Sure, its a way of keeping the off topic neat and tidy, but next time someone feels like asking what music I like I'm gonna tell em I've already answered that question, sry they didn't get to read it :? and that will be that.

What if you made the Daimonin General auto delete after 3 days of inactivity? Or better yet MT's Blog?

Smacky you seriously went off on one about Kyle and Theo's 'war' in off topic discussions, yet it matters not anymore as its all gone, disappeared, and the only evidence of it is your bloody rant telling them off in the news section! (Yeah, I wasn't very happy to see 'Old Father Time' talking to my friends like that either!)

Now two things need to happen here in my opinion -- 1. The Off Topic forum needs to be allowed to grow, coz this is ridiculous and 2. Smacky needs to chill out and stop flaming peeps!

Please don't make me do this again, I don't like going up against you guys...

Oh absolutely agreed. That would be a great solution, only those interested in off topic conversation would go and take part. And those who make interesting posts wouldn't get frustrated when they are no longer there

And as for Smacky, you ain't kiddin!

*Checks ankles for previous scars*

I, personally, would have no issues with it being deleted entirely. Reason being I didn't even personally make any threads there, anyway, a post I made was moved there, wasn't it Smacky. To where it was edited by Theoris, which I could not stop. Then I get a whole News topic about me, insulting me. On the News ffs.

It's clear there's a personal vendetta, when I do nothing wrong you act as if I spammed? Blame your moderator, not me. Making a whole news about it on the home page is completely out of order in my opinion, do you find it objectionable for me to find that offensive?

Attempts have been made on my behalf to bite my tongue, and attempted to resolve this issue once before, to no avail. The news still stands there, as if my actions were bad. I honestly have no idea what was wrong with my actions on that thread (now deleted).

I'm afraid you miss the point Smackster.

If you delete the Off Topic forum then you give everyone back the right to post their (arguably) crap in Dai General where you have to work harder to do your editing. Instead of just saying that its off topic and moving it to somewhere harmless where it will get deleted... Think about it, You are never gonna delete that forum! Not in a million years

You can't blame the fact that everyone knows who you were calling beavis and butthead on everyone else for 'grizzling' about it after the fact. If it were me you were calling butthead you would have heard more than you have. But it wasn't so you haven't -- and thats all I personally have to say about that issue, ok?

Now back to the Off Topic discussion. I think the problem is your megalomania (for want of a seriously softer word)... It is your decision to make an off topic forum, your decision as to what is off topic 'garbage' and your decision for how long it stays there. Sry chap but I think in this paragraph lies the reason you get no response to what the public think.

Dispite that I think that the off topic forum will keep everyones heads on the gaming side of this community turned soap opera so I'm all for it. I just wont be making the same mistake of explaining my long thought out, deep beliefs about music and such again :lol:

I just dont see the point of making it gone once the thread has already died... Why delete it once everyone has already had their say, once it has already left the lastest posts block? why? At that point all thats being done is taking away peoples history, its hardly protecting the front page of the website from stupidity when the same damn things will re-occur because noobs can't see that its already been done before is it..? Come now, lets be rationale about this eh...

The Off Topic is a great idea, deleting it after any amount of time is utterly insane. Unless you have other reasons that you haven't yet mentioned??

Sry its a long one dudes

Damn, just deleted my original reply... Well, the gist of it:

If you delete the Off Topic forum then you give everyone back the right to post their (arguably) crap in Dai General where you have to work harder to do your editing. Instead of just saying that its off topic and moving it to somewhere harmless where it will get deleted... Think about it, You are never gonna delete that forum! Not in a million years

Lets not turn this into a challenge

Now back to the Off Topic discussion. I think the problem is your megalomania (for want of a seriously softer word)... It is your decision to make an off topic forum,

True, ultimately. But also it followed a request to do so (the link above).

 your decision as to what is off topic 'garbage'

So where would you draw the line?

A thread of long posts of presumable googled 'insulting' pictures with posters names tacked onto them which then degenerates into a catfight is ok?

An incredibly long post of cut and pasted jokes, to which every reply was some form of complaint IIRC is ok?

 and your decision for how long it stays there.

I asked for feedback 2 or 3 weeks before I made the forum and got none. The news and forum description clearly stated the 3 day deletion time and that the forum will be deleted if it causes problems (from m POV it has caused a lot of problems already, witness this thread, but it has not yet been deleted) but not a peep until now.

So I make the decision myself. To some extent, deliberately extreme in the hope of provoking a reaction (note in the thread I suggest 7 days, but following no response you get 3). But still nothing until after the fact. You call it my megalomania, I call it your lack of forethought and apathy.

 Sry chap but I think in this paragraph lies the reason you get no response to what the public think.

OK. So what would you suggest is the better way to do things?

The Off Topic is a great idea, deleting it after any amount of time is utterly insane. Unless you have other reasons that you haven't yet mentioned??

Searching. Someone searches for, for example 'music' in an effort to research the development situation in Daimonin. They end up with a load of links to various players' lists of favourite CDs or whatever.

That problem exists if we have an OT board at all, but is made infinitely worse if the threads are permanent.

That's annoying but maybe not really the end of the world. However it is much worse when the search comes back with a load of kiddy crap. Say the searcher is a serious potential developer. What sort of impression about the project does this give? And for anyone, it's hard enough to get people to search as it is. It's even harder if the (valid) excuse for not doing so is 'searches always give x% false positives, I have better things to do with my time'.

Perhaps OT can in future be excluded from search reult as well as the last post block? (If anyone knows of a way to do this via the normal admin panel, please let me know).

But you make some good points for not time-deleting (and I have just seen Anchak's post too)

Why, oh why, are the 'off' topics deleted?

It's a control/power complex.

when you click on search, it searches all available forums UNLESS you tell it what specific forum or section you want searched.

I have no opinion on whether OT forum should remain or be deleted, I commented once that it would just be another forum I won't visit.

We try to do what we feel is best for the Daimonin Project and the Website.  Sometimes we are wrong and we fix it the best we can.  If it was a control/power complex as has been suggested, we could clamp down and say ANYTHING not directly related to the Game, this Website, or the Project is not allowed and will be deleted immediately.  We have all been quite busy lately between fixing bugs, trying to fix other things that weren't quite right (like treasures), not to mention that supposed thing called real life.  We also understand we can't please all of the people all of the time.  As we get time, we are working on a general set of rules for the forums....such as post off-topic drivel to the off-topic forum and after 7 days of no follow-up posts it will be deleted automatically.  All it takes (even now) is 1 person to talk to his/her self via that thread within the auto-delete time to keep it there and alive (smacky might get mad at me for pointing this out).  If your off-topic thread isn't even interesting enough to keep you commenting on it 2 or 6 days later, how much interest do others have if it's deleted.  Or if you're really desperate to keep your off-topic drivel forever, we can extend it to 14 or 30 days to give you more time to follow up your own posts.  Don't forget a couple key points though.....
1) A forum is like a database, it stores information for retrieval.  Each character written and not removed takes up disk space, memory when read, processor time pulling it all out, etc.
2) The Main and Test game servers and the website are all hosted on the same machine, so resources taken for the website take away resources available for the servers.
EDIT:
3) There are many forum hosting sites (some are even free like topbb.com).  Start your own forum for off-topic drivel and we would consider having those links in a post on the forum so you can post whatever on your board and run it your way and if people want to go see it they can.

I'm going to quote out of order.

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Searching. Someone searches for, for example 'music' in an effort to research the development situation in Daimonin. They end up with a load of links to various players' lists of favourite CDs or whatever.

That wouldn't happen. Someone would have to seach the off topic forum sirectly to get hits from the off topic forum on a search, or at least thats my experience of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong. For example, do a search for 'console'. What is the first hit (or second now)? Now go back and change Display results to Posts (often more useful than entire topics) Now the top 5 (or 2-6 after this) are off topic. and thats with 3 day deletion. fast forward a bit and think what it'd be like with permanent OT posts..

The problem is that (AFAIK) you can't exclude a particular forum from the search results.

As said, if MT can do that in the same way as excluding it from the last post list, problem solved. But currently I think that is impossible.

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A thread of long posts of presumable googled 'insulting' pictures with posters names tacked onto them which then degenerates into a catfight is ok?
An incredibly long post of cut and pasted jokes, to which every reply was some form of complaint IIRC is ok?

Most definately not to both, but we have managed for a long while without the off topic forum. I was the leader of the complaints against the stupidly long list of 'jokes', once again for want of a better word, and that controlled it, the thread would have died and been buried in any other forum.

No, it would have been deleted probably before anyone even saw it to complain if recent experience is anything to go by. If it was just ignored and buried it is still liable to spam search results (I don't want to overplay that though beccause you could argue that about any post which isn't a deadly serious development issue).

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You call it my megalomania, I call it your lack of forethought and apathy.

And my point differs how? :lol:

You've lost me.

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OK. So what would you suggest is the better way to do things?

Well, you could return things to how they were, I'm just saying its not in your interest to. Other than that keep the forum, but to delete the posts is absurd, it only makes for duplicate posting on off topic subjects... Am I wrong on this?

Well IDK. Lets watch the forum and see what happens.

But really, go back  months to the various 'freedom of speech' and chat channel threads. People were demanding a free unmoderated 'forum' then (albeit ingame) where they could relate to other community members about things other trhan the price of a RoY. If you stopped complaining for a few seconds and actually thought things through you might see that the OT board is a step towards that. It is not perfect immediatelly, partly for the technical reasons mentioned above which currently have no solution. But I've already said

There should be virtually no need for a moderator to ever come into the off topic forum as a moderator.

The OT board should ultimately be a place for the community to discuss what the community wants (short of advertising, 'hate' posts, posting porn, and other hopefully obvious stuff). Despite my raging megalomania I actually have no desire to control anyone at all. I just don't want this forum to be flooded with spam because people have no filter between their brain and the submit button. Everyone should control themselves -- responsible freedom.

But to have that sort of freedom requires a little responsibility and that 'self-policing' which was bandied about 6 months ago.

We're taking baby steps towards that but ATM I see very little evidence that we're ready to walk at all.