[Scotty]

Question is in the title.

Seriously guys, you don't have to lock everything that pops up that doesn't have to do with world politics or some TV show.

[bahijal74]

Question is in the title.

Seriously guys, you don't have to lock everything that pops up that doesn't have to do with world politics or some TV show.

on mine it kinda made sense it lost its purpose

[Scotty]

Off-topic discussions are some of the best.  And this sub-forum is actually called the "Off-Topic Discussion" forum, so I don't see why they have to lock everything.

[Nuke]

i dont mind off topic discussion so long as its just not a collection of random crap. it should have a theme. as for venting frustrations i kinda thought that whatever happens in your life... would suffice. as for the other, it was taken over by nnjas and had to be stopped. and the third, well it was a blatant persona atack. so i think im justified. im not gonna shut this one down on the grounds that it was carried out respectfully. the threads i locked would have inevitably turned into a heaping pile of pork byproducts, so i crush them now before they become self aware. just think of it as house cleaning.

[High Max]

However, I do see the admins and mods complain about people resurrecting old threads, so I wonder why the admins just don't re-program the forum to make it so if a topic hasn't been replied to for over 3 months and is not stickied, it automatically locks itself. That would solve that problem. I've been wanting to say that for a while and this thread comes closest to being on topic with that question.

[General Battuta]

I'm running out of good lock puns anyway.

But seriously, we do have plenty of good threads in GenDisc, and they work fine.

[BengalTiger]

A non-locked random thread...

 

[NGTM-1R]

If I download Avatar again I'm blaming you.

[Kosh]

[Flipside]

Seriously though, it's not like the threads that start seriously usually stay on track for more than a page or two, but there is, however, a difference about someone posting a 'Let's have a discussion about....' and 'Hey, let's post random crap!'.

There was, for a while, a favourite youTube thread, even now, there is a favourite free game thread in the Gaming forum. There's nothing wrong with that, but a thread completely devoted to posting random stuff is probably pushing luck, experience shows it'd only be a matter of time before it exploded.

I remember watching, for several months, the degradation of the 'Word Association' thread into a complete shambles, I'd rather not sit through that again.

[Kosh]

Quick! Find more crap to post before the lock happy mods fire their thread-locker-upper-thing at this work of art!

[Flipside]

At the moment, it's a discussion about the Mods lack of tolerance for random crap, therefore it stays open

[Blue Lion]

So what exactly is the problem with random stuff other than it being random?

[Flipside]

For me, mainly the fact that this is a Forum, where people discuss things, not a wall where people can come along and stick up pictures. If people want to do that, there are sites on the Internet that are designed for it. Threads like that tend to blossom to around 100 pages of completely irrelevant copy-paste urls, and drains the life out of every other thread in the Forum as people search for random crap to post.

[High Max]

The parent directory of GenDisc is called off-topic discussion, but it no doubt means "off topic from Freespace" which is the true purpose of HLP (Freespace). So you need to stay on topic on off topic discussions, huh? Actually, HLP is pretty laid back compared to other forums when it comes to going off topic. Also, you get away with a lot here compared to some forums, like forums that are about instant messaging (they tend to be stricter).

[Flipside]

Thing is, forums like this sit in the hazy area between 'random' forums, like SA etc, and 'official' forums, we represent a single game, and we do so fervently, but are also, for the main part, moderately relaxed about the general discussion forums, you'd never see the kind of discussions allowed in GD appearing on the Sims 2 forum, for example. So, in general, I think we try to keep an air of 'decorum' without trying to control the flow of discussions too much.

Edit: In fact, one of the things I love about this place is the level of discussions that can, on occasion, take place because of that relaxed attitude.

[Nuke]

while it does say off topic discussion at the top i find a lot of people seem to forget the word discussion. when random stuff gets posted, its not a discussion, its a ****ing graffiti wall. so long as people are discussing something, i could care less. i had only planned to lock one or two threads but it kinda started a chain-reaction of prepubescent angst among the less mature of the users. and thats why i locked 3 threads instead of just the one.

[Inquisitor]

"Off topic Discussion"

Not off topic random poo flinging

[Dilmah G]

I better make the most of this rare opportunity and do what someone else should have done 5 posts ago.



SEX.

[Snail]

eh