Discuss the state of the forums and find solutions

[the-pi-guy]

spurgeonryan said:

Who cares about votes? It's not affecting the site. Nobody is going, oh God, there are votes and it is not how I like it, I am leaving.
As for Liking a post or subscribing to a thread. Again, nobody really cares, all of this is just extra stuff to make the site a site. Functionality.
And I do not mean to say, if you care about votes that your opinion does not matter, just saying this thread is about the state of the forums.

Does the votes and the like really affect much?

Maybe not.

But I've seen some people complain, and I've also seen some people kind of weaponize upvotes. (People agree with me, and not you, so people recognize my argument is better).

I think one issue is that news is kind of slow. We used to have a big gaming show every few months (E3, Gamescom, TGS, PSX, plus others.) Sony, MS, Nintendo each would frequently have like 90 minute shows, if not 2 hours at times. Games are taking longer to make, and the big companies are making fewer of them, although Indies are making more games than ever. 

I think the biggest issue with forums, is that Reddit exists. Which has places for having conversations on literally anything. If you want to talk about gaming news, there are tons of large communities dedicated to that. And you can also find groups of people that are like minded for politics and religion and be able to have friendlier conversations that fit one's echo chamber. Which is harder to do in a place like this.