The Apolyton Irony...

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, believe me, driving away noobs is a big problem (you wouldn't be able to think of a time because a new poster would post, get spammed/danced and just up and leave). If you actually look at the number of new posters, you'll be amazed at how few of ours stick around while CFC apparently gets hordes of them. They actually make their noobs seem welcome, while we try our best to scare them off and call it a trial by fire or something.

The on topic is pretty slow and has too few new posters as well.

[Winston]

i ain't going nowhere.

Good. But it's quite obvious you need more toolbars, menus and task bars if you're to truly settle in.

Once you hit F11, you know that you're in Heaven.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
No, believe me, driving away noobs is a big problem (you wouldn't be able to think of a time because a new poster would post, get spammed/danced and just up and leave). If you actually look at the number of new posters, you'll be amazed at how few of ours stick around while CFC apparently gets hordes of them. They actually make their noobs seem welcome, while we try our best to scare them off and call it a trial by fire or something.

Wow. I honestly had no idea.

[MarkG]

the mass exodus

3 people?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
We just have to be very, very nice when BtS is released. Maybe we can fool the n00bs until they are addicted .

Then can we kill them and eat them?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
i ain't going nowhere.

Ha ha! No one sends you PMs.

[Wiglaf]

Asher is still banned? That's retarded.

[Chris 62]

Maybe you just need better posters.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
They actually make their noobs seem welcome, while we try our best to scare them off and call it a trial by fire or something.

The on topic is pretty slow and has too few new posters as well.

Our On Topic fora make noobs seem welcome too (the dance is very rarely seen outside the OTF). They still don't stay, because our On Topic fora are, well, ****.

It's been said again and again, and there were even new moderators (namely Cybershy) assigned work on this (as if it would take new moderators ), but that turned out a big disappointment.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Chris 62
Maybe you just need better posters.

We were doing just fine til just now.

[Blake]

I really think it's more important to argue about whether it's really Irony or not.

Proposition:
A policy of "Quality over Quantity" has led to a lack of quality due to quantity being lost faster than it is replenished.

I say it is NOT irony, because there is not in fact no policy of "Quality over Quantity". Instead outsiders are attacked with DL dances (and such) just because it's fun - shortsighted maybe, but fun.

Furthermore the reason there is no-one even trying anymore is mainly due to a lack of influx of on-topic posters - there are enough random sites on the web to talk about random crap that I don't think many people would come to Apolyton specifically for the off-topic. So new people to off-topic are likely to come from on-topic.

The old on-topic posters have basically either been firmly intimidated away, or aren't interested in the OTF. Meanwhile there is also a lack of new on-topic posters due mainly to that other site and the snowball effect of google page rank determining site popularity. A serious lack of new on topic posters, means even fewer trickling down to OTF.

So the important issue, is there Irony at work here? Maybe, in the sense that having fun in the short term leads to less fun in the long term, but that could just as easily be a lesson about investment as irony.

In final analysis I agree with Rufus, it would be ironic if the declining popularity of the OTF was due to a deliberate effort to make the OTF more popular, but there was no such deliberate effort - maybe there was a concerted effort to make the OTF less popular, which is merely stupid, not ironic (it'd be ironic if it made the OTF more popular - "Come to the Poly OTF, our DL Dances can't be beat!").

Given that there is no Irony here, I think there is nothing to worry about .

[Provost Harrison]

"A little too ironic, don't you think?"

[Agathon]

I know of at least 2 other people who stopped posting here because it had become a ridiculous circus where reasoned discussion of the events of the day was frustrated by trolls and spammers. Long term members of the OTF community were leaving out of frustration with the **** stirring and general level of pettiness.

That's pretty much why I stopped posting here. My posts per day had been in decline for about six months, and then I just stopped for lack of interest. If you open up the forum and a third of the threads are spammy, another third are trolls, and another third are discussions that have been threadjacked into pointless squabbles and trolls, it gets boring.

My personal view is that the moderation had become more lenient than it had been in previous years, I think because MtG stopped moderating and Ming couldn't really catch everything by himself (given that both of them were fairly active mods, whereas UR was not). Whatever you think of him, MtG was at least as strict as Ming.

After UR was removed as moderator, some people seemed to get it into their heads that they could pretty much do what they liked in terms of baiting the moderators and the ownership. A community where the laws are not enforced is a community in trouble -- even if the laws are bad laws.

Asher is simply the worst offender. I mean come on... lots of posters have made fun of LOTM for bringing his religion into his posts (it's just who he is), but 4 years ago, do you think that someone would have been able to stalk him around the site and jew bait him and make comments about being gang raped with a Menorah and not get instantly banned for a month?

Now the decision seems to have been made to crack down on people who come here just to cause trouble and strife. Some other people have left or threatened to leave because they enjoyed the slanging, slagging off and petty point scoring. But people who come here looking for Civ related stuff aren't going to stay and join the OT community because there is nothing to be gained if you are not already party to some feud or a member of some coalition.

When I came here it was because the Mac version of Civ III had just been released. I stayed because there were a lot of interesting threads in the OTF (and many would go on into hundreds and hundreds of replies). There was a lot of discussion that developed around the war as well.

I have to go eat... more later

[Hercules]

A good summation Agathon.

[ZEE]

.