unforum

[yanka]

 BEGINNERS LOOK HERE: PHASE 2

[yanka]

Please read this before posting on the forums.

Useful Resources

Before posting, your first port of call should be the resources already listed here:

• Forum Search – usually, a simple search on your main keywords will suffice; however, sometimes you will need to perform more than one search on varying keywords to answer your inquiry. Keep in mind that a question like "when has 'this' been discovered?" can usually be answered by a search on "this" – the earliest-dated link will almost always end up being the post relating the discovery of "this." Also, please keep in mind that searching should not be limited exclusively to questions – you should utilize it any time that you are not sure that your idea is already being/has been addressed. If you are looking for a specific update remember you can search by topic title, message only or in both.
  
• The Wiki – use it any time you are looking for something specific (for example: you want to see everything that is known about a character, or which things have been tried to solve a particular puzzle, etc.)
  
• The Primer / Quickstart Guide – if you have just discovered the game, this is the place to read "the story so far". If you are looking for a condensed version of updates on any particular day(s), check the Updates section. For details of any particular update, check the mod blog.
  
• People in chat (who will usually be happy to help if asked nicely). If you are unfamiliar with IRC, please refer to this thread

General Posting Guidelines

The main reason topics balloon up into hundreds of posts is that people have not used the resources above. It is also very important that you read through the topic you are about to reply to.

Repeated information is annoying for everyone and makes it much harder to use the forums, so although you may spend 10 minutes to read through a few pages, people will respect you more and you will help keep the whole forum a lot more organised.

The same goes for agreement posts. If you are just posting an agreement to someone's idea without including anything additional, then perhaps you could hold off replying until you come up with your own speculation or can add something to the thread. If you do really want to congratulate/agree with someone on an idea or post, feel free to PM them through the board.

Please give some consideration to the placement of your post. Chances are that the appropriate thread for your post already exists – just browse the boards' thread titles. Posting your speculation as a new thread should usually be reserved for topics that have not been discussed, are general enough to allow different angles of view to be taken on them within that thread, and are backed up by enough evidence to be distinguished from "trivia".

Please try to keep threads on topic. Conversely, if you see a post in a thread where it does not belong, please don't hesitate quoting it in an appropriate thread and replying to it there, or at least pointing an off-topic poster in the right direction! If you're correcting someone on posting "old" news, or commenting in the wrong place, please post a link to the right thread. This will make the discussion much more enjoyable, and the game much more easy to follow.

We aren't grammar fascists and a misplaced apostrophe won't result in summary execution. However, typing proper English makes it easier for others to follow what you're saying, so avoid using "2" instead of "too" / "bcoz" instead of "because" / "OMGWTFHAXXORZ" instead of "Wow, it looks like a hacker has struck!" / similar abbreviations. Ta!

It should go without saying, but we expect your mother to have taught you good manners. Trolling won't be tolerated.

Thread/Post titles (or what should I title my post?)

The best title is something that is descriptive and informative. A title like "Look what I found..." doesn't indicate what the subject of the thread is going to be. A title like "[UPDATE] New in-game site - www.example.com" is much better.

Forum Types (or where do I put my post?)

There are several sub-forums to post in, use the below to choose the correct one:

General/Updates - Discuss general game information and site/game updates. Note: if a puzzle is included in a site update, further discussion of the puzzle should take place in the Puzzle forum.

Questions/Meta – In this forum you can ask questions which you can't find the answers to after searching or reading through the various resources. Also any discussion of the game mechanics, what you think of how everything is running or anything else not related to the game content itself should go here.

Quick Reference - Catalog information about sites, characters, and events here. This forum is for reference, not discussion/speculation.

Puzzles - Catalog puzzles and their solutions here. All puzzle discussion should be here.

Why shouldn't I just post whatever I want on the first thread I see? (or why do I keep getting told I'm posting in the wrong place?)

The key to being an effective team is to stay organized. No one wants to waste their time on a puzzle that has already been solved in another thread. Nor does anyone want to read about the same update 23 times in different threads. By keeping the discussions focused we can be a more effective team and we can have more fun!

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Topic Headers

LABELS - Your subject MUST begin with a label, specifying the category in which it is being posted. The label should be square-bracketed so that it can be easily found in search and if your topic is an update remember to include a date in the format DDth Month to avoid international differences. (eg. [UPDATE] New email from Sente – 1st January)

RELEVANCE - Your post should tell us something we may not have thought of or realized before.

CLARITY - If your post is ill-written or hard to understand, we will ask you to change it.

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Topic Labels

NEW - New in-game website, phone number, or e-mail from the game.

UPDATE - Use this when an in-game web site, voicemail number or e-mail autoresponder has changed its content. (DO NOT POST OLD NEWS USING "NEW" OR "UPDATE"!!!)

SPEC - Speculation. You think your post might be right, and some evidence supports your view, but the point is not conclusive.

OFFTOPIC or OT - This post is totally unrelated to the game. Posts like this can actually go elsewhere, because of the diverse sections of Unforums.

TRIVIA - Facts about the game which COULD be relevant, but which, as far as you can tell, probably aren't.

INFO – When posting information relevant to the game.

HUMOUR - A post which is teh funny.

EMAIL - An email coming from an in-game source.

INTERACTION – Until an interaction forum is made if needed, all character interaction should be labeled with this.

PUZZLE - A post about game-related puzzles, passwords, credit numbers, voicemail codes, etc. If the answer has been found, the PUZZLE label should be changed to SOLVED.

SOURCE - Analysis of the HTML source code underlying game-related pages.

EVENT - For any real world events/meetings which happen.

META - Discussions of what the moderators are doing wrong, new labels we should use, how people ought to play the game, or about the Unforums organization generally.

TROUT - The polite response to a redundant or factually false post. The word "trout" is a term of respect. Read about it here. Although meant as a friendly term, trout can be overused. If you are going to trout someone, always remember to provide a link to where the information has already been posted or you are not helping the original poster. If someone has already trouted a post, there's no need to do it again - once is enough.

You should use multiple labels, when appropriate. For example, speculation as to how to solve a login puzzle should go into [SPEC][PUZZLE]. (Of course, it's unlikely that any such discussion is relevant any longer, but that's how you'd label it under the current system.)

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Subjectivity and Censorship

Yes, the final guideline, "Moderator's preference," is subjective. Maybe we ARE refusing to post your stuff just because we have a personal grudge against you. We have the full right to do so, which we will try to wield with responsibility and tact. Sometimes we will fail. When we do, you should flame us *mercilessly*.

(edited posting guidelines to explain UF's attitude towards "lol txt sp33k" - GuyP)

[GuyP]

Why We Post Updates, Share Answers And Work Together
Just to clear up any confusion: people are welcome to play Perplex City however they like, by posting to the boards, or only reading them, or following the story but trying to solve the puzzles themselves, or ignoring us utterly (as we rightly deserve.) This post is about the active, posting community at UF, and our open philosophy towards sharing information.

Recently, some people have come to question our way of working. We post everything we find, share all our theories and solve puzzles (whisper it) in public. That's probably illegal in several states, right? And worse... anyone can become a leaderboard champion? It's troubling, I know, and this post will hopefully address some of these concerns.

Unfiction has a long tradition of collaborating and co-operating when we play games such as Perplex City (from herein: ARGs.) It's a strategy that originated with the Cloudmakers, the first UF-like community, that originated to play The Beast - widely acknowledged as the first ARG. (At least three of the team behind PXC are ex-Cloudmakers.)

They found that working together on the puzzles had a number of benefits.

Making progress was easier - they were more efficient working together than seperately. This might be a "well, duh" point. But for a lot of people, progress itself is more important than the personal satisfaction of making solves. This is especially true for those of us that are more excited by the medium (what will they try next?) and story (will Kurt and Violet ever make babies?) than the puzzles. We can draw parallels between ARG players and groups that try and solve real-world puzzles: archeologists, detectives, scientists and so on. They don't usually hold out for personal glory, because they're more interested in The Answer itself.

Thanks to this dynamic, it made the game a lot more accessible, too - very few people would have been able to follow the updates and solve all the puzzles by themselves. Even when players didn't personally contribute to solves, they could appreciate the complexity of the puzzles, and the elegance with which solutions were found. Following in the footsteps of the hardcore Cloudmakers allowed many more people to enjoy the game.

Finally, the players found that exploring this new world was simply more fun with other people alongside. Time and time again, players cite the community spirit of ARGs as one of their favourite elements.

The same lessons continue to ring true nearly five years later. Why, then, the controversy? Because Perplex City is one of the first ARGs to introduce competitive elements to the game. There's the leaderboard, which recognises the acheivement of players' at solving cards, and then there's the large cash reward for finding the Cube.

For the first time, then: an incentive to hide your classnotes.

But we haven't, and we won't.

The manner in which you play Perplex City is partly a matter of personal taste. Imagine there's ten people building a wall, and then an eleventh person building a wall on their own. It's perfectly understandable that this person would rather build their own, taking satisfaction in the knowledge that they've laid each and every brick. On the other hand, it's clearly ludicrous for the one person to notice the larger group and their larger wall, only to exclaim "they're cheating!" It makes sense, as we have more manpower - but in truth, we aren't necessarily bothered by the size of the wall. We simply enjoy the good company while we build it.

(You may insert your own "size doesn't matter" pun here.)

That said, the dynamic of the game has consistently encouraged (and often demanded) large-scale teamwork from its players. Long messages have been sent, letter-by-letter, to hundreds of different people. Puzzle trails have required people in New York to share clues with others in Birmingham, London, and so on. At times like this, our modus operandi has been essential to solving the mystery of Perplex City. We're proud of it.

There are some people, it's alleged, who use UF to quickly discover the answers to their cards. Then they grab their Perplex Points and snatch barely-earned Leaderboard Glory. To this percieved injustice, we say: "Whatever." It's understandable that this is a sore point for fiercely independent players chasing the top spot. It's also slightly odd behaviour. We don't defend it, but accept it as collateral damage. Sharing information also means new players can get up to speed using the forums and the wiki, and indeed there are far, far more people lurking and reading the boards than there are posting. Also, many of the active members of the forums avoid the card discussions precisely so they can attempt to solve the puzzles themselves.

The Cube is the ultimate example of this. There's been a lot of discussion about the reward money - how can one person walk away with £100,000 when finding it has been a team effort? The answer, of course, is "because they can." People have floated all sorts of ideas about how they might divvy up the money, and it's a wonderful suggestion (not to mention a nightmare in practical terms). Nonetheless, each of know that we'll probably end up with nada. And that's cool - we're playing because it's fun, remember?

At the end of the day, we celebrate the personal achievements that players make, but our goal is, more or less, knowledge at any cost. We'll share and share alike for as long as it reveals more about Perplex City and the mysteries within... and have a great time together along the way. We don't especially mind who finds the Cube. We'd just like to see it found.