Cessation of discussion

[Archon]

I would just like to interject my opinion on threads such as Cool Things on the Internet, and Cool Lyrics. Most of the advocates of keeping discussion out of these threads say that people should start other threads to discuss these. I suppose we could create threads that mirrored all of the "pure" threads, but until we do, there are two problems. For one, if we create a new thread to discuss the "pure" thread, the person or people that we are discussing it with might not see the new thread, and therefore, might not reply. The other main problem that I see is that, until a permanent thread is created to mirror the "pure" thread, the threads that are made to discuss these topics are going to tend to be very short, which seems like a waste.
(By the way, I use "we" as in we of the forum, not we the people who discuss in "pure" threads, because I try not to do that.)

Secondly, and feel free to tell me if this is out of line, I mean no offense, I think this site is becoming far too political. The people who formed the forum were all friends, to my knowledge. The people who later became regular posters, such as JP, Gemm, and Entropy have entered as friends too. The way that the site has been running, it doesn't seem like it is a group of friends. It seems more and more like a government. I know that this site is serious in ways, reviewing video games, movies, and RPG's, but I don't see why that means it should be treated this way, giving it rules of conduct beyond the basics (no swearing, leet, be courteous etc.).

[Spriggan]

You're not out of line in asking, but personaly I don't see any of what you're saying.  We only have a few rules and this "pure" thread, as you call it, has been unwritten sence we started with Cool things.  We do lock more threads then we use to, but many people here have gone from being courtious in thier discussions to becomeing flamers so it's nessacary for an admin to step in and tell people to knock it off.

What else is there that bugs you?  We might as well talk about specifics here and now.

[JP Dogberry]

Keep in mind, the role of mod didn't really exist until about six months ago. We'd had a huge issue with newbies, flame wars, and such, and decided that we needed to deal with it.

I am very noninterventionist - I only lock threads when I actually need to because I see Flames coming, and I try to warn first to steer the direction back on track.

We are pretty free and relaxed I feel. I think people  should be allowed to talk about anything within reason.

As for discussion on threads, I don't mind a little discussion on the aformentioned threads, but it's better if either the person also posts something on topic, or if it only goes for a few posts - any longer and it probably does deserve a threa dof it's own.

That said, the list threads are IMO terminally boring.

[Archon]

Take for example this thread. In my opinion, the reason that the issue has come to making it a policy decision is that the site is becoming more centrally governed, not that violations occur more often now. Also, I agree with your statement about courteous posters to a degree. An extension of that is that people are quicker to get angry at one another and get into a large conflict. This results in an admin having to step in to resolve it. People aren't solving their own problems anymore so the "government" of the forum steps in to do it for them. This is part of what I am talking about, more and more threads are locked, people's comments are edited out, stuff like that. This shouldn't happen, and it shouldn't have to happen. Anyone in the forum who can't control their discussion really needs to learn to. Of course, tempers get carried away, and people will make comments that are out of place, but these should be occasional things. So, in essence, the "government" shows up because people on the forum are not governing themselves as well. I haven't seen a good debate that could be brought to a satisfying close in a long time, because they always have to be locked. That is why the people of the forum, I include myself, have to start acting more like friends, and less like politicians.

Mod: I just saw your comment JP. I wasn't criticizing you, JP, I don't consider you to be at fault. I am just making a generality about the forum.

[Spriggan]

Well people's posts getting edited issue was resolved in private discussion over a month ago, I don't know who deleated the extra posts in the "quotes" thread (probaly Tage) but that dosen't bother me as much as moderators removeing words or lines from people's posts.  But again that shouldn't happen except in extreame cercomstances.

As for your other comments, you're right people aren't solveing thier problems themselfs I know JP dosen't like to lock threads or warn people, but until people here can start behaveing again (like it was 2 years ago) these things are nessacary to keep some calm.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I just want to clarify.

I'm not talking about off-subject posts. ie, talking about being angry about my commute to work in a Heroclix thread
i'm not talking about flamnig stuff.
I'm talking about posts that DIRECTLY relate to quotes/whatever given being hacked away.

I think when you take that route you get drops in post counts. People are inherently lazy. yes, it's only two clicks (and the typing of a subject line), but that's enough for a lot of people to decide it's not worth it. That means less posts. That means less page views. That means less to see, which ultimately means less reason to be here.

The site has to change to grow. However, changing to have more "strict" threads (where you can't do anything but post another in a sequence of discontinuous, disjointed, and unrelated quotes or whatever) isn't going to help.

We want to have "cool lyrics" and you don't want anything else. That doesn't do anything for the majority of the people, is what i'm seeing. Two people heavily for it (Tage and Sprig) and one preferring it (Fell), which 2 people heavily against it but still reading (Ent and I) and two people at least who won't even read it because the concept isn't interesting. if it's such a cool lyric, why not talk about WHY it's cool? Why not let people comment on how cool it is? Because you'll miss the next quote mark or quote box? Are you that worried about it that you want to have less discussion just so you won't have the very slight chance of missing a lyric?

And how about the "cool stuff" we want to cut commentary. Does this mean we have to stop posting the results of taking the polls? What fun is that? ultimately, this leads me to thinking creating a new thread from the start is much better than putting it into the collection, which defeats your purpose anyway. It's nto like it's hard to see where the new links are anyway. They're a different color. Scan for that. It's at least as easy as making a new thread.

Make it easier to join the community and harder to violate the FAQs and "unwritten rules." THAT'S how you increase participation and create a stronger community. Not by having more "features" that have non-intuitive, thread specific codes of conduct.

[Fellfrosch]

I agree with SE. I also agree that our posters (myself included) have a tendency to go off on unrelated tangents that can sometimes last way too long. There's a middle ground somewhere, and I'd like to think that we can reach it without getting too rabbinical. If we all just try policing ourselves, we can hit a happy medium without too much fuss and no need for admin intervention or Big Government.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

My problem with cutting comments in threads like Grumpy things go here is that the thread is all about getting sympathy and not just a thread for spouting off.

Editing peoples posts is also pretty lame. But If its going to be done the mod editing it should have to say that they edited it. Either to the person who has their post changed or to the forum in general. Just my opinion. Id actually rather have a post deleted than altered, because I dont want someone else changing my meaning.

Timewasters has gotten more rules oriented, and it has scared away some people. We do need to grow readers.


I think we also need to discuss giving noobs more and better leeway. We are way way way too hostile to noobs here and its a very bad thing.

I realize that TWG is like a big dysfunctional family, but new folks need a chance.

[Fellfrosch]

We've been remarkably nicer to newbies recently than ever before, and I think we're improving quite a bit in that area.

[Entsuropi]

Much of which can be attributed to me not doing it anymore :p

[Spriggan]

Entropy's new title "Master of the Obvious"  

[Skar]

I'm with MasterJeffe on the Noob treatment.  Maybe we are nicer now than ever before.  That doesn't mean we're nice enough.

On several occasion I've seen new folks, who are going through a lot of the old threads looking for interesting material and then commenting on it, blasted mercilessly for "resurrecting old threads."  That's ridiculous.  It's perfectly reasonable for a noob to go through old threads looking for interesting things (enjoyably wasting time for heaven's sake), and it's also perfectly reasonable for that noob to want to comment on things he finds interesting.  

As for the whole "tangent" discussion on a pure thread problem, why can't the forum admins move a lengthy discussion to a new thread if it gets appropriate to do that?  If they put a marker/link in the original "pure" thread saying where they've moved the tangent to, then the pure thread maintains its integrity with only a single extraneous post and everyone who wants to participate in the tangent can with only a single extra click.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

for once, I think that Skar and I are in near total agreement. The problem with resurrecting threads in the past has been that they are resurrected for a "me too" post or to show a complete disregard for how a fight/flame war was stopped or to rehash something that's already hashed to heck (not to beat a dead horse or anything).

The principle of resurrecting a thread itself is not bad though. If that's the only reason you're yelling at someone, just stop. If they're showing a complete unfamiliarity with forum culture, gently explain to them that this was a bad idea and point them at the FAQ and the introductory thread. If they KEEP doing it. Let Jam and Fell know.

and I think Skar has a great solution to the extended discussion problem. It's hard to move just a couple posts, but the mod could point to the new thread and tell them to carry on that way, maybe quoting a couple posts if necessary. Further posts in that vein on the original thread could be deleted (fair warning was given) for propriety's sake, i think, but preserve the discussion.

[Fellfrosch]

I think that could work. But again, I think that the first line of defense should be our own common sense, rather than relying on a mod to do it for us. Mods can step in if a tangent gets way too long, as mentioned, but for the most part I think we can do this on our own.

[MsFish]

and made sure people knew that people at TWG weren't here to solve other people's problems in life.

Yeah!  Down with friendship!

*Fish giggles

Honestly, it makes me very very sad when everyone starts snapping at each other.  Couldn't we just have civil discussion and actually learn from each other rather than being hostile?  

*Fish looks up the price of real estate in utopia