Anti-mafia whining on G-D

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
So, yet again, a highly vocal KoL player with way too much time on their hands has decided to attack KoLmafia and KoLmafia users, over on G-D. Apparently, he's decided that using KoLmafia is either "cheating", somehow, because it gives people advantages he doesn't have, or he thinks they "aren't playing the game" because they are "having a program play for them", or, well, any number of similar crappy viewpoints.

Aside from my inability to post over there, I'm really not interested in arguing with the Hard of Thinking, but others have stepped in. Futilely, I am sure, but if they enjoy it, why not?

I just saw a gem of a post from Half a tin of Grizzly on that thread which sums it up perfectly, in my opinion. He wrote (edited slightly):

Half a tin of Grizzly said:
Tawt Strat said:
Isn't the usual argument that's trotted out to justify it that it's so you don't have to do stuff that you have already done hundreds of times and are completely bored with?
I don't understand where you anti-Mafia types come up with the notion that people who use Mafia are under some obligation to justify that decision to you. That implication mystifies me. I generally use Mafia because it's a convenient tool that improves my KoL experience and, try as I might, I can't think of a single reason why I should give a shit whether or not you approve.
I laughed and applauded. Bingo. I then sent him MY attitude, which is even more extreme:

I write KoLmafia to improve my KoL experience and that of others who use it. Since it takes my precious freely given time to add features to it, projects I choose to do to improve it primarily aim towards improving MY experience, but, we have a good community of users, and I often willing spend my precious freely given time to fix their bugs and add features that make their experience better. However, I do not give a shit about whether any particular player chooses to use or chooses to not use the program. If someone likes it and choose to use it and, best of all, chooses to join the community at kolmafia.us, great! If someone chooses to not use it, I could not care less. I am completely uninterested in trying to convince them to use it. I am completely uninterested in hearing why they don't use it. I am completely uninterested in spending my precious freely given time to change it in the hopes that they might use it.
You guys are great. I am glad that KoLmafia works for you. I am happy to help keep it working for you.

Thank you.
 

roippi

Developer
The particular player's opposition to use of tools not provided by the native interface is a little fanatical, to be honest. He keeps repeating how unfair it is that players have certain advantages that he'll never have, without mentioning why exactly he'll never have them. Nothing precludes him from using those tools. Fortunately, the community is vastly more level-headed than Tawt. There are plenty of people who don't use mafia for whatever reason (and that's fine), but very few whine about its "unfairness."
 

Bale

Minion
You guys are great. I am glad that KoLmafia works for you. I am happy to help keep it working for you.

Thank you.

Well, dang. Thank you. I'm glad that you enjoy writing KoLmafia or else I and many others might have gotten bored with the more repetitive or troublesome parts of this game and drifted away.

I noticed Tawt's ridiculous attitude in AoB, its skills, and the seasonal leaderboard. I'll have to give "To click or not to click" a read just for humor value.
 

Theraze

Active member
Thank you for all the time you spend on making our lives better, Veracity. :) We really do appreciate you, even if some nutso people on G-D whose time is too "valuable" to spend on AoB consider mafia to be cheating. I mean seriously... if you don't like a challenge path, don't do it. And move on. :) Anyways, we think you're pretty nifty.
 

Bale

Minion
The weird thing about Tawt is that he complains about Mafia giving an unfair advantage to people who use it. This troubles him because he feels that he cannot compete with those who use it. Ummm.... If he thinks it is really all that and the box of cake, then why the frell does he choose to not use it!? I mean... he's purposefully choosing to not use a program that he believes conveys a large advantage, right?

Never mind. I don't really expect a sane answer about the behavior of an insane person. Especially not in the G-D forum. After all, Veracity was stealth banned, but people like Tawt are encourage to post their idiocy in G-D.
 

StDoodle

Minion
Ok, this is my guess, 'cause I couldn't figure out a way to come out and ask that was polite, but I get the impression Tawt is severely visually impaired; I know he uses a screen reader. I have no experience with such things, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that KoLmafia is completely unusable with such a device. Perhaps this is a factor.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Ok, this is my guess, 'cause I couldn't figure out a way to come out and ask that was polite, but I get the impression Tawt is severely visually impaired; I know he uses a screen reader.
I saw that too. It does not explain his attitude that people who use KoLmafia are "cheating", nor that he is, somehow, morally superior to those who use it. But, yeah - I have some sympathy for physical inability to use the tools available to others.

I have no experience with such things, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that KoLmafia is completely unusable with such a device.
Interestingly, I recently got a proposal to work with some people to make KoLmafia/KoL easier to use with screen readers. I have sympathy, but no time whatsoever to learn this completely new (to me) technology and take on such a project. I would love it if other dev(s) were able to take on something like that.

By the way - Tawt applied to my clan, was politely rejected, and then appeared in YOUR clan. He's yours. ;)
 

Bale

Minion
Oh no. He's in our clan?! Well, HCN has a policy of accepting anyone who has ever done a hardcore ascension. Joy.

At least he has a good reason for not using mafia despite thinking it provides an advantage.
 

roippi

Developer
You know, I'd have a whole lot of sympathy (empathy?) for him if he came onto these forums and requested that we help him out to make the program more accessible to screen readers. I think that such an undertaking would be monumental, but I'd 100% understand and sympathize with his position, and wish him all the best. I'd even be glad to help code up something if anyone spearheaded such an effort.

I.. can't really do much with the whining and I'm-a-victim attitude. That may be completely callous, but yeah.
 

holatuwol

Developer
You know, I'd have a whole lot of sympathy (empathy?) for him if he came onto these forums and requested that we help him out to make the program more accessible to screen readers.
At one point, I wanted to torch the main UI and make everything equivalent to custom relay override paths accessible through the browser. That'd make the notion of a 'mobile' KoLmafia theoretically possible for people who have their computer on but only want to run CLI commands and chat while they're on their tablet from another room, since you could have your tablet access http://192.168.x.x on your local network and have access to a complete KoLmafia web-driven interface.

The interesting thing about doing this is that we don't have to worry about Java's limited support for screen reading devices. You get to work with web standards instead, which are much, much further along in the notions of accessibility. And, if we got really creative, we could even have swipe interfaces that would give the KoL devs some interesting ideas on how to make m.kingdomofloathing.com (if that ever comes to pass).
 

Bale

Minion
At one point, I wanted to torch the main UI and make everything equivalent to custom relay override paths accessible through the browser.

That is one thing I actually like about kolproxy. It would be very nice to do everything in the relay browser without ever having to switch windows.

Sounds like a major undertaking though.

What is m.kingdomofloathing.com?
 

holatuwol

Developer
Sounds like a major undertaking though.
Yep. We'd probably have to put a bunch of tooling in place to achieve it because it needs to be really easy to build things in HTML with some scripting in the middle, which is the interesting part. I'm leaning towards something that translates some HTML-like input file into an ASH relay script, but building a fancy JSON API on top of KoLmafia and doing it dynamically in Javascript might be easier.


What is m.kingdomofloathing.com?
I read on the KoL forums something about a mobile site in the works, in the iOS app thread (I think). Nearly every mobile site out there starts with an 'm.'
 
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zarqon

Well-known member
This thread reinforces my belief in mafia and its developers. Thank you all for being an excellent online community, and thank you devs for making this wonderful tool and having square heads on your shoulders (idiomatically speaking). I have joined and subsequently left other communities where personal arguments and negativity became the primary modus operandi. Also, this sentence reinforced my belief in one dev in particular:

If someone chooses to not use it, I could not care less.

Thank you for not saying "could care less". This actually made me cheer. :) Our devs not only make a fabulously useful tool, they use semantically correct idioms even when semantically incorrect forms are becoming prevalent! Yeah!

PROUD TO BE MAFIAN.
 
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matt.chugg

Moderator
Before I hijack the thread a teenybit, Veracity, Hola and other devs, I'm sure i've thanked you before, but this seems like a good occasion to reinforce that, I for one appreciate the amount of precious free time that goes into kolmafia development, I think that anyone who feels "kolmafia" is cheating, or gives an unfair advantage is wrong. KoLmafia for me is about simplifying repetitive tasks, I always play new content, and a large part of the old content in the relay browser. I eat and drink from the native interface, and I like thinkgs like clover protection, I fail to see how this could be cheating in any way!

My words never come out onto these threads as they start out in my head, but I think you get the idea, you are appreciated over here, a lot!


Yep. We'd probably have to put a bunch of tooling in place to achieve it because it needs to be really easy to build things in HTML with some scripting in the middle, which is the interesting part. I'm leaning towards something that translates some HTML-like input file into an ASH relay script, but building a fancy JSON API on top of KoLmafia and doing it dynamically in Javascript might be easier.



I read on the KoL forums something about a mobile site in the works, in the iOS app thread (I think). Nearly every mobile site out there starts with an 'm.'

my company specialises in mobile web development, and i've been toying with the idea of a mobile ready relay override, one of the more interesting ideas in mobile web development in recent months is the use of responsive layouts, I think a large part of making kol mobile could be done in css with @media queries, (although obviously some php device detection would also be necesay)

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/projects/320andup/

a great example of a fully responsice weblayout : http://ribot.co.uk/
 
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StDoodle

Minion
First, I want to second zarqon's "+1 grammerz"* sentiment as well as matt's "once again, thanks to the devs" sentiment.

Second, if the devs decide to move forward on the mobile-optimization idea, and decide at some point to test how various parts work on screen readers, I would suggest contacting Tawt and asking if he'd help. For what it's worth, he's been nothing but pleasant in /clan, and such a project might kill two birds with one stone: it could both help the visually impaired community and perhaps change the opinion of one of G-D & /hardcore's most notorious anti-mafia players. If such a proposal were considered, I'd be happy to serve as an intermediary.

* Sorry. :p
 

zarqon

Well-known member
Eh, I was wrong anyway -- both are grammatically correct; I meant "semantically correct." Grrr.

Editing the post ftw!
 

holatuwol

Developer
Second, if the devs decide to move forward on the mobile-optimization idea, and decide at some point to test how various parts work on screen readers, I would suggest contacting Tawt and asking if he'd help.
Yeah, once we start pushing a few things to the relay browser (my first target will be login, because that's the first thing you interact with), we can reach out and see if the relay browser itself is usable. I don't think it'd be worthwhile until at least that part works.
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
Interesting article here. Basically trolls gotta troll. I confess that I have neither the thick skin nor the patience to read the complaints directly but as described here it seems to me that someone has a control agenda mixed with entitlement issues. How does my use of KoLmafia impact his enjoyment of the game? If he feels it confers some kind of in game advantage to users then perhaps he would be better off lobbying for an asterisk or a "scarlet K" to appear on leaderboards if the player uses KoLmafia.

If this is really just sour grapes because KoLmafia is not accessible to the visually impaired then there are certainly much better ways to garner interest and sympathy that would lead to improvements in that area.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
I would suggest contacting Tawt and asking if he'd help.
I'm sorry to say that Tawt's continued postings are making it harder and harder for me to even think about "contacting" him. They are making me want to stay farther and farther away from him, rather than drawing his attention towards me.
 
semantically correct idioms even when semantically incorrect forms are becoming prevalent

Idiom (n): A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., raining cats and dogs).

I willingly say "could care less" because, as you admit, it is an idiom. If it made sense semantically, it wouldn't be an idiom.
 
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