While there are certainly ways in which the forums can work better for Wonderland related areas (e.g. better organized help/solutions, more options/features for the custom level areas), I do believe that these areas work reasonably well in their current state. They have their predictable highs and lows around and away from new game releases, but I don’t think they have any fundamental flaws.
The Off-Topic/Social area, however, is fundamentally broken. I know many of you agree, either because you have made the same point in the forum itself, or because you have long ago abandoned the site for purposes of social interaction.
In my opinion, Off-Topic is a haven for spammy posts, excessive silliness, time-wasting, and arguing. The overall quantity of the posts is huge (with some users racking up hundreds if not thousands of posts in little time) while the quality of the posts is extremely low.
The main problem is that I truly do not police (or even read) these forums. I know I should probably be cutting a lot of topics down, and warning or possible banning several users for their posting behaviour. But I have no interest in Wefight or reading hundreds of other silly posts each day and trying to keep up with who said what and at what point I should step in.
I was fine with having an off-topic section in the forum when it was in moderate use and truly meant to supplement social interaction that already existed in e.g. custom level discussions. But now, for some users, the off-topic areas seem to be the prime reason for visiting and participating in this community, and I’m simply not willing (nor able) to supervise such a beast.
I see, at this point, three options - two of which you won’t like.
1) Just accept the state of the forum as is and continue on without changes.
2) Completely remove the off-topic areas from the board and revert it to a Wonderland-only discussion area. Links could be provided to one or more alternative forums where users could meet for simple chat and silliness.
3) A system of moderation is implemented. This would, however, require
i) a set of willing and capable moderators
and
ii) even more importantly, a clear set of rules and guidelines as to what the purpose of the off-topic areas are, what reasonable conduct is, what sort of posts are encouraged and discouraged, and what type of disciplinary action should be taken.
My own inclination at this point is toward #2, the complete removal of off-topic areas. Yes, I know that this will mean the loss of several users. However, and I’m sorry to be blunt, if your primary reason for being here is e.g. Wefight, then maybe this is not the place to be?
So, I’m looking for suggestions and solid discussion if you want me to go with #3 instead (or #1, I suppose). I’m totally open to ideas, including splitting the forum into silly and non-silly section, assigning moderators to those sections, etc. However, for this type of system to even have a chance of working, I would like to see some consensus in how these sections should operate.
There is no need for a hurried response, take your time in thinking about what you would like to see if you were in charge of this area. Be inclusive (e.g. also to those types of users/posts that used to be made, but are no longer around given the changes in recent activity), be reasonable, be fair. If you as a whole can come up with a vision for what you’d like to see in this area, I’m willing to give it a chance. If this degenerates into a flame-war, you know where we’re headed.
Patrick
