Too many OT posts in General

[Umbran]

Like the ban on politics and religion? Or strictly moving media and computers posts to the correct forums?

Sorry, but I just don't agree. The only reason that this board is as... tame, as it were, is because from almost day one posts on politics and religion have been enforced, strictly.

Relatively strictly. If you'll nose around, you'll find there are a number of posters around who feel the politics and religion bans are less than sincere, that the mods only moderate some, and not others. If folks can get that impression, how strict is the moderation?

The whole flags issue goes to note that point - what constitutes "politics" is subjective. How strict or ironclad can a ban be when there's a matter of interpretation as to when that ban applies?

The mods are obviously aware of this. They will, on occasion, put in a note to the effect of, "This looks like politics to me. Keep it civil or I'm going to close it." They do a good job, and I applaud them for it. But let's face it - one of the admins is a pirate. We all know they prefer guidelines to rules

 

[jdavis]

(Personal Rant)
This really ties into the self-regulating thing above. One of the biggest tells that we're barely self-regulating, IMO, is the amount of stuff in General that should have been posted in the first place. People don't bother to go to the other forums specifically because they know they get less traffic - even the Media and Computer forums, which have a lot of regulars! They often times don't use the tags, which were made so people could sort stuff easier.

I mean, all it would really take to fix General is consistent use of the OT tag, and the ability to ignore any messages with that tag. Whether that's a part of the message board software, I don't know. But that way, you only see the threads you want to see, and have no need to complain.

It's a self fufilling prophecy, "I didn't post it in Meta because nobody reads Meta", well maybe more people would go to meta if more stuff was posted there. Everything gets stuck in general because that's where everybody sticks it and everybody reads everything in general because that's where everybody sticks their post. I can understand people skipping Meta but how many post have to be moved to computers or movies/tv? I would bet that half the post the board gets on a average day are in general, people just don't go anywhere else for some reason.

As far as having to page back a couple of pages, well I don't mind that either but just because a post doesn't get 2 replies a minute doesn't mean it's not a good thread, sometimes a good thread only gets one or two post a day, the Mor's End threads from plots and places would not of worked in general for example because they only got a couple of post a day but lasted for 3 months, they would of been ten pages deep in between post and if you waited more than a couple of days to post you would never find it again. I had post in those threads that were 8 or 9 pages long (in word) and took days to type up, the average thread only last a couple of days in general, it just moves to fast to get that deep into stuff.

the ot threads that make me itch are the "what kind of processed meat product are you?" threads.

the ones where everybody piles in saying they are corned beef or souse or spam or pickle loaf or something based on an in-depth 8 question quiz about shoe size and ear wax preferences.

Or the good old "Hey look at this funny picture of a monkey" type post. There is a difference between this type of stuff and people having a discussion about Football season. I think a lot of people just post everything they come across while surfing the internet.

 

[the Jester]

Well, I generally like a lot of the OT threads- but too many at once is, indeed, annoying. Eh, I'd leave 'em in general, and Bro. Shatterstone has it right- post to a good thread to bump the ones you don't like down.

On P&P- I'd say throw it into general, just cuz I never bother to go there because there's hardly ever anything new and exciting going on there when I check.

 

[Wicht]

Piratecat,

About Plots and Places - For a discussion area about plot ideas, its pretty lousy – low traffic. But then you have threads like mine (which admittedly I have let die) where I posted all my adventure notes for one story hour (along with a few miscellanous DM charts and adventures). The thread was sort of an online module to me. I have thought about starting a second one like it for my newer campaigns. Such a thread would seem greatly out of place in General IMO, though admittedly it would get a lot more looks.

 

[Chacal]

About Plot and Places :

With its slow pace, I find it cool that Plot and Places is a slowly updating archive of interesting ideas.

But part of its threads are requests, and they don't receive the attention they would get in General Discussion.

Ideally, I would like the request-like Plot'nPlaces threads posted first in General Discussion, with a [PlotnP] tag, then moved to Plot'n Places if they fall from the first n pages with a little bump for advertising Plot and Places (I wonder which % of the hits concern thread after the third page, BTW).

Of course, this would probably be too much work for the mods, and thus screams for automatization...



Chacal

 

[mooby]

"I just had my birthday, had a baby, got sick, had a family death, or got married" is wonderful news that goes hand-in-hand with caring for our fellow EN Worlders...

...I want to know about the important parts of their lives. I tend to draw the line at pet threads, though, but that's me.

Many of use treat our pets as part of our families. I'm still mourning the loss of my dog, and it's been 5 months. Pets aren't "just pets"

 

[kreynolds]

"I just had my birthday, had a baby, got sick, had a family death, or got married" is wonderful news that goes hand-in-hand with caring for our fellow EN Worlders. It's not terribly useful to everyone, but it helps foster a sense of community.

Then how about a "Community" thread? After all, what exactly does "I just had my birthday, had a baby, got sick, had a family death, or got married" have to do with "General RPG Discussion"? Nothing at all, as far as I can tell.

Unless, of course, your character had a birthday, your character had a baby, your character got sick, your character had a family death, or your character got married.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Then how about a "Community" thread?

Sounds like a good idea to me...

After all, what exactly does "I just had my birthday, had a baby, got sick, had a family death, or got married" have to do with "General RPG Discussion"? Nothing at all, as far as I can tell.

Neither does nonRPG advertisements in your signature...

 

[kreynolds]

Sounds like a good idea to me...

Of course it does...it wasn't mine.

Neither does nonRPG advertisements in your signature...

First, it's not an advertisement (per say). It's an ethical statement.

Secondly, you won't even _see_ my signature in the General forum unless it has to do with gaming, and _that_ is the point.

 

[Umbran]

Secondly, you won't even _see_ my signature in the General forum unless it has to do with gaming, and _that_ is the point.

Yes, but look, that .gif in your sig takes up 9,192 bytes. Which in a way means that any post in which it appears that is less than a thousand characters or so is more about your "ethical statement" than it is about the body text. Otherwise, you're making people spend more download time on your .sig than on your post. How is that for ethics?