What I meant is that though I for one would never engage in this kind of discussion with people I know to be in complete disagreement with no hope of ever changing their mind (or them changing mine), if you are really not bothered by doing so (and you detailed indeed your reasons in your latest post, they make sense from your point of view even though they don't appeal to me, in the sense that I don't care much about most video games and forgot Gamergate was even still a thing, assuming it ever was) you might as well have gone all the way and brought up the subject right in the OP. These are superficial considerations really and relate more to your kind of posting and thus have little to do with the suggestion unless you'd be willing to edit the OP accordingly - feel free to hit me up by PM if you wish to reply without cluttering up the thread.
As for why menopause specifically, I guess your reasons make sense, though it should really just apply to humans and not any [INTELLIGENT] creature because it really seems to be specific to humans (and orcas apparently for some reason). It could apply to dwarves maybe, if we consider them to be human-like enough to be able relate to them, but then they do live until 250 or something, so any specific menopause age would be kinda hard to justify. Or maybe dwarven biology is just special and female dwarves are always fertile (for instance they don't seem to have any kind of cooldown period between the birth of a baby and their ability to be impregnated, unlike humans), who knows.
In any case, since Toady closely follows all heated arguments in case they get out of hand, at least you can be sure he read your suggestion and all the reasons you put forward, so this thread wasn't made for nothing.
We assume that all the intelligent creatures are either closely related evolutionary speaking to humans or they have undergone similar evolutionary pressures arriving at the same conclusion. Not that I care whether it is done that way, I was merely pointing out that it could basically be done with no actual raw changes whatsoever so as to demonstrate the elemental simplicity of implementing the menopause idea. Equally they can go for the raw based approach of adding a manual fertility termination date into the raw files of specific creatures, either way it does not matter. The simplicity of it's implementation is the point here, it could be implemented in a more complex way and indeed it could be implemented as part of a general set of fertility modifiers for old age.
Yes Gamergate is very much still a thing, as shown by the amount of trouble they managed to cause Beamdog over the Siege of Dragonspear over a certain minor character Mizhena being transgender, something that you do not find out unless you ask her a rather odd question and a line of dialogue from a supporting character that was a pun on their avowed purpose. They did not do so mainly by political rhetorical arguments against the game, they did so by posting negative reviews in a systematic way, not all of them overtly mentioning the political motivations behind their negative reviews. Or were they just genuine negative reviews, the point is that by copying the genuine negative reviews you create more damage and blend into the crowd in a way that cannot simply be separated out.
Thing is that some of your members/reviewers bear their identity openly so everybody *knows* you are the negative review campaign but since nobody can sift the genuine reviews from the political motivated ones so as to prove that their game really is not just crap. So everybody falls into line, cutting or modifying content according to the wills of the mob
EDIT: Regarding your remarks on the influence of a vocal minority on the development of video games, you probably shouldn't worry because they don't apply to Dwarf Fortress. Tarn doesn't care about profit beyond his livelihood and financial security and he's been known not to budge on aspects he doesn't feel comfortable with regardless of how often they're requested (like working through the tedium of making a mouse-based UI or an external API) without any negative consequences for him so there's little pressure for him to give in to the political demands of a crowd assuming they ever rise up. Also, you have to keep in mind the set of donators is different from the set of bay12 posters which is different from the set of DF players. I have myself gotten a couple of friends who certainly don't fall into the aforementioned demographic into the game. They may or may not donate, but they won't ever post here (actually they probably don't know this place exists). My point is at the end of the day practically no one cares about the opinion of people on an internet forum because there's more to the game than them and they aren't likely to influence anyone or anything no matter how vocal they are, especially not the Adams brothers. And no one knows about Gamergate in real life.
It is not quite as simple as profit motive vs non-profit motive. People who create want people to appreciate their works and if the audience evidently wants something or evidently does not want something then this will influence a creator's work, even if they are in no way financially bound to do anything they will tend to be influenced in subtle way. The key difference as you correctly point out is that where there is no profit motive the creators have more freedom to defy the consumer base if they have strong convictions in a certain direction. I do not however get the impression that the devs have many strong convictions in any direction however, especially in a political or social sense.
Uh. It seems weird that I have to actually say it, but I'm not him, obviously. English isn't even my first language, in case you didn't figure it out. But I can see from the previous posts and the familiarity with which you people seem to speak about each other that there seems to be some kind of an internet feud on this forum in which I have no desire to take part or pick sides. If it helps you to think I don't really exist, by all means go ahead, it doesn't cost me anything. I'll just see myself out of this thread and go to sleep.
That is one way that the silencing works in practice. The conflict becomes overtly political and people bowl out because they do not like pointless political conflict except the mob's members do a lot, so the mob, while actually minority appears to be the majority opinion. As already mentioned once the mob owns the topic, it does not have to wear it's allegiances openly on it's sleeves as it does best if it can blend in with the demographic and appear to be representative of it.
So a tankie who hates any economical suggestion to the game that stirs it away half an inch from it becoming the communism simulator he envisions also fancies himself an internet crusader against what he ridiculously perceives as gamergate bullies monopolizing video game online discussion. I am shocked.
They are the internet crusaders not I, my thread is the target of the crusade since the thread mentioned issues that they do not like mentioning. They start babbling on about SJWs and then it is ridiculous to conclude that that which babbles like Gamergate is Gamergate? Since you are launching veiled personal attacks on me rather than contributing in any way to the thread, perhaps I should conclude that you are as well?
Genius. I have never until now realized the extent of the mistake the evil group of organized bigots who have the audacity of disagreeing with you have made in their awful ongoing quest of silencing opposition. In their foul attempt of homogenizing thought through fear I'm sure they have threatened you constantly with subtle implicance of physical retaliation (of which I have failed to notice so far but I'm sure it's there somewhere). But no, not only did they fail to silence you but have indeed only advertized your brilliant, dashing, insightful and even sometimes satirical counter-cultural commentary that undoubtedly left those idiot bullies seathing in impotent anger and impressed sensible bystanders.
These highly moral bystanders who have so far been hiding their true opinions in fear of being cruelly attacked by gamergate fanatics, content in lurking, silently nodding when exposed to your brave social commentary, are now slowly but surely feeling more confident and coming out; all thanks to you. And you manage to do it all virtually unafraid of the violent contrarians that would surely beat you up if they could, the disgusting savages that they are. Truly, a masteful chess move that could only come from an individual smart enough to be an author.
Checkmate, bigots!
And of course I, in my crude attempt of making fun of you with this post, am in fact only helping you spread your wisdom by bumping your thread one more time. That's because every single intelligent person who happen to lay their eyes upon your flawless logic can't possibly find your arguments contrived and your rethoric tedious, but can only immediately change their mind because your political ramblings are so perfect. Bay12 forums will soon be overrun by the revolutionary vanguard of logic and reason that is to come, catapulted by your valiant efforts and leadership. Foiled again!!!
It actually happens to them a lot, it is why their hate-figures such as Anita Sarkeesian managed to become so famous (and rich) despite not really saying anything new or original but just recycled gender studies dogma.
I concur. In fact if it didn't make me think of this thread I would have gave it a total miss. Of course that didn't stop you from yammering on about it, in fact the rest of it read like many of your posts. In your own words "asserting a non-problem and then setting out on a long scientific journey to solve the non-problem".
The only thing I found interesting and relevant about the article to this discussion was the fact that only us (that's humans not dorfs) and 2 kinds of whales go through menopause. So hey I learned something, and your original suggestion even is worthless because it would only apply to a minority of critters in the game. So maybe Toady knew that and the fact that it wasn't a development priority actually has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of sexism.
The rest of your rambling, well Ribs reply pretty much covers it.
The creatures that get menopause in real life (humans) are kind of more significant to the game than random critters. The problem with the concept however is that not all creatures menstruate in the way that humans do, a lot of creatures simply reabsorb their womb lining in a more elegant fashion and a lot of creatures obviously do not have wombs at all but instead have eggs. The problem is that a lot of more creatures might have menopause in the sense they stop producing womb lining even though in the human sense they do not menstruate as such.
This makes a little more sense as to how this suggestion was framed. I thought it was odd that the suggestion was framed in terms of menopause, a condition that only affects 1 sex (and rarely across the animal kingdom) when the way the OP wanted the suggestion implemented seemed to just be in terms of fertility based on age, which would be a condition that affects both sexes and occurs pretty much universally across the animal kingdom.
If anything came out of this thread it caused me to do some research on the subject. To my surprise, there was actually very little mention of fertility in definitions of menopause. The definition of menopause is "the ceasing of menstruation," infertility only being mentioned as a side-effect. By this definition, no creature in dwarf fortress can go through menopause because no creature in dwarf fortress menstruates (I suspect the reason for this is similar to the reason no creature in dwarf fortress poops). Now, if the OP also wanted to suggest implementing the psychological and physiological side effects that also come with menopause, the perfect time to implement that would be when maladies and diseases are put in (but the way the OP said the suggestion should be implemented said nothing about this).
The loss of fertility goes without saying, since no womb lining = no pregnancy; this is how the contraceptive pill works. In humans no womb lining = no menopause because in humans the womb lining is shed monthly but in most mammals the womb lining is simply reabsorbed into the body instead. So creatures who do not actually menstruate can still potentially have the menopause, it is just less visible. It get worse in that ovulation also stops during the menopause but in humans at least the two things, that is the production of womb lining and ovulation are tied together so that one stops so does the other. I do not happen to know which of the two controls the other, do the women ovulate because they have developed their womb lining or do the women develop their womb lining because they are ovulating?
I am not against modelling the other effects, it is just these fall under the "general negative effects of old age" and are hence presumably rather complex/time-consuming to implement in relation to simply a fixed date at which a female creature in unable to reproduce or even numeric fertility maluses accumulated over time.
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Topic: Menopause (Read 8883 times)