For continued discussion of the topic started in the “Broken Forum vanished” thread.
OK, what the heck, let’s start from zero. My thoughts, from the other thread, are focused around recognizing that there are other forums out there that are more welcoming, more open, to new and different ideas and approaches. I put out that I think Broken Forum seems to be a more welcoming place for women, but that’s just one example. I am interested in ways that Quarter to Three might expand its horizons, open its doors to people who might be intimidated to jump into conversation or just unsure how to start. Here are my starting assumptions:
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You can’t moderate this stuff. I mean you can, I know other forums are much more locked down when it comes to what people say and how people say it. But, setting aside things that are truly beyond the pale, each person has to have their own level of comfort with the kind of back and forth that keeps a forum a living place.
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I think we all agree that we like Quarter to Three, we enjoy the kind of discussions we have here, but in m opinion, things could always be better. Why coast on our general inertia when we could be putting effort into directing where we want to grow? Assuming we want to grow?
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This thread could be where we try to percolate ideas. Not everyone wants things to change, and even if they do, might not agree how to go about it. Those, too, are valid opinions, and should be expressed here and discussed. I don’t propose that I have any answers, I’m just interested in finding out if anyone else might be interested in the question. If not, I can live with that too.
Understanding that this is Tom’s forum, and how things will work around here are ultimately his call, but we all make this place what it is with every post we write. A lot of us have been here a long time, and we feel invested. Maybe the discussion will get heated, but I’d like us to keep our heads and try to remember that we all share the goal of making this place something that all of us can enjoy and be a part of.
Are there any stats on how many new members join from commenting front page items after the switch to Discourse? And how many of those who dive into the rest of the forum?
Be the change that you want to see. Call out particularly egregious offenders when they offend. PM to avoid drama.
I want cruller initiation and hazing rituals.
I want to stress how much I agree with the bolded half. This forum pre-dates social media, and it was kind of concurrent with Usenet. We were a bridge between those two things: the wild woolly “whatever happens happens!” of Usenet and the “hey, let’s carve out a comfortable space where we kind of know each other” of social media.
At the time, the sense that it was my living room was a way to leverage telling certain people to chill out, to behave as if they were guests in someone else’s house, to encourage expression without the idea of someone laying down laws about acceptable conversations. But I don’t know if that metaphor applies anymore. I appreciate what you guys mean when you say it’s my forum, in that me, @telefrog, and @stusser are maintaining things when they need maintaining. Part of that means if judgment calls need to be made about forum features, locking threads, or closing accounts, you guys will have to trust our judgment.
But all along, my contention has been that it exists for you guys. The whole issue with the people who got kicked out and found a new place on Scott Jennings’ forum is that they took the idea that it existed for them in a way that I never intended, that I didn’t think was fair, and that I felt was detrimental to the goal of this being a comfortable place for everyone. Since that time, this site has needed almost no moderation and I think the idea that you’re all guests in someone else house is outdated. I like to think that this is the common area of a house where we all live.
Anyway, just my two cents on a metaphor.
But I’m really happy to see you guys discussing this issue. I want the site to be welcoming to everyone who would like to join, and if there are ways we can improve on that, I’m all for it.
-Tom
You know, I was “eh, whatever,” until I read this line.
You, or no other person on this board(*), has any right to PM for my what you would term as “egregious” behavior. I am not here to be silently judged by a right-think panel consisting of a group of yots who believe that my beloved spot on the Interwebs needs a dose of group sensitivity training.
Call me out publicly if you have a problem with my knuckle-dragging, reactionary nihilism and we’ll work it out from there.
(*)Tom excluded, because, well, you know.
I’m happy to see this thread created and I look forward to the discussion.
As I said in the other thread, I think we’re a pretty good community, and I’d love to see more members.
The recipie for success is more grognards, and fewer people under 43.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around this one. Nobody has the right to PM you to call you out for something you said? So every member of this board must suffer in silence if someone decides to break the social contract?
That awkward feeling when someone creates a thread branching off from a thread you have muted.
I generally avoid meta discussions but I wanted to comment on this:
I think public call outs are the exact opposite of the right approach, and the cause of most of the noise in previous iterations of the forum. There’s a misguided idea on the Internet that if you yell at an annoying person enough they will suddenly change their ways or be shamed into submission. That doesn’t work at all. In fact, it’s counterproductive.
You’re almost always better off ignoring the original offense (and if necessary, deciding that it’s best for that annoying person to leave completely). That approach has worked great for years now.
[Clarification Needed]
So let’s say I deliberately put up a “I’ll be in my bunk!” post when I finish my first day with Battletech.
Have I broken the “Social Contract”?
Is the “SC” something as simple as “Be excellent to each other, and mute whoever you don’t like listening to”?
Or is it, you know, more invasive?
I can handle it if a few folks threadcop me with a “Dude, that was pretty fucking gross, because X” but I am not going to be hit up by a PM from someone with a “You know, you’re violating the social contract.” [Note: I figure I am man enough to handle a “Dude, you really hurt my feelings when you posted that Foghorn Leghorn video about me” PM or whatever.]
And while I’m continually spamming my edits:
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We want this community to “grow”? What does “grow” mean? More people? OK. What kind of people? All people? A certain subset? Or just bulking up the site’s visibility?
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We want to be more “welcoming”? A better front page? Or do you mean “inclusive?” For whom?
Specifically define the ideal Qt3 candidate. Age. Gender. Interests. Number of cats owned.
Now, if that ideal is kinda 180 from the folks who have already comfortably settled their butts here, then maybe Qt3 isn’t the best hill to die on.
Fuzzy, happy words like “welcoming” and “growth” don’t cut it. Lay it out there and tell us what your true vision of Qt3 is.
Wow, this topic really put a bug up your ass, didn’t it? Which is exactly the sort of feedback I was hoping to get.
I’m going to figure, based on nothing whatsoever, that you’re able to act like an actual human being when you’re out and about in your daily, non-internet-related life. Doing your job, picking up groceries, having dinner, what have you. I bet you manage to somehow not piss off every single person that you cross paths with. Why do I feel safe in figuring this? Because you’ve reached this point in life being able to observe, even if you are completely lacking in empathy, how human beings interact with each other. They observe a completely unofficial, not-written-down-anywhere thing called a social contract. What’s in it? What happens if I break it? Will someone throw me in jail?
You’ve also somehow managed to put together a tenure here on Qt3 without being completely ostracized or banned outright. Maybe you’ve gotten one or two PMs taking you to task for something you wrote. I don’t know, and don’t particularly care, that’s none of my business. And I’m betting you can figure out how to talk to other actual human beings in the future. I have faith in you.
Now, on to the interesting part of your post: What is growth? Basically, it’s managing to convert the normal churn of people who wander in and those who go on their way into a net positive. If we like Qt3, it stands to reason we don’t want to to die a slow death of attrition. We aren’t getting any younger here, are we? So, how do we ensure that we might occasionally get some new, interesting people to stop by now and then? I’m glad you asked! No fucking clue. Love to hear some ideas.
What kind of people? Short answer, sure, anyone. But mostly interesting people. Obviously, Qt3 is going to self-select to a certain degree. We talk about games, movies, books, music, sure, anything, but I mean come on, we’re pretty geeky. Would we like non-geeky people to come around? I would, if they have something interesting to say! And what would be interesting? I don’t know, I’m not a rules lawyer, and I don’t particular feel like we need a giant questionnaire to weed out the non-interesting people. That will happen naturally, when non-interesting posts and topics slide slowly down the page.
How do we be more welcoming? That’s a tall order, and I’ll propose with being less of an asshole, for a start. You, me, that asshole over there, we could probably do with a bit of sanding off our rough edges. We’re all veterans of the internet wars at this point in our lives and we’re quick with our six shooter opinions. Maybe we could listen, which is to say read and think, a little more often? Well, I probably could.
Last of all, fuzzy, happy words like “welcoming” and “growth” absolutely do cut it, when you’re talking about a mindset. This isn’t MIT and we aren’t a board of regents. We’re allowed to figure this shit out as we go. Because I said so.
None of this is welcoming.
You’re already here. The Keeping Members from Quitting committee is down the hall.
Too broad of a definition. I think that everyone on this is responsible for roughly zero murders here (*), and is capable of walking down the street without feeling the need to spray invective and spittle into the faces of passing strangers. Or bellowing out racial slurs at the office party. In fact, I’d say that ALL of us here fall on the “yeah, it wouldn’t be cool to do that” side of things, and we don’t do it here.
What I don’t want is The Other Forum’s [TM] matronly/Robespierre-style groupthink. I am not going to endlessly puzzle over a post to determine if it might cross someone’s tender boundaries. I figure I am adult enough to know when I am deliberately insulting someone, and when my words might offend. But if somebody goes trigger happy over some perceived or edge-case “insult”, well, there are folks out there whose whiskers might be a little too fuckin sensitive, and that’s not a me problem, that’s a you problem.
Now, that being said, while the definition has been narrowed down a little, well, we’re still not defining the behaviors that drive away the Cool Nerds we’re looking for. We haven’t even established that the faint boy’s locker room odor of Qt3 is what is keeping the Cool Nerds away. Is it? Do we have any first-hand evidence that there is someone squarely in the Qt3 Wheelhouse of Cool swam away after, say, reading one of Brian’s space missives? (**)
Here’s my thesis: the fishies aren’t jumping in the boat because a)it’s not like there’s a bazillion game boards out there, and hence b)Quarter to What Now? (x) The site “advertises” for a very select group of folks, most of whom are already here.
(*)There was that time in the Philippines where I got blackout drunk for the first and only time in my life, so roughly
(**) Understandable
(x) I wonder how many of our current posters started out as people trolling Tom’s reviews, which they learned about from Metacritic
Okay, so we’ll just assume new members won’t notice how we treat eachother.
Yes, we will assume prospective members are over the age of ten.
Easy: turn into a social media site. Short of that, slow death by attrition is what we can expect because forums are not how people interact on the internet anymore. And as much as I think that’s terrible and social media is a wildly unproductive format for any sort of meaningful discussion, long term interaction, or ability to reference things even a week later, that’s just how it is.
I’m all for making people welcome if they do buck the trend and decide they want to hang out there, I just don’t think growth is a reasonable expectation.