Poll: Why is this happening to the Escapist Magazine forums?

[stompythebeast]

too many people whining and crying. 50 posts about campers, 20 about sucking ass in TF2 and how its the game that sucks and not the person, and a countless others crying about other people ruining a good game for them online. Reason for this post is to ask you guys: Would it be best if we all collaborate and make a sticky for the forums on : How to deal with campers, how to deal with griefers, and game X is fun, you just need to get better at it( or stop playing and stop whining).

These forums are turning into Gamefaqs forums, i used gamefaqs 8 years ago when i was 12. Seems we are getting more and more useless posts. Instead of posts going on " Game X is fun, but i just don't seem to like it, any suggestions on what im doing wrong" we are getting now " Game X sucks" you people don't even ask what you can do to enjoy the game, since you invested money in it. The Escapist has a great community, that keeps growing and growing, but it seems we are getting less quality than quantity.

 

[Same River New Water]

The Escapist is a victim of its own success. Or Yahtzee's success, I suppose. It should be a law of the internet: the more people there are on a site, the more discussion is dominated by the constant yappers who don't think before they type. They can type more that way!

Even so, I don't like the sticky idea. I prefer to just ignore topics I'm not interested in and I hate posting on page 12 of a thread. A thread shouldn't be the definitive forum on the topic - it should be more like a conversation. If you chat with your friends about TF2 while you're over at their house, you don't feel the need to refer back to comments they made two weeks ago. I like the forum to be like that: topics will come up again and again over time, people will participate if they're still interested and the discussion isn't monopolised by whoever happened to get to the topic first the first time it came up.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

The least we can do is encourage rational debate and reasoning. And we can keep our English a bit tidier than that of numerous other forums. I rather enjoy seeing fellow Escapists writing at least somewhat well-formed sentences. It's quite the pleasant discourse from being on the Gamespot forums.

 

[bad rider]

Meh to be honest the mix is a lot more diluted than it was, but i havent seen a religous flame war in a while. Actually while I'm here "there is no god, and you can't disprove me."

 

[Uszi]

Yeah...

The topics come and go as interest picks up and dies. It is annoying that we have posting fads, where people don't think of original topics, but just post something slightly different but largely related.

I think part of the reason we get fads though is the badge system. It was created to try and get people to make topics that provide large discussions, the 10 page reply ones. People try to make all their posts have that kind of success, and so they try and jump on whatever people are posting on at the time.

How about: A limit to the number of threads you can start in a given time period. Like, you can only start one new topic every three days. The limit decreases as an algorithm of the persons post count and the time they've been registered.

Just a thought.

 

[Inverse Skies]

Meh to be honest the mix is a lot more diluted than it was, but i havent seen a religous flame war in a while. Actually while I'm here "there is no god, and you can't disprove me."

Lol. No! Not another flame war over religion! (smiles)

 

[willard3]

You should also know that most new members don't even bother looking at the stickies; they just go and post whatever they feel like.

What really annoy me are the people that ***** and moan about repeat threads as their reply. "Thread's been done before. Just saying that because I like to show off and act like I'm better than you. The thread I'm linking to (if I'm linking at all) is a year old, but I'm just showing off how long I've been here. With that, I'm going to continue in this thread anyway."

If you're posting a reply to the OP's question, don't put in an annoying jab at the OP while you're at it.

 

[Librarian Mike]

The best thing we can do here is to lead by example: making intelligent and articulate posts and following the 'report and move on' rule for people who don't follow the rules. The Mods here do a great job, so we should do what we can to make their jobs easier.

 

[starrman]

I assumed mods would delete repeat thread titles.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I understand your point, OP, but there's some delicious irony here, for those of you willing to look for it...

I think I saw it...

OT, if you don't like a discussion, avoid it. No matter where you go you'll ALWAYS find discussions that have been done to death, or ones that are relatively pointless or whiney. The good thing about the escapist is that you get less of them than normal, not none.

So yeah... rant over for you? It's probably best that you just go on with your forum-life and ignore the sort of stuff you were talking about (or report them if they're that bad).

 

[eviltim]

website forums are suceptible to jackasses who decide that they want to try and emotionally cripple everyone else because anyone with a dipshit iq (that's about 70% of the world) psychologically releases themselves on the internet because they don't think there are any consequences since they can't be seen or found. a perfect example is that kid who commited suicide because of a facebook bully. the bully would've never said anything like that to the kid's face, but was stupid enough to think they're the only person on the world with the capacity for emotion. i know i'm probably gonna get bogged down by people saying i'm a flamebait noob or some other troll insult, but i don't care cuz it's better than being a jackass.

 

[Knight Templar]

That won't stop anything. The people doing this are the same people who read the opening post in a thread then reply, sure some are just mistakes but most just don't care.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

Really? I haven't noticed such a downturn yet. I think you are overexaggerating to be honest.

 

[Glerken]

Meh to be honest the mix is a lot more diluted than it was, but i havent seen a religous flame war in a while. Actually while I'm here "there is no god, and you can't disprove me."

Lol. No! Not another flame war over religion! (smiles)

Those are fun. I think I'll go create one real quick.
Just kidding. Maybe.
But no, I blame the annoying threads and posts on new people like myself. Except not me of course.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

At this point I'm numb to most of it but the only threads that really get on my nerves are the 'Best Ever' threads. I don't care how old you are. I don't care what the theme is and what tasteful, intelligent thing you picked.

F*** you for posting something that juvenile and idiotic.

There is no best ever. It changes every year. It's a stupid conversation where we all jerk off to our favorite thing and our opinion and mindlessly read through the posts to see who agrees with us and who doesn't. Every single one of those threads is nothing more than a group of people shouting and only hearing themselves talk.

 

[E-mantheseeker]

I have learned to just weed out all the garbage threads that appear here. As with anything, the greater the potential is to succeed there is an equally great risk of failure.

That's why there are really thought provoking threads with meaning behind them, and there are (seemingly) stupid threads like "what do your shoes smell like?" The Escapist attracts many people, of course there's going to be some questionable people putting up questionable posts, just like there are genius posts. I love the diversity. If that means having to ignore pointless threads here and there, I'm fine with it.

It's the mix that keeps it interesting here. It could be a lot worse, but there are moderators and too many intelligent people for it to get too bad.

 

[Ezzay]

Forums are forums, there will always be people who don't like to use the search button, just like there will always be people who post somewhat meaningless topics that have been posted 10 times before.

Unless someone has a gun to your head telling you to read their posts, i don't see a problem with it, jest let them drop off the page if people are not interested.