Forum moderation/activity discussion

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Chaqa
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#21 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:56 pm

Assuming it was Kestas:

Hint: this is the kind of shit we don't like

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Re: My resignation at webDiplomacy

#22 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:59 pm

kestasjk wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:37 pm
Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:52 pm
I think if anything the front page of the site being redesigned to better showcase the new forum, as well as WebDip actually utilizing Discord and not just having one that exists to exist would be better changes.

Seriously. The WebDip Discord is so fucking boring and useless.
What do other sites use discord for, is it just a modern IRC?

I should split this off from zultar's thread, 1 sec
Many things. Organizing games, tournaments, chat rooms, all kinds of stuff.

A few of us tried to make this point several years ago when the Discord started. But the staff were very quick to lockdown any major efforts and TBH were pretty dickish about it.

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#23 Post by kestasjk » Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:06 pm

Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:56 pm
Assuming it was Kestas:

Hint: this is the kind of shit we don't like
:o ominous!..

I figured the thread was split to move the discussion away from zultar, dargorygel didn't have permission to split it (he does now) so he made a new thread. I thought two threads based on the same topic should be merged

You think it should be split back out, with two threads on the same topic?

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#24 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:10 pm

kestasjk wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:06 pm
Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:56 pm
Assuming it was Kestas:

Hint: this is the kind of shit we don't like
:o ominous!..

I figured the thread was split to move the discussion away from zultar, dargorygel didn't have permission to split it (he does now) so he made a new thread. I thought two threads based on the same topic should be merged

You think it should be split back out, with two threads on the same topic?
I think messing with threads people make is kinda just annoying
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#25 Post by Doom427 » Fri Mar 10, 2023 5:36 pm

I use the forum purely as a distraction when I need to wait for someone to respond to my messages. While more activity would be nice, I hardly see why that activity HAS to be things that break our (pretty minor) rules here. I suppose if the objective was to make the site the same as a decade ago I would get it, but the forum was awful back then- I mostly remember the army of awful white dudes being shitty. There's a reason why I barely went on it. Like the good captain said- it made it impossible to recommend the website to anyone that I held any respect for.

Plenty of zines exist out there to discuss diplomacy. And if Diplomacy is too tedious discuss in the webDIplomacy forum , than well- I assume we live rich enough lives to find something to throw onto the forum without it having to be the same level of "Women exist to be property" man.

I will also say, I was not online last night when apparently a lot happened, so I can only speak half-way about it- I don't see the value when people are already annoyed and angry to try and make further changes to the forum. All I can see happening is the death of this forum when people just get more and more pissed at things.
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#26 Post by brainbomb » Fri Mar 10, 2023 5:53 pm

•allow members to post images and funny memes.
(this is insanely idiotic to even pay the kind of money you are paying to have a forum where users as castrated from where society is right now. the benefit of being able to share images from games that have ended would
massivley benefit dip game study and the fact people have to use imgur or external links is insane to me

•make mafia on webdip a centerpeice of the forum and allow us to be viewed by all regularly as its a huge part of the forum itself

•promote and foster a fun forum by removing politics from
a hidden corner of the forum so people can actually see the topics.

•allow gambling and wagers on games with a third party betting system.

•offer paid vacations to admins and mods for hard work
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#27 Post by brainbomb » Fri Mar 10, 2023 5:55 pm

create a not safe for work adult section of the forum where users can swipe left or right on other users if they find them sexy enough
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#28 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 5:56 pm

The fact that we can't post images is ridiculous in 2023.

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#29 Post by brainbomb » Fri Mar 10, 2023 6:02 pm

also ability to create alt accounts and nicknames is long overdue.
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#30 Post by dargorygel » Fri Mar 10, 2023 6:13 pm

•allow gambling and wagers on games with a third party betting system.

I'll run this... keep it in house. And I have a creek in the backyard, where you can swim with the fishes if you don't pay your tab.
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Re: My resignation at webDiplomacy

#31 Post by President Eden » Fri Mar 10, 2023 6:25 pm

kestasjk wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:37 pm
Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:52 pm
I think if anything the front page of the site being redesigned to better showcase the new forum, as well as WebDip actually utilizing Discord and not just having one that exists to exist would be better changes.

Seriously. The WebDip Discord is so fucking boring and useless.
What do other sites use discord for, is it just a modern IRC?

I should split this off from zultar's thread, 1 sec
it's a VOIP and text chat app that is very robust and modern. it's pretty much the car to forums' horse and buggy, tbh.

not that you solicited my advice specifically ;) but in my view, while I think I basically 100% align with you philosophically on free speech, the reality is that the remaining user base does not. the unmoderated/loosely moderated forum ship sailed years ago IMO. i don't think you're doing much if any harm by loosening things - this place isn't going to turn into 4chan basically no matter what policy you land on - but i wouldn't count on it creating a renaissance of activity on the forums either.

the problem is more structural - forums are better for long-form posting but worse for chat style conversations, and internet culture has shifted dramatically away from long-form posts toward chatty conversations. we've even noticed it in the mafia community here, our threads have absolutely exploded in size but it's almost all conversational style posting.
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#32 Post by Hellenic Riot » Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:48 pm

When I first joined this website, the forums were like the Wild West. There were a lot of legendary gunslingers who went around posting insane spiel with the fastest hands in the west, rounding up posses to shoot down anyone who disagreed with them. And yes, one can look back fondly upon this era with the names of people who were around then and are not anymore. However, just because I can enjoy watching movies like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; or a Million Ways to Die in the West... Doesn't mean I actually want to live in the Wild West era. Some things are better off left in history.

When I was an admin, a lot of work was put in to cleaning up the forums. And yes, some decisions were made by others that I disagreed with, and plenty decisions were made by me that others disagreed with. Nobody's perfect. But the community response was massively favourable toward the changes we'd made (which is not to say unanimously). I barely posted on the forums in the pre-moderation era for much the same reasons Captainmeme did - Rampant hostility and character assassinations are not something that enthuses me in just about any medium. webDip's diversity has improved - Alongside that of the Diplomacy hobby in general - and we had numerous instances of positive feedback by players from minorities (which very much includes women in this hobby), and also teachers who were now happy to use the website as a tool for learning at schools because they weren't directing their students to a website discussing the merits of school shootings or arranging fistfights in parking lots on the front page of it.

Much like Captainmeme, when the pandemic came around and I was hooked back into Diplomacy and the Virtual Face to Face hobby took off, I was sad that Backstabbr was the interface chosen for this new format over webDip. I've happily talked the merits of webDip up many times in recent years in that community, but Backstabbr has features that are perfect for running virtual games (Sandboxes, ability to assign non-playing gamemasters upon creation of games, shorter retreats/builds phases, those GM's being the only people who can end a game by drawing it, or who can adjust phase lengths, orders from last turn being readable at the side of the page when a turn goes through instead of hidden away). If the idea is to grow the community, the fact that webDip missed the boat on the biggest surge in Diplomacy-wide hobby participation surging is a much much bigger factor than the size of the forums... And bringing in the features that gave Backstabbr that advantage is the best advice I can give on that front as a result. Virtual FTF continues to thrive. It's entirely organised over Discord (as is much of the FTF hobby as well these days as a result). And it will keep using Backstabbr for as long as that's the best software for what it wants. But if webDip were better for that? You've got yourself an instant win on community size.

Forum activity has certainly dropped since the new forum came in. But the forum is a very outdated medium on the internet in general as Fluminator has said - There is only one other forum that I'm active on nowdays, and despite that being an incredibly modern piece of software run by a games company with a player-base in the tens of millions, even there the Off Topic section that discusses stuff not to do with the games they publish is a very very minute fraction of the communal size of the rest. So yes, you could bring in a more modern aesthetic and perhaps people might use the forums more, but in reality Discord is the medium that has surpassed Forums... And in a few years time, maybe something else will surpass Discord. The internet doesn't look like it did in 2010 when everything was discussed over forums. It also doesn't look like it did in 2000 when everything was discussed in IRCs.

At the end of the day, you can't go back to the future. The past is the past and chasing something from a decade ago at the expense of alienating what you have today is only going to further diminish the playerbase we already have.
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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#33 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:32 pm

An easy solution would be to utilize the new Forum functionality built into Discord. Best of both worlds.

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#34 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:33 pm

It's also more advanced than this forum already.

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#35 Post by JECE » Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:05 pm

Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:32 pm
An easy solution would be to utilize the new Forum functionality built into Discord. Best of both worlds.
Except that you need a separate account. :cry:
See my full Profile:
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/profile.php?userID=17421

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#36 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:25 pm

JECE wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:05 pm
Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:32 pm
An easy solution would be to utilize the new Forum functionality built into Discord. Best of both worlds.
Except that you need a separate account. :cry:
Technically speaking I believe your forum account is a separate account from your WebDip account.

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#37 Post by JECE » Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:52 pm

Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:25 pm
JECE wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:05 pm
Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:32 pm
An easy solution would be to utilize the new Forum functionality built into Discord. Best of both worlds.
Except that you need a separate account. :cry:
Technically speaking I believe your forum account is a separate account from your WebDip account.
I guess, but I didn't really have to register with yet another website to use it.
See my full Profile:
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/profile.php?userID=17421

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#38 Post by Chaqa » Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:07 pm

JECE wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:52 pm
Chaqa wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:25 pm
JECE wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:05 pm


Except that you need a separate account. :cry:
Technically speaking I believe your forum account is a separate account from your WebDip account.
I guess, but I didn't really have to register with yet another website to use it.
Seems like a weird thing to worry about in 2023

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#39 Post by Jamiet99uk » Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:05 pm

Hellenic Riot wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:48 pm
When I first joined this website, the forums were like the Wild West. There were a lot of legendary gunslingers who went around posting insane spiel with the fastest hands in the west, rounding up posses to shoot down anyone who disagreed with them. And yes, one can look back fondly upon this era with the names of people who were around then and are not anymore. However, just because I can enjoy watching movies like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; or a Million Ways to Die in the West... Doesn't mean I actually want to live in the Wild West era. Some things are better off left in history.

When I was an admin, a lot of work was put in to cleaning up the forums. And yes, some decisions were made by others that I disagreed with, and plenty decisions were made by me that others disagreed with. Nobody's perfect. But the community response was massively favourable toward the changes we'd made (which is not to say unanimously). I barely posted on the forums in the pre-moderation era for much the same reasons Captainmeme did - Rampant hostility and character assassinations are not something that enthuses me in just about any medium. webDip's diversity has improved - Alongside that of the Diplomacy hobby in general - and we had numerous instances of positive feedback by players from minorities (which very much includes women in this hobby), and also teachers who were now happy to use the website as a tool for learning at schools because they weren't directing their students to a website discussing the merits of school shootings or arranging fistfights in parking lots on the front page of it.

Much like Captainmeme, when the pandemic came around and I was hooked back into Diplomacy and the Virtual Face to Face hobby took off, I was sad that Backstabbr was the interface chosen for this new format over webDip. I've happily talked the merits of webDip up many times in recent years in that community, but Backstabbr has features that are perfect for running virtual games (Sandboxes, ability to assign non-playing gamemasters upon creation of games, shorter retreats/builds phases, those GM's being the only people who can end a game by drawing it, or who can adjust phase lengths, orders from last turn being readable at the side of the page when a turn goes through instead of hidden away). If the idea is to grow the community, the fact that webDip missed the boat on the biggest surge in Diplomacy-wide hobby participation surging is a much much bigger factor than the size of the forums... And bringing in the features that gave Backstabbr that advantage is the best advice I can give on that front as a result. Virtual FTF continues to thrive. It's entirely organised over Discord (as is much of the FTF hobby as well these days as a result). And it will keep using Backstabbr for as long as that's the best software for what it wants. But if webDip were better for that? You've got yourself an instant win on community size.

Forum activity has certainly dropped since the new forum came in. But the forum is a very outdated medium on the internet in general as Fluminator has said - There is only one other forum that I'm active on nowdays, and despite that being an incredibly modern piece of software run by a games company with a player-base in the tens of millions, even there the Off Topic section that discusses stuff not to do with the games they publish is a very very minute fraction of the communal size of the rest. So yes, you could bring in a more modern aesthetic and perhaps people might use the forums more, but in reality Discord is the medium that has surpassed Forums... And in a few years time, maybe something else will surpass Discord. The internet doesn't look like it did in 2010 when everything was discussed over forums. It also doesn't look like it did in 2000 when everything was discussed in IRCs.

At the end of the day, you can't go back to the future. The past is the past and chasing something from a decade ago at the expense of alienating what you have today is only going to further diminish the playerbase we already have.
Ok.

Well.

Since we're all writing essays.

I was banned from the site for saying it's ok to violently stand up to Nazis.

My position was clear: You're a an outright Nazi, you give up the right to be treated sensibly and without violence. People have the right to kill you because you are a fucking Nazi.

Wanna ban me again?
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There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. - Lenin.

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Re: Forum moderation/activity discussion

#40 Post by Jamiet99uk » Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:07 pm

I don't even think this is controversial.

We fought the entire Second World War.

Nazis should die. No controversy.
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There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. - Lenin.

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