It seems to me that most of the problems with the forum could be dealt with if you just banned krellin outright. don't even give a reason, just let him wake up one day and be unable to log in. Delete every post he's ever made. Change his name in every post in which he's mentioned. Don't respond to his emails. Just let him scream. If anybody asks about him just pretend you don't know what they're talking about.



Now, I'm not suggesting you actually DO this - I for one would miss krellin terribly - but it would be hilarious.

---

On the other note, don't make multiple forums, that's just silly talk. To this day I fail to understand why anybody who has a real problem with a given user and hasn't simply muted that user should be taken at all seriously when they complain.

In my best Vulcan voice, "That would be....shocking..." <fingers steepled in deep, contemplative thought...>

YJ - the voice of reason ..... Mod him now

YJ -- I'm certain I need not remind you of your past...er....adventures in forum vulgarity. Be careful what you wish for, my dear friend.

YJ, that assumes that people like me (who mostly care about dip threads) are insulted/offended by the other users/threads. I'm not, I just don't care. If I could turn on a forum feature to automute non-dip threads, I would. Not because I'm insulted by the other content, but because I don't care about it and don't want to spend time ignoring or muting it.

I'm new here. Can someone tell me how to mute specific people? I found how to mute a thread, but not specific people.

If anyone is interested in a new person's perspective, I would be happy to share, but I'm not really going to jump into the cauldron otherwise.

JUMP

On each user's profile, next to their name (at the top left of the page) there's a little mute button (looks like a speaker). You can get to their profile by clicking their name on any of their posts.

I have just muted a tin can, I never thought I would say that in my life.....

Thanks a lot.

This is once again devolving in to the discussion this always devolves in to: This is *my personal* ideal vision of how WebDiplomacy should work. If only I could mash you all in to my Utopian ideal, all would be happiness and unicorn bliss.

No! No! Your vision is wrong! And I dont' even like unicorns! THIS is the way WebDiplmacy woudl work best if *I* were Goresgone, God of the Internet. In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!

@krellin

I'm not sure I understand. The entire point of this thread was to see how people wanted the Forum to be run.

Krellin, you should make that last paragraph your profile text ;)

I would be in favour of a system that let users choose between the two or three most common "ideal views" of the forum. Then we can all experience our unicorn-filled utopia.

Yeah that was pretty good.

Abge , first, it was a joke...some got it,you didn't, I guess. Second, the "the forum would be perfect if only" is just a bunch of opinion, none of it backed up by data to prove the point. Ban krellin, don't ban krellin, one unified forum, two forums' selectable forums, etc....al opinion, none of them with any evidence to support the claim that Player X has the perfect solution. There is no perfect solution, which you have pretty much already said.


I'm sorry for my momentary lapse of reason in introducing levity to the obvious stalemate.

And how do you pronounce goresgone anyways?

Is it like "Gore-is-gawn?" Or "Go-ress-go-nee?"

Gore is gone....Gore, creator of the internet....Gore's Gone....Goresgone

Of the two issues -- non - dip threads and bad apple behavior, it is the nastiness that is worse. It gets too gray to moderate behavior so muting users is a blunt solution, but the most practical. It would be good for some feedback though, at least to the mods if not the users to know how many have muted you so there is a way to change perceptions.

In the past I advocated split forums or filters, but as a first simple step before considering something more work or drastic, that only the latest post of a thread be previewed on the home page so you can quickly see more threads without digging deep -- it is the rapid fire topics that bury posts usually. Especially for those of us regularly on a phone.

Just make it so that for new users krellin is muted by default. They can then choose to unmute him if they like that sort of stuff. ;-)

Seriously though, although I am sure some players will leave/have left because of how the forum currently works, who's to say that not many more players are attracted by it or would leave if it would change. We have no data about that do we? I guess the best indicator would be if the website was in decline which afaik it isn't. So, don't fix it if it ain't broke.

That being said, I sympathize with people like Tin who under the current system are forced to either regularly go and mute a bunch of threads or risk missing out on the content they are actually looking for. Therefore I wouldn't mind a system with two tags, dip and non-dip, along with the option to select either one or both as your default view. I think it is the best compromise between keeping a lively forum and making it easy for people that are not interested in non-dip stuff to filter it out.

I think this notion that people leave the site because the forum is sometimes colourful is absurd and changing things to accommodate people who are likely to still leave anyway is ridiculous. Also, what of the people who use the forum whilst not necessarily participating in games. I have no open games at the moment, and haven't played for six months as I have a busy life right now. But I do pop into the forum frequently although I don't post too often.

Keep things as they are.

This is the danger of appointing someone to improve things. The feel they have to do something as that's what they were appointed to do. The fact that what they are doing doesn't improve things becomes academic.

"This is the danger of appointing someone to improve things. The feel they have to do something as that's what they were appointed to do. The fact that what they are doing doesn't improve things becomes academic."

That's a completely unfair assertion. As far as I read him abge is pretty much in the camp of those that don't want to change anything. He's just facilitating a discussion.

I agree with Maniac with this, however, I do not see any detriment that having the diplo-only/non-diplo/both forum views could possibly have on the site barring extra coding work and some potential buggy forum issues after implementation. Some people have voiced that they would prefer such a system, so I see no reason not to implement it other than not wanting to do the work. (which is fair enough)

Just make sure that Both is the default, if this is done. IMHO.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

"This is the danger of appointing someone to improve things. The feel they have to do something as that's what they were appointed to do. The fact that what they are doing doesn't improve things becomes academic."

I assure you, I have no interest in making changes for the sake of making changes.

A wise man once said "if it looks better broken, don't fix it"

Suggest threads on home page only preview last comment. That will make a big difference without a major coding or process change. That's may be enough change. Muting statistics would be great, by the way.

Abge - I didn't mean to have a dig at you personally. I sometimes fear there is a culture generally, in business and elsewhere, that doing something is always preferred to leaving things as they are. More emphasis is placed on what a vocal minority say that what the silent majority feel. People think they can make everyone happy - they can't. But a new broom brought in to look at making things better is under great pressure to do something. Going a year and then reporting back to their superiors that then did nothing, but things didn't get worse - is a brave more and likely to lead to the sack. I was speaking generally, rather than specifically when I made previous comments, sorry for any offence caused.

*a brave move