Messages

[Forum Changes:]

Forum Changes:
When it comes to this forum, old URLs will continue to work as described above, but login cookies will not. Consequently, the standard domain of this forum will switch to forum.calref.ca on January 1^st. All members will be logged out and have to sign in again under the new (.ca) domain. In case of any confusion, the IP addresses of this forum (138.197.153.138 / 2604:a880:cad:d0::d1f:c001) will remain the same, as the server will otherwise not be changing.

Happy New Year!

The above plans have been carried out, and the default domain of the forum has been set to forum.calref.ca. Additionally, PHP errors (primarily regarding member lists and search functions) should be fixed, and topic icons should work normally once again.

The Refuge portal page at calref.ca has been updated to be more streamlined for our new layout. You may also notice that the main site is more compact than it was before. Indeed, Tyranicus has consolidated his sites elsewhere and, after five years of hosting and 1,676 consecutive days of uninterrupted uptime, our Xenon server has been retired to the void.

If you notice anything that seems to have been missed or isn't working right, give the page a hard-refresh. If it still looks like there's a problem, drop me a message so I can get it patched up.

Cheers.

[Relocations:]

Greetings all,

Several years ago I knew that I would be moving and, in order to make sure there would be as little disruption possible to the community, I purchased rights to our domains four to seven years in advance. A number of those will be coming due for renewal this year, and it's my intention to slim down. This means dropping some side projects that I had planned, as well as reducing CalRef's current two domains to one.

The issue with this is obviously which "one" will it be? The .network TLD was not popular during staff discussions, with almost everyone saying that it was awkward or too much of a gimmick. Additionally, .cc seems to be causing connection problems when their school or work content filter has banned the entire set, similarly to the last time that affected us. Around where I live, there's also a slight issue of people going "don't you mean .ca???" After a healthy debate of our options, Floor 16 has decided that's actually exactly what we mean.

CalRef is going to be relocating to its seventh domain, calref.ca. This change will produce the following results:

Relocations:

• calref.network  >>>  calref.ca
• calref.cc  >>>  forum.calref.ca
• archives.calref.network  >>>  archives.calref.ca
• eyebeast.calref.network  >>>  eyebeast.calref.ca
• tart.calref.network  >>>  tart.calref.ca
• vote.calref.network  >>>  vote.calref.ca
• wiki.calref.network  >>>  wiki.calref.ca

Special Notes:

• dot.calref.network  will be discontinued and moved to calref.ca/dot
• mail.calref.network  will be discontinued and moved to calref.ca/mail

Because we are a slight larger than we were the last time a move occurred, and because many people now link to images, files, and documentation URLs across a spectrum of publications, tutorials, and personal projects: All existing URLs will remain valid and supported for one calendar year. This means that now through December 2023, you will be able to link to a file as either https://calref.network/post/scott.png OR https://calref.ca/post/scott.png. After that time, old (.network / .cc) URLs may continue to work, but their longevity is not guaranteed. Old URLs will stop working entirely in 2024.

It is for that reason that you should take this time to change links in areas/publications you control to the new URL schema when you encounter them over the course of this new year, or report them to your applicable local authority for minimal disruptions. Users looking for Dot documentation will be able to access dot.calref.network for an additional year, but an annoying banner will start to appear, letting people know that the documentation is moving.

Forum Changes:
When it comes to this forum, old URLs will continue to work as described above, but login cookies will not. Consequently, the standard domain of this forum will switch to forum.calref.ca on January 1^st. All members will be logged out and have to sign in again under the new (.ca) domain. In case of any confusion, the IP addresses of this forum (138.197.153.138 / 2604:a880:cad:d0::d1f:c001) will remain the same, as the server will otherwise not be changing.

Feel free to post in this thread with any questions or concerns you have during this process.

[CalRef II]

The 2022 Refuge Census

The Refuge Census is an annual project first created in 2009, where members may give feedback on our services, whether some of them need additions, modifications, or just need to go. We also study demographic changes due to new members joining the community and existing members getting older. Census data is generated through responses filled out by Refuge members during the week in which the survey runs. All results are anonymous, and there are no questions for which respondents are required to provide an answer.

The Census is also one of the most valuable programs we run and, from an administrative point, one that I would look forward to the most, were it not for how much effort it takes to put everything together. If I were a non-staff member, it would be what I would look forward to the most, too, because there has never been a Census that we have not directly acted on. Census results over the years have brought about changes in staffing, returned us to SMF, launched new RPs and Minecraft servers, and were the foundations for some of the biggest changes in our CalRef II, CalRef III, CalRef IV, CalRef V, and CalRef VI large-scale development pushes. This year's results will be treated no differently.

One of the biggest take-aways from these results is that we're just not doing enough to get people integrated and involved with the wider community. It has been another year of record-breaking turnout, and that explosive growth means that the majority of respondents, about two thirds of total, are new to the community as of this year.

Results indicating a respondent didn't know about one or more services has been a phenomenon since I started tracking quality and usage metrics in 2013. Back then, there were three services that everyone knew: The chat, the forum, and the active Minecraft server. After that, about 10-30% of respondents that didn't know what a service was*. Now however, no service is universally known (including the Discord server), and most services are unknown to 30-50% of the population. Since we know that 2/3rds of respondents this year registered in 2022, this is clearly an integration issue in need of intervention, instead of an indifference issue from older members.

If a service was known to a respondent, it was almost always rated positively.

There was one area of complaint as it relates to moderation, to which we all contribute to some extent. Three surveys returned that the community staff were overly strict and unforgiving of mistakes. This is an issue which I accept the largest share of the blame. For the first several years after taking over, the good bulk of new members who arrived were younger and rowdier than I was comfortable with, and my priorities were set on preserving the old culture and not letting things become a frat house. The practice of coming down hard on members who had no intention of being responsive to intervention was something I became overly accustomed to, and which is no longer reflective of where we're at today.

These days, our moderation team is much more robust, new arrivals have better intentions, and the community is well-equipped to deescalate and self-regulate, independently. I would like to reassure the respondents who posted these answers that I've written extensively upstairs about what we all, including myself, can do better in terms of interactions and giving new people a chance, doing due diligence with explaining things, and having better communication. This will be an ongoing improvement process.

Regarding NationStates, respondents requested more things to do in Refugia and more ways that they could interact. Similarly, the Refugi government has been looking for more people to get involved with the region and help out with things. So it's pretty clear that more efforts are needed to bridge the gameside-only divide, and should be supplemented with more interactive events and programs that people can actively work on over a short to medium term, beyond just answering issues. The recent Factbook Writing Competition was made to this end, and plans are in the works for an interactive "versus" event in the future. Two respondents asked for better welcome messages, which hopefully have been adequately implemented since those requests were made.

Demographic Observations:

• Members are an average of a year younger than they were last year; about a third are 14-16, a third are 17-20, and a third are everywhere else.
• Non-binary members have risen, as a share of total, for the third year in a row, becoming the second most populous gender.
• Close to half of all members are bisexual
• The majority of new members in the last year are European.
• Members who have participated in a CalRef RP were the slimmest minority ever (10%), though this may increase with the recent launch of The Trees of Timberwood.
  
• The Refuge is more educated than ever before, with the first time a master's degree has been seen since 2017 and the first time a Doctorate was seen ever.

Please enjoy this fine arrangement of graphical data which elaborates on these results further, and thanks once again to everyone who participated in the 2022 Refuge Census!

Oh my god they're doing it again! Kinda.

Actually this time it's moving up a local mod who, for the last eightish months, has been filling the call for extra help, keeping Refugia documentation together. In that time, Aav has also used the position to provide feedback on issues we've been having, plans and ideas we'd like to do, and generally providing another grounding voice for bouncing off ideas when it comes to what might benefit the community.

We're increasingly on our own as far as communities go in 2022. The internet used to be a little more crowd-sourced, a little smaller, a little more collaborative. And doing things in the way we do has gotten harder, as internet users seem to have become a little more more transitory. Sometimes I've wondered "where in the world has everyone on the internet gone?" But, really, I know the answer. It's the massive servers with 250,000 - 1,000,000 people, with a large, paid, development or content-generator team that didn't really exist ten years ago.

We don't really aim to be that or compete with that, but I do recognise that I'm (in the grand scheme of the internet) becoming an older web admin with a community model that's very much out of the meta. I'm interested in modernising and growing things without losing our core ideas and principles. I'm extremely grateful for whenever someone comes along who shares those values and culture. We've got a nice shitposty community, but we also make some unironically cool and high quality things that hopefully gives people a better time, gives people some fun stuff to do and more reasons to hang out together.

Since Aav has been here helping out with all of that, it's about time we recognise those contributions and give some greater access and tools for carrying on with that in the future. So please join me in acknowledging and welcoming Global Moderator Aav.

[Demonstrations]

Dot 3.7: Backup Plan

Demonstrations

    assets   

    delegates   

Sometimes I wonder when it is that I'm supposed to publish a feature update and not just keep coding, and I think the answer is whenever the code I have is so different from what's on the server that my brain goes AAARHGHAGHG. That's why this update is limited to just increasing the version number and accomplishing nothing else along the way. AAARHGHAGHG!

Oh also, it adds two new commands and improves many others. So, I guess I can spend a quick second talking about that too...

• Probably the most notable enhancement for this update is the welcome command, where a long-standing feature request has been to add the option to set a role to ping on a new member's arrival. This "welcome squad" function has now been added. Inside the welcome command, there are two new buttons. One will let you set a role to ping, and one will remove it if no longer desired.
  
  Pressing the ping button will generate a pop-up modal where you can type either the name or the ID of the role you'd like to assign, and if Dot is able to locate that role, it will ping in the welcome message next to the ping of the new member whenever someone new arrives.
  

• Next up on the improvements list is the avatar and display commands, which are being "improved" by being removed entirely. It doesn't make sense for me to have multiple commands with vaguely similar functions taking up space in an operator's brain when we could be publishing fewer, higher-quality commands. To that end, the ability to pull your global or server-specific avatar is being added to the info command, as button options.
  
  Use the info command and if the target member has an avatar, a button to post it as an embedded attachment will be there, operating as the avatar command previously would. If they have a server-specific avatar, a button will be there for that image as well. For operators who will be unaware of this update post, "avatar" and "display" are new aliases of this command.

• The tart command has also been upgraded. I had thought that publishing Tart.CalRef would cause most people to stop using Dot's command and start using the web site, but this was not the case and tart remains religiously used, still. So, I have taken the time to go through the output and now the improvements that Tart.CalRef made over Dot's command have come home, with better formatting, data handling, and delegate highlighting (when applicable).
  

• Within the Refuge discord server, you can now use RRS to cite specific statutes of Refugia's law, if you know them. You can also continue using the command by itself to just get a link to the Revised Statutes when you need them in a flash.
  

• Finally, the version command now reports an uptime per cent over the last 30 days, the number of commands used and what the most-used command has been over the same time. Additionally, you can get a history graph of the number of servers Dot is in, and what the total number of members seen are.
  

Observant operators may note that Dot has crossed the threshold of 75 servers, and Discord has requested me to verify Dot. It is not immediately clear when or if verification will be necessary, as many of Dot's popular functions rely on permissions, such as message content, which Discord has typically been unwilling to grant. Since my concern is that people not have their commands or functionality yoinked out from under them, verification poses more risk than benefits to me at this time. I will let you know if anything changes on that front.

Until then, I am pleased to relay the following new features:

Pack Up Your Things

Something that I tend to neurotically do over the course of [all the time] is to make backups and backups of backups to ensure that we never have a massive wave of data loss where something dies and takes half of our cultural touchstones with it. Graphics on Discord have been concerning me with this for quite a while. It's the same reason that Dot posts target member's avatar as an attachment instead of just a link, info does the same with banners, why roster does the same with role icons, and so on.

Although Discord has made it easier to copy a server for backup or re-launch, these "template" settings extend only to channels, roles, and permissions. However, there is no easy way to save your server's graphics, except for emotes, without help. And even emotes are time-consuming to save. So, to make admins' life easier, there's now a command called assets. It provides that help by giving operators with the "Manage Server" permission the ability to download all of their servers' graphical assets into one convenient zip file to dump into a new server, or just to save for future projects.

The time the command takes to complete will be proportional to the volume of content that needs to be saved. The zip file will be posted to the channel you call the command in. If the message that posts is destroyed, there are no additional backups, as archive zip files are not retained on CalRef servers. The command has a one-hour cooldown.

If you have the "Manage Server" or "Administrator" permission, all you need to do is use /assets or I cast assets to activate.


Seize All Delegacies

Fulfilling another long-standing request, the delegates command has been added. This command generates a leaderboard of regions on NationStates, ranked by their delegate's voting power. You can traverse the leaderboard by using the arrow keys under the output. The pages are limited to Discord's 2000 character limit, but that turns out to be about the height of my screen and I presume everyone else's will universally be the same forever.

Still, this does mean that there are 50ish pages of delegates. If you're trying to find where your region stacks up, but think it's somewhere in the middle, then you'll be pleased to know that instead of clicking through 20 pages of buttons, the region command now tells you a what a target region's delegate rank is (if they have one).

Delegates, additionally, has a button to get the entire list of delegates into a single text file, separated by commas, and broken into lines of eight. This is built for manual World Assembly campaigning, which is something that I, myself, have used with the timer command to send out campaign telegrams at max speed. So, I'd definitely recommend that combination if you'd like to get a proposal to quorum but don't want to hand NationStates any money.

The final note that I'll make with this command is that it's highly likely that it will be the last NationStates command that gets added to Dot. The existing eighteen commands will continue to get updates and improvements if there are any that come up or need to be done. However, Refuge staff have found that the site brings us more trouble than its worth now and I, myself, have found it difficult to stay motivated and creative in NationStates' caustic and problematic environment.

I will continue developing Dot for as long as I am able, but the nature of that development from this point forward will be to the benefit of things that are fun and build community activity. Rebuilding functions for Dot's economy, adding games, and other things that inspired me in the beginning will be my focus once again. I am excited to share those updates when they become available.



Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• Fixed an issue in autopins where an error message would never appear if a channel's pins were full
• Eyebeast report colours are slightly easier to differentiate
• Fixed an issue in eyebeast where actors for deleted posts may have been misattributed
• Fixed a bug in eyebeast where some users would not generate reports
• Fixed a timezone issue with fortune's resets
• Fixed a bug in error reports where the console error log was sent to the user's copy instead of their own message
• Fixed a text issue in hail where admins were implied to be unauthorised to run the command
• Added recognition for the active developer badge in info
• Made some improvements to nation to try to deal with error-riddled responses from NationStates' API
• Fixed recruit still being set to "on" after deactivating when NationStates' API dies
• New drop down menus for recruiter
• Fixed truesight not being able to handle dispatches that don't or no longer exist

Report all errors to the local authority.

CalRef II: Unsacred Water, Otherwise Known as "Tap"
CalRef II: We he feels his toes in his noes and the no-good priest, oh! How does he do it y'all?
CalRef II: The Harold of Andraste, The Rupert of Jesus, The Andy Sixx of Bethlehem
CalRef II: We've Patched All The Crashes by Invoking a Plain White Shirt in The Error Handler
CalRef II: Call de Stomes 🌪
CalRef II: It's Such a Shame They Called Her Seven of Nine Instead of Two by Four
CalRef II: If I Could Fall Into The Sky, Do You Think The Maker Would Have Products to Buy? - Dwarves
StarCraft II: Southerners, Spider Monkeys, and Italians
CalRef II: Moraine with Flailing Arms at a Car Dealership

Object Permanence

Militant

HumanSanity: 81
Emily: 67
Luca: 57
Argo: 30
Aav: 14
Kal: 14
Wasc: 10
FLP: 7
Ziz: 5
Dyll: 5
Fox: 4
Zuk: 2
Sueloc: 1
Istillian: 1
Catherine: 1

Something I'm coming to understand as I fill this in again is that some years had lots and lots of gaming and other years were pretty much a wash with whatever was going on at the time, or had only limited things. Very strange, given how long a whole year is.

1998 - Freddi Fish Maze Madness / Frogger PC
1999 - Centipede PC / Castle of the Winds
2000 - Bubble Bobble / Super Mario (NES)
2001 - Age of Empires II
2002 - Age of Empires II
2003 - Age of Mythology
2004 - Age of Mythology
2005 - Geneforge 1-3 / RuneScape
2006 - Diablo II / Geneforge 4 / StarCraft
2007 - Diablo II / Warcraft / Dungeon Lords
2008 - World of Warcraft
2009 - Command and Conquer: Generals / Dungeon Siege II
2010 - Dawn of War:DC / Geneforge 1&2 again so my dad could see it this time.
2011 - Fable III / The Halo series chronologically from Halo Wars to Halo 3. Since my dad wanted to see that, too.
2012 - Civilization IV & V
2013 - PlanetSide II / RIFT / Dwarf Fortress
2014 - Warframe / RimWorld
2015 - Warframe / TrackMania
2016 - Cities Skylines / Overwatch
2017 - Overwatch
2018 - Divinity Original Sin II / Crusader Kings II
2019 - Warframe / Crusader Kings II
2020 - Dungeon of the Endless / RimWorld
2021 - Warframe / Dragon Age: Inquisition
2022 - Dreamscaper

Paiv missed the rule that says you have to answer and then ask a new question, so I will ask a new one.

Name five uses for aluminum foil.

Once upon a star supernova, twenty six legendary cards descended from our tall card tower. Hooray!
Our newfound love Testlandia, wore splendid magenta fursuit, specifically commissioned to contain BEES! It buzzed through rainbow, over walls yonder, and into the sky. At midnight, Gerald Ford erupted from his volcanic lair, overflowing with meritorious service. Both chambers reloaded their legislative shotguns while removing glistering shirts, heated by lava undershirts. Ford devoured the 535 imperial guards, while copper prices skyrocketed, and legislation stalled.

Meanwhile, the legendary crocodile, Crocodile Irwin, initiated CPR for the legislature of New Hartoria. Mercifully, HS wrote textwalls of nonsense which follows:
"Spinning crickets mercifully inundate Equestria"

Obviously, this sucked. Mercifully, Andraste (Jesus Ronaldo) smote tobacco from a Tevinter corpse. Aromatic! It smelled. Unclear directions confounded the manufacturing executives, who decided there was no better fate than death. Opportunistically, they provided Andraste more timeshares filled 37% of the time by Tevinter, but why? For this, the ultimate price of three dollars and forty seven cents must be paid.

Dissenting Justice reminds us of prison. Thanks Justice! Very cool! Not until

Uh well he feels his toes in his nose and the no good beat, oh. How does he do it, y'all?

I don't know. I'm just playing my self, y'all. I can't see his show.

Luca

HumanSanity: 81
Emily: 66
Luca: 56
Argo: 30
Aav: 14
Kal: 11
Wasc: 10
FLP: 7
Ziz: 5
Dyll: 5
Fox: 4
Zuk: 2
Sueloc: 1
Istillian: 1

Cat

Once upon a star supernova, twenty six legendary cards descended from our tall card tower. Hooray!
Our newfound love Testlandia, wore splendid magenta fursuit, specifically commissioned to contain BEES! It buzzed through rainbow, over walls yonder, and into the sky. At midnight, Gerald Ford erupted from his volcanic lair, overflowing with meritorious service. Both chambers reloaded their legislative shotguns while removing glistering shirts, heated by lava undershirts. Ford devoured the 535 imperial guards, while copper prices skyrocketed, and legislation stalled.

Meanwhile, the legendary crocodile, Crocodile Irwin, initiated CPR for the legislature of New Hartoria. Mercifully, HS wrote textwalls of nonsense which follows:
"Spinning crickets mercifully inundate Equestria"

Obviously, this sucked. Mercifully, Andraste (Jesus Ronaldo) smote tobacco from a Tevinter corpse. Aromatic! It smelled. Unclear directions confounded the manufacturing executives, who decided there was no better fate than death. Opportunistically, they provided Andraste more timeshares filled 37% of the time by Tevinter, but why? For this, the ultimate price of three dollars and forty seven cents must be paid.

Dissenting Justice reminds us of prison. Thanks Justice! Very cool!

Once upon a star supernova, twenty six legendary cards descended from our tall card tower. Hooray!
Our newfound love Testlandia, wore splendid magenta fursuit, specifically commissioned to contain BEES! It buzzed through rainbow, over walls yonder, and into the sky. At midnight, Gerald Ford erupted from his volcanic lair, overflowing with meritorious service. Both chambers reloaded their legislative shotguns while removing glistering shirts, heated by lava undershirts. Ford devoured the 535 imperial guards, while copper prices skyrocketed, and legislation stalled.

Meanwhile, the legendary crocodile, Crocodile Irwin, initiated CPR for the legislature of New Hartoria. Mercifully, HS wrote textwalls of nonsense which follows:
"Spinning crickets mercifully inundate Equestria"

Obviously, this sucked. Mercifully, Andraste (Jesus Ronaldo) smote tobacco from a Tevinter corpse. Aromatic! It smelled. Unclear directions confounded the manufacturing executives, who decided there was no better fate than death. Opportunistically, they provided Andraste more timeshares filled 37% of the time by Tevinter, but why? For this, the ultimate price of three dollars and forty seven cents must be paid.

Dissenting Justice reminds us of prison. Thanks Justice!

Once upon a star supernova, twenty six legendary cards descended from our tall card tower. Hooray!
Our newfound love Testlandia, wore splendid magenta fursuit, specifically commissioned to contain BEES! It buzzed through rainbow, over walls yonder, and into the sky. At midnight, Gerald Ford erupted from his volcanic lair, overflowing with meritorious service. Both chambers reloaded their legislative shotguns while removing glistering shirts, heated by lava undershirts. Ford devoured the 535 imperial guards, while copper prices skyrocketed, and legislation stalled.

Meanwhile, the legendary crocodile, Crocodile Irwin, initiated CPR for the legislature of New Hartoria. Mercifully, HS wrote textwalls of nonsense which follows:
"Spinning crickets mercifully inundate Equestria"

Obviously, this sucked. Mercifully, Andraste (Jesus Ronaldo) smote tobacco from a Tevinter corpse. Aromatic! It smelled. Unclear directions confounded the manufacturing executives, who decided there was no better fate than death. Opportunistically, they provided Andraste more timeshares filled 37% of the time by Tevinter, but why? For this, the ultimate price of three dollars and forty seven cents must be paid.

Dissenting Justice reminds us of prison

Once upon a star supernova, twenty six legendary cards descended from our tall card tower. Hooray!
Our newfound love Testlandia, wore splendid magenta fursuit, specifically commissioned to contain BEES! It buzzed through rainbow, over walls yonder, and into the sky. At midnight, Gerald Ford erupted from his volcanic lair, overflowing with meritorious service. Both chambers reloaded their legislative shotguns while removing glistering shirts, heated by lava undershirts. Ford devoured the 535 imperial guards, while copper prices skyrocketed, and legislation stalled.

Meanwhile, the legendary crocodile, Crocodile Irwin, initiated CPR for the legislature of New Hartoria. Mercifully, HS wrote textwalls of nonsense which follows:
"Spinning crickets mercifully inundate Equestria"

Obviously, this sucked. Mercifully, Andraste (Jesus Ronaldo) smote tobacco from a Tevinter corpse. Aromatic! It smelled. Unclear directions confounded the manufacturing executives, who decided there was no better fate than death. Opportunistically, they provided Andraste more timeshares filled 37% of the time by Tevinter, but why? For this, the ultimate price of three dollars and forty seven cents must be paid.

Dissenting Justice reminds us