My point was that Discussion won't ever be a place of serious discussion. I don't know where the rules come in here, guy was retarded and in no way "enforcing" the retard-rule.

I'll give you another example: you asking me to define "serious discussion". I don't feel like typing a wall of text because you feel like nitpicking. I won't go and hunt down every single clueless post made by clueless people just so you can see "trends".

I don't remember suggesting anything tbh. There's no direction to take the board in. Your posts have no connection to my line of thought which I've been laying out for you bright as day three times now.

This is a forum infested with 12 year olds and edgy high schoolers who either have no idea what the actual topic is about, or have some vague idea and post something ridiculous for the shock factor/argue for the sake of arguing. The people I could see myself discussing things with are too few in numbers to make a significant impact on the general outlook of this board.

It only took you 3 posts to get it. I think that is above average, speaking about Discussion.

Flaming and time friendly, of course there are some guidelines which can be based on both Ele and Zelda's morals (Based on verbal abuse).
To be honest some discussions get even better with flaming, it rarely goes out of hand (apart from with touchy subjects).

Maybe just a thread every now and then with this allowed, also one that can be just small posts. God damn I like to read through these threads but some of the users here write more in a single post than what is required in a single 3-page essay.

Lets address the last point first: Why do you want the Discussions board to have a warm feel and be an inviting place? Everyone is of-course allowed to express their opinion and argue on the base of evidence, but let's not try and paint this a warm and happy place. The discussion board has and will most likely be held in the esteem of being occupied by some hotheads that can't have enough arguments in real life and some that drop by every now and then to swing a southpaw once or twice a month, and of-course the last 50%, the 1-2 line posters that make a few posts before realizing they do not really care enough to stay for a month-long back-and-fourth with for-example Gorman.

However, I am not the one setting the goals here, so let us play ball: In order to make this board more welcoming lowering the seriousness of the topics would help. Sparking discussion on topcis ranging from the evolution of the hiphop genre to persay the direction major game publishers such as Ubisoft and Activision are taking would most likely bring a wider audience into the board and bring us away from topics such as the political development (retardation) of major democracies and general US centered fuck-ups.

Moving on, the major issues with this board does not lie with you, it lies in the mismatch in of level argumentation from the participants. This most often swings one way: someone tries to make an input in a thread, but either due to the lack of understanding or a major language barrier most of the ideas fall sort of actually being beneficial to the current discussion. This is a problem that won't likely be solved, ever, however promoting ignorance towards these outlying posts would most likely hold the threads on path and not lead to a 2-3 paragraph bashing of these newcomers.

One of the major, but yet lesser to the one mentioned above, is the use of mod-powers in this board. Closing threads are done WAY too early, and most often no good reason are given. As Gorman said above, having necro-posts in a discussion forum is most often NOT a bad thing, unless you are of the mindset that discussions that no-one have upheld are dead and as such no-one should have to re-read a few pages of posts rather than posting the same thing over and over again. Also I saw a mod-edit here: http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...5&postcount=31 and I am quite certain this is not the intended use of such powers.

I should probably reflect more on 2-3 before continuing, but at-least the major issues are roughly outlined above in relation as to how I view this board.

Yeah, but as Gynx reasoned;

Even if the first post isn't stupid, that doesn't stop stupid people from participating. It's like cleaning a plate, only to have somebody shit on it. The people that post in Discussion are representative of the community. If the threads in Discussion are shit, it's because the community is shit. Short of making Discussion less representative (barring shit people from posting), there's not a whole lot that can be done about it. Or is there?

Dude, you're being silly now. That thread's OP was a complete mess, and that steered everybody in the wrong direction and baited a lot of people. It was pretty much a thinly veiled troll.

The reworked thread Zelda made is much more reasonable and even provided a list of possible questions for discussion.

I feel like nothing anybody does ever is agreeable with you, Gorman.

Not angry. He said you remade the same thread. You didn't. He's saying we should've just edited his OP to make it better, but you created a new thread of a better quality anyway. We didn't kill the discussion at all. It's just as active now - in fact, there's more posts.


Why is it absurd to close a troll thread and remake it into a better thread that is just as active? 'No opposing viewpoints'? Pretty sure people were arguing different opinions there man.

I went back through all the closed threads in the time that we've been mods (since Feb), and none of them were closed for being onesided. We haven't done that. I don't know if Redundant or Arglax did that.


It was a troll thread. Check it again. I've bolded phrases that you should pay special attention to. Analyse that vocab and tell me those words aren't baiting/fighting words.

The point of the mod action was to remove the troll OP and make a better, more directed discussion. Action accomplished.


There's a line between inspiring debate and baiting. If raaaage was cunning about it instead of being so blatantly obvious, then he'd probably be like you. Or pretty much every Discussion regular.


We solved the issue. We made a thread with better direction, that wasn't bait. Zelda probably spent at least 10 minutes making that that OP, and it sounds like you're degrading the effort he put into that thread and that we've both put into trying to turn this place around... With nary a reason, too.

If someone said you were 'pretty ugly' then that would make you ugly, wouldn't it?


I've already said. Baiting is not the right way to stimulate discussion.


We are enforcing rules. We're deleting posts. We're constantly moving threads to more appropriate places. You don't see all of that. You don't see behind the scenes. Your accusations aren't based on what's actually happening, just your tinted perspective of what's happening.


Yeah. By opening a thread, asking people to diagnose problems with the board, and taking their advice into consideration (we've been far less heavy-handed, and activity has consequently risen), I'm actively destroying the board. You're actively destroying my brain.