What do forums still have to offer?

[Kyriakos]

WHAT???? Also, have I not got enough but "every half- regular poster" has? Or is this a count I am not aware of?

Of course likes are not like elsewhere. In other places "By clicking the like button, the defendant clearly endorsed the unseemly content and made it his own”. You can get done for that sort of like.

I am on mobile, I will check later for the list or count - vaguely recall an upper limit or similar...

 

[The_J]

Nope, not that I'm aware of, and if so, it must be beyond 27k , https://forums.civfanatics.com/members/?type=likes .

(longer post to address the thread topic will come at some point, but not right now)

 

[Gelion]

Of course likes are not like elsewhere. In other places "By clicking the like button, the defendant clearly endorsed the unseemly content and made it his own”. You can get done for that sort of like.

We need to replace it with a "Yep" button then

 

[Samson]

We need to replace it with a "Yep" button then

Well, that would be an option, so it explicitly means "I agree with you". I quite like the ambiguous nature of it, that it can mean "I agree", but also "that is funny", "thanks for answering", or "that is actually a well crafted post, even if I disagree with it".

 

[Gorbles]

I consider the karma system this forum has one of the least intrusive; the most benefit for the least harm. In eons past (in forum culture generally, not necessarily on CFC), this kind of behaviour was simulated by people quoting a post with "+1" (or just replying after the post with "+1", which kinda turns into spam after a certain point. This is the closest to that without introducing the more perverse associations like you see on reddit, where popular content is up, and unpopular content is down, regardless of whether or not the content is good / accurate / worthwhile / whatever.

 

[Hygro]

I don't like forums having reputation counters displayed graphically under names... But!.. I did like the anonymous reputation feedback I got on djforums, which helped me understand better how my posts were affecting other people. Others here have expressed a similar transformation of learning another dimension of their impact on others beyond what garners replies.

The rep/like system I would like most is one that is less public facing so as not to hijack the attention of the readers. That said, sometimes I'll skim over a long post by some user on some topic, see a bunch of likes, or even see who liked it, and will go back and read it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Likes here don't function much like on Reddit; the post doesn't move up if it has more likes. Also, in cfc you can get an upper limit of counted likes (iirc), and thus eventually every half- regular poster gets there.

Unless someone has set that up specifically here, the number of likes can go on forever.

Here are the stats for the person at TrekBBS who is in #1 position in terms of both post count and likes:

(I left off his username and avatar)

There are three ranks of admiralty. They start at 8000 posts. I'm on the bottom of them, at 11,000+ posts. At my rate of posting, it'll easily take another decade to get to the middle rank. This person is literally in a post count rank all by himself and has close to 74,000 likes, but since post count allows entry into ranked lounges, the admins didn't see the point in creating a subforum accessible by only one member plus the staff.

 

[Fippy]

Missed out on posting 3 words with a popular opinion when Civ6 was new, and getting 20 likes for investing 5 seconds

 

[Gori the Grey]

Here's a thread I ran on what various posters mean when they "like."

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...rcumstances-do-you-like-on-this-forum.627516/

 

[Zardnaar]

Forums didn't have like buttons when I started using them. I don't care if someone likes me and I rarely use the feature myself.

If I don't like you I'm not being rude I just don't care.

If I do like one of your posts at that particular point in time I like your post and remember the like button exists that's all.

 

[choxorn]

A lot of the competition to forums operates from a more ephemeral standpoint. Facebook excels at sharing what just got posted. If you want something from a year ago, you have to scroll a lot. Discord has search, but (usually?) users can't create their own topic/channels, unless they are administrators. As lymond mentioned, this means busy ones have lots of text, and topics can get intermingled. Discord is also very poor at web discoverability, since everything lives inside an instance that isn't web-searchable. If someone's looking for Civ IV information on the web, they might discover CFC and the answer to their question. They won't find the answer if it's posted on a Discord server. Discord puts information into siloes that outsiders are likely to never learn about.

Reddit's kind of halfway in-between, and probably the biggest direct competitor, since it is basically a forum, just a centralized one. Steam forums are similar; they're centralized, but are fundamentally forums.

Reddit kind of also leans towards the Facebook/other social media thing of "share what just got posted but not so much older things." It used to just archive any post more than 6 months old, preventing any future participation, and plenty of subreddits still do that, and even aside from that most active threads you'll find on the site are less than a day old, with maybe the odd exception of a big enough topic getting some discussion for a few days or an older post that suddenly becomes relevant again.

It also is definitely not all that great at discoverability, reddit's search engine is legendarily ineffective at actually finding anything except maybe the names of subreddits, and that's if you already basically know what you're looking for.

 

[Quintillus]

+1 to Narz and Snowgerry on the Internet not being a great substitute for in-real-life experiences. Not that it's all doom and gloom - I've read some insightful things online, just as I have in magazines. And you do get to know at least a side of people whom you interact with regularly... which is most of the people on this thread. You know, I wonder, "when is choxorn going to post the next chapter of The Conquests? does he still play Civ or is he out surfing in Hawaii all the time?" But while people may not be putting on airs here as they may be on social media, you also don't really get to know people as deeply as in real life. You don't sit down with a CFC member in your living room at 2 AM on New Year's Day, after everyone else has left, and talk about how they've gained perspective on their failed marriage that ended a few years ago.

I agree with Farm Boy, Discord doesn't have a good interface. I remember trying to figure out how to video chat with it with friends the first time, when you just want to chat, not be part of a Discord "server", and it was not nearly as intuitive as adding each other on an AIM buddy list. I still have to use Discord in two separate browsers because half the servers I joined were with one e-mail, and half with another, and I can't just sign in to them separately in separate tabs. IRC, I can join #fiftychat and whatever all else I want with a fair amount more ease, though sadly it appears most of #fiftychat decided to migrate to Discord. I still log into #fiftychat occasionally though, despite never having really been a regular there.

Likes... mixed feelings. The downside I see is that it's a minimal-effort way of providing positive reinforcement, that can be chosen in place of more thoughtful feedback. I have occasionally dabbled in the Stories & Tales forum. Before we had Likes, if you thought something was fun and you wanted to provide encouraging feedback, you had to write something. Now, you can just press "Like" and that's it. As a writer, guess which one is more encouraging? Something that is written out. Doesn't have to be long, but a quote of a section and comment of, "I loved that joke. Keep it up!" means more than a "Like".

Reputation, I'm happy not to have it here. You learn who the regulars are. We all know Kyriakos is one of the city graphics legends, at least if we hang out in the Civ3 forums. The_J posts some interesting stuff to the front page; Fippy regularly participates in Civ4 discussions. There's no reason to feel inferior or superior because someone has more reputation currency than you do.

I have been on a forum where you could send a comment when you gave reputation, which could be a way of saying, "thanks for that Civ IV beginner help guide", for example, without having to bump an old thread just to say it. That could be kind of nice, kind of like Hygro was saying. But I'm not sure it would be worth having reputation currency displayed publicly.

Reddit kind of also leans towards the Facebook/other social media thing of "share what just got posted but not so much older things." It used to just archive any post more than 6 months old, preventing any future participation, and plenty of subreddits still do that, and even aside from that most active threads you'll find on the site are less than a day old, with maybe the odd exception of a big enough topic getting some discussion for a few days or an older post that suddenly becomes relevant again.

It also is definitely not all that great at discoverability, reddit's search engine is legendarily ineffective at actually finding anything except maybe the names of subreddits, and that's if you already basically know what you're looking for.

Ehhhhh... I don't actually post on Reddit (decided not to take the chance of getting addicted to it in college, I was already posting to CFC often enough), and mostly only read it when I find links to it from search engines, maybe if it's a Paradox or Factorio Reddit that I happen across, I'll scroll through a bit and see what the latest is. But locking threads after a set amount of time, regardless of content, is my forum pet peeve. It reminds me of https://xkcd.com/979/ . If someone posted a question in 2003, and I run into the same thing in 2022, I should be able to reply to the thread from 2003 with new information for the benefit of anyone else who comes across it in the future.

From what I have seen though, I agree. The "Card" view (now the default) instead of "Classic" seems to make it worse, too, by making only about 3 things show up without scrolling. And what others have said about popularity impacting the sort order.

 

[Snowygerry]

(...)
I have been on a forum where you could send a comment when you gave reputation, which could be a way of saying, "thanks for that Civ IV beginner help guide", for example, without having to bump an old thread just to say it. That could be kind of nice, kind of like Hygro was saying. But I'm not sure it would be worth having reputation currency displayed publicly.

The old ACG forums had that yes, it was fun, you could send private messages while having public discussions,

like many other similar functions it could be (and was) abused by sending insults accompanied by positive rep.

 

[choxorn]

You know, I wonder, "when is choxorn going to post the next chapter of The Conquests? does he still play Civ or is he out surfing in Hawaii all the time?"

I likewise wonder "when is Quintillus going to post the next chapter of Scientific Anarchy?"

 

[sendos]

I like that forums promote organised discussion with specific topics in mind.

It goes without saying that a strong admin/moderator team is necessary to maintain them otherwise they get filled with spam, threads going off topic and personal attacks, etc.. I remember doing some moderating for a forum once many years ago and I am still moderating a gaming Facebook page after about 5 years. Forums cannot function properly in a lawless space.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Kind of like the arrow on a car's fuel gauge that always shows what side of the car the fuel tank cap is located.

Huh? I will see if this is true for my car. Thanks.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Samson : I was thinking of "trophy points", which afaik are calculated from likes (?)

113 is a strange number too. How do you arrive at a random prime if it wasn't the single option instead of the upper limit? Addition would make sense if it's not just "likes", but maybe the other thing added is singular/base (?)
Some non-active posters have some number (less than 113), but those points might have been retroactive likes too.

 

[The_J]

For someone who posts so much you definitely should know that .
You can look them up on your profile. https://forums.civfanatics.com/members/kyriakos.36763/trophies

 

[Kyriakos]

For someone who posts so much you definitely should know that .
You can look them up on your profile. https://forums.civfanatics.com/members/kyriakos.36763/trophies

I am all about stat-padding, so if a category reaches a trivial upper limit, I don't look into it

And it was even worse than I thought: everything was addition of singular stuff...

 

[Kaitzilla]

Huh? I will see if this is true for my car. Thanks.

No problem.
My fuel cap is on the right side of my car.

Spoiler :