Improving Gamingforce

Improving Gamingforce, eh?

Pang is right about how tough people here make it for newbies. Maybe less so lately, but that's probably because we've driven everybody away and all the new people that come here see the welcome threads that derail into trolling and other bullshittery and just don't bother. I think we should purge the Welcome Welcome forum and start fresh, and have mods be a bit more strict there than in other places. If Welcome Welcome is people's first impression of GFF, it's a pretty lousy one.

Originally Posted by Devo

GFF is too cliquey. Honestly. I won't blame Meet Crew, but a lot of the discussion sticks to journals about whatever the fuck those people happen to be doing.

I agree it's cliquey but I think you're being awfully unfair singling us out considering Chat Cabal is a much bigger influence over board confusion than us communicating via our journals. Without fail, whenever there's some inside joke or name change or table-stretching avatar that confuses the fuck out of people, it's something that the Chat crew found funny and don't feel the need to explain to anybody else. However, Mo0 raises a good point about how a lot of us have turned to other methods of communication, and meet crew could probably shoulder some of THAT blame, since meeting each other in real life does tend to open up methods of communication a bit more. Speaking personally, I can say that a major reason I stick around GFF these days is primarily to stay in touch with the people I've met, so I mostly hang around the journals for that reason.

I do like being a member of the community at large, though, and agree that things could be better and more active around here, so I propose a few ideas:

1. Kill the rule that says we can't revive dead threads. I don't see why any discussion should have a moratorium on it. A lot of people, newbies especially, come here and ignore the "dead thread" rule, and then get shit on for breaking it. Honestly, who the hell cares? Let's revive some dead threads, I'm sure lots of us have new things to say, so let's open those back up.

2. Less strictness on discussion topics in general. I always got the sense that making a new thread on GFF required the topic to be one that can be discussed thoughtfully, and thus, fewer threads are created. Whereas with GameFAQs, the thread can be about anything, and thus, thousands are created every 14 minutes about FFVII alone. Maybe we should find a middleground somewhere? Open up the media center and make a Movies subforum, and allow people to create movie-specific threads, for example. Stuff like that. Let's broaden our sights a bit more on what's discussable vs. what's considered lackluster.

3. Link the forums to VGMdb visitors. I'm not sure if we do this already, but if not, I see no reason not to. Maybe we could talk to them about putting discussion links on the site that link to Gamingforce.

4. Stricter trolling enforcement. Yeah yeah, I'm sure some people will come in here and say how trolling isn't a problem anymore, and to them I say that while I agree, I only agree because there's no activity for the trolls to take advantage of these days. And not just trolling in the threads with shitty attack posts, but mod trolling as well, which I'd argue is a far more obnoxious problem. Shin banning me from the meet thread and handing out infractions to try and increase discussion (lol) is a terrific example of this.

I don't think it's about having thick skin, nutty. I think it's just that some people, myself included, have a lower tolerance for stupid bullshit than others. Trolling doesn't hurt my feelings, but it does annoy me and make me want to seek discussion elsewhere with other people (facebook or the journals). Before the meets, one of the reasons I stuck around with GFF back in the day was because of how strict the rules were with making sure discussions were kept civil and mature. Discussions on GFF used to be like walking into a mortar testing range. You might get caught in the crossfire, but if you're smart and post well, you can dodge the bullshit. Lately it's like walking into a minefield. You're fucked no matter what you do.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

While we're on the topic of facebook, something I've always thought would be cool is the ability to tag your friends in journal entries or posts. Just a quick thought, more to come later.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Short messages, devoid of any sort of context and just nothing but superficial garbage.

Furthermore, like nutty said, nobody is saying we need to become the next Facebook. Just look at what made them successful as a communications platform, look at what could potential make us more successful as a communication message board, and apply it however possible. I think the idea of tagging members in journals or posts is hardly going to transform GFF into facebook, but merely implementing something that might wash away some of that apathy and give people more incentive to stay active and even incentive to join.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Quote:

Bring the mom's basement to the front. Incorporate Acer's numerous streams and shorty's ventrilo to the front page, to give them more prominence. If we could somehow begin to actually show people the huge amount of activity that goes on off these boards, we'd definitely have more people sticking around. We don't have to sell our souls to get new people, we just have to market ourselves differently.

We have a nearly constantly busy chat room, we have, what, like... five streams a week of people team watching anime. We have an active group of chatters who watch certain tv shows/sports shows together. We have a huge network of people who are close outside the boards. We have meets. We have games of D&D that are so hilarious and creative I've shown them to people who hate D&D and their first question is: "Is the game always this good?" We have a weekly radio show that is brilliant (except when nutty tries to invite simply majestic). We have one of the greatest Video Game music cataloging sites on the net.

I agree 100% and I think a lot of this stuff can be worked into a GFF event calendar system or whatever. The more I think about it, the more it seems that what we are best at is events and community-driven games. We should be working on bringing these to the forefront, and creating new ones as well. Hell, Gamingforce might as well refer to message board games instead of video games.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by DieSeLFueLeD

We could always have various contests, threads and ideas about the logo, color choices, forum skins etc.

I love this. If we do a re-design, it should be a community-wide re-design that everybody can contribute, take part in, and vote on.

I would hate to lose my many many entries, but I'm not against a complete overhaul of the journal system. Backing up the old journals wouldn't be too hard but having them stored on the server somewhere would be ideal.

How far behind are we on VB? What exactly has changed since our last update?

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by LeHah

Does the journal system support a back-up function? Certain blogging systems like Livejournal have things that allow desktop saving.

Yes. At the bottom of the screen there's a BACKUP tab that lets you backup in XML, CSV, and TXT. Not ideal IMO but it's something!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?