: Like I said when I first started posting/adminning: I'm not here to force the
: forum to conform to any one person's (including my own) idea of what its
: content should be. I just step in to clean up the real messes that
: everyone agrees should not be on the forum, like spam and the
: name-impersonating guy, and I'm pretty sure Claude agrees with me on that
: (claude, if you're watching, feel free to jump in here...)
I don't disagree - I'm all for freedom of expression, but this is a Marathon Forum and HBO is a Halo forum and a much more appropriate place for comments and questions about Halo books. I have no objection to people posting here to try to tie the Marathon Universe to the Halo Universe, or the PiD Universe or even the Myth or Oni universes if they so choose. If there are others here willing to discuss this, then fine. I've even contributed to some really OT threads myself. The problem is that the forum can be accessed from outside the forum, making it possible for people using a search engine to access an OT thread and start posting to it. Pretty soon, the thread is growing by leaps and bounds and the people doing the posting don't even realize that this is a Marathon Forum - hell, they don't even know what Marathon is. In other words, I draw the line when the Story Forum is coopted from the outside. Mind you, I'm not trying to keep the Forum pure - I just want it to be of, by and for Marathon fans and anyone who wants to join in.
Now, when Stephen posted here, adding his question to the "thread that refuses to die" he was immediately pounced upon by 4 or 5 of us. As annoying as his style of language was, I don't think he deserved to be treated that way. We really missed an opportunity to provide some constructive and useful information to him - forget about those Halo books and go play Marathon! Locking the thread is just one way to do that. There are other ways, too, but they might have even more of a chilling effect. Some threads really should be forced to die.
: Question: Are you reading the forum in the default display setting
: "mixed thread listing", or one of the others? In the default
: setting, a new message in an old thread like the one that sparked this
: argument takes up only a tiny amount of space, so perhaps I'm finding it
: hard to understand how much of a negative impact it has on someone else's
: forum experience in a different mode. (Of course, that single
: objectionable post was followed by 5 people telling him to shut up and
: calling for a lock...)
Yes, I'm using the mixed thread listing. Yes, this particular thread is growing only because of the debate on locking it. You have to admit that there have been times, however, when this particular thread and a few others have generated so many comments that it fills half the posts in the mixed thread listing. Then it's a problem!
