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[GlyphGryph]

I'm getting a lot of mileage out of these quotes today.

I am weak. I clicked it, damn it. I told myself that this time was going to be different. But I couldn't write anything. I couldn't send it. I just couldn't go through with it. It's like the button has some strange power...

[sonerohi]

Seriously. All this high-minded judgment of the forum content has me scratching my head too. What exactly means the forum is dying? Because it's got content you don't like? Because it's got poseurs who want in on the fun but haven't asked permission, or been here enough months to justify their presence? I get annoyed by that, but it's not "the death of the forum."

I've been here a full year now, and honestly, I don't see much difference between now and then, except more new faces. Yes, that's years less than some people. But what exactly determines whether or not GD is even alive?

I could care less if new people come in or if people talk about stuff I'm not interested in/opposed to. It would invite learning, and and discussion. I don't want to kill the fun, but we don't have discussion. Compare Aqizzars old thread about the Gulf Spill to the ponies topic. We had just as much fun being constructive and debating, and if we go back to that then we don't need the "lol randum kawaiiiiii".

It took me seven attempts at that thanks to my terrible internet connection.

[Vector]

If you had read my post explaining that, or the posts re-explaining that, or even the OP of this thread, you would know.

I know you think it attracts the wrong people and has nothing to do with DF, what I'm trying to understand is why you consider those people to be the wrong type or why somthing not dealing with DF is toxic to the forum's continued livelyhood.

I set up most of the infrastructure for the Mafia subforum.  In fact, almost all of it.  I also came here for the sole purpose of playing Mafia, and wound up staying here for the community.  All of the other posters I know who came here to play Mafia have been nothing but quiet and orderly.  I have only seen one moderator post in that entire section in the year I've been here, and I am speaking as someone who used to read every post in every thread.

I've played Mafia on other boards and the atmosphere simply isn't the same.

G-Flex, from my admittedly limited experience, I find myself disagreeing with you.


As far as everything else goes, I don't know that more moderation is necessary.  Maybe it is.  Maybe it isn't.  More self-moderation would be good.

Over at the xkcd forums, posters can't post links within their first 5 posts, and can't start threads without having replied to a couple.  That policy, along with a catch-all "welcome to the forum" thread, might greatly curb a lot of the issues with a. spambots and b. folks who aren't familiar with the atmosphere.

Other than that, I think a personal agreement among ourselves to self-moderate harder--in terms of reporting when things are starting to get weird, rather than getting pointlessly nasty and argumentative--might be advantageous.  I don't think more official moderators will fix the board and leave it with our culture intact.  I think that people listening to others' complaints would be good, as would more speaking up--politely--about things that annoy us.

There's a balance to be struck, here, and we need to recognize that and get to striking it.


EDIT: That, and a generalized agreement that we're going to cut the twittery-threads down to Happy/Sad and leave it at that.  I think that would seriously help everyone and everything.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I could care less if new people come in or if people talk about stuff I'm not interested in/opposed to. It would invite learning, and and discussion. I don't want to kill the fun, but we don't have discussion. Compare Aqizzars old thread about the Gulf Spill to the ponies topic. We had just as much fun being constructive and debating, and if we go back to that then we don't need the "lol randum kawaiiiiii".

That's your complaint? A thread that's supposed to be taken as absurd showing up? That doesn't make up all of GD, not by a long shot. We still discuss the news in a serious manner all the time. Aqizzar's oil spill thread got so huge because it was a huge news story, and the same can be seen with other threads about real life issues. If the story is huge, the thread will be huge. If it isn't, it isn't.

[Megaman]

Forums are fine, none are committing suicide from the content here.

[Leafsnail]

I don't actually see why more moderators would help the forum at all.  I'm pretty sure all the reports get looked at and acted upon, and all that introducing more mods would do is create arguments over the actions of specific moderators ("Mod X locked thread A!  Toady One/ Mod Y said the thread was ok!").

Propositions to delete the parts of the forums that the suggestor doesn't use seem kindof strange.  I guess there's the "Hey, we could do this anywhere", but really, we could have any of the forums, including the DF ones, "anywhere else" (with the possible exceptions of Future of the Fortress and the Announcements.  Hey, why don't we just delete everything except those?).

[Sowelu]

Over at the xkcd forums, posters can't post links within their first 5 posts, and can't start threads without having replied to a couple.  That policy, along with a catch-all "welcome to the forum" thread, might greatly curb a lot of the issues with a. spambots and b. folks who aren't familiar with the atmosphere.

In the upper forums--which are, in fact, the main focus of the forums--this unfortunately wouldn't work.  New DF players need to be able to post new threads to ask questions, and needing an intro thread to ask game questions just doesn't work.  Even posting links seems important, in case you wanted to ask about something on the wiki or on dffd or something.

[Vector]

In the upper forums--which are, in fact, the main focus of the forums--this unfortunately wouldn't work.  New DF players need to be able to post new threads to ask questions, and needing an intro thread to ask game questions just doesn't work.  Even posting links seems important, in case you wanted to ask about something on the wiki or on dffd or something.

Really?  A new DF player really can't search around for threads that might have something to do with what he's talking about?

I dunno.  I've looked up there, and most of--a heck of a lot of, anyway--the threads by newbies appear to be question threads that people pop into, give answers to, and then also say "By the way, there's a search function here for a reason."

[breadbocks]

I gotta agree with the OP on this topic. The fact that recently (As in the last few months) some forumites have decided everyone is a catgirl, and thus enjoys nonsense words and tildes, or {QUOTE}"This" posts when people are too lazy to write their own posts, or just general one word posts, with or without images, really irks me. Anyone who says the lower forums are OK are just plain wrong. These forums are run by people who rely on what they're mainly about for a living. The entire "Finally..." and the OG forums are all meaningless to Toady and ThreeToe, and one of the big ways they get the word out is with bay12forums.com, and it has a rep that needs to be kept. The moment they get entirely fed up with the lower forums is the moment you can say goodbye to your favorite internet hangout. Everyone on these forums needs to do some serious soul-searching (No exceptions.) if you want this place to stay around.

[Sowelu]

In the upper forums--which are, in fact, the main focus of the forums--this unfortunately wouldn't work.  New DF players need to be able to post new threads to ask questions, and needing an intro thread to ask game questions just doesn't work.  Even posting links seems important, in case you wanted to ask about something on the wiki or on dffd or something.

Really?  A new DF player really can't search around for threads that might have something to do with what he's talking about?

I dunno.  I've looked up there, and most of--a heck of a lot of, anyway--the threads by newbies appear to be question threads that people pop into, give answers to, and then also say "By the way, there's a search function here for a reason."

It's actually pretty well-established and well-known that the search feature here is a joke.  It works very sporadically, and sometimes gives different results to different people.  It's broken, hard.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I have to say, this whole discussion makes me feel like not posting at all. Just...all of it, gives me the impression that in reality none of us like each other in the slightest. I mean, is any of this even needed? If Toady is going to make changes to the forum, he'll be the active party, not us.

[KaguroDraven]

I like most people on here, I'm relitively upfront to the people I dislike.
OnTopic:I do agree some stuff does need to be toned down a bit, but we're mostly ok. You CAN have odd little discussions that don't have meaning in the same forum as serious topics after all.

[GlyphGryph]

Anyone who says the lower forums are OK are just plain wrong.

What's wrong with each of them then? Cause this thread has mostly been about problems in GD, which I usually don't bother with anyways (It doesn't seem worse than general discussion forums on any other site - if you want a good topical forum, you need to give it something more, like XKCD does with its Serious Business and News&Articles).

Other Games is amazing, and has done quite a bit to spread the word of DF.
Forum Games and its sub-fora are very good as well, perhaps not for DF but for the people who use them. Their threads are almost always strongly on topic, theres been a ton of quality writing and stories, and there's a good deal of DF related stuff that happens in them (Though LCS seems really popular down there as well).

[Sowelu]

Anyone who says the lower forums are OK are just plain wrong.

Other Games is amazing, and has done quite a bit to spread the word of DF.
Forum Games and its sub-fora are very good as well, perhaps not for DF but for the people who use them. Their threads are almost always strongly on topic, theres been a ton of quality writing and stories, and there's a good deal of DF related stuff that happens in them (Though LCS seems really popular down there as well).

Other Games and Curses are not lower forums, they are middle forums, just for the record.

Although yeah.  Other Games brings in a HELL of a lot of traffic to DF, considering that our forums are the first hit when you google for a lot of games.

[Max White]

I think a rather important question here is "What level of maturity do we want to treat these forum as?". I know the answer some people want to jump to is 'The highest level possible, Max!', but that would be the sort of answer you get in a forum specific to debating political veiws, or suchthing of a very seriouse, specific nature. That isn't us. We come here to relax, and have fun, and enjoy ourselves. If every post is minimum 300 words, spell checked, and proof read, then honestly, this isn't a real apealing forum. True, this expectation gives us a little more freedom, in that it allows for open debate on any topic, and assumes we are going to do the right thing, therefor dosn't require heavy moderation, but it removes any distinction from visting the forums, and finishing that essay you have due tomorrow.

This isn't an invitation to lower the standards of maturity as far as possible. That would imply we need a lot of moderators to kick the ass of anybody who takes a sep out a line. It would ban any contraversial debates, and images would be banned altogether. I'm talking cencership to a level that would make the evil guy from V for Vandetta smile with glee. This isn't fun, it's kindergarten.

So, we have to draw a line. How mature can we be while still having fun? The less mature we are expected to be, the less freedom we are given.

And if we are expected to post as we please without stricter rules in place? Well you can scuttle off back to /b/.