Game Threads in The Game Room

OK. I just added a new forum on a different message board that I help to administrate. Without rushing at all, it literally took me one minute and three seconds to add a new forum.

  1. Go to the Admin Control panel
  2. Go to to the “Forums and Moderators” menu
  3. Click on “Add a new forum”
  4. Type in the title of the forum
  5. Type in the description of the forum
  6. Click Save.

It did take me some number of seconds to find a couple of things but with the instruction guide that I just provided, you should easily be able to break the minute mark. I will concede that ten seconds would be difficult.

Yes, I spend a fair amount of time in the AdminCP and I think 20 seconds is probably the lowest reasonable amount of time one could expect to spend creating a new subforum for an existing forum, and that assumes you’re going to leave all the settings at their default values. If you want to set them to match this board (disable images, post icons and thread ratings), I’d plan on at least two or three minutes just to be safe.

How long would it take you if you didn’t have administrative rights?

Besides, we’re not so convinced it would be a good thing for the board anyway. Wasn’t convinced earlier. We understand what people are saying but we’re reallly not inclined to change it, even if we could.

I totally agree with all of this. All I was doing was refuting the claim that the logistics would be difficult for someone with Admin rights.

Perhaps, but both you and I know that this isn’t how the board is run. There is a ton of inertia to get anything changed on this board. I think you need to make your proof as strong as possible.

BTW, I would support a rule (or guideline) to explicitly label thread games, to make them easier to ignore if people are so inclined. That’s something it wouldn’t take an Admin to do, and might be a compromise that would help.

Why? Since you’re clearly one of the “No” votes, own up to it. Tell us why you don’t think a thread games sub-forum is a good idea.

The mods are still discussing, and we are not even vaguely close to consensus.

  • Some mods say they visit the Game Room frequently, and don’t think of it as a problem
  • Some mods think a subforum would be OK, but no one feels strongly
  • Some mods note that lots of games are currently in CS, and conceivably other places-- e.g., a political game could go in Elections – so it would be a good idea to have one forum
  • Some mods note that lots of games are currently in CS, and conceivably other places-- e.g., a political game could go in Elections – and they like that things are spread around and don’t see reason to change

So, we’re still discussing, but the direction seems to be as noted by TubaDiva: there’s not a compelling reason to start a new forum. (PLEASE NOTE: “direction seems to be”, there is no consensus yet.) We are considering other options. Yes, game-threads tend to get more responses and stay on the front page longer, but during the Olympics, those threads tend to get lots of responses and stay on the front page longer, so that the golf threads are harder to find.

There are no thread games in CS.

There are threads of the form “post a bunch of quotes from some source or another” in both The Game Room and in Cafe Society. Maybe you don’t consider those to be thread games, but whatever they are, they’re spread around.

Name one in CS.

Heck, I’ll name three:
Random Star Trek Quotes: Random Star Trek Quotes - Thread Games - Straight Dope Message Board
Random Star Wars Quotes: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=733790
Have You Ever Seen A Grown Man Naked?: Have you ever seen a grown man naked? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

If anything, game threads should reside in one specific forum, regardless of what they’re about, be it a new forum or an existing one. At least, that’s my opinion.

Folks, we’ve been through this. And you know the answer already.

We’d rather have a thriving active forum and not slice and dice it to death in subforums. For some that’s like having your vegetables touch your meat and we realize it’s not what you like but that’s how it’s been and most likely how it’s going to stay.

It is what it is. It’s not the personalized experience you might like but it’s the best we can manage with things being as they are.

We do think if you take an extra second and make your titles more descriptive and even consider marking them (SPORTS) or (GAME) or whatever, that may well make them easier for others to locate in the forum listing. So do your fellow Dopers a favor and try this and see if this doesn’t take us in a better direction.

You left out Rabbit Season. It didn’t start out that way, but Dopers used it as an easy setup to start posting random Looney Tunes quotes.

How are random quote threads games?

I disagree that you refuted the claim. From my observations, when someone is asked to do a technical task, a good portion of the time it takes is not just the technical aspect itself but the communication, coordination and planning involved in setting up the technical part. It’s misleading to say that the technical part only takes a small amount of time or effort when there’s so much more involved.

In the example you gave, the forum you set up had the wrong permissions set, didn’t have a good description of the forum, didn’t have a reason for the forum, didn’t have any communication surrounding the start of it and didn’t have a discussion about why the forum was needed. As a result, within minutes, there were questions from posters about what was going on. Some of that is inevitable, but better communication and coordination (which takes time) would have alleviated some of that.

I would hope that doesn’t happen if a new forum is set up here.

“Things being as they are” is code for “nobody but Jerry the Tech God has admin rights”, correct? I don’t believe that to truly be the case, and if it is, then it’s just silly.

So instead of experimenting with a feature that would take less than 20 minutes of your time to configure (as has been demonstrated upthread), you’re putting the onus on everyone who starts one of those threads from now until forever?

As someone who’s been around here for a really long time, I feel like you guys (the mods/admins) think nobody on this board other than you understands how this stuff works so you can exaggerate its difficulty. We’re then supposed to bow down because you “do a difficult job and do it just for the jackboots and coffee mug”, so we’re lucky to have what we get. I find this attitude astoundingly arrogant, rude, and outdated.

If you’re unwilling to take suggestions from your members about potential changes to the board, then perhaps you should promote someone who isn’t afraid to try. If it turns out to be a bad idea, so what? Besides, it’s not like it’s going to cost you any money.

You really see no difference between the CS threads quoted above and

Speak to me only in Movie Quotes

Speak to me in succinct song lyrics

Speak to me in INCORRECT song lyrics

Speak to me only in science fiction

Speak to me only in song lyrics

or

Speak to me only in Simpsons Quotes?

Fair enough but it’s hardly a Herculean task and it’s totally irrelevant because they wouldn’t ask Jerry to do it if it was ten seconds or ten hours. Someone added a Boo forum for Halloween a couple of years ago and we recently had an April Fools prank where they changed the name of every single one of the Forums and then changed them all back 24 hours later. Do you really think that either or those things took more than a few minutes of someone’s time?

If you’re sure of that, then pointing out the actual length of time it takes to do the technical part is just misleading and not adding to the discussion of the relevant issues, since you think that part is irrelevant.

I can’t guess about the time it took to do the actual task, but I do think that it took a bit of planning, communication and coordination before the event that took more than a few minutes.

I can only guess that there are other considerations in setting up a new forum. I asked for a new forum on another message board. The resistance I got would make it seem like I was asking for the moon instead of something so easy as you’re describing.

But the reasons had nothing to do with the technical difficulty of setting it up. Just like here.