So, clearly many people were -extremely- unhappy with the changes to the these forums. Admin seems to have -very- slightly loosened their grip lately. I see people are posting player pics, for instance, but basically, it's still incredibly restricted. If there was ever a time for some sort of alternative forums to establish a foothold (Dyzanru's or otherwise), this was most certainly it. And yet, while these forums are certainly far less active than they were - no activity is happening elsewhere. It's just a net loss.

I've heard that many have tried to establish forums over the years, but none were successful for any considerable length of time. In Dyzanru's case, it might have been somewhat helpful if he'd stuck around for admin duties - such as managing how his forums popped up (or didn't pop up) in search hits, or at least shared admin privs. There was also a point where the chat function of those forums possibly should have been removed... It didn't help that a couple of moderators were banning people for fun, or because they didn't like someone personally, or both... Still, very, very few people ended up banned by anyone (and were quickly unbanned), but it may have been too late to undo the damage to people's perception? I don't know, that may have been a minor point.

In any case, what baffles me is that even when things got about as bad as they could get on the IRE forums (and people were -furious-), within weeks anyone who was still around was willing to tolerate whatever was dished out, rather than type in a different url (if not Dyzanru's, something else). I do think a decent number of people left entirely, or are simply far less active. A few were banned, although I don't think that number was particularly high.

I should also say that a successful player run forum didn't have to be a "bad" thing done by naughty players. All of the drama IRE is trying to avoid would have been taking place safely away from their purview, and players would have had (almost) unlimited freedom (we did have some problems with the "almost" bit over at Dyzanru's forums).

And that brings me to my question... What is it about our community that has kept us from successfully running a message board and getting our fellow players to use it (even when circumstances would seem to absolutely demand it)? I'd say that no one has both the time and expertise, but I doubt that's completely true with this group. A fair few people probably do have time to run their own message board, as well as the savvy to do so (and in this case, one would have though, a very strong motivation)! In any case, I guess if we could answer that question, we'd be happily using these forums for the things they're still good for, and using some other forums for everything else. I'd like to see what people have to say about the failures of our community over the years to establish and maintain an active forum. Thoughtfully considered responses are what I'm looking forward to, of course, and if there's a few of those sprinkled in that would be great.

That forums was a breeding ground of negative energy, and eventually I just didn't really find I was enjoying a whole lot of the discussion. Most of the major contributors were people who aren't even playing the game anymore!

Nevermind.

This; I never did much more than skim, but I didn't see anything I really wanted to take part in. I'm happy with these forums as they are now, personally.

Holy -, how many times are you gonna do this? I can't possibly conceivably imagine you regaining any creditability at this point but this post and the, "I agree. Delete <whatever the - is the popular topic>", posts are just getting old. Go serpent already.

I can rant still here, so that's a plus. Dyzanru's forums were a breeding ground for trolls. Hell, dormant trolls joined it just to continue being trolls. I'd rather post in a less-fun, restricted forum than have to deal with the "pro" trolls.

Player run forums took the idea of hating the rules here and ran them in the extreme direction for a 'HA!' moment. I mean, didn't that have a section specifically for making other players look bad and even a porn section or some - like that?

I think that's probably right on most counts, although the porn was vigorously moderated, and Aard's section was shut down fairly quickly. The trolls are a tough one. Unless you were willing to do a fair bit of more "hands on" moderating and banning (which would probably be very controversial), it would be hard to keep the "trolls" away. I'd have prefered almost absolute freedom rather than protection (but at least some people are saying that -isn't- what they desire). In any case, it -really- didn't help that at the outset several of the mods were some of the worst of the worst in trolls. I also doubt that Dyzanru's forums could have been the answer here, but that still leaves me at the same question - why didn't someone else step up, and if they had, why would they probably not have been successful? Is there a way they could have been successful?

I think we've learned a valuable lesson here, kids...

That was kind of the point. Assholes go there, soft-skinned, reactionary cuddlebunnies stay here. Everybody wins.

Seriously, though, I think Dyz's forums failed because of the stipulations laid out by the official forums for their existence. There were too many loopholes left open that the admins could have taken advantage of to get rid of us-- both as an alternative forum presence and with in-game repercussions.

While I've never been particularly worried about the consequences, I know the idea of them kept a lot of people away. With all that has been done to censor the official forums over the past five years, to say nothing of the other unofficial forums that have been attempted, it's safe to say that no one trusts the administrators here not to play dirty. What begins as a group of players trying to express their amusements and annoyances with the game in a less stringent atmosphere always ends in threats and drama as IRE shows off its e-peen. It always ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

Yeah, it really depends on what you're aiming for. Having a warning/ban hammer ready at hand is very appropriate for establishing a forum focused only on a very direct discussion of specific game improvements, suggestions, etc... It really does keep people on task. I mean, my meetings at work have mostly set agendas, and there are obviously strict rules of conduct to keep it running and accomplish specific objectives. However, it's less conducive to ranting... or arguing about politics (and frankly, few sane people do much arguing about politics at work)... Things like that are done in a far less formal environment - where people pretty much feel they can speak their minds.

stop

Just to point out my actual point: Isn't that what they're doing here?

Yeah, I think you're onto something there Amunet. All of it. It was -really- hard to advertise in any sort of effective way (even if we'd fixed our search tags, that can only do so much). I think at least some people might have been worried about admin retribution, but I don't know if the effects of that were really major or not. If enough older players felt that way, because they'd learned from past experience, then yeah, it might have been a pretty big deal in this.

Yes, Soludra, I get it... and they did. And in theory, I actually think that could have been a great thing all around. My question is... why didn't players succeed in building a robust forum to continue talking about the things they did before the forums changed? Now, there are just a few half-hearted discussions under the watchful eye of admin... Rants... Favorites... combat... are discussed here under a watchful eye. So far as I know there are still no politics whatsoever (that was one of the most volatile, but lively sections for obvious reasons).

EDIT: basically, with a good player forums, the only reason to post something on these forums would be if you wanted admin to see it, and discuss it with the player base as well. That's a great function for these forums, and an important one, and even one that shouldn't include nasty trolling.

Well... We obviously don't have as much of a player-base as, for example, RuneScape or World of Warcraft. I think that our population, coupled perhaps with general unwillingness to start anew, and fear of admin retribution as pointed out by Amunet, might just have doomed most attempts from the start. Couple that with the (no offense) stupidity of the unofficial forums that I have seen, and the lack of incentive (apart from the "stick it to The Man" mindset), and...

EDIT: Also worth noting, not all of the game population even visits the forums regularly.

That's true... the actual forum population is a smallish (but vocal!) segment of the player base.

Yeah. It's just not appealing to up and move to a new forum, when we're all already entrenched here, and then you have the issue of getting people to actually find the new place.

Maybe I'll add a pseudo-forum to my maps website. (On the side, I'm really sorry I haven't been updating it since I announced it, I've been bogged down with other projects. )

It didn't work because it was a childish concept to begin with.

If your website is heavily used enough for it's other features, that might be the -only- way around the advertising problem, since you would always be getting traffic that wasn't forum dependent, which would always leave the door open for the forum to establish itself, even if it died down for a bit. A site like Asara's would have been ideal.

I've been around a while, and there have been two prominent, controversial ones that have come and gone that I can remember. One of them was pre-official forums, and the other one I'm sure many of you still remember-- I'm certain it haunts Deletus' worst nightmares.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. But I mean, I'm planning on doing more than just the maps. A plugins/scripts repository for one, and a news archive (either negotiating for access to Rakon's, or making my own), for example. So it would have a lot more to offer, thus providing the extra incentive to visit.

lol, I got nostalgic about the Great Forum Neutering, so I went to the first page of General Ranting and read the first 100 posts or so. So awesome.

Page 2 of Quotes is -ing gold.

Nostalgic about something that happened a few months ago?

Those forums could have been good. They just weren't (for all the reasons mentioned above).

I think another large problem aside from the quality of the forums would be maintaining an influx of new membership. Inevitably you lose some people as time goes on and people get bored, so you need some way to gain new members to keep an active forum going. With these forums, we can be pretty sure that there will be new players joining given that there are new people joining the game pretty frequently. However, the number of people who find Achaea, then find these forums, then manage to follow a link to unofficial forums probably wouldn't be enough to sustain active discussion after a while.

The only way I see unofficial forums working is if, by some miracle, they put a link to it on the front of the website or on these forums. Seeing as how they basically said "if you want to discuss these things, go do it somewhere else", I think it would be reasonable to put a link to a viable somewhere else on one of these pages, but I still don't think it will ever happen. Edit: To clarify, I doubt they will ever do so because I do not believe that they wish to be associated with the inevitable trolling that will dominate any unofficial forums at first.

Main reason they didn't work is because people loathe Aardvark.

you are really trying hard to fit in, arent you

Damn straight. I like digital camcorders because they allow me to reminisce immediately. "Oh hey, look! That was me five seconds ago!"

beyond what was said before already, the other forums always took very long to load for me. high speed internet has made me inpatient long ago, sadly.

Heh my first computer was a C64, you kind of learns patience then.

I don't want an "open for everything" achaea forums where I can see all the idiocy that my fellow achaeans want to show me without any moderation. I want the forums like the used to be, sensibly (if sometimes a bit harsly) moderated, and with OOC sections, rant sections, and a favourite moments section. Because the point of this game will never be the credits, it'll be the community. If I didn't feel a sense of community with the players here, I would never bother playing.

I agree to Alinoe, but I guess what is done is done. My speculation is that the moderating of the old forums with all the wisdom and insights (into the game, the human mind and the world) that the potential trolls and troll groupies constantly offered to the community in all those sections.... just ended up being too annoying / time consuming.
Of course, I could be totally wrong!

Jules, you choose the weirdest causes to fight for. Illegal totems, and forums in which there are more than one of me?

Haha dude, if there's one thing you'll everrrr learn about the forums is to not take it too seriously

i stopped reading on 1st page

i dislike the changes but stay here bc i play the game not the forums

I tried to start a player modded forum, but it didn't end up with anything. Everyone went to Dyzanru's forums instead. I posted up some general rules and Akarin made fun of me for it, but oh well.

Probably did better than Amunet's.

I'm uncertain as to whether Achaea's forumites could ever form a successful self-run forum. The difference between us and other forums (especially other MUD focused forums) is that we're not a community, but rather a disparate bunch of customers. We all want to have fun in our own way, and many of us have payed for what we deem our 'right' to have fun. When people grate on our nerves it's easier to just mock them into oblivion than attempt to gently correct them, or maybe even learn to get along with them; after all, it's our right. We 'earned' it, didn't we? What do we gain from being nice to someone? It's not our job to create a friendly community, we're just along for the ride that we paid for - and if you're one of the ones that got on the bus for free, you'd best behave yourself!

At least, it's the best conclusion I've come up with after pondering just why Achaea's forums have always been such hotbed of bitterness and trollishness.

Wait, what? I never went to any player made forums...

Might not have been you, was a Mhaldorian if I remember right though.

The reason seems pretty straightforward to me, Achaea is attractive and rewarding to a lot of people who don't play nicely with others.

at least while in the anonymity of the internet.
In RL, they are probably shy furballs that have started to lose hair 5 years ago.

I still have my hair, TYVM.

It's just white.

Pretty sure people made accounts under other peoples names. Someone said I was on Dyzanru's forums but I never went there once.

Yeah, that's fairly lame. Not like it couldn't happen here too, but they probably wouldn't last long.

It is my conclusion that much of Achaea's playerbase, at least on the forums, Suffers Newbies Poorly. That's not counting the actual trolls, even.

I went to that new set of forums. I stopped going when I realized that there were hardly any threads relevant to the game itself, and that most of the material about playing was from people who simply wanted to insult/make fun of other groups of people.

I think that some people were grumbling over the changes, but I still don't believe that all that many people were unhappy with the changes. Perhaps a rather vocal minority, but not all that many. Mainly those that like the spotlight or watching flame wars burn out of control.


See my above answer. Personally, I've never had any problems with the administration's control over the forums. It's their territory, they are free to make or enforce the rules that they see fit. While some may see their administrative style to be rather heavy-handed or arbitrary at times, they are also human and change their minds or react as they see fit. And honestly, some individuals are basically blatantly toeing the line of what they deem acceptable. Or simply hopping across that broad, invisible line and saying "Nyah, nyah! What are you going to do to me now?!" I've never really understood why some people feel they are entitled to more freedom of speech or privileges than what they've already granted us. I've never had any problems communicating or arguing with the others here, even if I may dislike some of them.