Watch the Footage

Greetings Metaguards!
Have you ever thought about talking with your fellow players in real time? Ever needed to work on a compiled post for the RP and had trouble waiting for PMs to come and go?

Enough of that sales pitch.

After the pub quiz we thought it would be fun to have a real time chatroom to talk amongst ourselves. So, I bring you:
The Chatroom (Neatchat is dead; Link removed.)!

Currently at:
Slack chatroom.

Talk about the current developments, talk about the wheater, talk about the metaverse. All metaguards are welcome to join. So let's set up a few simple rules to make this work:

1- The room is not intended to be a planning center. ARG planning should be done in the forums. But, since we'll talk about the ARG there as well, should interesting theories arise, by all means bring them here.
2- There is no way to enforce naming conventions in the chatroom, so I'll ask that Metaguards use the same name as they use in the forums and don't go switching names all the time.
3- Under no circunstance use the name of another Metaguard! This will warrant banning from the chatroom should we identify the troll pretending to be another person.
4- Overall forum rules do apply. Don't be a jerk and we'll be happier for it.

I'll ask that no one posts the link on Twitter. It's open to many people not involved with WTF and the goal of this chatroom is to allow us to talk about ourselves and about things not necessarily related to WTF. Since we can't control who joins the chat, it could bring strangers and trolls to spoil our fun. But I'll repeat here: All metagurads are welcome to join. Yes, that includes you dear lurker who only posted in the Introduction thread.

Joe, Mr. A, Gurt, Ed, Metaneko... I'll be sending some PMs anyway, but if you feel like you want to just chat around about stuff, by all means join us.

On the chat itself. If you click on a person's name in the sidebar, you'll open a private one-on-one channel of communication. There's no way to make a sub-room for more people. Other than that, it's fairly intuitive. Any doubts, comments, sugestions or anything, just comment here.

UPDATE:
We had a little incident, someone joined under the username "H" and didn't speak at all. Even after we asked who he was. This H in question as temporarily kicked out of the room (1 hour) in our unfortunate paranoia. We'll avoid banning people who are not trolling in the future. If whoever is this H is one of our users in the forum, please, accept my apologies.

The only behaviour passive of banning is trolling or impersonating another metaguard.

Sicon has opened a voice chat channel as well. So, you can get the software here.
In order to join the room you'll have to add Sicon, so tell him your username, as it is invitation only.

Adressing Morgan's Visit. On this same thread.

Do we have a system in place for keeping four specific undesirables out?

(Well, I suppose if you suspect someone to be one of them, you can always open a private chat with the most paranoid Metaguard online to test the theory...)

Nope. Anyone reading this thread can join.

But, as I said, it is not intended to be a planning center. So we're not trying to hide it from them anyway.

But if they learn our speech patterns, then they can impersonate us on the boards more easily!

I've really got to restrict my paranoia to the appropriate threads.

Qara-Xuan Zenith wrote:But if they learn our speech patterns, then they can impersonate us on the boards more easily!

I've really got to restrict my paranoia to the appropriate threads.

I'd love to see the guy who can impersonate some of our speech patterns.

Well, we had a problem... Updated the first post to address it.

The guy who wrote at the last Romeo's post also had the nickname "H". Maybe we have a renegade metaguard.

Well, he popped there again. Never said anyting, and then left. Seems like one of us though.

Hey H, if you're lagging and all... We're NOT banning you. Try reconnecting, or talking in a private tab to let us know who you are!

I couldn't post - Your line lengths were syncing up. Also, 'renegade metaguard'? I like the sound of that.

I say anyone who quotes xkcd like that can't be evil. Welcome, H.

Thank you. Has Moriarty ever read xkcd? (Actually, now it occurs to me he might...it seems his kind of thing...)

Also, heads up everyone! If you post "too fast" in the chatroom, you get auto-banned for sixty seconds. Which pass much slower than you'd expect.

It happened to you about 10 times, Qara!

H22 wrote:It happened to you about 10 times, Qara!

ONLY TWICE! And the second time was an experiment, to see if I could duplicate the results!

www.xkcd.com/242 Qara.

Fun fact: I thought about that strip on my way to the university yesterday.

Dryunya wrote:Fun fact: I thought about that strip on my way to the university yesterday.

XKCD trips DO tend to leak into one's brain during university journeys, don't they?

Pure Chaos: Playing now at the Chatroom!

Okay, it's time for those of us with admin powers (*cough* Pixel *cough*) to start deleting the logs.
Why? Because the Cabal now know about our chatroom and could stop by at any time.
Considering we've done some important planning there, and some unimportant guilt-and-insult-slinging at the Cabal, I'd rather they not be able to go through the archive and see it all.

We get to see some of THEIR archived chats; let's not neutralize the advantage by letting them see OURS, mm?

Some really big concerns have come to our table in light of the recent Pheeble chatlogs. I'd like to point them out and open a discussion about how we should handle it.

From an in character prespective, the Cabal have acknowledged our chatroom. They did read it. They know about accusations we threw at them about Tara's death and our overall reaction to numerous events. Yes, the found the link in here and there's nothing we can do to stop them from joining us in there and using the information we discuss there.

From a Meta point of view, that's a very bold move, dear GMs. No GM has control over the chatroom, to recognize it is a pretty big decision. It also means that discussions taking place there intersect with topics from here to an extent where the chatroom is basically a part of this regardless.

So, to what we can do about it:

• Enforce strictly off topic behaviour in the chatroom: This one will never work. We'll go "Oh, Quixote tweet!" and from there it'll be chaos. Immediate response is not "Ok, let's take our time and post this on the forums.", It'll be "Quick, how do we respond?" Sicon and Dryunya are doing an amazing job nudging the discussions here. But some talk about the events is inevitable. Also, there's no real administrative control for the chatroom. I can't force names or registrations to join, I can't ban content or segment into sub-rooms.
• Destroy the chatlog: Simple solution, but creates another problem. It'll force people to acutally register the discussions here, otherwise they'll be lost. But I'm personally aganist this. We'll lose register of all the fun stuff we come up with in there. It's a very very dick move to punish ourselves for talking in there. I am aganist it.
• Be nice people and copy over all the relevant discussion to here: Best course of action, but, as I said there is no way to enforce it mechanically in the room. If someone decides not to post, well, only the Honor System to make sure we ignore him until he complies.

About the Cabal reading the chatlog or connecting there to talk to us? All I can say is: Be my guest. Whoever is there, copy the relevant chat to the forums. If they want to talk there, it's GM decision. If they do so. I say we play along. No need to hide our chatlog, no need for paranoia over "lurkers" and all of that.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Someone to tell me to shut up?

SOMEONE IS READING THE CHATLOG?! But seriously, how did they get in? Obviously, the answer is that I am the Cabal. (I wonder if they got the Orwell/Manga/NaNo references)

Okay, so the archives aren't being deleted.
I have apologized to the Cabal in the chatroom, on the assumption that they'll be reading through the logs.
I recommend anyone else who's said nasty and unwarranted things about them there do likewise, as a show of goodwill (and of not getting tracked down and revenge-killed by them).

I've already said that from a meta POV, we shouldn't be all hush-hush. We will have to put up with the info leaks, but at least the GMs would be in the loop.
The other solution is to make a user-based approach (with passwords, but I don't know if neatchat supports it), and give access to Ed and Joe. That would keep the Cabal out, while keeping the GMs in.
...unless - and that's my third point - they DO resort to masquerade. Even using someone else's name is easy - take someone who is not there, snatch the logs and run. Not to mention actually making some fake account on the forums, get some attention, and sit in the chat safely. Like H. That's the drawback of crowdsourcing, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Also, if you delete the logs without proper backups, I'll hate you forever. They are a part of the ARG's history now, and we need to keep them safe. After it's all over, the other people will only be able to see the events based on what we leave for them. I sound like an archeologist, or something.

You're right; the logs are important to keep.
Besides, as we saw from my failed Wikipedia vandalism, the characters will see what the GMs want them to see, regardless of what we've deleted.

So I think apologies are the way to go from here.