So, let's discuss forum behaviour. In particular the behaviour around or lovely little den, but general forum behaviour or online behaviour should do well too. We can probably relate. Lately there has been a large influx of people who, and I can only assume here, didn't think it was a good idea to read the rules when they got here, and now, several ranks later, they are doing their very best to get any and all topics closed because they can't type up seven words in response. I don't know why, but I kinda assumed forums were for discussion, but there seem to be a general consensus that forums are for poll replies, just like the game comments are for word burps instead of, say, quick feedback or reviews, comments, suggestions and so forth. Is this a thing we just ought to live with, because the internet degrade brains, or should we stand tall, and possibly wait in a dark alley for the people doing this, and beat them up? Same goes for the deal of "let's reply unnecessarily to questions", not just with the 100+ replies to "How do I change my armatar" or something equally simple, but also the 50+ replies after someone made the first move and told the newbie to go do us all a favour and read the stickies. I am well aware that the people pointing out the obvious and biting the mods in their well meaning way is doing it out of a good heart, but like the other example, it ends up being rather unnecessary, and spoonfeeding others information just ends up leaving them unable to learn it all themselves.
Anyway, if you fought through that little rant, congratulations. You have now come to the part where you give your opinion, point out the flaws in what I said, perhaps say some wise words or bring our attention towards other aspects of online behaviour and so forth and so forth.
And due to above, I bet this won't make five pages.
So, you went tl;dr and told me to get over myself, instead of engaging in the discussion by... Well, doing anything I mentioned? And no, "Get over it" does not count as opinion nor pointing out flaws. Okay, let's take this over.
Hello citizens, I am currently training to become the master of information, and in my endless training, fighting through jungles, finding lost treasures, getting the girl, all that, I have also stumbled upon strange information and theories about the social interaction on the internet, and I was wondering if you, citizens of this wondrous city from internet land, could tell me a bit about your own experiences when it comes to these interactions, especially on accounts for proper etiquette and behaviour? Mainly to gain further experience myself for any future studies that might, might not some day be available at your location, freshly printed in a language you can understand, whether this fresh print is digital or actually delivered to you for whatever reason you would still be interested in analogue media at the point where my articles and findings will be published outside of obscure information master related magazines.
So, please, do enlighten me on your findings. Let's start with the wonders of rules, and whether or not they actually prevent a digital city from going into equally digital anarchy, shall we?
>_O Okay, while your style of writing here is squint-inducing and not entirely readable, I'll reply to what I think you meant:
the wonders of rules
Just as in the real world, rules do prevent the forum society from degrading into chaos, despite the fact that some people choose to ignore them. The reason for this is that without the rules, many of the people who follow them would either not participate in the forums, thereby reducing the ratio of good vs. bad users, or they would lack the guidance to properly behave therein and would likely make a high incidence of well-meaning mistakes that would nonetheless aid the downfall of the forum. Another facet of this is the fact that the presence of the rules acts as a deterrent to some who would otherwise not follow them. Those of weak enough character to continuously act inappropriately sometimes also have a weaker degree of willpower. To these individuals, the presence of rules with harsh enough penalties attached can sway or frighten them into proper actions. Despite all of the rules in place, there are always those who either ignore or deliberately break the set guidelines. Some break the rules inadvertently, some because they don't care, and some do it to achieve a sense of empowerment. Regardless of the reason for the fault, the rules allow the good people involved to react accordingly and either educate the person whose ignorance led to the transgression or remove the deliberate villain. But all of this must come with a warning: Just as some rules are good, having too many rules is a very bad thing. When there is an overabundance of rules, their sphere of influence spills over from general good conduct into the insignificant areas of operation, where they then become a burdensome and ever-present governmental micro-managing of a person's life. Such an oppressive situation would heavily discourage good users from joining or acting in a forum, and it would motivate those who break the rules anyway to step up their efforts. It would likely also inspire the online equivalent of civil disobedience, which while not chaotic would signal by its necessity and presence that the ruling system has failed and is well on its way to extinction. This is also speaks in part to why in the real world the creation and subsequent forcing-upon people of the governmental "Big Brother" nanny state must be stopped at all costs. Rules are made to better society, but the abuse of the ability to make and wield rules leads to oppression and ultimately to revolt of the people and the destruction of the oppressing system. _________________________________
One rule that would benefit every forum on the interwebs is one that used to be taught to people as part of the development of their character: Unless you have something important to say, don't say anything.
I think that it all started with the fact that in recent games the whole mission is just to level up, forget everything else pretty much and just keep leveling so that you can brag to your friends once you are a higher level then them (also you have less of a life then them probbly as a consequence, but that's another discussion) So then by the nature of this website, there are alot of gamers on here, those gamers are robably playing the recent games that focus alot on leveling up and getting exp (or in this site, ap) so they start thinking, "how will I get the most ap in the shortest amount of time so I could level up?"
Then they figure out the shortest way is to spam rates, comments, forum posts (i really wish they just stayed off the forum, its only just 1ap anyway) and game comments. And that is the story of how it got to be so annoying that we are talking about it here.
Also the reason why they just stop reading the rules before trying their luck at leveling up in the forums is the fact that they are already used to not reading rules. These people on the forums are mostly all gamers, and with all the instructions they ignore when playing games or the "i read and accept the terms of agreement" button, which almost none of them actualy take into consideration what they just said, so they have already had training in just jumping right into something and expecting the game to tell them what to do even thought they don't know the instructions, but once we tell tem what to do they have already done quite a bit of damadge.
Cenny, I'm getting a mod to lock this because the OP has absolutely nothing to do with the title! :O
I'm joking, obviously, but I agree with your point on the lack of substance in 30% of forum posts recently. I can't comment much on how recently this problem occurred because I've only been off hiatus a few days. People definitely need to stop posting the bare minimum and getting away with it! Also, I keep seeing people posting a completely unrelated comment and upon getting picked up on it they go 'Oh, I must have read the OP wrong, I'm real tired '
On an unrelated note (excuse the hypocrisy), I've noticed now that you're not a mod, people treat you differently.. :/
I say people have certain behaviors that may be self-destructive, insulting, or hateful, because they do not have complete control of their mind, or in some cases, bodies. Just my opinion. (about the spam, trolling, etc.)
And for the spoonfeeding part, well, if we don't do that, they probably won't learn it, ever. If they can't learn more about the actual way to communicate online, and especially, on this site, well that's their problem.
I really think that if we set a good example and make every post at least 5 sentences long and think bout our post for a couple of minutes (or hour if you really want to be thourough) then we wouldn't have these problems, as for the topics that are made that have almost no substance, if we could get all the oldies to just not give in to the easy ap and not post there, then they might learn that those topics get barried quickly or locked.
I also found that commenting on their profile about their post and putting a link helps them improve the length (unless they just really don't care) of their posts.
@ Somewhat49 Well, that would work unless it's a forum game. Which would obviously does not matter since there is no AP given.
But even though many people set an example, you can't just expect everyone to follow it. It's just setting your expectations way too high. The majority of people may be able to stick to that, but some people just won't change, and unfortunately, in our society, that is just way too common.
But even though many people set an example, you can't just expect everyone to follow it. It's just setting your expectations way too high. The majority of people may be able to stick to that, but some people just won't change, and unfortunately, in our society, that is just way too common.
But I don't think many peope are really doing what I just described, Like right now we are all pretty much writing quite lengthy and full responces to this thread (probably because so much peer presure is on this topic right now) and peer presure is what we need. When they see that everyone is writting such big and well thought out responces they might think that they don't want to be the odd one out and be posting half assed answers so they will follow the crowd and post nice long and thought out posts as well, then once another new commer is there and reading the posts on the forums, they will see how everyone is following the rule of writting well thought out responces.
But then agian this could just be like communism, it only looks good on paper and never actualy works in real life.
just like the game comments are for word burps instead of, say, quick feedback or reviews, comments, suggestions and so forth.
This is the most annoying thing for me.
On another slightly related note what is really the point in having a game rating? I mean you can rate a game well, lets say giving it a 8/10 but never say why you gave it that score. For all we know you could have just been randomly choosing a number if you don't but a comment on it saying why you gave it that score. Even if we assume that you were properly rating we don't know what that person thought about the game as in what they liked and didn't like. Pretty much I don't get the point of a rating.
Well, doesn't everything look like that in the beginning? (lol, I think you got me to temporarily argue with my previous statement) Anyway, back to the topic, peer pressure seems to always work. If only Cenere could see us now, he'd be so proud. Yet I always get the feeling that on the internet something is always going to go terribly wrong.
It seems like this thread turned out to become more than the simple rant-response usually seen. I guess that is the magic Cenere has that I've heard about. Sorry if my thoughts seem to be a bit random and discordant, I really have no real explanation for it...
Even if we assume that you were properly rating we don't know what that person thought about the game as in what they liked and didn't like. Pretty much I don't get the point of a rating.
You don't get what was good and bad about specifics of the game, you get a rating of the overall product. If i look at two games, one game got a 3/10, and the other got an 8/10, I'm not going to care why they were given what they were given, i'm just going to play the one with the higher rating.
It seems like this thread turned out to become more than the simple rant-response usually seen. I guess that is the magic Cenere has that I've heard about.
Really it has always been cerene, highfire, and hiaha that made me want to start trying to be as efficent as possible because I look at the stuff they write and I am impressed that what some people reply with one sentence to, they reply with 2 paragraphs.
Also I have found that writing more thoughtfully helps me also is school because I am already used to throwing all my thoughts into one thing and including alot of deatail.
I agree with you. I haven't seen many responses like that, but on the unusual occasion I get the priveledge to see a comment like that, it's just unbelievable how they think of that, it just makes your original opinion look 2 dimensional, flat. It's that kind of people that really makes you wonder why they aren't the people up on TV, and instead, those random people who were just born into that luck. Huh, what were you talking about communism?
Oh yea, I was just saying how the plan of just having peer presure to make the new commers post longer responces might just not work like how communism dosent work, but it still looks functional when written down, like how my plan sounds like it could work, but there really isn't any real life application of it yet to see if it will fail as badly as comunism does.
http://armorgames.com/community/thread/9238351/question-of-the-day/page/16#post-9326255 Well it seems that my longish post had no real effect on the posts after it, well at least it was worth a try.
But no point in giving up, there could always be a way. Maybe also it could just be that one long post out of the 100 short posts dosen't make much of a dent, but it will be hard to try to get everyone to post with adequate thought and not just minimal thought.
