Following the quite frankly horrendous breakdown in communication which lead to the Holocaust the perma-banning of several high-profile members and everyone collectively losing their marbles, I feel like we need to organize shit that we KNOW is happening, and establish a general timeline.
First things first, Update 6 launches. A bunch of new features are added in, including WHOOAAAAAA HOLY SHIT PROFILE CUSTOMIZATION. And functioning mod tools. That's all pretty fucking sweet, and nobody was mad about that. What everyone was mad about was the fact that supposedly megathreads were being banned, as Hezzy explicitly stated in the GTA:V megathread, leading to everyone losing their shit.
[quote=Hezzy, in the GTA Series thread]Fair warning, I am going to be closing this thread when I wake up tomorrow. Feel free to create threads on the topics you're discussing in here. We're trying to encourage people to spread out more, be liberal with the thread creation button. Don't group everything into one thread![/quote]
So people started trying to get answers on just what the fuck we were supposed to do, which lead to us people asking Hezzy, the community manager, and Postal. Who's Postal, you don't really need to question Postal because he knows what he's doing for the most part, and he's fucking hilarious at times. Anyway, Hezzy and Postal explicitly tell us to create class discussion threads on TF2 and DOTA respectively. This is fine for TF2, albeit a somewhat messy one, and for DOTA? Well...
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107127/41afb6dc-db91-4191-b432-b4f5f84c1f06/leaky butthole.png
Yeah. This lead to things being a complete clusterfuck. Especially since the DOTA and TF2 posts were no longer contained, and flooded GGD like a tidal wave of vomit that was irrelevant for a good chunk of people. Supposedly our solution was to just stick to the child boards, which is all well and good except it was completely arbitrary what was and was not given a subforum of its own, and with the SUPPOSED dissolution of megathreads, it was going to be near impossible to actually post anything.
A bunch of people start flinging shitposts in protest. While yes, they were complete shitposts, it served to prove the point that what we had was a disorganized mess that was going to be nigh impossible to navigate. After that, Garry enacted a holocaust and permabanned everyone involved in the "spam" threads, leading to everyone screeching their lungs out. By the way, no appeals. Ever. These people are gone forever, for reals. They've basically TOXX'd their accounts away without an escape clause. Even the people who explicitly followed Hezzy and Postal's own instructions were banned.
The breakdown in communication truly rears it's ugly head, when we find out that all of this was basically for nothing at all.
[quote=garry]I haven't banned megathreads. There are plenty of megathreads still on
the forums. I'm telling mods to stop banning people for creating new
threads instead of posting in megathreads.[/quote]
That is Garry himself, in page 16 of the Update 6 thread saying that megathreads haven't been banned. We didn't have nearly as drastic a change as everyone, including me thought we were. All of this drama could've been prevented if things were made just a tad bit more clear after the fact.
So that just leads us to the present, with this thread being created and us still being down a bunch of people for the foreseeable future. The basic gist is a massive breakdown in communication made everyone think that this..
https://i.imgur.com/JTBOG2j.png
..was going to be our future. Except it actually isn't, and this was all a breakdown in communication. Our megathreads are still going to be alive and well, supposedly. We're just going to let the people who aren't interested in megathreads post their own questions in separate threads now.
TL:DR: Everyone loses their shit because megathreads are being banned, and a bunch both follow mod instructions and shitpost to show that this is a bad idea. They all died, and then Garry clears up what's actually happening; which is that our megathreads aren't banned.
Just wanna quickly touch on this part right here, according to the changes page Garry added User Unbanning on April 3rd, so it's not end of the world for them.
Well unless some decide "fuck it, don't care about this site anymore" if or when they get unbanned of course.
I don't think making 20 shitpost threads for seperate dota characters is a going to do anything other than make you look dumb. It's also not a good way to express yourself about the changes.
I think the idea with "moving away from megathreads" is to create threads as ideas and events come, not preemptively create threads and effectively becoming "fractured megathreads".
Although their permabans were unwarranted, flooding the GGD like that was admittedly puerile.
If you are a gold member, I've got a casualty list in OIFY.
A good amount of those threads could be considered spam, Butthurter alone made around 20 quality threads such as "which TF2 character are you IRL"
i feel like the threads made for individual classes/DOTA heroes are debatable but what were people really expecting would happen making threads like "what tf2 weapon are you xD" or "i killed a bear in far cry whoa lmao xDDD"
Holocaust? more like idiot cull.
Because it was mod-sanctioned by multiple mods with no indication it was a bannable offense by any mods at all.
When brought up, mods told us to "make threads if you're unhappy about it."
Those who did were perma'd.
Film and television do not need to separate c'mon who thought of that.
A good chunk of them were absolute shitposts that had no place like "Heavy's Right Eyebrow", but a good chunk of threads were quite literally following the mod's own instructions. Whether they meant it as a joke or not is up for debate, but even the people blatantly shitposting didn't deserve to be permanently banned. At worst, they deserved a week.
as far as i know the only thing approved was threads for classes and shit and not what were basically shitposts that have always been bannable
Craptasket says "idk make a thread saying this sucks donkey dicks"
multiple people do exactly that akin to a mischievous genie taking a vague wish literally
Somehow they are surpised when they are permabanned
And yet even the classes were immediately banned. Even people who posted stuff about the classes were banned.
@Hybrid_Theory what point are you even trying to make here? People did what they were told to do and were permabanned. How is this not something to be irritated at?
The point is they deserved the ban. They knew full well they were making those threads just out of spite or to prove a point, one even admitted this in the FP discord.
I don't think people were referring to that. They're referring to when someone asked Hezzy what to do if they just wanna talk about TF2 and he said "make a thread for each class in TF2" so someone did and was completely serious about it with well thought out OPs. He even came to the discord to explain that he wasn't trying to troll, he was just trying to follow Hezzys advice and go with the flow
Maybe our community manager shouldn't be so unprofessional then
Of course they were, they disagreed with the changes.
How does expressing your feelings regarding a change by doing exactly what a mod says warrant being permabanned? Especially the permabanning of long-standing members at that
thats why i said those specific threads were debatable. some of them DID have shitpost-y content in the OP rather than being legitimate though. but did people think they wouldnt be banned for making 500 threads that just basically were "which TF2 character would you fuck", or that that would even be a good way of proving a point? it was just throwing a fit is what it was. the threads for characters were a good way to make a point (if they had legit content...), and making shitpost threads that would be bannable even under old circumstances were not.
Again, they literally did what they were told to do. In very black and white words, they were told to make those individual threads.
And they were permabanned for it.
You can read into it however you want, but the fact is they were told to make those threads and permabanned for it.
nobody told them to make shitpost threads that nobody would ever want to read or would ever even have any purpose in existing megathreads and would most likely have been banned for in them too. it was dumb to ban for such a lengthy amount of time overall, especially with the threads that they were actually told to make, though as i said im pretty sure a majority of the DOTA threads were shitpost OPs anyway.
Sure, if you knowingly break the rules.
These people were doing what they were told. And when mods were asked about it they said "there's no word on it so we'll wait til tomorrow" before there was a mass permabanning spree.
There was absolutely zero indication it was rulebreaking or what the intent of the new system was from Hezzy or Garry;
so people expressed their distaste (or otherwise compliance) with it by creating these individual threads as they were told to do so.
Combining everything accomplishes nothing and hurts everything.
Our brains are precisely designed to filter out boring things. The basic loop of people checking for new threads on a forum is reinforced when they find threads they like, and weakened when they find threads they don't.
By filling forums with threads people don't care about, you're essentially teaching them "it isn't worth looking for interesting things here". You're directly attacking the central interaction loop that makes people want to engage with your platform.
Have you ever opened Youtube when you weren't logged in? The front page is a huge mess of boring, uninteresting trash. Would you use it if it was always like that? Because that's essentially what you're doing with forums now. It doesn't matter how many times you show me the "jake paul reactions must watch!!" thread, I'm not interested in that content. And if a high enough percentage of a forum is that uninteresting content, I'll just stop going there altogether.
The best part is, the subforums I'm interested in aren't even really affected by any of this. So I don't even really care that much. It's just such an obviously bad idea, I can't help but point out why :v
Hezzy didn't tell anybody to spam anything. If the threads were created naturally and with the purpose of kickstarting discussion, they wouldn't have been banned. If you don't think that warrants a ban on Facepunch or you think they have a right to not be banned by someone on their own forums, you haven't been paying attention. Also Butthurter and Milktree? Yeah forgive me If I don't shed a tear.
This is all one big disaster. People getting banned for doing what they were told to do. All because something is trying to be fixed that was never broken in the first place. This screams something new for the sake of having something new without even having a solid plan in place on how to execute it. Seriously what is the end goal of making 99% of the users angry and making the forum in general harder to navigate for no reason besides "mega threads = bad"
This is stupid. Now you're forcing people to wait for the "right moment" to create threads or facing being permabanned? What kind of logic is that.
If the dude wanted to make some threads talking about TF2 characters and Hezzy permitted it, why was he still permabanned?
Why were all the people who were told to make individual threads in Meta expressing their distaste for the new update by Craptasket permabanned?
Stop trying to justify your argument by cherry picking examples, there was clearly something wrong here and the lack of communication doesn't help.
Genuine question, because I'm not trying to be snarky: what is the best way to go about it? I don't agree with people shitposting to make a point but people that have legitimately presented alternatives to the recent changes have either been ignored or been hit with a "lol get over it". I don't agree with the practice, but I don't blame people for shitposting in 'protest' when there isn't a clear solution. You can't fight a dismissive attitude with constructive criticism.
Just ignore him, he hasn't yet brought a single valid point to this discussion in any thread.
The fact someone genuinely wanted those threads created and was permitted to do so by the CM and was still permabanned is my problem.
If you don't understand this is a problem then we aren't going to see eye to eye and there's no point arguing about it.
Why are we having the same arguments over and over and over?
No-one told these guys to spam a ton of low quality threads about subjects they weren't interested in discussing. They did that because they're assholes. Not because of a lack of communication. Not spamming is common sense, it doesn't need to be communicated.
Hezzy told people that in theory they could create a thread for each character. He didn't say you must create a thread for each character - as soon as possible - and please make a ton of spam in all the other forums too.
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Timeline of Update 6 + What's actually happening
