RISE OF THE N00BS!!!

[jalsonmi]

fkusumot said:
It seems like the userbase has doubled in the last six months. Not any scientific analysis or anything, just going by my fallible memory of how many people I used to see signed in versus what it is now. Things like "Wii Bingo" are old hat references that a lot of people don't even mention anymore because it's just an old joke.

There's a lot of new users that post "Wii Bingo" topics and don't realize how funny they are, on a subject that's been beaten to death and that have been definitively explicated by naznatips, sqrl, shams, the_source, happysquirrel, bodhesatva, and other luminaries who make posts motivated by rational arguments and actually use historical data to back up their assertions.

It almost motivates me to put together a FAQ based on different threads. I would probably start with the NINTENDOMINATION thread. But it would be too much to expect new users to slog through a few thousand posts to educate themselves.

For the time being there's not much to do except ignore the silly posts/threads or go through the old arguments again. It's going to get worse. There's a lot of reasonable criticism that has been aimed at GAF and the way it's run (because of that NYT article) but if you take into account how huge GAF's userbase is some of the policies seem more reasonable. I'm sure as the userbase for VGChartz grows the procedures will tighten (as they have already). IMHO the challenge will be to make VGC more tolerant than GAF. I blame Wii Fit.

I think a FAQ for new members would be a briliant idea. Just giving an idea of what threads and or baseless opinions have been given ou and done to death already, so hopefully all posters would have a base of where to start the conversation from. Of course, no one ever reads FAQs of that type, and some of the oldest posters are the most extreme flamers/trollers/purveyers-of-false-information-and/or-hope on the site, but you can hope it'll do some good.

I for one would love to see an end to all "Wii will Phail" posts as well as an end to "PS360 sux" posts. Can't we all
just appreciate games as a whole and not color everything by what console manufacturer we have inexplicably personally decided to like and which we have decided to dislike? Why does everything have to be a juvinile kill or be killed mentality? Why can't both MGS4 and Wii Fit be games we enjoy and see as adding to the overall gaming environment? Doesn't anyone realize how such a mentality is an indication of stunted emotional growth?

But there I go, tilting at windmills...