A thread to complain about the small issues of the escapist forums.

[Stemer]

Well misleading or ambiguous thread titles are always annoying, but lately people who put their threads in the wrong forum are starting to annoy me more.

Threads about feminism and gender issues belong in religion and politics
Threads about the government taking away your right to shit-post on facebook, or how much you hate PETA belong on religion and politics.
Threads about TV shows or movies belong in off-topic

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I don't really like the fact that there are a few topics that no matter what, WILL get hate posts even if it's not related to anything. I think ponies, the Wii U and CoD are the main victims of this. I can't be asked to make threads about any of those because I know they'll get locked.

Also, the moderation needs some work. I've never been a mod, even though I think it would be a good experience and I personally think I might be good as one I know I won't get to be one any time soon. But even I see all the problems of a moderation system mainly based around user-reporting popping up. For example, the "forum celebrities" really don't get reported because they're celebrities, when the Zeels and Karatmoruesks (I have no clue how to spell his goddamn name) are reported and get banned because they have unpopular opinions. I've barely even seen them do anything that could get them banned/suspended. I think we should have a mix, moderators should have more freedom to give people warnings and such, whilst we keep the reporting but seriously look at them in the queue before we give them the wrath. Right now the mods are trusting the community too much to handle itself, which I've never seen be a good thing. I was a mod for about two years on a pretty big Minecraft server, whilst of course not being as big as The Escapist I have dealt with quite a lot of dicks in my time and I've got to say that even in a relatively small community like that server, no-one was liked by everyone.

 

[GrandmaFunk]

"Recommend me X" thread titles are like nails on a chalkboard.

 

[anthony87]

To be fair, I've rarely seen the "forum celebrities" (christ I hate that term) actually say or do anything worth reporting in the first place whereas the Zeels and Katos get reported for generally being assholes.

Honetly, I think there'd actually be a lot less reporting and arguing than there is if we were all just allowed to tell each other to fuck off now and then. Civil discussion is all nice and...well, civil, but I feel like the insane amounts of passive aggressiveness and "insulting people without technically insulting them, thereby avoiding mod wrath" that goes on around here end up doing a lot more damage to the community, rather than if we could just tell an asshole that he's an asshole.

Granted, that's probably just my Irish-ness speaking. Quite often our conversations will end with a "Yeah? Well fuck you so!" or something along those lines ^_^

 

[excalipoor]

This is also why I don't want the thumbs up system since that is bait for people who just want to say something they think is funny which wont add anything of use to the thread.

This is happening already. *cough* And even if it escalated from here, people would probably quickly get annoyed enough to ignore blatant thumb whoring.

And low content is low content regardless of whether it warrants a warning or not. Adding a few words might circumvent mod wrath, but it's still not saying anything more than "I agree" or whatnot.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'RE ANGRY ALL THE TIME!!!11!!!1 NO WE'RE NOT!!1!!!! YOU'RE JUST TOO SENSITIVE!!!!1!!

[small]My bad :'([/small]

Oh, and had there been a 'thumbs up' button, I would've thumbed the few posts above mentioning issues with moderation.

 

[Robot Number V]

Hmmm. Off the top of my head? (spoilered for neatness)

Spoiler

-People getting angry at others for using the phrase "Am I the only one?" It's just a damn figure of speech. Turns out, people are not 100% literal 100% of the time. I garuntee that you aren't, either. This is a very simple concept.

Spoiler

-Huge, sweeping generalizations. Namely, the fact that just about any time somebody brings up a horrible thing that happened somewhere, people start blaming the ENTIRE population of the country where it happened. As in, "A group of 20 Americans want to teach the Bible in schools? Man, why are ALL AMERICANS so crazy?" or "A Chinese person ran over a little girl and drove off? Well, it's China, what do you expect?" [insert frustrated growling noise here] This is the OPPOSITE of constructive discussion. Stop it.

Spoiler

-"Hating" things. This is more about the internet has a whole, but it seems like these days the word "hating" is synonymous with "not particularly liking". This would be fine, except that once a lot of people "hate" a thing, they start to ACTUALLY hate it, the old fashioned way. So instead of a lot of people being totally indifferent to, say, Justin Bieber, you have a culture of people who hate him[footnote]HER. I get it. It's hilarious, because literally everyone on the planet has made that joke, and as we all know, jokes only get funnier the more you tell them. Just like "The cake is a lie."[/footnote] merely BECAUSE they are indifferent to him, and hating is now the same thing as indifference.

 

[Lyri]

The constant ability for people to derail every fucking thread with inane bullshit without moderation.

Fuck off.

It is mostly the same people too, every god damn time. You have user groups for that.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

To be fair, I've rarely seen the "forum celebrities" (christ I hate that term) actually say or do anything worth reporting in the first place whereas the Zeels and Katos get reported for generally being assholes.

Honetly, I think there'd actually be a lot less reporting and arguing than there is if we were all just allowed to tell each other to fuck off now and then. Civil discussion is all nice and...well, civil, but I feel like the insane amounts of passive aggressiveness and "insulting people without technically insulting them, thereby avoiding mod wrath" that goes on around here end up doing a lot more damage to the community, rather than if we could just tell an asshole that he's an asshole.

Granted, that's probably just my Irish-ness speaking. Quite often our conversations will end with a "Yeah? Well fuck you so!" or something along those lines ^_^

Well, I have pretty much seen some of them doing that sort of stuff. Really, who the hell knows what goes on in the queue but the mods, I could be wrong or I could be right. We won't really know unless we become mods.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Am I the only one that hates "You're never the only one!"?

IT'S A FUCKING FIGURE OF SPEECH!

Yup. Logically I get it but god damn everytime thread like that pops up SOMEONE has to point it out real sarcastic like. Italics and all

OT: Also the term "strawman". If you don't throw that in your argument about 50 times then you're debating wrong apparently.

I've seen that word so many times, it's like the internet suddenly learned a new word.

There's ultimately very little point of arguing, because most people have justified their own opinions to themselves; if they're not willing to have their opinions challenged, then why express it at all?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Actually the only thing that bothers me so far is the lack (or well hidden) 'Hot Threads' button since the visual redesign.

 

[anthony87]

OT: Also the term "strawman". If you don't throw that in your argument about 50 times then you're debating wrong apparently.

Something that always comes to mind when I see the term "strawman" is that I've never ever seen it used outside these forums. Hell, I didn't even see it in these forums until a year or so ago. Now everyone and their bloody dog goes tossing it around in an attempt to sound intellectual.

 

[Bobic]

Well, I was going to complain about the first thing that popped into my head, but. . .

Am I the only one that hates "You're never the only one!"?

IT'S A FUCKING FIGURE OF SPEECH!

This guy beat me to it, and delivered my complaint for me.

So instead I'll go on to my really petty and small issue that no-one should really complain about. IMO

MOTHERFUCKING IMO

I know it's petty, but seriously, why is it necessary? I know it's your opinion, it's not a damned fact and, well, you fucking said it!

And then, they don't even bother to say it creatively, they just throw 3 letters there and call it a day. No 'I think that' or even 'In my opinion', nope, just 3 letters that I read as a standout statement because they're always bloody capitalised.

And why is it arbitrarily acceptable, if you wrote all your posts in txt speek you'd get laughed out of the room, but no IMO is fine. In my ridiculous opinion, IMO just sucks.



Oh, and anime request threads annoy me too simply because there are so damned many. C'mon guys, is it really that hard to find a damned anime? People experiencing every other form of entertainment seem to get by fine. And if it is that hard, fine, go to one of the other dozens of threads on this site. Or watch Paprika, it's the only one, out of four, anime that I've enjoyed. It's got the Bobic seal of approval.

 

[Something Amyss]

My complaint: Excessive thread derailing grinds my gears, especially in threads in which the OP asked several times for the derailing to stop.

This thread is now about ponies.

But seriously, the mods seem to get involved in some of these derails; perhaps contact them if it's such a bother?

 

[Easton Dark]

I say someone's acting like a dick (in August) who later admits to acting like a dick, that's a warning (a month later).

Others call people dicks and dick heads and they get nothing.

Subjective moderation... I'm not a fan. But that's really my only complaint. Maybe thread derails, but that I can ignore.

 

[Lyri]

You wouldn't be referencing a certain highly notable poster with Amaterasu as his Avatar?

I hold that as the Sean Connery rule: when you reach max level, you stop leveling.

Amongst others, yes.
It's been going on for a while now and whilst they have defended it as having fun, which I agree is fine to do when you derail threads constantly something should be done about it.

Its the clique thing all over again, I was hoping that groups would end that and people would just go and fellate each other in there, apparently people still find it fitting to have those little incoversations amongst friends whilst people are posting.

Forum rules and posting etiquette has become so lax, it's astonishing.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

You wouldn't be referencing a certain highly notable poster with Amaterasu as his Avatar?

I hold that as the Sean Connery rule: when you reach max level, you stop leveling.

Amongst others, yes.
It's been going on for a while now and whilst they have defended it as having fun, which I agree is fine to do when you derail threads constantly something should be done about it.

Its the clique thing all over again, I was hoping that groups would end that and people would just go and fellate each other in there, apparently people still find it fitting to have those little incoversations amongst friends whilst people are posting.

Forum rules and posting etiquette has become so lax, it's astonishing.

Not really more lax, it's actually become a bit harsher on the lesser-known members in my eyes. But yeah, I have no idea why turning a thread into a quote-bonanza with little in conversations about avatars and shit doesn't count as derailing. We have PM's, groups and you can always add people on Skype/Facebook/Whatever if you want to talk with them, there's no need to go on so much in an unrelated thread.