The Stagnation of the Escapist forums.

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MiracleOfSound

Fight like a Krogan
Jan 3, 2009
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Samurai Goomba said:
Part of the problem is that the old members who kept the site intelligent (or wordy, anyway) have all largely left or been banned. Very, very few of the posters who have joined since I did have been people I felt I could respect the opinions of. Not because of when they joined, but due in part to the idea popularized by a recently-banned member that having a large post count was some sort of achievement.
.
Unfortunately, the member in question also popularised the notion that it's fun to be incredibly rude and abusive to anyone who makes any kind of grammatical error or expresses a different opinion, and get away with it.

I had someone call me a 'dick', and 'gay' the other day, reported it and I see they haven't even been put on probation.

The reason they did was I asked them to be less hyperbolic and aggressive when they posted the following contribution:

'SHIT REVIEW UR WRONG DIE A LOT'

If people get away with this kind of crap, no wonder it becomes less fun for the people who just want to come here to get along.

Here, see for yourself:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.160205
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Oct 1, 2009
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OpiateChicken said:
BGH122 said:
Do, good people, note the hypocrisy of this thread: that the OP hasn't replied to a single post.
Haha, well, I'm packing to leave. My house, that is.

But you guys have raised some good points--the Discovery channel thing, and the old glitter on a turd. I guess I never really thought about it that way. I know I could go to different sites to get in-depth discussion, but I was under the impression that it used to be this way on here. I wouldn't really know, I guess that's just how people made it seem in the nostalgia threads.

Well, I suppose I'll have to settle for the one-liners then.
As a newcomer myself, I agree with your original post, OpiateChicken. This forum initially struck me as a forum where the discussion was a bit more intellectual than most other Gaming forums on the internet. Some of the topics posted most certainly makes you think that there might be a decent discussion going on.

Just like you, I've also noticed that some of the posters on this forum love to bring in their insanely high IQ and their mental handicap and/or mental disorder into discussions before flaming someone like it was crispy time at Burger King. So I have eventually arrived at the conclusion (especially after all the discussions about how diffrent/special/strange/inferior women are... Seriously.) that The Escapist's forum suffers from false advertising. I won't find more intellectual debate here than I will on any other internet forum. That is not to say that there isn't any going on, it just means I feel that for every sensible post I see, I sift through 30 or more posts that are gibberish or outright flammable.

I am currently in the phase where I try to redeem it by contributing myself. We'll see how long that lasts.
 

GundamSentinel

The leading man, who else?
Aug 23, 2009
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I too have noticed an increasing number of, well... nonsense topics. (I have no girlfriend what should I do? Do you think pizza is tasty?) I haven't been around for that long either, and when I joined up is was because I frequently saw interesting posts and topics on this forum. Alas, over the past few months (especially the last few weeks) this number has drastically decreased. It's still a fun forum, but not what I signed up for. Thanks for this topic, and very good OP.
 

cuddly_tomato

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Nov 12, 2008
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Gethsemani said:
OpiateChicken said:
BGH122 said:
Do, good people, note the hypocrisy of this thread: that the OP hasn't replied to a single post.
Haha, well, I'm packing to leave. My house, that is.

But you guys have raised some good points--the Discovery channel thing, and the old glitter on a turd. I guess I never really thought about it that way. I know I could go to different sites to get in-depth discussion, but I was under the impression that it used to be this way on here. I wouldn't really know, I guess that's just how people made it seem in the nostalgia threads.

Well, I suppose I'll have to settle for the one-liners then.
As a newcomer myself, I agree with your original post, OpiateChicken. This forum initially struck me as a forum where the discussion was a bit more intellectual than most other Gaming forums on the internet. Some of the topics posted most certainly makes you think that there might be a decent discussion going on.

Just like you, I've also noticed that some of the posters on this forum love to bring in their insanely high IQ and their mental handicap and/or mental disorder into discussions before flaming someone like it was crispy time at Burger King. So I have eventually arrived at the conclusion (especially after all the discussions about how diffrent/special/strange/inferior women are... Seriously.) that The Escapist's forum suffers from false advertising. I won't find more intellectual debate here than I will on any other internet forum. That is not to say that there isn't any going on, it just means I feel that for every sensible post I see, I sift through 30 or more posts that are gibberish or outright flammable.

I am currently in the phase where I try to redeem it by contributing myself. We'll see how long that lasts.
Good luck with that.

This place is much like any other place on the internet, except it has more elitism than most and considers itself better (contrary to the evidence). That said there are plenty of decent people here who are well worth talking too. But it has its fair share of arrogant toss-pots too. What this forum really needs is an ignore feature, it would make sifting through threads far more bearable.
 

orangebandguy

Elite Member
Jan 9, 2009
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I talk with other members all the time. Add people to your friends list and message them or join a group.
 

Biosophilogical

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Jul 8, 2009
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I love the escapist[footnote]Though I wish MaxTheReaper were still here[/footnote] but my biggest thing with it is the 'Use The SearchBar' comments. I understand when it is a thread that was done about 5 minutes ago, but when people just use it at every possible moment it gets tiresome. I would even go so far as to say that the 'repeat searchbar-ism' is worse than the repeat threads.


However I think the biggest reason there isn't such deep discussion on here is because there are a ... select few who tend to be overly sensitive on debatable issues ... which makes me wonder ... has anyone done a euthanasia/eugenics/abortion thread ercently, because I woudln't mind findingg out escapists' views on the topics there I go blabbering again.
 

Daedalus1942

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Jun 26, 2009
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Furburt said:
OpiateChicken said:
Also, one more thing. A good thing about this site is it's persistent community. I didn't see it at first, but now I know. I've made friends on here, we all know how we work, we get used to each other. It stops being a list of avatars and names and more like real people. And thats when it gets fun.
Exactly! I've seen you in almost ever thread I post in, and whenever I see one of your posts, I look forward to reading it because you're intelligent and a valued member of this community. There's the same 15 or 20 intelligent few that constantly post thought provoking threads, that have at least one angle of discussion if not more.
And then you have a whole bunch of newbies who are just joining and tend to just flame anyone who doesn't agree with their opinion.
That being said... I will continue to flame anyone who tries to tell me that Oblivion was one of the best RPG's ever created. Aside from "that" topic though, I respect everyone's opinion, regardless of whether I agree or not.
 

P1p3s

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Jan 16, 2009
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EspirituExterminatus said:
basically not allowed to have any real conversation without Mommy and Daddy taking it away because we are too fragile for it or the /b/ rejects fucking it up this place does seem to be stuck in a rut. The same boring old mindless topics again and again.
I don't agree with this statement in the sense that the things I have observed getting locked down are either
a/ threads raised deliberately to start a flame war
b/ a legitimately contraversial thread that has descended into name calling and childishness

I love to discuss things and as the OP points out (and has been already mentioned) the bulletin style postings don't actually allow for DISCUSSION rather a more 'fling your poo into the ring and see what happens' kind of thing. Granted the nameless (username not included) faceless (avatar not included) nature of the internet allow people to put in a swift boot and run away without consequence which gives rise to this very behaviour but I can't imagine the OP is alone (and this thread proves they are not) in his/her desire to form an actual online community here.

I would prefer it, I have dipped in and out of escapist over the last few months to catch up on vids (Zero P/Unskippable) and articles (stolen pixles mainly) but haven't posted for a while because it's effort for nothing. Granted Video Games aren't really the centre of my world anymore but that doesn't mean there aren't people logging onto this site that I wouldn't share opinions, experiences and POV's with meaning real friendships, deep discussions and (subsequently) an actual community can be forged.

I may have missed the point somewhat and would be happy for anyones feedback, but my interpretation of what the OP was saying was that rather than being random ships passing in the inky blackness of the interwebs we could actually know each other.
 

Daedalus1942

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Jun 26, 2009
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SikOseph said:
*sigh*

You've been here for 90 posts so you really don't know the forum well enough to understand it. Threads do derail, and a lot of them disintegrate into random comments but that is because there are a lot of threads that defy discussion beyond the stating of opinions. Where I've been involved in a thread and had something interesting to say, I've found that people are very responsive, both for and against my opinion, often giving their reasoning. The way that getting quoted lets you know that someone has responded to you promotes this sort of 2 or sometimes three way conversation, though it does contribute to to threads with several unrelated conversations going on. This criticism is largely unwarranted, and particularly presumptuous for an inexperienced user.
*sigh* You're not exactly an expert on this forum either. You've been here a whole 2 and a half months.
I've been here longer than you and I'm still not an expert on this forum. This type of response is the sort of elitism that the OP is referring to, and he's right.
-Edit- Also, the original poster has been here longer than you, hahaha.
 

psychic psycho

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Dec 17, 2009
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*sigh*

You've been here for 90 posts so you really don't know the forum well enough to understand it.
I've only joined a couple days ago but I think I've got a good feeling on how the forums work. For about a year I just read the forums; I found them interesting enough but never really felt I needed to post anything. I only joined because one Yahtzee's articles mentioned how L4D(2) doesn't have a storyline (which it indeed does), and felt I needed to say something as no one else did. Incidentally, my post was ignored.

Anyway, I don't think the forums are as bad the OP makes it out to be, based on my year of lurking in the forums. There seems to a decent amount of people that post several times and make good threads. I've noticed a few of them have already posted in this thread.
 

Lord Krunk

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Mar 3, 2008
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
Are we dying again? I thought it was about time.
I know, eh?

As for the OP, everything is just the same today as it was two years ago. The same ratio of good posts/threads/users to bad ones, although the sheer amount of people has drastically increased in that time.

I guess that means all the good things on the forums are harder to find nowadays as a result, and that's correct; what classic threads can I recall from the past year as opposed to the year before? I myself miss The Escapist, circa 2008.
 

Samurai Goomba

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Oct 7, 2008
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Quoth said:
Samurai Goomba said:
---->8-----

Gamefaqs, for all it's faults, is probably more fun for me to post on at this point. If for no other reason than it is actually useful.
I never heard anyone say that about Gamefaqs before. Although it was what brought me here, here is whats keeping me off Gamefaqs.
What I mean is that if you have QUESTIONS, you can go there and get useful ANSWERS. If you have specific questions and the board is not dead, you can get specific answers. You might encounter some stupidity, but you'll also find a wealth of knowledge there on pretty much any game you're likely to play in your life.

The Escapist has (in order) a few smart members, a lot of members who think they're smart, a bunch of arrogant jerks, some overly verbose people, trolls, and stupids. Pretty much what you'd get in any forum, but Gfaqs has the added benefit of having its forums stapled to a massive user-based Q and A/walkthrough website.

miracleofsound said:
Unfortunately, the member in question also popularised the notion that it's fun to be incredibly rude and abusive to anyone who makes any kind of grammatical error or expresses a different opinion, and get away with it.

I had someone call me a 'dick', and 'gay' the other day, reported it and I see they haven't even been put on probation.

The reason they did was I asked them to be less hyperbolic and aggressive when they posted the following contribution:

'SHIT REVIEW UR WRONG DIE A LOT'

If people get away with this kind of crap, no wonder it becomes less fun for the people who just want to come here to get along.

Here, see for yourself:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.160205
Yeah, I've seen people banned for things that didn't seem like bannable offenses, and other times left unpunished for posting what basically amounted to YouTube comments ("your mum does *needlessly graphic description* to me" or "your face is stupid," etc) But that's another matter. Regarding the community, there's definitely an elitist attitude here you don't get at a lot of other places (well, not in such amounts). It used to be kinda defensible, seeing as we had intelligent posters who would post 3-page OPs across a great number of subjects, and the length would be justified (Iron Ninja was a great poster, I miss him).

Nowadays, though, the idea of really anyone on the forums thinking The Escapist is a "better" quality forum than anywhere else is kind of laughable. It's a different kind of stupid is all. It's not any better or worse than what you'd find on YouTube, it's just that on this site the dummies write slightly longer posts. And even that's not as true as it once was.

For good or ill, the "I'm so evil and cool" Escapist posting cliche seems to be the wave of the future.
 

OpiateChicken

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Jul 2, 2009
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Gethsemani said:
I am currently in the phase where I try to redeem it by contributing myself. We'll see how long that lasts.
I would say that this usually works out for the better, and it's people like you who will keep pushing this website up despite the massive force pushing it down.
SikOseph said:
*sigh*

You've been here for 90 posts so you really don't know the forum well enough to understand it... This criticism is largely unwarranted, and particularly presumptuous for an inexperienced user.
I think I understand it alright, thanks, and I would like to hear why the criticism is unwarranted. I hear lots of people besides myself criticsizing the same things.
zala-taichou said:
I too have noticed an increasing number of, well... nonsense topics. (I have no girlfriend what should I do? Do you think pizza is tasty?) I haven't been around for that long either, and when I joined up is was because I frequently saw interesting posts and topics on this forum. Alas, over the past few months (especially the last few weeks) this number has drastically decreased. It's still a fun forum, but not what I signed up for. Thanks for this topic, and very good OP.
Totally agree with you there, it's still okay, but not how I thought it was.

cuddly_tomato said:
That said there are plenty of decent people here who are well worth talking too. But it has its fair share of arrogant toss-pots too. What this forum really needs is an ignore feature, it would make sifting through threads far more bearable.
So would this ignore feature essentially just block you from reading certain users' posts? That could be difficult to configure, but sounds like a really good idea.
P1p3s said:
we could actually know each other.
That's exactly what I was trying to convey, and isn't it always sort of fun to see people making the same kind of posts? You get to sort of learn who they are as a person, even moreso than IRL in some cases because of the anonymity.
Daedalus1942 said:
*sigh* You're not exactly an expert on this forum either. You've been here a whole 2 and a half months.
I've been here longer than you and I'm still not an expert on this forum. This type of response is the sort of elitism that the OP is referring to, and he's right.
-Edit- Also, the original poster has been here longer than you, hahaha.
Lol I didn't even notice that! Good homewerk skilz.
 

Samurai Goomba

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Oct 7, 2008
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SikOseph said:
psychic psycho said:
*sigh*

You've been here for 90 posts so you really don't know the forum well enough to understand it.
I've only joined a couple days ago but I think I've got a good feeling on how the forums work. For about a year I just read the forums; I found them interesting enough but never really felt I needed to post anything. I only joined because one Yahtzee's articles mentioned how L4D(2) doesn't have a storyline (which it indeed does), and felt I needed to say something as no one else did. Incidentally, my post was ignored.

Anyway, I don't think the forums are as bad the OP makes it out to be, based on my year of lurking in the forums. There seems to a decent amount of people that post several times and make good threads. I've noticed a few of them have already posted in this thread
Yeah fair enough, and I don't deny that it is possible to get the forum right before you've done a lot of posting, but to start complaining about how the forum is bad for XYZ reasons with such a small amount of participation is disingenuous. Your assessment of the forum more or less chimes with my own.
Still, it's a good point he had about how people tend to show up around here and act like they've been here forever. I don't consider myself an old or veteran poster, and I constantly see people acting like Cranky Kong when they've only been here 4 months. It's insane.
 

Borrowed Time

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Jun 29, 2009
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Samurai Goomba said:
It always seems like things were better than they are now, but I do know that I've been posting much less. Honestly, I've kind of lost interest in the same discussions being repeated over and over. Every once in a while we get a good thread, but even then it's quickly spoiled by the obnoxious community members who feel they have to flame in order to make a point. Things aren't stagnating, but they're not improving, either. We have only the community to blame. Or rather, ourselves.

Part of the problem is that the old members who kept the site intelligent (or wordy, anyway) have all largely left or been banned. Very, very few of the posters who have joined since I did have been people I felt I could respect the opinions of. Not because of when they joined, but due in part to the idea popularized by a recently-banned member that having a large post count was some sort of achievement. Most people can't post constantly and put up quality stuff every time. Hence there's a lot of wasted bandwidth on the forums where people jabber mindlessly and get to feel good about how their post count is growing nicely.

Gamefaqs, for all it's faults, is probably more fun for me to post on at this point. If for no other reason than it is actually useful.
Though I wasn't even aware of The Escapist when the supposed "golden days" existed, I did lurk a little before joining. I'd have to agree with you Goomba. There's only so many times that you can argue the same points over the same topics before it does nothing but add to your own continual loss of sanity. This is made even more apparent, unfortunately, when actually holding intelligent debate over the internet. Special olympics anyone? Ah, what a cliche and one I'm very guilty of participating in.

I find myself coming to The Escapist more and more for the videos and news segments and less for the forums and community. Although, I do know that part of that is because I only lurk the forums on days when I work (which is only 4 a week, yay for 2 eight hour shifts and 2 twelve hour shifts), so I'm not always around. Though I've connected with a few individuals here, I'd be hard pressed to call them much more then acquaintances in truth. All too often I find a topic that I have an opinion about and begin to write a novella, only to hit the back button with a sigh knowing it will either be ignored or spark some sort of inane debate that leads to either a waste of forum space or a harboring of resentment.

I've never really understood the mentality of "OMG post more so I am seen" as I would rather my posts have a degree of quality to them then quantity. This really is a place for me to come when I'm bored though, as unfortunate as that is to say. I would much rather be spending time with my wife and kids, playing games or working on my computer (damn thing is overheating again, that's what I get for SLI'n 2 8800GTs, 26Amps per card is just sickening) then lurking these forums.
 

OpiateChicken

New member
Jul 2, 2009
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Samurai Goomba said:
Nowadays, though, the idea of really anyone on the forums thinking The Escapist is a "better" quality forum than anywhere else is kind of laughable. It's a different kind of stupid is all. It's not any better or worse than what you'd find on YouTube, it's just that on this site the dummies write slightly longer posts. And even that's not as true as it once was.

For good or ill, the "I'm so evil and cool" Escapist posting cliche seems to be the wave of the future.
I guess it was my mistake, thinking that. I used to be a poster on Totse, what was regarded as a "last bastion of good internet discussion" or something along those lines, and when it got destroyed I started looking for something new like it, and this just kind of seemed like it could be, or at least, that it was. However, I do think the Escapist is slightly above some other discussion boards in terms of average intelligence or insight/post, and I just didn't want to see that slip away, I suppose. I am still a n00b though, and no, I wasn't around for the Escapist as a pdf. Lol.

@ sik0seph, I'm not totally idealizing the past, just longing for what other people have, I guess, idealized about it. You're right, it's fairly easy to do that about almost anything, and you could say anything in progress is also degenerating, or whatever. I never said this was a BAD site, just one that I thought used to be better.

edit: I probably also lurked for about half a year before joining, like some of you have mentioned you've done.
 

cuddly_tomato

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Nov 12, 2008
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Samurai Goomba said:
SikOseph said:
psychic psycho said:
*sigh*

You've been here for 90 posts so you really don't know the forum well enough to understand it.
I've only joined a couple days ago but I think I've got a good feeling on how the forums work. For about a year I just read the forums; I found them interesting enough but never really felt I needed to post anything. I only joined because one Yahtzee's articles mentioned how L4D(2) doesn't have a storyline (which it indeed does), and felt I needed to say something as no one else did. Incidentally, my post was ignored.

Anyway, I don't think the forums are as bad the OP makes it out to be, based on my year of lurking in the forums. There seems to a decent amount of people that post several times and make good threads. I've noticed a few of them have already posted in this thread
Yeah fair enough, and I don't deny that it is possible to get the forum right before you've done a lot of posting, but to start complaining about how the forum is bad for XYZ reasons with such a small amount of participation is disingenuous. Your assessment of the forum more or less chimes with my own.
Still, it's a good point he had about how people tend to show up around here and act like they've been here forever. I don't consider myself an old or veteran poster, and I constantly see people acting like Cranky Kong when they've only been here 4 months. It's insane.
Freshman or not, the op is touching on things which strike a resonance with a lot of old-timers here such as yourself. Let us not dismiss the message simply because the messenger is unfamilar to us, especially as his orginal post had considerably more intelligence, depth, and courtesy than we have generally been seeing from around here of late.

We have had an influx of new posters lately who have been posting some rather good stuff (op is one such poster), so I am trying to be optimistic about the future prospects of the forum.