VGChartz Forum Changes

[Kantor]

Khuutra said:

Kantor said:

1) That would already be against the rules

2) We still have Person Above You threads? Besides, all of that stays confined in one thread, so I don't see the issue.

3) We have a Vita thread and it has some 250 pages. No specific discussion can happen in a thread that large.

4) No moderator has ever been elevated for being a friend of current moderators. In case you've forgotten, we all had to submit applications and were chosen on that basis. We were the best picks, in Machina's view.

5) Already happens.

6) We have the GIF rule already, but the length rule is a good one, I suppose.

Essentially, most of what you're saying is already in place. Moderation is not the problem here.

To argue or not to argue....ah Hell with it.

1. It's not against the rules, or otherwise it's not enforced which means it's effectively not against the rules. As things stand now, members can do or say damn near anything while hiding behind the cover of "It's like, my opinion man", and there is no moderation that comes down on the majority of trolling in the forum. I'm not looking for a rule amendment so much as I am a stricter enforcement, in this respect.

2. Elimination threads in particular are everywhere and drown out otherwise good discussion, pushing it off the main page of the Hot Topics (which is the way most people browse, I assume, since it can be customized). It flooding out of the discussion isn't a problem, it making other discussions irrelevant, hard-to-find, and less active is.

3. That doesn't address the larger point, but for the sake of clarity I will rephrase it in the context of something you and I can both mutually understand: a Mass Effect thread.

Say we have one Mass Effect thread. There is no need for more Mass Effect threads, as it stands now. All Mass Effect discussion would take place therein. When the new DLC is announced, the OP and thread title would be changed to reflect that. Talk about characters? It goes in there. Talk about multiplayer? It goes in there. Asking for build advice? It goes in there. Got some interesting quotes from Chris Priestly concerning when DLC is landing? It goes in there.

The idea is that the vast, even overwhelming majority of threads don't need to actually exist. We've fetishized "official" threads so much that they're essentially worthless, but once they exist we're supposed to post relevant news in them. We don't, at the moment, which is another case where the rules aren't being fully enforced. Do we need a new thread every day about THe Last of Us? No. It just takes up space on the forum listings and pushes most discussions off of the main page.

Also, I hoped that this would be implied, but in case not: threads would have size limits. Something like 2000 or 5000 posts. After that, time for a new thread.

4. You're addressing one specific sentence without referring to the larger point. How many people still hold grudges over multiple past questionable moderations that were never acted upon by the administration? Quite a few, I think. Maxwell was a friendly guy, but his moderations were some of the most controversial on the site, and some of the most personal, and nobody's complaints were ever really thoroughly investigated.

I'm not saying there needs to be transparency in this process. I'm saying there needs to be clear and actionable rules laid down for moderators, and these rules being acted upon needs to be indicated to the forum at large to some degree.

5. THis is another case where I guess I'm being too gentle in the language

Be more strict about it. Moderators tiptoe a lot around here, and it needs to stop.

6. SHRINK THE GIF SIZE LIMIT. Also set the size limit, hard and fast. People have been screwing with the size of their sigs for literally years, and it's been impossible for the mods to keep a leash on it because there's nothing there for them to refer to anymore.

Anyway.

This isn't about the job that the mods are doing within the context of the current system. You guys are doing fine. However, a few rule tweaks - and an increasing willingness to bloody your hands, granted - would do a lot to weed out unnecessary and harmful discussion, which allows better discussion to flourish. When we're not being drowned out in threads all covering the same topic, it creates a sense of clarity and purpose in discussions where we can form communities around topics and ideas, and where people can exchange those ideas in a constructive way.

Like I said: rearrange the forums all you like, but it's only going to fix a part of the problem. The other part of the problem is harder, based on the discussion being had here, and that's using the rules to help foster the kind of community you want to participate in. I know you yearn for a return to the days where discussions were in-depth and vibrant, and even where they weren't friendly they were either level-headed or ban-filled.

We're not arguing; we're debating. This is exactly the sort of thing that the site needs.

1) That will always really be left to the moderator in question. You can't just say to somebody "be strict", because that's an empty statement. As you say later on, there's a lot of discretion involved.

2) Perhaps we could have a subforum for elimination threads, or forum games in general (so Mafia could go there as well)

3) This can work for smaller games. Mass Effect 3, as things go, is a fairly small game on this website. Compare that to Last of Us. Even with a 5000 post limit (100 pages), it will be damned near impossible to find anything within that thread. What happens if you want to discuss multiplayer and, a couple of days earlier, the topic has switched to DLC? With a game the size of TLOU, that would probably mean 200-300 posts between you and the last multiplayer discussion.

Many people may disagree with me here, but my main problem with NeoGAF (other than the prevalent trolling and superior attitude) is just how quickly every thread grows. There's never any discussion because your post gets buried within minutes and every thread reaches 10 pages. It's just full of people making one-line posts that will never be read unless they're on the first couple of pages and then leaving. I don't think it's ever good for a community to have threads that large.

4) I think I can freely say that Maxwell was a terrible moderator, and he wasn't promoted through the usual avenues. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did on the moderation team. If you have a problem with a moderator, you contact that moderator or you contact axumblade, and if he doesn't think you have a valid grievance, then you don't have a valid grievance. From personal experience, you get far more complaints from people who are clearly guilty than from people who are even questionable.

5) It would be nice if you could give an example of what constitutes trolling and would not currently be moderated.

6) It's 1MB already. Much smaller than that, and you can't really have a GIF at all. But I agree that we need a formal measure for maximum sig length.

I think point 3 is the most important one here. Points 1, 4 and 5 are more or less the same thing, and points 2 and 6 are minor issues.