Author Topic: Off topic -> Community-driven board(s) (Read 19081 times)

smacky

So lets have some opinions -- hopefully sensible ones -- on the Off Topic board. Clearly it is being used and, except rarely, is being used properly (if a bit unexcitingly), although there is still a bit of posting on topic threads in off topic.

So that's good as far as it goes.

As said above, I want to expand the Off Topic board to a community-oriented category of boards (not to be mistaken with the current community category which is just server-player stuff). This should be very possible on the new site.

The question is what kind of boards would go in this category? I don't like a catch-all 'Off Topic', partly because those words seem to be often read as 'Spam'. So some ideas:

Board request board -- where posters can request, discuss, vote on (if you must) new boards for the community section.
Per language boards -- where posters can post in foreign (obviously not much use for suggestions, etc which should be posted in English (or close enough ;)) to the suggestions board, and so on, but possibly good for the community (non-native English speakers whose English is bad can express their ideas in their mother-tongue and have a bilingual community member translate and post to the appropriate board, easily find a language-specific subcommunity, etc) though this idea could also backfire horribly (that said other forums do it). I mentioned this on IRC and the person I mentioned it to thought it was unnecessary. Is it?
(Broadly) topic-specific boards -- so instead of Off Topic, maybe have Politics, Players (for My Pic, birthdays, other announcements of note about community members -- although I think the new site will handle the first two itself by a different mechanism), and what else?
?

Don't worry about moderation or not -- I'll need to see what the new site is/isn't capable of first -- and for ****'s sake don't start posting about boards in which you can/are required to swear, flame, etc

Talwoasc

(1) Board request board.
Why not just create a sticky in the 'this website' board? It is the relevant board and a whole board for what could simply be a topic seems a bit over the top. If you want public discussions of whether a suggested board would be wanted or not, simply create topics with a poll in this board too, and don't bother with a sticky, maybe an announcement to let people know that it is encouraged?
(2) Per language boards
Difficult. How many speakers would you want before you create the board? A board for 2 or 3 people to discuss Daimonin in Swahili seems over the top again, but I know there are alot of players that would be able to discuss the game better in German, French or another common language. I see the point about whether or not it is necessary though. In order to find and play daimonin, most people would have to speak English, or know someone who speaks English.
(3) Topic Specific Boards
Easy. Until the Off Topic board reaches/surpasses the level of topics/posting that Dai general/server general reach, I see no need for this to be added. I suspect we have quite alot of time to go before this happens.

smacky

Well re #1 and a bit #2, AFAIK the number of boards is really irrelevant in terms of the amount of space it uses in the db. I stand to be corrected but I don't think there is a technical limit (OK, there's probably a limit of 32k or 64k or something total boards, but in real).

Of course there is a human limit. No-one wants to navigate 17 levels of category and sub-category and sub-sub-category and so on to finally reach the board they want or have to find just the right highly spe****ed board in a cast of 1000s.

Similar confusion could come with stickies or topics in this board to request boards and it could be argued that board requests is a distinct enough topic to warrant its own dedicated board. Also, it's for requesting new boards in the community section not in the forums as a whole (and also re #3, I'm still pondering how to make the community section community-driven and not Smacky-driven). So from that POV it makes sense to have a dedicated board.

But I'm really asking the community to say what it wants. Of course there are technical constraints -- all forum software is written with the assumption that ultimately everything will be pretty directly controlled by moderators (frankly, with reason). But I think we can still achieve something within those limits.

But my heart's not set on any of this, so if the consensus is that it's a bad idea or not needed, fair enough. Less work for me.

grommit

Language boards: a good idea imo where people who have poor English can converse and get explanations from other players with a better grasp.
My initial suggestions for boards that would reflect the player base as far as I am aware:

German
Dutch
French
Spanish
Czech/Slovak
Polish
Russian

Oh, and Hungarian for Die to talk to himself :) (don't know of any other Hungarian speakers)

Plus a general board where players can post requests for a new language board if they can show there is sufficient demand for it.

spyke

ive seen like 4 or 5 hungarian but not on forums and didnt make so much lvls so i dont think there is more...but im special in something anyway

subaru

ive read the first page of this thread and that is all

i would like to comment on the off topic board now, as i see it there was many players off subject in and out of the game hence the board being created i speculate

i believe it is nessasary to delete older threads and 3 days seem a great time, if the off topic posters cant shout it in game they can simply direct attention to the off topic board for there views to be seen (of course as long as it abides by the rules

)

A wise old birdie once told me through a PM that i cant please everyone and i believe this to be a living (erm.. written) example, and i hope you remember that quote my lil birdie

(glances at a random wall closest to her)

im not a expert on what im about to say, but of course it is but an opinion, i believe if there were a excessive amount of key words such as music as (i believe) smacky posted earlier, the search about this keyword would bring up a massive amount of results, thereby slowing the forum down

another opinion would be that this is a daimonin forum the permanent posts should be daimonin relevent shouldnt they? and anyway if there was a possible issue in the handling of the off topic forum, why not simply post in another forum on a different site specifically for those kind of threads

im sure if you find another gaming forum they would have strict rules on a off topic board (if not at all a board for that kind of information) <of course i was generalizing and i cant confirm this 100% :p>

~missy

Anchakor

I pretty much agree with Subaru, but deleting posts in Off Topic forum makes it totally worthless to me...basically it would be something like IRC, but I have IRC for that... (forum is like a blog to me)

Unfortunately it isnt easy to make forum non-indexed by robots with current system (PNPHPBB) AFAIK...
I hope on the new website this would work... (also disabling counting of posts in some forums; btw I dont see a reason why post are counted anyway...)

Frostyglen

Language Boards..good idea. I'd hate to play a game in a second language ( especially one I'm not good at ) and not actually be able to communicate easily with ANYONE...and I've seen communities go nuts when people talk in another language ( why is beyond me, since that's what most of us are doing to them ).

Sub-boards...I'd keep it as simple as possible. Politics, humor ( although these two are almost the same ), languages, Smacky-bashing ( since he seems to get the brunt of the abuse )...too many just makes people end up posting in the wrong forums anyway.

Edit: I almost skipped over this topic since I thought this topic was dead months ago and someone just wanted to re-hash a dead issue...

smacky

Yeah sorry guys. I recycled an old thread which probably has caused confusion.

Re deleting OT posts: well I turned that off after Trep and Anchak (and maybe some others) complained. My reasoning for having it auto-pruned was pretty much what Sub says, but it seems that this won't be a problem on the new site as forums like OT can apparently be taken out of the main db so they won't appear in search results or the new post index or anything. I understand that it may be possible to exclude them from search engines too.

So therefore it should not be necessary to delete all the crap.

We don't need to worry about that I think. Just say what you'd like instead of/as well as OT (or you might just want to keep OT). To give the forum a section focussed on the community rather than the game or the project.

I agree with Frosty.

smacky

I split this thread now, to hopefully prevent confusion.

I have just been playing with the new forums and I am quite confident that the changes to OT I want to make/have been discussed here will all be possible.

It can be set up so that, for example, all members with >= X posts to their name (say X = 50) have certain moderation permissions on OT only.

For example, all such could lock, split, or merge OT topics.

I think it will be best to keep topic removal restricted to global moderators (there is a 'call moderator' button). OTOH removed topics go to a recycling board from where global moderators can either delete them finally or restore them, and all moderating is logged anyway. So abuse can be tracked/fixed, but it is a hassle for global mods (really I am trying to pass off as much work as possible

). Or we could have a higher level of OT mods. So 50 posts gets you lock, split, merge and 100 gets you remove, for example.

And yes, the risk is that basing things on post counts encourages spam and necroposting, so maybe the global mods will need to take a harder line on that? Or perhaps there is a better way? What I don't want is a situation where global mods make the decision about who gets OT mod permissions. That seems to defeat the purpose. It should be that by default these permissions are attainable by anyone, and can be removed in cases of abuse.

ThePlaneskeeper

i think its fine as you stated, but OT mods should not have the ability to unlock threads or post to locked threads (as we can). This will prevent "i don't care i have seniority, lock, and lastword, you loose".

The other side of things, you can get 50 posts in a day. Easily. I think it should be 200+ for lock, split, merge, and 500+ for remove. Of course vols should already have these permissions by default.

just my thouhts.

Talwoasc

It is possible to get 50 posts in a day, but if spam/necroposting is looked after sufficiently then it is not realistic.
Higher level of post counts for remove is a good idea IMO.
Where would global mods come in with abuse accusations though? Would it be possible for these powers to be removed, regardless of post count? How would these accusations be proved/disproved? AFAIK posts deleted are permanently gone...how would we know that it wasn't a vendetta against the modded account? Can I think of any more questions?

smacky

@TPK: Indeed. Only global mods/admins can post to locked threads (in fact, this is yet another option, and there would be a board-specific group of mods who could also do this, but only in their boards).

I'm not clear yet on whether locking ability means unlocking too, I agree, it is preferable if it doesn't, otherwise you get tit for tat locking/unlocking battles.

@Talw: Yes, about the spamming. But maybe 50 is too low. Whatever, we can tweak that value later on.

I am not clear on removing the OT mod powers. From a quickish look, I think this can be done in a slightly roundabout way. Really I want a nice simple exclusion list. So everyone can attain this by default, but global mods can disable individuals if they're being tits. What I want to avoid here is banning members from the forum entirely simply because they got carried away in OT.

As to proving/disproving abuse and deleting posts:

Quote

removed topics go to a recycling board from where global moderators can either delete them finally or restore them, and all moderating is logged anyway.

Anchakor

Umm sorry for playing dumb, but:

Quote from: "smacky"

I have just been playing with the new forums and I am quite confident that the changes to OT I want to make/have been discussed here will all be possible.

These are what?

Quote from: "smacky"

It can be set up so that, for example, all members with >= X posts to their name (say X = 50) have certain moderation permissions on OT only.

For example, all such could lock, split, or merge OT topics.

Why you want that?
Is it from lack of moderators for moderating OT forum? If so, then I haven't noticed the lack, anyway wouldn't it be better to make more OT forum moderators who aren't tits, then give basically everybody the power and then have problems with the tits?

ThePlaneskeeper

the idea is to make less work for the devs/mods by having a community that is a) self-serving, b) self policing, and c) growing (and by growing, i mean growing in personal sociological health. Where people realize they have power because of their seniority, and choose to not abuse it, because they are morally sound. Instead they choose to use that power to show other people the way out of the cave. [go Plato/Socrates!])

Author Topic: Off topic -> Community-driven board(s) (Read 19081 times)

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