"Customer Complaints"

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• Woz: I would suggest you strip the covers off, sir.

  I suppose that if it was usefull it wouldn't work ?"

• Kevan: That's right, sir, this document-reading software can only pronounce words which have been spelled correctly.

  The spellchecker on this computer seems to be permanently set to "Cockney".

• Drewsxpa: 'Ere naow, an' it lukes foine ter me. Wot's yer problem, myte?
  
  As close friends of the late Miles Darby before he signed up for your "Wilderness Survival" course, we don't feel that your brochure was sufficiently clear when it stated that the course would be "graded on a pass/fail basis".
• Fat German: [Drewsxpa] Congratulations! Thst's the first time I've ever seen an American-cockney accent accurately rendered in print. (Note: American-cockney is a combination of Cockney, Yorkshire, and Redneck. It's closely related to English-NewYork, which is a combination of Woody Allen, Somerset, and Cartman).
• Drewsxpa: [FG] I tried to shovel in a bit of Newfie too.
• Riana: [Drewsxpa] Newfie? You're a sick man. Tha maun saik help! (I just finished reading Lawrence's _Lady Chatterley's Lover_, in which I was bombarded with Derbyshire. Hmm.)
• Huxley: My colleagues here tend to laugh at my Somerset/New Jersey/Boston hybrid accent... at least I think that's what they are laughing at.
• Thread-o-matic: And meanwhile...in the game,
• _tim_: I'm sorry Madam, you appear to have the wrong number, this is the ticket office at Mornington Crescent

• _tim_ (Winner's Comments): Well, I may well get a slapping for it, but I saw my opening, and like the great Ben Johnson, I would stop at nothing to get it... I thank-you...
• Kevan: Feh, I was enjoying that. Best original game idea in a long while.
• Simons Mith (Game Creator's Comments): [Kevan] Why thank you sir. Mind you, it has been slowing down a bit. Let it have a rest then bring it back in a a few months' time. Or, if you want to take the opposite approach:

  This game isn't dead yet!

• Icelos: Course it is, squire, course it is! [Whips out large hammer and nails flapping limb to counter]. It's just static electricity making those muscles move, that sort of fing. Nuffink to worry abaht. [Throws small tarpaulin over corpse and leans on most active point] Next!
• blamelewis: Sorry I missed this game, but I thought some of you might appreciate a few genuine calls I or my colleagues received when working on the National Rail Enquiries Line. I used to keep myself sane in that job by collecting them under the banner of "Uncle Bob's 1001 Craziest Callers". (I never claimed it worked.)
  #704 "This Virgin Value ticket - do you *need* to be a Virgin to qualify for it?"
  #12 "My son's driving a train to Dartford, but he can't remember what time he's due to arrive."
  #409 "Why haven't you erected my fence?"
  #374 "Ooh hello luv - does Victoria Station have left Luggage Lockers? Only I want to leave my husband there overnight."
  "Wh?"
  "Don't worry dear, he's in an urn. I'll pick him up in the morning."
  If anyone enjoyed these, I can dig out more... you have been warned.
• Dunx: [blamelewis] Well, I certainly enjoyed them... hang onto them and create another instance of this game in a free slot some time.
• gil: Seconded
• Raak: Ditto. So many times I've thought of a What They Say, only to realise it's really a Customer Complaint.
• Projoy: I agree too. I just skimmed it again and it really is hilarious. A revival is in order, I think, or perhaps just an undead resurrection.
• Kevan: Having re-read the whole lot (I'd entirely forgotten this game ever existed), we really, really ought to start logging the best of these somewhere.
• Rich: Isn't Projoy working on that very task?
• Baaka: Just because it's fresh in my mind from a training session last week :
  Trainee, sitting at training room computer: "It's not as fast as my PC"
  Me:"Might help if you switched the monitor on."
• Projoy: [Rich] er. Yes. Very, very hard indeed. (looks shifty). Actually, I am still making progress with it, but for the moment I'm confining my archiving efforts to limericks and verse and whatever else catches my eye. Once I have something up, there will be a system for other people to lighten the load and make their own suggestions of classic content to be included.
• Dunx: [Projoy] Are you OK for the coding?
• Barry the Time Sprout: [Archive] When my exams are finished and I've taken a short break in London to get over them, I intend to return to the altogether bigger-than-I-anticipated Book Game Indexer project. Would there be a home for that in the Archive? Do the people you're using to host it allow CGI ? (I have grand visions that I'll never get round to implementing of a CGI interface to it as I can't see any way round a certain amount of human maintenance (there's no sure and fast way to know whether something it's identified is a book, author, same author but using a different name to refer to them, etc.))
• Rich: [Dunx, cc:Projoy] I keep asking that... :-) (More beer in the Eddie Mr Projoy - instead of me just mugging you when you go past the window?)
• Lord Blue-Glass: My girlfriend (who works in a bookshop) had a woman go in the other day, and hang around the "Biography" section for about a quarter of an hour. Approaching her, my gf asked, naturally, if she could help.
  "Where do you shelve written diaries and stuff?"
  "Well, here, usually."
  "But I can't find hers."
  - if you can see it coming, shut up -
  "Whose?"
  "This Bridget Jones women they're all going on about..."
  My girlfriend then gently steered her in the direction of "Fiction", where, to her added bewilderment, she had to be further directed to "Fielding" and not "Jones."
  People.
  
• Kevan: [Archive] Hm, surely all we need are some "fake games" (or a Wiki) into which anyone could paste their favourite bits of MCiOS history, correcting spelling and layout as they go, eventually script-reformatting the lot into something pretty? (Or even publishing them in a limited-edition book? Gil?)

  Or would a slightly more complicated "submit text / vote on previously-submitted texts" script work better, for some gestalt democratic editing?

• Projoy: [Kev] I'm already embarked on some work towards the end of creating something of the kind. In lieu of another discussion game, I'll summarise the main points here and invite suggestions. <mode="gettysburg">
  1. The archive would contain classic moves from games, nicely formatted and crediting the original authors. In order to obviate the curse of Bad HTML^TM (which we've all done from time to time, since nobody's perfect), the pages would be edited by hand. Stuff to archive might include
     • Limericks
     • Haiku
     • Other verse
     • Quotable Unquotes
     • anything else the players think suitable and want to suggest.
     I am proposing that the site should be maintained by several volunteers, and I like the idea of getting webspace that allows multiple FTP accounts, to enable (say) ten or so volunteers to maintain the site, and also to be contactable with suggestions for items to include via its pop accounts.
  2. There would be a section for New Players, containing hints on play, at-a-glance rulesets for the most common rulesets (which should help people settle in faster), a useful HTML guide (as published by "Chorus" not too long ago) and a few comments on how not to annoy people.
  3. There would be a Reference Library, containing things like:
     • Player Profiles (submittable by a form?)
     • A League Table of League Tables for all servers in the Morniverse
     • Tube Maps (including NY subway, The Great Bear, Stockholm etc.)
     • A master index of games, including the rulesets and handy hints, which can be linked to by any player starting a game, instead of having to explain all the rules over again.
     • In a similar vein, a guide to verseforms, as played in the long verse games.
     • BtTS's indexed version of Read Any...
  4. A links section, containing links to all morniverse and morniverse-related sites, and
  5. ...er....
  6. ...that's it.
  </mode>
• Projoy: Oh, and I guess it would make sense too if the archive were searchable. The reason I suggest maintenance by hand, if I didn't make this clear, is that the pages would need to be in a clear order, making it easy for the user to find what they're looking for (IMHO, if you have a wiki-type site, you may as well point users straight at the original games with a search engine)
• blamelewis: "Archive" - Given Projoy's detailed proposal and provided it really were a group edited thing (so it didn't become a huge time drain!) I'd tentatively like to volunteer to join the editing team - if you'd have me!
  My website running pedigree can be checked at Random Fiction (</shameless plug since it cropped up>) and if that doesn't put you off the idea thoroughly let's talk further!
• Rich: [blamelewis] Do you and Projoy know each other already then?
• Kevan: [Projoy] Hm, communal FTP seems to be baiting the dark gods of simulpost; a simple form-based script would do the job far more neatly, I suspect (each genre of game knowing how to format its data for maximum niceness). Sterling ideas for the static pages, though.
• Projoy: [Kevan, re:FTP] Absolutely. I was thinking, rather than full shared FTP access for the whole site, that volunteers would have permissions for particular directories of which they had (or maybe shared with one other person) "ownership", but that could well mean "ownership" of a particular form-based script, so that the actual content was supplied direct by the players. The "owner" would simply manage the heirarchy and keep the content nicely organised, so stuff is easier to find. "Owners" of static sections of the site, like the links section, for instance, would do all the work themselves, perhaps. Anyway, I'm a scripting ignoramus, so input is much appreciated from those who know what's what. I'm certainly willing to look at acquiring the web-space/domain for this and to do some of the legwork (for instance, I've now got a database of all the games, to which I'm adding genre information and the winners, where applicable, to help create the league table and master games index). [Rich] Yes. :)
• blamelewis: [rich] Yep, it is he you should blame for my finding this wonderful place.
• Projoy: [Kev] In fact, looking at it, there are arguably only a few pages in the above that would obviously need to be "static" in the sense of having only one author. Forms could well be a handy way of collecting content for the guide to verseforms, and maybe even suggestions of "bad advice" for newbies.
• Rich: [blamelewis] Are you local? (To Projoy - not generally...) :-)
• Projoy: [Rich] No. :)
• Rich.: Ah. I was going to suggest he join us for beer in the Eduardo.
• blamelewis: [Rich] In Glasgow - but I'm on for the beer next time I'm down that way - and likewise if you're ever in Glesga.

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