In which we Discuss the Quality of OT

[Strider]

Are you sure the quality of OT has changed, Strider? 'Cos I went back in the archives (to mid-2002) and found these beauties that wouldn't be out of place today:

The last one's quite appropriate.

Not looking at the contents themselves. I would only judge 6 of those to be fairly useless. The rest sound like badly titled news threads.

 

[Catharsis]

Well, all the signs from Modern CFC OT are there:

# Do you get high?

The 'Oh I'm So Cool, I Use Drugs' thread

# Best eating utensil

The pointless poll thread

# So now what do I do with my life?

The advice thread

# Canada the Police State!

The thread with 'Police State' in the title

# This is the LORDs place

The spam thread

# Communism IV

The communism/capitalism thread

# The Great Tomato Debate

The pointless question thread

# If You Were An Evil Dictator, Would You Be Religious?

The religion thread

# Moon Landing A Hoax?

The conspiracy theory thread

# Why do Americans eat peanut butter?
# Peanut butter is dangerous

...and two threads about peanut butter, for some reason. This just seems like rose-tinted nostalgia - OT threads, at least, don't seem to have changed much. I can't speak for the maturity/civility of the posters 'cause I wasn't here in 2002.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

I'm not very experienced with OT, but I think the thing that is missing more than "maturity" is "civility" Posters have become very rude and base. That, and my lack of debate skills have taught me to keep away except for the occasional happy birthday.

So at least 1 person understands.
_______
Maturity is so incredibly overrated by a LOT of people. I still don't understand why anyone would want to be mature on a forum. Even in real life, too much maturity is bad.
Or maybe i'm like this for being mature way beyond my age when i was a kid and i realised i lost an oportunity.
Anyway, being imature doesn't mean you have to be a ...........g moron or an annoying ****** or a spammer or a lamer (some here are all 4). Are all the people you love in real life mature ?

But i guess, somehow, the forum drew a crowd of the wrong kind of immature people.
Yea - if people were more nice it'd all be better. That's what made me stay in this forum you know ... The niceness of (most of) the people in the Civ3C&C forum. And i use "nice" in the broadest sense of the word.
Obviously, some people (for reasons only known to them) in OT can never be like that.

Moderator Action: Warned! - Inappropriate Language
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[LucyDuke]

Maturity is so incredibly overrated by a LOT of people. I still don't understand why anyone would want to be mature on a forum. Even in real life, too much maturity is bad.
Or maybe i'm like this for being mature way beyond my age when i was a kid and i realised i lost an oportunity.
Anyway, being imature doesn't mean you have to be a ...........g moron or an annoying ****** or a spammer or a lamer (some here are all 4). Are all the people you love in real life mature ?

Maturity is knowing when to be mature.

 

[GenMarshall]

The rudeness and the trolling is more rampid than years ago.

 

[azzaman333]

<snip> but I think the thing that is missing more than "maturity" is "civility" Posters have become very rude and base. <snip>

Agreed, 100%.

 

[carmen510]

Alright, here's a few suggestions:

A. Create a new Politics sub-forum, which would easily siphon out the good threads from most of the bad.
B. Move a lot of the threads to World History.
C. Delete stupid question/flaming/spam/pointless threads.
D. Bring downtown and Gogf back, two of the main sensible voices.
E. Strap all forum members to chairs and lecture them for 20 hours on manners and civility. Failing that, try to PM them in a calm, but firm manner. Failing that, report them.

 

[azzaman333]

Alright, here's a few suggestions:

A. Create a new Politics sub-forum, which would easily siphon out the good threads from most of the bad.

Won't do a thing.

B. Move a lot of the threads to World History.

That helps.... how?

C. Delete stupid question/flaming/spam/pointless threads.

The moderators already do this.

D. Bring downtown and Gogf back, two of the main sensible voices.

Won't change anything.

E. Strap all forum members to chairs and lecture them for 20 hours on manners and civility. Failing that, try to PM them in a calm, but firm manner. Failing that, report them.

While you're at it, teach them how to make jokes even vaguely amusing.

 

[carmen510]

I revise my statement on A, there will still be stupid Political threads, plus, that leaves us with basically a forum of religious and other spam.

B helps, because it helps rejuvinate the forum there, plus, about 1/4 of the behemoth that is politics belongs there as well.

D will help, because they offer a voice of trust and insight, as well as give other members sanity.

E, not sure I can, maybe Fifty or Perfection.

 

[azzaman333]

But no threads in OT belong in World History anyway.

Oh, and Gogf and DT are gone. You'd probably have to pay them to come back.

 

[MarineCorps]

When I posted in OT regularly (2003-2004) the "Who's The Sexiest Dictator?" thread wouldn't have made it 12 hours before being closed. The moderation has gotten less strict over time. I'm not saying that the current moderators have been bad, but the definition of what is considered acceptable has changed over time.

Yes.

As I said on another forum

I got done with OT years ago. When I first came in 2003 the worst that would happen was tempers would flare in a thread. Now spam has increased ten fold which makes it stupid.

OT has declined considerably. It seems more like spam and lack of civility has become the norm. Now people are rude all the time, especially if you have a different opinion then theirs.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

We have had waves of posters leaving before; some of them are the best posters I have ever known...

No biggie. We will always have more posters coming in, which is the main advantage of our publicly available forum.

 

[.Shane.]

OMG PEOPLE ARE LEAVING CFC OT!

Seriously, do you expect people to hang out in the same OT forum their whole lives? I've seen this on other forums, people start to think the forum is more important than the associated game. As the game goes, so goes the forum.

OT is fine. It comes and goes. I do think some of the people who I've posted w/ for a while are not as active, but, so be it. My activity level comes and goes and I'm sure there'll be a day, be it 1 week or 10 years from now when I'll quit posting here altogether.

@Carmen, I appreciate your attempt to come up with ideas to "save" the OT forum, but almost all of those will contribute to it being used less.

@azza, why did DT leave? Just time, interests, or did he get insulted or summat?

Lastly, there are some posters there who are out and out racists/bigots who they continue to let post... but, meh, this forum has a history of being very generous in terms of the breadth of people it allows to post, so, I can't complain too much about that.

 

[azzaman333]

@azza, why did DT leave? Just time, interests, or did he get insulted or summat?

Quoted from the Comings and Goings thread.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have an important announcement.

Effective 1/11/08, I am checking out of here, and plan to pretty much leave OT. There are a few reasons:

1) I have been here a long time...several years. While its cool that I've gotten to know (or at least, as well as one can over the internets) a lot of you guys, a lot of the OT discussion has really become derivative. I know what a lot of you are going to say before you say it. We discuss a lot of the same topics all over again. Why should I read another RELIGION IS IRRATIONAL AND DUMB thread if I've read the same damn thing for 3 years?

2) My motivations for posting have changed a little bit. As a person, I've changed A LOT over these past few years, which is to be expected, seeing as I left high school, and went to college. But after my dad died and mom got sick, and I was bounced to a community college for a year...to be honest, i just lost patience for a lot of the dumb petty crap I used to think was important...or even how I used to think.

The things that have kept me at OT over the last few years were the insights from people who had more life experience than I did...people like Whomp or JH, since being a student, I don't have that many adults to ask questions to anymore. In 2005, I might have been interested in 80% of the open threads...now, its more like 15 for me.

3) I spend a LOT of my time with politics. I'm a political science major, so I'm usually in government classes all day. Then I go to work in my government job. I talk about government stuff with my friends and family. And then i'm here. Now, I'm really passionate about this kind of stuff, and I do have a lot of other interests, but I'm worried I'm getting burned out, which isn't healthy for me intellectually, or professionally.

4) I have over 7,000 posts here. Thats feels like kind of a waste to me. I think I'm going to take all that energy, and try to focus it on more productive endeavors...like writing more (since i don't get to practice that very much at OSU). If I focused the energy it takes for me to post on improving my voice by say, blogging or writing essays, I'll be using that "work downtime" a lot more productively.

Its been fun guys. I like a lot of y'all, and I've learned a lot. I'll still be around fiftychat, and have email...but for now, I think its time for my next adventure

 

[WerBackIII]

OT is fine. It comes and goes. I do think some of the people who I've posted w/ for a while are not as active, but, so be it. My activity level comes and goes and I'm sure there'll be a day, be it 1 week or 10 years from now when I'll quit posting here altogether.

Seconded.

However, now the OT is really gone now. The quality has dropped. However, all that trolls will go away one faithfull day, I'm sure.

 

[Grisu]

OT has declined considerably. It seems more like spam and lack of civility has become the norm. Now people are rude all the time, especially if you have a different opinion then theirs.

oh, shut up, will you? jk

seriously, IMHO there have always been rude people in OT, even back in 2001. Some people just have no manners, and that hasn't changed. Usually I just ignore them, sometimes I find myself responding to them despite myself.

What annoys me much more is the endlessly repeated jokes/memes/whatever. Many of them were funny once, but after the 2000th time they start becoming annoying. But maybe that's just due to me being here for (too) long.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

These posts come up regularly on all forums i've been for longer time. "Quality of xx is declining", i wonder how many older similar threads i could find with search?

Things keep changing, and people as well.. some consider that decline, i think OT is pretty much the same as it has been for year and a half i've been following it.

 

[Berrie]

For me, a good OT-forum has to have its share of interesting debate topics, genuinely funny threads and here and there a simple no-nonsense thread.

The past year we had mostly debate topics that were badly thought trough, miserably-failed funny threads, and a whole bunch of pure spam threads.

Solutions: harsher moderation, maybe setting limits before posting or creating threads in OT and deal with the annoying cliques.

just my 2 cents

 

[Mulholland]

For me, a good OT-forum has to have its share of interesting debate topics, genuinely funny threads and here and there a simple no-nonsense thread.

The past year we had mostly debate topics that were badly thought trough, miserably-failed funny threads, and a whole bunch of pure spam threads.

Solutions: harsher moderation, maybe setting limits before posting or creating threads in OT and deal with the annoying cliques.

just my 2 cents

I don't think that harsher moderation would necessarily work. People need to be spontaneous in order to get out a good line from time to time. If everyone has to deliberate on whether their post is possible an infraction it will further reduce this spontaneity make OT a little derivative IMO.

I mean seriously love him or hate him, if fifty really sat back and thought about each post he wrote I chuckle alot less at some of the threads in OT.

That being said posts, made with malicious intent are rarely funny.

And about annoying cliques well that's just a fact of life. Unfortunately it doesn't end in high school either, you just have more latitude to avoid them as you grow older. Plus, even if the clique is annoying there are still genuinely cool people who may be a part of it.

 

[Berrie]

I don't think that harsher moderation would necessarily work. People need to be spontaneous in order to get out a good line from time to time. If everyone has to deliberate on whether their post is possible an infraction it will further reduce this spontaneity make OT a little derivative IMO.

I mean seriously love him or hate him, if fifty really sat back and thought about each post he wrote I chuckle alot less at some of the threads in OT.

That being said posts, made with malicious intent are rarely funny.

And about annoying cliques well that's just a fact of life. Unfortunately it doesn't end in high school either, you just have more latitude to avoid them as you grow older. Plus, even if the clique is annoying there are still genuinely cool people who may be a part of it.

With harsh moderation I don't mean more bannings and such. I mean that in my opinion moderators should close stupid threads much faster. On top of that I think they should try to ban certain topics or close popular threads if someone (or certain posters) doesn't behave. So the people who were seriously debating the topic will be mad at the people responsable for the ban or the closure. Much more effective then warnings. It works on other fora.

It has nothing to do with spontaneity. Spontaneous remarks are in general the most funny and like I said, I'm all for funny threads (but you also have to be ready to bare the consequences if the funny thread was indeed spam; but I'm sure the mods here can appreciate a GOOD joke from time to time).

About cliques. When being obnoxious and rude is becoming a badge of honour, those people stop being cool in my book. I'm not pointing fingers, it's just a remark.