Remove Private Tag

I remember when we first added the private tag. I found it pretty interesting and fully supported it but with it now having been on the site for a while, I think it's more of a detriment than something actually helpful.

I don't really recall it being used purposefully in situations where a note tag couldn't have done the same job. But instead, I see lots of people get confused by it. Which makes sense, since not everyone was on the site before it was introduced and not everybody knows the difference between it and Note.
If I joined the site today and wanted to send a secret message to a player, I'd think 'Private' is the right tag for it and I'd ignore 'Note', since I wouldn't be sure what that does. And from the GM/poster side, it looks correct. It formats the message as basically what a Note looks like. So only the players see it. And they don't know it's secret. I for example just had to quickly shoot a GM a message because I thought something was private information but because I couldn't see the tag, I wasn't sure. But I at least knew Private tags exist and how they work, so I could make the assumption.

I can see very limited use for the tag (and even then, sowing confusion in a PBP game is probably a bad idea in most cases, even when it sounds fun...) and a lot of potential for confusion.

Also, I get super paranoid these days. Every time a post feels even slightly off to me, I immediately start suspecting that they might be responding to some private tag in the GM's last post. But I know that is a me problem.

Anyway, long ramble...
In short: I think the Private tag adds more confusion than actual use and it would probably be better to remove it again. Thoughts?

I don't think I've used the private tag once. I feel like it could have its uses in a certain type of game and in that type of game be very valuable, but I expect that type of game is rare, so if it is causing a ton of confusion in other places it might be worth re-considering it. Maybe having it as an option if selected during game creation would be a good compromise, so that games that rely on it could still run smoothly. Having said that, I don't think I've experienced confusion from its use, but maybe I just didn't realize because it was private XD. I can at least imagine how it might cause confusion.

Anyways, I guess I don't have strong feelings either way.

Huh, I didn't realize this was retired. Or I forgot about it. That explains why nobody replied to the last thing either 😄

I often use private, but 🤷

e.g. In hell what everyone else saw as a devil, one of the characters saw as a PC who he failed to rescue.

Yes, that's the kind of thing that I was originally thinking of using it for as well and why I was such a fan of it. I just never saw those situations really come up and only saw confusion. But that's why I asked around, to see if others made the same experience or not really.

Maybe changing their names at least would make sense. Note to secret (since everyone seems to already think that secret means note) (or maybe to 'hidden' to not confuse people who do know what secret means) and secret to... deceptive. Or something that would make people who don't know what it is hesitant to use that at first 😆

Maybe. They'll need to be aware of existing uses and find a way to deprecate it cleanly.

First step would be to remove it from the drop downs and documentation.

If other people think it's a problem as well. if it's just me, we can keep it as is

I had no idea what the difference was. The biggest problem is that it is formatted differently from GM to player, so I had only experienced it from one side and didn't realize the potential for confusion. I think it could have a very niche use in games where one character is hallucinating or seeing something differently but you don't want to give away that meta-knowledge. I'd settle for just clearer examples in the BBC code guide maybe so people are aware of how it works and possible uses.

That is not just you. I don't allow the private tag in my games for that exact reason. I have seen games die because people are responding to things not everyone knows about (discord conversations are a big culprit here), and others get uncomfortable or confused.

The Note tag at least lets everyone know there was information they were not privy to, so they can understand what it going on.

In the case of one player being given true information when everyone else if given false, I like the fact that the Note tag tells everyone there was something going on, same as if the GM took one player aside and whispered something to them. I expect my players to keep playing as though their characters believe what they have been show, but that is a me thing.
The names of these tags are not ideal (naming things is hard) and it would help if we can make their function more apparent, either by renaming them, or by easier access to the documentation.
Can we do a search and replace in the database to turn all Private tags into Note tags (or whatever we start calling things)? I would hate for things that anyone thought were 'private' to be exposed by any such changes, but suspect merely exposing the fact that talk happened (if `private` becomes `note`) might not be the worst thing.
Agreed. Leaving them functioning as they are but discouraging their use should do no harm.

This is what I was going to suggest, actually.

Arr. That was me. I'm not going to implement any of these suggestions so it seemed a bit daft people logging them.

But if y'all planning to continue using this forum, can someone arrange for the primary GM role to be transferred from me to someone else?

Only @Keleth can do that. I guess he can just pick from anyone who's currently GM in here.

Probably makes sense to still keep it. Even if things are less likely to be implemented, having a place to log everything just makes sense.