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[Captain Mayday]

The faux cuteness thing annoys me as much as anyone, but I don't see why it should lead to banning.

On this Various Nonsense thing: Why not reopen that forum, then?

Because it was awful.

[Makrond]

Not to be a dick, but again: discussion about a ASCII fortress-building sim goes in the upper forums (the ones with "DF" in front of them). It's a bit like making a smoking section to seperate smokers from people they might annoy, then bitching when they smoke in the smoking section on the grounds that you personally think smoking is bad.

Except it's more like the smoker's sections isn't separated at all and the smoke keeps drifting into the non-smoking section and the restaurant is getting overwhelmed with complaints. Also all the smokers are gibbering loons.


in fact it's nothing like that thing you said at all

[Sowelu]

I like how all the personal attacks are coming from the "Idle chatter is what is wrong with the internet" people.

Maybe we do just need an unofficial forum somewhere else, where you guys can just...not go.  I'd happily sidle over there if that's where the flow went.

What, in your opinion, belongs in GD anyway?  Anything?  What specifically?

[LordNagash]

Agree with above posters. Not sure what all the drama is about. If this were going on in the upper forums, where people have an actual agenda of trying to communicate about a specific topic, I could understand.

But down here -- seriously, WTF? If a thread seems inane, ignore it. If it's one of the happy/sad ones, wait a few hours and whatever was irritating you will probably have scrolled off into history. If you can't handle either of those options, and are getting bent out of shape about people posting silly things...well, maybe the problem isn't the forums.

You're talking about imposing rigid structure on something that is inherently loose. The day that I have to follow strict guidelines about what I can and cannot choose to discuss in IDLE CONVERSATION will be the day I start hunting for a new online hangout. Sorry. 

It's not about imposing rigid structure, it's about imposing any structure at all. You compare it to idle conversation, but an idle conversation has rules and structure as well. If you were having a casual discussion about your day and someone ran up and flashed a giant piece of card with a random image on it, and then 5 other people ran up shouting KA MEW!!!! you'd be like 'What the hell man? I'm trying to have a discussion here.' Why should a forum be different?

[Sowelu]

Agree with above posters. Not sure what all the drama is about. If this were going on in the upper forums, where people have an actual agenda of trying to communicate about a specific topic, I could understand.

But down here -- seriously, WTF? If a thread seems inane, ignore it. If it's one of the happy/sad ones, wait a few hours and whatever was irritating you will probably have scrolled off into history. If you can't handle either of those options, and are getting bent out of shape about people posting silly things...well, maybe the problem isn't the forums.

You're talking about imposing rigid structure on something that is inherently loose. The day that I have to follow strict guidelines about what I can and cannot choose to discuss in IDLE CONVERSATION will be the day I start hunting for a new online hangout. Sorry. 

It's not about imposing rigid structure, it's about imposing any structure at all. You compare it to idle conversation, but an idle conversation has rules and structure as well. If you were having a casual discussion about your day and someone ran up and flashed a giant piece of card with a random image on it, and then 5 other people ran up shouting KA MEW!!!! you'd be like 'What the hell man? I'm trying to have a discussion here.'

And that is why God invented multiple threads per forum.  If you don't like the KA MEW!!!! thread, don't go in the KA MEW!!!! thread.

[Lofn]

Those of you defending the Happy thread and similar messes should note that they're exactly the kind of thing Toady has expressed displeasure about.

[LordNagash]

Agree with above posters. Not sure what all the drama is about. If this were going on in the upper forums, where people have an actual agenda of trying to communicate about a specific topic, I could understand.

But down here -- seriously, WTF? If a thread seems inane, ignore it. If it's one of the happy/sad ones, wait a few hours and whatever was irritating you will probably have scrolled off into history. If you can't handle either of those options, and are getting bent out of shape about people posting silly things...well, maybe the problem isn't the forums.

You're talking about imposing rigid structure on something that is inherently loose. The day that I have to follow strict guidelines about what I can and cannot choose to discuss in IDLE CONVERSATION will be the day I start hunting for a new online hangout. Sorry. 

It's not about imposing rigid structure, it's about imposing any structure at all. You compare it to idle conversation, but an idle conversation has rules and structure as well. If you were having a casual discussion about your day and someone ran up and flashed a giant piece of card with a random image on it, and then 5 other people ran up shouting KA MEW!!!! you'd be like 'What the hell man? I'm trying to have a discussion here.'

And that is why God invented multiple threads per forum.  If you don't like the KA MEW!!!! thread, don't go in the KA MEW!!!! thread.

Way to miss the point entirely. You're talking like there was some kind of dedicated thread for going KA MEW!!, when instead it was all over a thread that is ostensibly supposed to be used for discussing your day, thereby matching my example exactly.

Edit: Also, again as Retro said, 'IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN LEAVE!!!!' is a really unhelpful attitude, and is one of my major problems with this forum.

[Makrond]

I like how all the personal attacks are coming from the "Idle chatter is what is wrong with the internet" people.

Maybe we do just need an unofficial forum somewhere else, where you guys can just...not go.  I'd happily sidle over there if that's where the flow went.

I think you need to look up what 'personal attacks' are. And someone tried that when Various Nonsense went. It didn't pan out very well because most people actually like to have a reasonable discussion occasionally.

What, in your opinion, belongs in GD anyway?  Anything?  What specifically?

A good start would be 'anything that's not a low-content or no-content post; random images without context; threads discussing how your life is right now and why you want to kill yourself; or nonsensical posts/references that contribute nothing to the topic at hand'. Just as a start.

[Simmura McCrea]

Agree with above posters. Not sure what all the drama is about. If this were going on in the upper forums, where people have an actual agenda of trying to communicate about a specific topic, I could understand.

But down here -- seriously, WTF? If a thread seems inane, ignore it. If it's one of the happy/sad ones, wait a few hours and whatever was irritating you will probably have scrolled off into history. If you can't handle either of those options, and are getting bent out of shape about people posting silly things...well, maybe the problem isn't the forums.

You're talking about imposing rigid structure on something that is inherently loose. The day that I have to follow strict guidelines about what I can and cannot choose to discuss in IDLE CONVERSATION will be the day I start hunting for a new online hangout. Sorry. 

It's not about imposing rigid structure, it's about imposing any structure at all. You compare it to idle conversation, but an idle conversation has rules and structure as well. If you were having a casual discussion about your day and someone ran up and flashed a giant piece of card with a random image on it, and then 5 other people ran up shouting KA MEW!!!! you'd be like 'What the hell man? I'm trying to have a discussion here.'

And that is why God invented multiple threads per forum.  If you don't like the KA MEW!!!! thread, don't go in the KA MEW!!!! thread.

Way to miss the point entirely. You're talking like there was some kind of dedicated thread for going KA MEW!!, when instead it was all over a thread that is ostensibly supposed to be used for discussing your day, thereby matching my example exactly.

So ignore it. You can't compare a face-to-face discussion to a discussion on a forum, since the former is you and some other person/people talking about something, and the latter is you and some other person/people talking about something while different other people talk about other stuff over and under your discussion. If you don't like a discussion, scroll past it.

[Deus ex Machina]

Those of you defending the Happy thread and similar messes should note that they're exactly the kind of thing Toady has expressed displeasure about.

What has he said about them exactly? I mean, it's hard to hate something for the sake of it.

[RedKing]

Not to be a dick, but again: discussion about a ASCII fortress-building sim goes in the upper forums (the ones with "DF" in front of them). It's a bit like making a smoking section to seperate smokers from people they might annoy, then bitching when they smoke in the smoking section on the grounds that you personally think smoking is bad.

Except it's more like the smoker's sections isn't separated at all and the smoke keeps drifting into the non-smoking section and the restaurant is getting overwhelmed with complaints. Also all the smokers are gibbering loons.


in fact it's nothing like that thing you said at all

I just looked through the first page of threads in DF Dwarf Mode Discussion, DF Modding Discussion, DF General Discussion and DF Adventure Mode Discussion and hey, guess what?

They're all DF-related. Mission accomplished. I stand by my analogy.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Perhaps they are a little overwhelmed, or frustrated, or some such, but adding more mods runs into the gigantic problem of there not being a single one among us who could be trusted to show as much restraint and responsibility as Toady and Threetoe generally have. I don't agree with everything they've done, but overall it's leagues better than I've seen on any other forum with even a fraction of the activity you get here.

As for the pointless, random, spammy threads, I just ignore them. Especially the ones with tildes in the titles. I thoroughly recommend this approach, as it's served me quite well.

The day that I have to follow strict guidelines about what I can and cannot choose to discuss in IDLE CONVERSATION will be the day I start hunting for a new online hangout.

Hate to say it, but this. And this is the best place I've ever found on the net, by a long way.

This. Though I'm spending more time on dakkadakka of late, all that is spent discussing tactics and rules, and I hate having to constantly censor my speach of innocuous intensives.

Yes, Sowelu, it was sarcasm.

As I see it, Various Nonsense was deleted, but the content just drifted into GD. It used to be that General discussion was in fact a place where discussion was actually held. Now it seems saturated in memes, stream of conscious, blogposts, and all other kinds of random crap.

You think this is "saturated"? Have you seen the internet? This, in the state you are bemoaning, is a bastion of absense of these things.

[Sowelu]

Those of you defending the Happy thread and similar messes should note that they're exactly the kind of thing Toady has expressed displeasure about.

What has he said about them exactly? I mean, it's hard to hate something for the sake of it.

The OP quoted a Toady post where--this is just my interpretation--he seemed to say that the happy thread in concept was cool, just as long as it didn't turn into spamhouse city.

I'm still not seeing what's wrong with avoiding threads that you know you don't like.  I really don't.  If people weren't complaining, there would be no problems, obviously.  What's the source of the complaints?  What, exactly, is making your lives miserable?  Don't you think these forums would be a lot easier to moderate if people stopped going into threads they didn't like just to report stuff?

[LordNagash]

Agree with above posters. Not sure what all the drama is about. If this were going on in the upper forums, where people have an actual agenda of trying to communicate about a specific topic, I could understand.

But down here -- seriously, WTF? If a thread seems inane, ignore it. If it's one of the happy/sad ones, wait a few hours and whatever was irritating you will probably have scrolled off into history. If you can't handle either of those options, and are getting bent out of shape about people posting silly things...well, maybe the problem isn't the forums.

You're talking about imposing rigid structure on something that is inherently loose. The day that I have to follow strict guidelines about what I can and cannot choose to discuss in IDLE CONVERSATION will be the day I start hunting for a new online hangout. Sorry. 

It's not about imposing rigid structure, it's about imposing any structure at all. You compare it to idle conversation, but an idle conversation has rules and structure as well. If you were having a casual discussion about your day and someone ran up and flashed a giant piece of card with a random image on it, and then 5 other people ran up shouting KA MEW!!!! you'd be like 'What the hell man? I'm trying to have a discussion here.'

And that is why God invented multiple threads per forum.  If you don't like the KA MEW!!!! thread, don't go in the KA MEW!!!! thread.

Way to miss the point entirely. You're talking like there was some kind of dedicated thread for going KA MEW!!, when instead it was all over a thread that is ostensibly supposed to be used for discussing your day, thereby matching my example exactly.

So ignore it. You can't compare a face-to-face discussion to a discussion on a forum, since the former is you and some other person/people talking about something, and the latter is you and some other person/people talking about something while different other people talk about other stuff over and under your discussion. If you don't like a discussion, scroll past it.

I shouldn't have to ignore it. That's the entire point of having a set of rules, and moderating to those rules. To get rid of undesirable things from the forum so people don't have to 'just ignore them'. We could 'just ignore' spambots and trolls and illegal material too, but a) it wouldn't be quite that easy and b) it sure wouldn't be a good image for the forums or for Toady.

Also, are people seriously going to stand here and defend what has been going on in the happy and sad threads? After Toady just locked them both to drop /another/ warning about it? I'm telling you now - there won't be a third warning, not with the increasing frustration being shown by all the threads that have been disappearing into the ether, and the fact more bans have been handed out in the last month than probably in the year before it.

[Phmcw]

Ok this very thread is getting out of hand, but disregarding that, what are you expecting from the "general discussion?"

Because a lot of poeple are annoyed at the "atheist thread" (too confrontational) at the pony thread (too silly), and I'm sure that here is thread that will be deemed too serious. Then what?

If it's just an excess of meme and/or completely useless posts, a line in the rules and maybe one more moderator dedicated to this task would suffice. (no pointless posts)
Else I don't really understand your point.

I'm not sure I understand toady point either, if he's just annoyed at the thread or at the general state of the forum.