I'll note that Maxwell's complaints about Nintendo have more to do with certain negative nancies in the Nintendo community than any sort of hate from non-Nintendo fans

I'll take that note, but he also specifically mentions non Nintendo fans and most of his rant was just about defending Nintendo. He finds issue in that one espect of the forums, but he doesn't find issue in the 15 or so 'DOOMED' threads made about the NGP just a few weeks ago or the 'Microsoft have no exclsuvies!' threads that have been popping up. If someone can come into one of those Nintendo threads and make a reasonable or legitimate argument, then he or she should be able to do so without being harassed by a mod with a bias.

Controversy breeds discussion, if he wants better discussions to happen, then he needs to come into those threads and prove every one wrong with a good debate. That's how Jarrod handles it, that's how Khuttra handles it and that's how even you handle it.

Yeah... that's why I mostly hang in the Off topic section.

The main sections seem to have lost any sembelence of wanting to have a conversation about something.

Arguably Off-topic is worse about having a coherent discussion, at least when politics or religion (or some lethal combination of the two) comes into play

Thats because people are as equally  stupid in those topics. You don't come into a thread discussing abortion and then use the bible as a reference as to why your argument it right, that only leads to a whole bunch of arguments, thread derailments and insults. People need to think before they post, that religous poster (an example) could have used a different method of proving his point and it would have been easier to convince people, the other posters will take him/her more seriously and a reasonable debate could go on.

Off Topic turned garbage when every thread posted was based on some sort of agenda, which is fine to a degree, but when you have 'All Muslims are terrorists!' or 'The white race is the best race, every other race brings crime!' within the first couple of pages, that's when you know your threads done and it's going to become an angry brawl, instead of an intelligent discussion about the issues at hand.

I blame the random and sudden influx of new posters, they seem to be a lot more incoherent, angry and a little racist.

It's also odd that Gaming Discussion is monitored so strictly, but some people get away with some of the craziest things in Off Topic, if it was monitored a little bit better by a neuteral mod, then threads might actually last longer than two pages before they turn into a shit storm.

This is a comic I made in... 2008? I think it was 2008... anyways...

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Anywho, what I'm really trying to do now-a-days is be involved in things here on this forum that get people interested in the actual games. Whether it's the VGC Most Wanted, Recommendation Guides, Pokemon Black/White thread, or whatever... I just want people to be excited about the things that matter most for our awesome hobby: the games.

True, but at least they are topics that have... substance.

I mean, i'd rather get into an arguement about fiscal policy all day long, rather then an arguement about why the PS3 won't sell 140 million.

Politics and Religion are important, hence even the irrational arguements are rational in that... it's something that matters!

Hey I complain all the time like I complained that the PC board was a ghost town, and if you go to the PC section you will see that I have started more threads than anyone else and I post in most of the others, it is now just as active as any other platform board possibly more active than the MS one lol.

Of course half the reply to any thread is herp derp Piracy herpa derpa, PC shouldn't get anygames because people get them for free blerpa blerpa. So I have slowed down recently except for my Witcher 2 thread.

There was a time when i felt it wasn't worth discussing the MOVE, because all i'd get was nintendo fans swarming to the thread telling me it was just a copy.

Haha quite funny I remember the thread on this one and it really does line up with when the community changed drastically as the site became more popular in 2008.  

And yes I like the game discussion threads, in fact I create a lot of impressions threads, like my Okamiden thread I posted and linked to you, but it seems unless it's uber hyped game 4371 no one else discusses it, then for some random reason a random member of the angry mob pops in to say how much he hates the game he's never played  

The only problem with this time of the year is the lack of decent titles, there's Portal 2.... that's about it till OoT remake... so no thread's to discuss what I'm playing (which is the main reason for my What are you currently playing thread) and the discussions about the consoles are just like that next to last panel lol

So when I created this thread, there was nothing to discuss game wise, there was no interesting game threads, and people were so involved in rumors I just didn't feel like pointing out the pink elephant in the room 200 times over...

It's partially the time of the year, another factor is who is posting what, the problem being comes in the form of a public forum you can't regulate who signs up and posts, only moderate posts that go against the express written rules laid out, and there's just a lot of people who like to skirt around those rules, like basically you can stop a troll from posting but you can't regulate the quality of poster, there is no IQ test, reasoning skills assesment, or a siminar on the historical trends of sales to become a member lol

The only way to regulate any of that is to become a closed forum like GAF and no one really wants that, if there was a way to strike a real balance it would be perfect, but really VGC was a little known site prior to 2008, as per small sites that grow they have a dedicated group that finds the site and builds up the community with other friends, so the quality is similar and once traffic goes up, the small dedicated community is thrust out into the general net populace... which isn't always a fun nor intelligent place for discussion.   But VGC captured me back before it became the awesome and popular new kid on the block amongst gaming sites, even though many of the really good posters left, a good fraction of the quality posters from yore are still around, and from all the talks we all have it seems like we keep each other around and give each other reasons to discuss and reply to some of these really silly threads/posts.