[Rictor]

Believing that 9/10 people are worthless assholes because they're not Picasso is not a very good way to live. And it's an even worse way to run a community. This is not, to the best of my knowledge, a cloistered community of artistic elites who have decided to sequester themselves from the great unwashed masses. And here's a question for you: do you think that Bobbaou, DaBrain and all the other productive people give two ****s that the rest of us don't contribute? My guess, and I could be wrong, is that they're just as happy as anyone to have a place where like-minded Freespace fans can gather - which, if you're unaware, is kind of a very, very niche subject. I would be as thrilled as anyone, certainly as much as you, if HLP specifically and space-sims generally were to experience a renaissance of talent and initiative. But culling the herd to make room for a resurgence that may never come is....of questionable wisdom.

You would rather see an empty church than the pews filled with average Joes? Fine, your prerogative, but I'm just saying that that's a really good way to run a community into the ground. And I'm wondering how many of the Powers That Be around here share such a fatalistic attitude.

Here's a heads up: every single forum on the Internet has an OT section, and in almost all cases it is the most active. People like chattering. Yes, the vapid, mindless, blabber-mouthed masses like talking about politics and cars and what they ate for breakfast. On every message board this exists in parrellell to the main subject (be it cars, Linux or obscure 1920's German Expressionist films) not in competition with it. Snipes had it exactly right - the General Discussion is like an old-folks home that argues just to pass the time away. And I have absolutely no problem with that - it's not a sin and it's not abnormal, in fact it's a great way to forget about all the **** going on in your life by poking fun at the **** going on in everyone else's life. 95% of the content on the Net serves no useful purposes - our dear little message boards are no exception.

[BlackDove]

Freespace fans can gather in the Freespace forums where they will post about Freespace.

They may NOT gather in a forum that allows Freespace fans to act like ****ing retards.

That makes nobody happy. Don't invert ****.

The point however, was what to focus on. You will still be able to act like a retard in those forums below. However, having those forums up first and foremost, is the absolute definition of idiocy. It defines what the community is about, and I'd rather the community be about **** taylor does, than what you have to write in the latest thread on democrats.

[Mr. Vega]

Firstly, the fraction of **** on the GenDis forums isn't a majority, not by a goddamn mile. Don't invert ****.

Secondly, before we had all this ****, we were this place, where stuff actually happened, every day, while all the artists labored for years at whatever their project was. In terms of actual production, we did more than about 90% of the artists here, because - guess what - only a small fraction ever finished what they promised -THAT'S why it got so prominent. What I am proposing is merely to clean GenDis up and make it productive again, rather than stuff it under the bed.

[Rictor]

It makes me happy to see 50 posts a day instead of 1 per day. And it would make me even happier if I saw 500 per day, especially if some proportionate number of those contained models, textures and source-code mods which could be enjoyed by all. Fact is that the anus of this and every forum is what keeps many (I won't say most, because that's not true here, but is in most other places) of the people around.

Again, my problem is not on the new focus, which changes so little as to be hardly worth discussing, but rather the mentality which says that all posts (and posters) which do not contribute materially are worthless clutter and exist only at the mercy of True Keepers of the Flame.

[CP5670]

I like how the forum did its routine backup just as everyone was scrambling to post.

It's a bit of a stretch to call the HL section a "community" these days, when people are often at each others' throats. As some others have said, the HL section has become a pretty sorry place during the last two years and is a far cry from what it was when the site was started. If you want a place to vent on political issues, there are plenty of other forums out there made for that purpose.

That being said, I don't have a problem with the current arrangement. Most forums do have dedicated OT and P&N sections, although perhaps more to keep that stuff from seeping into the other sections than anything else. What I saw as the issue was that the arguments had become the most prominent aspect of the place. HL actually does contain some interesting discussions (that careers thread is one example), but with all the crap mixed among them, I rarely post in there these days.

I still believe that the Freespace sections should come before the community projects though, in the order they used to be. Freespace is after all the focus of the site and everything else basically stems from that.

[Mr. Vega]

Not to mention that the last big thing that came out of the hosted projects was what, the BWO demo? Inferno R1?

That being said, I don't have a problem with the current arrangement. Most forums do have dedicated OT and P&N sections, although perhaps more to keep that stuff from seeping into the other sections than anything else. What I saw as the issue was that the arguments had become the most prominent aspect of the place. HL actually does contain some interesting discussions (that careers thread is one example), but with all the crap mixed among them, I rarely post in there these days.

Well here's our chance to clean it up at last.

[achtung]

The Padded Cell
Here is where all the stupid stuff is sent. You probably don't want to visit this place. Posts in this forum do not count towards your total.
Moderators: Charismatic, Cobra

 

[Sarafan]

If politics and religion are the main subjects that cause so much trouble, why not create a place for them and keep HL for other things aside from that?

[Mr. Vega]

The politics and religion threads aren't ebola. We don't have to quarantine an area of the forum to house them. Just keep the existing form and squash em when they get out of hand.

[Mr. Vega]

Posts in the pub don't count? You've got to be ****ting me. Having a junk forum is enough. This'll just increase spam in the FS forums.

[Mefustae]

This. Is. Bollocks.

[BlackDove]

The Padded Cell
Here is where all the stupid stuff is sent. You probably don't want to visit this place. Posts in this forum do not count towards your total.
Moderators: Charismatic, Cobra

 

Exactly.

[Mr. Vega]

Go eat a banana.

[Col. Fishguts]

Goddamned, the layout changes every 5 minuters now. I like the focus-on-projects-and-less-on-retarded-****-approach  though

[Ransom]

Come on guyyys

I do think this is a generally okay idea, but Off Topic really ought to be above Hosted Projects. It just seems like it's more buried than it needs to be. And I don't get why the Art forum is in Games and Gaming, that kind of sends the message that it's exclusively for fan fiction.

[SadisticSid]

Let me add my voice to those other dissenters who thing that this is ****ing lame.

First off the suggestion that we can 'go and join another forum for politics' is bloody stupid... it's the personalities of this place that keep me coming back and I doubt all of us are going to be of one mind and go elsewhere. I spend hardly any time reading the FS fora any more, apart from an occasional look at the SCP and the modding ones to check to see if anyone's released anything new. And it's also insulting to the rest of us to infer we're incapable of filtering things out that we don't want to see.

The only real criteria for dividing up a forum is to prevent large volumes of information from swamping any one particular item, which is a problem we've never had - it's not like you can miss a forum topic because it drops off the bottom of the listing after a day or so. What's happened is simply the outcome of the heavy handed approach the admins seem to love these days, and it benefits no-one. If anything, it makes things inconsistent because all those thousands of old debate threads will no doubt languish in this forum forever more.

Change for the better is good. This is not one of those times.

[vyper]

It's like watching a train crash in slow motion...

[Bobboau]

Politics have no place here, though. They accomplish absolutely nothing. As Flipside has said time and again: No one has ever had their opinion changed in any of these debates. All they do is cause fights and get people monkeyed. If I had my way there'd be none of that here, honestly.

you know I used to be a big Bush/Iraq War supporter, arguments here played no small part in my thinking process and changes there in.

this forum is running around with it's head cut off, what ever happened to talking this **** over with us?

[Flipside]

Yes, but was it the arguments where people were putting forward logical arguments or was it the ones where people were going 'Amerika Sux!! Nazi Fascist Dictatorship USA ahoy!1!111!'?

Personally, I think the boards have been over divided now, but I can understand what's trying to be achieved here, I just think possibly the pendulum swung a little too far under its own inertia, but I'm willing to wait and see how things go.

[Bobboau]

swung!? the first I hear about this is I refresh the page and everythings gone? what sort of implementation is that?

a non-moderated argument forum is a good idea IMO, but A)carveing up what is here already and )B putting everything at the bottom of the page, not to mention my personal favorite c) not telling or asking anyone about it, is quite posably the worst idea to have ever been inflicted upon this board, and I include all of the april 1st **** in that.

and for the record all of them, when someone else is an idiot it makes me stand back for a second and make sure I'm not being one also.