FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I don't think that it's best to keep the same quote on the Minetest.net homepage for long periods of time. We could make it pick a random quote out of a list of several quotes and display a different one every time, or change it regularly and vote on which one to use next, or something. What do you think?

+1 for a different one, +0 for shwoing a random one (I don't care about that).

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I am one of the Minetest.net website maintainers, and I think it is a good idea. Do your vote. Everything on minetest.net must be family friendly. Ultimately it is celeron55's choice as anything other than typo fixes and updates need his permission.

The full list of Minetest.net maintainers is on the contributors page.

Please correct me if I have got something wrong.

The quote is not even honest. I never wrote this:

Fake Wuzzy wrote:I was flying around in my U.F.O. with a load of fuel in my inventory searching the deserts for pyramids. – The interesting part is: I found the pyramid half-buried in the sand!

Actually I wrote this:

Wuzzy wrote:I was flying around in my U.F.O. with a shitload of fuel in my inventory searching the deserts for pyramids. I had luck; the search took less than expected.

The interesting part is: I found the pyramid half-buried in the sand!

Please either quote correctly or don’t. Distorting quotes like that just because it doesn’t pass your family filter is still dishonest. The homepage is a liar. The homepage also claims the world is infinite. Another big fat lie.
Whatever, I don’t really care what you “decide” about quotes. But no matter what or who you quote, don’t distort it, it is fucking rude.
Whatever …

But I still like the Pyramids mod, by the way. :-)

Everything on minetest.net must be family friendly.

Why on Earth? o_O This is the Internet, not your local kindergarten. :P

If you use “family friendly” as an euphemism for “censorship”, I’m against it. Especially the crusade against “strong language” is stupid as fuck. It simply does not make any sense whatsoever.

Clearly not written by a parent. Just say'n

Wuzzy wrote:

Everything on minetest.net must be family friendly.

Why on Earth? o_O This is the Internet, not your local kindergarten. :P

If you use “family friendly” as an euphemism for “censorship”, I’m against it. Especially the crusade against “strong language” is stupid as fuck. It simply does not make any sense whatsoever.

+1

Wuzzy wrote:The quote is not even honest. I never wrote this:

Fake Wuzzy wrote:I was flying around in my U.F.O. with a load of fuel in my inventory searching the deserts for pyramids. – The interesting part is: I found the pyramid half-buried in the sand!

Actually I wrote this:

Wuzzy wrote:I was flying around in my U.F.O. with a shitload of fuel in my inventory searching the deserts for pyramids. I had luck; the search took less than expected.

The interesting part is: I found the pyramid half-buried in the sand!

Please either quote correctly or don’t. Distorting quotes like that just because it doesn’t pass your family filter is still dishonest. The homepage is a liar. The homepage also claims the world is infinite. Another big fat lie.
Whatever, I don’t really care what you “decide” about quotes. But no matter what or who you quote, don’t distort it, it is !@#$%^&* rude.
Whatever …

But I still like the Pyramids mod, by the way. :-)

Everything on minetest.net must be family friendly.

Why on Earth? o_O This is the Internet, not your local kindergarten. :P

If you use “family friendly” as an euphemism for “censorship”, I’m against it. Especially the crusade against “strong language” is stupid as !@#$%^&*. It simply does not make any sense whatsoever.

I know you hate censorship, but it is a big issue if it goes on the fhome page. It would turn away a lot of people who could be very beneficial.

Remember the difference between the censorship of ideas and the censorship of swear words. There is no way that a swear word would make it onto the homepage especially. Freedom of speech is freedom of ideas, not swear words.

I didn't quote you, that was celeron55.

Quite frankly, I think that those who are driven away by occasional swear words should not really be our primary audience. We should be less worried about them and think more about the experienced players who, for example, understand that Minetest is not meant to imitate Minecraft. They will bring structure and organization to the community, rather than the dull chaos associated with a surplus of "newbies" like we currently have. That doesn't justify abusing the ability to use swear words though, which is another characteristic of newbies that we only need a relatively small amount of.
I agree that there are other things that should also be changed on the homepage, including the thing about the world being infinite (it's not). With all due respect to those who run the website, there is plenty of room for improvement.

The notion that so-called “swear words” are somehow bad and need to be avoided simply makes no sense whatsoever. It is complete bogus. If you would think about it for just a minute, you would realize how pointless these crusades against “bad words” actually are. It’s nothing but a modern kind of superstition.

Freedom of speech is freedom of ideas, not swear words.

You surely have a perverted view of “freedom of speech”. Freedom of speech also includes the freedom of other people to say things you don’t like, including the way they say that.

I think you will find that parents will not agree with you, Wuzzy. Swearing is not needed to give a point, and is unpleasant. Language is about communication, and swear words communicate anger and aggression.

Freedom of speech is about speaking against the government, not about being rude or unpleasant.

I venomously oppose any profanity on the homepage, or and other page of the main website. The forums is okay, as it is just the author of the post.

SegFault22 wrote:Quite frankly, I think that those who are driven away by occasional swear words should not really be our primary audience. We should be less worried about them and think more about the experienced players who, for example, understand that Minetest is not meant to imitate Minecraft. They will bring structure and organization to the community, rather than the dull chaos associated with a surplus of "newbies" like we currently have. That doesn't justify abusing the ability to use swear words though, which is another characteristic of newbies that we only need a relatively small amount of.
I agree that there are other things that should also be changed on the homepage, including the thing about the world being infinite (it's not). With all due respect to those who run the website, there is plenty of room for improvement.

I agree that small children should not be our primary audience, but we should still cater for them.

EDIT: I have modified the homepage slightly.

Definitely could not of said it better myself.
I am far from a a Saint. Most of my life was either working construction, or being in the military. I can swear with the best of them and without thought.
But I do know there is time and a place where behaving yourself is expected. I do not swear around my children. I do not swear in the presence of any children. I do not swear at the grocery store in the presence of civilized people. Not because of censorship, but because I'm really not in the mood to feel ashamed of myself.

I still have not heard any real arguments here.
If I understand correctly, you are against all this because society has made this as a taboo. Yet there is no rational reason why these words are considered to be bad.
IMO this is a taboo for no reason. So all this resulted more from peer pressure than from actual reasons.

Wuzzy wrote:I still have not heard any real arguments here.
If I understand correctly, you are against all this because society has made this as a taboo. Yet there is no rational reason why these words are considered to be bad.
IMO this is a taboo for no reason. So all this resulted more from peer pressure than from actual reasons.

You honestly don't get it do you? You really think it's appropriate to drop the "F-Bomb" at any given time? Is profanity used beyond conversation even necessary?
Answer these questions if you chose, and I'm sure you will. But I won't be debating further on this topic as I can tell already I will be unable to convince you otherwise.

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Changing the quote on the official website's main page, from time to time, may help a little with it's appeal to search engines. The problem is finding quotes of advertising quality.

As for swearing, as I see it if you chose to exercise your freedom and right to be offensive to others then you should not be offended when others chose to exercise their freedom and right to refuse you.

I'm actually making a redo of the main site. I never really intended to do much with it, except learn stuff... I am using css3 to make a simple quote slider.

philipbenr wrote:I'm actually making a redo of the main site. I never really intended to do much with it, except learn stuff... I am using css3 to make a simple quote slider.

Then, please, change that blurry logo to a more aesthetic one too :)

PS: @everyone: chew this and create an international standard which can be applied in any country. Then talk about censorship or whether it is legit to punish for some strong language or not. One can also make a research on how a situation when the server is in USA and people are from Russia, UK and New Zealand should be treated. :)

One answer can't for do all people. Words are inadequate to communicate either.

So, call it considering what it is - a "censorship". Then ask for a permission before quoting someone.
Alternatively - change the forum rules, so that everything posted here may be censored and quoted within minetest.net.
People would continue to get annoyed, but that'll be legitimate. Does anyone really want this?

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Here is my take on the censorship thing:

I would not use it on any webpage. Period. I try to make everything as professional as possible, which basically means getting the content to the reader of the site as quickly and perfectly as possible. Swear words only add ambiguity. I think that if it is a part of your dialect, I can't do anything about it, but I personally don't enjoy them, and I also believe that they do not help get your point across whatsoever.

As for the website itself, I have finished the rotating quotes slider, and I have also made neat little cards in the middle of the webpage which are little summaries of some things. I'll stick a zip here of what I have done in a little while. Oh, and this website will probably not work very well with older browsers. If you have any recent version, you should be okay...

Speakin' of dialects...
I rare swear in real life, only when pissed off, actually.
But unwritten general rules of behavior tend to suppress me. For good, in fact.


The question is, why it's the site's/forum's problem to do the work of one's parents?
I see no reason.

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Philipbenr: i hope you are using the website repo on Minetest's GitHub. If not then it will not be used. Also, it needs to work without js.

Please don't confuse censorship with personal choice.

If the government tries to stop you from publishing a book because it contains swear words, or if they try to punish you for swearing in your own home, then that is censorship, and it's very bad.

But if someone who owns a web page or forum says, "this is MINE, and there will be no swearing here!," then that is their right as owner. Your right to freedom of speech does not in any way obligate someone else to publish, host, or even listen to what you have to say.

I don't think we should have swearing on the Minetest home page, and the reason is simple and purely logical. There is nothing inherently evil in the particular combinations of sounds or letters that make up "swear words." But the whole purpose of swear words is to offend. Certainly they are considered offensive by a significant portion of people. So why would we put anything on the Minetest homepage that would be likely to offend? We are trying to draw people there, not chase them away!

You wouldn't put swear words in your resume, or in a paper you wrote up for a presentation at work, because you want them to appear classy and professional. We want the Minetest page to look classy and professional, so it shouldn't' contain swear words either.

@Rubenwardy: I didn't really intend to have it online, but I could if I really tried. Anyhow, what is this website repo you speak of? I have not explored much into the github, except mainly minetest and minetest_game... Anyhow, I will post waht I have done later on, as I said earlier.

Also, I am trying to use all css (I might have used a bit of css3 in the quote slider... it would not work without it I don't think. Let me double check.) I only have ever used a little bit of Jquery... It was when I was finishing website design course. I was one of two 'elites', so I got to remake a website (wordpress platform) which was requested: http://www.awestrucklacrosse.com It is fallen a bit lower since I am no longer working on it, but it was pretty nice when we were doing it. I am great at WP and plain coding, but better and plain coding.

Sorry for the rambling...

I was just looking at the front page and i thought i should just offer a little help with presentation (since you asked)

(taken from the front page)
Minetest is a voxel sandbox game and also a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner and Minecraft.

Minetest is available natively for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and is Free and Open Source Software, released under the LGPL 2.1 or later.

"random quote from community member"

Features

* Explore, dig and build in a voxel world, craft items from raw materials to help you build anything you desire.
* Easy plugin based Mods can be used to add blocks, tools and other features to the game.
* Multiplayer support for tens of players, via servers hosted by users.
* Voxel based lighting with gameplay consequences (light caves and buildings with torches)
* Almost infinite world and several beautiful map generators.
* Runs natively on Windows, Linux, OS X and FreeBSD.
* Supports multiple languages, translated by the community.

Take a look at some wonderful screenshots, taken by the community.

Background

Minetest was started by Perttu “celeron55” Ahola in October 2010, and is now developed by a random bunch of community members.

Minetest is designed to be simple, stable and portable. It is lightweight enough to run on fairly old hardware. It currently runs reasonably on a laptop with Intel 945GM graphics. Although, it is recommended to have a dualcore CPU for best performance.

I sugest to you all to see this Vsauce video, it's about ''Why are bad words bad'' and why some of them are not, the origin of them, what they represent (not only irritation and anger, people please)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7dQh8u4Hc