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"Understand the Past, Gain the Future": Dustloop Revamp General

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Where it trends or where it doesn't trend shouldn't be something that determines whether or not you contribute though.
 
GG and BB almost do not exist in my home state, but I "Keep the Flag Flying" as much as possible.

 

 

Contributing accurate information and gameplay discussions is rather hard to do when you don't play the game in question. As I stated, I still post as much info as I can in the AC+R Jam forums, when the rare times it is needed, so I don't see your point.

 

Anyway, this discussion is pretty irrelevant to the point of the thread. Let's talk more about how to encourage discussion than why I don't post as much :p

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As someone who has been lurking for a while, and yet is a new member, who, hell, is still little more than a scrub at BB, I'll just say what I think.

 

More attention to the wiki would be really nice – that's how I was introduced to the actual Dustloop forums, and I know so many new players go there to try to find pieces of advice on their chosen character, only to have it be disappointingly empty, especially for EX (which is somewhat excusable because it's fairly new).

 

Well, besides that, as outside observer until fairly recently, I noticed that there's just not a lot of talk outside of character forums or specific threads. People are staying in little bubbles; I think a new part of the forum for people to get to know and interact with each other from all over the place – GG, BB, P4A, the Mizuumi fighters – would only help the community. Would some cliques develop? Probably. But there's not very many ways to bring the community together as a whole, and I think the forum could really benefit from something like that.

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I'm just dropping in here to put my 2 cents in and do not intend to monitor this thread at all, or argue any points.

 

In my opinion, for the most part, the time for traditional forums has come and gone. Some places can still make it work, but most can't. In our case, the community has up and decided that sharing information publicly via social media is the easiest and most convenient way to get things out there. That's actually fine, but there's nobody compiling that information into a single resource. I still -- to this day -- use the Dustloop wiki. Even if it's missing a lot of information, it's still a good resource. In order to make Dustloop a viable community again, what I think needs to happen is the following:

 

  • Ditch the forums. Go with a Reddit-style board where people can link to twitter posts and other links to helpful information.
  • Create sub-reddits (or whatever you want to call them) for individual characters. The intention here is that when I post something on twitter or evernote full of information on Minazuki, someone will go and put that link on the Minazuki sub-reddit. People will see it. People will vote it up or down, but they'll see it.
  • Flesh out the wiki more. When people post these links, there should be people who care enough to update the wiki. Perhaps put a permanent link to each character's wiki page at the top of each sub-reddit.
  • Create a player database, where people can put their player handles, twitter accounts, youtube accounts, what characters they play, or other information. This is actually a pretty simple thing to create: a simple database with a couple front-facing forms.
  • Make a better event calender. Make it filterable by region or zip code. It needs to be a lot more robust than what we're using right now: google maps integration, tournament information, links to streams involved, TO information, whether it's a major/minor region event, etc.

If I think of anything else, I'll come back and post it. For now, SEE ME ON TWITTER

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@anne, I'm seriously inclined to disagree with a lot of what you've said. In particular, I am not sure what other experiences You've been through that were so harrowing, but seeing Mac chaos who conviently took your place in the threads I posted in, being nice yet stern and having a ton of control over threads so far, with virtually no feedback, on top of my own experience with you (that is neither here nor there), makes me believe that maybe people were pushing back for a reason.

You can see for yourself. Go into one of his threads and see him enforcing a rule. See how many people push back.

It's not rocket science. You have to talk to people a certain way, no matter how rude they are. Your job is (well, was) not to get mad back. Frustrated? Understandable. But again, sometimes, you were right on the other side of the fence you were trying to keep up.

And I say this completely without bias. Again, whatever issue we had is water under the bridge, at least to me anyway, and I am speaking from a detached, critical point of view. People observe who is leading them. Those people are emulated. The people you lead are extensions of yourself, or will be if they stick around. Granted there were some issues with misinformation. That will NEVER go away, though, no matter how Hardass anyone tries. It doesn't mean give up. It means, these people are giving you a job. Any successes or failings on your end are entirely on you, not anyone else. Again, take a step back. See how your successor does things. There IS a difference.

 

It really depends. You can be lenient towards people, but then people do start to take advantage of that. Eventually someone has to put the boot down and that person always turns into the bad guy. Moderators on their end also have bad experiences and deal with extremely weird issues. But I think this can help with overall policy change and more transparency? Plus with more people hopping onto PS4, it could push towards, "Post vids and prove it" rather than people circlejerking bad information back and forth.

 

That and scrubs gonna scrub. There are a lot of people who join any kind of fighting game with an extremely limited idea of what they're even doing. However, due to the nature of being competitive, a lot of people try to be Hollywood and one-up another rather than learn the game or take any kind of criticism. On other communities I've seen a lot of posts that my response is: wwwwww. Ultimately the reason why DL was more strict was because of upholding the policy that it is to remain a site for good competitive information.

 

There are a few known methods of dealing with that. Make character boards strict, but make other buckets for more general chat, etc. Only thing is the BB General got a lot of complaints due to how bad the threads are.

 

This is kind of what I was referring to in the other thread, you can't really win with this; I'm sure Dustloop was a lot more lax and community based a few years back and that did help make it more open and welcoming to people, but when people socialize, they start circlejerking and creating their own cliques where they talk amongst themselves and reach some pretty bad conclusions. And then, when you try to correct them in any certain way, people get defensive because they feel like they're being personally attacked for just "having fun" and "playing the game".

 

So then the mods came down on things like that and then suddenly Dustloop gets the reputation of being "Elitist". I had a friend told me this site wasn't fun because she was told to stop posting fanfiction tier shit in the Zepp Museum. 

 

There were some policies that IMO went too far. Netplay General was it's own brand of something. It got bad when even moderators in that board took part in shitposting. However, I thought the general threads in the majority of the character forums were fine. People complained, but as far as I saw there weren't any that were problematic.

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regarding the revival of off-topic discussions:

 

we've had this discussion/problem before. i believe our consensus was that we wanted dustloop to be an information database, and the off-topic posts would deter from the useful information. i'm sure you've already heard this somewhere in this topic before. we knew that if we were to eliminate all signs of casual discussion from the forums, we'd get a pretty dissatisfied userbase. nobody would ever want to go on the forums other than to read information and maybe post news, although the latter will run its course very quickly as new information is always scarce.

 

our solution was to have the chat. we figured that if people wanted to have off-topic discussions, they can do so in the chat.

 

but nobody uses the chat, save about a few handful of people or so. and then i see people complaining about the lack of off-topic discussions here, and i'm like:

tumblr_inline_ns8adpS9qh1qmgt2c_540.jpg

 

case in point: we do actually have a place for off-topic discussion. it's called the chat. if you don't like how it runs or should be incorporated differently, that's fine. let us know then, and we can figure something out. just remember that we're trying to make everyone happy. that includes the regulars, the lurkers, and the people who only go on just to look for information.

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Having a Wiki or Database format certainly curbs the off topic discussion, though comments and community should have a good place to exist.
 
And speaking of community, people should be allowed to have a good spot to speculate and discuss the stories of the games in a more organized format than just dumping stuff in Zepp Museum (or at least that's what I've observed).
 
Side note: if chat were more prominent maybe more would use it???

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well it's in the top bar...

 

but then again, so is the video thread...

 

which nobody ever uses either...

 

so i guess nobody pays attention to the top bar...which is a problem.

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Hi, I'm one of those inactive people that has the badge thingy that marks those who have some idea what they're talking about. 

 

That and scrubs gonna scrub. There are a lot of people who join any kind of fighting game with an extremely limited idea of what they're even doing. However, due to the nature of being competitive, a lot of people try to be Hollywood and one-up another rather than learn the game or take any kind of criticism. On other communities I've seen a lot of posts that my response is: wwwwww. Ultimately the reason why DL was more strict was because of upholding the policy that it is to remain a site for good competitive information.

 

This is one main reason why I don't post about how to play the video game anymore. Another, not skill based, reason that ties into Polka's post is people tend to not be very good at having active discussions. By that, I mean, 1) reading and comprehending what other people are discussing with an open mind and 2) actively framing their viewpoints with enough reasoning to make 1) as simple as possible. I'm not quite sure how to fix this since you see this happen everywhere, but I think that if people do 2) good enough, 1) will happen. You can kind of see it whenever SKD posts something. Sure, you get some people that just talk at him in response, but in general there is a discussion happening there. So I think you need to convince people who are capable of starting and maintaining good active discussions back into the community. About how to do that...shrug?

 

Also please never bring Netplay General back. Never forget the feet pictures. 

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I'll never get tired of the leap of logic between "Me and my friends don't use forums" and "Forums are dead, we should stick to Twitter".

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I can agree to disagree on the publicly calling someone out without infracting them though that said I've never seen such public warnings being what I would consider polite OR (and this IMO is the bigger issue) sufficiently targeted.  They've been more like a blanket "You kids get off my lawn" sort of warning where, if any infraction does get handed out, it seems like the person most likely to suffer mod wrath is not the most egregious offender but rather the most recent.  That is, quit simply, shitty moderation. 

 

I probably didn't make my comment very clear, to be fair. I only meant that things like "Sorry, that picture is way too large for the thread, so I edited it into a link instead! Hope you don't mind." type of warnings were okay for public posts. Similarly obvious things that were minor and may require editing from the mod seem okay to me. Anything beyond that is definitely for private messages only.

 

If we're disagreeing on that, still, then that's definitely an agree-to-disagree situation. I just wanted to see if we were on the same page or not. :P

 

 

===========

 

Just going to restate that I think a reddit-styled board sounds absolutely horrible. There is almost nothing about the way a reddit-styled board operates that I think would work well for the purpose of building a reliable community hub.

 

That said, I am severely biased in favour of an actual forum for discussion and organization, so it would probably be good if someone would write up a list of what they consider to be benefits from switching to a reddit-styled board, if there's enough interest in that type of switch.

 

(still vehemently against it, by the way!)

 

 

===

 

While it would be nice if everyone was good at having discussions on the internet, there's no real getting around the fact that it's very unlikely for that to happen. Just something that has to be taken in stride, for the most part.

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Jyosua said that he won't check this thread, but I still want to respond to one thing he posted:

"Create sub-reddits (or whatever you want to call them) for individual characters. The intention here is that when I post something on twitter or evernote full of information on Minazuki, someone will go and put that link on the Minazuki sub-reddit. People will see it. People will vote it up or down, but they'll see it."
 

I would hope that it doesn't go this way. Essentially, you'd need several people, for a site with as many games as Dustloop, dozens, to keep track of all top players Twitters or Facebooks or blogs or whatever, and then keep posting it a forum no one cares about. Why would anyone visit the forum when the only content is a bunch of tweets? Why would anyone want to be the one to post tweets and keeps returning to nothing at all? Even worse, be the one updating a wiki that you don't know if anyone uses or cares about.

 

Essentially, it's easier for players to just tweet stuff, it's short and simple and you don't really have to care, just like it's easier to just sit at home and play online rather than go to tournaments (or host them). It doesn't build a community. Reddit is discussing created content between consumers. A tweet from a top player with no explanation or followup has no real meaning.

At least in the circles I move in, Dustloop very much has a stamp of "lol dustloop those guys have no clue" because many good players would rather just stay in their cliques. Which is understandable, but a shame.

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While it would be nice if everyone was good at having discussions on the internet, there's no real getting around the fact that it's very unlikely for that to happen. Just something that has to be taken in stride, for the most part.

I agree, but I was trying to avoid being pessimistic.

 

Also going to have agree on the idea of a Reddit style board being a horrible idea. My experience with the Dota 2 subreddit as a place to learn the game has been...negative at best, and I am inclined to believe it is a result of the structure of Reddit.

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A dustloop revamp should emphasize, and i mean emphatically, the wiki and how the redesign makes it easier to update and contribute to for forums users, and that second part should also be true. in the long run it simplifies archival and, with enough use, people will get a better sense of how best to organize the information and make it useful. and maybe people won't have as strong the impression this entire website is basically one giant video thread lmao
 
Hypothetical model as follows:
 
Each barebones character subforum has a gen thread, a critique/analysis thread, and a link to the character's main wiki page. the moderator's job now is not only to make sure the forum threads don't explode, but ensure that the character's wiki is updated on a gradual and consistent basis. the mod updates the wiki with material derived from his own experiences or filtered (you will see this verb later) from good, informative posts. the mod has primary say over how the wiki is formatted and presented, but can delegate to trusted posters. as a moderator you could do cool things like have a faq consisting of twitter and ask.fm questions you've already answered or post dank memes like in the srk kof 98 wiki, things which could be useful or reduce work for a moderator so they might be more inclined to moderate or use the wiki.
 
The wiki medium lets you do things these forums can't. like in the other thread there was the great idea that looking at either the X vs Y or the Y vs X matchup should lead to the same page. so you could just have a link on each subforum that goes to the same matchup wiki subpage and you wouldn't have to see a giant list of matchup threads where the op fucked off after copy pasting each thread.
 
One big problem with dustloop and most other infodumps is a lot of things just tend to get lost. so threads like this or this or this fade into obscurity and you're left wondering whether your otg 2k gunflame oki is actually tight or whatever. the site redesign needs to tackle this problem, and the wiki looks like the best way to turn shit into gold. (just a metaphor!!) the above model could easily be applied to more general subforums, although in this case you might want to encourage the use of common tags? like the [GAME] tags you see, but useful for more than the sidebar. ideally a front page writer could wade through everything and filter all the good tweets and videos and posts and do the categorization for us but that's too cruel lol.
 
People want to post (chat) and there's no helping it. so if someone posts or tweets good and you're not interested in risking 10 pages of chit chat to get to that post, it should be filtered someplace where that information won't get lost (even better, and possibly more important: can be discussed), in a wiki or a tagged collection of posts or a tagged-post-only discussion thread or whatever works best. this definitely requires more effort and curation from the moderators but dustloop's reputation has everything to gain from such efforts. imo

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One of those lurker people posting.

 

Regarding the amount of Mods...

 

It seems to be agreed on that we don't need as many Mods as we have. I think the issue stems from the fact that we're linking moderator duties with someone who is knowledgeable about a character.

 

I would say, scrap character Mods. Instead, create a new position; a volunteer user that knows their character and is willing to be a prominent figure on said character forum. They would be the go-to person for new users, and would serve a Mods (current) purpose of guiding their characters forums. The best part about these "Guides"  is that you can have more than one without making the staff look bloated since they fall more in line with what a community volunteer would be.

 

But what about pruning threads and other such things? For this, we'll need a dedicated Mod team. Each game can have a small handful of (active) Mods that can handle the issues in their respective game's forums. Of course, we'll still have our few Super Moderators etc.

 

Aside from trimming the staff this separation of duty helps to create a clear line. As had already been discussed...sometimes Mods do need to put their foot down. Problem is, for some people, it can be an issue that the person that needs to be stern and say "No" also is the one that is expected to teach others (not to mention, being a mod can make one jaded, but that is a different discussion). I speak from some bit of experience here, hard ass Mods are just seen as hard ass Mods. The problem is...when you put Mods in this light that shows them as one of the pillars of the community, but that pillar needs to do certain things that some users don't like...it gets dicey. Let select users be the pillars and the ones that help others, and let the Mods handle their own duties. I see no reason why they should be the same thing.

 

See, there is one HUGE flaw about all this.

 

This suggestion won't mean crap if we can't get active and dedicated volunteers to be these "guides" that the new user needs, and it won't mean anything if these Mods watching over their game's forums aren't active. Since these guides, depending on how such a thing would be handled,  In the end, the site will flourish only as much as the users (and staff) want it to, but I think that this sort of change may help it take a step towards new users and people on the outside seeing Dustloop as less oppressive. (I mean, seeing a site with as many mods as this may give someone some strange first impressions.)

 

 

So uh...yeah, just a thought. I'd love to see this site flourish and be a place not only to learn, but to be a community of like minded that wish to help each other and to see one another grow.

 

 

 

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I want to really think through some of my suggestions before I start posting anything, but I do have one suggestion I can get out there right now.

 

Whatever the general interface for Dustloop may be in the future, I think there needs to be a side or top bar with all the important links such as the Wiki and Stream tabs that auto-scrolls with whatever thread you're in. These bars would have drop down menus as well leading to character forums that could allow a member to open a new tab/window in their browser without leaving whatever discussion they were apart of at that time. The reason for this is that, as stated numerous times, there is a ridiculous amount of information available to those that visit Dustloop. It takes too much effort to go from one thread or even one forum to another. You can't readily do such a thing, with any attempts at doing so being a chore. If you could just sort of 'jump' to another similar discussion without taking time to weave through a number of threads (an example being from one character's matchup thread to the opposing character's matchup thread), you could quickly see if any relevant information was already dropped, leave comments in both threads since the discussion in both is relevant to your interests, and there would...well, be actual discussion! You would have players of both characters interacting with each other instead of having players of one character talk about a matchup in purely their own thread and the same situation happening for the other character.

 

Maybe this would require a complete transfer to another forum system, but I feel like it could help deal with inactivity and lack of consistent discussion.

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In regards to tournament players for moderators: The problem is just because someone's good at the game doesn't mean they want to deal with all the bullshit on the site. They might be okay with answering questions, but that's about it. Typically moderation is decided by who wants to do the work, which is 95% of the time is upkeeping all the resource threads as long as it seems like within reason they'd be good at doing so and barring obvious signs of problematic behavior. If a character board is stagnant, that usually just means the moderator is busy/lost interest and no one else volunteered yet to take their place. Or some characters simply don't generate much discussion regardless of how good their resources are due to low player base.

 

Some of this can be offset by improving the wiki so most of the bullshit work is integrated into the wiki which is open to editing so there's less of a barrier to getting it updated if the designated person has to deal with real life. IMO the character subforums should stay because they primarily exist to teach people how to play a character. A wiki can and should do the brunt work, but you can't ask a wiki questions so IMO it is important that the character subs stay.

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Well Ive been on dustloop for a long time since  late CS1 ~ early CS2 days so about 4 years or so and Ive seen some shit go down since then on here with the destruction of the general discussion boards and the sturn posts of mods and the reputation being cohesive with the site itself leading to the fall and phoenix lift of this very topic almost each year. I came to dustloop with the original intent to get better at the game through information alone and nothing else at the time as i thought thats all DL was basically for until i seen how active ppl once were on here in general discussions and other tangent subject matters tha kept ppl coming in but at the same time seen elitists and very bias users and perhaps some mods ( im not calling names but we know the history so its watever) just post in a way that just kills the motivation to even click on the link to the site in the first place. We all get this by know we all want a place to have reliable info for competitive purposes and use while also entertain the grounds for having the site be a social grounds to have same users come and feel welcomed and respected enough to even have them use this site for any reason. be it social or info it doesnt matter we all just want ppl to use this site in some form or fashion and i think that's the REAL goal here. i feel like Twitter, Facebook, Skype, and console chats are whats taking away from DL in general because of convenience and because of groups or cliques that regularly chat or talk there than DL more over the "Freedom of speech"  clause there as opposed to DL where it seems to a lot of new users or players in general they dont have this right without some backlash monitoring their attempt to post anything opinion based.

 

Now to adress certain stuff mentioned imo:

 

Off Topic General Discussion Threads

 

imo its fine to have this as long as the thread doesnt have anything related to death threats or any disrespect to someones family or personal matters. if theres a post about someones opinion being stupid hell let it be it an off topic discussion anyhow its nothing pertaining to the ASW games on correct info as this site is mostly based on anyhow so it should be ok. insults : make it a PM and take it from there but dont post something like racism or something intended to hurt the other persons feelings to earn cool points we clearly dont have time for that anymore and is the reason why we have this rebuild thread in the first place please ppl use common sense. why do you think PM messages exist? be cool about it and help represent a good community standard please. we all can benefit from it. also the Chat on DL that was supposed to replace the off topic general threads isnt exactly wat i think most of the users had in mind for it off the ideal vision to be able to see ppls posts in a thread format (as it is now) as opposed to a literal Chat line as if we where on a stream or something

 

Moderators

 

mods are fairy decent imo the only mod i seem to recall to pass me off as an annoyance of some sort was Anne but i understand his reasoning. however as TD

mentioned before  Mac chaos does it in a way that pretty respectable and if i had to choose what kind of mod i wanted Mac would be first on my list anyday because he knows how to let the threads rock a bit but not to the point of being super sturn about it on every minor instances. he basically spoils us in the right way and it seems to satify everyone effectively. imo any mod suggestions could best be from him or TD they seem to understand how to work the crowd when necessary. thats just me tho. as for Mods in general i think we should do this :

 

Character Mods: same ways mods are for 1 character forum running those threads with their back up mods

 

General Mods: the mods who enforce the rules and regulations of the new DL. need to be nice and kind to new users and fairly so and respectable to regular users as such and warnings should be treated as in the same manner but only stern if its absolutely necessary ( this may vary on tolerance level of individual mods but i like Mac chaos take on it so far)

 

Back up Mods a.k.a Co-Mods: each character mod should have a back up mod of perhaps 1 to 2 co-mods. since each are responsible for character info and general gameplay info i suggest to have any form of contact info for users and other mods for communication to get intouch with if necessary to be a standard as any user (imo) should feel empowered to get intouch with someone they can trust to have their questions be answered instead of waiting for days to be responded. the time for forceful contact for a mod towards inactivity imo should be anywhere between a month or 2 as a reasonable timeframe to see if that mod is okay or if life picked up for them and as a mod it is your responsibility to contact fellow mods if possible to inform of impending inactive time ahead of schedule.if not possible we will attempt contact info after atleast a month under reasonable activity in the forums in which said mod runs in the mean time co- mod should stay attentive to forums in the same manner as the main mod is until further notice

 

Dustloop forum layouts

 

i do agree that the layouts are too cluttered and isnt simplified enough imo but some of it cant be helped at the same time i guess. perhaps this could help:

 

 

 

                                                                                      Dustloop

____________________________________________

 Insert any dustloop introduction of some sort via video animation of AWS gameplay or flash Gifs of all ASW games and a welcoming text. also post any upcoming events as well as a reminder up here so that it captures ppls attention.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BLAZBLUE | GUILTY GEAR | PERSONA | UNDER NIGHT IN BIRTH | MELTY BLOOD | ETC.  PLACE EACH GAME IN TABS LIKE SO

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                             

                                         DUSTLOOP NEWS                                         | Tournament news

                                             post any news here                                   |    post tourney news here

                                                                                                                  |

                                                                                                                  |

                                                                                                                                                                                              |

_______________________________________________________________________________________________  ____________

 

Twitch channels | Youtube channels | stream channels | Nico Videos |   DL logo here i guess

___________________________________________________________________

 

Skype | Facebook | twitter | instagram (if even used) | Dustloop wiki |      Calander and events

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

this is just a rough draft of how i feel dustloop can be revised as the front page and could be simplified from here on. not as perfect as the way it shows for the time being but from a view perspective this is okay i guess as a demo representation

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EDIT: Quote function not working right, nor is copy and paste.  This is in reference to TD's post on the bottom of page 1 about mods needing to be nice.

 

Like Circuitous.  He's one of our most dedicated mods, but he really does need a PR course.  He get's way too riled up over off-topic posts and it tends to cause other people to get angry.

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I don't have a lot of time to respond to people today, so I"m just going to say this in regards to moderation.

Yes, it is within your rights to say "this is how we run the forum, if you don't like it don't come here" and that's true for all forums.  However, keep in mind that if you're sincere about growing the community then this attitude is probably only going to make outsiders think you're stubborn and power hungry.  As it stands, you have a cycle that looks something like

 

"Okay, I can't post about stupid shit in Zepp Museum without my thread getting locked, I guess I'll go to gameplay."

"Okay, I can't post about gameplay because I'm still learning, I guess I'll go back to Zepp."

 

But at the same time, don't concern yourself with being nice.  I dislike "niceness" because it seems hollow and artificial to me.  Instead, try to be friendly.  Friendliness is more sincere, and you can do that without compromising your personality, ethics or sense of humor.  

 

Overall, just remember that as staff you represent the largest English hub for airdashers on the internet, as well as the community at large.  Anything you do or say reflects not only on the website, but on the community as a whole.  Think that over before you take action.

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Just a heads up -- I'm doing a test reordering of the structure of the wiki to make it more accessible. I'm going to be reformatting an old game as an example and UI test and get feedback, then make edits and enlist in some help to expand it to all games. Nothing major, just organizing how things are presented. Simple usability issues.

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I probably didn't make my comment very clear, to be fair. I only meant that things like "Sorry, that picture is way too large for the thread, so I edited it into a link instead! Hope you don't mind." type of warnings were okay for public posts. Similarly obvious things that were minor and may require editing from the mod seem okay to me. Anything beyond that is definitely for private messages only.

 

If we're disagreeing on that, still, then that's definitely an agree-to-disagree situation. I just wanted to see if we were on the same page or not. :P

 

We are on the same page.  Hell, the example you gave, to me, doesn't even warrant communication between the moderator to the offending user.  It just requires the moderator to make it clear in the edit function of the post who edited it (them) and why (image size).  My issue was that I've seen "beyond that" too often aired publicly.  I've also seen some fairly egregious IMO editing behavior by moderators.  In the latter case what I'm thinking of was a user bitching about a character, followed by a mod warning said user to knock this sort of behavior off and then without, as far as I know, issuing an infraction going back later and editing the users post in a way that dramatically changed the wording and intent (i.e. putting words in someone elses mouth).  As far as I'm concerned a mod that does that shouldn't be a mod the next day.  Either the post is offensive enough to warrant an infraction or it isn't.  If it is then issue the infraction and consider deleting the post.  If it it's close but not infraction worthy communicate this to the user via PM.  A moderator should not take it on themselves to be someones personal, unsolicited editor.

 

 

Just going to restate that I think a reddit-styled board sounds absolutely horrible. There is almost nothing about the way a reddit-styled board operates that I think would work well for the purpose of building a reliable community hub.

 

That said, I am severely biased in favour of an actual forum for discussion and organization, so it would probably be good if someone would write up a list of what they consider to be benefits from switching to a reddit-styled board, if there's enough interest in that type of switch.

 

(still vehemently against it, by the way!)

 

Yeah I am definitely not in favor of a Reddit-styled board either.  I will say I think that one way in which I think Dustloop could condense is by binning the Matchup subforums.  SRK manages just fine with SFIV having a "Matchup" thread for each character (keeping in mind just how many more characters there are in USFIV then say GGXrd).  I, in general, find that format more conducive towards discussing and sharing strategies.  The fact that, as best as I can tell, the Xrd matchup threads average barely 5 responses per thread (lol Zato matchup forum with 4 threads and 19 replies) says to me that the space isn't being utilized well.  The general trend seems to be that only characters that are really popular and/or kinda shit have even marginally active matchup sub-forums.  There are only, for Xrd, only four characters who, if their respective matchup sub-forums where condensed into a single thread, would yield a thread longer than this one (Bedman,Slayer, Sol and Venom).  That seems pretty manageable to me.

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Yeah I am definitely not in favor of a Reddit-styled board either.  I will say I think that one way in which I think Dustloop could condense is by binning the Matchup subforums.  SRK manages just fine with SFIV having a "Matchup" thread for each character (keeping in mind just how many more characters there are in USFIV then say GGXrd).  I, in general, find that format more conducive towards discussing and sharing strategies.  The fact that, as best as I can tell, the Xrd matchup threads average barely 5 responses per thread (lol Zato matchup forum with 4 threads and 19 replies) says to me that the space isn't being utilized well.  The general trend seems to be that only characters that are really popular and/or kinda shit have even marginally active matchup sub-forums.  There are only, for Xrd, only four characters who, if their respective matchup sub-forums where condensed into a single thread, would yield a thread longer than this one (Bedman,Slayer, Sol and Venom).  That seems pretty manageable to me.

 

Yea, but then you have the problem of when important information is lost among pages and pages of other matchup talk. Like let's say I wanted info on the Hakumen vs. Nu matchup and someone posted a legit option that would help. So a new Hakumen player comes in, wanting to also learn the matchup. Now either the person that gave that original tip is long gone from the forum or forgot about it entirely. Now said user would have to search a thread for a post that's probably months old buried in content. 

 

That's probably the reasoning for specific matchup threads to begin with, easier to keep track of information, but at the cost of not being as active as a general thread would be.

 

 

 

Something I think we need to understand about "General Threads" is that while they give a more lax and community  based atmosphere, they're not really information cohesive. Like the UNiB forum may be more concise and easier to post it, but there's barely any information to take from due most OP's lacking. So we have to really consider the purpose of a general thread and where it should go. Like maybe you can have a "[insert Game here] gameplay discussion" sub forum where all system related topics are; Frame data, how to play X character, etc. etc. And then you got a "[insert Game here] general discussion" where people can just relax and talk about the game casually; story topics, favorite characters, artwork, etc etc.

 

Maybe even have a general sub forum in of itself to discuss whatever users wanna talk about. So my idea would be like

 

Blazblue.

  • Blazblue General(story topics, artworks, personal topics)
  • Blazblue Gameplay(match finder, character discussions, system data)

 

Guilty Gear

  • Guilty Gear General
  • Guitly Gear Gameplay

Persona 4 Arena

  • Persona General
  • Persona Gameplay

Misc. Games

  • Under Night In-Birth
  • Arcana Hearts
  • Dengeki Bunko
  • etc etc

 

General Discussion

  • Chit-chat(basically a place where you can speak your mind about anything. Almost anything)
  • Gaming(We may be focused on fighting games mainly, but no doubt we all have other genres we follow.)

 

 

And all in-depth, character specific stuff can go onto the wiki or something. I dunno, I haven't really sorted this out, this is just off the top of my head. But i wanna have a happy medium of casual and competitive on this site.

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Oy, I don't even know if anyone will read or care about my input, but from what I've read, I'll throw my 2 cents in.

First off I think this forum was better when it was community oriented, sure you had the odd troll and foot posts, but with some feet being put down, it was generally kept to a minimum, since it went in favor of being information oriented, it certainly has declined. We, as staff, decided it was more important to keep the flow of information accurate at, what seemed to me, the direct expense of the people we are supposed to be doing it for, and correct information is important, don't misunderstand me, but it didn't have to come at the cost of stifling discussion.

 

To realize what needs to happen to Dustloop comes down to the question, "what makes up our community"? Who counts as a member and who doesn't? The forum, and the information contained within is FOR the community, and everyone who decided to shut down off topic knew and even recommended that people should take off topic discussion to social media, or anywhere outside DL's jurisdiction. If this thread is of any indication, that is what shot DL forums in the foot, because anyone who went to social media, stayed on social media because it was easier and more welcoming to community discussion.

 

It feels like I'm talking in a circle, so I guess my point is;

The off topic discussion comes with the package, take it or leave it. Should it be moderated for abusive or completely apropos posts and comments? Yes, but I think it should be allowed, it's simply letting the community talk to one another, they'll either do it here or not, and the choice to emphasize an information database was in essence telling the community to fuck off of DL, and they sure did. The worst assholes should be infracted or banned, without external discussion, if you're on the fence about it, we have warnings, if you're not sure and need guidance, the staff can communicate internally, but the choice and action should be done decisively. and without engaging with a member outside of the warning/infraction/ban in question. One, maybe two forum posts warning people to get back on topic is necessary, the users who understand that there are rules to be followed will understand, the super rebellious assholes aren't wanted here and should be banned regardless.

 

That leads into my next criticism, a lot of the staff have waaaaaaaay too little tolerance and get upset too easily. For years I've seen people overreact at some guy just voicing his opinion or misrepresent something, sure he may be new and speaking on insufficient experience, but reacting and responding in a short tempered fashion is not the way to do it. If people are going to mod, some level of patience and anger management is needed. I'm not here to call people out, but that kind of attitude WILL drive off new users and even users who've been here for a while, the communication of the community is a learning experience for players of varying levels of skill and not everyone is gonna have the same mindset, it's not a hivemind and shouldn't be treated as such, if someone has the wrong idea about something and it turns into a debate, that's fine, if it gets out of hand or overstays it's welcome and moderation is needed, that's also fine, I've always been the type of guy to see things proven right or wrong through gameplay, because unconventional thinking can lead to great things, I think those kinds of debates should be interjected with that kind of mindset, even if the user in question is outright wrong, he/she'll sooner learn in gameplay than they would being yelled at on a forum.

 

I won't say "bring back the general threads", I have no hard suggestions on how to bring DL back, this is just how I've observed things in my time as a user and a mod, but a change in attitude about the community is imperative.

 

Edit: to expand on my point I think this is the core issue of DL, not the forum layout, not the amount of moderators. Large forums are not only nothing new, they're common, try going to your average anime forum or a cellphone forum, or even a different FG forum, large layouts happen with time and are not an issue with activity, and when forums grow in that fashion, it's only natural to have a good amount of mods, people who are passionate about whatever specific aspect of the forum and are willing to make sure it stays organized and neat, I think it's too much to downsize and ask a select few to take up that mantle, it's a free, thankless job.

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