2012-01-29, 17:20 | Link #21 |
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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relentlessflame I like the idea you're alluding to of a life cycle and only really caring for the NOW and FUTURE and not the past. But some of the things you're saying and the current format doesn't really fit into that. Is this something recent or something you've cooked up years ago? (I'm assuming it's recent)
What I don't really understand in your post...
There are some other things that seem off but that's all for now.
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2012-01-29, 17:42 | Link #22 |
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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felix:
Very few of the ideas expressed here are new (at least for as long as I've been on the staff/mod team, which is years now). 1. The purpose of allowing free topic creation in the context of this conversation was to help breath life into a forum that is past its prime, which I'm saying is not a goal we intend to pursue. Restricting thread topics while the series is airing and popular did not seem to be at issue, as the context of the conversation was older series. We do not see any great need or benefit in opening sub-forums up to open topic creation, given that we do not intend to pursue measures that will keep sub-forums alive once discussion has otherwise generally died down (it's a "non-goal"). 2. We do allow anyone to request a thread, and threads that seem likely to support a good discussion are generally created. The staff uses their own judgement to determine, largely from past collective experience, what topics will make for good threads. If you don't agree with our judgement... well, sorry, but that's how it is. 3. While the sub-forum is in its prime, the need for the general discussion thread will be low, as most of the conversation will occur in context of one of the other threads. During that time, it serves as a "catch all", but not a primary focal point (hence does not generally need to be highlighted or "stickied"). We're not going to lock episode threads weekly because not everyone watches each episode day and date with the airing (or even within a week); the topic is the episode itself, not a certain timeframe of activity. That being said, the forum experience is not optimized for someone who watches a show years after it airs either, nor the desire to keep a community alive long after most of the anime fanbase has moved on to something new.
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2012-01-29, 18:05 | Link #23 | ||||
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I've re-read your post a few times now, and I'm still not seeing what real benefit Anime Suki hopes to take from going in the opposite direction of what is being requested by some members on this thread. The principle of one topic, one thread is probably a good one, which is why I don't think anybody would object to the locking of, if not outright deletion of, truly redundant threads. But if fans of a show believe that there's a specific thread topic not adequately covered by the ones typically created within subforums, and if that show's subforum no longer has an issue in keeping its episode threads "front and center" as those episodes are no longer airing for the first time, I'm not sure what the real downside is to letting the core following left in such subforums enjoy freer thread creation. Also, while I respect that no series subforum can avoid retirement forever, I'm a bit worried at the idea of an "one size fits all" life-cycle approach being used for them. Take the Haruhi Suzumiya subforum for example. Given Kadokawa and KyoAni's pace at furthering that anime along, it could conceivably be years until more Haruhi anime is out. Yet, it is fair to say that the Haruhi Suzumiya subforum hasn't been particularly active in a long time (its subforum is one of the ones that I could see benefiting significantly from freer thread creation). So suppose Fall 2012 comes around, and no new Haruhi anime is anywhere on the horizon. Would Anime Suki be just about ready to retire the Haruhi subforum then? If so what happens if, come 2014, a new Haruhi anime comes out? Does the Haruhi subforum get "unretired"? How does that even work? I'm sincerely curious about all of this. But on a broader level, I'm wondering what exactly is it that you're hoping to avoid by not going in the direction requested on this thread? What are you concerned might happen if you take Anime Suki in that direction? It's difficult to discuss the pros and cons of different suggested directions unless we know what the perceived cons of those directions are. Personally, I don't see any harm in opening up older series subforums to thread creation by the members left on that series subforum. I'm inclined to agree with Sackett that the idea I put forward would produce more benefits than harm. If anybody disagrees, it would be nice to know why. Quote:
However, when it comes to "breathing new life" into an older subforum, this approach is not particularly useful. The reason is "General Discussion" isn't exactly a sexy topic heading that's going to necessarily draw attention to it when people notice that it's been recently updated by a post. However, a more specific thread topic may draw attention to it, as it might touch on a topic or idea that is interesting to some people. Quote:
I don't see how it serves the dedicated fans of older anime shows that have subforums, as it can only make it harder to generate interesting discussions on the subforums for those shows. I don't see how it serves the interests of more general anime fans on Anime Suki because they probably won't be on older anime subforums much anyway. As for AS Moderators, I would think that felix is correct. Surely locking/deleting a topic is just as easy as approving/rejecting one. In conclusion, I'm genuinely perplexed as to why your response to my idea has been largely negative, I think it's fair to say. Nobody on this thread has opposed it (while Ledgem and Sackett have both already expressed at least some support for the idea), and I don't see any significant downside to it, nor has any such downside been mentioned thus far on this thread, so... ? Edit: Quote:
I mean, insofar as such "breathing new life" into an older forum can be achieved by good thread creation by members alone (without needing AS Mods to spice it up somehow with active work), I don't get why the AS Mods would actually be against that. Breathing new life into an older forum can only help Anime Suki. It can only create more interest in part of this site, which is good for the site as a whole.
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2012-01-29, 18:40 | Link #24 | ||
Me at work
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2012-01-29, 18:53 | Link #25 | ||
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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Because the structure of the sub-forums are not currently designed to adequately support this approach, and we favour maintaining our design and general moderation approach than to pursue this secondary goal that would require breaking our pattern to serve a much smaller group of members. As I said, our preferred alternative is that the small group of remaining members make Social Groups where they can take full control over the management of the "space". This keeps the community active within the AnimeSuki Forum website, just not on the forum strictly-speaking. In other words, out of the sub-forum a community remains as a remnant, and when the sub-forum is no longer the best avenue to support that community (because its thread structure no longer fits), the community migrates to a social group and the sub-forum (whose structure is now antiquated and less useful) dies. We're just saying we're not going to open up the sub-forum to keep it alive artificially, but that doesn't mean the community has to die.
All that to say: don't breath new life into a dead space. Instead, move to a new space that takes the flavour of the remaining inhabitants. I think that has the potential to be a lot more vibrant anyway, but it really depends entirely on the fans. Quote:
(I would say in general that some people tend to be a bit more "thread-happy" than fits our moderation philosophy in general. Many topics are similar and don't require a new thread; our philosophy has always been to keep the same topic in the same thread, and that's not going to change.) Quote:
In general I would just say that you need to consider the big picture when making these sorts of requests. Implementing a change that would seem to benefit a small group of members may seem like an obvious thing to do, but I fear that you haven't really thought through all the implications. For example, there is a significant benefit for all anime series sub-forums to have the same structure and a similar moderation approach. This is why, not too long after limiting sub-forums, we extended that same pattern to all other anime series sub-forums on the site. This helps people understand our expectations and gets people into a habit of what to expect and of how things work. This predictability is invaluable when you're dealing with a community of our size; it reduces moderation issues significantly, and is generally what allows AnimeSuki Forum to run smoothly with a very small but dedicated moderation team. In other words, just because you can do a thing, and doing that thing would make some people happy, doesn't automatically mean that you should do a thing, especially when there are other ways of accomplishing the same thing that would realize most or even all of the same goals without breaking the established pattern or system. I think we do have a suitable alternative in this case that I think has the potential to accomplish the purpose even better than the immediate proposal (because it's not only open, but community-managed). That doesn't necessarily address every single point you raised, but I hope that addresses the main ones.
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2012-01-29, 21:19 | Link #27 |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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If the staff have decided that this is the way it's going to be, then that's how it's going to be. Still, unless I missed it, I didn't see any reason to justify having this in place (other than "it fits the moderation style").
Relentless, you've been here as long as I have. AnimeSuki has grown a lot during that time, but with time the moderation has also become more strict. It's not just the moderation itself, but there has been an obsessive compulsiveness about keeping threads organized and avoiding repeat discussions that has been growing in recent years. It is as if we're generating discussions, but once we have allowed a conversation to run its course, we lock it, keep it around for archival purposes, and work to prevent anyone from having the same conversation again. Now we're even preventing people from coming up with more original talking points by shuffling conversation into pre-defined, patterned threads. It's less fun, and I have personally felt stifled by it. I am aware of the extreme opposite form of moderation, and how a forum can devolve into mindless, spammy commentary rather than discussions. I appreciate the work that the moderators do to keep things orderly and flowing - I think it is at least partly for that reason that the forum has continued to grow and maintain worthwhile discussions. Part of this comes down to an identity issue. I view AnimeSuki as a site that caters to anime, in general, and includes a few areas for other discussion that isn't always related. Based on what you're saying, it seems as if AnimeSuki serves only discussions of the latest series. Why lock up and archive the forums for older series - what purpose does that serve? Why not let conversation flow freely? Again, if the staff have decided that's how it will be, then there's no discussion to be had. I am curious about the rationale behind those ideas, though. If they're sound, then I'll accept them. If they're not, then I'd imagine that I won't need to say anything, as the staff will likely come to the realization on their own.
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2012-01-29, 22:41 | Link #28 | ||
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1. Keep in mind that both the thread request and the retirement systems have been around for many years now. Sub-forum retirement started in 2008, and thread requests were around 2005 IIRC. Of course, a major reason for sub-forum retirement was that the sub-forum was basically not being used anymore anyway, and was just taking up space on the main index and making the site look stale by listing all these "old shows that nobody cares about anymore" (in quotes). Cleaning them up was more good housekeeping than anything else. 2. In the case of retired sub-forums where we do lock certain threads, there is always an unlocked thread that is still suited to discussing the show and can cover the topics that were previously covered in the locked threads. So I'd again think of it as re-consolidating the discussion into a single thread going forward (while preserving the old threads for posterity). 3. As for "preventing original talking points" bit, I still honestly don't see this. Again, what threads are you wanting to create that you can't create by asking? Do you really need a new thread, or would one of the existing threads do? The pre-defined threads are there because we've found that, if we don't create them, people ask for them anyway. People have gotten into a habit of there just always being certain threads for shows season after season. And I think, for a lot of the conversations, that works just fine. For cases where that doesn't work, a new thread can be proposed, and I really don't see why it wouldn't be granted if it's a worthy topic. What I'm trying to understand is: is it "stifling" because we won't create the threads you feel are necessary (due to not deeming them worthy), or just "stifling" because you have to make the proposal in the first place? Quote:
Granted that even from my days as a simple member I was never much of a fan of sub-forums to start with, but I definitely thought things improved significantly when the thread topics were locked and more organized. Despite what is being implied, I really do think conversations nowadays are much more focused and on-topic than they used to be in the old days, and so a lot more engaging with a higher content/spam (signal-to-noise) ratio. It's a lot easier for me to engage in a topic that's of immediate interest to me without having to wade through a whole ton of randomness to find a gem. Are the threads perfect? Of course not. But I'm not sure that it's so simple to fix the problem, nor that allowing free thread creation gets us closer to a solution. (Granted, I can't say that I'm exactly clear on the problem.) So you're asking for a rationale as to why things are the way they are, and I guess I can only say it's an amalgamation of all the preferences of all the staff past and present who participated in the discussions that led to this point (and I'm just one small part of that process). Of course, each person who works on the staff has different opinions and their own personalities, but each person was also nominated by the other staff because (among other reasons) they seemed to understand and accept the general principles that govern the site's operation. So you might infer that, our "collective personality", influenced by past experience and internal discussions, is to prefer threads to be organized and follow predictable patterns that tend to support the needs of most of the forum members particularly during a show's airing. And you can probably also infer from my comments that the staff, on the whole, aren't generally very interested in keeping sub-forums alive when the show is past its prime, particularly if that involves allowing things to be more "chaotic". Again, if you ask me to give you like "the 5 main reasons why this is the best system in existence that'll convince anyone we're on the right path", I don't know if there is such a thing (though I've tried to give as many as I can think of along the way). I think it's more like "we like it this way", "it generally seems to accomplish our goals", and "previous experiences with other approaches have driven us away from them". Contrary to what some might believe we really are open to new ideas (and often these are incorporated into internal discussions and get morphed into future ideas/decisions), but proposals that go firmly against the principles we otherwise use to moderate the site aren't very likely to be adopted, at least not as is. Anyway, that's probably all I can say on the topic (other than replies to specific questions); maybe some other members of the staff have more ideas or feedback.
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Last edited by relentlessflame; 2012-01-29 at 22:58. Reason: fix typo and quote |
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2012-01-30, 00:05 | Link #29 | |||||||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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(Sorry, this turned into a really long reply):
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For the older series, you ask me what thread I would want that doesn't exist. I don't create new threads very often. What I want is something that is less easily definable: people proposing theories, linking the series to various aspects of life, bringing in comparisons with other series, movies, or world events... basically, the boundless, unrestricted creativity of fans who want to talk about anything and everything, tied in to the series. Having to request a new thread to be made is a huge barrier in itself. It's not a matter of laziness, either: the fact that such a rule exists already indicates a hostility to the creation of new threads, and seemingly indicates that a moderator is likely to tell you that your idea stinks or that it should just go into a pre-defined thread. Why bother, particularly knowing that the forums are older and don't receive much traffic anyway? (Bear in mind also that while the subforums for older series receive less traffic by default, I wonder if they wouldn't receive more if threads could be created freely.) Quote:
How about the Death Note subforum? It's a similar deal, with threads that have accumulated hundreds of replies that seemingly lead to people ignoring the most recent posts that have been made (even if they truly are recent) and just dropping their thoughts. I was delighted to have a conversation with a member who joined the site this month, but there were a number of other replies that seemingly ignored my posts and never returned, even after I responded to them. And I don't blame them - when there seems to be little activity and threads are hundreds of posts long, people seem to be assuming that nobody is active at the end, or that people contributing are just post dumping. Quote:
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I guess now I've shifted from asking a question to making an appeal. If the staff are dead set in their ways, then there's nothing to be done. I'm asking that this all be reconsidered, not because I want this site to return to the way that it was in 2003-2005 (even though I liked those days best), but because conversations feel incredibly stifled. Quote:
I won't be surprised if nothing changes from all of this. Noting that things have become more restrictive over time, I would request that they not become more restrictive than they have already become. Edit: Even though Relentless and I have been going on about this, I'd invite other staff to give their thoughts and opinions, as well.
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2012-01-30, 01:13 | Link #30 | |||||
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Age: 41
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This whole hypothetical "there's a whole world of possibilities you're deliberately turning away because you're not allowing completely-free thread creation" is really a stretch to me. How do they get by then for the 90%+ of shows that don't get sub-forums in the first place and so only have one thread...? I don't think creating a new thread of your own is such an essential part of the creative process when discussing a show, nor is the barrier to jumping into an existing thread that much of a deterrent. Otherwise, older sub-forums surely aren't the biggest problem to be addressing at this point. Quote:
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At the end of the day, I think we all have to work together to make a good environment where conversation and constructive discussion can occur. The staff do their best, based on their experience and judgement, to support an environment conducive to that sort of experience. Of course it's not perfect, but I think our current approach has considerable benefits to all. But if people don't like the approach we're taking on principle and find that it doesn't suit their needs or desires, no one's married to this site. If you can find another site that does a better job of meeting your needs, then go there. Or if not, create a new site for that matter. Or do all three at once, if it meets your needs. Life's too short to remain frustrated. That's all from me.
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2012-01-30, 05:06 | Link #31 | ||
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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You know how you praise yourselvs with statements like "this is a moderated forum" or "inteligenet discussion" well that's all pretty void when you think how as a moderator you don't have to lift a finger and things like discussion/debate outright don't exist. The dominating patterns in series forums are (short) statements/conversations, neighter of which need any attention from you. What you've done is not "moderate" but simply create an environment so sterile and unfertile because it's convenient to you. It's like torching your garden to prevent bees from comming near it; enjoy your garden of short and punny grass afterwards. But hey growing grass is more convenient then growing flowers so obviously it's "superior" (sarcasm).You ask what's the problem with your system and debates. Well, I ask you where the hell are the debates? No, really how many debates/discussion threads have you as the staff as a whole created when you consider ALL the series forums? I'd imagine the density is 1/forum AT BEST. Because really, if you think "what's best as a moderator when moderating" creating a debate/discussion thread runs the risk of you actually having to look at it from time to time. You then have all these threads in the forum: "How do you tie your shoes when looking at character X", "How do you tie your shoes when looking at character Y", along with "How do you tie your shoes when looking at seyuu X", and of course the glorious "How do you tie your shoes this week, Rate your shoelace" threads. Add to that the Avatar/Signature, Image thread, Merchandise and so on, and you've essntially got a 1 to ~15 debate to noise ratio (the 1 being General). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure some people find those threads useful and fun, particularly things like Merchandise, Image threads and so on, but really none of them are debate material and they just promote a sense of noise in the entire forum. The hardest thread to post into, and find for what it's worth, is always the General thread, but it's only thread where you might see a resemblence of actual inteligent talk. To add to this, your logic on which should go to SG is just completely backwards to your ideals. You essentially want SG to act as a hub for all the non-discussion/debate noise. But if that's the case why are you sending the people from older forums there, who obviously don't have anything they can do other then cary out post-show discussion/debate, YET, go out of your way to create 1001 "appretiation" threads in the forums, among other noise. But anyway, I digress. Essentially what's happening is you've found that creating a lot of this "white noise" (that you've somehow justfied to yourself) makes your job a lot easier since what it's doing is creating the illusion of discussion/debates when in reality there is none, along with the illusion that you CAN have debates/discussion when really... you can't, because if it happens in an existing topic the "good" noise just eats it up and if it's requested you just deny it on the basis that it's insufficiently unique (ie. not your "white noise"). And you've convinced yourself that obviously "because you're doing far less work, the system is better" even though you go on to add "you don't actually like talking in the series forums" yourself; so obviously you yourself don't find any worthwhile discussion/debate there either. Now when you think of this lifecycle thing from that angle, it's no longer a means by which you support fresh discussion but just a another way to continue with this logic train of "what's easier to moderate, is more inteligent" and thus justify killing a huge chunk of debate/discussion.
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2012-01-30, 06:14 | Link #32 |
reading #hikaributts
Join Date: Feb 2009
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@felix (i find it a bit long to quote your post)
The most intelligent posts that i find are in the general and the specific episode discussions. Because they contain analyses of the current episodes and speculations of future episodes. By the time an anime has finished, there is not much left to speculate except on the ending or on the unresolved plot (or the plotholes) of the anime. Most people will lose some interest of an older anime after a new season starts, unless the anime was a huge succes like Steins;Gate, Code Geass, Madoka etc. But I think that you don't always need a new topic for discussing that, because people who are still reading and posting on those older sub forums are surely fans. Also because less things are posted after an anime has reached it's prime, you can still debate with the fans in those forums without the interuptions of the "casual" viewers. To be fair, there are more than enough debates in existing topics of certain anime sub forums of popular series or in the shounen series like one piece, fairy tail etc. Saying that there are hardly any debates in this forum is not that true. In fact anyone can stir up a discussion, which in most occasions quickly leads into a debate. But I assume you probably want to discus something less general and you want a seperate topic for that. While i can see your point that you want more freedom of creating new topics that can start new discussions threads about something more specfic that's not suited for the general discussion, but i think that you are not taking moderators in consideration. I am pretty sure that they moderate the forums voluntarily and don't have the time to do this 24/7. So in a way, you are giving the mods a harder time to moderate more and closing pointless topics and handing out infractions ,while you satisfy a small group of people. Also i don't think it's just fear, because infractions and bans never truly stopped the trolls creating pointless threads in other forums. Last edited by hyl; 2012-01-30 at 06:24. |
2012-01-30, 06:59 | Link #33 | ||
sleepyhead
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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One Piece is a legacy forum. It predates the system, hence why there are a lot of debates. Naruto / Bleach / One Piece are essentially the exception and to the best of my knowledge they are treated as special cases in the sense they have dedicated moderators. They are also so well known it's not really in question anyone moderating it would not be familiar with the material.
Regarding discussing/debates in general threads. As I mentioned they are way too noise and misguided to have any constructive discussion and any discussion you start will just get buried. So no, they are no appropriate at all. As I've mentioned the General thread of these forums is also particularly obscure. relentlessflame pretty much said they are intentionally making it obscure himself. Quote:
The community can handle itself just fine even with a little chaos here and there. The old system worked just fine with debates and everything, do you have any proof it didn't? There is absolutely NO need to censor the forum and dumb it down to such extents for a certain group of people that don't even directly participate in said debates. Do you plant just grass in your garden so the gardener has an easier time gardening? Obviously there are other solutions that could be used that don't involve affecting the community in a negative way. But don't take my word for it. There have been private petitions (not by me, btw) on the very issue of the moderation team thinking of only their interest and mishandling anything resembling a debate. And it was signed by a whole lot of people. Quote:
It doesn't matter, or it shouldn't matter, how many people treat it as just a place to vent their feelings with out any backing. If that's what you want, there's this thing called irc, 2chan, etc. Being "opinionated" isn't the same as having an "opinion". A lot of these threads in series forums are just people being "opinionated", ie. they think something, but have nothing backing them up. Having an opinion isn't something you declare but something that comes naturally when you have different reasons/arguments in a debate for something. If you have no actual arguments then it's just noise and all your contributing to the debate is wasting people's time trying to explain it to you and your non-existent logical backing. And also, you're generalizing to minorities, thus indirectly labeling yourself as some majority. As I said this have been other issues related to this; it's hardly a "minority opinion" or out of thin air. If you want to continue to claim that, then prove it!
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2012-01-30, 07:07 | Link #34 | |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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It hasn't always been clear to me that sub-forums are a good solution for discussing popular series. The most recent case in point is the thread for Cross Game. It has over 3,400 postings, which I believe is the most for any show that doesn't have a sub-forum. As in all popular series, there were the occasional postings of "I hope this gets a sub-forum" usually followed quickly by more postings to the effect of "please, no." The general consensus in that thread was that a sub-forum would dissipate discussion by spreading it over dozens of threads.
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2012-01-30, 07:17 | Link #35 | |
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
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2012-01-30, 07:27 | Link #36 |
…Nothing More
Administrator
Join Date: Mar 2003
Age: 44
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No invite necessary; I was going to reply. However, I'd like to make a considered response, so I need to reread everything more carefully. Glancing over the thread my first impression is that there may be legitimate concerns being expressed, but they are actually being lost amidst the rhetoric and hyperbole. It is going to take me time (that I don't have much of) to get my head around the points. Hence no reply yet.
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2012-01-30, 08:42 | Link #37 | |||||||
reading #hikaributts
Join Date: Feb 2009
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If you meant by "own interest" by not wanting to moderate everything 24/7, then it's understandable because moderating is not a paid job but something voluntarily. If you meant by "mishandling", closing in their eyes a discussion/debate that got out of hand, then it's their judgement to do so. Not everyone can have it always right, just like in sports referees can also make mistakes while the most people disagrees on his judgement. While that is true, but you don't have to have new thread for every kind of discussion. You can have discussion in existing threads as well. Your only reason for not wanting to debate on those topic are noise by people who do not want to discus the same subject as you do. Eventhough some people can be distracted by "noise", but this lessens with the older sub forums, because less people are posting compared to when it was in their prime. Quote:
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If we go by those numbers, then i can say that the "minority opinion" is pretty valid. edit: Quote:
In fact is you divide crossgames 3400 posts by 4 (being a 4 cour serie) and you will notice that it was not as popular as you expect it to be based on the amount of posts compared to other series with overall less posts like dog days (which has over 2,4k posts in 1 cour). Quote:
(Also "Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai" is not known as AnoMita) edit: because i think this needs to be said Quote:
Also if you look up the word "forum moderator" you will get this as a result Moderators "The moderators (short singular form: "mod") are users (or employees) of the forum who are granted access to the posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussion (similar to arbitration) and also keeping the forum clean (neutralizing spam and spambots etc.).[12] Because they have access to all posts and threads in their area of responsibility, it is common for a friend of the site owner to be promoted to moderator for such a task. Moderators also answer users' concerns about the forum, general questions, as well as respond to specific complaints. They also can do anything to lend a helping hand to a user in need.[13] Moderators themselves may have ranks: some may be given mod privileges over only a particular topic or section (called "local"), while others (called "global" or "super") may be allowed access anywhere. Common privileges of moderators include: deleting, merging, moving, and splitting of posts and threads, locking, renaming, stickying of threads, banning, suspending, unsuspending, unbanning, warning the members, or adding, editing, removing the polls of threads.[14] "Junior Modding", "Backseat Modding", or "Forum copping" can refer negatively to the behavior of ordinary users who take a moderator-like tone in criticizing other members. Essentially, it is the duty of the moderator to manage the day-to-day affairs of a forum or board as it applies to the stream of user contributions and interactions. The relative effectiveness of this user management directly impacts the quality of a forum in general, its appeal, and its usefulness as a community of interrelated users." So you are bashing on moderators for doing "nothing" except deleting posts,giving infractions, closing topics etc. /sarcasm Based the general discription of a forum moderator, they are doing a fine job in my opinion. Last edited by hyl; 2012-01-30 at 09:41. |
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2012-01-30, 10:12 | Link #38 | ||||
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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You're also right about the situation with Older forums somewhat, but your off in your logical assesment. Basically you're saying: you can discuss in older forums since nobody visits them, hence the system is good for everything (including current forums), hence it's okey for the moderators to lock and push everything into single threads, because you can discuss in a single thread. The fact of the matter is you CAN NOT discuss in this way. You can try to start a discussion sure, but what happens is it either will get buried, repeats, or is impossible to follow. This is why with this new system these forums become uterlly useless after the series ends. There's littlerly no use for them other then venting. If they actually facilitated discussion as you are telling me then they should be even more open for discussion after the fact (at least for the complex series). But what we see is them completely and utterly die out because nobody can make heads or tails of the discussion. EVEN when someone goes out of their way and re-reads one of those monolithic threads of EVERYTHING and makes a post, for anyone to make a followup to that posts requieres them to go back and read the entire damn thing themselvs. I mean, I have trouble understanding what the hell some people are replying to even in threads I've followed! when enough time passes. It's unusable. By all means prove me wrong! No really. Go to ANY show forum you wish, that was created using the system (and didn't exist with the old system) and show me how exactly you go about finding "topics" of discussion and debate (and I mean specific discussions! nobody cares for discussing everything under the sun), and posting in them and how others reading your posts have a clue of what the topic you're replying to is about or what the previous points were. And don't tell me you can't find any because that show was "not that type" since the staff themselves recognized there were plenty by creating the forum itself (it's officially one of the few things on criteria we know). So in other words, if you fail it just proves what we've been saying that the current format for series forums SPOILS debates/discussion.You want to know why series threads don't have this problem? While they may seem like they're doing the same thing (discussing episodes), it just doesn't work that way. Series threads discuss "the series" more specifically "how the series progresses" and any confusion with the debate is mitigated by the fact is very well organized and in chronological order. So if you want to search for a topic you can infer it by the episode it might have initiated in. You can also infer it as part of the ongoing discussion on the series progression. It's not as good as it could be if you actually had specialized topics, but it's pretty inteligent overall. That kind of tries to happen in series forums but the whole format just pushes it away from it. You just simply can not discuss it like that when each week a discussion from the previous week has to be rehashed because of the whole separate episode thread deal. And at the same time a previous discussion is always abnadoned by simple virtue of re-creating threads that serve the same purpose. Say a discussion that starts initially and then as you progress further the circumstances changes, very hard to follow; because it's hard to recognize things that are said when the show was in it's infancy when you approuch a climax. Not to mention that the episode threads themselvs have a standard of extremely dumbed down discussion and by virtue of speculation, charactarization and other things being split into completely pointless separate topics the discussion is dumbed down even more. About the censorship, "Oh let's talk about Kyuube *insert moderator comming in and closing the thread and censoring the topic*"Looks like censorship to me. Quote:
This is going to sound wrong, but there's really no nice way to say it. It's a moderators job to simply direct the discussion in the right direction, but the flow is left for the community to decide (since no one man can claim omniscience or predict the future). If you can't do that, then step down! It's a valuntery job, if you can't do it right, don't volunteer. Or call yourself something else, because that's not what a "moderat"-or is. If you are going to dictate what the ONLY good topics are then you can not call it a forum either, in a forum everyone is free to bring out (reasonable) topics on the subject; even if they might be shot down later. Becase nobody can say a topic won't go anywhere before the topic is even created. Quote:
Also I don't know what nonsense site you found that definition one, but here's the actual definition. (Though I don't understand why even bring such a thing as an argument; do you not know what they are until now? do you think everyone else here didn't know what a moderator is?) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moderator Quote:
(I've ignored what seem like just personal accusations/attacks)
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2012-01-30, 11:59 | Link #39 | |||||||
reading #hikaributts
Join Date: Feb 2009
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These things however do occur in the discussions of the current series, but the point of this topic was for the older series as written by the topic starter and not for the current series. Quote:
To be honest, why do the heck do you even want to read the older discussions or debates in which you haven't particpated yourself? Even if you would want to comment on it, the people you are commenting on won't bother reading your reply due the fact that that discussion ended ages ago. If you want something discussed, then simply start a new discussion in an existing topic, not by reviving older discussions. Quote:
This is however not an act of censorship but an act of keeping the order of the forums. Quote:
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While they have similar functions (mediating a community), but the thing that they moderate is different and thus giving them slighly different tasks. Try using better keywords when using a search engine, like using "forum moderator" instead of just moderator the next time. Also if we use the general discription of moderator of your example, then it will also work against you. Because a mediator does not have to give a seperate place to discuss things, they only intervene in the case if there are conflicts or if something goes wrong. Also in my opinion you have started the almost personal attacks by baselessly insulting people (the moderators) by accusing them of doing poor jobs. Last edited by hyl; 2012-01-30 at 12:10. |
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2012-01-30, 12:13 | Link #40 |
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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I'll answer your points but I'll leave it as-is for now for at least a day. Seems you have some kind of animosity against me and most of your arguments circle around myself, how I post (etc), rather then the actual argument. I don't want to turn this thread into some mindless back and forth quote war and replying to your post there would just be an explantion on points I've already went into detail over. Since NW is going to post his own views later this shouldn't be an issue delaying my explanation to your post so the thread can slow down and other people have a chance to reply as well.
If you have something against me feel free to take it out over vm, pm.
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