EVE General Discussion

I should add that on my old forum, there are roughly 10 moderators and we spent several months internally debating the removal of our General Discussion forum.

That people gravitate towards GD as the linchpin of the forum is self-fulfilling of GD. To say that everybody goes to GD means getting rid of it will result in nobody coming to the forum is only because you have a GD in the first place acting as a central point. So there was a concern that nobody would use the forum "because everybody posts in GD". But after several months of observation, everybody was posting in GD because there was a GD.

Now in order "cover everything", we had to look at what is mostly found in GD and either discard that or give it a subforum. The Eve forums have plenty of subforums and a lot of GD threads get moved there. What else is found in a typical GD forum?

- Rants
- ePeen contests
- "generalized" questions about the topic that the forums center on. For example in the Eve forums we could see a thread like "Why do people play this game?" or something more "philosophical" like "why do you play this game?"
- Direct questions that need to go to a specific subforum.
- Politics of the topic of the forums. The Eve version of this would be the "highsec versus nullsec" threads for example.
- Egomaniacal endeavors
- Anything that the subforums do not cover.

At my old forum, we did for a time create a "rants" subforum for anything goes ranting and most of what plagued GD ended up there, but the rants forums because 10 times more the stain than GD was. It did prove one point though: that GD is an environment for ass-hattery, but not the best environment for it because where you find ass-hats in GD, so you also find the anti-bodies for ass-hats. Giving the low end of the posting pool their own petri dish had us questioning humanity after a month.


So all of this happened in 2001 and the GD forum was removed in 2002 and to this day there is still no GD there. Was "overall traffic" affected? Yes indeed. But what did we lose? We lost mainly the trolls. In fact, the "useful posters" who were there in 2002 are still there now, and some of them in the last 12 years I eventually met in person - heck I even stayed at the home of one of them for a few months. Without the trolls and the babysitting a real community took shape. You do lose quantity, but gain in quality and this I say is from personal experience.



Would the loss of GD here damage the community? We would have to ask what kind of community. I could see the "nullsec versus highsec" and the "nullsec/highsec/lowsec" issues getting their own subforums. A lot of GD is just that. Why not have a "soapbox" section for each zone? Other posts regard the woes of the noob, the "how can I deal with these veterans?" posts (and much trollage ensues) But maybe the grievances of new players would be better served in their own forum? How about a "bitter vets" subforum as well so we can boast about how many feet of snow (uphill) we had to MWD through before WTZ?

... and things like that. Removal of GD would be a good thing, but it would take some observation and some work and maybe a few subforums. When my board dumped the GD, we took the main points of the common GD posts and made a specific-issue-discussion forum and also a "news" subforum along with a "welcome" and a well-moderations "Q&A" forum and everything worked out.

Personally, I would combine the following subforums:
~GD and My Eve
~Jita Parks and Assembly Hall

That's for starters. I would also nuke CAOD from orbit. There is literally nothing of merit there. They can keep that **** on the comments section of TMC, Eve24, reddit, and certain sites that shall not be named.

{My emphasis}

I'm dropping out of lurking status to respond to this statement in particular. How do you know this? Have you taken an exit poll of people that have come to the forums and not posted? Or posted for a time and then stopped. Have you interviewed a sufficient number of these individuals to be able to come to this as the concensus reason for why most people have stopped posting? I hate blanket statements like this that make an assumption based on personal bias.

I have visited the forums often since I started the game last November, but I have never posted. Not because I was afraid of flames and trolls, but simply because I didn't have anything to say and I was mostly just looking for answers to questions that I found with simple searches. Don't presume to speak for "most people" unless you have the data to back it up. Of course, if you have a statistically viable, non-anecdotale basis on which that statement is based, then I apologize and please feel free to post the numbers.

such is life in new eden

With a 'slight' delay, yes...

Ezwal points at ISD LackOfFaith. 'He is the good cop, understand?' Ezwal points at himself. 'I however, am not....'

I have removed some rule breaking posts and those quoting them. As always I let some edge cases stay.
Please people, keep it on topic and above all civil!

The rules:
11. Discussion of forum moderation is prohibited.

The discussion of EVE Online forum moderation actions generally leads to flaming, trolling and baiting of our ISD CCL moderators. As such, this type of discussion is strictly prohibited under the forum rules. If you have questions regarding the actions of a moderator, please file a petition under the Community & Forums Category.

30. Abuse of CCP employees and ISD volunteers is prohibited.

CCP operate a zero tolerance policy on abuse of CCP employees and ISD volunteers. This includes but is not limited to personal attacks, trolling, “outing” of CCP employee or ISD volunteer player identities, and the use of any former player identities when referring to the aforementioned parties.
Our forums are designed to be a place where players and developers can exchange ideas in a polite and friendly manner for the betterment of EVE Online. Players who attack or abuse employees of CCP, or ISD volunteers, will be permanently banned from the EVE Online forums across all their accounts with no recourse, and may also be subject to action against their game accounts.

As said, I let some edge cases stay, but I would urgently ask you to stop bashing on the CCL subdivision of ISD (a.k.a. the forum moderators). We enforce the rules laid out by CCP, noting less, noting more. In that, we do our utmost best to keep a neutral stance in and on the threads we moderate.
But if and when you are perceiving a problem with ISD behaviour on the forum or are disagreeing with the way (your) posts are being moderated, please feel free to read the CCP policies and follow the procedure found under the header 'Complaints'.

Thread unlocked.

noe its knot

r u alan s morriss set?



noe unles yore point wuz its liek 100000 spoonz wen al yoo nede is a nife

I keep expecting this thread to get moved just to prove it's own point.

Because forums suck now after low troll quality snd ISD...

I have removed some trolling / personal attack posts. I strongly suggest not going there, particularly in a thread that is in the spotlight for CCL.

Wait..... I thought you said you couldn't moderate in a thread you were actively involved in....

I went through that whole ISD dance to summon ISD Ezwal for you too.

::sigh::