[hyl]

Originally Posted by felix

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.

How does an older thread get burried under other replies if people hardly reply in them? If we take the example of AnoHana there was a discussion that lasted 1 page and before and after that discussion the difference of the posting date were atleast 2 days. It's really silly to say that newly started discussions will get burried under other posts, thus making it hard to follow.
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.

Originally Posted by felix

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.

So how does this relate to the fact that you want to freely

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.


To be fair I'll answer it for the other side as a baseline: I'll go with the previous example in the thread. To find interesting debates you sort the forum by reply count or view count. You also have 14 pages listing topics. If you're interesting a certain topic you can just search by topic title. You can also search by post if that doesn't work since because topics have their own thread and are not rehased everywhere (not rightfully anyway) you're boud to find the central hub for the issue you had interest in talking about for the series. It should be real easy to find and read since at worst each topic won't treat anything more then the issue you're interested in. You can easily add your own arguments and assesments to the topic and anyone reading can eassily see what you are talking about since the related posts would be just above and not split by several pages of other junk. Additionally your post has a very clear corelation to a title so you don't have to "explain what the hell you're talking about" every post and everyone knows exactly what the initial points where, points that were brouth up and what the last points were.

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.

Originally Posted by felix

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.

For closing threads, they probably have their reasons. Like discussions turning into flame wars or something else that would be in conflict with the forum rules or if the discussion or the topic has ended it's purpose (like in your cases the failed attempts of removing haters from the general or episode discussions ).
This is however not an act of censorship but an act of keeping the order of the forums.

Originally Posted by felix

I don't feel like asking them to do the standard thing is asking too much. It's what by definition a moderator should be doing. Why they exist. Nobody is asking them to do it 24/7, nobody is asking for super excellence and perfect topics. We're asking them for just the typical things you expect out of a forum: the ability to create specialized topics. (and before you punce on "you can request" try and answer my previous question of "how many debates/discussion threads have you seen come out of this request-begging system?")

The ability of creating specialized topic is not privilege for every forum, eventhough you are assuming it is. I know some other forums in which you can't needlessly start topics.

Originally Posted by felix

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.

Depends on the direction, atleast give me an example of a closed topic in which the moderator was wrong. If the closed topic started to get out of hand and would have resulted into something breaking the rules (http://forums.animesuki.com/faq.php?faq=rules) then i would agree for closing it.

Originally Posted by felix

That's what a administrator does. Moderators are the people that "moderate" discussion, ie. they're the ones who are suppose to just redirect the stream now and then when it goes too much in one direction or another.

An admin is the one who is running the forum (and are the one to blame for the technical issues /joke). It's not like they can't moderate (in fact i know many admins in different who also moderate threads) but my discription that i posted was for a forum moderator and not a forum admin.

Originally Posted by felix

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

In the case of forums it's typically just (1).


(I've ignored what seem like just personal accusations/attacks)

That's very cute that you have quoted the general meaning of moderator, but a forum moderator is not quite the same as other moderators like a town moderator or a game moderator.
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.