Since the forum is dead and no one really cares anymore, i was thinking nour was thinking that maybe we should just spam stupid fun spam topics as much as we want, it's not like we're doing anything else with the forum so i made a poll because i liked the idea of a stupid topic about stupid topics and nour wouldn't do it
no we don't we're still trying to only make topics that are actual things that might be actually worth talking about like video game and anime stuff, even though most of these topics rarely get any attention. Other than that is just the occasional intro/return/leaving/birthday topics.
i want to fuck around in the forum, make it filled with any stupid thing we want
and the point of this topic is mainly to get al to tell us to go spam ;D
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:29 am
Alibaba wrote:
Since the forum is dead and no one really cares anymore, i was thinking nour was thinking that maybe we should just spam stupid fun spam topics as much as we want, it's not like we're doing anything else with the forum so i made a poll because i liked the idea of a stupid topic about stupid topics and nour wouldn't do it
this is all nour's fault
Vote yes for spam or no for no spam i guess
No. If this stuff continues with other topics, eventually someone will have to tidy the sections up, and that someone will probably be me, so no.
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Tue Jul 21, 2015 7:52 am
we're okay with you not tidying anything up, i don't want us to fix the forum i just want to take full advantage of its current state and shitpost i mean the whole point is that since no one cares about it we should go all out, you actually trying to take care of it is exactly the opposite of what i want
"Keep it contained" means "Keep it within one topic" Any extra spam will be deleted by the time I have boarded the ship, whenever I do. There may or may not be consequences at the time depending on my mood, which will depend on the amount of work I will have to do.
Sorry but i don't think i can agree to just 1 topic, and i don't see why i should, i don't see what your problem even is, everyone wants this and no one is asking anything from you. It's an attempt to get this place moving that might actually work out at least for a while, if you're going to put it down i want a better reason than you don't really like it or that you don't want to do the work that I'm literally telling you not to do.
And no offense but i don't really see why we should pander to your opinion when you're barely even active as a member, you only got active recently and you're just going inactive again, i'd rather go with what the members who actually bother coming here want.
Which i should add aren't that many because nothing's going around here, it's not like we can actually start other things around here anymore you know that whatever actual event or similar thing we try will just die as soon as it starts, it's not like the staff is actually here or seriously trying anymore either not that we really want them to, but this is one of the few things that we can actually do and enjoy as we are right now, and i don't know about you but i want to actually enjoy this forum.
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:12 am
My opinion, that is a weird dislike against excessive spam, also happens to be a forum rule not just for this forum but most forums/internet entities in existence (including 4chan! yeah, they actually have rules in what you can post, just like anyone!), but hey, let's try and defend it.
"Everyone wants this" is an overstatement to say the least. To begin with, "everyone" in this case seems to refer to people who would open and post in a topic called "Stupid topic", which is a biased sample, and even then, the only clue we have for their support (other than the fact 2 people posted, which is ambiguous in nature anyways) is a poll without a real word in its question, or a question for that matter. In fact, if I was going to be pedantic about it, I could state the 2 people who did post, actually expressed disagreement in their posts (danna saying "no", leokane calling the idea "stupid"), but hey, that's ambiguous too tbh. I should point out, that a literal "everyone but Al-Bhed" is also untrue because I know I can find at least one more active member who disagrees, which is a large sample considering our active member base. But hey, not the issue here either. The thing is, that the support for this issue I'd gauge less as endorsement and more as "eh? meh, sure, whatever", which in 2 days to a week will be "what? that was a thing? what are you talking about?".
Let's get some things out of the way here. No one is stopping anyone from posting with reason. And we are not talking about a serious reason, the top topic I see in recent topics right now for example is "What game are you playing right now?" which is not a serious reason, but is far above the minimum requirements of an acceptable reason nontheless. At the same time, no one is stopping anyone from contacting the staff, asking them for permission about posting games. In fact, unless I changed something and forgot about it, nour as well is responsible for posting games, so just getting permission from nour is enough (nour, it can't get easier than that, nour has to find it agreeable), and there all I ask is that nour is reasonable and we don't get filled with zero thought pointless posting games filling up the recent topics section.
And even then, one "Stupid topic" is allowed. Yet another pointless posting game every now and then is allowed as well. What is not allowed is multiples of them at the same time.
As for the reasons you may not continuously post new topics without reason (can't believe I am doing this btw):
1) You have no reason to and it serves no purpose. If you have nothing to say in one topic, no issue to bring up, then that is not going to change no matter how many topics you separate it into. All it does is continuously eliminate all discussion or cohesion that somehow managed to be created in that wasteland of thought, which is counterproductive. I actually can't see why you want to do that (since it works against making active topics) other than getting more slightly brighter letters in the recent topics widget, which is meaningless and does not represent activity.
2) Spam does not generate actual activity in the forum, it's fake and saturates really fast, as it is wasted effort that one does only because they are not supposed to be doing it, which stops mattering once they actually do it, and then it becomes just effort for nothing.
3) Whenever someone actually has a topic to discuss, an issue to bring up or puts in effort to create and post something, it has to be buried underneath the meaningless, pointless spam and become invisible. Some examples from recent topics: FGN topics, banlist, emote commisions.
4) It makes moderating incrementally difficult. It makes sections a lot harder to navigate and search, while making actual moderating of posts harder by splitting ambiguous topics.
What I am asking is A) If you want a topic like this, keep it in one topic. It is better both for the forum and for whatever this topic is for. 1-2 post topics dying continuously instead doesn't really mean anything. B) Other than that, when you post, put in some effort or thought, don't just make a "BLAH!" topic and call it a day.
As for why my opinion is to be "pandered to" Because when no real discussion is being made, no real points brought up and no opinions are being heard, someone's opinion has to go through for a direction to be followed. No it's not a dictatorship, yes it is up for discussion, but a discussion isn't held between a person expressing their opinion and the ambient mood that may be able to be felt. If I have heard no other real opinion, my opinion will pass because someone's opinion has to pass. Also, there is some bias towards my opinion, because if someone else does something thoughtlessly and then I am the one who has to clean up after them, that's me being screwed over, so at least mom wants to ask that the kids don't put their shoes on the kitchen table because they feel more comfortable. At least ask before that.
Also, yeah, I haven't been posting before these days, I was writing my tests and then I took one week to unwind from 5 weeks of testing, but I just want to point out that even then, even during test period or that one week, even though I was not posting, I was still dropping by wda to make sure everything is ok.
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Wed Jul 22, 2015 9:35 am
We have rules against spam because we wanted to protect actual proper discussions and topics from it, i say we don't really have them anymore.
And i'll point to danna and leo who actually went straight for this thing and had some fun with it, and nour was just oddly afraid and trying to be responsible as a mod because you're against it. I'm sure you can find someone within the large pool of members who agrees with you, but large pool of "active" members? You've been here lately you know there are barely any, and a good chunk of them don't even open the forum at all. We only have 10 people who've been online in the last 24 hours, and we only got that much because 3 people who usually don't come online happened to be on at some point today, not that it lasted that long. And sure i know the ones who are taking part in this aren't that excited or care that much about it, and i doubt it'll last too long, i even mentioned that in my last post. but some "eh sure" is the best we got in this forum for a while, and i'm going to do what i can until they finally get bored.
And when i say i want stupid topics i don't exclusively mean posting games even if i want like maybe 3 of those at a time..? something like that. What i also want is actually things that can keep some kind of thing going, topics that take off from whatever actually started them and derail into whatever the people in it feel like talking about even if it goes away from the original point of the topic, and you can't really force and decide on a 1 derailing topic. I mean you mentioned "what games are you playing?" as something with a little reason, sure it's nice and simple, but the topic as it is won't end up going anywhere if everyone just mentions what they're playing and moves on, heck what's the point of having the topic even if it's just that? what would keep it going is when 2 people decide to start discussing one of the games and going into whatever they happen to go in to until they get bored and then someone else mentions another game and another derail goes on and so on. That's what i want to start here, i want us to go into these half-baked enjoyable discussions about things freely with some topics just as a starting point along with some pure spam ones like positng games just to keep the enthusiasm going even when the momentary discussions die.
I don't just want to spam topics, i want topics that i'd enjoy half-assed posting in over and over. Sure it'll be "fake" activity, nothing will be actually going on, not much new is happening, just a small thing to keep us slightly entertained. and of course people will get bored of it, they only jumped on it today because it's something new and anything new is at least something around here, we even get suddenly active when cbox suddenly goes away or comes back just because "something happened" even though we get bored of it pretty soon after, but even then at least it's something, let it last while it can and die and that'll be that.
And really, don't try to make an excuse for the "Actual worthwhile topics", there really aren't any. Leo's FGNs very rarely catch any kind of small interest most of us are clearly not bothering to even go through them. the banlist was only actually posted because danna was desperately trying to get something going, and of course it didn't work. the chat emote topic might actually work if you get someone properly work on making the emotes, but it's still very reliant on the person incharge and it only actually got attention yesterday because of this stupid topic and saying in the chat that we should just post on the forum, i doubt nour would've bothered with it if we weren't suddenly posting to get something going in here. the members right now are barely interested in anything big or worthwhile and all attempts at those kind of topics are just failing, i don't see why i should care about topics that are barely actually getting any kind of posts.
And for the moderating i'm really asking for no real moderation, maybe only if it's something glaring and necessary and if it gets to that point i don't really think it'll be hard for you or nour to find the problem.
Also as a last note i wasn't trying to say you were doing bad as an admin, but as a member you haven't been adding much, i don't blame you for it you're busy it makes sense but it's just that if you're not going to be around often the things that we do shouldn't affect you too much and we shouldn't care if it's not to your liking as a member.
My points might be very few, messy and simple and i kind of ended up just repeating them but still whatever you say or do i'm not going to completely back off on this.
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:22 am
I understand your concerns about the problems for the forum (while feeling we've had this discussion before), but that's not a solution and has no logical reason to function as one. It is more like a wish: It would be nice if by throwing out random topics one of them stuck, is the gist of it, and you should know from regular people interactions that it's more likely than not to fail. It's trying to trigger a random event continuously, and using the assumption that the event will be triggered as an argument. And even if it does happen once, that one time doesn't do much and it becomes less likely to happen again because it falls under the spam lifespan that I explained.
We don't have to be filled with proper topics for them to be buried, in fact it can be worse when we are not because the spam to not-spam ratio increases. The problem is, the moment someone actually tries to do something meaningful in the forum, the moment someone tries to contribute, that becomes meaningless because there is a bunch of counter-productive spam, which works against managing to create activity since it discourages people from supporting that and creating that. I know it's not much, but if a solution exists it would come from a meaningful route such as this, so what this boils down to is: "We have a problem, we don't have solutions, so as a solution let's do something that is unlikely to help and discourages solutions".
I still haven't really seen that support for the motion. Yeah, people spammed in spam topics. This forum could be the most active thing on the internet, and you can bet people would spam in spam topics. As for nour, you said she would support you if she didn't not-support you. Sorry, but I can't read anyone's mind on this. If I am going to take anyone's opinions, it is going to have to be actually stated.
Finding the problem in few places is easy, finding the problem when it is in several different places is harder for obvious reasons. It wasn't clear in the previous post I guess so I'll explain it. It means that the mod needs awareness of all active topics, which means the mod will actually have to check several different spam topics which is a complete chore, even if it was ok to do this why would anyone have to follow the trail of shitposting? And no, we cannot sense when something is wrong, we have to actually check, it takes one bad topic/post and it can be anywhere. 'Ok' when there is meaning, but 'not ok' when it happens meaninglessly with topics that are more likely to generate such posts. Not to mention I can already see something that can derail easily. "Give the above user a fetish", I have to check that thing because I can very easily see it breaking forum rules very soon, and I have no real motivation to check a topic named "Give the above user a fetish".
I've seen the excuse "because we don't have activity" a few times, and I think that's where I will start drawing the line, because it usually becomes I did X unrelated thing -> because we don't have activity From now on I will be very wary of the phrase coming up, I need proper justification of how it helps, and if questioned it needs to be somehow shown/proven, because at this point I could say "I'll repost Durzo's sex diaries over from TWA to WDA" -> "Because we don't have activity" I could somehow wiggle it in forum rules, but it would still be both meaningless and distasteful. I just can't see it as the blanket excuse anymore, 'throw something at the wall and see if it sticks' doesn't cut it.
Yes, I would very much appreciate constructive ideas on improving forum activity. Please put in some effort, please put in some thought, please use some logic and give me something I can use, something justifiable, tangible and reasonable. Spam is not one of those things, it doesn't improve anything, it just fizzles, with a random drop chance of something happening at a cost.
Even if you don't back off from it, if forum rules are being broken with vague justification and no real support, I will be forced to do my job and moderate this forum. At some time tomorrow, I will be basketing all topics deemed to be posting games that did not receive permission. You have to ask for those, so just ask. If there are at that time active topics that can be joined together, that will be done as well. Gif topic will be considered, it starts with a girl dry humping another girl, not sure how to feel about that, some stuff feel like they belong in "cute girls thread" too.
As a reminder, I would like to add, for personal silly stuff, every user has a "room" topic they can use, which happens to be immune to necroposting and has no topical spam rules, only basic ones (minimum word limit, double posting, etc.).
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:14 am
I'm not concerned about the forum itself, i just want to try and entertain the members. As much as you want actual genuine constructive ideas right now we cannot go for that it will not work unless we do something big and none of us are showing even a hint of bothering to try and build towards that thing even if it sounds nice as an idea, even you don't want to actually put the effort into some big constructive "fix" for this forum. I don't want to help the forum improve i don't care about it or any of your concepts of what a forum should be filled with or what the members should be doing. We were a normal and healthy forum and we got sick of it and people stopped wanting to be a part of it and you say that's still what we should try and go back to. How can we even go back to it? Some kind of big overhaul that would take a miracle to actually get going? Do you personally even want something like that? Think about the kind of process it would take and the results that is honestly not worth it. We'd have to actually find some kind of focus to get real things going and get actual members joining but no one seems to want any kind of real focus. Do you even remember how we started becoming this way? The majority of active members got sick of ygo and the staff kept dragging it on and on long after it was clear that it's just not worth it until we complained enough for you all to finally give up. At the time we were more, we just split people to each go into their different thing and it worked for a while, but as we are now we just can't do that. As much as you try, not many people want to talk 1 specific subject, whatever thing you single out to get that group into will just die because the group will always be too small. And you should know that no one is really coming here for a real forum experience, we're only coming back to enjoy whatever we can out of the chat, which does not have anything serious or constructive about it, it's just half-assed small entertainment that manages enough with enough familiar faces to get at least some people still coming back. But now even the chat has become just a tad too unspecific and it needs people to actually be around at the same time which is actually happening less often. So what i want from this stupid already long past its prime dead horse of a forum is to actually be used for the same kind of half-assed entertainment at the very least. I'll start actually listening to your rambling about magical long term constructive fixes when you start actually trying, and if you don't have time to, don't have a good way to do it or just don't really want to put in the effort then shut up about it and let me have this at least somewhat tangible thing rather than your ideal that'll have the forum probably die for good rather than actually even coming close to fruition.
Subject: Re: Stupid Topic Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:53 am
I am not talking about a vague notion of a proper forum, and healthy activity is not something I am referring to for the sake of it. Sustained activity means people habitually using the forum while getting something out of it, like the entertainment you mention. Forum being alive means people coming together here, that's what I mean. I've never asked for activity for the sake of it, I've never had properness for the sake of it, I've gone for the opposite, multiple times, with what helps members the best as a goal, please don't try to make me out as the exact opposite all of a sudden.
If I am reading correctly (sorry, it's kinda hard to get the point), are you saying, forum is dead, won't go alive, so let's go wild, have fun with it and finish it off? And that I am supposed to consent to that for some reason? I won't go much deeper into this until I figure the overarching goal here.
Btw, I have actually tried many things to revitalize the forum ever since ygo interest died down, put in a lot of effort, more than I should have actually, multiple times, so thanks, I guess.
I'm trying to say that i don't think we can truly revitalize the forum, so i just want small stupid topics that i can enjoy. I don't think there is anything we'll really end up hurting with this, though not much to really gain from it besides that it's better than the nothing that we have without them.
It's not any kind of real solution and i'm not really claiming that it is, it's just that at this point i find nothing from the other kind of topics to be worth not doing this just so we don't hurt them.
And even if you think there are good ways to revitalize this forum then honestly we can just stop this kind of this thing when we actually start going that route.
Is it imperative that the topics are meaningless? Are you sure it cannot be achieved with a direction? There was that one time I was rambling about kirito doing something stupid, which is not really big news, that was a legal topic. Are, at least coherent, ramblings out of the question in this strategy?
The topics don't have to meaningless, just that they don't have to have a meaning either.
And i won't say I'm 100% sure it's impossible to achieve it with a clear direction but i sure don't think it will happen, we lack motivation and a clear focus and probably other things.
I'm not trying to eliminate any kind of topic, I'm trying to add more of certain kinds of topics.
I think the problem is spam topics will overwhelm other kinds because they're easy and effortless for the most part, but i don't think there's much left to overwhelm. And There's not that many of us posting on the forum, it won't even get to that point.
And it's not like I'm planning to throw out a ton of topics each day, it's more like what we did today, some posting game, some random topic, some half-discussion derail in a topic. I just want you to let me post what i want when i do post these topics.
While I disagree with their use and effect as described, there is something we can test by taking advantage of their short life spans.
The Toilet section. There can be five topics at most in it. No more. Every week (not exact, with conditions) the section is flushed and all its topics move into the basket. Topics in the Toilet section are immune to the spam rules discussed here, with the exception of the basic ones (double posting, minimum word limit, etc.)
By testing this section we can gauge the reaction of the members to it and the effects on the forum. If it works out and we keep it I'll ask for a tagging system to be implemented on the topic titles, but for now I just want them to start with the letter 'T'.
