Number SMW Marathon (Nov 2-4)

yggdrizzle

Edit history:

yggdrizzle: 2012-11-05 04:03:01 pm

2012-11-05 03:59:34 pm

Quote from Robfathah:

Quote from spimmmm:

well it looks like we have differing opinions on the matter. stream monsters gonna monster

That's what mods are for. Of course, "stream monster" has a variety of definitions, but yours is the kind of person I'd just ban from stream chat if I were moderating it.

Then I sure hope no one would put you in a moderator position, anywhere, ever, because you clearly don't understand how chat works.

e: if you think people are 'behaving badly' or 'trolling' or whatever in most of these instances you are very wrong, it's not worth arguing this with you

Robfathah

2012-11-05 04:01:18 pm

Quote from yggdrizzle:

Quote from Robfathah:

Quote from spimmmm:

well it looks like we have differing opinions on the matter. stream monsters gonna monster

That's what mods are for. Of course, "stream monster" has a variety of definitions, but yours is the kind of person I'd just ban from stream chat if I were moderating it.

Then I sure hope no one would put you in a moderator position, anywhere, ever, because you clearly don't understand how chat works.

Yes, because I criticize people for behaving badly, I don't understand how chat works. That seems logical.

Wawlconut

2012-11-05 04:02:09 pm

Quote from Robfathah:

Quote from yggdrizzle:

Quote from Robfathah:

Quote from spimmmm:

well it looks like we have differing opinions on the matter. stream monsters gonna monster

That's what mods are for. Of course, "stream monster" has a variety of definitions, but yours is the kind of person I'd just ban from stream chat if I were moderating it.

Then I sure hope no one would put you in a moderator position, anywhere, ever, because you clearly don't understand how chat works.

Yes, because I criticize people for behaving badly, I don't understand how chat works. That seems logical.

You don't understand group mentality that's for sure.

Carcinogen

2012-11-05 04:03:17 pm

If you want to discuss moderation, I have two words for you: slow mode.

I'm all for getting hype, but I can only handle so much Kappa or FrankerZ.

Of course, it's easier to just not give a fuck about chat and just watch the stream instead. If you want to watch the stream with people, watch it with other internet friends.

To be brutally honest, why would you want to join a chat full of like 3000 people anyhow unless you wanted to spam menial bullshit? If you have questions about the game or the runner, join the game's community and learn it.

Robfathah

2012-11-05 04:03:58 pm

Quote from Wawlconut:

Quote from Robfathah:

Quote from yggdrizzle:

Quote from Robfathah:

Quote from spimmmm:

well it looks like we have differing opinions on the matter. stream monsters gonna monster

That's what mods are for. Of course, "stream monster" has a variety of definitions, but yours is the kind of person I'd just ban from stream chat if I were moderating it.

Then I sure hope no one would put you in a moderator position, anywhere, ever, because you clearly don't understand how chat works.

Yes, because I criticize people for behaving badly, I don't understand how chat works. That seems logical.

You don't understand group mentality that's for sure.

Please, continue to instruct me on what I "don't understand". Then I'll instruct you on the fine art of thinking for yourself, maybe you'll find it enlightening.

yggdrizzle

Edit history:

yggdrizzle: 2012-11-05 04:09:52 pm

2012-11-05 04:04:51 pm

Slow mode is a terrible idea. I'm sorry you weren't around to see how well the stream chat went--there was a lot more than spamming menial bullshit, and we all had a great time. You shouldn't shut out people who are curious about the game or runner by telling them to go learn about it on their own. That's why we have the chat and commentary.

vv There's a little more to it than mentality. People are downright wrong about what actually happened, and making it sound a lot worse than it was at its worst. I think the chat here is a good example of what happens with this style of moderation, and it's a something we shouldn't brush off to the side. I'm not going to make any more comments on what AGDQ chat should be, but I will defend this marathon's chat.

Yagamoth

2012-11-05 04:06:43 pm

INTJ

The clash of mentalities.. Guys - honestly, discussing this is as pointless as arguing which music style is "better", rock or rap or Metal or classic etc. In the end, a solution has to be found anyway..

Wawlconut

2012-11-05 04:07:17 pm

Yeah it's pretty shitty to use a common form of cheering (in this case it was the twitch faces). I think it would be best if everyone just came up with some word on their own and used that. Down with groups. Everyone for themselves.

Robfathah

2012-11-05 04:12:12 pm

Quote from Wawlconut:

Yeah it's pretty shitty to use a common form of cheering (in this case it was the twitch faces). I think it would be best if everyone just came up with some word on their own and used that. Down with groups. Everyone for themselves.

Well, this quote has helped me by displaying that you aren't a person worth taking seriously, so I appreciate it.

For the record, singular twitch faces that aren't spammed? I still think they're annoying but have at it hoss, no big deal. Spamming the fucking things is obnoxious, annoying behavior by most standards and something that should be quashed.

ShadowWraith

Edit history:

ShadowWraith: 2012-11-05 04:16:36 pm

2012-11-05 04:15:08 pm

.

I see no need to ban the words themselves. I'd rather ban the people spamming them, unless someone actually appreciates someone yelling "FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ" as some sort of cheer. :|

i.e D e e R F o R C e is perfectly fine as it's a well established cheer for the Super Metroid runners.

Robfathah

2012-11-05 04:18:22 pm

Quote from ShadowWraith:

I see no need to ban the words themselves. I'd rather ban the people spamming them, unless someone actually appreciates someone yelling "FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ" as some sort of cheer. :|

i.e D e e R F o R C e is perfectly fine as it's a well established cheer for the Super Metroid runners.

Banning the words is something people have learned to work around, too, and just winds up creating more work. I tend to agree that it's just easier to time out or outright ban the people who spam stuff like this.

ShadowWraith

2012-11-05 04:19:13 pm

.

No, they haven't learned to work around them. They can get around the twitch chat censor, but we won't be using the twitch chat and we probably won't ban for them typing those words anyway.

Robfathah

2012-11-05 04:19:38 pm

Quote from ShadowWraith:

No, they haven't learned to work around them. They can get around the twitch chat censor, but we won't be using the twitch chat and we probably won't ban for them typing those words anyway.

My mistake, I forgot AGDQ chat uses regular IRC. Ewps.

Carcinogen

2012-11-05 04:28:13 pm

Quote from yggdrizzle:

Slow mode is a terrible idea. I'm sorry you weren't around to see how well the stream chat went--there was a lot more than spamming menial bullshit, and we all had a great time. You shouldn't shut out people who are curious about the game or runner by telling them to go learn about it on their own. That's why we have the chat and commentary.

Dude, I couldn't talk to anyone worth shit in that chat. Sorry for not being so "go with the flow", but when 3000 spamming and getting hype at 15 messages per second is staring me in the face, it's no different from looking at the chat of a huge fighting game stream. There's too many viewers.

Also, Wawlconut, no offense, but you're really not helping your case by responding to a contradicting (albeit confrontational) opinion in a non-communicative manner. Your mentality of responding to someone who says "your chat sucks, why do you moderate it that way" with "hurr durr down with groups lol sarcasm" reminds me of how when I was growing up, I was purposely excluded from a lot of things just because I simply "didn't get it". It's equally counterproductive, insulting to the other person, and is overall terrible communication. I fail to understand what you're trying to say.

To be honest, I want to know how chat works the way you moderate it too because I'm genuinely curious.

[quote="yggdrizzle"]Slow mode is a terrible idea. I'm sorry you weren't around to see how well the stream chat went--there was a lot more than spamming menial bullshit, and we all had a great time. You shouldn't shut out people who are curious about the game or runner by telling them to go learn about it on their own. That's why we have the chat and commentary.[/quote]
Dude, I couldn't talk to anyone worth shit in that chat. Sorry for not being so "go with the flow", but when 3000 spamming and getting hype at 15 messages per second is staring me in the face, it's no different from looking at the chat of a huge fighting game stream. There's too many viewers.

Also, Wawlconut, no offense, but you're really not helping your case by responding to a contradicting (albeit confrontational) opinion in a non-communicative manner. Your mentality of responding to someone who says "your chat sucks, why do you moderate it that way" with "hurr durr down with groups lol sarcasm" reminds me of how when I was growing up, I was purposely excluded from a lot of things just because I simply "didn't get it". It's equally counterproductive, insulting to the other person, and is overall terrible communication. I fail to understand what you're trying to say.

To be honest, I want to know how chat works the way you moderate it too because I'm genuinely curious.

esi

Edit history:

esi: 2012-11-05 04:30:17 pm

2012-11-05 04:28:33 pm

Having watched and moderated the channel over most of the marathon, I think most of the spam that went on in the chat is positive. There was the occasional negative spammer here and there, including one during early bonus streaming that I had to block with a script due to him sockpuppeting to ban evade, but for the most part, it felt like it was getting people hyped up. In fact, I would argue that the hype even helped bring in donations, especially during the SM64 run.

Thinking that the chat was unmoderated would be naive. For those who did spam negatively - bitly/tinyurl links, screamers, random letter spam, out-of-control/prohibited bots, racism, etc., timeouts/bans were generally pretty quick.

Granted, I do think we got pretty lucky with our audience - had the spam gotten too far out of control we might have had to use slowmode and moderated more heavily. Not every marathon chat is this cooperative.

Edit: To respond to posts since I posted - I could easily carry on a conversation in the chat; you just needed to be patient and wait for the spam to die down - usually it only went on for 10-20 seconds at a time anyway.

Having watched and moderated the channel over most of the marathon, I think most of the spam that went on in the chat is positive.  There was the occasional negative spammer here and there, including one during early bonus streaming that I had to block with a script due to him sockpuppeting to ban evade, but for the most part, it felt like it was getting people hyped up.  In fact, I would argue that the hype even helped bring in donations, especially during the SM64 run.

Thinking that the chat was unmoderated would be naive.  For those who did spam negatively - bitly/tinyurl links, screamers, random letter spam, out-of-control/prohibited bots, racism, etc., timeouts/bans were generally pretty quick.

Granted, I do think we got pretty lucky with our audience - had the spam gotten too far out of control we might have had to use slowmode and moderated more heavily.  Not every marathon chat is this cooperative.

Edit: To respond to posts since I posted - I could easily carry on a conversation in the chat; you just needed to be patient and wait for the spam to die down - usually it only went on for 10-20 seconds at a time anyway.

ssskinner

2012-11-05 04:32:31 pm

every game is a horror game

There's a different between letting people spam during hype sections and letting people say racist, sexist, trolling bullshit. I'm not even going to comment on this stream chat more than saying it was impossible for me to talk or be heard because I avoided the chat after reading it for five minutes and realizing no one was actually paying attention to the chat (mods and chatters alike), just using it as a way to scream as loud as they could and not expecting any one to pay attention or ban. But I think the spooktacular had a great chat and we weren't banning anyone unless they were disrespectful.

There is obviously a middle ground between a non-moving chat and 5,000 lines of FrankerZ during a run, so this bullshit dichotomy being argued in this post is pointless. People are seriously going back and forth about how there shouldn't be any spam and how spam should be rampant. It's not going to be a real conversation since no one is listening to each other.

But to me, esi, THAT was "out of control spam" -- personally I like a chat where I don't feel like I'm yelling in to the darkness and it's pointless for me to ask a question or try to talk to anyone.

There's a different between letting people spam during hype sections and letting people say racist, sexist, trolling bullshit. I'm not even going to comment on this stream chat more than saying it was impossible for me to talk or be heard because I avoided the chat after reading it for five minutes and realizing no one was actually paying attention to the chat (mods and chatters alike), just using it as a way to scream as loud as they could and not expecting any one to pay attention or ban. But I think the spooktacular had a great chat and we weren't banning anyone unless they were disrespectful.

There is obviously a middle ground between a non-moving chat and 5,000 lines of FrankerZ during a run, so this bullshit dichotomy being argued in this post is pointless. People are seriously going back and forth about how there shouldn't be any spam and how spam should be rampant. It's not going to be a real conversation since no one is listening to each other.

But to me, esi, THAT was "out of control spam" -- personally I like a chat where I don't feel like I'm yelling in to the darkness and it's pointless for me to ask a question or try to talk to anyone.

PJ

2012-11-05 04:50:44 pm

Is PJ

I enjoyed this chat.

Chrno

Edit history:

Chrno: 2012-11-05 04:54:27 pm

Chrno: 2012-11-05 04:54:17 pm

2012-11-05 04:52:50 pm

WOW.

Quote from PJ:

I enjoyed this chat.

Another thing you need to remember is that the commentators were activly encouraging the chat to spam (just go watch back the final few runs and you'll see), so of course it is going to be worse.

yggdrizzle

Edit history:

yggdrizzle: 2012-11-05 05:04:10 pm

yggdrizzle: 2012-11-05 05:01:18 pm

2012-11-05 05:00:19 pm

Quote from Carcinogen:

Dude, I couldn't talk to anyone worth shit in that chat. Sorry for not being so "go with the flow", but when 3000 spamming and getting hype at 15 messages per second is staring me in the face, it's no different from looking at the chat of a huge fighting game stream. There's too many viewers..

This was not true 95% of the time. Like many said, conversations were held and I as a viewer was able to read the full chat--hell, when I was streaming my run I caught most of it and responded to a ton of questions/comments.

Quote from ssskinner:

There's a different between letting people spam during hype sections and letting people say racist, sexist, trolling bullshit. I'm not even going to comment on this stream chat more than saying it was impossible for me to talk or be heard because I avoided the chat after reading it for five minutes and realizing no one was actually paying attention to the chat (mods and chatters alike), just using it as a way to scream as loud as they could and not expecting any one to pay attention or ban. But I think the spooktacular had a great chat and we weren't banning anyone unless they were disrespectful.

And this was not true 99% of the time, on both points. I have no clue who told you this or what chat you might have stepped into.

Quote from Chrno:

Quote from PJ:

I enjoyed this chat.

Another thing you need to remember is that the commentators were activly encouraging the chat to spam (just go watch back the final few runs and you'll see), so of course it is going to be worse.

This actually made things a lot better, since the chat (near the end) started to flow in a good way -- after everyone got out their FrankerZ's (maybe 10 seconds?) we had a pretty pleasant chat (usually minutes).

[quote="Carcinogen"]Dude, I couldn't talk to anyone worth shit in that chat. Sorry for not being so "go with the flow", but when 3000 spamming and getting hype at 15 messages per second is staring me in the face, it's no different from looking at the chat of a huge fighting game stream. There's too many viewers..[/quote]

This was not true 95% of the time. Like many said, conversations were held and I as a viewer was able to read the full chat--hell, when I was streaming my run I caught most of it and responded to a ton of questions/comments.

[quote="ssskinner"]There's a different between letting people spam during hype sections and letting people say racist, sexist, trolling bullshit. I'm not even going to comment on this stream chat more than saying it was impossible for me to talk or be heard because I avoided the chat after reading it for five minutes and realizing no one was actually paying attention to the chat (mods and chatters alike), just using it as a way to scream as loud as they could and not expecting any one to pay attention or ban. But I think the spooktacular had a great chat and we weren't banning anyone unless they were disrespectful. [/quote]

And this was not true 99% of the time, on both points. I have no clue who told you this or what chat you might have stepped into.

[quote="Chrno"][quote="PJ"]I enjoyed this chat.[/quote]
Another thing you need to remember is that the commentators were activly encouraging the chat to spam (just go watch back the final few runs and you'll see), so of course it is going to be worse.[/quote]

This actually made things a lot better, since the chat (near the end) started to flow in a good way -- after everyone got out their FrankerZ's (maybe 10 seconds?) we had a pretty pleasant chat (usually minutes).

ssskinner

2012-11-05 05:07:01 pm

every game is a horror game

My first sentence was speaking about "stream monster" style chat. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about that that it wasn't re: the numbersmw chat. I thought that my 2nd sentence cleared it up, but sorry if it didn't. But all the times I popped in to the chat I saw the same kind of spamming stuff and closed it quickly. Like I said, again, I felt like it was impossible for me to talk. That turned me off to the chat. Regardless, it didn't make me dislike the stream or stop watching it. I just closed the chat. As I said, it's a personal preference as is what everyone is saying in this thread. You don't really need to question whether or not I saw the chat -- you and I just liked/disliked chat for the same reason. No biggie.

Thino

2012-11-05 05:11:48 pm

It's not as if it truly mattered in the end.

The goal is raising money for cancer so whether there is more or less FrankerZ or Kappa in the chat won't make any difference for AGDQ.

Though, I could arguably say, as a stream monster myself, that a big part of what motivated to donate money was the the fact that commentators would read my FrankerZ spam and that it would create chaos in the chat right after, as sad as it may sound.

So moderating that kind of stuff might make a little difference as to the amount of money AGDQ will get in the end, even if it's gonna be merely a $200-$300 difference.

facetouch

2012-11-05 05:14:44 pm

The hype was constant, the negativity was practically non-existent, the support was amazing, the bad links were taken care of, the donations were generous and the donation goal was shattered. AGDQ is a more professional (by comparison, anyway) and organized annual event, so they can implement a strict set of guidelines to make it more enjoyable for everybody. But this felt more laid back and you could hear the positive reactions from both the broadcasters and the chat plus the generosity and support at the end was overwhelming. Of course less FrankerZ would have been nice, but otherwise I don't see the problem with how it turned out.

ChristosOwen

2012-11-05 05:37:02 pm

I had a blast both watching and participating in this marathon. I felt the chat was extremely laid back and fun, and that was what the aim of the marathon was. I wouldn't change anything.

I managed to follow the chat whilst I was racing ALTTP and respond to numerous questions... so I think anyone who says "I couldn't follow the chat whatsoever" either caught it in the middle of hype moments or didn't really try to engage with the chat particularly hard, be it for lack of patience, plain stubbornness, or whatever reason.

I've had some feedback since Saturday from viewers that caught my run, mainly saying that they really enjoyed my commentary of various aspects of running the game, and for answering questions people had. Further to this, the other commentators in mumble would pickup on questions I missed that the viewers had and either answer them themselves or ask me if they didn't know. I think it worked really well.

On the flipside, I have enjoyed previous SDA marathons, but I didn't find the chat as fun comparatively. Of course, this is just my opinion, but as everyone else is chiming in with their opinions, I thought I'd throw mine in too.

I had a blast both watching and participating in this marathon. I felt the chat was extremely laid back and fun, and that was what the aim of the marathon was. I wouldn't change anything.

I managed to follow the chat whilst I was racing ALTTP and respond to numerous questions... so I think anyone who says "I couldn't follow the chat whatsoever" either caught it in the middle of hype moments or didn't really try to engage with the chat particularly hard, be it for lack of patience, plain stubbornness, or whatever reason.

I've had some feedback since Saturday from viewers that caught my run, mainly saying that they really enjoyed my commentary of various aspects of running the game, and for answering questions people had. Further to this, the other commentators in mumble would pickup on questions I missed that the viewers had and either answer them themselves or ask me if they didn't know. I think it worked really well.

On the flipside, I have enjoyed previous SDA marathons, but I didn't find the chat as fun comparatively. Of course, this is just my opinion, but as everyone else is chiming in with their opinions, I thought I'd throw mine in too.

ShadowWraith

Edit history:

ShadowWraith: 2012-11-05 05:44:26 pm

2012-11-05 05:43:32 pm

.

I guess I should weigh in with my opinion then. I didn't watch a whole lot of the marathon, but for the parts I did watch, I had to close the chat. Why? It was pointless to try and follow it as an outside viewer. If I were to participate, it'd have to be in the same manner as everyone else because while other people have said they managed to hold conversations (albeit interrupted semi-frequently), the chat itself didn't look very suited to it. As a watcher, it was just walls and walls of people linking meme images and dog faces with brackets and while it didn't look all that hostile, it wasn't really worth my time to try and read it.

That said, I don't think the chat was bad in any respects. It's just not the sort of thing I'd want to participate in.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2012-11-05 05:51:45 pm

Omnigamer: 2012-11-05 05:49:02 pm

Omnigamer: 2012-11-05 05:47:34 pm

2012-11-05 05:45:55 pm

All the things

I'm not going to try to argue one way or another, I think this chat and a more disciplined chat both have their merits and purpose. Instead, I'd like to include some food for thought. EDIT: Gah, the forum orders them by name. May have to scroll a bit more to compare them; sorry about that.

The charts below contain some of the data from the channel. As with any sort of data, it's open to a lot of interpretation. I apologize that everything is not the exact same timeframe. Some arguments can be made though:

-Throughout most of the marathon, the core audience remained the same. The number of unique viewers is only slightly less than the maximum concurrent viewers for most of the early hours/days of the marathon. This means that not many people were joining, but most people were not leaving.
-Chat activity for most hours is less than 3600 messages/hr. This means that less than one message was coming in per second. Assuming a couple cheering rounds per hour, that seems pretty reasonable. The spikes however are enormous, with the largest at almost 15k. These time periods would be nearly impossible to have any normal conversations.
-The number of unfollows, though small, increases after periods of high chat activity. For proper perspective, the number of follows for most hours was an order of magnitude greater, but unfollows should not be overlooked. Unfollows as a whole mean that they disliked it enough to actually go through the effort and revisit the twitch page to unfollow, which says they really did not enjoy it.
-The huge jump in unique visitors for Monday is likely due to less competition (MLG, etc). At the same time, the maximum concurrent viewers was significantly less, which means that we had very little hold on the viewers. Despite the high number of uniques, chat activity was mild for the most part. This is especially ambiguous.
-One thing that I have no access to is the donation density. It could be argued that because we kept the same core audience through most of the marathon, the donors were only a limited subset of the full chat. This is expected, but it makes it difficult to compare how the chat affected donations.

I'm not going to try to argue one way or another, I think this chat and a more disciplined chat both have their merits and purpose. Instead, I'd like to include some food for thought. EDIT: Gah, the forum orders them by name. May have to scroll a bit more to compare them; sorry about that.

The charts below contain some of the data from the channel. As with any sort of data, it's open to a lot of interpretation. I apologize that everything is not the exact same timeframe. Some arguments can be made though:

-Throughout most of the marathon, the core audience remained the same. The number of unique viewers is only slightly less than the maximum concurrent viewers for most of the early hours/days of the marathon. This means that not many people were joining, but most people were not leaving.
-Chat activity for most hours is less than 3600 messages/hr. This means that less than one message was coming in per second. Assuming a couple cheering rounds per hour, that seems pretty reasonable. The spikes however are enormous, with the largest at almost 15k. These time periods would be nearly impossible to have any normal conversations.
-The number of unfollows, though small, increases after periods of high chat activity. For proper perspective, the number of follows for most hours was an order of magnitude greater, but unfollows should not be overlooked. Unfollows as a whole mean that they disliked it enough to actually go through the effort and revisit the twitch page to unfollow, which says they really did not enjoy it.
-The huge jump in unique visitors for Monday is likely due to less competition (MLG, etc). At the same time, the maximum concurrent viewers was significantly less, which means that we had very little hold on the viewers. Despite the high number of uniques, chat activity was mild for the most part. This is especially ambiguous.
-One thing that I have no access to is the donation density. It could be argued that because we kept the same core audience through most of the marathon, the donors were only a limited subset of the full chat. This is expected, but it makes it difficult to compare how the chat affected donations.

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