The truth about the new forum

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brainbomb
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The truth about the new forum

#1 Post by brainbomb » Sat Feb 08, 2020 12:43 am

The justification for why the old, fun, classic forum was replaced was that it took up too much storage and was not sustainable.

but the truth is, there was too much negative feedback, spam, and a lack of interest in the site at large wanting to admit that the forum here was what was actually the cultural identity of this site.

The proof is in the pudding. look no further than the sister site vdiplomacy, still using the classic fun forum. Still dozens of posts a day. Now, true vdip regulates spam harder. I have in fact tried to spam joke threads there and was told off immediately.

So why is storage space not an issue for vdip but it was here?
□it wasnt. it was an excuse to push away the last of the unique people who were here, stuff them into hidden site compartments, and erase all traces of this site being anything other than a place to play diplomacy


what was great about webdip WAS the forum. it was the satire, the debates. The fights. The drama. This was a reality tv show full of rich characters.

the forum itself was more interesting. tuning in each day was fun.

statistically, the forum is now exclusively mafia. no one else really has daily discussions on it like they used too. there used to be daily bible study, daily trolling, daily scholarly debates on issues. And now its all just shoved into the politics feed where probably less then 20 ppl have ever even bothered to go.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#2 Post by jmo1121109 » Sat Feb 08, 2020 1:38 am

Oh yeah you're right, the vDip forum which is now 144 pages is like, the exact same size as the webdip one which is at 412 pages (with hundreds more archived to stop the crashing). It's the same bullshit as trucks that are over 10 feet tall not being allowed to drive under bridges with a clearance of 9 feet. The road still exists after the bridge so it makes no sense making those trucks take a different route. The only downside would be a massive crash, the truck being destroyed, and a big mess to clean up.

And just because the sizing problem doesn't happen until around 500+ pages with thousands more users on the forum, on a site with about 1/10th the number of people loading that forum, really is just garbage justification by those lying site devs. And the fact that all the site crashes that were happening every other day for weeks before Kestas archived a massive section of the webdip forum (everything from creation in 2008ish - 2 Jan 2013) is just sheer coincidence.

Brainbomb, please stfu when you don't know what you're talking about.

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Re: The truth about the new forum

#3 Post by brainbomb » Sat Feb 08, 2020 1:50 am

what youre saying is that vdip forum is inevitably doomed to be turned into this. its inly a matter of when the content outweighs the site storage.

if true, being that it was your implementation that brought this forum to its knees, surely you wouldve said "hey they got the right idea at webdip. long term we gotta do what theyre doing".

but deep down you didnt wanna destroy vdips cultural epicenter
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#4 Post by brainbomb » Sat Feb 08, 2020 1:53 am

you can buy more storage space pretty dirt cheap on just about any web hosting service. its like 400 bucks a year for 1 billion forum posts worth of data on some providers.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#5 Post by brainbomb » Sat Feb 08, 2020 1:55 am

now granted the bots are mostly a non factor now. which is nice
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#6 Post by jmo1121109 » Sat Feb 08, 2020 2:24 am

Again, literally no one except you ever said storage space. It's the way the forum was built, it pulls way more data then it should every time it's loaded, an arrow is clicked, a page is changed, a thread is opened etc. Thousands and thousands of times more. We at no point even came close to running out of space. Processing power and server strain from a poor design though, that'll crash a site every time and you can't really just buy more of it since the strain increases non-lineally.

And yes, you're exactly right, from 2010-2020 vDip got 140 pages, if that rate keeps up in another 20-35 years they'll have to replace their forum.

"now granted the bots are mostly a non factor now. which is nice"
Are you okay? Nobody mentioned bots in this thread...
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#7 Post by MajorMitchell » Sat Feb 08, 2020 3:18 am

I'm going to respectfully disagree with you Dipbro Brainbomb. The Forum wasn't replaced, it has evolved to be a Forum with more Decorum, so it's much more welcoming and far less offensive, especially for lady members of WebDiplomacy.
I haven't played a game here since August as a form of peaceful protest related to the massive hit to my reliability rating and probably won't join any games until after August this year when I should regain the 20% deducted last August.
Yet I do like the better Forum with more Decorum and regularly read and make posts. It's great to be able to stay in contact with lovable scallywags like yourself Dipbro Brainbomb and many others, eg CommanderByron, Jamiet99uk, Octavious our Oracle and Orathaic and many others, even that, imho, stubborn blockhead PF who I say unlawfully stole Liverpool from me in a game.
The reason there's a lot of non political threads in the politics section is because in that section there is a bit more freedom of expression, an allowance for more robust discussions, so it's where for example the thread about pornography exists.
Threads will attract readers and posts based on their degree of interest, on the basis of content imho.
I have to go, I can hear the affectionate roar of my Lovely Fire Breathing MemSahib Her Serene Imperiousness Indoors lounging on a sofa eating cakes, she's lovingly commanding me to go and prune the rose bushes or something similar...
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#8 Post by MajorMitchell » Sat Feb 08, 2020 3:22 am

Oh the reason some persons have left the Forum with more Decorum, been temporarily or permanently banned from the Forum with more Decorum or the WebDiplomacy site is, in my opinion, their own failure to adapt to changing circumstances, and an obtuse determination to continue to make offensive posts.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#9 Post by KalelChase » Sat Feb 08, 2020 4:52 am

I like the people here and the forum. Very excellent contributors and discussions.

You describe the old forum as... old, fun, classic forum.
Old... don't care.
Fun... Why do you think the old one was more fun?
Classic... don't care.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#10 Post by RoganJosh » Sat Feb 08, 2020 6:08 am

The most exciting thing that happened on vDip's forum last week was that someone realized that the v in vDip stands for "variant."
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#11 Post by flash2015 » Sat Feb 08, 2020 6:15 am

I had a quick look at the vdip forum. Where are those mythical debates? Going back a few pages in the vdip forum, it is pretty much only game related topics.

The debates forum on playdiplomacy looks pretty dead as well with no new topics for months.

Rather than any specific cause, perhaps it is just debate fatigue?
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#12 Post by VillageIdiot » Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:36 am

Activity does not automatically equate to quality. I did indeed enjoy the free flow of how the forum was before and i did like how it spotlight some of the characters of the site, but the majority of the content was just dumb. Almost none of it had anything to do with Diplomacy, it was just a haven for trolling and spam and for a lot of us that's just not our thing. The parts were good, but the bad was obnoxiously bad.

That said the forum is no longer the only WebDip meeting place for interactivity, we have the Discord channel which lends itself so much better for debates (and fights and feedback and yadda-yadda) so if that's really your bread and butter there's still an outlet for that.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#13 Post by Octavious » Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:55 am

VillageIdiot wrote:
Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:36 am
Almost none of it had anything to do with Diplomacy
That is very true, but there's an excellent reason for that. Talking about diplomacy gets very dull very quickly. It's simply not that big a topic, and anything worth saying has been said several thousand times over. You can only discuss whether or not to bounce in the English Channel so many times before going mad.

At its best the forum was a fantastic place to unwind between phases, a place to let off steam and talk to one of the most politically diverse communities on the internet about literally any topic under the Sun. It was a place to practice your persuasive abilities, a place to practice deception, a place to practice taking an insult with grace and building alliances in arguments. It was diplomacy without the board.

This has all pretty much been lost, and the site is far weaker for it.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#14 Post by brainbomb » Sun Feb 09, 2020 1:44 am

first time ive ever seen Octopus agree with me. wow
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#15 Post by Your Humble Narrator » Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:03 am

So, knowing that we've gone over the issue several thousand times over, what's the verdict? Do I bounce in the English Channel?
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#16 Post by brainbomb » Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:27 am

EF is the dumbest alliance. you already know it aint gonna work
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#17 Post by GalahadIII » Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:38 am

The interesting thing about reading this discussion is the fact that everyone is talking close to the issue without finding the issue. Everyone seems to be answering a different question. Remembering the old times. A kind of nostalgic impression overall.

I've always found it difficult to post things. Generally, words, though flowing freely, are a kind of weapon and must be weighed with care. Debates are challenging because it has always felt to me that people rarely change. And when they do, it is in such a small way, that progress it often snapped backwards to less than ideal behavior. And when I debate someone and I fail to get them to move, it someone feels although I have failed the concept of "reason." That I used such careful words, and yet it wasn't enough. Despite how strange that might sound. My first Facebook "debate" was between a *cough* idiot (a joke perhaps) and myself and rather made me far more reticent over the internet. Yet I am here, perhaps a changin', perhaps a regressin'. Like I was when dealing with the recent Honesty vs Deception discussion. Yet a true debater must prove himself capable of taking a side that he personally despises.

Perhaps rather than negate on how the past was better, perhaps we should consider how to improve the webdiplomacy culture. What makes us different from the other Diplomacy websites, other strategy games played throughout the internet?
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#18 Post by Wusti » Sun Feb 09, 2020 7:59 am

Octavious wrote:
Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:55 am
VillageIdiot wrote:
Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:36 am
Almost none of it had anything to do with Diplomacy
That is very true, but there's an excellent reason for that. Talking about diplomacy gets very dull very quickly. It's simply not that big a topic, and anything worth saying has been said several thousand times over. You can only discuss whether or not to bounce in the English Channel so many times before going mad.

At its best the forum was a fantastic place to unwind between phases, a place to let off steam and talk to one of the most politically diverse communities on the internet about literally any topic under the Sun. It was a place to practice your persuasive abilities, a place to practice deception, a place to practice taking an insult with grace and building alliances in arguments. It was diplomacy without the board.

This has all pretty much been lost, and the site is far weaker for it.
Shut up Octavious you're still a know-it-all pommy whinger. Aussie Aussie Aussie OI OI OI.

Having given the obligatory abuse. I agree. A forum aint a forum without bagging some idiot for there terrible opinions.
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#19 Post by Octavious » Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:21 am

Wusti wrote:
Sun Feb 09, 2020 7:59 am
Shut up Octavious you're still a know-it-all pommy whinger. Aussie Aussie Aussie OI OI OI.

Having given the obligatory abuse. I agree. A forum aint a forum without bagging some idiot for there terrible opinions.
Awww, there's not many who are prepared to make as much effort as your good self. I love you too ;)
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Re: The truth about the new forum

#20 Post by Octavious » Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:27 am

Your Humble Narrator wrote:
Sun Feb 09, 2020 4:03 am
So, knowing that we've gone over the issue several thousand times over, what's the verdict? Do I bounce in the English Channel?
The answer is the same as it's always been. It depends on the initial relationship between you and England / France, and the wider circumstances of the board, and even if you're confident you know as much about them as realistically possible you can still get it wrong. Other answers are of course available, but they are incorrect ;).
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