Friday Update, June 15, 2012

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Buzpilot

I don't really see why it should be necessary to move this discussion into a different thread, after all much of the update is about Dx9 problems.

Most of the times it's not only what the subject is, but how it is discussed: in a series of personal arguments between a handful of people on long entrenched sides and going off to totally irrelevant tangents.

This usually involves questions about what happened during development, along with each involved user adding his personal speculation.

I don't have to tell you that what happened in the past is off topic in a thread where the main subject is future developments

Originally Posted by Osprey

The point of a forum is so people can discuss things, and like any conversation it evolves. Without active threads a forum is utterly useless.

The quickest way to make a forum lose readers is to over-moderate it. As long as people are reasonably civil then what's the problem?

The problem usually is that someone might jump in this thread for a quick look, searching for information expected by the headline and see 2-3 guys discussing a totally irrelevant thing. He will scroll up and still no clue. He will go a few pages back, still no luck. His lunch break is almost over now though, so he will just quickly post a one-liner question that is probably already posted and answered, but is buried among the avalanche of private conversations that are discussed in a public announcement thread. In each update thread, maybe a 10% of the posts is actually the informative part. The rest is just general discussion, for which we have a perfectly valid general discussion section where everyone can open their own thread.

To sum it up, this is a place for asking and answering questions, or already finding your question answered if someone else asked/answered it before. Well, good luck with that, when the Q&A constitutes maybe 30 posts scattered within 30 pages. The content that actually servers its purpose in these threads tends to be less than 10 pages or so and that is if we're lucky

It's the equivalent of going to the pub and trying to talk as loud as i can, so that the people sitting on every single table and on the bar are listening to what i'm saying and can't carry on with their own conversation. On purpose. Week after week.

If i did this in a pub, i would be told to keep it down and after a while i might be thrown out, don't you think so?

The rest of the general forum section is free of this constraint. It's ok to start a subject and see where it goes, as long as (like you correctly pointed out) people remain civil.

Update, bug report and suggestion threads are not like this however. They are either a questions and answers affair, or a situation where we post in a specific way to make information easy to access. Think of it less as a discussion and more like an information directory, say like the yellow pages.

If things start evolving into a different discussion, we are encouraged to open new threads and separate the general discussion from the specific information.

I really don't get why people don't make use of the freedom they are given to start new threads. If you have your own thread you can even request help to keep it within a certain topic. Instead, everyone prefers to just derail this tiny minority of three thread types that should be in a specific posting style and as a result, make it harder for everyone to find what they are looking for. I really don't get it.