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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by sprouticus

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.

VGMdb has its own forums, though, where discussing the shit on VGMdb is basically all they do.

We have to remember in making our suggestions that Gamingforce survives on VGMdb's server out of a sense of nagging obligation. I don't think they'd spit on us if we were on fire.

And yeah, just doubling up on Krel's suggestion that people need to just chill the fuck out. WE HAVE ALWAYS HARASSED PEOPLE FOR X isn't an excuse, it's a confession.

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

I do feel like there should be a friendlier attitude regarding topics of conversation around here.

I mean, yea, some shitty member comes in and posts about how girls hate him and how can he improve and then immediately gets told that he's a prat, to shut up and stop posting.

Sure, he's a fucking idiot. But let him post. He can be entertainment if anything. The instant you get hostile with a member, it sends a message. Most people won't stick around after getting a light thrashing.

Sometimes, the way some people get treated on here really discourages others from posting. I know I've avoided certain topics or replying in certain threads just because I don't want to get trolled, yelled at, ridiculed, ee tee see.

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just suggesting maybe a different approach to what some people perceive as stupidity could both provide more entertaining posts and encourage more open posting among people who may feel threatened or whateverthefuck

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

Another thing: We seem to have a SA style approach to threads, that of focusing on megathreads just to avoid clutter. The problem is, we don't have nearly the activity level to justify that. Why can't threads get created about smaller topics? They may get a few posts each, but that still looks better than having 3 months' worth of threads visible on the first page of a forum.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

This might not be a popular idea, but we seem to have a lot of sub-forums that just don't see much action. Combine that with the fact that we have a large selection of subforums and new people might be overwhelmed. (I know the counter-argument to this already, but we're not Something Awful. We're not NeoGAF either. We simply don't have that many people running around here at all hours.) We have thread prefixes and people use them, so there's really no reason why we couldn't merge more of the subforums together. Creator's Cafe and I make a bitch sandwich could be merged into a umbrella creativity subforum and, even more outrageously, maybe even merge Media Center and Video Gaming.

I'm just waiting 'til the Political Palace and the Quiet Place get merged. Now THAT would make for interesting discussions.

On topic now, I tend to disagree with welcoming just anyone with open arms to the forums and letting threads be created that aren't at least somewhat thought out and different form the last 20 threads that were created. I'm not much the socializing type whether in real life or online, and this is about the only place I've ever come to consistently for that precise purpose for as long as I have. It is as far as online places go anyway. A big part of the reason this is has to do with the fact that I know if I come here and read a thread, I'm almost guaranteed to find some food for thought on the subject of the thread. This is a rarity as far as I've seen on internet forums, and throwing that away simply for the sake of having more movement seems like a shame to me. I'm sure many forums have interesting threads buried beneath the thousands of shitty ones about X video game character is hotter than Y, and post your 100 best video games of all times, and so on. I keep coming back here on a regular basis because I know that if I have to sift through shit to find something worth reading I won't spend an hour looking.

I do agree however that a bit more activity would be welcome, and the only way I see that it would be possible to do that without sacrificing the things that make this place great would be to find a way to get more visibility. Be it through advertising of some big event that we would organize on the boards or simply through everyone doing their part in coaxing friends to join for a given aspect of the site, there would be ways to attract new people without having to lower the level of discussion to the lowest common denominator of the internets.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

Sometimes, the way some people get treated on here really discourages others from posting. I know I've avoided certain topics or replying in certain threads just because I don't want to get trolled, yelled at, ridiculed, ee tee see.

Yeah... I don't think I made a Welcome, Welcome post for myself back when I first joined in 2003, but I'm amazed I didn't get trolled/flamed for the username I had then. People were quite civil. (I think I may have gotten the occasional Yamanamana annoyance in some thread somewhere along the lines, but nothing compared to the hostility we show to every new blood that seems to show up nowadays.)

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You lot saying that people being mean to newbies is why the place is quiet is laughable bullshit. We don't get any newbies and as Deni pointed out, all the Welcome threads from the last six months or so have been entirely civil and friendly. We're not overly hostile, there's not enough activity for it. I don't know how some of you kids have got so butthurt about trolling and being the victim of random chat jokes because frankly, without that there'd basically be nothing here. I agree that certain people have been far too infraction-happy with what new members we have had and I discussed it at length in the Hut but to be fair, what newbs have been run off by it were basically exceptionally fucking boring idiots and we're better off with no posts than their posts.

Pang is entirely correct. There's a fuckton of cool stuff here but it's incredibly well hidden. We have all those stream things Acer does, we have the radio thing, we have chat and the drink-ons, we have an active community of Xbox Live players that actually attracts new members (Shake posts in the Halo thread, that counts), we have a bunch of incredibly eloquent and creative people who are all more than capable of making awesome posts (Just look at Daravon's Halo thread OP or all the Gamers Month posts) and we have a burgeoning DnD community which results in threads as funny as anything posted on sites like Darths & Droids which has millions of visitors.

The problem is simply one of apathy. Nobody does anything and when someone has a good idea, they rarely act on it and even more rarely get any support. It's all well and good bleating about how mean everyone is here but if everyone else actually posted stuff then very quickly what little actual trolling foes on here would quickly be buried. Back when I joined this place was way more hostile than it is now and yet we attracted hundreds of active members.

We need to capitalise on our strengths. A proper front page would be a good start and I'm surprised that the idea of member reviews didn't kick off better since most reviews here are way better than any crap from Gamestop. An events calendar is a top idea too, especially with big flashing announcements. I also think people should just go ahead an act on any ideas they have. Let's be honest, although instances of mods fucking about (Primarily out of boredom rather than maliciousness) are up, instances of mods actually moderating threads are pretty fucking slim lately. I'm up for ditching the thread necromancy rule but that only comes up once in a blue moon anyway.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

A front page for a small-ish forum is a bad idea. Conversion rate for registration is far higher when people land directly on the forum index. Most won't even realise this place has a message board if they don't see one immediately upon arrival.

I'd wager most of the incoming traffic here is driven by people finding individual threads through google. Incite people to join and they'll do so.

How ya doing, buddy?

Most of our members are somehow related to Gamingforce Audio.

We've had tons of factions split off from us that were originally part of that user base.

I mean, I'm just saying, VGM was (is?????) pretty kool.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, let's review some rules/guidelines, shall we?
Spoilers have been used to cut out rule-details to make this post simple and to the point.

Originally Posted by taken from Political Palace

1. Use the Search Feature:

At the top of the page, you will see a number of things to click on. One of them is the Search feature. When you want to make a new thread, please use it first. If there is already a thread about the topic you want to make, don't. This is to cut down on the number of duplicate threads, which will be closed.

New threads about a subject can be created if the thread's last reply is three months old or more.

2. Don't bump old threads:

Since you have been given clearence to make new threads on a subject if the thread discussing it has been dead for three months, don't revive threads that old or older. There is some leeway in this, especially concerning post quality. There's nothing quite like, and nothing aggrivating in quite the same way, seeing a thread from over a year ago being brought back to life with a one-word post.

3. Stay reasonably on topic:

This forum is about debate, and over the course of a debate the topic can drift; that's to be expected. However, there are limits. If a thread is discussing Wal-Mart, for instance, we do not want you to enlighten us about what a horrible person George W. Bush is, complete with a list of the 42 men to hold the office of President of the United States ranked from best to worst.

4. Don't troll, flame or spam:

Basic forum rules there, but worth mentioning anyway. Just as topics can drift, tempers can also flare. However, don't come in here and start flaming without provocation.

Similarly, make any posts you make contribute something to the debate at hand; that's a big part of what spam is or not. If you can make a relevant point with only one sentence, then by all means, post that one sentence and don't worry about dressing it up with lots of extra words. If you need those extra words, don't just post one sentence.

4a. When making a thread, make a worthwhile opening post.:

This goes along with the don't spam criterion. When you make a thread, make sure your opening post is well-written and clear. Including a news article or something similar is good, but not required. If you don't, be sure to fully and explain your position and what you want to discuss in the thread. Something like this is not what we're looking for.

5. Don't rant:

If you want to make a thread about how something sucks and expound on that point, a simple guideline: don't. It is for things like that that you have a Chocojournal, and can use it to express your feelings about the current situation without cluttering up the forum page with it.

6. Don't member moderate:

We have moderators. It's their job to tell troublemakers to knock it off, not yours.

7. No homosexual marriage threads. Ever.:

Pretty self-explanatory. We've had plenty of gay marriage threads in past board iterations, and they've all ended badly. We'd like to avoid things like this in the future.

8. Use common sense:

If you know you shouldn't do something, then don't do it.

Follow these rules and we'll get along just fine.

Reviewing the current state of GFF where the next thread down from the top most hasn't been updated in like 2 months, Number 1 and 2 seem to conflict (not just in Political Palace but overall across the board). It's true the same exact conversation topics shouldn't be made into new threads, but at the current activity rate, it almost makes sense to start over again. The general rule-of-thumb about old threads when this place was getting multiple threads in sub-forums on a daily basis was that 3 months since the last post or couple pages within the sub-forum view. Since new threads are sparse and we're looking at an activity level equivalent to seismic activity/Earthquakes in North Dakota, we may want to review it and see if there's a reasonable compromise.
Number 7 seems like it's a blatant NO on political discussion on the topic, which in the year 2010, seems like it's doing the community no good to keep around this rule. There's been plenty of good, healthy, sane and civil conversations regarding the topic so I don't see why prohibiting people from talking about it openly can lead to something harmful to the community in general. (My two cents, nothing against Styphon or the decision made by admins/mods at the time of inauguration of said rules.)

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

Let's see if I can categorize the responses/suggestions so far, and I'll try to keep it updated in the first post:

Quote:

Problems
-Hazing of new members
-Apathy of current membership
-Not enough visibility of current community events
-Lack of Ace Combat Era
-Outdated forum design
-Forum is "cliquey"
-Outdated rules

Suggested Improvements
-Redesign the front page or forum header to better advertise events/things new folks might be interested in
-More theme weeks
-Somehow move activity from journals back to the forums
-Merge more subforums together
-Find a niche for GFF and capitalize on it
-Legalize thread necromancy
-Loosen the rules in general
-Less megathreads, more smaller, focused threads
-Site redesign

Focusing on the improvements, I strongly support a redesign of at least the initial layout of the front page of the forums (not the "front page", but the page most of us see when we log in). The "5 Recent Posts" encourages apathy, and we'd be much better served with some promotion of events. I'm sure Acer could somehow advertise his nightly streams, and BlogTalkRadio has a plugin that could stream GFF Radio right on the front page. The last Drink-on didn't get nearly the promotion it should have.

I'm really surprised thread necromancy is still enforced. When you have one active thread in each forum, why not allow a little necromancy?

The big question is, what could we do to modernize ourselves? What's popular these days, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Sure, groan all you want, but they're successful, and many of us use them. Is there some lesson that can be learned and incorporated here? Is there some way to update our antiquated arcade to encourage more user interaction (i.e., something cooperative)?

Is there someway to integrate journals with forums? I think Aussie-Nintendo's forums are kind of neat, in that any time an article is posted, it gets added as a forum thread. What if we had journals work more like forum posts? A user makes a journal, it gets added to the "Journals" subforum. If a mod decides it's worth discussing, it can be moved to a more appropriate subforum. A user could still close their own journal threads, since they're the creator. Sure, they couldn't delete them (maybe that permission could somehow be granted in that subforum?), but it's more fun if you can't delete your drunken journal entry the next morning.

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

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I am decidedly not okay with the facebook-ing, or gameFAQsing, or MySpaceing of GFF.

The solution to a problem is not to become just as bad as other shitty media. We've never wanted to be a major center of activity because of the sheer amount of idiocy that requires. We've always stood away from that, and this is no way to make it better.

Sprout, the way to fix a cliquey site is not to start tagging individual members to entries or posts.

The LAST thing this place needs is to start modeling itself on the idiocy that is facebook or twitter. Short messages, devoid of any sort of context and just nothing but superficial garbage. I will take a smaller membership any day of the week (yes, I know, we need more people than we have now) to avoid that sort of forum culture. We've always been above that, and it is probably one of the things we can be really proud about on this board. We don't need more furby to make this place better. Facebook and twitter appeal to people who want their world wrapped up in under a paragraph. Preferably under three sentences. I'd like to think most of the people here are better than that.

So yes, we have to make changes, but I will firmly oppose changes that dumb down our presentation to the point where we might as well be GameFAQs or a Twitter feed.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm not saying we need to stoop to the posting quality of Facebook or Twitter, but we have to evolve or die. If you're content to let GFF fade away as a horse and buggy while everyone else on the internet is driving a fancy car, so be it, but if we can modernize things a bit, maybe we attract some new blood.

Or we can just go back to 1995 and make the site run in frames. Rename ourselves Framingforce Interactive Frames.

FELIPE NO

God, am I going to agree with Deni. It hurtssss usssss

You don't want to send traffic away to Tweeterspaceface. I wouldn't try to use it. I would try to improve connections here and now, not using outside communications. We need to work here, not there.

I mean, I know that sometimes, I will communicate with people on FB over GFF. Sooo I'm guilty. And I will try to correct this.

Didn't we have some kind of "instant messaging" capabilities on here for a whole what, 2 hours once when Bobo was around?

And honestly? I would rather keep my FBing, blogging, whatever SEGREGATED from here. There are just some things I'd rather you people not use against me.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

There are ways to modernize without dumbing down, RadioMan.

It's not a matter of let us be a buggy while people drive sports cars. It is a matter of if we're going to modernize, let's make sure we modernize in a way that isn't fucking ridiculous. Because that sports car you mention looks a hell of a lot like a Honda Element, and anyone with half a brain is laughing at the poor sap driving it. Even if he is worth a couple million.

I like Pang's thoughts of instead of completely overhauling everything good we have into something terrible, just for the sake of being trendy, we find a way to accentuate the amazing things we do have.

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.

We aren't short on kick ass things, we're just doing a really good job of making sure as few people as possible participate in them. The LAST thing we need to do is make the place MORE glossy and try and make content even more trunctated. Facebook and Twitter have shitty discussions because they're designed to make erudite, intelligent conversation impossible. We should not, and can not, go that route. Spruce the place up, make the kick ass things we do more obvious, do more kick ass things. Do not make it shitty just to make it popular.

The concept is ridiculous.

P.S.

Sprout. The thumbs up and down thing is there purely to avoid short "your idea is stupid/good" messages. They exist to avoid twitter idiocy, not to encourage it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

It'd be neat to do something along the lines of Prime Gamer except not restricted to game reviews. Just let people post stuff that goes on a WordPress blog. It's not something we'd ever advertise the hell out of, but it's a better and more modern frontpage than what we have now.

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?

If there is a serious consideration to replace the top 5 posts with an events feed instead, I'd also like to suggest a small forum highlight ticker as well. It could be randomly generated to suggest somebody read a currently active thread, a post that received a certain amount of props, a new thread/release in the VGM section. It's open to creativity.


And along the lines of needing advertisement, what the fuck are we going to advertise on? Half of the VGM community has left us high and dry, there's not a major non-forum community anymore. The site that bobo made back in the day for people to host their own pages for art and music was kinda kool, but that's gone.
Basically everything about this fucking place is word of mouth.

I propose Bring Your Kids to Gamingforce day!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Who said anything about advertising?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Quote:

One idea I kind of thought about, but I'm kind of reluctant to do it. I was thinking as I eventually get more videos on my youtube channel. My number of subscribers could increase, I was thinking of giving this website a shout-out but it could bring a lot of idiots here in the process.

Quote:

A huge part of it is just drawing people here in general

Quote:

Link the forums to VGMdb visitors.

Via multiple mouths, including yours.

FELIPE NO

Except VGMdb is part of this site, and I meant by pushing what we do on GFF proper.

So the only mention of advertising as you mean it was on Angel's youtube channel.

So, no. Not really what you said at all. Just people talking about how we present things we already have.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'd be all for a quick, obvious link to get into #gfchat somewhere at the top of the page.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, there is a link to Gamingforce on VGMdb on this page.

And while I hadn't looked at VGMdb's forums until just now, all of the subforums are related to music discussion. There is no section for "General Discussion", "Off Topic", nothing.

So I'm a bit tepid to the idea that bringing GFF to their attention in a more pronounced way (or, more severely, merging the two forums, if that ever came up) will have much impact on Gamingforce, aside from that in the Concert Hall, the regulars of which don't spend much time, if any, in the "Gamingforce" sections of the forums or in the journals.

Nevertheless, if the idea is to seek an immediate influx of members, VGMdb is the likeliest well to tap.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I'd be all for a quick, obvious link to get into #gfchat somewhere at the top of the page.

What, you want something more direct than Quick Links > ChocoChat? You lazy bastard.

How ya doing, buddy?