure as maintainer, I would vastly prefer Synthlore not fall into big-words for the sake of having big-words and hard sci-fi, which doesn't fit our server atmosphere. For that reason as well, I would say -1.

The lore team needs to work together, and I can't see myself or some of my friends on the lore team working with you.

[MattAtlas]

There have been several instances in which you've acted the opposite of what you promised.

The last and most significant one is our interaction on the medical server. You said this:

the issue isn't that you're nerfing things lmao
it's that you're nerfing the wrong things in the wrong way, too much or too little
you're taking a hammer to anything that moves instead of applying the slightest bit of critical thinking
I call it the Burger Method

I'm not sure I need to explain how unneeded this entire block of "criticism" is. You didn't even read the comments in my PR nor did you read the forum thread that I linked explaining my reasoning, yet you called me out on the basis of completely made up knee-jerk sentiments. How can I trust you to work well with other people in the lore team when this is the kind of behaviour you display while criticizing others' work? If you can't do the minimum work required to understand someone's position, then I'm not sure I'd like to see you part of the lore team, which currently needs anything but this kind of attitude.

[Mofo1995]

Hello! Sorry for the wait. I've selected another applicant for synthetics writer, but wanted to extend the option to you to keep your application and rebrand it as a deputy application, if you were interested. 

[MoondancerPony]

18 hours ago, Mofo1995 said:

Hello! Sorry for the wait. I've selected another applicant for synthetics writer, but wanted to extend the option to you to keep your application and rebrand it as a deputy application, if you were interested. 

I am in fact doing this, for those who are not in the know. (Also bumping this thread.)

[Mofo1995]

?

[niennab]

Thank you for applying! I appreciate your remarks about the IPC factions being discrete. I have felt the same and I would love to see changes made to this.

I was curious what you mean by wanting to change the lore behind positronics in your essay? What are the issues that you feel with positronics in the current lore?

As a side note, I am wary of the idea of making people reapply for white-lists. I would only like to strip white lists for big offenders with multiple warnings. I like to believe that people get better as writers with each new character and therefore some archived white-lists may not be a true reflection of the players current skill set. You might find that I am a fairly lax person comparatively. Do you see this being an issue in working together?

Do you have any preferred management styles? I'd like to have an open space with my Deputies where they can take on projects but at the same time, they aren't expected to. I also hope to utilize the team as a means of brainstorming and refining ideas. What do you expect from me as a Lore Developer? What do you expect as a Deputy?

Edit: Additionally, will you be able to balance the duties of a coder as well as deputy duties?

Edited October 29, 2019 by niennab

[MoondancerPony]

On 28/10/2019 at 22:33, niennab said:

I was curious what you mean by wanting to change the lore behind positronics in your essay? What are the issues that you feel with positronics in the current lore?

There's a woeful lack of definition at all. The only attempts were by Muncorn, which made things way too complex and restrictive. Examples of this are the savant-versus-generalist lore, and the fact that most positronic brains actually have a digital as well as positronic component, as well.

On 28/10/2019 at 22:33, niennab said:

As a side note, I am wary of the idea of making people reapply for white-lists.

As am I. Like you said, it would only be for big offenders with multiple warnings; it'd be a discreet, gentle step towards revoking a whitelist if they don't quickly improve. It helps them realise what's on the line and is conducive to opening a dialogue with the person in question.

On 28/10/2019 at 22:33, niennab said:

You might find that I am a fairly lax person comparatively. Do you see this being an issue in working together?

Not particularly. I think it's a benefit; any issues I would have with someone would ideally be filtered through/tempered by you, meaning that people's complaints about my temper would hopefully be fixed as I would mainly be handling lore, not so much the personal/communication aspect.

On 28/10/2019 at 22:33, niennab said:

Do you have any preferred management styles? I'd like to have an open space with my Deputies where they can take on projects but at the same time, they aren't expected to. I also hope to utilize the team as a means of brainstorming and refining ideas.

This is essentially exactly what I would like.

On 28/10/2019 at 22:33, niennab said:

What do you expect from me as a Lore Developer? What do you expect as a Deputy?

I expect you to be open to discussion and dialogue on planned changes/ideas. I don't expect any issues with you regarding that.

As a deputy, I expect essentially what you said already. Most of what I did before was brainstorming and refining ideas; I'd help improve ideas, or if they were potentially bad, I would try to dissuade people from them. An example of this was a plan to make all IPCs from one central faction, which I felt to be overly restrictive to player choice for no real gain.

[MoondancerPony]

On 28/10/2019 at 22:33, niennab said:

Edit: Additionally, will you be able to balance the duties of a coder as well as deputy duties?

Definitely. One of the reasons I originally had synth deputy the first time was to have someone on the lore team who could also code. There's not really much to balance on the coder-side, anyway; it's really just something I do for fun in my free time. It doesn't take much time at all.