Teemu Ruskeepää
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
- Messages
- 50
I want to discuss my idea to improve all discussion forums online. All forums everywhere are the same as civfanatics. They are based on the "vbulletin" forum. It is a shame how everybody accept its problems as "normal internet". My idea is a new kind of forum that offers good conversation and better outcome.
What is wrong? This will definitely be hard for you to accept, it usually is. The norm in the internet is to have fun and to say things you like. That's great, except that we can say what we feel and disappear before others talk back. Norms are obvious everyday beliefs, that are not usually thought about. In this case, I talk about them, because the internet forums don't allow good conversation. Why would we need good conversation when it is fun to play? I say nothing is ever solved online, were it about Civ or anything else. Internet forums have a system that won't allow good conversation. It only allows fun and playing, unless the topic is about one certain thing that everybody work for, Civ modding. All this means that you can never get to know others or agree with them. You can't talk about anything important because the internet treats you not seriously. There is nothing but games everywhere, even the official forums.
Civ forum have 3 levels of categories, first is the front page categories and sub-categories, second is the list of threads and the third is the thread. The first is created by the hosts and is always illogical, overlapping, too long as a list and repetitive. The second has many pages of uncategorized various topics. The third has many pages of discussion history by many users and about many topics. The result of the 3 levels is a forum where the subject of conversation is unorganized, lost in mass of random subjects and makes it impossible to follow one subject. That's why we can't talk about anything.
My forum creates a logical tree of infinite levels. It starts from a few big ones that mean the ways of talking about things, like "to have fun", "to discuss", "to report" and ends at small ones like "to have fun-about playing Civ-with a joystick-while having a weekend". I'm just improvising, but that's the idea. All topics have a unique place so that everybody talks about the same thing from the same POV. This is idealist, but even if it was just for helping the number of messages in the same place, a constant headache for Civfanatics hosts, you can help it by creating more levels of categories. All this is the first rule. The second rule is scrapping anonymity and appearing online so that others can identify you and contact you. In my forum, you should show a passport like facial photograph, you full name, occupation, location and age. Phone number and address is not necessary. I think that the risk of becoming attacked doesn't change at all. Your identity is known already by many people that you don't know. But it would stop you from using all forums for hit-and-run games.
My forum has more. After the tree of categories, there is a normal list of threads, but under each thread there is a different tree, which shows the history in a visible tree, placing each answer in a tab from the previous message. The comments themselves are also new. Each member has only one comment per thread, which s/he edits to respond to other people. After that it automatically jumps to the top of the list of comments, appears in the tab tree and shows a mention about your new edit in the former list of threads, and lifts that thread also to the top of the thread list. In the thread list, you can see a short start of the new text that you edited into your comment. My forum also has history page, in which you can see all previous versions of your comments. The comments could also be in video format and there would be a real-time video chat room for all categories. This forum structure makes forum policing unnecessary, since people have to answer to the official law about their comments.
Not to mention all official forums, which have been limited, technically behind vbulletin or other published forums. A general point about all internet forums is that they connect only a small number of people and only for a one cause, or then the forum offers only anonymous fantasy. If this forum standard was adopted by our government as the national internet forum for advertisers, voters, politicians and hobbies, it would vastly surpass all existing media outlets, advertisements and political forums in effectiveness to connect people publicly. Connecting advertisers and consumers wouldn't mean jeopardizing privacy, because of the forum structure.
All this can reduce the number of messages very effectively, make subjects easily located, grants everybody main attention in the forum and the thread with only one post per a thread and it allows a good, clean and effective conversation. It works for fun, games modding, industry, trade, work and politics. My idea is the next evolutionary step in internet social networking that has been lacking since internet was born.
Mr. Teemu Ruskeepää
BA of sociology
University of Lapland
truskeep@ulapland.fi
What is wrong? This will definitely be hard for you to accept, it usually is. The norm in the internet is to have fun and to say things you like. That's great, except that we can say what we feel and disappear before others talk back. Norms are obvious everyday beliefs, that are not usually thought about. In this case, I talk about them, because the internet forums don't allow good conversation. Why would we need good conversation when it is fun to play? I say nothing is ever solved online, were it about Civ or anything else. Internet forums have a system that won't allow good conversation. It only allows fun and playing, unless the topic is about one certain thing that everybody work for, Civ modding. All this means that you can never get to know others or agree with them. You can't talk about anything important because the internet treats you not seriously. There is nothing but games everywhere, even the official forums.
Civ forum have 3 levels of categories, first is the front page categories and sub-categories, second is the list of threads and the third is the thread. The first is created by the hosts and is always illogical, overlapping, too long as a list and repetitive. The second has many pages of uncategorized various topics. The third has many pages of discussion history by many users and about many topics. The result of the 3 levels is a forum where the subject of conversation is unorganized, lost in mass of random subjects and makes it impossible to follow one subject. That's why we can't talk about anything.
My forum creates a logical tree of infinite levels. It starts from a few big ones that mean the ways of talking about things, like "to have fun", "to discuss", "to report" and ends at small ones like "to have fun-about playing Civ-with a joystick-while having a weekend". I'm just improvising, but that's the idea. All topics have a unique place so that everybody talks about the same thing from the same POV. This is idealist, but even if it was just for helping the number of messages in the same place, a constant headache for Civfanatics hosts, you can help it by creating more levels of categories. All this is the first rule. The second rule is scrapping anonymity and appearing online so that others can identify you and contact you. In my forum, you should show a passport like facial photograph, you full name, occupation, location and age. Phone number and address is not necessary. I think that the risk of becoming attacked doesn't change at all. Your identity is known already by many people that you don't know. But it would stop you from using all forums for hit-and-run games.
My forum has more. After the tree of categories, there is a normal list of threads, but under each thread there is a different tree, which shows the history in a visible tree, placing each answer in a tab from the previous message. The comments themselves are also new. Each member has only one comment per thread, which s/he edits to respond to other people. After that it automatically jumps to the top of the list of comments, appears in the tab tree and shows a mention about your new edit in the former list of threads, and lifts that thread also to the top of the thread list. In the thread list, you can see a short start of the new text that you edited into your comment. My forum also has history page, in which you can see all previous versions of your comments. The comments could also be in video format and there would be a real-time video chat room for all categories. This forum structure makes forum policing unnecessary, since people have to answer to the official law about their comments.
Not to mention all official forums, which have been limited, technically behind vbulletin or other published forums. A general point about all internet forums is that they connect only a small number of people and only for a one cause, or then the forum offers only anonymous fantasy. If this forum standard was adopted by our government as the national internet forum for advertisers, voters, politicians and hobbies, it would vastly surpass all existing media outlets, advertisements and political forums in effectiveness to connect people publicly. Connecting advertisers and consumers wouldn't mean jeopardizing privacy, because of the forum structure.
All this can reduce the number of messages very effectively, make subjects easily located, grants everybody main attention in the forum and the thread with only one post per a thread and it allows a good, clean and effective conversation. It works for fun, games modding, industry, trade, work and politics. My idea is the next evolutionary step in internet social networking that has been lacking since internet was born.
Mr. Teemu Ruskeepää
BA of sociology
University of Lapland
truskeep@ulapland.fi
