The current state of play of the forums - General

the mod team was deeply concerned about what was going on https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/58157/18076dbc-d7a6-4653-9087-10ac6bde00a9/image.png

My current issue with the forum is the lack of balance between information and relevance. I'm simply overwhelmed by choices. Looking at the homepage, I see each section followed by all the different sub-sections; clicking on any category, I'm still getting hit by the subsections and it's fucking annoying. I like the idea of subs, but it needs to be more presentable. The goal of categories is to filter information accordingly -- not to keep irrelevant information lingering around. This is as simple as changing the aesthetic around a little bit so isn't always biding for our attention. If I want to filter down further, then I'll do that. Otherwise, let me just see the broad strokes of what's going on. That said, the whole forum either needs to be categorized or megathread-ed at this point; you can't have a 2D sub and then have a pseudo 2D megathread going on at the same time. I also think we might've rushed the process to diversify. We became so excited by the prospect of creating all these different categories that we didn't really sit down and think about what we needed and what we didn't. Case in point: fashion and science each have three threads and nobody has posted in the therapy subforum.

A shit one, sure. It's one that can freeze while simply trying to text people it's so shitty. I'm really not sure why I should need to use a totally separate service to discuss the forums with the community manager though.

WHAT I'm not going to allow some stinkin' ALGORITHM dictate what I'm going to read.

They just thought it was interesting.

This is largely irrelevant to the thread itself, but I'm pretty sure that's actually due to your phone? Mine chugs a bit sure, but it hasn't actually frozen on mine at all yet.

This x100; I have a sneaking suspicion that @Hezzy will just silently ignore this though, as it's such an irredeemable fuck-up that there's really no good way to spin it. I digress though, after all, he's done sooooo much already, "trawling" through Tudd's threads to find the relevant ones and issue a ban.

Since a few people have posted about their general experiences since update 6, I thought I'd take a moment to say that I'm adapting pretty well to the new, pretty messy, sprawl to the forums. It's not as hard to navigate as they appear, and I think everyone sticking with it will iron out some of the design issues. That being said, I also wanna take a moment to plug/remind everyone of @nummy 's great suggestion, found here. Garry himself has already acknowledged the idea as an interesting one and is looking into how to deal with it technically, but I thought it was still worth bringing up again due to how well it would work with the new forum design. Essentially giving every post the option to be quoted in a new thread, forking a line of discussion from one thread into an entirely new thread. Not only is it going to be way, way better for breaking up the generals really naturally over time (and finding out what subforums still need generals in the first place), but I think it gels really well with the direction the forum is headed in general. Not to mention it seems like a pretty unique feature, I haven't been on any other forums that really encourage such posting patterns.

At least give us the option to not show subforum threads in the parent forum. Showing subforum threads in the parent forum is not completely useless, but is frustrating and cluttered for the people who don't like/want it.

Seconding this. I have no interest in overwatch or any of the battle royale games, and would rather hide the threads and free up space in the main board for other stuff that I potentially may not have heard of. I probably wouldnt have heard of Warframe or Tribes way back when if it wasnt for the thread here.

This is exactly why I made a big post about it in the thread hezzy said he's going to link to other stickies. So he can't ignore it without looking like a silly billy!

This forum shipped without the ability to unban people, to report people to mods, and to PM people. There's not having features ready, and then there is not having basic functionality ready.

garry is unsure about PMs because they're not really private unbanning should work now garry wants to be less ban happy overall

i think it might be a bit too late for that

Tudd was an asshole and all but I don't want to spend any energy or brain cells thinking about him anymore. what good does it do complaining about it still

Because it sets a fucking shit standard, and exemplifies a double standard. It shows that the moderators and admins that let him keep posting and fucking up the community (which is the only God damn thing they should care about if they're volunteers FFS) allowed it to happen intentionally for over 2 years when the entire website was bitching about him from the start.

fucking up the community I really don't think Tudd's trolling did that. The entire forum enabled him which probably created the idea that he was serious. All people had to do.. is like not respond, but by making constant issues and formulating valid arguments the narrative suggests that people subconsciously liked the Tudd banter and really weren't that bothered by it. Maybe there should have been a petition or something but it's too late now.

So according to you, the optimal way to deal with people is to... not give them valid arguments. Got it.

people still engaged with his posts. whether positive or negative. i'm just amazed one poster created this much controversy..

For the most part, people engaged with him civilly and intellectually and tried to debate him on reasonable grounds that he absolutely refused to play on himself. Trying to blame his garbage on the people who engaged with him is just stupid. He stirred up shit very intentionally.

The only reason Tudd wasn't banned was that he wasn't "breaking the rules." All this did was tell me that as long as you don't do something stupid like admitting to what you're doing, you can get away with a lot, even when it's blatantly obvious what you're doing.

So if someone is trolling then nobody should ever respond to them. Seems reasonable enough at face value but there's two flaws with that. The first is that it's not always possible to tell when someone is trolling. The second is that being able to ignore trolls is not valid justification for mods ignoring trolls despite admitting they are exactly that.

people complained he made racist threads why reply to them?

Because just ignoring it doesn't get the mods to do something. Ignoring him would have been valid if we could rely on the mod team to take care of him. Except they didn't. And any time some of them did try, it got reversed.

collectively calling him out publicly was so pointless...

I literally just explained why it wasn't so... I don't know why you'd continue to think that without providing reasoning. It's simple. Mods won't do shit so what option do the users have to get something done about it? Hezzy claims nobody ever provided him with the evidence he asked for but that's not actually true. People did on several occasions but Hezzy seemed to just write it off as not good enough or something so people gave up even bothering.

it was pointless because all it resulted in is him getting fuel for his "supposed rhetoric" it's literally like going up to Katie Hopkins on purpose, you know what kind of conversation it will be and you won't gain anything from it..

So that makes it okay? What an ass backwards piece of logic.

Yes, there is a Refugee Camp subforum but we've no means to link it to banned people. Garry has expressed his dislike for the Refugee Camp but I will putting an argument for its use to him. I'm not moving discussion off of the forums, the roundtable is to compliment the discussion on the forums and offers people the opportunity to sit down with me and potentially other moderators in a fast time discussion. The stream will be properly publicised and people will get the opportunity to submit questions beforehand. This thread and by extension this entire subforum is for the discussion of the forum. I will post a sticky in GD directing to here This would be cool. During the last stream canl mentioned having some kind of alert system or ticker to advertise when people are playing games. I'd love a feature like this. You could submit a question. As stated numerous times before, this is a temporary solution. The stream will definitely be a complimentary feature, not the main forum.

"Problem? What problem? There is no problem. There was never a problem." It's like I'm reading the news.