There’s a difference between boredom relief and completly senceless, mindless, and utterly stupid banter. Oh, and if I recall correctly, god were there a number of flame wars.
They were dealt with, but we shouldn’t have to bow to the whims of certain people and create a forum because they’re being idiots, especially not recreate a forum which was a huge pain in the ass for the community in general.
Well then Kagon, if you didn’t bow then, I really hope you aren’t bowing now.
I’m no mod, I don’t know what you guys do behind closed doors, I don’t know who you talk to, who you ban, who you reprimand. All I know is what I am seeing right now. What I am seeing is what I am responding to. If you have some grand plan of fixing this, it would be a great relief to those of us not privilaged to know. However, if you collectively feel we are not entitled to know what’s going on, threads like these, asking for action, will happen.
I don’t like posting this, but I don’t like what is being posted. If you have plan, if you are doing something, please say so. I know you well enough to trust you well enough in the matters that deal with our collective happiness.
:kissy:
I do NOT accept that people can’t be polite. I do NOT accept that people can’t be reasonable. I do NOT accept that stupid, assholish behavior is normal and acceptable. I DO believe, from my years on this forum, in particular, that everyone is completely capable of being intelligent, sensitive, witty, and kind in their own ways. In the absence of that, I expect everyone to at least be respectful of each other, and that’s an ideal that is in no way exclusive to messageboards.
Some of the people who jumped on the most recent bandwagon should have known better. They’ve been here a long time. They’ve probably scene a lot of threads in which people specifically called bandwagons stupid. The problem is not that they need to do something stupid somewhere else. The problem is that they need to understand that they need to use better discretion posting on the forums. Anyone can do that. They just need to think a little, and accept the principle.
That’s as optimistic as I’m going to get tonight, barring someone shoving some of that positively-charged goo from Ghostbusters 2 up my butt. And that is NOT a solicitation.
I’m for bringing it back, mostly because I loved the place when it was there.
All this stuff about “senseless posts” is kinda stupid. Sure, you don’t have to read them when they’re in the main forum, but it’s easier to avoid if there’s a WHOLE FORUM designated for stupid posts.
If you get a stupid post in the main forum, toss it to the ToB where it will hopefully die.
There shouldn’t be anyone here telling other people to “restrain” shit, it’s just not their place. It’s not exactly hurting anyone to have some random bored post because you just don’t happen to have something going on right then and there. Post to your fucking heart’s content, and do it in the ToB if it’s not really constructive.
For people who hate the tower of babble, a forum could be made called the trash can where senseless, usually unfunny posts and threads would be placed where no one can post back in. It could serve as a reminder as to what some people don’t want to see and sift through constantly.
Bringing back the tower of babel will not solve the stupid threads/posts problem, it will be the same as the weeks or months before it was shut down. I did like the TOB, but most of it just was not funny in the least. Or theres nothing I remember being funny in the TOB, though I started checking the forums by the time of TOB’s last months. The tower of babel, if ever resurrected, will never be how it was in the good ole times.
tob r.i.p
Oh, GOD. I’d hate to see the people who post pointless nonsense all aquire LiveJournals. Can you imagine the sheer amount of “I UPDATED MY LIVEJOURNAL!!!” posts?
shudder
It would be the next bandwagon. Oh lord…
It’d break Zero trying to fry all of their asses, quite frankly.
ON THE ToB NOW :
As Kagon said, the ToB was a failed experiment. However, I think Eden’s point is that as it was an experiment, there is no reason why we couldn’t retry this experiment with new factors in.
I am personally of the faction that the ToB should stay burnt down and just die already. Stop talking about it, sheesh! Yeah, that faction. When a small clique of users are present on a certain forum, with no one else bothering them, it tends to create a caste system on the boards (which is entierly stupid, you’ll agree with me) and a caste system in ANYTHING only creates chaos, especially in a well-adjusted online community like this one (say what you will, but you have never been to SD6.net, fun and all, but christ do these people need lives or actual decency).
The ToB is basically welcoming chaos with open arms, and will most likely be a burden on the mods and admins to actually manage.
Eden, I’m no mod, and you know it. However, my stance on this is this : It’s not because there are people to pick it up that we need to shit outside the bowl.
Woh, i didn’t know it was such a big deal! I am sorry for jumping on the latest bandwagon…
I like the trash can Idea, the SA forums has something like that, and it kept most people in line, it would probly work better here since this forum is much smaller. Another idea is to allow some sillyness (we wouldn’t just want all “here check out this crazy internet link” threads after all), but tell people to keep it in moderation
Or just let the ToB back.
While alot of stuff in the TOB was complete crap, some of it was halarious. For example, when Nova and Paxton had that flame war…classic. Bring back the tob. It might be hard to mod, and if none of the mods want to do it, get new mods.
Also, what Eden is saying is right. If you dont want people posting crap, give them temp (or even perm) bans. Dont just close threads that are completely pointless, delete them. They do it for the attention, and if it’s still there, locked or not, people will read it. I know that i read almost every locked thread, just to see why it was locked. Delete the attention seeking threads, dont just close them.
I was one of the “Babylonians” (the clique that Kagon referred to) who was a common frequenter of the ToB and the other boards. I don’t remember bringing up ToB shit to the other boards, but I might’ve and regardless I counted myself among them. I liked the ToB but I think that you had to go through just as much shit as you do now to get to a gem of a thread, and in the ToB, they tended to be much rarer than here.
However, I’m much against the resurrection of the ToB. Like others have said, people will still post stupid shit in the main forum, and even if it is moved to the ToB, we still get that little link that brings us to it, so what’s the point? The ToB spawned a lot of stupid shit that nobody read or thought was funny, and the small amount that people actually liked could be made in the main forum and found funnier by more people since less people visited the ToB.
I had a much better argument in mind but I kinda lost it.
I think people are over reacting about this slightly just to give themselves a seat in the ToB council. Another forum full of crap. Wow. RPGC’s main forum full of crap. Wow. If you don’t like it, don’t look it, however that is a shitty phrase when that crap is excessive and constant. So honestly I don’t know what my opinion is supposed to be saying. I guess how it’s funny that people can be so serious and proffesional sounding about a forum that got removed a year ago. other than that I think I agree with Kagon.
There’s really only a couple of things to do
a) Do nothing. I dunno, I thought the threads were kinda funny (the first few, anyway :P), and the people who post like Ramza’s post in this thread (“OMG SPAM”, “WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS”) screw the matter up worse than any amount of actual spam could.
b) Bring back the ToB, or Trash, or Superconductive Fuel Aluminum Flux Capacitator Skanking Garbage Forum, or whatever, but keep it as a locked forum. You guys seem to be under the impression that it has to be open and people can post in it and recreate old patterns, but it really doesn’t have to be that way.
Its an online message board. I’d think you can restrain yourselves. If you’re really feeling that insane go hit your head against a wall or shoot some coke.
Well, I never noticed any of the things that pissed everyone off so much about the ToB, so I would like to have it back.
But then again, I wouldn’t notice the crap everyone hated even if someone whacked me in the head with it because I just don’t care that much what kind of crap people post.
If people want to post post crap I just let them do that and ignore them. I understand that the admins/mods don’t think the same way about it though…
They can’t really think that way either. That would cause the whole board to collapse into a smoldering pile of shit…
But I don’t see why the ToB can’t be revived, just for a while. If it still is as crappy as it was, just kill it again and say that it is impossible.
But most of the people that were posting crap there are now older and hopefully more mature. And we have probably also learned from our mistakes, so why not give it a second chance?
I still know that everything is up to “the people upstairs” and if you’ve decided that you don’t want it, then it’s not coming back.
But the forum and the posters has changed a lot since it was deleted, so I believe that it could actually be revived without turning into what it was during the end…
I mean, people wouldn’t ask for it to be revived if they didn’t think that there is more to it than just random crap, so why not give us (because I’m one of the ones that believes that) a chance to prove it instead of almost denying that there ever was something good about it?
(And about the groups trying to move threads to the ToB…
I was (and I guess I still am) part of CRABS… But Iv’e always just considered it a joke (and I made some jokes about trying to get stuff moved to the ToB too, but nothing really serious…))
Talking about Bob… And George. They Got a Newbie Thead. Liss and Death (and several Other mods) are Quite Strict about Posting Newbies about side that thread.
See:
http://forums.bobandgeorge.com/viewtopic.php?t=7
Big Nutter
If so I point out that My Newbie threads will be seen at http://forum.thetribeuk.com
My apologies, I’m on vacation :P. I do have to express amusement at what’s going on while I’m gone though. As an aside, YES! BOWSER’s in the smilies! My life is complete. :bowser:
A TOB won’t change a thing. Newbie threads won’t change. If people will post, they will post. If they’re newbies, odds are since they don’t really read the rules, they won’t really notice a post here if you’re new thread. The same applies to a lot of different topics and if you don’t believe me when I say that these things have been discussed to the extreme, the staff boards are occasionally as active as the main forum. People have already explained why, what we need is a strong moderating presence in the main forum especially, in order to alleviate these issues when they arise. This essentially happened because I’m not around for a variety of reasons, but I’ll be back. In the meantime, Mods, kick some ass :P. There’s too much angst going around. This tends to happen over the summer and I figure its cuz people have too much time on their hands and/or they need to lighten up and get their minds off virtual communities if they’re about to blow an aggression inhibitor. I clearly remember we had ‘asshole’ issues last summer. This is nothing new. When you’re around for as long as I and a few others, you notice certain patterns in how people post. For example, someone made fun of the sorry thread. Hell, that in itself has become a predictable response. I’m almost tempted to tell people to lay back and smoke a doobie.
In short: the TOB is coming back over my dead body. I’ve seen countless bandwagons, but I’m not the one that keeps forgetting about how much they suck by making more a couple months later. Similarly, I didn’t forget why the TOB was eliminated.
Ok. Sorry to break it to y’all, but I am gonna close this thread. But, before I do, I’ll answer what Eden originally had to say.
First of all, the question was rhetorical, so there was no reason to make any answers. I wasn’t actually asking. The answer is very obvious: A lot of veterans and forums regulars who remember the ToB wanted it OUT. We heard their plea and threw it out. With this in mind, CLEARLY the majority of the people who know what I’m talking about (And let’s get real, EVERYONE who jumped on that ‘my name is’ thread has been around long enough to remember) don’t want it back. So, the answer, clearly, was no. There was no reason to make an answer.
Second of all, threatening to bring back the ToB, permanently or temporarily, would be a win-win situation for the moderators, because if we do, one of two things will happen:
- The people will see the errors of theirs ways, and, in the future, cease to make bandwagon threads so pointlessly with no humourous value and clutter up the main forum,
or
- We bring it back, some of the people bitch and moan, and we take the opportunity to make an example out of people who convinced the mods and admins as a whole to decide to bring it back, thus, giving them a lot of flak to deal with.
Lastly, I don’t know if you were implying that I dislike useless, nonsensical posts, but lemme make it clear that I really don’t. But, this bandwagon-hopper style of all the kids at RPGC (And jumping on the bandwagon of something that really is virtually impossible to recreate in a humourous manner, cos most of those silly threads are funny cos of their randomness and spontenaity, which, it is neither when everyone does it) really just plain kills it, and makes it more of an annoyance than anything. For as much as we mods and admins can do, it really is the responsibility of both authority figures and ‘commoners’ (Don’t really know a better word :P) to maintain a peaceful, well-structured community.
So, now, if you didn’t understand my intentions and feelings before, now you do. We’ll just have to sit back and see what happens.