This place is going to the dogs again.

[Fire Daemon]

Everyone saying that the forums are fine the way they are will be saying that the forums 'have gone down hill' in the future. When there are threads about nothing, posts with four letters the norm and content moving faster than 4chan you will complain. You will *****, you will cry, you will throw a tantrum because the forum is not what it was like on the 9th of September 2009. I've seen it happen, seen it happen quite a few times actually, it will happen to you. Most people have their breaking point, you will leave this forum eventually.

Those of you wishing it to be better? You'll leave as well. In the rare chance that things do get better, in the rare chance that this forum becomes 'the beacon of sanity on the Internet' you will realise that this place is far too intelligent, too stuffy, too high maintenance for your likes. When each thread has post after post after post that are four to ten paragraphs, when your thread's get locked for lacking content, when you get shunned for a one line response, when all RPs have the depth and writing requirement of Queen of Hearts (or maybe no RPs at all), if not more, you will leave this forum.

Everyone that complains about the Escapist standards or complains about the complainers want the forum to be exactly as it was when they joined.

EDIT: Put some stuff in that I missed. No idea why but I seem to leave words and 's' out of my posts.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

You're not the first. Older users usually don't have the patience to show new blood the ropes and just get irritated by wave of what they perceive to be ignorance. Every few months someone makes a thread concerning the new blood being either out of line or lowering the quality of the forum.

The minimum post count before you make a thread is an interesting one, I wouldn't mind if that were adopted. As for repeat topics, [HEADING=1]let them sink.[/HEADING]

It actually annoys me that the perpetrators of such topics probably won't actually read this thread. The first person who sees that the thread is a repeat or troll thread, just inform the rest to let it sink, in the hope that they won't actually bump the thread constantly by telling the OP that he is reported or stupid. It's not necessary, they aren't going to break down and cry out for forgiveness, so don't bother with the thread bumping and post boosting.

But either way, be nice to the new members. We were new once. Alienating new members just turns this place stagnant. They need to learn and grow with the community as we did.

I think this is a simple matter of:

Report and Move On. If everyone did what they were supposed to do, and report posts that were deemed...unacceptable (VS Threads and so on...), this would be solved. The moderation queue is extremely small. Do your job as good Escapians!

 

[The Cheezy One]

sounds good actually, i didnt start my own till around 50 and it got about 15 posts before it stopped being noticed
my best is this
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.96319?page=1

 

[polygon]

No they're not. It's not so binary. It takes longer to understand your example sentence than one with just a couple of errors and requires one to focus on understanding the words as opposed to grasping the point of them. It's comprehensible, but not as easily comprehensible as a post with "halfway decent" spelling.

And?
If I make a post with intense mathematical and scientific theses, it would surely be harder to comprehend than a normal post, but that doesn't mean anything as far as its merits as a post, especially not to the point that there should be a rule forbidding it.

Everyone saying that the forums are fine the way they will be saying that the forums 'have gone down hill' in the future. When there are thread about nothing, posts with four letter the norm and content moving faster than 4chan you will complain. You will *****, you will cry, you will throw a tantrum because the forum is not what it was like on the 9th of September 2009. I've seen it happen, seen it happen quite a few times actually, it will happen to you. Most people have their breaking point, you will leave this forum eventually.

Those of you wishing it to be better? You'll leave as well. In the rare chance that things do get better, in the rare chance that this forum becomes 'the beacon of sanity on the Internet' you will realise that this place is far too intelligent, too stuffy, too high maintenance for your likes. When each thread has post after post after post that are four to ten paragraphs, when your thread's get locked for lacking content, when you get shunned for a one line response, when all RPs have the depth and writing requirement of Queen of Hearts (or maybe no RPs at all), if not more, you will leave this forum.

Everyone that complains about the Escapist standards or complains about the complainers want the forum to be exactly as it was when they joined.

I'm going to quote this here because it's right and you should read it again.

 

[dudeglove]

Jeez, I thought the escapist forums might be interesting when I signed up, but with threads like this I now remember why I stopped writing in forums circa a decade ago. Reporting constantly? Ban anyone who doesn't remember i before e except after c? Prove your worth with at least 100 posts? That's the same logic as saying Lady Gaga is a great artist just because she's sold a million of her shitty records, not to mention a narcissistic witch hunt of the highest order.

Now I'm willing to bet quite a few of you posting in this thread are mature gamers and have been into games since the NES/SNES era and thus have developed the mental capacity to form sentences, but you were all talking nonsense like the 13 year olds who jerk off to Halo 3 (who then go on to make threads about their wankfest) at some point in your lives, so get over yourself.

If you have a problem with it, then simply don't read those posts. No one's forcing you to trawl through every thread.

 

[Klarinette]

You're not the first. Older users usually don't have the patience to show new blood the ropes and just get irritated by wave of what they perceive to be ignorance. Every few months someone makes a thread concerning the new blood being either out of line or lowering the quality of the forum.

The minimum post count before you make a thread is an interesting one, I wouldn't mind if that were adopted. As for repeat topics, [HEADING=1]let them sink.[/HEADING]

It actually annoys me that the perpetrators of such topics probably won't actually read this thread. The first person who sees that the thread is a repeat or troll thread, just inform the rest to let it sink, in the hope that they won't actually bump the thread constantly by telling the OP that he is reported or stupid. It's not necessary, they aren't going to break down and cry out for forgiveness, so don't bother with the thread bumping and post boosting.

But either way, be nice to the new members. We were new once. Alienating new members just turns this place stagnant. They need to learn and grow with the community as we did.

I agree with this. Rather than having half the Escapist population ***** at someone who's posted a repeat, everyone should just let it fall away. Posting on it puts it in the highlights, which attracts more readers, which causes more responses, which causes the cycle to repeat.

As a noob, this all definitely makes sense to me. There are still boatloads of threads I haven't even seen yet, so it's definitely important for new users to at least look at all of the topics before they even bother considering creating a new thread.

 

[polygon]

You're saying that, say, in a discussion of the search for extraterrestrial life, the increased difficulty in blah blah blah

No, I'm saying that the extra second it takes you to comprehend a sentence that isn't formatted perfectly is fine and making a rule forcing people to spell correctly would make you a cockhead. I phrased my argument in the form of a terrible irrelevant analogy as I tend to do.

 

[gh0ti]

Dunno, I g0t meh teh hunderd poste levele ya spessify n i carnt b trusted 2 start nu threds.

 

[SimuLord]

I've often thought that a Lowtax-like approach to forum moderation would be a great benefit to the Escapist the way it's been a benefit to the Something Awful forums over the years.

Then again, SA has something the Escapist thankfully doesn't have, namely a ten-dollar "don't be a douche fee" that effectively makes stuff like /b/tard invasions well beyond the realm of feasibility. On the one hand, the barrier to entry keeps the riff-raff out, on the other hand I find it a bit silly to pay actual money for the privilege of arguing on the Internet.

 

[Knight Templar]

I follow the idea that if things are bad, being better and reporting will change that. If somebody does something wrong tell them why not "reported". Don't ignore the problem if it is within your power to fix it.

I have noticed a larger than normal amount of dickheads who spell incorrectly, but with time they will learn how to act or be removed. Just a little effort is all that is needed to be a good escapist.

 

[Andronicus]

shouldn't the admins/mods impose some kind of rule for new users?Achieving a certain post-count [80 would provide ample experience, I think] before being granted the privilege to start threads?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That would make the problem infinitely worse. Imagine all the trolls trying to meet that quota as quickly as possible.

I somehow doubt the average troll has the patience for that kind of thing, when the whole internet is rich-pickins' anyway.

Edit: I just saw that this thread got trolled by somebody with 600+ posts...Hm.

I am in agreement with Squirrel here. I would prefer to just skip over the posts of trolls who aim to raise their posts in the various topics than have to wade through the amount of rubbish posted on the forum to find topics worth commenting on. It would be fairly plain to see who would be driving up their post count simply by the nature of their posts, and warnings could be issued before they manage to fill the forum with repeat threads.

Anyone using l33tsp34k purely to try an get their point across, unless intended as a sort of joke, is showing a blatant disregard for the other readers; if you cannot even be bothered inserting a small amount of grammer and punctuation into your post, let alone stopping to perform even a quick spellcheck, why should we be bothered to put any thought into what you have to say? I like to make my posts as well-worded as possible, and though I can appreciate that others may not choose to be as masochistic in their grammer than I, I think it is just good manners to offer your opinion in a legible and coherent fashion, preferably with distinguishable sentences (you can usually tell by the little dot at the end).

I am a grammer Nazi (my friend blocked me on Steam for correcting his spelling), and I don't like swearing; it simply isn't necessary, in my opinion. However, I am perfectly happy to accept that people will be people; mistakes will be made, and that's a fact. Hell, I can even put up with people who can't differentiate between "your" and "you're" (sometimes). But there is a limit, and that begins with common sense and good manners. Anyone who feels they have something truly worthwhile to offer to the forums would gladly adhere to a post limit before posting threads (these are also the sorts of people who know what the search bar is used for), and I think we could attract more users if they see our forums aren't cluttered with the same old spam threads.

 

[Andronicus]

EDIT: I accidentally pushed refresh and my comment was posted again.

My apologies.

 

[Labyrinth]

It depresses me to see topics like this. Instead of making them, perhaps you should pour your time and effort into something which will lessen the proportion of crap threads to the good ones. Or, if you're feeling really progressive, work with mods such as myself to let us know the threads that need to go so we can lock and sink them accordingly.

We don't function as some secret police. We're working for you users and would like to work with you as well.

 

[TimeLord]

If you don't like repeated threads or "Do you like Halo?"threads, then avoid them! Stop complaining and make the forums a better place rather than grouching about it.