Yeah armedmonkey, this is all your fault. I mean, Idle Thoughts says there’ll be an announcement in a week and you act like you expect an announcement within a week? Ed says the forum will be up in a few days, and you act like you expect the forum to be up in a few days? What the hell is wrong with you?
:rolleyes:
You do understand that the decision is made, and kvetching how wrong the decision is is quite counterproductive?
FFS, people, let it go.
They’re not kvetching about the substance of the decision, they’re kvetching about the slowness of the implementation of it and limitations being placed on the kvetching. Try to keep up. 
The helpful mods and admins of the Giraffe Boards timed themselves on how long it takes to create a new forum in VBulletin. The amount of time required ranged from two to four minutes, start to finish, the time difference to implementation being related to the inexperience of the mod in question and whether they’re using hands or hairy claws to type. In the time it took you to type out this bitchy little screed you could have had it done and saved. Which kinda makes your protestations of oh-so-much-too-busy-ness ring exceeding hollow. FYI.
The handling of the game room issue seems to be intended to get everyone to shut up about what everyone (including administration) knows is a real problem without ever fixing it. They tried denying that it was a problem at first, and after overwhelming convincing as to otherwise, instead gave us “the wheels are turning on this issue”, which has lasted months. When anyone asks for an update, the thread is locked.
Why they’re making so much effort to suppress discussion rather than taking the easier path of simply fixing the problem (and I’m sure they do know it’s a problem) is quite a mystery to me.
I’m expecting this to end up with something like “you asked about the gameroom 4 times in 5 months after we said we were working on it, you ungrateful bastards. Now you have offended us! No fix for you!”
Why would I give a shit? It’s only a message board.
I should add - I think we’ve all been quite patient on the game room issue. I waited 2 months to post my initial “so, um, update?” post, was told it would happen soon, and then waited yet another 2 months for my next “so, um, update?” post.
Given that the only thing that got the moderators to say that they acknowledge there’s a problem and the wheels are turning is loud, consistent, widespread public complaint, and only after quite a bit of that did they grudgingly move to act, for us to shut up almost entirely for four months shows faith in the board administration to actually act on what they said they would.
So if it turns out that it was all a trick to get us to shut up, that’s pretty disappointing and a betrayal of our trust.
The game room has been dying for months. Regulars there are leaving out of frustration with the situation on a daily basis. New people who could potentially be valuable posters are staying away from the forum because they’re greeted with that wall of nonsense when they check to see what the forum is all about. I’ve been a very active poster in the game room since the beginning, so I have a decent feel for who is there and for what. And it’s clear to me that the forum is being strangled to death for actual discussion.
There was an uptick of discussion in the forum in the last 6 weeks or so. Perhaps some of it was the end of NFL season, and the video game rush season for Christmas, but there was clearly life coming back. Only perhaps 30 of the top 40 threads were game threads for a while, instead of 37. I’m inclined to think that the promise that something would be done might’ve got some people who left it to dip their foot back into the pool. But when they see nothing has changed, those people - if they’re actually there at all - will be gone again.
We’ve lost a lot of people and a lot of discussion in those forums due to frustration and disgust. The longer the fix takes to come, the more people we lose. Are those people going to come back if the problem is ever fixed? Some, but not all.
I don’t know if there actually really was ever any plan to fix the game room situation, or if this is all a tactic to get us to shut up while nothing ever gets done, but if there really is a fix in the works, every day - week - month you delay is doing irrevocable harm to what’s left of the game room. Too much longer and there will be nothing to save.
At which point you will probably say “see, the forum is dead, no one even cared about the game room in the first place, why were you all making such a big fuss about it?” after you killed it.
I’m not trying to be antagonistic. I’m not trying to insult anyone over this. I’m trying to be polite and do what’s in the best interest of the boards. As someone who’s been here for almost 15 years now, and who has never tried to sabotage the boards or do anything but support quality discussion on them, I just want to fix the damn thing before it’s dead.
By the same small handful of posters, who I agree- have been loud & consistent. But “widespread”? Hardly. :rolleyes:
And perhaps “do what’s in the best interest of the boards” would be not raising a stink about this minor issue constantly?
I’ve stayed mostly away from this topic (actually, most of the board for reasons), so I hope my comments aren’t construed with the consistent complaints/comments from those more resolute to the cause. But the reason you give here, Idle Thoughts, is garbage. I’m reading it as “the reason there’s been no resolution is because there’s no resolution”. It’s entirely hypocritical to say you’re putting it through the mod loop, please be patient - and then to change the tune to “stop asking, it’s not happening”. Give us actual reasons. You’ve (apparently) been discussing the issue for months in The Loop - so tell us what that major points that came out of that were. Clearly they were persuasive enough to suggest that the status quo was good enough. And since there were multiple suggestions offered, there must have been discussion about those individual suggestions, right? What else could have taken up so much time?
And please, I don’t want to hear “it takes a lot of time to get everyone’s input on this - we’re not all online at the same time.” We’re talking about months here. If there are moderators on this board who can’t be bothered to discuss something over the course of several months, maybe their input on that particular subject may not be all that important to them/you/us. Get the Game Room mods’ opinions and anyone else interested in discussing it, and come to a fucking conclusion! “The reason is there’s no reason” is bullshit.
I’m confused at what you’re saying. It was never “We’re discussing it, please be patient” and then “stop asking, it’s not happening.”
What happened was “We’re discussing it, please be patient” and then “Okay, here is what we’ve decided”.
The post of mine you quoted was me giving a reason as to why the threads were closed while we were discussing it.
I’d like to toss my hat in the ring with those who advocate change in the Game Room. I enjoy discussing sports and occasionally gaming. The [GAME] threads are really distracting and tend to quickly push actual discussion threads out of sight. I’m not opposed to the games, but it would be nice if they had their own home.
Why were we not allowed to discuss it while you were also doing so?
As I said in post number 20 and again in post number 29, because it had already been talked about, across three topics, and didn’t show any signs of slowing down or coming to a resolve. With every solution offered, there was always a group of posters unhappy with it and arguing against it.
So we closed them all for the time being, that’s why.
So the argument is that the topic was just too interesting to people? You’re right, can’t have that.
That’s not really true, though, is it? I don’t think that any posters were really against the idea of creating a new forum.
I wouldn’t worry too hard about this–hey, the Barn House forum is still there, right?
And by “time being”, you mean “please never speak of this again”, right? Because “time being” is a load of crap. A few weeks is “the time being”. Several months is not a reasonable amount of time to come to nearly ANY conclusion, let alone what to do with a bunch of threads on a friggin’ message board.
I just wanted to add, before this thread inevitably gets closed, that the delay on the Game Room issue was what convinced me not to become a paying member of the SDMB. Once I finished grad school and got a paying job, joining and supporting the board was high up on my list of things to do. The way the Game Room issue has unfolded has changed that-- the initial issue was never a big deal to me, but the repeated delay and stonewalling certainly is, and I worry about the kind of precedent that this sets for the management of the board. It is really disturbing to me to see debate squashed with such a heavy hand. I’d rather take my money and reading time elsewhere.
[QUOTE=Munch]
And by “time being”, you mean “please never speak of this again”, right?
[/QUOTE]
You don’t see anyone discussing the move from AOL, do you? And some said that even going to AOL had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans, er, newspapers. Those people are probably not here anymore.
My thoughts:
-I’m a little annoyed at the delay in getting the subforum started, but what the hell, in terms of annoyances in life, it’s very, very low on the list.
-A few comments from a few mods/admins have been less than professional. That’s more annoying than the delay itself.
-While I understand the rationale behind shutting down discussion, I disagree with it. It was the original discussion that persuaded TPTB to set up the subforum. Even if there’s a very low signal-to-noise ratio, the existence of some signal means that the threads can be useful, as long as people remain civil. It may be that through discussion, some brilliant adjustment to the plan will become clear :).
-If people become incivil, it’d be much better to mod-note or warn those folks than to shut down discussion.
-Indeed, in ATMB, where criticism of mods is allowed, I think mods should be extra-careful not to shut down discussion. It’s perfectly natural to get defensive when you’re criticized, and to want to respond by shutting down that criticism; however, if criticism is gonna be useful, TPTB need to be aware of the propensity to get defensive and work against it. Call out individuals who are being abusive, sure–but if there are folks who aren’t being abusive, even if you don’t think the discussion is currently being productive, it’d be best to allow it to continue.