Matt Colville's Community

[LordEntrails]

Videos can be good, effective and concise, but they rarely are.

An example, I used to do live demo's on technical topics via web meetings. These were almost always 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of questions. Give or take. I would then take these conversations videos and edit them. Usually down to about 10-12 minutes.

That's right, I would ramble for 45 minutes to deliver 10-12 minutes of value.

The problem with YouTube is no one edits their videos. It's too much work. You can practice a topic, maybe go through it 2 or 3 times and then record it and be done with it. Say 3 hours to make a 1 hour video. But editing it, well, can easily take another 8 to 10 hours. That's too much work for folks so they just take the easy way out and post a 1 hour video for 12 minutes of value.

 

[Umbran]

When someone tells me Starship Troopers is a terrible movie or the lunch special at the grill is horrible they generally don't don't feel the need to make it clear they're giving me an opinion rather than a factual statement.

The question isn't whether they feel the need to make it clear.

The question, in context of online communities, is: how well the ensuing discussion with randos on the internet is going to go if you don't make it clear? Statistically speaking, that is - is not ever bothering going to get you better results than fitting that into discussions regularly?

When someone tells me Savage Worlds is too swingy, the initiative system is too slow, or all the characters are the same I don't feel angry or threatened.

I mean, sure, you can cherry pick things that don't threaten you. And even if we accept that you, MGibster, are are completely immune to such behaviors, the rest of the population isn't. It isn't as if humanity right now is particularly good at demonstrating how rational they are, are they?

It's got nothing to do with me living on planet Vulcan and everything to do with me understanding the difference between an opinion and a fact.

Always? Every time? On all topics in your life? Okay then.

Anyone who feels angry or threatened by a negative statement made about a game they love probably needs to work through some issues with that. In my opinion.

Sure. If you say so.

 

[MGibster]

Sure. If you say so.

If these discussions have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended –
That you have but slumbered here
While these opinions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gamers, do not reprehend.
If your pardon, I must amend.
Else the MGibster a liar call.
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Gygax shall restore amends.

 

[MichaelSomething]

You don't? Hopefully I can enlighten you.

Speaking broadly about human psychology (so, there are exceptions) - the words we use matter. How we speak about things changes how we think about them, the emotions we attach to them, and how others think about them.

The most basic example which is perhaps most relevant to these messageboards - for human beings, the more authoritatively we state a position, the more compelled we will feel to defend that position, up to and including making crap up to not have to back down. Backing down is seen as a threat to one's position in the social order, and to our hindbrains, that's not really different from a physical threat.

The more we explicitly build pressure releases into our statements - "In my opinion" and "as far as I understand" and so on, the less we feel a need to defend the position. And, the less others will feel a need to attack them. And, when someone does question a position, we will tend to give the new information more honest consideration if we have already openly admitted our position isn't necessarily absolute truth.

For example...

D&D General Thread 'Why Enworld should liberate D&D from Hasbro'

Oct 18, 2025

I studied this market.
Dungeons and Dragons has less then an eighteen percent chance of surviving the next two decades without the loss of millions of games.
This is not a threat; this is the truth.
The powerful of this game destroy their own past time, stripping its resources for themselves.
Many unique playstyles will soon be unplayable due to corporate greed.

Yet here some are, posts and arguments worried about stopping me instead of stopping Hasbro.
Enworld has the knowledge to repair the rules, run the games, and punish the munchkins.
Enworld could save more games in a single year...

• MichaelSomething
• Replies: 641
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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[Aldarc]

Tangentially related to the conversation, but I would like to point out that putting someone on ignore doesn't mean that the other person is a bad person. Obviously they can be. However, believe it or not, it's possible for otherwise morally good and decent people to have conflicts of personality and frequent breakdowns in communication. Personalities can clash between good people.