Proposed Change to WH Forum

[Phrossack]

Perhaps it's because you post so much, and most of it is about Poland, that the impression is of a forum overran by Poland threads. That Prussia thread is a good example of overposting; of 30 replies 19 are yours, including multiple consecutive double posts, of content which could really be condensed to one post in the OP as a proper history article.

Or when the topic is not about Poland but you mention it anyway.

It's actually worse than that. Look at the thread on Slavic appearance. There are one or two cases of Domen posting two posts back-to-back, two cases of triple-posts, and one case of a quadruple post. Most of his posts are very long, with thousands of words and who knows how many kilobytes of huge maps and pictures. They're probably the longest posts ever made in WH, possibly in CFC, and he puts them two or three or four in a row, answering, in painstaking detail, questions nobody asked. His style consists of basically copy-pasting whole chapters of books and dumping them on us for no clear reason. If double-posting goes against forum rules, what he does should be practically a felony.

Regarding the US complaints, I think if we consider the membership and viewership of CFC we'll find that America make up a significantly larger proportion than Poland.

Poland and Polish-tangent threads are just way overrepresented right now.

Don't get me wrong, all these US threads bore me too, but they're to be expected in a US-based forum with so many American members. I recall another forum where I used to lurk that had lots of Indian, Pakistani, and Australian posters. Unsurprisingly, most of the topics involved those three countries.

Meanwhile, the Colosseum has just a few Polish posters. Only one of them posts regularly on Poland (another, TLO, no longer does). He fills the forums with threads on Poland, stuffs those threads full of enormous posts two or three or four in a row that consist less of dialogue than of monologue, and then starts spamming unrelated threads with information about Poland. Domen realized at some point that this was going over the top, so he made an OT thread dedicated to Poland. Unsurprisingly, he forgot about that thread's purpose and continues to pump out several books' worth of trivia about Poland. Nobody else in all of CFC does anything similar.

 

[H4run]

It's actually worse than that. Look at the thread on Slavic appearance. There are one or two cases of Domen posting two posts back-to-back, two cases of triple-posts, and one case of a quadruple post. Most of his posts are very long, with thousands of words and who knows how many kilobytes of huge maps and pictures. They're probably the longest posts ever made in WH, possibly in CFC, and he puts them two or three or four in a row, answering, in painstaking detail, questions nobody asked. His style consists of basically copy-pasting whole chapters of books and dumping them on us for no clear reason. If double-posting goes against forum rules, what he does should be practically a felony.

He is not just copy pasting, he even translate the huge article regarding "About the origins of Rurik and Varangians, Finnish roots of Russia?" I think that really take a huge effort, even though I not yet read it but I pretty much appreciate his effort. I remember once peoples criticizing him for not giving enough citation, after that he give citation with Polish source, then again peoples criticizing him for posting the unreadable citation and video, after that he carefully chose the source that have English translation and often he translate it by himself, and after all of that peoples still criticizing for putting too many long tl;dr citation. And I understand your objection in regards of his long post, but that is his style, everybody have their own way to argue or state their opinion, take for example R16 is also not less unique than Domen. This is just my piece of mind Phrossack.

 

[Domen]

Don't get me wrong, all these US threads bore me too, but they're to be expected in a US-based forum with so many American members. I recall another forum where I used to lurk that had lots of Indian, Pakistani, and Australian posters. Unsurprisingly, most of the topics involved those three countries.

It's called free market history. Check also:

Hostile takeover - the acquisition of one forum (called the target forum) by another entity (called the acquirer) that is accomplished not by coming to an agreement with the target forum's management, but by going directly to the forum's users or fighting to replace management in order to get the acquisition approved.

 

[Oruc]

This is just harassment to try and chase a poster away they don't like.

 

[Azale]

Nay, he contributes more then you people. you're not mods ,you don't set the rules and this isn't a private forum for you and your buddies.

This is just harassment to try and chase a poster away they don't like.

And you're white knighting him because you're mad you're not in the club, not because you give a crap. You feel an affinity for them because you think you're excluded and victimized by the Big Lefty Machine. Come off it. The threads recently in WH have been terrible and the conversations that typically spring from Domen & Kyriakos threads are awful.

 

[Domen]

Let's see:

In "Counterreformation" thread I started it discussing Spain as an example of successful Counterreformation, but Tolni suggested that we should rather put more emphasis on Poland. Despite this, "Counterreformation" remained a thread in which Protestant, Orthodox and Atheist forumers were arguing against me (formally Catholic) on how allegedly nice and awesome was / is the Catholic Church.

In "Slavic appearance" thread Poland was first mentioned by Pangur Ban.

"Ancient Macedonians" is not a Greece thread as I suggested that they were a nation on their own.

"Byzantine" thread also discusses whether Byzantines were a nation on their own, rather than Greeks.

"Varangian Guard" thread is about as much Scandinavian / Viking / Norse / Germanic as it is Greek.

"Prussians" thread is more like a Baltic thread with German, Lithuanian and Polish "spices".

In "Zimbabwe" thread someone - but not me - mentioned similarities between Poland and Zimbabwe.

And so on, and so on.

I think there is a problem with Poland being over-represented. But I disagree with claims that this is only my fault. For example why someone mentioned Poland in a "Zimbabwe" thread is unknown to me.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Meanwhile, the Colosseum has just a few Polish posters. Only one of them posts regularly on Poland (another, TLO, no longer does). He fills the forums with threads on Poland, stuffs those threads full of enormous posts two or three or four in a row that consist less of dialogue than of monologue, and then starts spamming unrelated threads with information about Poland. Domen realized at some point that this was going over the top, so he made an OT thread dedicated to Poland. Unsurprisingly, he forgot about that thread's purpose and continues to pump out several books' worth of trivia about Poland. Nobody else in all of CFC does anything similar.

I always liked how the mods kept a blind eye towards that thread, in the hopes that all Poland discussion is centered on that one thread as opposed to the entire forum.

-----------

I think people are unfairly targeting Domen. A few of you accusing him of derailing threads with Poland stuff are the same people who bring up Poland whenever Domen posts in a thread - even when his post has nothing to do with Poland at all!

Several of those threads, such as the Varingian Guard, origins of Rurik and the Rus', and ancient Slavic history are in my opinion very interesting topics and I am as disappointed as any of you guys are when they get derailed with Poland.

Anyway, put me on the same boat as the guys suggesting that we as a collective need to start and generate more discussion and that change has to come from us.

@Domen, I think your posting needs to evolve away from essentially 'talking to yourself' to a more engaging format.

 

[Louis XXIV]

^ I do agree with that. A dialog would be more engaging and rewarding for everyone involved. That being said, I do appreciate the occasional detailed and informative post when appropriate.

I think the problem really is that we - collectively - have to make more threads.

That tends to be my thought as well.

I do think it might be a good idea for any poster who has a reputation of dominating a conversation to self-evaluate and consider cutting back (given the obvious backlash), but I'd much rather that happen voluntarily (and everyone else picks up the slack) than having to single out one subject or one poster. This "solution" is going to inevitably cause tough line-drawing problems anyway when another area of history legitimately involves Poland.

 

[Evie]

By and large, I'm fine with some Poland. Just feeling like lately this is more the Poland forum than the History forum. Rather like the History channel eventually turned into the Hitler channel.

Only one country further east.

And yes, that's not ALL Domen's fault; we all need to brin gmore about other topics. But solving this is going to take a two-way efforts: more posting from the rest of us, and perhaps an effort on Domen's part to try to bring up Poland a little less often.

 

[sophie]

Again, for me it's less Poland and more that Domen entering a thread often signals the death of that thread. This is because it's mostly pointless engaging with him because nobody actually has conversations with him. He just says what he wants to say, you respond, he makes a token acknowledgement that you said a Thing and then proceeds to continue to say what he wants to say irrespective of whether or not that thing he wants to say is relevant, wanted or even tangentially dictated by the flow of the conversation. Much like with aimee, Domen just uses the forum as a platform from which to gush about a pet topic without really paying attention to anybody else who uses the forum.

I'd have no problem with Poland threads - or Early Modern threads (which, although being my pet topic, I feel I cannot talk about because it just summons Domen that much quicker) for that matter if Domen would actually engage with other people in the thread.

 

[Plotinus]

This is, covertly, a thread targeted at one person, as the subsequent discussion indicates.

I'm not going to close it, as the discussion has been civil.

But I will say again what I've said before. Domen is perfectly free to make posts and threads about Poland, just as everyone else is perfectly free to ignore them. As long as his posts and threads are historically focused, they're appropriate for the forum. A large part of the problem here is that many people have turned the Poland obsession into a joke and bring it up in other contexts or use it deliberately to needle Domen when he's talking about other things. Not only is that uncivil behaviour, it's effectively reinforcing the narrative that Poland is an inescapable topic here. Plus, I think it's part of the somewhat cliquey behaviour here that others have commented on before, and which puts off others from venturing into this subforum.

My advice to Domen would be to recognise that there is something about his posting style that raises hackles, and therefore to post more on other topics, and also post in a style that encourages discussion rather than info-dumps; but that is just advice and he's not obliged to take it. My advice to those who don't like Poland threads is to ignore them, to refrain from raising the issue when it's not necessary, and make more threads of your own on other topics. At the end of the day, Domen's primary sin here is just to be more enthusiastic than everyone else, and that's not exactly something to blame him for. I don't see a good case for any official action one way or the other.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Well, civil discussion, with the usual trolling by some comedians and their mirror..

 

[Flying Pig]

I can't say I particularly mind most of the Greek threads, because most posters here can at least get interested into those discussions - the problem is that few people have more than a passing knowledge of the minutiae of Polish history, and those threads don't often provide much interest to the curious layman.

 

[Domen]

One of reasons for shortage of threads in "World History" is that people are posting history-related threads in "Off Topic":

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=524910&page=8

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks for linking to that. I think my INT just dropped by one.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Masada and I had fun with it. I especially liked the imagine of homosexuality being heretical.

 

[Silurian]

I think you are unfairly targeting Domen here. He isn't always just writing essays on the forum, some people reply to him and have a dialogue. So it isn't just self-indulgance on Domen's part.

Additionally, if you don't want to read about Poland may I suggest you skip his post? Not difficult to do.

I'm bored -stiff- with the number of US politics and religious threads in the OT section too. I just don't bother reading them..

I agree with this.

Domen puts a lot of work into his posts.
If you are not interested just ignore.
But do not condemn someone for making an effort.

Added

Just after I posted the above an advert for Polish lessons appeared on the header

http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/...mnn0fvXchEj7HmLYEfwnlfPTGzAEX5IZ-wi78mGTgmJzz

 

[Oruc]

And you're white knighting him because you're mad you're not in the club, not because you give a crap. You feel an affinity for them because you think you're excluded and victimized by the Big Lefty Machine. Come off it. The threads recently in WH have been terrible and the conversations that typically spring from Domen & Kyriakos threads are awful.

Wah Wah Wah someone doesn't agree with me I'm going to have to throw a fit like a autismal child.
The same thing happened with ghostwriter, all that talk about needing stricter rules when really they just wanted him banned, well he's gone now and the same thing will happen again if people don't speak up.
don't pretend like you know a thing about me. And you can only white knight women.

Edit: It's not like I dislike every lefty, reindeerThistle is alright by me.

 

[Traitorfish]

..."Autismal"?

 

[gay_Aleks]

..."Autismal"?

Maybe "abysmal"?