At 9:25 this morning I posted to a thread in the Game Room. A mere 12 minutes later there were 9 threads above it, 7 of which were thread games. For comparison, there was a post at 9:25 in MPSIMS as well; 12 minutes later, there were 3 threads above it. Ditto Cafe Society.
The thread games are monopolizing the space at the top of the forum that all discussions depend on to attract contributors. Any mod who thinks this isn’t a problem, I’d ask you to consider how you’d feel if your favorite forum constantly looked like this (I’m just assuming that it will be awful whenever that link is clicked on).
I just wanted to post and say that anything that decreases the amount of clutter in the Game Room would be fantastic.
I like video games and I’m an active member of the SMDB gaming group. I sure would like to read through the Game Room for video game threads, but right now, I have to wade through so much stuff that I don’t even bother. I mean, as of the time I’m writing this, 11 of the top 20 threads in the Game Room are thread games.
Instead, I wait for oft wears hats to tell me about interesting threads, or I check what threads SenorBeef or Kinthalis have posted in. This is clearly not a good way to get interesting fledgling video game threads off the ground.
If game threads are not going to have their own forum or sub-forum, they need to stay in the game room. Whatever damage they are doing in the game room, they would do far more damage in any other forum. There just aren’t that many sports and video game threads. Threads in Cafe Society and MPSIMS already sink to the bottom of the page if no one posts to them in an hour or two.
Another option: Move game threads to Straight Dope Chicago or The Barn House.
Larry, due respect, but it doesn’t look as though you’ve read this thread very carefully. Every point you’ve made has been addressed; if you’re going to reassert them, it’d be helpful to acknowledge the rebuttals and explain why you think they’re insufficient.
But if we split them up, there’d be no problem anywhere. A few game threads at the top of a forum is a non-issue, but 12 game threads that are perpetually in the top 20 is terrible. It’s not a linear progression: you reach a tipping point.
The fact of the matter is this is the one instance where thread games belong buried in a sub-forum, period. But the powers that be just don’t give a shit, despite their reasons given, because it’s a PITA to get an admin (that is: Jerry) to do that.
That’s my conviction on the matter, and I think it makes the board experience worse off by its nature as a weed no one wants in their favorite forum, game/sports fans and perceived board-traffic equivocation be damed.
So you agree that game threads are toxic. You just want The Game Room to be the dumping ground.
It’s not like “talking about sports and videogames” is some obscure niche activity. There are entire message boards elsewhere on the web that consist *entirely *of talk about sports and games. NeoGaf, for example, is *bigger *than the SDMB and consists entirely of people discussing videogames.
There’s an opportunity in The Game Room to expand the readership of the board. But that involves making the game forum a place that’s welcoming, not a vacant lot that’s choked off by annoying threads the rest of the board doesn’t want.
This, I think, is the best solution. Something like “talk to me in movie quotes” would go to Cafe Society, as would “speak to me in only song lyrics”. Those are about movies and songs. " Made-Up, False and Flat-out Wrong Trivia Dominoes " should go in MPSIMS and shit like this complete waste of server space should be locked before it gets to the 97 pages it’s already at. Some of these “game” threads are too stupid to live. I’ve seen the mods lock stuff in MPSIMS for that. I don’t understand why they allow the thread I just linked to to continue.
Thread-game/chain threads are the “who farted?” of discussion board threads. They need to be boxed in a sub-forum, period. I get that it’s been “taken off the table of options” so sayeth the mods, but it’s the right move. Everything else are weak, sad excuses.
Ideally they would have their own sub-forum, but it looks like that isn’t happening. I’m loathe to suggest they should be banned, because people seem to like them. I just don’t think the solution is to move them from a less trafficked forum to a more trafficked forum.
Maybe another option would be to put a cap on the number of game threads allowed at one time. If there are more than, say fifteen active game threads ( posts within the last 48 hours, say) the mods can delete new ones with an explanatory pm to the thread starter. Might be too much work.
Not sure why a dedicated sub-forum is such a bad idea. I know TPTB don’t want to split the board into too many fora, but in this one case, where there are threads that some people really like but other people hate, it really would be the best solution. Can anyone other than Jerry do this?
Yeah, but screw those people. The thread I just linked to in my last post had this OP:
The damn thing has 4847 posts at the time I am writing this, all consisting of a single word. There’s no game there. There’s no theme. There’s no point. Shit like that should be killed with fire.
Oh snap! I just thought of a brilliant new app, Dictionary Dartboard. If only I knew how to make apps.
I add my tiny voice to the growing chorus of those supporting SenorBeef’s most recent proposition. Real games-as-threads would not be the clutter that the current this-is-kind-of-a-game threads have become. I do not object to whatever other Dope participants seem to enjoy, but I’ve seen more than a few posters in this thread explicitly state they avoid The Game Room because of those forum-clogging threads. The problem persists.
