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

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OK got it fixed on Firefox, deleted all the cookies related to dustloop.com and works now.

Did the same and that fixed the problem on my end as well.

strange, i've never seen issues accessing the site from either chrome or opera...

 

can you provide any further details?

Sorry,I would if I could but I don't know what caused it. I don't think kosmos badgirl knows either unfortunately. 

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I agree with Luna about the elitism. While I think it's nice to give credit to top players, I don't think that means that they should be able to oppress folks who aren't top players with their opinions and beliefs. Believe it or not, top players aren't always correct, and do sometimes learn from the folks who aren't considered as good as them.

 

I understand the desire to have more top player discussion on this site, and I don't have any issue with trying to promote that, but I don't think that's a good reason to actually create a split in the community. All that I can see happening based on the current suggestion is the formation of a dividing class system, which will almost inevitably lead to the creation of more problems than it solves.

 

 

There is really no reason a top player cannot have a meaningful discussion with a person who isn't a top player, by the way. It's not like only conversations between top players are useful. I'm pretty sure that's not what you're implying, but parts of the message do sound like that, so I figured I'd just point that out more clearly.

 

You don't have to be a top player to know what you're talking about, you just have to know what you're talking about.

This pretty much sums up the last point.

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I agree with Luna about the elitism. While I think it's nice to give credit to top players, I don't think that means that they should be able to oppress folks who aren't top players with their opinions and beliefs. Believe it or not, top players aren't always correct, and do sometimes learn from the folks who aren't considered as good as them.

 

I understand the desire to have more top player discussion on this site, and I don't have any issue with trying to promote that, but I don't think that's a good reason to actually create a split in the community. All that I can see happening based on the current suggestion is the formation of a dividing class system, which will almost inevitably lead to the creation of more problems than it solves.

 

 

There is really no reason a top player cannot have a meaningful discussion with a person who isn't a top player, by the way. It's not like only conversations between top players are useful. I'm pretty sure that's not what you're implying, but parts of the message do sound like that, so I figured I'd just point that out more clearly.

 

This pretty much sums up the last point.

But how do you know when someone is saying something legit and not pulling shit out of their ass? Like where's the line drawn here?

 

 

I do agree tho, but then it kinda makes the character mod system a bit superfluous doesn't it. We should probably ask ourselves, "Why do we need character mods?" from my understanding, they're the ones who clean up and hold some authority over their respective character sub-forum, so like...why don't we just give people who are actively a part of this site just a bit more posting power?

Like let's say you play Ragna, that would allow you to lightly mod the Ragna sub-forum sections; sticky, unsticky topics, Archiving topics, etc. etc. And just let the extreme mod stuff go to the administrators or the site mods themselves. 

 

I just think character mods never made much sense; when you have multiple players of one character, why give just 1-2 people power over that specific section of the site and literally nowhere else. I like to think we're smart enough to handle our own sub-forums and act accordingly in them. 

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You would think that, but that's not true at all. If you ever saw the Noel subforum before I was made mod, you would find out what it's like when the boards are left to no one in particular. Just as an example, people think ONE general thread is bad. Well the Noel forums had TWO general threads, full of nothing but shitposting and certain power users trolling everyone else. The matchup threads had info from both CT and CS1, it was madness.

Even sub-communities need an authority figure, the Noel boards got straightened out as soon as I took the helm, and I was certainly not one of those "Iron Fist" type of guys.

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In that case, I would just call the site mods to clean up the place, be like "can ya'll clean up this shit hole" I dunno, I go to a lot of other FG sites and not many of them have mods for specific sub forums like we do.

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At that point you're just asking for less mods to do more work. Meanwhile, most of our Head Mods do enough work as it is. I think the current way we handle mods is fine. I'm really not entirely sure why people have an issue with it.

The only thing I'd really change is how the site displays your position on staff. It tells us Admins are Admins, and Super Mods are Super Mods, but everyone else is just "Staff" or "Moderators". If it listed the mod as what his actual position is, it might help prevent some of the confusion some people might have about "Who's this random chucklefuck I've never seen before, and why is he a moderator?" If it said under my avatar "Noel Mod", then that same person might think "Oh, he mods Noel, I only ever hang around the GG threads, so I suppose it makes sense that I've never seen him post".

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There are some legitimate issues such as character forums becoming dead and resources being extremely outdated when mods have to deal with real life or go AFK. As I mentioned earlier, this can be offset with most of the information going into the wiki and the character forum being focused to a few easily managed resources and discussion... something like this?

Link to wikipage
Gameplay Discussion and Questions (players ask questions they have here)
Videosharing and Critique (players post videos to show new tech they have or to ask other players for input on their play)
Video Analysis (players post match videos and discuss them here)
 

Of course, other threads could be made depending on that particular character community's needs/wants. IMO, I have no problem with general threads being brought back, but not all character mods want to deal with having to manage that. Earlier I mentioned that video threads should just be kept to combo videos and tutorials, but is that something that should also be pushed into the wiki?

Also with the discussion of top players, there are some ways that can be managed. 1) Give them some kind of marker (don't awards cover this already)? 2) Stamp out fanboyism.

Main issue that seems to cause elitism/toxic opinions is when other people speak for "insert top player here". Mentioning something or linking to a tweet for reference or whatever isn't bad, but for when people are arguing on behalf of someone else who isn't present, if that's discouraged then that should help? Oh, and I like the idea of the culture being pushed towards: Prove it via video. More people can do that with games shifting to PS4.

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But how do you know when someone is saying something legit and not pulling shit out of their ass? Like where's the line drawn here?

Pretty much how anything is verified; by testing it. Even in something like the academic community, while things discovered and posted by more prolific researchers are given more initial credibility, the claims are still peer reviewed and tested by many others to verify what's being said. If someone claims some move is good to use in a certain matchup then other players will have to go and try and see if it's true. If it's not you can come back and ask for more clarification or say that you have tried to test it and it doesn't work.

I know we have 'likes' on posts and all, but i think if there could be some other type of points or reputation system where if something posted by someone is useful enough info that you would say post it on a character wiki then they get more rep. I know im short on details here but the psychology of a points/progression system has been proven time and again. You have places like StackOverflow that employ very good use of it.

 

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It totally could be a terrible idea. I was trying to think if there is any way to get those people back here posting, if we consider that desirable. It's a difficult question

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I mean, why try to drag "top players" off twitter when they don't wanna be here? lol

I get they know things but they're real people with real lives doing what they wanna do. I don't see a point in putting out candy to drag them here when we can just incorporate the things they already use into here. Like Nakkiel answers shit on twitter and askfm when he has time, I don't wanna speak for him but I know he works a lot and that's probably just easier for him to do. That's the gist I get from him anyways.

The whole "let's rely on top players or super knowledgeable people" shtick is getting old. That's kind of what the site was doing with the mod system and it didn't go over well, so why do it again? Why not work on making it so we don't have to rely on some all seeing god players and try to bring the average quality of the forum up?

Like I don't think one good player bringing down the wrath of god from time to time balances out the power users causing problems. I'd rather deal with making it so the users who are able to think for themselves have room to grow instead of getting caught in that cycle.

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But how do you know when someone is saying something legit and not pulling shit out of their ass? Like where's the line drawn here? 

 

 

 

I don't get why there's this terrible fear of allowing people to post what they think without it being "verified". Isn't the point of forums to talk and discuss? If you think it's wrong, test it out, see what happened and correct it if necessary. 

If it's blatantly wrong just correct it. If they don't listen that's on them. 

 

Also I agree with what Tari, Luna and Anne have said as well. 

Edited by pktazn

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It's not about "relying on top players" or giving top player some kind of carrot to post here. From my take on various "Dustloop sucks" conversations, it's largely because there's also a sentiment that Dustloop is not a good place to post information.

Meaning that if changes are made, that encourages people to post period whether they're a top player or not. There are also high level players who do want to see Dustloop as a place where people can learn to "git gud" out of interest of increasing their own pool for competition.

That's how this whole thing started in the first place. People involved still believe that Dustloop can be a tool for that.

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I mean, the way it's kind of been spelled out to me is "don't believe anything you read on here unless it was said by a top player or somebody with a red name. Even then, be careful of the red names!"

I mean I agree we should make it a posting environment where people will post regardless of skill level. Tbh I'd rather just kick out people who are proven wrong and keep being wrong after being corrected. Like, I get if somebody is new they might say some wrong things every once in awhile, but then you have people who are consistently wrong and will fight you to the death if you question it. If that's elitist so be it, but I mean more top players would probably wanna post if they could have a meaningful conversation easier, and more players would feel better to converse without having those other users overwhelm them.

BB general was real bad about this and earned its reputation that way. If you said something the core of that thread had a problem with, you'd eat shit even if you were right, until our lord and savior top player came in and explained things. We should hold our users to a better standard on just a behavior basis whenever we rework mod policy.

Tbh I'm proposing to curb user elitism at this point. Again, don't wanna speak for others, but I remember certain people trying to contribute to the conversation and then tearing their hair out because those users would dig into them.

Edited by Anne

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But the problem with the general thread wasn't, for the most part, anything to do with interactions with the mod staff. It was mostly just people interacting with each other.  I don't think moderating people harder will help. It just makes things worse all around.

I think things need to be reshaped somehow, to try to get better behavior, better discussion. What would that look like? Maaaaaaaaybe a point system type thing could work. 

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Yeah, exactly what I mean when you say "users interacting with each other". The mods just watch users pick each other apart and squad up. That's really dumb, because the mods are failing the users who are outside the squad who can't be in the discussion on equal terms.

Why do we need point systems? People already go full on e-peen here over the trophies, I don't want more people trying to justify what they're saying even more because they have some number or color next to their name. You should use your brain and listen to the person who is telling you correct things. If you don't know what the correct things are yet, you should really pay extra attention. I know we want to make it easier to figure out who to listen to, but I'd rather the forum be brought up to the point that's not a worry and try keep people as equal as possible.

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I'm kind of coming into this conversation in the middle, so not sure if any were already mentioned, but just adding in some of my ideas if they may help the site or not. Many of them may be rather big ideas to incorporate, but with sites like Twitter, FB and such, big moves are probably going to be your best bet if you want other social media users (as well as new players) to look your way.


International Player Interaction with Japanese Players
While it may be difficult, perhaps mentioning dustloop to japanese players may be good for the site? Obviously there will be a language barrier, but that doesn't stop people from talking to each other on twitter in english/japanese either. And I know there must be some interest in this english/japanese interaction, because people copy/paste links to japanese twitter posts on dustloop asking for translations all the time.  Granted, I realize it would take a serious amount time and effort to sub-title threads in Japanese, somehow introduce Japanese players to dustloop, manage a multi-lingual forum, etc.... but the end result could prove beneficial if Japanese players' reception to dustloop is good.
Nowadays, we see a lot more Japanese players in tournaments such as NEC, EVO, etc..... Basically sharing the same venue as most of people posting here. I believe the same could be done with forums if people really put their mind into how to incorporate it.


Community Contests
Maybe DL could hold something like every 5-6 months like Art contests, Online tournaments, Combo Video contests, etc.... anything to keep things fresh and activity up. And the winner could an arcade stick or some kind of ASW related product. Not sure what methods could be done to raise money, but I'm sure there would be people who would be willing to pitch in to help for prizes if this sort of idea was used.
There reason I suggest this idea because sometimes a community doesn't have to always be talking about frame data and matchups in order to be a community. At the end of the day, it comes down to common interest, and I think that contests and competitions outside of the game can be great for the site when paired with the essential data and discussion as well.


Tournament Result Database
Instead of having to search twitter or google for results. DL could have its own results section (maybe added to the wiki? or an independent section of site?) that displays results by year and the major tournament's name. A very small change, but if people are ever interested in seeing the results of a tournament that they missed or whatnot, they'll know exactly where to go without having to bother searching the internet or having to dig for it in forum posts.


Netplay Instructors (for complete beginners)
Another idea could involve having designated instructors or mods (divided by region to improve netplay latency) that could do a one-on-one or group teaching sessions on microphone (PSN/XBL) for beginners. I emphasize on complete beginners, because it would probably get out of hand if every other person wanted a personal netplay training session. This would be mostly directed toward completely new players to a specific game.


Aesthetics
Perhaps having a picture banner on top would help with the visual appeal of the site. Like a BB banner when you are in the BB forums, a GG banner in the GG-related forums, etc. And if the workload is too much, you could probably use the same Background and just replace the character (similar to how character matchup threads or combo threads have pictures of the characters over a preset BG).


Aside from that, I also agree with LunaKage about the Moderator titles... if someone has a title of (example) "Noel Mod" or "UNI mod" or whatever, players are going to know exactly who to contact if they have questions pertaining to that character or game. I guess it's something we never think about since a lot of us have been on DL for a long time, but it might be helpful to newer users to DL (especially if you plan on getting a wave of new forum users).


Anyways, I guess that's it. Hopefully you guys can get revitalize DL the way you want. I'll try to do my part by posting a little more often.

 

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I definitely like the idea of "Noel Mod" "Admin", "Netplay Mod" etc. I will look into it.

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I like to simply discussions down to really basic parts.  Here are the main goals I see as we talk about a potential revamp

1) Compiling information from all available sources - dustloop forums/wiki, twitter, youtube, nico, ask.fm, evernote writeups, spoken conversations, etc.
2) Making that information organized and accessible
3) Allowing mass participation
4) Authenticating information
5) Managing behavior - preventing shit throwing contests

A lot of these goals conflict with each other really badly, which is maybe why we have trouble coming up with solutions.

The wiki itself is supposed to be all authenticated information.  What does this leave the forums as?  Are they the talking shop that later gets put into the wiki?

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The wiki itself is supposed to be all authenticated information.  What does this leave the forums as?  Are they the talking shop that later gets put into the wiki?

Forums are a source of information, but the "volatile" kind that is ever changing since the game evolves. Things like combos, strategies and matchups are, and have to be, constantly discussed and perfected.

The Wiki should be only used for hard and factual data, such as frame datas, system values/variables and hitboxes.

Edited by Tong

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Forums are a source of information, but the "volatile" kind that is ever changing since the game evolves. Things like combos, strategies and matchups are, and have to be, constantly discussed and perfected.

The Wiki should be only used for hard and factual data, such as frame datas, system values/variables and hitboxes.

Why can't people just edit all that in the wiki as the game evolves?

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And who's going to edit the wiki, the users? Because I dont feel like posting the same content on the same places. The Mods? On top of everything they already do on the forums it's just too much work. Not to mention the new info that is always lost on the huge general threads or dont even arrive here thanks to Twitter and Evernotes.

 

Imo, the Wiki should have more or less this format:

http://www.dustloop.com/guides/ggac/

http://www.dustloop.com/guides/bbcs2/

 

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The wiki is open to editing, so IMO I think it's better for users to edit it since that would lessen the workload for character moderators. As it is, a lot of character mods already handle wiki editing.

But, if the wiki is going to be used as one giant infodump, then there's no point to the forums period. I agree that volatile and contested information should be left to discussion while anything concrete should be thrown into the wiki so that character mods have less resources to manage.

But, for example, the games we cover have no "solved" match ups per say, and people are always thinking of tech to improve MUs. Having open discussion should encourage just that whereas a wikipage would more suggest to new people "follow this". It's better to use the wiki as a guideline (if MU information ever gets put into there) or how to deal with specific information and leave the rest to the boards to figure out.

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There's a lot of shit in character subs that should just go on the wiki though. Combos, safejumps, set ups, common strings, general gameplan, etc could go on there. The only thing you'd need to discuss in a thread is the critical thinking stuff, how you approach things, when you want to use those options etc along with MUs.

Like nobody needs to ask me what my options are when I get a knock down. Anybody can look that up in a video or whatever. Just throw it in the wiki. What I'd like players to talk about or ask is "why would you choose x option over y option in z situation?". That should go in the forum. Any hard info will end up getting buried behind that conversation unless it's stickied, and anything that's hard info that's gonna get stickied should just go on the wiki.

Again, I just think it makes sense to have things that don't need to be talked over again to be housed in a place they won't get buried by people talking. Things that are going to be continuously talked about like critical thinking and MU development should be in places where it's easy to talk, like the forum.

You can say combos/set ups/etc aren't "concrete" cause new optimal ones get discovered, but I mean there's not much more to it than "hey here's a new thing we can do for better damage. Oh geez, that sure is more optimal, update the combo list".

I feel like people keep taking this to extremes when all it really comes down to is that it makes more sense to use the wiki more for what it's good at, and free up the forum to do more of what it's good at.

 

Edited by Anne

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The wiki's greatest strength is the fact that it can be edited at any time, by anyone. If you ignore that, all you're doing is just another thread, just on a different part of the site. There is also the fact that more people check the wiki than the forums, so if we want to help people as much as possible, most of the info should be on the wiki, not the forums. Imagine the wiki as the store front, and the forums as the kitchen. Surely one of the most populated character subforums on the website has enough people to both come up with new tech and update the wiki with it?

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