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	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums
	Posted By: RyokoTK	Date: 10/11/06 4:23 a.m.
	In Response To: Re: Maturity and Internet Forums (Forrest of B.org) : It's really the image-based signatures that bug me. Avatars are unnecessary : but I can still deal with them. : And how is it hard at all to distinguish people by name, vs avatar? : Especially when on many forums people can *change* their avatars. Because most users won't. And come on; if a user has a vivid and easily recognizable avatar, it's faster to just glance at the image than read the name. : Not sure where you get a comparison to Marx from, since he favored extremely : populist politics achieved through the use of centralized force, which are : the two positions I was just attacking. : Also, I cannot seem to parse your bracketed statement. Please restate? Well, see, the bracketed statement was discounting the statement about Marx. It's a joke, you see. : I guess I can see a place for subforums when they're logical categories like : "story", "mapmaking", etc. But I see many phpBB-style : (inaccurate name I know, but I lack a better one) forums that have : separate subforums for what are essentially popular thread topics. It'd be : like if, in addition to the Story Forum (were this a multi-topic forum : system here), we also had a "Is The Player The 10th Mjolnir Mk V : Cyborg?" forum. That's the kind of crap that bugs me. (Mind you, I : don't read the Pfhorums at all, so I don't know where they in particular : fall on this issue. I'm just talking that style of forum in general). Well, those would be extremely poorly-designed forums. The Pfhorums actually breaks it down into overarching topics, for the most part: -Welcome (okay, this is unnecessary; new members can introduce themselves here) -Questions (general help with Marathon or Aleph One) -Story Discussion -General (tends to be like Questions, so okay, not a good one) -Projects (anything from scenarios to mundane things) -Mapping (map help, posting maps for critique, etc) -Founding (about the Pfhorums itself) -Contests and Tournaments -Bash.org (STUPID forum) -Chat -S.O.S. Brigade (spam forum; necessary given the age group and maturity level) -Polls : I'm not quite following your point here. What attitude of mine are you : complaining about? What's a necessity of more active boards? Well, imagine that this board had topics that reached thousands of posts on a regular basis (not saying the Pfhorums do either, but in general), and has maybe 20 new posts a day or something. On a board like this one, it would hopelessly clutter the main board list with the weird staggering, whereas it's relegated into one little box on a phpBB board. : What bothers me about single-threaded forums (i.e. forums where threads are : linear arrangements of messages with no branching) is that: (A) if the : topic drifts over time, and someone comes back and wants to respond to : something that was said earlier in the conversation, their reply to that : appears in the middle of a bunch of posts about whatever the topic has : drifted to, since the linear threading means there's only really one topic : in the thread at a time. Not true; a board I frequent the most has a userbase of about 10,000, so it's pretty big. If a topic is about actual discussion, then it's entirely likely that you will have parallel discussions. It's just helpful that you quote the text to which you're responding. Just because the last post is about X doesn't mean everyone's now talking about X; people can choose to post about X, ignore X, or continue talking about a post that was 500 posts before X. : Multithreading allows conversations to diverge in : different directions; one subthread can go off on one tangent and then a : latecomer (e.g. someone who only reads the forums every other day or such, : as opposed to all day every day like some people) can respond to an : earlier part of that thread, which is still new to them, and then : *another* branch of conversation can continue off of that, instead of : interrupting the "current" branch. Both branches are concurrent; : there's no interruption and thus no perception of impropriety on anyone's : part. (I've seen forums where people get upset that someone's not : "up" with the current focus of a thread, who drags up something : from a few days earlier in that same thread). Well, that's some forums, but the major boards that I frequent don't have that problem. If your post gets ignored, it's likely because it doesn't matter in the scope of the overarching argument as opposed to the one at that point in the topic's development. Big boards have unwritten codes of conduct, which most users will follow; those that don't are generally ignored, because they usually do it on purpose to annoy. : (B) To a lesser extent, there's a somewhat opposite problem. I'm annoyed that : it drags up the first post in a thread every time someone : "bumps" that thread. That is, when you click a thread, you see : the first message there first. For someone who's not constantly active : reading everything in a forum, but just dropping by every now and then, : this makes it hard to see what is really currently being discussed; you've : got to click the most current thread, page through to the end of it, and : then page backwards until the point where the current subject of that : thread was established. Or you can do what any procrastinating college student does and skim through all of the posts since his last viewing. This only takes a few minutes (because most people don't write novels for every post, like you :P), and then boom, you're informed.

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Replies:

	yota part 4-6	goran	10/9/06 1:41 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	Johannes Gunnar	10/10/06 11:08 a.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	goran	10/10/06 12:11 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	RyokoTK	10/10/06 12:32 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	Forrest of B.org	10/10/06 2:39 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	goran	10/10/06 3:07 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	RyokoTK	10/10/06 3:36 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	Johannes Gunnar	10/10/06 10:45 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	Forrest of B.org	10/11/06 7:28 p.m.
	i'll drop by at psyjnir later today :) *NM*	Johannes Gunnar	10/12/06 3:10 a.m.
	Is psyjnir down? *NM*	Document	10/19/06 8:43 a.m.
	the hotline server is up at the moment... *NM*	Johannes Gunnar	10/19/06 10:07 a.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	Adam Ashwell	10/10/06 4:03 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	mitchellan	10/10/06 5:24 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	RyokoTK	10/10/06 5:44 p.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	RyokoTK	10/10/06 5:47 p.m.
	viva la story forum! *NM*	Johannes Gunnar	10/10/06 10:47 p.m.
	Maturity and Internet Forums	Forrest of B.org	10/10/06 8:04 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	RyokoTK	10/10/06 8:33 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Forrest of B.org	10/10/06 10:24 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	RyokoTK	10/11/06 4:23 a.m.
	Addendum	RyokoTK	10/11/06 4:27 a.m.
	Re: Addendum	Document	10/11/06 7:43 a.m.
	Re: Addendum	Callie21V	10/11/06 6:58 p.m.
	That took you way too long, man. *NM*	RyokoTK	10/11/06 7:14 p.m.
	ROFLCOPTER down! No LOL left behind! *NM* *NM*	Forrest of B.org	10/11/06 7:30 p.m.
	Re: Addendum	Document	10/11/06 7:32 p.m.
	L.O.L! *NM*	Johannes Gunnar	10/12/06 3:12 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	goran	10/11/06 12:30 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aachim	10/11/06 2:48 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	RyokoTK	10/11/06 4:25 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums *LINK*	goran	10/11/06 6:33 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Forrest of B.org	10/11/06 10:43 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 12:16 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Forrest of B.org	10/11/06 1:49 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 4:09 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	goran	10/11/06 11:56 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aaron Sikes	10/12/06 6:44 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	goran	10/11/06 3:02 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 4:11 p.m.
	Social evolution	Forrest of B.org	10/11/06 4:37 p.m.
	Re: Social evolution	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 5:34 p.m.
	Re: Social evolution	goran	10/11/06 11:49 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	xyfbzi	10/15/06 2:50 p.m.
	Is this a movie quote? *NM*	Document	10/11/06 5:44 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	D-M.A.	10/11/06 4:51 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	RyokoTK	10/11/06 5:04 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	D-M.A.	10/11/06 7:19 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	treellama	10/11/06 8:43 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	D-M.A.	10/11/06 9:05 a.m.
	*looks at thread* What have I unleashed!? *NM*	Adam Ashwell	10/11/06 3:27 p.m.
	Re: *looks at thread* What have I unleashed!?	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 3:45 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 3:43 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	treellama	10/11/06 4:36 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Aaron Sikes	10/11/06 9:26 a.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Tycho	10/11/06 4:55 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	RyokoTK	10/11/06 5:16 p.m.
	I wasn't arguing your point, I agreed with it. *NM*	Tycho	10/11/06 5:24 p.m.
	Oops. *NM*	RyokoTK	10/11/06 5:30 p.m.
	Re: Maturity and Internet Forums	Nicholai	10/11/06 9:19 a.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	D-M.A.	10/11/06 4:53 a.m.
	Re: yota part 4-6	RyokoTK	10/11/06 5:26 a.m.

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