State of the Forums 2016 Update

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After the Overlution the forums were pretty good except Vami then Vami got banned. Now a certain someone came back and there;s mod logs, stupid drama and lack-luster trolls. Coincidence? I think not!

[RedRover]

did you brick-build that shield and weapon on that TR-8R?

[stubby]

After the Overlution the forums were pretty good except Vami then Vami got banned. Now a certain someone came back and there;s mod logs, stupid drama and lack-luster trolls. Coincidence? I think not!

Well problem solved, Vami should be un-banned once again, assuming I got all the IP addresses right. Now whether he comes back or not, we'll have to wait and see.

[Duerer]

Well, apart from that shitty Eva spam (that has been a problem way before the Rei and Mari alts), I'm actually happy with the community, as it is. Well, some might argue, that we all could agree there’s always room for improvement, but as far as I can tell, there isn't much, that needs to be improved.

[RedRover]

annex weaboos?

[Duerer]

annex weaboos?

Smartest idea, I've heard in a while.

[Gorthaff]

The thread you mean? I thought it was meant as a ghetto for weeabooisms. Or Is this the Final solution? You Piltogg...

[L-Man]

The thread you mean? I thought it was meant as a ghetto for weeabooisms. Or Is this the Final solution? You Piltogg...

Final solution? Like... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu2BNiwhaX8 that one?

[stubby]

A few months ago I realized how much time and energy it was costing me every day to babysit shitposters. Since I started rewarding myself with ban-based vacations from babysitting duty, I've been getting so much done. You have the first chunk of chapter 11 because I decided I didn't have to spend Manly Santa Day babysitting Vami, for example. So the state of the forums may feel a little different as a side effect.

For a long time I thought that the best thing was to keep the forum open to whatever "quality content" people wanted to contribute, and just steer the flow in entertaining directions as needed. But I've come to realize that while there are lots of kinds of trolling and provocation that are engaging and entertaining for the forum at large, you can tell pretty easily when even the poster knows they're wasting everybody's time.

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I was talking more about the micro-managing behind the scenes, deletion of content and overall facist moderating policies of a certain returning member.

[Keldoclock]

A few months ago I realized how much time and energy it was costing me every day to babysit shitposters. Since I started rewarding myself with ban-based vacations from babysitting duty, I've been getting so much done. You have the first chunk of chapter 11 because I decided I didn't have to spend Saturnalia babysitting Vami, for example. So the state of the forums may feel a little different as a side effect.

I solve this problem by not caring about irrelevant internet shit(there is just too much of it to even try to care about), but then again, I've been banned from plenty of places, so maybe I have been causing headaches for some people.

Am I to blame for being annoying? Are they to blame for having too stiff of a stick up their arse? We can only speculate.

For a long time I thought that the best thing was to keep the forum open to whatever "quality content" people wanted to contribute, and just steer the flow in entertaining directions as needed. But I've come to realize that while there are lots of kinds of trolling and provocation that are engaging and entertaining for the forum at large, you can tell pretty easily when even the poster knows they're wasting everybody's time.

That's true, but if it really was completely worthless, why would they post it? Where do you draw the line? All useless discussion? All unoriginal, useless discussion? Banning specifically overused topics and memes (the "Joke Life Preservation" theory)?

For me I think the right place is to stop actions that do much harm for a small benefit. Like, if you were kidnapping people and burning their fat to heat your house, I think any moral framework that isn't 100% selfish would say that's not a good idea. However, what about smaller cases?

How about a drunk guy who pisses in a phonebooth? Surely more people are harmed by his actions than he benefits, but he gets away with it because 1. its hard to punish or prevent 2. he has the excuse of being drunk to protect him from self-shame.

How about someone who has the English(or any other language) literacy of an 8 year old child? Should they be permitted to participate in a discussion, knowing that it will hamper and aggravate everyone there? What if they really do have something to add to the discussion? Is it worth the frustration of reading it?

IMO, the answer is yes. But I have an abnormally high patience, compared to the set of all humans.

[Silent-sigfig]

A few months ago I realized how much time and energy it was costing me every day to babysit shitposters. Since I started rewarding myself with ban-based vacations from babysitting duty, I've been getting so much done. You have the first chunk of chapter 11 because I decided I didn't have to spend Saturnalia babysitting Vami, for example. So the state of the forums may feel a little different as a side effect.

I solve this problem by not caring about irrelevant internet shit(there is just too much of it to even try to care about), but then again, I've been banned from plenty of places, so maybe I have been causing headaches for some people.

Am I to blame for being annoying? Are they to blame for having too stiff of a stick up their arse? We can only speculate.

For a long time I thought that the best thing was to keep the forum open to whatever "quality content" people wanted to contribute, and just steer the flow in entertaining directions as needed. But I've come to realize that while there are lots of kinds of trolling and provocation that are engaging and entertaining for the forum at large, you can tell pretty easily when even the poster knows they're wasting everybody's time.

That's true, but if it really was completely worthless, why would they post it? Where do you draw the line? All useless discussion? All unoriginal, useless discussion? Banning specifically overused topics and memes (the "Joke Life Preservation" theory)?

For me I think the right place is to stop actions that do much harm for a small benefit. Like, if you were kidnapping people and burning their fat to heat your house, I think any moral framework that isn't 100% selfish would say that's not a good idea. However, what about smaller cases?

How about a drunk guy who pisses in a phonebooth? Surely more people are harmed by his actions than he benefits, but he gets away with it because 1. its hard to punish or prevent 2. he has the excuse of being drunk to protect him from self-shame.

How about someone who has the English(or any other language) literacy of an 8 year old child? Should they be permitted to participate in a discussion, knowing that it will hamper and aggravate everyone there? What if they really do have something to add to the discussion? Is it worth the frustration of reading it?

IMO, the answer is yes. But I have an abnormally high patience, compared to the set of all humans.

I mAY BE A TAD DRUNK BUT i have no clue what you're talking about.

anyway

The forums are doing pretty good.

Since shitposting seemd to be the topic of the thread let me just say that between vami and his lazy purpletext posts getting banned and me blocking myself from seeing overreach posts a few months back I have seen like no shitposting.

Also since ther hasn't been much music lately and there seem to be the same levels of quality original content as ever I'll say the forums are doing just fine.

[Silverdream]

Mari and Rei were the worst and most unbearable shitposters I've seen. At least other shitposters can offer some entertainment.

[Natalya]

Mari and Rei were the worst and most unbearable shitposters I've seen. At least other shitposters can offer some entertainment.

Yeah the only redeeming quality there was Rei had a good avatar. But alts usually aren't as good as the real thing.

[stubby]

I solve this problem by not caring about irrelevant internet shit(there is just too much of it to even try to care about), but then again, I've been banned from plenty of places, so maybe I have been causing headaches for some people.

Ah, but I can't get away with that. Keeping the forums running costs me at least a couple of bucks as well as adding a couple kinds of potential liability for me, so I can't just abandon it to drown in shitposts. If I can't keep it in a state where it has some kind of positive net value (to me, specifically), then I need to just disable or delete them entirely.

And sure, you do cause headaches, but not in a way that doesn't provide value as far as this forum measures value (which is to say, as far as I measure the forum's value). I can see why other forums would ban you, depending on what they think is valuable or not. If their principles include "let's all agree to not give each other headaches" then you're obviously out.

That's true, but if it really was completely worthless, why would they post it? Where do you draw the line? All useless discussion? All unoriginal, useless discussion? Banning specifically overused topics and memes (the "Joke Life Preservation" theory)?

How about spambots? Spam isn't worthless to the spammer. But nobody seems to have any objection when I delete those posts and ban those IPs.

Anyway, I never said "worthless." Posting something with the specific intent of wasting everybody's time has a certain amount of trolly worth to the troll. (For some people, the "worth" is in how much they can inflate their post counts, but I try to be tolerant of those guys even while I'm deleting all their posts because they're new and just don't know the score yet.)

But as far as administration goes, the question isn't whether the posts are "good" or "bad." I don't give a crap about any of that. It's about whether they have net positive worth to me. This isn't about some moral or ethical standard, but a subjective, utilitarian, aesthetic one. It's about calculating the odds for whether some post, thread, or person is going to cost me time and energy that I can't afford, and whether the things I selfishly want for myself or for BrikWars or for the forums in general would be better served by suppressing or removing them.

I've tried to install admins and mods with the same kinds of shameless autocracy. If I've done my job right, I don't think there's a single mod on the board who tries to hide behind nonsense platitudes or moral grandstanding or the worst one of all, "I'm just doing what the community wants." It's part of why I eyeroll so hard at all the shitposts about "why are you banning Vami when he's not the REAL racist." Who gives a fuck who the real racist is? When I'm banning Vami it's not because I'm jumping on some moral high horse. I ban him because he intermittently gets some random bug up his ass and tries to burn the forum down. He still keeps right on being just as much of a racist whenever I let him back in.

I was talking more about the micro-managing behind the scenes, deletion of content and overall facist moderating policies of a certain returning member.

Working as intended

How about someone who has the English(or any other language) literacy of an 8 year old child? Should they be permitted to participate in a discussion, knowing that it will hamper and aggravate everyone there? What if they really do have something to add to the discussion? Is it worth the frustration of reading it?

IMO, the answer is yes. But I have an abnormally high patience, compared to the set of all humans.

We have lots of guys like that over the years, both because we get a lot of non-English speakers and a lot of younger kids. I try to carve out space for them as much as I can; it's why we have the rule that only Blitzen is allowed to criticize grammar. Most of the time everybody else manages to hound them out before long anyway, but it's not for lack of effort on my part.

Mari and Rei were the worst and most unbearable shitposters I've seen. At least other shitposters can offer some entertainment.

Nope. I'm going to say that Shrekpoop et al. were way better at being unbearable. Maybe Mari and Rei could have developed to that level over time, but I didn't give them the chance.