OOC - A Handful of Nim Comments

Per the title, there are a few things I'd like to bring to your attention in this post.

Firstly I'd like to welcome LadyPyra to the OW Community Platform. She has been active on Ongoing Worlds on and off for a good two years. Like all of us, she is trying to figure out how this whole online community thing works and how to fit it into the volatile nature of life. Please join me in helping her feel at home here (LP, if female pronouns are not appropriate, I apologize).

Secondly, a couple of new fantasy games have recently been created by new moderators. Feel free to check them out if fantasy is your thing. A word of caution, it is my experience that new members to Ongoing Worlds tend to hold a lot of happy illusions about what Ongoing Worlds is about and what her members will be like. When these illusions get dispelled, the results can be quite ugly, particularly when that new person is a moderator (as moderators possess a good number of tools that can be used to humiliate anyone they scorn). This is not to say that you guys should dismiss games made by new members and ostracize new members that try to join your games, in fact, I strongly discourage this, but do be advised that new members will likely do things that do not make sense to you, or not do things that you think they should do. It is my strong recommendation that you do not offer unsolicited advice to new moderators, as this was the road to my damnation in most of the games I joined that were made by new moderators. You, (like I did) may think that you know better than the new moderator on how to build a successful game on OW (and you'd probably be right), but unless the moderator asks for your input, chances are that they believe they understand all they need to know to be able to run their game. Your unsolicited advice may then be viewed as a threat against their authority, which may make them mad, and well, you now have an angry internet person with an arsenal of new, poorly understood weapons that he can use on the poor fool that has earned his ire (that would be you). All that to say, my unsolicited advice to you platformers is to be careful of what you write in a game made by a new member, especially the ones made by new mods that put a lot of work into their game. They tend to have a lot of expectations, many of which may not be realistic. Define your boundaries as respectfully and non-confrontationally as possible, and if you still end up getting banned and given a "This Person is a Stupid Idiot" award, just know that David Ball can remove that "award" for you.

Whew, anyway, the third and final note is that I will not be running a Quote of the Month for August. Instead, I will present a writing challenge, which will be elaborated upon later. This will not be the Story Forge variety. That said, don't procrastinate on submitting a quote that you like for this month's QoM, as you won't be able to submit one until September.