Lockkaliber said:
@DU: Let's say that I agree with you and that you have convinced me that I was wrong and just whining.
Take a look at any other forum. What happens? Someone creates an inane topic. Somehow or another that topic slightly diverts. Someone comes along and champions one side of an issue or cause that topic is now about. Someone else who disagrees begins to champion the opposing side.
The two sides have at each other for a while. Other members call for the thread to be locked because the argument is getting too heated. Someone else calls for them to take it to PMs. The thread is locked. Another thread is (typically) created in its place or the same discussion ends up cropping up in other threads. The effect of locking the thread to end the discussion fails, so more drastic action is taken.
Someone gets banned. Everything goes to shit as people decide that the ban was too harsh or not harsh enough. If he was banned, why not that other guy? While another camp sets up on the "something must be done" bandwagon and asks for more people to be banned. The moderators go X-TREME™ and start locking shit down left and right. "We will not tolerate any more discussion on X topic". The forum loses a bunch of members who don't like the way things are going. Soon enough, things calm down but eventually, the cycle gets repeated.
The Codex went the opposide way. Two fags want to have at each other over the internet? Cool. Why should I care? It's not like I get paid to babysit. If they want to go on for 20 pages creating epic posts in reply to each other, why should we stop them? Eventually, the two sides tire of it and things die down. Someone says something really dumb that tos earn them a tag. Some people leave because they can't handle it. No-one gets banned. The issue mostly stays in the one topic which becomes some sort of epic memory for the old-timers "Oh hey, you remember when X got dumbfucked?". Everyone moves on quite naturally.
Yes the really Retarded shit does need to be dealt with (after everyone's had 20 pages of fun with it) and yes, from time to time you do need to stop the spam (the kind where someone goes on a spree posting the same message eighty times in a one hour period). You moderate the Codex anymore than that though and you lose what the Codex is about. The ability for two or more people to yell and scream at each other for 50 pages while everyone else grabs some popcorn.
Jokes become "old and tired" but discussions become "old and tired" too. How many times have you seen someone post "We've had this discussion?". When you start trying to draw arbitrary lines somewhere because you've had this discussion before, you miss the point that maybe not everyone else has had it and it's new for them. We didn't stop it the first time, so why should we stop it the second time? Just because 4 years ago someone rememebers someone else said the same thing? Welcome to the real world.
We let things run their course. You'd note that when ("the serious") threads are Retardo'd here, very rarely is a duplicate thread created. You'd note that when we do finally ban someone, there are cries of "Well it's about fucking time" including "Wow, I thought you'd ban me months ago!" from the person who got banned (ref: EV). Sure, they create an alt and come back but their attitude is just that little bit better than creating a thousand alts through a thousand different proxies and spamming the place up so much that we need to disable registrations for a few days.
Lockkaliber said:
Still, is there something that you think is wrong with the current userbase or the site as a whole as opposed to how it was a couple of years back
Yes, our freer moderation policies do draw in a lot of people who just want to post shit. They're not here because they want to get into an epic debate about some mundane issue. They just want to throw pot-shots in from the side-lines without contributing anything much more than a one-liner. Perhaps more obvious are those members who simply lack the capacity to have anything more than a three line conversation.
The problem is that also happens in most "debates". Some people just want to throw one-liners in. Sometimes though, they get drawn in a bit more extensively, though sometimes not.
I am the fourth person to have ever registered on the Codex, back before the forums were even open to the public. I was with Calis, Deathy, Saint, Sheriff_Fatman and the others when we were discussing what we wanted the place to be. We launched the place with the ideal of being able to have heated arguments because who the fuck cares if two people have at each other?
What I see today though, I saw back then. The serious discussion only ever happens once in a blue moon and it's a
very small group of people who do it. Most of the time, people post one-liners or just want to make an off-the-cuff remark. New discussion is harder now because most people can remember the old discussions so it's lost its freshness. We've been arguing about Fallout 3 and Bethesda for years. It gets "old and tired" and you lose members quite naturally because of that. Much the same way every other forum loses members because they move on.
That handful of "warriors" have already had the discussion so why repeat it, when you can just link the thread? Better yet, why not just deliver the classic one-liner meme that thread created? "ONE CANNOT TOTALLY AVOID COMBAT" makes the point more easily than repeating what was said before. Couple that with an influx of new members and you have what is referred to as "the decline".
Lockkaliber said:
(except for "newfags" whining about decline)?
"The decline" is born out of higher thread turn-over. That is, threads that pop-up over night, hit multiple pages, and in a day or two have disappeared and been buried back to page 3 or 4. Visit the Codex once a week and see how many new unread threads you have.
EG: Today is Mon 22nd of Feb for me. A week ago was Mon 15th. I have to go back to Page 3 of General Discussion to find a last reply for Mon 15th. At 50 topics per page that's about 150 topics in GD alone that were created in that time and a lot more posts. Check the other forums and you'll see General Gaming has its entire first page of replies made within the last week.
Compare that to Ye Olde Days when I'd visit the Codex once a week and be lucky to maybe find a few new replies in the same thread in there that we were talking about last week. Now-a-days, that same thread would have been buried to page 2 by then (making it harder to find and easier to forget), Retardo'd or be up the front of the forum with 44 pages of replies. 42 of which were made since you last read it. Visit the forum once a week and you're less inclined to want to read all those 44 pages. I can remember when NMA was the same (Looking at NMA today, NMA is still much the same).
"The decline" happened when the Codex became popular and simply had a lot more members not only visiting, but checking the forum every five minutes and posting. Has it changed the forum? Yes. Should I care about it...
Why? It's not any of us are paid to do this. Can I still make one-liners and yell and scream at people when I want to? Yep. Can I post WALLS OF TEXT that some of you actually bother to read and respond to? I'm doing that right now. Can I still do some coding and muck around with PHP as is my want from time to time? Yup. Can I visit the forums every 5 minutes and see new posts? Well, now I can.
Lockkaliber said:
You seem awfully neutral and not willing to express any opinions on the matter, but are quick to refute any criticism. It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on the matter.
There are two things you need to understand. Firstly what you want and secondly, getting what you want. Would I love it if every day was Saint_Proverbius having at a developer, Rosh chipping in and VD writing inciteful content? Absolutely.
How do I make that happen? Well, VD's off making his own game. I also helped kick him off staff because he wanted to ban Helton (among others) who I actually saw as the more decent members. Saint isn't around anymore. Neither is Rosh. Add the people of their ilk that in your own minds are "the better posters". Wyrmlord hits 10k posts and decides enough is enough. They all move on. From time to time we get a few newfags who replace them but memory is a funny thing, none of those n00bs seem the same as the old guys you used to run with.
That, to me, seems to be what most people complain about. And the fact is, as has been said, your decline isn't necessarily everyone eleses decline. According to some guy the Codex
went down the toilet in 2004. Funny thing is we still had Saint, VD and everyone else around at that time and his post complains about some of the better posters (I mean Role-Player, Spazmo, WTF?).
The other thing is, how am I supposed to control this place? I mean, really? If I were to implement the ban hammer, you'd be on my list. Zertol & CF didn't add anything to the Codex and I've hardly seen any decent input from them on anything serious. Andhaira is an interesting case where he actually knows more about RPGs than a lot of people here and yet when he makes a thread, the replies he gets destroy the thread. Is the problem Andhaira or how people reply to him? Do I control it by banning Andhaira or the people that reply to him? You
fall into much the same category now. Cleve and Nomask would be gone too. I mean, we've had enough predictions of doom right?
But what would all of that leave me with? A much quieter forum and still not enough serious discussion because that's all "old and tired" for those that are left.
Instead, don't look at what we've "lost". Look at what's here. Are there still serious discussions? Yep. General Discussion @ the Codex is the only forum I know of where I can run into Holocaust deniers and have at them without going to Stormfront... where you get banned or a forum like RPGWatch (using as a broad example) where it would get "too heated" and end up locked. Do we still talk about RPGs? Yep. Can we still whinge about the state of RPGs? Yep. Is Site Feedback still used as a dumping ground for people trying to be witty? Yep. And are we still free to post one-liners because we can't be fucked doing anything more? Ab-so-fucking-lutely.
Is there some crap you have to ignore to find the good stuff? Sure. But that's always been the case. And you know what, what might be crap to you that you want to ignore, might just be the stuff I was looking for today.
Dny said:
DarkUnderlord said:
Oddly enough, most people don't live on internet forums for all their lives. They go through a period, post and move on.
You shot yourself in the foot man. Isn't that painful ?
I just have longer periods. I mean hey, it took me 8 years to shut-down FMF. I don't give up easily.
Shannow said:
And more recently Edward R Murrow and Brother None. Just seems like many quality posters entirely leave or post so rarely (in BN's case, so specifically) one hardly notices them anymore.
Pretty much. Like everyone else, they move on. The fact is, most of those better posters developed their reputations in other forums before they came here too. Saint ran V13.net, Rosh haunted NMA. BN was around but I think he was a much quieter guy than he eventually became. All of them haunted the Interplay forums. We know them mostly because we knew them "over there". Now most of those other places are gone and have been replaced with new grounds like ESF or the BioWare Boards. Places I can't be assed going to these days.
