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[GlyphGryph]

The reasons that you like the community are also reasons people are being driven away.

This will always be true, no matter what we do. People just have different tastes.

I suppose a simpler solution would be that, since it looks like the majority of GD is for silly shenanigans, make a more serious subforum for people like me that find the hijinks off-putting. You can have your kawaii, desu, and tohou, and I my leather armchairs, aged cigars, and brandy.

This seems to be how most forums do it, and I think that is a good way to try to give everyone what they want.

It sounds like its a fundamental disagreement over what "General Discussion" is, and its one thats not exactly uncommon. As I said before, I think the "problem" is the worst here of all the forums because it has no focus. It really is a forum for shooting the breeze, pretty much. A lot of people come here to unwind. Others want something more, and the current setup sort of lumps serious debate and newsworthy topics in with the other stuff... so maybe they should be separated. Toady has said his words on mods and the like, so we should consider other solutions that would make everyone happy.

Vector really hits the nail on the head here. A lot of the posts I am seeing basically say 'Well what is happening doesn't offend me personally, so that means it should be perfectly fine!' Of course it doesn't offend or irritate you, you're the one doing it.

It doesn't bug me because I don't read the stuff that bugs me for the most part. Unless I'm doing some of these things? I dunno.

That has no relation to how someone who is coming here for the first time is going to view it, and that's a major thing you should be considering on a forum considering posts are archived for all eternity.

First, General Discussion isn't usually a place people end up first coming here. Most of them spend quite a bit of time in other forums first and then drift over.

Nearly every other forum on the internet does it (especially if that forum is connected to an official entity like a website), so I don't really see where all the doom and gloom predictions are coming from.

And there's a reason why many of us spend our time here instead instead of on those other forums.

I do agree that the humour and memes in the Dwarf Fortress general forums are pretty stupid sometimes. But thats where all the new people end up, and to many of them the humour is bright and new instead of tired and old, so try to keep that in mind.

[GlyphGryph]

Bleh double post.

[Grakelin]

I'm away from this forum for one day, and you guys drop the ball.

Way to go, guys, way to go

[Urist is dead tome]

A solution would be to not start so much crap. That would help.

We just have to not start crap. Then Toady will be able to finish his artifact. And ThreeToe will be free to write more stories.

[Grakelin]

Urist is right. We need to stop being crap.

Actually, that was an incredibly vague and unhelpful suggestion. Let's think critically!

[Zangi]

*Snip*

You give the impression of... pod peoples or something similar.  Changing the forums more to the IRCers tastes would bring some of them to the forum. 
At the same time, it would drop some people from the forums.
IRCers are here to take our brains.

On a more serious note, given the number of demographics DF brings in... its not too surprising that we have people not liking this community.  I would be dumbfounded if everyone taking a look at B12forums found the community to their liking.
 
Is the IRC demographic significant?  Would they jump in if things were to 'change for the better' here?  They could be in one of the many other mini-communities on other forums that keep tab on DF.  Each of those communities cater to their own people.  Are they going to have the time to invest in both?  Will they leave that for B12Forums?

What of the current forum demographic?  How many would fade away if things were clamped down on / totally cut out?

Can you be absolutely sure that their would be a net gain of forum goers?  Can you be absolutely sure that more people will donate just cause they like the way B12Forums has changed?

You can't cater to everyone.

[Urist is dead tome]

Be more mature. Think about what you post before actually posting. And the likes.

Urist is right. We need to stop being crap.

That my friend, is crap. It doesn't help anyone. It probably makes some people mad. And it just leads to derails.

[Grakelin]

I don't know think the IRC is any 'better' than the forum. I only went in there once or twice, and they spent copious amounts of time bashing somebody's tileset. I decided I wasn't welcome there shortly after I told them what I thought of that.

In my experience with that community, it felt like there was a lot of negative energy. If Toady would rather have a community brimming with negative energy than a community where people are getting along and sharing in jokes, I will gladly tip my hat to him and bid him farewell.

[Chaoswizkid]

Well, it appears Toady's made his call. I'll leave this thread open for an hour or so in case anyone else wants to toss their opinion onto the pile then it's lock time.

I would petition that this thread remain up, or at least another thread be made. A big part of this thread that I feel has been missed is that a good chunk of people feel alienated from the community, and we should at least have some form of discussion on that. Since moderation increased has been cut off, that accounts for 50 to 70 percent of what's been said, which still leaves a good portion of this alienation that's been discussed.

[FuzzyZergling]

May I ask what IRC stands for?

[Grakelin]

On moderation: Everybody who has disagreed with it has been right. Nobody here would be able to do it. And it creates a hierarchy where certain people are treated as 'landed knights'. The hierarchy will skew debates and discussion in favour of the moderator, every time, because Tarn Adams isn't the only toady on the internet.

And really, why would anybody WANT to moderate for the right reasons? Sure, lots of people would love to be a moderator because of the power the title wields in an online community, but if someone was going to do it for 'justice and good' (or whatever), they would have to detach themselves from the community the way Toady and ThreeToe do. Even the candidates I can think of would not be able to resist stepping into a politics thread featuring myself and Nikov. It's a bad road to go down.

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat.

[Retro]

Well, now that I've played the part of semi-impartial thread maintainer for a little bit, let's let some opinion loose.

Honestly, I'm very disappointed by Toady's call. As Jay's post directly after his points out, mods are to pre-emptively cut train wrecks off before they're a big enough deal to bother being reported, which in practice can be proven useful as the majority of the threads Toady responds to have been deleted or locked right after he's intervened. That point was sort of just... missed, I think. He also completely did not respond at all to the idea of a set of better guidelines, or the idea of a moderation log, the latter of which was desired by pretty much everyone I believe and really would be as simple as posting a locked and stickied thread either in announcements or GD and posting in it when they take significant mod action. I sent him a final PM asking him for his thoughts on these things in particular, since he only responded to the issue of moderation, but aside from a possible response on it I think that's that.

Sigh. In any case, I put out an effort to change what I still remain to see as an incredible deterioration on post quality in general. The fact that Toady is not acknowledging some of the points made at all does make me think that he missed them somehow, but it's his call. I'll live. Of course, now that I know the forums are going to keep getting worse and nothing's going to be done about it, I'm sure my personal presence around here is going to continue to diminish.

Is the IRC demographic significant?  Would they jump in if things were to 'change for the better' here?  They could be in one of the many other mini-communities on other forums that keep tab on DF.  Each of those communities cater to their own people.  Are they going to have the time to invest in both?  Will they leave that for B12Forums?

I can safely say that no, the IRC crowd has every intention of staying as far away from the forums as possible. Yes, it's another DF-based mini-community (although the regulars really don't talk about DF at all), but it is the official one linked to on the main site and the wiki, and as Nagash pointed out, when one official mini-community wants to get as far away from the other as possible, it's pretty indicative that there's an issue. I think there's only like three regulars, including myself, who actually bother with the forums save from when some incredibly stupid/ridiculous/otherwise outrageous post is brought to our attention. Still, it's understandable that they want to see the forums seriously improved nonetheless. Nobody likes to watch something stagnate when it can easily be improved. From an outside perspective, I don't think anyone on IRC thinks the forums are 'fine the way they are' or in some cases even salvageable before Toady has to cut off a subforum to get people to smarten up, and pretty much everyone agreed that better structure and moderation would be a huge improvement.

Well, it appears Toady's made his call. I'll leave this thread open for an hour or so in case anyone else wants to toss their opinion onto the pile then it's lock time.

I would petition that this thread remain up, or at least another thread be made. A big part of this thread that I feel has been missed is that a good chunk of people feel alienated from the community, and we should at least have some form of discussion on that. Since moderation increased has been cut off, that accounts for 50 to 70 percent of what's been said, which still leaves a good portion of this alienation that's been discussed.

Sure, I'll leave it up then. That said, the odds of Toady coming back to look at it again are practically nothing, hence my response. He really just doesn't seem interested.

[Grakelin]

I think what part of the problem here is a difference opinion of what makes a good community between the forumgoers and the IRCgoers. If, as you say, the IRC users have no intention of going anywhere near the forum, and the forum users have no intention of going anywhere neart the IRC, it is clear to me that a compromise can not, and should not be made. Better to maintain the status quo and let everybody settle into their respective communities than try to aggressively absorb one or the other.

[LordNagash]

I don't know think the IRC is any 'better' than the forum. I only went in there once or twice, and they spent copious amounts of time bashing somebody's tileset. I decided I wasn't welcome there shortly after I told them what I thought of that.

In my experience with that community, it felt like there was a lot of negative energy. If Toady would rather have a community brimming with negative energy than a community where people are getting along and sharing in jokes, I will gladly tip my hat to him and bid him farewell.

Let's not turn this into some kind of IRC vs the forums contest. That's not at all what I was even trying to do. I was saying that I've heard a lot of people in the channel saying there's a lot of behavior on the forum that alienates them. It had nothing to do with the IRC channel itself.

[Grakelin]

Yeah, and I think that it's visa versa (which I indicated in my last post, which I posted at the same time as you). Forumites are just as alienated from the chatroom.