Andrew
4481
Yes that’s the “classic” approach, but it sounds like Tom doesn’t like it because it is too much of an administrative headache. Or because people act like jacknapes despite it, so he doesn’t want to even try any more. Or something.
Sure, it wasn’t the officially stated policy but the “open the flood gates!” every so often effectively worked like a cooling off period for a lot of new posters. As you say the official process was Tom hand vetting each and every poster when he had the time, but of course he often didn’t, thus the flood gate unlockings.
I think I got in via emailing but I’m sure there were other, just as fine and respectable posters, who made it in during a flood :)
I went ahead and PM’d Tom about adding/adding back some kind of cool off as some others said they had done as well.
What’s with the racism ya miscreant?
Yeah, I think that it would slow the inflow of new users in general. You’d see a number of people who either lose interest in creating an account once they see they can’t get instant-posting gratification, or create an account and forget about it before the posting becomes enabled.
If people do remain interested enough to come back, there’s a better chance they’ll have spent some enforced lurking time so they can get a lay of the land. Things like the kid who joined just to join the Minecraft server would’ve had time to realize that random +1 posts aren’t really done around here.
I created my account right at the end of “stringent vetting”, and I hadn’t even bothered to create an account for about 6 months before that because I knew by the time I’d be allowed to post, the particular discussion I was interested in would have moved on. Eventually I did make an account, because I determined that there were frequent enough conversations that I wanted to be involved in that it would be worth it. I think similar situations might apply for some other people.
Sarkus
4485
Tom pretty clearly gave up on that. The community largely did that to itself with the way it decided to react to developers who did post here regularly. The most obvious example (and tipping point) is Brad Wardell, who decided to lay out his political beliefs in P&R but paid for it elsewhere on the board. And it wasn’t just one person who did that, even if that person was the most aggressive about it.
Tyjenks
4486
I was kidding. Apologies if you thought otherwise. I am too much of an insecure puss to claim superiority to anyone.
Raife
4487
There have been plenty of incidents of people being dicks to devs here in the past. It’s just that, unlike most other times, there wasn’t much sympathy for him because he is kind of a nutjob.
Sarkus
4488
At the time, though, he was arguably the most active dev on here. What other dev creates a thread so they can show us screenshots and talk about development as its happening? I get that people don’t like his politics, but the only way you create an “open and welcoming” community is if the members can keep what happens in P&R in P&R. And it’s not “open and welcoming” if you have to tell devs that they shouldn’t post in that part of the forum.
And as I said, Brad’s the most obvious recent example. But there are other devs who have scaled down their involvement here, particulary in terms of discussing what they are doing professionally, because they don’t want to deal with the negative responses that come when people get worked up over stuff they don’t like.
Yeah, not to mention that devs’ postings often get quoted by various games journalists, which I’m sure has the PR office highly unamused…
cliffski?
He’s survived a couple piracy related flamewars as well…
There hasn’t been a complete lack of bleedover, but I don’t think there’s been all that much harassment of Brad for his political views outside of P&R. The main offender that I can think of got banned for it, and I don’t recall much argument with that ban.
I think the main factor working against devs participating here is that this is a public forum, and anything you say in public on the Internet is…well, public. If you’re newsworthy, it’s going to get picked up as news.
Raife
4492
Cliffski is kind of a harmless crank, though. Brad said he wouldn’t sell his games to liberals if he could do it. That’s like Derek Smart level of inflammatory, and it came back to him.
Right, that’s what I was trying to get at. Cliffski’s hardly a wilting violet, but he keeps his rants and political views pretty well compartmentalized from his game development stuff.
nlanza
4494
Yeah. As crazy as he’ll get in a piracy thread, he’s quite reasonable in other threads.
Brad, on the other hand, was pretty willing to bring Stardock into his political issues. Remember the painful UPS boycott thread?
God, that was dumb.
The weird thing is that Brad is a very personable fellow in person or on the phone, and a fascinating guy to talk to. I think he’s the one guy that’s really demonstrated that particular foible of Internet interaction to me firsthand.
Hey I was trying at funny too with my fake quote, so no worries.
I use to scoff at the ‘ignore’-function. I think you could even search and find threads where I’m the one saying I don’t use ‘ignore’ because my superior brain is quite capable of doing that by itself.
But even a nasty piece of work like Dirt wasn’t as busy being annoying as some of the people that I have on ‘ignore’ now. And trying to skip over their drivel is just too much work.
Tyjenks
4497
Ahhhh, the internet is hard. (That’s what she said.)
I guess I have an insanely high drivel threshold.
Yeah, this is why Brad took a lot of shite here…
UPS boycott? I must not have read that one.
[edit]OK, I found the UPS boycott stuff in the Glenn Beck thread. Golly!
Like Charles - he was endlessly harrassed by people when he commented on other games about things in AC (IE “how can you complain about that when your game doesn’t have it? HUH HUH!?!?!?”), he won’t tell where he works now or what he works on.
