Now you’re moving the goalpost.
It should be telling to everyone (and this has been pointed out already) that the mods are at once
a) Unwilling to admit that the threads in the game room are choking out non-game discussion.
b) Unwilling to move even a portion (a “small minority” of the existing game threads, mind) of them to another forum because that would bother users in THOSE forums.
I said the same thing to VarlosZ that I said to you. I did a quick count and didn’t think some of the game were pop-culture related when it could be argued that they are. If you want to say that 40% isn’t a small minority, OK. But it’s still a minority, and I don’t think moving some of those threads will make that much difference. I’d like to make it easier for people to find or avoid game threads rather than splitting those up, which will make the threads harder to find. The whole point of having forums is making it easy for people to find what they are looking for.
Correct.
‘It’s choking the forum’ isn’t equivalent to ‘users of forum A won’t want discussions from forum B.’
Here’s the thing, though: people who like movies are no more or less likely to be interested in a word game than people who like football, but the movie people are way more likely than the football people to be interested in a “game” that consists of nothing but movie quotes.
The thread games will make it harder for people to find what they’re looking for no matter where they land, but that’s a problem that grows in a non-linear fashion as the thread games cluster together and start crowding everything else out. Moving 1/3 of the thread games from Game Room to Cafe Society – where they’re a better fit anyway – would help the former more than it hurts the latter.
Except why are we pretending that users of different forums are distinct groupings? The only distinct groupings are the spheres of influence of the moderators.
Senor Beef, let me speak frankly to you.
We appreciate that you have a field of conversation and etc. that is very meaningful to you. We’re glad that you choose to have these conversations on this site; we like to think that most anything can be discussed here. The stuff you like is just one facet of this crazy diamond.
But your field of interest is not the majority field in the Game Room forum. There’s not a more appropriate place on the board for your interests than The Game Room. There’s not a more appropriate place for game threads than The Game Room.
There’s not enough traffic in your chosen field to justify a separate forum. If there was we’d consider splitting the forum, it would make sense. But there’s not enough currently generated to spin off sports on its own.
We are opposed to subforums – that’s the other alternative suggested – but a subforum approach would hide both forums from direct view. That is Bad For Business. It would be less traffic instead of more. Traffic is the heartsblood of a website.
Unless and until sports has a bigger following – big enough to justify splitting it off into a separate area – it’s going to share space with other similar interests in The Game Room forum. The game people are as entitled to express themselves here as you are, as everyone else is, and they shouldn’t be kicked out or kicked around just because you don’t like them. That’s not how it works here.
If moving some of those threads while keeping others where they are would satisfy a significant number of posters, would that be a compelling argument in favor of making the move?
Edit: I ask because I think there’s a strong reason to do just that, and I suspect that it’d garner a lot of support, but I don’t want to take the time to articulate the reason in detail unless it has a chance of being taken seriously.
That’s not true at all. There are plenty of posters who only use certain forums and avoid others. There are posters who don’t go to GD, the Pit, MPSIMS… you name it.
That’s an interesting point. We’ll have to look at who is posting to which threads and see if there’s a lot of overlap or just a little.
So does this all mean we’re not getting a “Boo!” forum this year?
Are you saying my “field of conversation” is “discussions about video games, sports, RPGs, card games, board games”? In other words, the intent of the game room when formed?
What? Yes it is! How in the world could you think otherwise? The thread games exceed the discussion threads in post count because a few dozen people are making thousands of low content posts per week, not because game threads are more popular than discussion. If you actually look at the number of people participating in discussions, and factor in that lurkers are BY FAR more interested in discussions than games they’re not actually participating in, how can you possibly say that thread games have greater interest than discussion threads within the game room?
That’s true. Discussion of video games, sports, RPGs, card games, and board games belongs in the game room.
That’s simply not true. As others are pointing out, “list Simpsons quotes” threads belong in café society. I would argue that more mundane, abstract, and pointless threads like Free Association belong in MPSIMS.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
After pages and pages of these discussions, and me writing endless paragraphs in an easy to understand clear manner, with justified reasoning about them, detailing exactly the problems of thread games and several proposals about them
**YOU THINK I AM TRYNG TO SUGGEST THAT SPORTS THREADS BE SPLIT OFF INTO THEIR OWN FORUM?
**
Could you please recuse yourself from this decision in favor of someone who is actually interested enough to read the discussion about the topic at hand?
My last post is not an overreaction. It is, in fact, an underreaction. Tuba has participated and read the threads where we’ve discussed this, including this threads, but also previous threads about the problem that thread games pose in the game room. Including, for example, this post in a thread that Tuba participated in:
Quoting myself:
As far as I know, Tuba is sort of the head person on these sorts of issues, the one who makes the final decision, and yet, despite participating in several threads about this subject, at this juncture does not even understand what the discussion is about.
This is staggering to me, utterly jaw dropping, and beyond that I don’t even know what to say.
Look SenorBeef, no matter how much you keep asking they’re **NOT **going to make a separate forum just for the Mini-Rants threads.
I must say this is a remarkably ham handed and tone deaf post.
You know what, Beef? It’s cool, because:
I’ll say it again:
Non-game activity in the game room is almost identical to non-game activity in MPSIM.
Since MPSIM obviously has enough traffic to justify existing, then surely non-game Game Room activity has enough traffic to justify its own thread? Right?
Senor Beef, sorry if I misstated your interests. Not meant to hurt your feelings or insult you or anyone else.
I’m not sure you’ve looked hard enough at the traffic to make the claim you’re making, Johnny Bravo. Maybe there’s a better measurement than looking at part of one day’s activity.
That’s true. It would take a survey across many days.
Do you have that data? I’ve only been counting for a few days now, but perhaps you can look into information that I don’t have and show me that I’m wrong?
Because we’ve now been given a clear metric for what would justify a new forum: if non-game threads in the Game Room have traffic that is roughly equivalent to an already existing forum, then a new forum would be on the table.
No, what you did was far greater than that.
While you will hide behind the idea of consensus, you’re ultimately the person making the decisions on these issues.
You didn’t hurt my feelings or insult you or misstate my interests.
You have shown that, despite participating in threads where the subject at hand has been laid out at length several times, you do not even understand the topic of our complaint.
I have laid out many, many paragraphs describing why thread games do not mesh with the discussion content of the game room. I’ve done so in a very simple, clearly stated, and even redundantly-explained way. Many other posters have said that they agreed with me entirely, and that I stated their argument as well as they could’ve.
The entire discussion has been about why thread games are fundamentally different than discussions, and what to do about them.
So for you to come in here and say “nope, clearly you want a separate sports forum, and that’s not going to happen” is not merely tone deaf, but a staggering inability to comprehend something that has been explicitly and comprehensively laid out in various discussion threads in which you yourself are a participant.
I don’t understand how it’s possible that you could read and participate in these threads and POSSIBLY THINK THAT ANYONE IS ASKING FOR A SEPERATE SPORTS FORUM. It makes no sense whatsoever, has been explicitly contradicted in this thread, and doesn’t even address any of the points people are making. It’s as if we were complaining for days that our house is on fire, and you came in said “I’m in charge here, and I’m sorry, but I have to deny your request to have your parking space changed”
For you to have such a staggering misunderstanding of what your users are asking for despite it being argued extremely clearly indicates that, at the very least, you aren’t actually interested in listening or discussing our proposals, and that’s being generous.
Really, is no one else’s mind blown by what just happened? The person with the ultimate decision on this issue just showed that they have no understanding whatsoever of what we’ve all been saying.
To expand slightly on what I said before:
I’m willing accept that many thread games have to stay in GR. I think they’re a better fit theoretically in MPSIMS or their own forum, but if that’s not practical for whatever reason, I understand. (Others no doubt feel differently.)
However, most of the pop culture thread games are not really “games” by any reasonable definition. Speak to me Only in Song Lyrics isn’t a game: it’s a thread about song lyrics. The only thing it has in common with games is that it (sort of) has rules, but we know that that doesn’t make it a good fit for the Game Room since no one comes to the Game Room because they’re interested in rules. On the other hand, lots of people go to Cafe Society because they’re interested in music.
As for their not being enough traffic to support a sports-only forum: that’s probably true, but there is enough to support a sports+video games+poker+miscellaneous games forum. This is evidenced by the fact that such a forum got along just fine before the recent explosion of thread games. Moreover, if the thread games (or some portion of them) were moved to a different forum, that would lead to *more *discussion in the other topics covered in GR. The top of Page 1 is prime real estate. If that real estate is largely dominated by thread games, that will lead to less discussion in every other thread.
It won’t happen.
No amount of long-winded posts are going to make it happen.
This displeases you.
Can we get over it?
No? Okay, carry on.