Vault Dweller said:
It didn't really hit me until the forums were taken over. We have a number of people who are here exclusively for the lulz, for pulling shit that would have gotten them banned anywhere else. Should we be really surprised at the yesterday's events?
I had a similiar epiphany this morning. You threw me off by only going after the lulz that affronted your sense of decency.
When I started lurking (and later posting), there was plenty of vulgarity and lulz but the community was centered around rpgs. Everyone posting curse filled rants, evil manifestos, ladyboy porn, and death threats was here for rpgs and had earned their RPG chops in at least a few serious discussions.
At some point this changed for the worse. I don't think it can be tied to one point (and it's likely I myself am part of the slide). Two things stand out to me as key steps in the decline:
1) KingComrade - As far as I know he was the first person accepted into the community without much to say about rpgs. His ratio is around 11500 posts for the lulz and 16 for rpg discussion. The only rpg assertion I can remember him making is that FO1 > FO2 for all the usual reasons.
2) Oblivion - This is what really broke our back, and brought in hundreds of accounts without a damn thing to say about rpgs. Our complaints about Oblivion were so damn abundant and entertaining, that we became a lulz magnet.
I've been slowly coming to this conclusion the past few months just by looking at post counts. I get in my share of off-topic threads, but I generally remember posters by what they post on rpgs. Lately, I've been seeing more and more posts from accounts I don't recognize with post counts in the hundreds or even thousands. People that are just clogging the rpgcodex with lulz.
Obediah even compared my "reign" to Naked Lunch's hijacking of the site, claiming that I did the same thing: took the site over and changed it to reflect my ways. What would happened when I start banning people for less visible stupidity?
Hey, I think my recognition of similarity was quite astute.
I didn't mean to suggest that they were the same beyond using admin powers to redirect the community though. The methodology and goals were vastly different.
Anyway, that's why I'm out. I don't want to enforce anything without the overall consent. If most people still believe that banning dumb shits is wrong and that the lulz aspect of the forums must be preserved at all costs.
You still don't completely get it. The lulz aspect of the forum must be preserved at all costs, it has been a core part of the codex since I started visiting. The problem is balance. Too many people are here just for the lulz. And you have to go after all of them, not just the ones that offend you.