Have all the "Official X Threads" hurt forum participation?

[jp1]

I agree that the politics thread itself had to go, I don't think a permanent sanction on these types of discussions was productive. It's only my opinion, however, to me this is one point we fail at as society as a whole and I was sad to see that despite some missteps we couldn't overcome that challenge in this community. Sure you could correlate causation of all the events that transpired to just that thread or you could look at a bigger picture of turmoil on the threads during that time. I remember a lot of issues taking place with people being dissatisfied with decisions made about moderation, banning, policing of language and such. Obviously this is not something I always agreed with, if you look back you will find that I was vocal about how hard and thankless the job of moderation must be. I always felt comfortable here to speak my mind, and that never changed until everything came to a head on the back of those months. Like I said though, I don't know what else might have been done...it's easy to say what was wrong, harder to say how it should/could have been handled better. I definitely don't mean any disrespect to those who were tasked with the decision.

As for pointing to the catch all threads, I disagree, this did happen...and it happened many times. Probably not often to those of us who were regulars, but certainly to newcomers and relatively new members. I remember this distinctly because I had a debate about that leaving a sour taste in people's mouth and being a hindrance to entry into such a well developed community. Perhaps that has changed, but it was absolutely a part of the racketboy culture at one point.

To that point, I didn't mean to insinuate it had ever happened to me. I would feel quite comfortable creating the switch thread in my example and be confident it would be responded to with thoughtful suggestions. In any case, I'm not trying to paint a negative portrait of this community or it's team of moderators. The discussion about what may have been a contributing factor to the decline of the forums just left me open to some thoughts I've had for some time. Racketboy will always be a community I love and respect. That's the part that saddens me enough to speak up at all about it... I don't have contemptuous feelings toward anyone here past or present and to know that we had to part ways in the way we did is a real bummer. To have watched many of us (again myself included) devolve into name calling, finger waving bystanders in the destruction of years of kinship, without the chance to voice how misguided we might have been in some of our views due to our anger just made me feel uncomfortable in the community in general.

[Ziggy]

Welcome back, jp! Hope you stick around! And thank you for sharing your thoughts. Come to think of it, "We already have a thread for that," was actually someone's catchphrase.

[marurun]

I do think we've changed a bit as time has gone on. We're actually pretty split these days between classic games talk and modern games talk. There was always modern talk, but the balance has shifted more now. I was definitely more on the "there's a thread for that" side, at least for more specific threads or questions. I hate having a billion threads all on the exact same minutia, but I also agree that those broad monolithic threads can be intimidating. But I think we're doing a little better about spreading out a little from that now that we're more aware of it.

[pierrot]

Yeah, 'don't start a duplicate thread,' was definitely thrown around a lot, in the past. I'm sure I was guilty of it, too. I can't even remember the last time I've noticed anyone saying that, though. (Actually, I do remember some threads not too long ago about recent news in video games, where more than one thread was made around the same time, but I don't think that's what you mean.) I remember a lot of new threads popping up constantly, back in the "old days." Not having too many of the same thread was kind of like a preliminary level of filtering. I still kind of worry about whether or not there's already a similar thread from years ago when I start a new thread, though. Shit runs deep.

I pretty much always avoided the politics thread, and really only saw things that spilled out into other threads, so I'm not sure what was said that you might regret, jp. I think you could safely let it go, at this point, though. I think there may be a handful of older members who very occasionally still lurk here, and maybe a thread for burying the hatchet might draw some back in, if you felt like you needed that. I don't know. Probably a long-shot, anyway.

[Ack]

I don't think jp1 needs to bury the hatchet with anyone. Even at the most heated, I don't recall a time ever feeling like he was crossing a line or something. He was always cool in my book.

Welcome back, jp1. It's good to see you.

[MrPopo]

My main beef with jp is his name is too similar to JT's, and his avatar with the frog makes me think that JT (Jungle Toad) just changed his avatar up.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I agree that the politics thread absolutely needed to be burned to the ground. There are too many topics these days where middle ground or resolution is genuinely not possible, and that's only gotten worse in the time since we burned down the politics thread. I'm very happy having RB be a place where I can go to to chat about mah video games without being reminded how awful the rest of the world is.

[jp1]

Yeah, 'don't start a duplicate thread,' was definitely thrown around a lot, in the past. I'm sure I was guilty of it, too. I can't even remember the last time I've noticed anyone saying that, though. (Actually, I do remember some threads not too long ago about recent news in video games, where more than one thread was made around the same time, but I don't think that's what you mean.) I remember a lot of new threads popping up constantly, back in the "old days." Not having too many of the same thread was kind of like a preliminary level of filtering. I still kind of worry about whether or not there's already a similar thread from years ago when I start a new thread, though. Shit runs deep.

I pretty much always avoided the politics thread, and really only saw things that spilled out into other threads, so I'm not sure what was said that you might regret, jp. I think you could safely let it go, at this point, though. I think there may be a handful of older members who very occasionally still lurk here, and maybe a thread for burying the hatchet might draw some back in, if you felt like you needed that. I don't know. Probably a long-shot, anyway.

I don't have any specifics to detail really, and I feel making a thread would be skirting the line around the rules (especially if the intent was to have the discussion I want to have). I'll just say, I know I made some people feel judged for their choices in ways they didn't deserve. Stepping back and watching all the petty fighting that takes place all around us, and just how far we have moved away from what used to be a reasonable discourse, I certainly regret being any part of that. Hopefully anyone that may have felt that way will read this.

I don't think jp1 needs to bury the hatchet with anyone. Even at the most heated, I don't recall a time ever feeling like he was crossing a line or something. He was always cool in my book.

Welcome back, jp1. It's good to see you.

Thanks Ack! Good to see you too man.

My main beef with jp is his name is too similar to JT's, and his avatar with the frog makes me think that JT (Jungle Toad) just changed his avatar up.

This is a legitimate beef. I'm coming clean now that it was all intentional. I regret nothing.
Glad to see you haven't changed Popo.

I agree that the politics thread absolutely needed to be burned to the ground. There are too many topics these days where middle ground or resolution is genuinely not possible, and that's only gotten worse in the time since we burned down the politics thread. I'm very happy having RB be a place where I can go to to chat about mah video games without being reminded how awful the rest of the world is.

I'm sure many people feel the same. Maybe I'm a little more comfortable with conflict than most if it encourages important/interesting debate. It's a completely valid viewpoint that this isn't the place for that debate though, I respect that.

[Ziggy]

I was definitely more on the "there's a thread for that" side, at least for more specific threads or questions. I hate having a billion threads all on the exact same minutia, but I also agree that those broad monolithic threads can be intimidating. But I think we're doing a little better about spreading out a little from that now that we're more aware of it.

I think it's the kind of thing that we shouldn't even try to write specific rules for. Maybe loose rules that allow for exceptions. I agree, it's pointless to have a billion threads on the same topic. Actually, it's straight up harmful. But in those cases, I think it's the way it's handled that matters. I'm not citing anything from THIS forum specifically, but I've come across a lot of this over the years when Googling for stuff. All the time I would find a thread from a Google search with the same exact question I have, only to find that all of the replies were "We already have a thread for this!" and/or "You should have searched first!" and nothing else. It would make a world of difference to include a link to said existing thread, especially for a newcomer. "We already have a thread for this" is not helpful, and it's rude. "We already have a thread for this, see link: racketboy.com/examplethread" isn't even trying to sound as polite as possible, but is infinitely more friendly of a response. It's being helpful, and inviting the person to be included in an already existing conversation.

The person that may post "There's already a thread for this" and nothing else may not be aware that it comes off rude and uninviting, but it does. Like I've said, I've seen this type of response countless times from Google searches. Forums that I've never heard of, if there were a ton of people chastising someone with "you should have search first" replies, that's definitely not a forum I would consider joining. I joined Racketboy because I was searching for an answer to something and noticed how inviting the community was. That's why I stuck around.

I still kind of worry about whether or not there's already a similar thread from years ago when I start a new thread, though. Shit runs deep.

This is why I think we need loose rather than hard rules for this sort of thing. I will definitely search first, and I might use an old thread if it's appropriate. But certain things I think will benefit from a fresh thread. For example, there was a thread for Bloodstained ROTN from when the Kickstarter was announced a few years ago. I thought it would be best to have a fresh thread for the game's release, rather than create a monolithic thread out of the old one. But if someone were to post today, "What's the best way to use an N64 on an HDTV?" Well, we have a great thread for this that's only a few weeks old. Conversely, if someone wants to ask a question that has been asked before, but existing threads are years old, I think a fresh thread is appropriate. A lot of forums will lock threads automatically if they've been inactive for a certain amount of time. Things change, so old threads might not be accurate anymore. In the case of our niche hobby, there's tons of new stuff coming out all the time (FPGA consoles, AV solutions, consoles mods, flash carts, et cetera). Hell, even opinions change, so general discussion threads could be repeated. If we had "What your favorite X" from 5-10 years ago, I bet a lot of those opinions have changed by now.

[marurun]

The whole "You should have searched for it, first" thing is a non-starter for me, in part because many forums have poor search tools that don't give you enough options for effective searching. (Can you tell I'm a librarian?) I almost have better luck doing a Google search with site: random.com/forums than I do using most forums' built in search tools. So unless a likely search would have been an obvious success with even crappy search tools, I do not like asking users to rely on search. I've made my peace with RB's and can actually use it, but this is rarely the case with most forums.

Just throwing that out there.