Please! My Eyes Burn!: A Rant and Discussion

[josh797]

cheers isaac! thanks for bringing this up! giving voice to stuff ive been feeling

 

[Fire Daemon]

This is... very interesting. You said you didn't want to control the Escapist but look, you have decided what posts you want to stay and what posts you want removed and plan on using the mods to make this happen. *sigh* While I agree with you, there is stupidity and it is annoying, you don't have the right to remove this stupidity or to choose what caliber of stupidity warrants a ban. What you do have the right to do however, is replace the stupidity.

See an OP with little substance, why not make your own filled with substance. People would rather go to that one, then a single sentence thread. Did none of you think of this?

fire i really think people wont, less reading=easier to post? and in the end, i dont want to give up on this site, but i will, and i think many others might if it continues the way it is now. do you want the site to go the way it is now? id personally rather have it be intelligent, and if that means getting together and deciding what should be reported and what shouldnt, so be it

You shouldn't be getting "together" and deciding what you all like and what you all don't like. Take it upon yourself to decide what isn't quality and what is quality. Send a PM or a report to the mods to show them your opinion and then let them decide wether they agree with you. If there are enough people who share the same opinions then the mods will do something, but in the end it should be the mods who decide what is ban worthy, not you!

Like TheNecroswanson said, Report, PM and move along. Thats all you need to do. Thats all you should do.

 

[josh797]

I do... but I don't stray from the RP section very much

glad I did tonight though...

thanks for coming sergeant. its good to see interesting intelligent people still posting here

 

[Shivari]

There's a report button, use it.

We get it, the forum is going down hill in your eyes, the intelligence is fading, you're going to move to Canada. Not every thread is destined for a big intelligent discussion, I wouldn't come here if every thread was like that. Threads like the FAQ thread have their place, we don't need to sap the forum of all that isn't at least a paragraph of typing and not about a serious issue. Some of you are getting a bit uppity about this. If you think that stuff is spilling over too much into other threads, sweet, report it and move on. PM a mod if you have to explain your stance on it.

You guys are taking a simple concept (report and move on) and transforming it into some huge catastrophe. No one gave you the right to pick and choose what you like and what you don't like and to shape the forum that way. You can alert the mods to your position, but in the end it's not your responsibility to be policing anything.

 

[Noamuth]

There's a report button, use it.

We get it, the forum is going down hill in your eyes, the intelligence is fading, you're going to move to Canada. Not every thread is destined for a big intelligent discussion, I wouldn't come here if every thread was like that. Threads like the FAQ thread have their place, we don't need to sap the forum of all that isn't at least a paragraph of typing and not about a serious issue. Some of you are getting a bit uppity about this. If you think that stuff is spilling over too much into other threads, sweet, report it and move on. PM a mod if you have to explain your stance on it.

-snip-

Bloody hell, that just blew what I was going to say out of the water. Very well said, and I agree.

 

[Isaac Dodgson]

There's a report button, use it.

We get it, the forum is going down hill in your eyes, the intelligence is fading, you're going to move to Canada. Not every thread is destined for a big intelligent discussion, I wouldn't come here if every thread was like that. Threads like the FAQ thread have their place, we don't need to sap the forum of all that isn't at least a paragraph of typing and not about a serious issue. Some of you are getting a bit uppity about this. If you think that stuff is spilling over too much into other threads, sweet, report it and move on. PM a mod if you have to explain your stance on it.

-snip-

Bloody hell, that just blew what I was going to say out of the water. Very well said, and I agree.

We...already came to that consensus... And again i wasn't trying to incite some sort of mass movement... simply point out an influx of a particular issue that was bothering me... Stupidity will never die, and I don't want it to... but it was getting out of control in my opinion.

At the end of the day it's just my opinion, i'm not forcing anyone to subscribe to it...

 

[The Lyre]

Christ you lot, you need to cut this shit out. I agree with Isaac, this place has lost it. While it was once a safe haven from the Internet, multiple people have turned it into there personal play ground, where you have no consideration for the forum as a whole and only care about entertaining yourselves.

Take the FAQ you thread for example. While that thread has "Ask a Question" at it's source, the thread is mostly "talk about what you want" (looking at a page, any page, will show this). The FAQ you thread has no real substance or meaning behind it, it's what I would think of as an MSN conversation. You're all just babbling on about whatever you want and most of the time, what you want to talk about is crap. This crap spills over to other threads. When people start treating a single thread like an MSN conversation, then you start treating other threads like an MSN conversation, and then you start to destroy other threads. This shit happened before (Do any of you remember the duck thread? Or maybe the Ask a Girl thread? Or even the Random battle RP's that showed up?) and I was hopping that many of you would have learned your lessons but I suppose I was wrong. Back on topic however, this website, this community, isn't your personal play ground.

A few of you, and you know who you are, treat it like it is and while you may get a kick out of it, the rest of us sit here and suffer because we have to read your Annoying, pointless and plain idiotic chat room-Esq conversations. This sort of conversations turn this forum from an intelligent gaming forum to something below 4chan. Thats right, bellow mother fucking 4chan. Do you really think that if four of you went on 4chan and just started having a conversation between yourselves similar to what you do now, they'll stand for it? I really doubt that they will. Hell, at least the chans have some sort of order.

As for the badge collectors and the pointless topics; while they do make less than intelligent threads, at least they do add some intelligent discourse to the forum. That abortion thread for example, started out as a disgrace but others added their opinions and some content and from there a discussion/debate could grow. While I would like for the OP to have more substance so that the argument doesn't start on page three at least there is some intelligent discussion going on.

Quoted for the fucking truth.

Forget the crappy polls - those get dealt with quickly, my gripe is with the circle-jerking, ego-wanking, crappy excuse for topics that serve the same few people each time.

At least the admittedly poor poll-based topics are accessible to everyone, but again I have to reference the 'cool-kid' school mechanic, in which a few people decide they're just that fucking great, and place themselves above the rest.

FAQ you - a good idea, to begin with, but by the time I'd found it, it was being perpetuated by the same people, having, as Daemon so accurately put, what was basically an MSN chat.

The Escapist is not about being an elitist little shit - again, as Daemon put so well; Annoying, pointless and plain idiotic chat room-Esq conversations. Off-Topic is descending, and I do not feel it is due to crappy polls - as I said, the mods deal with those fast, but they can't lock threads for containing ego-caressing wankers.

I realise that what I basically did here is rephrase what Fire Daemon said, but I've been waiting to say this myself, and it needs to sodding well stop.

Edit; I see there's now a topic just for U.K. users...I'm a proud Brit, but come on, this is ridiculous.

Off-Topic, I proclaim thee dead.

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

Sometimes I think we tend to romanticize the last year of The Escapist. One of those reasons was probably because it was smaller. But if you're feeling choked by crappy threads and posts you need to do the following.

Report it.
We moderators are only two people. We don't have time to read through 30 pages of MSNesque chat to decide whether a thread is headed in the wrong direction. We have full time jobs, and other activities that keep us from being on the forums 24/7. So do us a favour, report things you think are harmful to the site so that we see it. Reporting is anonymous.

Ignore it.
Is it stupid? Does the thread cause you to lose braincells, or has the topic been done 10 times today? Don't bump it by saying so. Send it to page ten by using the greatest weapon in your arsenal, the ability to not give people attention who don't deserve it.

Bump it.
See someone made a smart topic and think it should stay around? You don't need to write a dissertation, but a polite bump on a smart topic is always welcome. Just don't say 'bump ftw' or some such other nonsense. A good example of a bump is; "I still think this thread deserves some attention."

Pm us.
The fastest way to have anything done is to PM a moderator. Don't be afraid, say whatever you like. Give us your opinions on everything. Just because we moderate doesn't mean that we don't think you have good ideas about how the forums should be moderated. As always be polite, that is the way to get things done. Demanding things turns the part of my brain off that allows me to consider your point of view.

Don't take matters into your own hands.
Moderators have something you don't have. The authority of the owners of this site to meter out punishment. Back-seat moderating doesn't just cause fights, it's also ugly self-promoting behaviour that makes this site's users look like a bunch of tattle-tales and teacher's pets.

We will lose people to other forums as the site grows bigger. That is the way of all communities. There will always be people who want to settle in a small town away from all the noise and traffic of the big city. We can't start a genocide of users who haven't learned to post hygienically yet. We can however provide them with good role models and remain critical (but not unfriendly) about posts that don't quite cut the mustard.