Uh, wishing for other's suffering aside..
I'm a bit curious about this too. I'm not complaining, just asking.
Is GAF too strict?
- Thread starter Kraftwerk
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Uh, wishing for other's suffering aside..
I'm a bit curious about this too. I'm not complaining, just asking.
A Pretty Panda
fuckin' called it, man
Why did LostVoyager get un-juniored?
Because he complained about it enough?
Because he complained about it enough?
Because there is no registered users, gaming only, no new topics category.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
The transition to getting people to use the community forums has been a gradual one, and there are plenty of borderline posts that we don't quite have a 100% answer to. In general, we want open-ended threads with fairly well defined communities that often end up doing chat room like antics to be in the community forums. This was a compromise solution to the problem of insular megathreads where people in them basically just sit and spam and don't really participate otherwise in GAF.
I couldn't really make a great argument for how Real Pic differs from Post Your Picture. Both have a fairly small core audience. Likewise, I couldn't really tell you why the Steam, XBLA, or Canadian Gaming Deals threads are in Gaming instead of Gaming Community. I guess the judgment call is that in all those cases, the threads have enough general purpose value and have done a good enough job of avoiding getting into the clique stuff.
I know politics has been a tricky one too. PoliGAF wants PoliGAF, as moderation we want to make sure everyone feels welcome to pitch in to political topics and the closed subcommunity aspect doesn't really accommodate that, but there are plenty of insider baseball issues every day that PoliGAF wants to discuss but that isn't necessarily of general interest.
Some of it is the classic grandfathering problem anyway. Any time you have a new idea about how to do things, it's much easier to make decisions about how to deal with new stuff than old stuff.
For the most part I think we've done a decent job of talking with people, giving advance warning, and being fairly open about the direction of the community forum stuff. The key takeaway here is that we're not trying to screw anyone over or treat anyone preferentially.
A Pretty Panda
fuckin' called it, man
I don't get what people's problem with the community forums is.
Just sub to whatever community threads and check the main OT and Gaming forum for new stuff.
Just sub to whatever community threads and check the main OT and Gaming forum for new stuff.
I wonder how many people auto-subscribe to threads. Because that'd solve many problems, I'd say.
Exactly. Just sub to your favorite game OTs and communities and jump in the threads occasionally when there's new posts. Obviously you aren't gonna find new threads in there.
The Take Out Bandit
Member
Too much clicking! </First World Problems>
Plus in the past, when you get banned all of your subscriptions would get nuked. Yes, don't get banned; and yes - the price you pay for being a douche, but still a bit inconvenient on top of forced vacationing in the Banhamas.
I really like the current setup. In fact, I would like to see an even more aggressive approach where any sort of OT or mega-thread would be moved to the related community forum. Right now, almost half of the threads on the first page of Off-Topic are either |OT|'s or other community type threads (Post Your Pic, DutchGAF, IronGAF, etc.). If all of those threads were moved to Community, it would clear up the main forum to be about strictly temporary discussion topics or breaking news type posts.
Also, I think this half-baked solution, where some large, ongoing threads get moved to Community and some don't, is probably more confusing. If you just move them all, it may cause a few days of confusion and complaints, but eventually people will get used to the idea of checking the Community subforum regularly to see if there are any threads there that catch their interest.
The problem I have with the community forum is I think it's a negative thing for a thread actually growing as a community. Something in regular OT is more likely to get more eyes on it, so if some threads get that benefit I don't see why others don't. Ideally I'd just ditch the whole thing entirely but I'm not the boss, yet.
Count Dookkake
Member
If anything, the hotties (girls or boys) probably have it worse, even if they get some fawning, when one accounts for rage induced by jealousy and impotence.
I think that is mainly a point of "training" users to look in Community more than looking in Off-Topic for everything.
Exactly. Which is why having a more aggressive approach to moving all, let's call them "continued-discussion threads", to Community would help get people used to checking there more regularly.
As a sidenote, having a thread moved to Community isn't the death knell of discussion. The NFL thread, for example, had more posts in it's week one thread than it has ever had in any previous week one thread. And this is a thread that not only was normally in the regular Off-Topic forum, but it was actually stickied so it was always on the top of the first page.
Stay off my turf Dead Man, LostVoyager name is mine.
Holy shit, that's awesome.
I don't get why port begging is so bad? What's wrong with expressing a desire to experience a game on a platform they own? Sounds very confusing to ban people who simply want to play a game but can't afford the platform it's on, or think a different platform would better suit the game.
because all it leads to system warz bullshit.
maybe the fanboys are the problem.
In the real world saying you want to play a game on a system you actually own is the natural response.
Stop the fanboys.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Port begging is one I've always been unsure on. Where does asking become begging? Is it just if you make multiple posts asking for it?
Ravensmash
Member
Yeah same here.
I think there's a big difference between instinctively wanting something on another platform as a gamer, and stirring up crap.
I mean, would someone get banned for saying:
"Wow, that looks absolutely incredible - I'm hopeful that they'll think about other platforms"
because that is a LOT different from
"i wish this game was out on [insert system here], instead of being wasted on this crummy thing"
NinjaBoiX
Member
Well retard isn't a particularly favourable term, I'd say calling someone a retard is in pretty bad taste.
I have visited community forums maybe twice.
When something enters community it is like it stops existing
All the active threads in the Community forum seem to contradict this. Maybe you should try going over there more often?
I mean it stops existing for me. I might do so. Although really this forum is too large. I originally spend most time on gaming, now I do it on off topic. Due to the size of the forum you will inevitably focus on some parts of it.
I would immediately ban for calling another user retarded, the others, eh, depends on context.
True. To be fair, most people probably don't actively trawl the Community forums. They just subscribe to the threads that interest them and visit them from the User CP or Subscriptions page.
faceless007
Member
If this constitutes port begging (apparently it does, albiet with not very long a ban) I'd say the bar is pretty low. Best to avoid discussion of any game's potential on another platform.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Wow, that was just a nice, enthusiastic post. Yeah, I'd say ignore it altoghether, it seems pretty easy to get banned for simply commenting, never mind asking. I wonder why they are so heavy handed with this? As someone else said, yeah, it might incite system wars, but that's another issue entirely.
I think it's more due to the fact that they're just spam posts. The large majority of the time, the people doing the port begging aren't making a convincing case as to why the game belongs on a specific platform, they're just complaining because the game is on platforms they don't own or that they don't want to play on for whatever reason. There is no value in port begging posts. At best they're just pointless noise, and in some cases they do derail threads into dumb fanboy wars, so I think it makes sense to discourage them with minor bans.
PetriP-TNT
Member
Me too. Only reason I post in CF topic is because I remembered to subscribe to the Dark Souls OT.
edit: holy shit, that was the first time I pressed the OT Community tab. So that's where all those topics have gone to!
I cannot speak specifically about why we do not do warnings for portbegging in particular; I have not banned a single person for portbegging yet because those are not the sort of topics I spend time reading.
But on the subject more generally, for me, the point of giving a warning is usually that someone has slipped but there is some sort of extenuating circumstance where I do not think it merits moderating, but I still want to clarify that it is not okay as a general rule so that other people do not see that person doing it, see that nothing has happened to them, and think it is okay and then start doing the same thing in other threads. In most instances, however, I think someone should know better, so I just usually do not feel like there is a compelling reason to warn instead of ban.
I also try to be more judicious about when I warn rather ban because I have found that they can sometimes backfire. I have given warnings, and on a few occasions I have received indignant responses in the thread at the implicit threat or private messages either from the specified user or from friends, admonishing me that I was incorrect to have given a warning. I do not like being ganged up on or outnumbered in a topic or derailing a topic with a debate on moderation policy any more than any other user does, so I try to be more sure that a warning is actually warranted over a ban and that it will be well-received, and that I communicate more clearly when I do (because there have been misunderstandings over my failure to fully communicate what I was doing).
But this is just me; I do not know why other moderators do or do not do warnings.
It is okay to admit you have a crush on me. :3
On the other hand, it is also true that in a sub-forum with a more limited number of pages, it is more likely that a topic with a smaller fanbase would be seen than one that has hardly any activity and is never on the first few pages of Gaming or Off-Topic.
It is an imperfect system, but it is not without its potential advantages for smaller sub-communities.
I agree, yes.
You got an avatar! I do hope my nagging you had something to do with it.
And I lost track of topics in Community for awhile myself, but as time has gone by I have started reading them again. I don't know why I didn't click the Community tabs for so long. It is not as if the topics were different; they were just in a different spot. There was some sort of "out of sight, out of mind" aspect to it, I think.
Empyrean Heaven
Member
Based on recent bleating, not strict enough.
charlequin
Banned
When there's a topic that feels like uncharted territory or we're trying to push the community in a new direction, we often do go into threads to explain what behavior we feel is inappropriate and encourage people to post differently -- and when we do that we generally try to stay engaged in the thread and talk people through what we're asking for instead of drawing a sharp "after this, BAN" line.
Otherwise, warnings are often counterproductive. When we warn people about stuff they should already know not to do, the result is semi-arbitrary enforcement -- people before the post get off scot free, people afterwards get banned even though in many fast-moving threads it's easy to miss a single moderator post, and then people complain about how they were banned for something they missed the warning on. If people are doing something they should know is against the rules (and this is the case in the vast majority of bans) I don't see much benefit in warning them first.
The best case is it's empty, zero-value posting (nobody cares that you want a pony but aren't allowed to have one); worst case it's a thread-ruining derail. The mod staff used to not care about it but it just kept being more and more of a problem. In general we get more people complaining that we don't enforce this one zealously enough than we do complaining about the rule existing.
FO-totality
Poet Centuriate
Straight up bans for obvious things (racism, bigotry, etc.) that's understandable, but if you did get warnings for even zero-value posts, it would clear up this air of "why were they banned for that." or seeming banned for low quality but on the individual seeming harmless posts. If you warned even in PMs for stuff, wouldn't that suffice as well.
I guess I'm saying if I have a post that is breaking the rules, but is one of those small "slap on the wrist" type of rules, I'd love a warning (either in thread or PM) so I know to knock it off rather than just show up and really not understand why something so innocent or not of concern (in my mind) got me banned.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
That's something that would have almost certainly been ignored if it wasn't in a thread for a newly announced console exclusive that was filled to the brim with port begging or complaining about the platform choice.
Community could probably use some more publicity, a few people have said the same thing about it falling off the radar.
Mods, since I've been posting here, I've always wondered why this type of trolling/insults is allowed in every XBL thread on GAF: Most Recent XBL Thread
Just curious as to why. It gets annoying, but doesn't really bother me (that's why I only included the quotes, not the GAFers who said them).
Is it because those are not direct insults?
Just curious as to why. It gets annoying, but doesn't really bother me (that's why I only included the quotes, not the GAFers who said them).
Is it because those are not direct insults?
FO-totality
Poet Centuriate
Those should be banned under attack and the same reasoning as port begging.
It's not like those people went into an XBL thread and posted that. The topic title is a question.
In the OT I think the phrase "Would" and it's many derivatives to be just as empty. I'm sure there's others who feel the same way, in that no one cares you want to.
While I don't see that derailing a thread, or causing someone argue over it, it's annoying none the less.
I would be curious to see what happened if those kinds of posts were more strictly moderated.
charlequin
Banned
Err, we ban for that.
Canis lupus
Member
Do you mean in the thread title?
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