chat channels.

i don't have much use for clan chat, seeing as i haven't exactly yet found any clan i'm not leery enough of to join. which would be a clan not too big that i can't get to know every person, a clan who doesn't consider joining them marrying the lot of them, in that they can actually be civil about letting people leave, and a clan not about to turn on me the moment we reach the wildy for hate-related reasons.

so my only use for clan chat would be to talk with friends, because it's much easier to spend a few seconds creating a chat channel and thereafter merely typing '/' before each sentence, rather than going through that whole ordeal of needing to click on the names, and apologise with sorry wp everytime you mix up random names with the strange questions asked. both of which are varied and numerous enough to confuse.

then there're the channels hosted by jmods, for various purposes. i don't suppose this is confidential, since some channels are, after all, open to the public. those being the channels i'll mention. some of them are completely empty. freakily. some are full enough, but no one talks, and anyone who tries to start a conversation's met with silence. of the worded sort.

then zezima enters one of them. and boom. it wakes up. i don't know how, but some people somehow manage to find their way in, and there you go.

i realise i'm not saying half of what i wanted to say because i don't know if it's sayable. short post then.

other than those i'm specifically directed to, i just don't come across any others. i've been warned of channels that try to remain rule-free, by virtue of trying to remain genuine player- and mod-free. a pity about that one, i've been trying to search out those like it. with 'the channel you tried to join does not exist' results.

well that's it. enforced (hopefully) month-long hiatus from rs. i'll probably only last till next weekend.

procrastinating: blogically, topically...

the spate of frequent blog posts ends in a day.

i'm a born procrastinator. revise that, i'm not being altogether fair. to parents and genes and such. i'm worse of a procrastinator than i should be, and ever should have been. was 11 last time i remember turning in all my work on time.

anyway. it's nearly 1am on a saturday night and i've got a paper due tuesday. a quiz on monday. an exam on tuesday. that doesn't count for much, but still matters because the teachers are great. plus the other loose ends you pick up and promise to amend but never get around to doing. i'm still trying to persuade myself to S-T-A-R-T ALREADY.

so much for that theory.

i'm going to ramble because the things i do want to blog about, i've got all the points, but it's going to end up a jumbled mess like my last post about macros. as in, i'll forget about it when i forget what i was going to say, and fall asleep with the laptop on, then wake up at the wrong time, go back to what i was doing, and add in the actual point of the whole rant in an edit.

that's what happens for all my exceptionally long and rambling posts. that doesn't matter so much as the fact that the same's true of the assignments i fall asleep doing.

point is, i've been planning to try, at least, to come up with something for rs haven. not as easy as it looks. i'm still trying to decide on what topic. and this time, i realise i'll have to organise it properly. and type it out in word, so those random capitalisations don't escape me. when i think about it though, which would be times like in the bus and such, i realise another thing. whatever i say just wouldn't quite fit.

i can't go out and give a sweeping statement like 'help sites do more harm than good' which was what i came up with in my last comment. 'down with stats' is what i would've said next, but that doesn't work either. it's not logical, i just like to think that way. not everything need be logical. but all that's another few posts for another few days.

trying to stay on track is ever so hard. please don't read this if you even got this far, it's not worth your time. that's why i blog. thoughts aren't worth the paper they're written on, but it seems worth the electricity. so i try not to think about the electricity.

whatever i end up saying, i don't blog for people to hear me. i blog because it's easier to type than write. because if i wasn't under the impression that people read this, i wouldn't have the self-control to do it. because i don't believe a diary's worth anything unless people're going to read it, and i want some stranger poking into my life as much as i want my friends and family digging a diary out. or a blog, for that matter.

BACK TO THE POINT. can't believe how easy it is to sidetrack. considered writing about why people play. as in, the it's an escape from reality, it builds up your people skills and tolerance level aspect of it. not the it's a browser based game and it's free aspect, which's been covered in other articles with excellent stats and info. the thing is, it becomes altogether too personal. i tried looking for the post i wrote about why i play, and it seems to have disappeared, but i ended up telling random people much more about myself than i should have.

people don't read personal, or people looking to read articles don't read personal.

when i email people or message them i end up looking one of three things. myself, whatever that is. a suck up. or a total asshole. i'd say arrogant asshole, but i suppose arrogant's incorporated into that word.

which doesn't suck as much as it feels like it should, but does pose a number of problems, because either way i don't give a damn. latter two categories fit under the first, after all.

i think i'm being too honest. or at least, saying what i shouldn't be saying. there are some things i wish i could say on rs. to people, that is. it's got nothing to do with the censor, i don't usually swear too much. this case being more unique than anything else. it's not so much the it isn't very nice to tarnish the name of all mods thing that gets to me either. it's the fact that i just can't tell people i don't want anything to do with them simply because it wouldn't be right to.

i almost hate my blog sometimes, because it's the only place i can be so brutally honest. everywhere i find myself, even if it's only in rs, i manage to convince myself not to. sometimes i fail, but it never comes out as bad as it does on my blogs.

then again, i should clear out of blogger NOW. and get to work. proper work, without blogger open on the side. or rs, either.

this is terrible.

oh, and ignore this post please.

modship vs politics. nother rant.

I’m having a hell of a time trying to convince people that position isn’t everything.

Just royally pissed someone off. He seems to think that position and names rank more highly than being a decent human being who knows how to act in polite company. We play with toggling pm settings, a game of you log in, I log out. I ease into it, don't attempt to talk to him when he dares to stay with pm on. Finally I get a chance to apologise, seeing as that's what I have to do. I don't consider apologies bad things, I don't consider apologising beneath me. I won't not apologise because of my pride, not even when I'm not in the wrong.

I will not apologise, on the other hand, if I feel I'm in the right. "Not in the wrong" and "in the right" are two distinct things, mind you.

I apologise, and that clinches it. He apologises too. He feels compelled to. I admire him for being willing enough to disagree vehemently enough with me, it must've been difficult to overcome that initial compulsion not to.

I almost feel like telling them, you have a next to nill chance of becoming a mod unless you are a genuine person concerned enough about other people, rather than simply, other players, to help them for the sake of helping them, with the idea of becoming a mod least on your mind.

I'm sorry for bringing this up again, but I thought solid examples might've been in order. I also need to rant.

Don’ts.

• Don’t go round intentionally playing Santa Claus. Giving away items is not going to help much, not if you’re going to be condescending, and not if you’re doing it for your own ends, just to clear some space in your bank. I have almost as much respect for this brand of players, who toot their horn doing this just waiting to be caught in the act as I do for people who beg.
• Don’t condescend to people, no matter what your opinion of their maturity is.
• Don’t gloat when you’ve killed someone in the wildy. Don’t even say “lol”. Schadenfreude isn’t going to get you anywhere at all.
• Don’t discriminate against a player because of their level, their combat type, command of the English language, or anything at all. Never discriminate.
• Never beg. Even if it’s only 5gp you need, never beg.

Now for do’s.

• Give people advice and help.
• Give items you want to give away to people who deserve it. Those won’t be the people asking for items, who patently do not deserve anything of that sort.
• Most importantly, be completely genuine. That covers it all. You cannot hope to be a mod if everything you do is structured around your wish to be a mod. The idea of becoming a mod must be least on your mind. That, imho, would be ideal. Perhaps not the reality, but the ideal.

Realise this. Being a mod is not anything like politics.

In politics, how much you desire the position matters, somewhat. If the only way to change the world is through politics, I’d rather go out and find a new one. It’s good to hear some people’ve found other ways already. I’m not bureaucratic and fake enough to become a politician, nor do I have enough masks. It’s possible to tell yourself you’ll be different amongst people who act as you would never want to. It’s not possible to succeed if you don’t speak their language.

The language in the game would be cash, items, stats. The surest way to a player’s heart would be to give that person good items. That’s the language of rs. Not to use it would involve so much more work. In politics, it’s not possible to succeed if you don’t speak their language. I refuse to speak their language, just as I refuse to speak it in rs.

Argue that codeswitching is the key, and I’ll tell you this. Those are masks. To codeswitch is to change masks.

The other option is to let that become part of your character. That’s something I’ll try never to do.

That’s precisely why you cannot approach becoming a mod the way you would an election. That’s also why you can afford to be human, all the time.

That’s why you must.

encounters of the borg kind.

edit: my oh my oh my. i just came across this post about chinese gold farmers, courtesy of vaskor (thank you so much. that's an amazing resource) and it does lend a whole deeper dimension to things. what i talked about further down is nothing compared to what those people in that post face. they've got so much more reason to macro, to real world trade than i would have, at home.

hmm. got two of them, really, if you'd like to put it that way.

a definition might be a good way to start off, even though i'm not quite competent as far as defining things go. a borg is for the most part a macro, but supervised by human beings. so it will respond sometimes to randoms or whatever comes its way, and will, as it follows, talk.

which it did. finally, i hear.

mind you, they really have a dirty mouth on them.

another definition, but not so much definition as putting things in context. in chinese culture, which i see enough of in the local chinese community, some things are particularly important. or more so than in, say, western culture, for example. what matters most, i guess, would be face. not losing face, and allowing another not to is what governs more actions that it should. then there's respect for your elders.

incorporate those two, first, into the big wide world of insults, and it'll stand to reason that insults aimed at your mother have a considerably wider scope, they'd even insult your ancestors. of course, there's never a shortage of lewd comments, either.

so to cut straight to the point. received insults from a borg the other day. i refrain from saying macro since no macro programmer's stupid enough to have a macro spouting this kind of language. there'd be a minor war in the way of foreign language insults over at the yews, and a gigantic backlash against, well, whoever falls into the right category. racial discrimination isn't dead. a fair share of it's directed at the chinese. (thanks alot jagex, for stating actual countries on your news update. next time remember not to mention that 'all macros are east asian, for example chinese and korean' = 'all east asian, for example, chinese and korean players are macros'.)

not that it's not unheard of, i've heard about things like this often enough that i've actually been wanting to come across a macro that was actually a borg, instead. let's just say there were things about female anatomy and fornication with respect to my ancestors.

besides tossing you a medley that would have itself called emotions (namely, urge to laugh at an inanimate object, suitable outrage, confusion resulting from too-quick elimation of what to say in response...), it does remind you - macros aren't just macros. they're run by human beings.

which brings me to my second encounter.

it's just a matter of time before the keywords "macro", "bot" and/or "autoer" come up in talk by any major body of water. willows and fish, after all, are about the most sought-after commodities, whether it's in the the bot or legitimate trade.

what's rare though, at least on f2p servers, is to find someone actually defending them. or rather, the people behind the bots. i've heard stories about failed green dragon bot pking trips because of mage pures or other players standing there guarding the borgs.

why, i realised at the back of my mind. it's like how to say the capital of indonesia in chinese. you don't consciously think about it, but when you need to dig it up, it's there. thing was, i never did need to dig that up. until that particular conversation.

that bots, real world trading, macroing, autoers - that all of that's baaad is common knowledge. it's like one a fundamental truth of the rs universe. you don't think about it because you don't need to.

what you don't think about is why. what you don't think about is the people.

i wonder what they think of us?

the argument goes like this. for all intents and purposes, the real world traders are just doing their jobs. they're just trying to make a living in some backwater of a less-developed country, and they're just making the most of opportunities they have. it's their livelihood. why is jagex taking it away from them?

that, in less words, was what was parroted off to me.

oh, and to clear things up. i am not trying to say that this is true. i am not saying that all macros are chinese, a large enough proportion are and i'm dealing with that fact. it's a fact, yes. i am not being racist. i am chinese. or i'm more than half chinese, anyway, and on my birth cert my race is chinese.

we rant on about them, we say we hate macros. we go around all self-righteous, criticising people we've never met and probably never will have cause to. it's rather pathetic, really. if you think about it, there are more important things to rant on about. what's going on in the rest of the world, for example. what's going on that could've led to the people who do macro do what they do. live doing what they do.

they have good cause to hate us, and i do suppose they do. mods, most of all.

ah suck.

perhaps they think, when they see the average player, going about their chosen tasks ignoring the macros, or standing there obviously reporting them, or prancing about showing off rares and equipment they know is worthless because they have plenty of - perhaps they despise us for trying to destroy their jobs. perhaps it goes deeper than that.

when they look at the average player, do they see only a rich white kid, a kid who funds them?

is it the way you feel when you give tuition, and get to see how other people live? is it the way you feel when you bus tables at a restauraunt and see, really, what kind of people keep you in school?

it's not so much hatred. you can't bring yourself to hate them. and you hate that feeling, too.

i'm not saying this is true, i'm just speculating. we were a colony once, and the white man's superiority thing still persists slightly. it manifests in cussing more than you normally would at caucasian drivers who cut into your lane. things like that. stereotypes persist. a caucasian will get a taxi faster than a local, because the driver assumes he tips more.

it's not tangible, but it doesn't make it any less real.

strangely enough though, you still can't hate people for things like that. you admire them, in a way you don't want to. you tell yourself you resent them, but you don't, really, and these things just never come to mind.

that's what it's like here. i don't think about all that when i talk to the random person on rs for the simple reason that it's not imaginable. i don't want to try either, and when i do, well, it's just another person. it's not that i can't be friends with any person i meet, i do and i can. when you get to know a person, you also know that person's human. no different from anyone else.

in real life it's not so easy, the first time you see the person you do see things you shouldn't. you assume things you shouldn't. the great thing about rs is that what you see is the person's character. the face doesn't matter, and when you do think about what you would have said had you met the person in real life instead, you'll realise it doesn't make a difference. you don't need to consciously stow away your stereotypes, which are terrible things. putting people on a pedestal never works very well, and with all the begging, scamming, cybering, and general nastiness that goes on in rs... give me macroing any day.

that's just my opinion, by the way. feel free to disagree. and again, bearing in mind how sensitive people are, i am not being racist.

seeing as this is how enough of us think here, i wonder if the people behind the macros think the same thing. whether that's at the back of their minds, the same way it is at the back of ours as you go about your life.

i sincerely hope not.

then again, the chinese are highly pragmatic. perhaps all the hate is about mods and maybe players, is purely economic.

it's a sad, sad day when money's the cause for hating.

but it's an even sadder day when it's about race, and perceived image most of all.

so let's not think anymore, and just hope.

edit: can't believe i forgot this. before you go all outraged on me, i'm not saying macroing is right. go on youtube and you'll see the number of videos uploaded about jmods. people stand there for hours playing and editing videos just so they can catch a glimpse of a golden crown.

i don't know whether to feel sorry for them or feel guilty.

whenever jmods come ingame, it's MOD hulme. MOD hohbien. MOD conor. MOD emilee. MOD simon c. MOD tobias. MOD tobes... i've seen conor and mat the most, and even then i can't just ignore that fact. even when they're joking around, that MOD doesn't go away. sometimes it's hard to imagine they could actually be real people.

real people with real jobs with real families and real lives.

you could say, jagex is their livelihood.

and macros are destroying that. macroing and real world trading is stealing. after all, it's jagex's resouces.

just because you choose to steal rather than to work a proper job doesn't make stealing right.

people who macro have a choice.

i cannot respect them for the simple fact that they cannot respect others enough to think about them. the jmods have homes to go to and whose upkeep their jobs pay for. real world traders are merely riding on what they did create.

i could be macroing now, y'know. i could have chosen to do that, or fall in with people who do that, rather than play the game.

there's always a choice.

when you choose to steal from people and take away what's rightfully theirs', as those who macro do... you can't try to shy away from the consequences.

forums author unconscious dishonesty.

written in microsoft word. hence the proper punctuation...

I’ve figured out another reason why I blog. Posting on forums gives more publicity to your opinions than is imaginable. Your posts on forums though, are fair game. Forums hardly allow you enough credit in that the moment you introduce a new perspective or idea into the discussion, the next post, or a post another few posts down immediately plays on that original remark, the poster in effect taking the idea for their own. Introducing it into future topics, as well.

It may just be that I’m selfish, or not inclined to do that. I typically credit the author, poster, or site, or at the very least, if I can’t mention names, steer credit away from myself. By adding things like, ‘as has been mentioned multiple times earlier’, or ‘as others have pointed out’. It just doesn’t seem honest to do otherwise.

When I find that annoying, therefore, it’s not because I’m upset that credit hasn’t gone to me. I'm more of a silent visitor, I don't post very much because I tend to get carried away posting, as I do on my blog. Neither do i have ideas actually worth the taking, what I do is read and find myself re-reading the same originally unique points, posted by different people.

It just gets rather depressing because you realise – many people are not honest, and not inclined to be. It’s not quite as bad as not returning items to someone who died in front of you. It’s that it isn’t a conscious decision to take someone else’s thoughts for your own; it’s something that comes so naturally it’s not even thought about. That’s a terrible thing.

It’s when I come across this particular brand of dishonesty all the time on forums, just by reading threads and posts by others that I retreat into my blog for a week or so, and promptly head back for more disappointment during the weekend.

Why? Because otherwise, I wouldn’t be heard.

After all, it’s a fair price to pay for the pleasure of being heard. In the meantime, I’ll see it as that I managed to persuade someone to hold the same opinion as I. I’ll see it as a victory in being able to convince. A fair proportion of people taking the same courses as me are about as intent as I am on a graduate degree in law. I’d imagine most of them want to practice. I haven’t decided yet myself, which is rather a terrible thing, and terrible timing, but I’ll choose to view this, in the meantime, as practice for practice. In case I ever do need to convince anyone that way.

I’m only able to convince well, however, if I believe in what I’m saying. That’s exactly why I’m unsure about practicing law. How can you fight for what you don’t believe is true? How can you fight for what you don’t believe is right? How can you let someone who trusts you enough to pay you down by not putting in your best, at the same time?

But I digress.

I would, in any case, rather people practiced dishonesty by posting where I can see it, rather than anonymously reading my blog, and going away relaying again whatever I did say. Sometimes, I’m thankful that so little people actually read my blog. It’s occasionally frustrating, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It would be plain stupid to inform every person I saw in effect plagarising of their inherent dishonesty. It would start a flame war. It would eventually have me banned from the forums.

Some battles are won, after all, by retreating.

undeserving mods.

consider this a full series.

previous posts include why and how to be(come) a mod.

i just came across a forum topic about mods. there were screenshots and complaints, basically about mods who acted in a fully unmodly manner.

consider this akin in format to a public service message.

you can report mods for behaviour you deem not befitting a mod. in other words, if a mod's breaking a rule, or acting as s/he shouldn't, don't be afraid to report. (do bear in mind though, that there's such a thing as "misuse of customer support" so please don't just report mods in a fit of schadenfreude.)

if i acted in a way i shouldn't have, i would want to know. if i didn't deserve an honour jagex bestowed on me, i'd want jagex to know.

and i'd want to accept the consequences, as i'm sure most would.

so if it's richly deserved, consider it a favour you're doing.

(ranting on forums isn't going to help at all, just make matters worse for everyone else. but as always, people have their reasons.)

so my point in saying all this, was just to broadcast that fact, if this counts as a broadcast at all. frankly, it's immensely disappointing to here people say things like "what the hell is up with the latest runescape mods".

i wouldn't want to be the cause of anything like that, and i doubt anyone else would.

do bear in mind this, though. mods are human. mods are people. people with genuine emotions. people who make mistakes. people who have the capacity to anger, just as they have the capacity for kindness. for hope.

for every other emotion you yourself have.

expect that, if nothing else. expect from mods what you would expect from any other person. because really, why are should that make them any different? expect what you will, but please

don't expect perfection.

how d'you become a mod and all.

please read my previous post first if you haven't.

or you might also want to read another rant about the same subject. (i know. it just bothers me, y'know. slightly different subject matter, anyhow.)

this is inspired by a fellow player mod steve. we are mutual strangers, but respect isn't a commodity necessarily bought by familiarity.

i had meant to cover this in my previous post, but for obvious reasons that wasn't possible. really it's only because my previous post seemed long enough to be a stand alone post as it was. here, anyway, is my take on the issue.

similarly, i cannot and will not disclose any information i should not. in other words, i'm not going to be telling you anything outside of what you'll be able to find in the knowledge base, anyway. so if you're looking to become a mod, please read my previous post . if you're back again after reading it, you're not going to find out anything you shouldn't. so if that's what you're here for, bail now.

the best advice i can give you is: you don't need to consciously want it. don't focus your entire gameplay and attitude on that want.

just be yourself. if you aren't genuinely like that, please don't try to fake it. you'll need to fake so much if you do become a mod, that way, and that's practically impossible. sometimes i need to be less genuine than i feel, but i do it, and did it, not because i wanted to be a mod, but because i'd have done it anyway. in doing that, i was being myself. i'd have done it because i'd have know, and i know, it was the right thing to do. do what you would have done anyway. that's a part of being yourself.

i'll look at this issue from my perspective because it's the best, if not only way i'll be able. this is what i did and what i believe. it'll probably not work for you, we're all different, but it's always worth knowing.

it's not all about being rule-conscious, but about doing what's right. sticking by the rules helps though. i did not go all out ananlysing the rules, i read them once through, and skimmed through those i knew enough of. thereafter, i went about doing what i thought was right. or, to be precise, what is right according to my religion, which would be Christianity. it's for this reason that i don't like philosophy. religion pretty much explains it all. on the other hand, just common sense morality might work. in that i don't mean logic, i mean conscience.

it's a hard thing to describe, that concept just floating there. what's right. so reading through the rules, and seeing if they align with what you believe helps too. if they do, then more's the better. if they don't, tough luck. you'll have to stick it, it's jagex's game. for my part, i pretty much agreed with every rule. what i didn't agree with was what should be against the rules that was not, and that didn't make much of a difference. i just acted as i would have, anyhow.

it's about how you act. ingame behaviour. reports matter (only) to some extent. how you act, after all, who you are, and how you go about doing things are reflected in what you report. going crazy with the report button might work, but please understand it isn't all there is to being a mod. of course, do report rulebreaking as you see it.

i guess that's all.

steve mentioned something about tests, of a sort. i've been wracking my brains, and some things do come to mind. on the other hand, these are everyday things. it's something that's just done, all the time, and that's why i don't think it matters, at all.

what matters, ultimately, is not whether you become a mod. it's whether you do what is expected of a mod, and more.

it's how you go about your life. how you live it.

that, after all, is what really counts.