Let me state right at the top that I understand that they are specifically permitted in the forum, they don’t break any rules (although post-padding has become the de facto result of them) and I am perfectly capable of ignoring them, which I do. My concern is the sheer number of them recently, and that they have the effect of driving other content off the page.
At this moment, of the first 25 threads, 22 of them are game threads, one is about an actual video game, and two are about Adrian Peterson.
I get that sports aren’t a great topic of interest on the boards, but the NFL and College Football have just started, baseball is going into their playoffs, and European soccer is back on again. Not to mention that the NFL seems to be imploding.
There are only a couple of dozen people that care at all about golf, and only a couple are on the board at any one time, so threads take time to get going, but in the past they did get going and the conversation was usually good and knowledgeable. I feel like if I started a thread on the upcoming Ryder Cup, it would get buried before another golf fan saw it.
If Cafe Society had 22 of 25 threads about Star Trek at the top, someone might feel the need to step in and say “Hold it down, people,” even though it breaks no rules.
I think it is getting to the point that it warrants a discussion, even if the answer is “Eh, that’s what people want” or “Shut your pie hole, golf fan.”
I know I’m not the only one who feels that it’s getting excessive.
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, as I rarely visit the Game Room, but it does seem like making a separate forum for sports discussions would make sense. Why not stick it down in Side Conversations? I’m sure more people would use it if threads didn’t get overwhelmed by game threads and it could potentially draw traffic to the board without swamping an existing forum.
The declining participation may be due to the fact that weeks 2,3, and 4 are generally the least competitive of the entire season. Why bother participating if you don’t think any of the Top 25 are going to lose?
My inclination would be to have a separate forum, or a sub-forum, for “play-by-post” games of the sort that are clogging up the game room at the moment.
Sports and video/board games are pretty different, but I’m not quite sure either generates quite enough volume to justify a forum of its own.
Yeah–I’m interested in the game room for video games, board games, and roleplaying games. I certainly don’t mind the sports threads in there, but the play-by-post threads make the forum much less useable for me.
Fuck the idea of a separate forum. I was against the “Games” forum to begin with, even though I am a frequent contributor in both threads and posts. This board DOES NOT NEED a plethora of sub-forums. That way lies madness, and kills any chance of cross-pollination and hybrid vigor. You want sports discussions represented? Start threads on them and contribute. Your golf thread died quickly? Sucks to be you. Nobody likes golf anyway.
I agree with the issue, but there do not seem enough sports threads for a separate subforum. I would prefer to see them in Cafe Society than where they are now,
And while putting the idea forth every so often is okay, it just seems like it’s too soon to revisit it right now. The staff discussed it over a few days last time and this was the decision.
As I said in that post, the idea was considered and liked by some, but in the end, it was figured that it isn’t necessary right now.
I think they’d go well in Cafe Society. More people would see them and comment in them. I like gaming discussion threads, but not enough to wade through all the play-by-post threads in the Game Room. There aren’t so many sports/games threads that they would overwhelm the place if they were in Cafe Society. And they fit the general entertainment theme of that sub-forum.
Seperating sports into their own forum is an arbitrary non-solution. That doesn’t solve the issue of the game threads at all and just picks one topic of the subforum to exclude for no good reason (why not video games or board games getting their own forum?)
Game threads are the problem. Splitting off anything other than the game threads only fractures the board and doesn’t solve the original problem.
You’re missing the point. On this board, we separate boards by category. Some types of discussion naturally go together. Game threads are not a difference of category, they are a difference of type.
In most forums, threads remain at the top because there’s a lot of interest in them and people are posting frequently because the topic is interesting or topical or the discussion is unusually good. On the other hand, game threads get a lot of low-content posts to bring them to the top constantly by their very nature. They dominate the forum listings of whatever forum they’re in, because they don’t work like other threads.
“Cross pollination” is not an issue, because it’s not as if anyone playing the A-B-C-D post game is going to say “oh, huh, a Destiny thread, that’s totally what I’m here for” - game threads are a separate entity that really don’t belong or synergize with any other content. In fact they merely push out content.
The boards don’t benefit from having a particular number of subforums that are set in stone. They benefit for splitting off a forum when it makes sense, when the overall health of the board is increased by doing so.
Game threads are of a different type, they do not synergize with any other sort of content and in fact they strangle it and push it out. They are essentially a scourge of whatever forum you put them in. Now I’m not saying people are wrong to play in game threads - I’m just saying they should be their own entity so they aren’t ruining the dynamics of the board.
There is no downside to splitting off game threads into their own forums - the same group of people typically play a lot of game threads a lot, and they will certainly move with the forums. There’s no lost synergy because they are sufficiently different in type of content that they don’t bring that to any forum. On the other hand, removing them from the game room removes a stranglehold where 22 of the top 25 threads are game threads.
I can even suggest that people who are thinking “I’m in the mood to play in a thread game” would benefit by having a dedicated forum to those sorts of things, so they don’t have to wade through the non-game threads in the forum.
I can tell you I peruse the game room page a lot less often because it’s tedious when you have to look hard for threads that might be interesting. While it’s sort of an odd pairing, with sports and video games and other sorts of discussions that don’t naturally go together, at least those discussions are of the same kind, and not a totally different entity like game threads.
I suspect the entirety of the reason people think game threads belong is simply because it’s named “the game room”, and obviously the names line up. Why should sports get a special reprieve from the thread game clutter, but all other content in the game room gets hosed?
Remember that all such threads used to be part of Cafe Society, but got split off when it was clear that there was enough interest for a separate forum. NOT all game-threads are in the Games forum, there are plenty games-threads in Cafe Society, f’rinstance.
I think it does go in cycles; there may be lots of games-threads on front page now, but come World Series or SuperBowl or Olympics, the sitch changes.
