DM: "Alright. Everyone else, please make up and write down two things about this player's backstory and let me know. Do not tell each other what you wrote. I'll choose which ones I'll use plus may throw in a couple myself" evil laugh

I was a child when I got Weird Al's autograph when he performed at an antique car show with the audience all sitting on grass. He was super nice.

I'm not interested in giving EA any more money or in their 2 hour long commercial. However, what I AM interested in is all creative talents who may create their own versions of what the Sims movie should be based on Sims 4 is actually like:

• No plot since it's up to you to think up the story in your head!
• Dining out for hours but the Sims can't sit down and actually eat a meal.
• Sims getting married when they've known each other for less than a day.
• A wedding with guests doing things like pushups or using their cellphones during the ceremony.
• A sim drops trash and now can't walk around it doing their 'hey you - help here - hand wave'.
• A crying baby needing food with two parents who desperately need to pee. The parents pass the baby back and forth, pee themselves, then one places the baby down on the floor in the puddle of urine.
• Famous Sims oddly appearing in every scene despite it not making sense for them to be there and oddities like wearing swimwear in snowy areas.

I break the spaghetti into 3 pieces before cooking it as then it's much easier to deal with. :)

I appreciate your response and I agree. And likewise nothing wrong with the dev making money and fans supporting that too. (I've seen complaints of some people who think all Lemmy apps should be free...and I feel that's very entitled demanding someone else's time and effort for free, but they too can just use free apps.)

Yeah I was going to try the app based on all they hype but I noped out based on the trackers and that you have to accept all those permissions regardless if you pay. A dev saying they won't use the data of paid users -- that isn't the kind of thing I would expect to be enforceable when legally you've already signed permissions for the data to be collected/used.

That's so dreamy that I created a feature request post linking to your comment. (I also did an @ you but not sure I did that right.)

@[email protected] (comment link) had mentioned server costs from hosting duplicated content which was a great point.

I will also add, that people's time is also a finite resource. And so we can all help by being respectful of the rules for each community (save moderators time) and additionally in communities where you are asking for help -- avoid being a Help Vampire.

I think this is an excellent point (re: server overhead) and one I hadn't considered. Thanks for sharing that.

I think it's natural to want the majority of posts to meet one's preferences but what one finds interesting/entertaining/etc. varies for each person.

I love diversity and choice and so I'm happy that each community can have their own individual rules/cultures and we can pick which communities we want to join. E.g., I wouldn't expect the same behaviour/rules/culture in a shit posting community compared to an arch linux community, but I'm glad both types of communities and content will exist.

We can collectively choose what kinds of unique cakes to bake and we can choose which cakes to eat too. :D

While I can appreciate wanting to help others feel good about posting, here are my concerns (and some solutions at the end to consider):

1. If most posts were upvoted blindly, it would make post ratings meaningless as well as the Hot feature. I prefer "good" posts to rise to the top.

2. If we upvote low quality/low effort posts, then that is what we are encouraging users to produce.

3. Low quality posts especially from Help Vampires can be a huge drain on the community and moderators. E.g., No one wants to see the same question asked every few posts.

4. New users may at first be drawn to seeing the number of posts...but if the first x number of posts are all garbage, we may lose potential users.

Personally, I will not upvote posts just to make new people more confident. However, here are some alternative solutions:

1. People can learn to feel comfortable posting in certain communities that are either smaller or where quality is less expected. E.g., if the future Arch Linux community is like their forum, they are very strict and you'll get worse than a down vote if you don't follow the guidelines in How To Ask Questions The Smart Way and had first RTFM (read the manual) and STFW (searched the web) and have put in great effort and be truly stuck before posting.

2. Before downvoting, we could look at the user's profile and some of their posts and if they seem very new, we could cut them some slack and/or send them a PM instead of downvoting.

Agreed. I looking forward to playing Paralives and Life By You. And my first thought/hope when EA implemented round walls in Sims 4, was that EA was feeling pressure from Paralives already having round walls. Could have been coincidence of course, but I can still hope. :D