"Look, you all know my stance. But here's a question. You want to "keep the forum more welcoming" which is all fine and good, but what are the metrics by which you're judging that? More people participating in the forum? Better retention of new players? A larger volume of posts in the forum?
Now, I know correlation /= causation, but all of those metrics, from my point of view, have gone down. There are less threads, there are less people on the site, and there are fewer voices in the forum. Perhaps it's time to review your policy, because it is not achieving the results it is meant to."


I was going to stay out of this thread altogether, but I feel like I should address these comments by goldie as he was a mod and admin and I didn't want his opinions to be taken as facts for many forum users just because an ex-mod/admin said it.

There is a tendency among some, maybe most of us, to have a rosy lens on the past. I've heard from some outspoken members and a few mods about missing some parts of the old free-for-all forum and I am not surprised. We've gone back and forth on why these changes are made and will remain, but I am not here to address that. I want to address this causal language and reasoning that goldie used to say that forum use and member usage have gone down (while pretending to pay lip service to merely his "point of view").

First, both jmo and ATC have shown multiple times that in the year after the "purge" forum usage did not go down by any number of measures. In fact, in comparison to prior years, membership went back up, more threads were created, and more people posted in the thread. On the forum, in mod emails, and in emails to me, numerous people said they enjoyed the new forums and gladly and generously donated to the site due to the changes we were making (which included dev work). In a site-wide survey and in bringing back the top 200 GR players, the majority indicated that the forum was less important to them than site development and making sure the site was free of cheaters, and for those who said the forum was important, the majority of them indicated they preferred the new forum or that they didn't mind the changes.

Second, in this past year, forum usage and membership have gone down, but we have also talked about how this was happening at essentially every Diplomacy site and is not unique to our site. Playdip, vdip, you name it, they are all struggling; facebook went form hundreds of regular users to a couple of dozens; did they too have a forum change??? To attribute decreases in forum usage and membership at our site to a forum decorum change two years ago is rather nonsensical (and if you were trained in causal methods, this claim would be embarrassing to make to anyone who has had quantitative causal training). This isn't even a correlation and causation issue but a rather lack of good understanding of multiple regression analysis of say either forum usage or membership accounting for yearly trends of diplomacy usage on the internet, or in a more rigorous framework, a difference-in-differences analysis of forum usage/membership looking at the before and after for our site and before and after at other sites.

Third, and maybe most importantly, we were bleeding mods so quickly prior to these changes and no dev work had been done for years. We couldn't keep mods around long enough; cheaters were rampant on the site. Most mods didn't want to stick around to be abused by players and we had barely enough of a staff to just respond to cases in the inbox, not to mention of being active in catching cheaters before they ruin games. The site improvements we have made and the cheaters we have caught are done (jmo and ATC made the most effort here) by people who didn't want to waste their valuable time making improvements on a site where the forum was a disaster and they themselves wouldn't want to participate. Jmo alone caught as many cheaters as all the mods had before him (not an exaggeration), and ATC made so many improvements that the gaming experience was greatly improved. The majority of our members care more about the gaming experience and site development than the forum, and those who contribute most to the site didn't want to contribute on a site where vitriol was the norm and many posts were just angry rants (accounting for much of the traffic in any thread).

So while it's fine to have fond memories of the old forum, please don't mischaracterize or miscontribute the negative impact that forum decorum changes have had on the site.

well said! want to play?

Zultar, what do you think of the idea I had a few pages back? To summarize:

Have an option when making a thread that it is a "low moderation" (for lack of a better term right now) thread. Inside, only the most basic rules (no meta, no multi, etc., as well as some basic stuff like no death threats, doxxing) would apply. If a thread has this setting checked, then it would by default be hidden from the forum (similar to how a muted thread is). To see these types of threads, have a checkbox in the Settings panel that is not checked by default. This way, only users who are sure they want to participate in these discussions can see them.

We've had discussions similar to your idea multiple times over the last few years (at least as far back as I've been a mod). I am open to that idea as long as we can get someone to actually do it and not just recommend it. That is often where the trouble is, lots of good ideas, plenty of volunteers to "manage" the process, but no one actually capable of doing it.

If someone can do this, please email us at [email protected], and indicate how you would do it. The site code is open source, so feel free to start working on this.

Yeah Chaqa. Code that shit

"well said! want to play?"
Asking zultar if he wants to play is very much approaching things with an unbridled sense of optimism.

It would need to be neater than the current muting code, because if it worked the same way as muting a) you could see it when you loaded the page up and b) it would mean that quite often you'd have a near-empty front page (if there are a lot of these threads).

@Chaqa, that's actually the best version of that idea I've heard suggested. By having the options button in settings defaulted too off I think it would make for a smoother experience for users who aren't interested in those style threads.

I'll look into it. Maybe rewriting the muting functionality would make sense too. I have some free time this weekend, I guess I'll finally get the webDip code setup :/

It's a pain in the ass to get setup, but it is a lot of fun to play around with once the initial setup is done.

THOUGHT on usage drop: fewer people use actual computers, more using phones/apss, and this is not the friendliest phone site, and has no app.

It's not a people problem - it's a technology problem.

^kind of agree with that.

That, I think, is probably true as well. Other sites have decent apps though and they are declining as well. But I do think a kickass app would do wonders for the site. Once again, we need a dev who can do this.

or raise some money and pay for one

I still haven't had a serious offer or estimate for one. I've asked for that info before, and it hasn't been forthcoming. I really am trying.

Tech problems: NO off-line notifications for game events. Archaic move-entry system. no obvious ranking system to see how you are doing overall on the site (like hit my profile, and see how I'm doing, how I'm trending, etc) -- and no, points are shit and don't give any useful information, even the manner in which we find new games is kind of ...meh.....archaic.

The web site is old and stale looking. No flare. People like blinky flashy....

:Ew......look at the blinky lights....ahhhhh.....


I know that I am in contention with the powers-that-be around here, but I don't think the forum is the thing killing the site. No, I'm not just saying that because I'm and obnoxious prick. I think that for as many people as would be turned away by dickishness in the threads, there will be an equal number that may be drawn to stay.

Hate to tell you this, but society kind of thrives on this sort of crap...EVEN gamers.

NO, I'm not saying the forums shoul be fre-for-all, etc....it's Zultar's site and he can mod the threads the way he wants....but this constant insistence that an obnoxious thread is turnign people away is childishly niave. Go to any NEWS site and <GASP!!> you will fidn discussioni threads full of awful speech. If your arguments were true, the CNN, Fox News, ABC, MSNBC, etc etc etc would have shut down their web sites becuase of lost users because of the big old meanies on the discussion threads.
On the contrary, these money-making organization understand that the vitriol on their discussion threads is a USER BASE that they don't want to lose...


Make a freaking tab for forum discussion and post a warning sign that "Clicking through to this forums means yoru little virgin eyes might be offended" and stop bellyaching about it.

@BIGZ, i call bullshit. if you want a service preformed call someone for an estimate. Really cant be that hard to figure out.

There probably enough millennial coders with no work that would quote you for some Lucky charms

@ssorenn, it's easy for a business to get an estimate, much harder for an old site with an ancient codebase that is literally the thing of nightmares for coders. If you have anyone you know though, shoot them Zultar's way.

I know nothing about code or coding. What type of coding need I ask if someone can do?

How about contacting a university and making it a project. Find a PROFESSOR (I think we might actually have one or two around here...) and get them to get some Comp Sci professor ot make it a class project or some shit like that.

YES^^^^

when they finish, we can send them out for pizzas and beers on WebDip(or Lucky Charms and some 2% milk)

Good question, I would say the ideal app would:
- Interface with the game search/creation pages
- Allow move entry in games
- Allow map reading in games (including historical turns)
- Allow order history viewing in games
- Allow messaging in games

I think anything else is overkill and not needed.

In technical terms, we are looking for an android and IOS compatible application that interfaces with old style PHP and MYSQL to allow game-play with basic order entry/in game messaging/ and map rendering. Backend infrastructure already in place. Strong focus on sustainable code that is well commented for easy updates if needed.

Thoughts? ATC, input would be welcome here!

Ssorenn, development of an app or of the site's code costs money. The costs that it takes to run our servers as they are for a year is the cost to keep a developer's attention through his or her lunch break. Funding it would be problematic.

I love the idea of talking with a CS program about it. That would be a great thing.

"(or Lucky Charms and some 2% milk)"
Gotta make sure to incentivize the under 21 crowd.

bo - no it doesn't cost money, if you find resources that will do it for free.

Hence my suggestion above. Can't be that difficult to find a university professor that is also a gamer. Again, we HAVE university professors on this website....we should enlist them to find someone to help.

It's an idea.

I agree, krellin, it's a great idea. I'm open to try it for sure. Hiring someone (i.e. getting an estimate) absolutely costs money though.

(money-----money). i think knowing what it would entail on a cost basis, should be the first step. it can stay an ad free site and not ask for annual donations, but if we knew the hard costs in terms of money and time, then we could make a better assesment if and what capital is required

cost basis= money or time or both