Helping restore Apolyton

[Grandpa Troll]

I'm back now so everything should be okay

Q.F.T.

[Japher]

Done with the Mission?

[Ben Kenobi]

This is exactly why Nazi type moderation is silly. Both of you could be banned for those posts.

And how is that a bad thing?

[Alexander's Horse]

not if you're a nazi

[Theben]

This is exactly why Nazi type moderation is silly. Both of you could be banned for those posts.
Such serious insults.

I didn't notice any insults.

[Theben]

My 2 @@:

Split the OTF into a "civilized" one, one that gets stronger moderation (no insults, flames, or BK ) and one that is no-holds barred.

Merge the "civilized" OT, sports and tech back together. Maybe even fold in Other Games.

Try the ladder tourney.

[ZEE]

10 pages later and my idea is still in the forefront. Of course Dan wont do it for all the usual reasons.

[Grandpa Troll]

10 pages later and my idea is still in the forefront. Of course Dan wont do it for all the usual reasons.

Wont do what AAHZ?

[SlowwHand]

Come over for a night's viewing of hip hop video watching.

[Aeson]

This is exactly why Nazi type moderation is silly. Both of you could be banned for those posts.
Such serious insults.

And that would be a good thing in a serious on-topic discussion of game mechanics ... so that it would remain a serious on-topic discussion of game mechanics instead of just filling up with spam like every other thread on the site.

having a place for actually discussing the topic your forum is founded on
having mods that can't differentiate between on-topic and off-topic

[Cort Haus]

Some good comments above from Aeson, Vel and Arrian. Coincidentally, these are three of the numerous posters whose contributions to the old Civ 3 strat forum helped draw me to Apolyton in the first place. I know some people here don't like Civ 3 - and it certainly had some 'out-of-the-box' problems, but that strat forum was an excellent community that centred around analysis of the game, and by sharing experiences and discoveries it helped a lot of people to enjoy it. Perhaps without that forum many of us who did like the game might not have done so.

To an extent, it was similar with Civ 4 early on, but perhaps because of the success of the Civ 3 strat community, many of those players were involved in the Civ 4 beta-phase and, as I think Aeson suggested, were not in the same position of learning, analysing and discussing the game from scratch as they were with Civ 3. Hence the Civ 4 strategy community (always a more interesting place than the 'General' flame-and-gripe forum) didn't have the same momentum. Having said that, there was still some excellent discussion, wisdom and work available. Blake's work in particular proved productive in terms of development, and ultimately very popular - though ISTR Asher putting the boot into that at times.

As for CFC OT. I haven't been there for a long time but when I did look I found it very bland and dull. To CFC's credit, they wouldn't allow a cyber thug like EoN to abuse an entire On-topic community for so long while enjoying a protected status. I could never understand why he was allowed that privilege here.

[Cort Haus]

Here's an idea - how about a green light for posting Civ threads in OT? If this is one of the most active places for traffic on the site, we could encourage each other to play and post about the game, and perhaps helping to revive the On Topic forums.

I recently played my first game of Civ 4 for 6 months, and felt as if I'd like to discuss the game again - perhaps I should start posting about it.

[SpencerH]

I was much more involved in the CIV3 discussions than CIV 4. Thats because CIV3 was a POS out of the box. There was always some new bug to report, complain about, and sometimes fix. Plus, it was easy for those of us who cared about the game to make mods. CIV 4, OTOH, was brilliant from the start, needed much less fixing, and seemed (to me at least) to require more effort to mod (and why bother sice it was so good), so there was less for me to discuss.

[Dinner]

That's because CivIII was shyte, and by the time CIV came along we couldn't care.

Civ3 was garbage and Civ4 wasn't very good as it originally shipped. It took the expansion packs to turn it into a decent game and that took so long most people just gave up on Civ.

[MOBIUS]

It's already been said before, but I'll just chime in to put my voice in with the rest.

I personally don't like how OT is. A lot of threads about fairly interesting stuff tend to devolve into personal attacks. People generally don't attack me, but the fact that they're flailing away at each other puts me off the thread.

But that's just my opinion and I'm only one of very many users in the OT. A lot of the funniest threads are the ones that are also the most chaotic. Then again, there are several threads where people just troll away in personal attacks against each other. That doesn't really do anything for me and it's not long before I head elsewhere. Ultimately, I wouldn't run my own message board this way, if I had one, but I can see that it's more or less workable, and so I understand if Ming/Rah want a place where speech is much freer. Given that it's their board, I think it's kind of going out on a limb for them, but if they're comfortable with it... :shrugs:

On-Topic, though, it's a different matter. People go there for game related help, and that's what Poly was set up to do in the first place. I think modding can be expected to be more strict on the On-Topic threads, since it is a situation where being unfriendly can and will drive people away when they need some help.

I've visited some forums where the mods refused to do anything about trolls even in the On-Topic forums. Those boards are pretty much dead to newcomers, or they generally visit quickly, plunder all the downloads, and then leave without posting. That does not make for a good community. (TTLG's System Shock 2 boards are a good example - despite offering some really good fan-made missions and other help, there are a few posters there who have a broad sense of self-entitlement and a narrow regard for decency for others. The problem is, they're the main contributors, so the site's mods are too scared to scale them back.)

I was on OT for about two years since my "return" in 2007, and by this time I feel like I've outgrown it, or maybe it's outgrown me. Most threads turn into pissing contests between people I don't really know all that well, and the basic question usually disappears. Since March I've started limiting myself more to On-Topic, and that's worked pretty well.

You'd probably quite enjoy CG, actually...