We wouldn’t need any of this if we simply had less trolls.
I mean, look at Tech Talk, we barely get any trolls there (except the occasional regular having a bit of harmless fun and even that’s mostly in the TTTOL) meaning that me, MarkMan and Kyle spend less time going after trolls and shitty posts and more time actually helping organize useful threads. Combine that with members who are actually willing to learn and help and you have a place where, we were not only the fastest to adapt to the move to Xenforo, but we were actually able to expand and reorganize our knowledge-base within a few days of the migration.
All it needs is people willing to help and to be useful. Creating a separate forum for the top players does nothing if it means that the regular sections are still filled with the same kind of shit. People here need to learn to change if we want this place to get the respect it deserves once again.
Lets face it though, tech talk has always been one of the better quality parts of the site, or at least since I’ve been reading SRK. Obviously you guys do a ton of work in there keeping things organized, which a lot of us appreciate a lot. At the same time though, the subject matter keeps a lot of random troll tards out.
In the other sections, organization only helps out so much. The SF4 section is pretty well organized in general. Sure, maybe a few stickies shouldn’t be stickied, and the vanilla section is probably redundant now that AE is out on PC, but overall, it should be pretty clear to most where to find what they need. The problem isn’t organization so much as a whole lot of people post total nonsense. I don’t mean trolls. I mean people who just have no bloody idea what the hell they’re talking about.
I stand by my point: there really is no good place on SRK right now for people who are actually good to talk about fighting games with other people who are actually good. There isn’t a good place on SRK for people who understand fighting games to talk with other people who understand fighting games. There is simply way too much static right now for that. I’m all for upping the level of discourse of the forums, but we need a place to do it.
I’m absolutely not proposing a “backroom” kind of thing. That isn’t helpful to the scene as a whole. Something that is invitation only based on merit and read only to the rest would be a godsend.
Edit: So the original poster is proposing a forum to open communication to the same people who choose not to communicate with the community. I say nah to the idea, if their not interested in communicating then why should we bother?
it can be done if the modw enter nazi mode
for example shit like this:
should be a bannable offense, scrubtastic posts and scrubtastic threads should be deleted on sight and the members that did them infracted for posting useless stuff
srk its suposed to be a fighting game community that caters to competitive players, at least it was before 2009
I wish srk could be like that, but seeing all the leniency taken on trolling and silly posts i think thats the way “the powers that be” want it to be. Is it?
Leniency on trolling should only be allowed in certain forums (GD), for more serious discussion (game specific forums, Tech Talk, FGD) there should be less leniency.
Hey, I ain’t saying let all the trolls loose on GD. I mean, some shit needs to be infracted/moderated no matter what. But there are more than a few fun trolls around that are fine for a thread like GD, but you’d rather not see in more serious strategy forums.
No, no, no! I’m not saying to turn GD into troll heaven. I’m just saying that it would be fine for GD to be a bit looser, whereas the other sections should be, well as close to police states as possible.
I’m not even saying that it should be GD. What I’m saying is that sections should be handled differently. Sections for strategy and serious discussion need to be used just for that. While other less technical sections can be handled a bit more loosely.
This actually worked for awhile on Unity - when we clamped down on the MvC3 section there and ran it likes proverbial police state. After more than a fair share of idiots got banned, the place was actually pretty decent (for something on Unity).
But THEY ARE interested, just not in an environment full of idiots.
Let’s get some things straight: The “elite” separation is already happening as we speakanyway, where the “elite” places are actually private places like IRC chat rooms for example.
What happened in smashboards is already happening on SRK as well, just in a more secretive unofficial way.
Can I benefit from it on the personal level and get info for myself? No problem, I’m already doing that.
Does it also hurt in getting more QUALITY people to the community? Yes indeed and that is exactly the problem.
But that doesnt’ solve the issue of the environment of SRK in general.
We went from “elitist but legit” to “elitist and full of scrubs” when the goal should be to drop the elitist part and simply be “legit.”
Instead of simply keeping the legit stuff in a separate place and allowing the scrubby shit to remain on the rest of the site, get rid of the scrubby shit, period.
It goes from “stupid forums with little info” to “stupid forums with more info” and while it’s not much it’s still an improvement.
If you have more ideas, better ones, by all means share them!
Which is the heart of the problem really, in this effort to become more welcoming, we ended up forgetting to actually keep a check on the quality of material being posted. We ended being so afraid of being called elitist and being scolded for it that suddenly, John Q. Scrub felt free to run his mouth on the forum.
What’s needed is a way to weed out John Q. Scrub while at the same time allowing the new players that actually get it - those who want to learn, who are just coming to grasp the culture of playing to win, of practicing and grinding their matches. At the very least, we need a way to identify and reward people like these while making sure that the scrubs either get in line and learn, or just drop out (because face it, some folks will simply refuse to be anything but scrubs).
Something similar to the old rep system would have worked, if only it wasn’t abused like it was (honestly, getting 1 neg simply for being an '09 was stupid, especially considering that in 6-8 months I had built a full green bar just by simply participating and being helpful).
