In order to hopefully make it a little easier for those who browse this forum on a daily or regular basis, we have added a prefix to all threads that are for the sole purpose of playing a board game or such. [GAME] (with brackets) means an actual game is being played in that thread.
A few things about this from here on:
Posters will be expected to keep up with this on their own if they want to/think it’s a good idea, but it’s not required. So…
Please don’t start reporting topics for not doing it. The mods will not be expected to mark every single new thread.
Please don’t start chastising posters (who don’t do it or forget to) in threads about it.
Feel free to give feedback here, in this thread.
If posters/regulars in here think it’s a good idea and like it, it will catch on normally. If not, then it will probably not be used much and die a normal death. Like I said, we’ve started it out for you, but it’s mostly up to you all to continue it now if you see fit.
Yes, I know it’s not as good as a solution as “Just make a whole other forum”, but at least it’s something.
And kudos to CK DEXTER HAVEN for coming up with this idea originally, trying to make a difference, and for all his hard work.
A few days ago, we had something that helped. labeling onlythread games as thread games, so that they could safely be ignored by people skimming the game room forum page. It made it very easy to simply see “game” and not read the rest of the title.
However, apparently, the new solution is to label every thread. And not only that, but the only difference between thread games, and game discussions, is that one will be in brackets. Which is an extremely subtle and nearly pointless difference when the entire point of labeling threads is so that you can quickly distinguish certain ones at a glance and ignore them.
So we had a solution that was:
relatively easy to implement (we only had to mark game threads)
moderately useful (you could just mentally skip over any time it said GAME
fairly likely to see compliance. Only those few people who started game threads would have to volunteer to mark their threads, or a moderator would have a relatively easy time marking only game threads.
And in instead we exchanged it for a solution that’s:
Harder to implement (now all threads, not just game threads, need to be labeled appropriately)
Far less useful (you can’t simply mentally skip over GAME because it might be a game discussion, so now you’ve got to read every thread title anyway
Less likely to be complied with, since people aren’t going to voluntarily do something as nearly pointless as this
So if we’re not going to see a solution like moving those threads out of here, could we at least go to the half measure that we had a few days ago in which only game threads are marked, so that we can more easily skim the page and ignore any thread that’s labeled that way?
We can sort them out so that it makes sense to you.
If we’ve mislabeled something, we’ll fix it as soon as we can.
And since you’re the marking these threads you can indicate as you need what’s going on. Discussion of games (as opposed to playing of games), that does seem to me to be a whole 'nother thing, so that makes sense.
Seriously, you want us to remember the difference between “GAME” and “[GAME]”? As I post this, at the top of the forum, is a thread entitled “[GAME] Computer games you’ve bought, possibly during a Steam sale, and never played”. It’s quite obviously a discussion about video games, yet it’s been tagged as a thread game. In fact, all the threads that aren’t about sports have been tagged as “[GAME]” whether they’re a thread game or not.
If the mods, who have just invented this distinction, can’t get it right, what hope the common Doper?
It would seem that this solution already made it past the first stage of “working it out” - they instructed Dexter to take down his solution as you can see in this post, deliberated on the issue, and then gave us a solution that does not work half as well and is doomed to failure. The consensus of the administration is that this obviously inferior half-measure should be done instead of Dexter’s somewhat useful half-measure.
What we need, as has been explained to you several times already, is not a distinction between sports and non-sports. It’s a distinction between discussion and non-discussion. Can you understand that?
DISCUSSION VS NON-DISCUSSION
Whether the discussion is about sports, video games, gambling, card games, it doesn’t matter. We need to differentiate the threads where people are having a discussion from the threads where people are playing a game.
As I said in this post, if you want to fashion the game threads as Dex originally had it (where only thread games were marked), that’s fine.
Nobody is required to continue on tagging sports or game talk threads.
But I don’t have that power. I’m not a moderator, nor do I start all the thread games. I cannot control which threads get labeled or not. The only thing I can do is not label my discussion threads, which is indeed part of Dexter’s superior solution here, but you’ve set up the dilemma where non-participation in labeling is encouraged because labeling discussion threads is pointless.
You seem to be trying to attempt what is essentially a discussion-ending cliché, telling me over and over again simply to do something that isn’t in my power to do, as if that’s a useful solution.
Instead, if there is to be an honest and open and productive dialogue for the betterment of this board, why don’t we discuss the specific implementation of any labeling system?
I have pointed out why this system is less useful, requires more effort, and is likely to lead to less participation and hence a collapse of the system, than the more useful, lower effort, higher compliance system we had just two days ago. Instead of simply repeating “if you don’t want to label your threads, don’t” as if it’s useful, please explain to me why your proposed solution is superior to Dexter’s.
If you cannot, and I suspect not a single person on this board outside of administration will agree with your current stance, then why won’t you consider re-implementing Dexter’s solution?
When you put a sticky on a forum suggesting posting etiquette to people, they’ll probably try to follow it. If you, in the very same thread, encourage people to break that system but refusing to adhere to that guideline, you’re deliberately setting up a system to fail.
This thread is for the discussion of your sticky thread in which to discuss a potential new change to posting etiquette. Rather than defending your decision against well-meaning, good faith, constructive criticism, you are essentially simply repeating “if you don’t like it, shut up”
Let’s discuss the actual merits of the implementation of this suggestion.
I outlined the benefits of the previous method implemented by CK Dexter Haven. Can you make a counter-argument and explain why the current suggestion in this sticky is a superior method to that solution?
Completely honest question (honest). What purpose does this serve, exactly?
I mean, this is The Straight Dope. It takes all kinds. I’ve read discussions on Ayn Rand, Tim Tebow, Borderlands, Hell’s Kitchen, boating, knitting, Spider-Man, the prospects of war with Syria, the French and the rudeness or lack of thereof, golf tips, gun rights, those stupid Chick Tracts, pencil-and-paper roleplaying…you look for it, there’s a good chance you’ll find it somewhere. Part of the thrill is going into a board and seeing what new thrilling/intriguing/ridiculous/unpredictable topic I’ll find next.
I remember the time before we had Cafe Society, and I found no shortage of music, movie, literature, and theater threads. I can understand wanting to spread things out so that topics don’t get shunted off the first page too quickly, but that’s what making a new board is for. I mean, if you want to find out if anyone’s started a thread about the Ryder Cup or Assassin’s Creed: Unity, you can do a word search. Or use this board’s search engine if it’s been a while.
About the only purpose this would serve is if for some reason you simply hated the very idea of topics about games, or sports, and I couldn’t imagine why.
I may or may not decide to go with this. Just like to know where exactly someone saw the need.
There’s more background about the original problem in this thread.
The problem was that thread games (where the point of the thread is post a lot to play a game, rather than to have a discussion) dominate the front page of this forum because a dozen or two people literally post several hundred to thousand times a week keeping the game threads constantly at the top of the page and drowning out the discussion threads. We asked that thread games be moved to their own forum, because they were fundamentally different from discussions and tended to crowd them out. The administration said that it wasn’t a problem, nor would a new forum be a solution even if it was.
CK Dexter decided to give us a half-measure to help navigate through the maze of thread games by labeling them all with a GAME previous. Therefore, if you were in the majority of game thread users who came here for discussion, you could quickly glance down the list ignoring everything that was labeled GAME. It wasn’t perfect - it wasn’t as good as having those threads in their own place - but it was better than what we had, it helped us more quickly distinguish and locate actual discussion threads.
The administration decided that they would revoke his solution, and instead apply the tag [GAME] to thread games, and GAME to discussions about games, ensuring that you could not simply skim down the page to find discussions where you wanted them, cluttering up the page with unnecessary labels. The upside of Dexter’s solution - being able to identify game threads at a glance and move on - was negated by this new solution, and with no upside. The new solution is simply worse across the board.
Essentially, what happened is that Dexter’s solution highlighted what they called a non-problem by showing just how many thread games were at the top of the game room at all times, and how far down you had to go try to participate in discussion. So instead, they’re attempting to clutter everything up by forcing unnecessary tags on everything so the domination of thread games isn’t so immediately apparent. And when the flawed new system that isn’t actually useful fails (that’s why they made it voluntary - they changed the current batch of thread titles to hide the fact that so many were game threads, and they’re hoping the current method is ignored by everyone so the whole thing goes away), then they can say “oh see, we tried to help you along, but all you guys just complained about it, see, we can’t do anything to please you” when in reality they’re attempting to obfuscate the problem that Dexter’s solution highlighted. The current system is designed to obfuscate the original problem, and then gradually fade away as people don’t comply with a useless system as they post new threads. If they really wanted the system to work, do you really think they’d use “[GAME]” and “GAME” to distinguish the two most common kinds of threads?
You can see more obfuscation and non-answers in this thread generated about the revocation of Dexter’s change. They are completely unreceptive to constructive discussion on the issue.
The problem is that you like reading discussions, but the Game threads are not discussions and don’t work the same as discussion threads.
Imagine the game threads were Marketplace advertisement threads in Cafe society, and every time you open Cafe society you see a front page of nothing but advertisement threads. You can’t participate in them, they aren’t discussions and so there’s nothing for you there. Eventually you stop going to Cafe Society because its just ads and nothing else.
Same thing with Game threads. They aren’t discussions, but they are stifling actual discussion.
For cripes sake, having some people label only game threads, and other label all threads, and other label none, is not going to help anyone! Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Try changing your sticky to suggest people only label game threads, and to not label discussion threads.
I liked Dex’s idea - label the game threads, and only the game threads. That made it much easier to spot the games, and to ignore all the rubbish about sports. Now it’s all a mess of labels, and I’m back to having to hunt for the games.