Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Hey folks: I have a community matter to discuss, though obviously with as slow as things are here of late, it will probably take a while to get a lot of voices contributing. Now, as I'm going to guess that most of you know, the CaS forums have had a rule for about ten years that modded creations were not permitted. Instead, modded CaS were permitted in literally any other part of 8WR's fora except for this one--the one place where people come to share and look for creations.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and I've occasionally heard others voice confusion about it, but it was the rule and and most of us have never used mods or have done so rarely, so it wasn't worth the potential consequences of running afoul of the rule. However, as far as I can tell, the rule goes back to our former mod, PockyYoshi. Now Yoshi has been inactive for some years, and there's good reason to believe, based on his last communication here, that he won't be coming back. Rest in peace if you did pass Yoshi: I may disagree with this one decision of yours, but you were friends with a lot of people here, and you'll be missed.
But that leaves us in an awkward place as far as the rule is concerned. On the one hand, we could all just agree that it is abeyance now, since there was very little support for it in the first place, and it makes even less sense to keep it with traffic as slow as it is, and a need to concentrate discussion and contributions in one space. But on the off chance Yoshi is still kicking out there, it doesn't make sense to endanger anyone's editing privileges.
So I reached out to Jaxel (owner and administrator of 8WR, for any newbies who may wander in to this thread in time), to get his feelings on the matter. He agreed that the rule doesn't make a lot of sense, and gave his blessing for us to decide among ourselves whether to discontinue the rule. Actually, I got the feeling he won't care if anyone who wants to post modded creations wants to just straight up ignore the posted rule, but I do think there are some reasons we might want to have a discussion about how to handle mods going forward, so I'd like input from anyone still around who has an opinion to share.
Now, while I don't think a rule strictly forbidding modded creations makes a lot of sense, especially in the present circumstances, there is something to be said for dilineating between creations created with the assistance of mods, and those using the vanilla editor. As I was just talking about with Gatsu a few days ago, a big part of the fun in creation is finding ways to get to a certain outcome despite the limitations of the editor. Likewise, one of the funnest things with viewing another user's creations can be marvelling at (or even trying to figure out in the first place) how they created a certain effect or accomplished a certain design within the limitations of the vanilla editors.
Now, mods typically only slightly open up the editor and free new options or remove unnecesary roadblocks. So it's not like you don't still have to work within the limitations of the CaS framework, by and large. Still, insofar as people are used to judging the accomplishments of others in terms of struggling against the vanilla editor, I think it makes sense that we'd want to know whether or not that is the case for a given creation. So here's what I propose: creators should feel encouraged, whenever they share a creation created with the assistance of mods, to label it as such, to limit the confusion of future viewers. Obviously this would be a bit of an honor system, but I do believe that insofar as discussing technique is historically a big part of the CaS forum, this should be considered useful and appropriate information.
So what does everyone think?
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and I've occasionally heard others voice confusion about it, but it was the rule and and most of us have never used mods or have done so rarely, so it wasn't worth the potential consequences of running afoul of the rule. However, as far as I can tell, the rule goes back to our former mod, PockyYoshi. Now Yoshi has been inactive for some years, and there's good reason to believe, based on his last communication here, that he won't be coming back. Rest in peace if you did pass Yoshi: I may disagree with this one decision of yours, but you were friends with a lot of people here, and you'll be missed.
But that leaves us in an awkward place as far as the rule is concerned. On the one hand, we could all just agree that it is abeyance now, since there was very little support for it in the first place, and it makes even less sense to keep it with traffic as slow as it is, and a need to concentrate discussion and contributions in one space. But on the off chance Yoshi is still kicking out there, it doesn't make sense to endanger anyone's editing privileges.
So I reached out to Jaxel (owner and administrator of 8WR, for any newbies who may wander in to this thread in time), to get his feelings on the matter. He agreed that the rule doesn't make a lot of sense, and gave his blessing for us to decide among ourselves whether to discontinue the rule. Actually, I got the feeling he won't care if anyone who wants to post modded creations wants to just straight up ignore the posted rule, but I do think there are some reasons we might want to have a discussion about how to handle mods going forward, so I'd like input from anyone still around who has an opinion to share.
Now, while I don't think a rule strictly forbidding modded creations makes a lot of sense, especially in the present circumstances, there is something to be said for dilineating between creations created with the assistance of mods, and those using the vanilla editor. As I was just talking about with Gatsu a few days ago, a big part of the fun in creation is finding ways to get to a certain outcome despite the limitations of the editor. Likewise, one of the funnest things with viewing another user's creations can be marvelling at (or even trying to figure out in the first place) how they created a certain effect or accomplished a certain design within the limitations of the vanilla editors.
Now, mods typically only slightly open up the editor and free new options or remove unnecesary roadblocks. So it's not like you don't still have to work within the limitations of the CaS framework, by and large. Still, insofar as people are used to judging the accomplishments of others in terms of struggling against the vanilla editor, I think it makes sense that we'd want to know whether or not that is the case for a given creation. So here's what I propose: creators should feel encouraged, whenever they share a creation created with the assistance of mods, to label it as such, to limit the confusion of future viewers. Obviously this would be a bit of an honor system, but I do believe that insofar as discussing technique is historically a big part of the CaS forum, this should be considered useful and appropriate information.
So what does everyone think?
