I’m not one to complain about the administration of this board (and I’m not trying to sound like a whiny bitch here, I’m just offering one opinion, for what it’s worth) but I feel like the Game Room is a problematic forum.
It’s ostensibly for sports, video games, and “board games” - i.e. text based, thread based games that people play with each other on the forum. But I don’t think these three things go together very well, honestly. It’s a muddled mix.
The “board games” seem to dominate. Of the 50 threads on the first page, more than 20 are game threads. I feel like this leads to threads about video games (and to a lesser extent, sports) getting pushed down repeatedly. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose, but I just feel like there are some very different things that are getting lumped together here.
I think there should be a “Sports” forum and a “Video Game” forum and a “SDMB Thread Game” forum.
Maybe that’s splitting it up too much, I don’t know. Maybe it’s more streamlined to not do that. I might be alone in thinking this, or I might have a lot of people that agree with me, I really have no idea. I’m not telling you what to do, either - it’s up to you, of course, this is just one opinion, and it’s certainly not offered in a spirit of complaint or bad intentions or anything else negative.
I agree completely with you, and would further suggest that we also add a “Politics” forum to keep the myriad “election” or “localised” political discussions out of GD or IMHO.
I’d like to see a “Sports” forum (even though I’m largely anti-sport) because I realise a lot of people do like it, and I think that different forums for “Thread Games” and a “Board Games” would be an excellent addition to the boards.
Personally, I think Computer & Video games have matured as an entertainment and art-form now to the point where they’re in the same category as Movies and TV, and should probably stay in Cafe Society; although I do realise that’s probably a bit arbitrary for many people…
Whilst I’m not in favour of spliiting the SD into myriad small fora, I do find that GD is swamped by American politics, which, of course, reflects the American slant of the Board. I’ve thought of discussing British politics, which rarely, if ever happens in GD, but (in a rather defeatist way) I fear that it would get lost. (With Gordon Brown, boy, do we have a lot to debate ).
I would be happy to be the moderator of the forum, if it were created. I don’t know what the qualifications to be a moderator are here, but in all my time on this board, I’ve always tried my best to not get personal with anyone else, treat everyone respectfully, stay out of drama, and try to see everyone’s point of view and be diplomatic. I mean, I’m not perfect or something, but I think I’m good at helping people get along with each other, in real life, so I could do it here. Do moderators get paid or something? You don’t need to pay me, if they do, I’d do it for free. I think if this hypothetical forum actually existed, it would be pretty tame compared to the other ones, so I don’t think it’d be that hard to moderate it to begin with.
While I didn’t count the number of threads of each type, I did just take a glance at the Game Room forum dates, and the last thread on the first page is from the evening of 6/19 (over 3 days old). If it’s taking longer than that for a thread to get a reply, it can’t be completely due to the forum’s topic mixture.
Moderators aren’t paid, although they get a free coffee mug. If you want to become a moderator, you have to send a message to TubaDiva (or is it Dex? I’m not sure and I can’t find it on search) and they will send you an application form for you to fill.
I don’t understand, the sports threads stay current enough in the forum as do the roleplaying threads. The more standard forum game threads do dominate, but at worst I can find my baseball, football and D&D threads by clicking to go to page two. This beats the hell out of the past when the sports threads were spread across various forums and the D&D threads were not even allowed.
We have a moderator that is a gamer and she respects the sports threads. It feels like it is working well and “the powers that be” (TPTB) have repeatedly resisted creating new forums. We begged for at least two years to get the new forum that we got.
It seems to be working out well. A purely sports forum would probably not be justified on this board and I actually prefer not being in the Cafe or MPSIMS with sports as we really got lost in those and the sports haters could not seem to resist jumping in to tell us how stupid we all were for liking sports.
A pure video game forum would also be underutilized. There have never been enough video game threads to support a separate forum. So now we have a catch all recreational forum simply called the game room. It is for talking about games, playing games and watching sports together. It might not be perfect, but it is working well.
BTW: None of the **Mods ** get paid, they all work for free except for a coffee mug. They even have to buy their own jackboots. There is one exception among the Admins, but her stipend is not for the board modding, but for maintaining the web pages and subscriptions.
Personally, I think the forums are fine as they are. I don’t see enough video game or sports threads to justify a forum of their own, and personally I use the board game threads as a diversion between other threads. If they were in a forum of their own I don’t think I’d go in very often. So I think the mix is okay.
We’ve talked about a politics-only forum before. I’m not alone in thinking it would kill Great Debates if those subjects were removed. And the politics forum itself could be fairly dead after this election cycle plays out.
Go ahead and start your British thread, Nine to the Sky. There are people here who are sick of threads about U.S. politics and they might see it as an interesting diversion and a chance to learn about something else.
Actually, my only problem with that forum is that the “board games” tend to get a lot less play. I think that traffic is lower all told in there, and a lot of people who used to drive-by participate don’t go out of their way to go in just for that.
I think it would be easier to save up for that Pony.
Serious question, why is it so hard to glance over the political threads?
(You are not the only one with the complaint, so I thought maybe you could explain it better.)
I find one poster seems to post an Op for any question that pops into his head. For some reason this gets annoying to me. When I use the New Post function, I find I see his name and pass right over the threads at this point. It seems like the same thing as skipping past the political threads.
I used to use the “new post” feature quite a bit, as it shows you what’s going on all over the board. I don’t use it that often anymore because of the 300 second wait between searches and when I do search half the page is “is Obama the anti-christ?, is McCain the anti-christ? Why doesn’t anyone understand Obama is the anti-christ, why doesn’t anyone else get that McCain is the anti-christ?”
It wastes 50% of the “new threads” results I get for my 300 seconds.
Wait, when I use the New Threads feature, it usually pulls up pages of New Threads. I can then go through, open the interesting ones in new tabs or windows from the first page and then go to the second page. So there is no waste, maybe it takes a little longer. You still get all the new threads whether it is 15 or 350 threads.
Thank you for the answer BTW, it makes sense, but maybe we use the New Threads feature in different ways.
It’s not that big a deal, but the reason we got a Sports & Games forum is people complained those threads were taking up too much space and bumping more interesting threads off the first page.
Personally, I never noticed much, but I have noticed the Hillary/Obama/McCain politics threads bumping everything off the first search page, and most of the thread titles are fallacious loaded questions.
And even of the sports fans on the board, we are overwhelmingly Baseball & Football. I have noticed Cricket and Soccer do better than NBA, NHL or Og forbid Nascar. I think it is the just the way the board skews.
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