[SO META] On the current format of General Chat threads.

[Honest]

Honestly I've wanted the DCC to be gone for a long time. I always felt it was infringing on a lot of success this forum could have.

Well, considering the thread probably receives more posts on average per day than the other threads in GC combined, I'm inclined to agree with that. DCCs of different sorts would be organized chaos. The DCC now is just regular chaos.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

My bad :s

Thinking about Oryx's idea, it's incredibly unorthodox, but it'd do something the supporter system started doing for people back in 2008: Adding a structure of importance among different members, but based nearer to merit than the donor system. Plenty of other boards around I've seen do things like that to strengthen their memberbases; while it does open for divides I also think it'd be useful as a merit system of sorts aside from staff. Then again, it's just something heretofore unknown and with how the staff here tend to think collectively I doubt a thing of that sort would become a reality, ever. :A

 

[Honest]

My bad :s

Thinking about Oryx's idea, it's incredibly unorthodox, but it'd do something the supporter system started doing for people back in 2008: Adding a structure of importance among different members, but based nearer to merit than the donor system. Plenty of other boards around I've seen do things like that to strengthen their memberbases; while it does open for divides I also think it'd be useful as a merit system of sorts aside from staff. :A

The problem is finding "recruits". Besides, with the DCC idea, something like that wouldn't even be necessary.

 

[Nick]

The problem is finding "recruits". Besides, with the DCC idea, something like that wouldn't even be necessary.

Why not just treat anyone who posts in any thread here, no matter how much, like a regular? In a sense, like they're part of a club that is General Chat. Reward them in ways for their contributions here. Encourage them to do so more. Encourage them to create topics, encourage them to contribute to existing threads. Encourage them to treat each other like friends, rather than strangers. Take a lesson from what Juli did to the Challenges forum. This forum is honestly the most intimate forum in ideal, but in practice, the crown goes do what Juli did to her forum during her tenure as mod of that forum. And it's that way because she treats everyone in her forum (sorry to current mod of that forum I don't know who that is, but) the way that I suggested the people who come here are treated.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

The problem is finding "recruits". Besides, with the DCC idea, something like that wouldn't even be necessary.

I'd imagine selecting forum regulars and ancient sages like Nick and others would be an idea, though like I said it's a really unorthodox idea to begin with. Also, could you elaborate on the destruction of the DCC rendering that useless? :<

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

The problem is finding "recruits". Besides, with the DCC idea, something like that wouldn't even be necessary.

Don't get recruits. That will just build into the "elitism" that many people view this forum in.

Rather, just let people post as they will. Eventually, people will catch onto the idea that so-and-so is the direction the forum will be going in, just like they had initially picked up on the post-and-go attitude.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Don't get recruits. That will just build into the "elitism" that many people view this forum in.

You have a point, though I'd like to outline that PC is a baby with candy when it comes to drama and elitism (judging from my experience on different forums, wikis, game servers and such as comparative evidence). Granted that's no reason to ever expand it, I just thought it was worth noting.

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

You have a point, though I'd like to outline that PC is a baby with candy when it comes to drama and elitism (judging from my experience on different forums, wikis, game servers and such as comparative evidence). Granted that's no reason to ever expand it, I just thought it was worth noting.

Unfortunately, it really is. People get upset that staff has it's own "little community", but it's not like we're doing anything different that other people are capable of doing minus some moderator powers. Just look at the VIP forum; there's so much potential there, yet no one has the audacity to try to make the best of it and thus is just sitting there untapped.

I digress, I'm going on a tangent here. Looking at the bigger picture here though, if you want to attack the real problem of post-and-go which happens all across PokeCommunty, then eliminate all DCCs. By the argument detailed, for the most part they are all taking away precious discussions that can be made, so instead of just cutting off the foot of the body and letting it hobble around why don't we just cut the head?

Yes, brutal metaphor but you get what I'm saying.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

+1 to the eliminating the DCC. The DCC is great and everyone loves it but it's so open to a wide array of discussions that there is no need to even chit chat throughout the other polls because well...the DCC is there for that! Hopefully by eliminating the "everything" thread people would be more inclined to branch out and carry out the mini discussions throughout the other threads.

 

[Nathan]

But what about those who actually like the "post-and-go" format? Sorry didn't read all the replies in the thread.

 

[Oryx]

Well no one's banning it. There's a reason no one's suggesting making it against the rules not to have a conversation. :)

 

[Alfieri]

To me, I never had a problem with the post-and-go format of this section. It makes more sense to me because the moment two users begin having a conversation about a topic, the conversation will tend to shift over to another topic that is completely unrelated to the topic title. So in order to prevent other users from telling them "hey this has nothing to do with the thread", the two users will be better off heading over to the Daily Chit-Chat thread or private message to continue their conversation.

 

[Honest]

To me, I never had a problem with the post-and-go format of this section. It makes more sense to me because the moment two users begin having a conversation about a topic, the conversation will tend to shift over to another topic that is completely unrelated to the topic title. So in order to prevent other users from telling them "hey this has nothing to do with the thread", the two users will be better off heading over to the Daily Chit-Chat thread or private message to continue their conversation.

Well, to be fair, the moment the conversation shifts dramatically, Andy or I would tell the people responsible to get back in line. I emphasis dramatically because we're still looking at everything with a rather laid back attitude, simply because conversations in general are laid back.

 

[Nihilego]

I honestly am not even slightly bothered by off-topicness in threads in this section any more if it's just a couple of people having an exchange that's kinda remotely related. Like say the discussion was on pizza toppings or something (lol @ how this is being used as the prime dull thread example) and the topic shifted over to how can't eat pizza because they're allergic to cheese or whatever then that'd be cool imo. As long as it wasn't like "i like cheese and tomato also my birthday is on the seventeenth of april" and then a conversation span off that it'd be cool.

Thing is that conversation cannot stay strictly on-topic. Real chat cannot follow a topic to the word. There has to be a degree of flexibility with it which our mods already pretty much allow; it'd just be nice for more people to realise that and use it.

$0.02, mind. I don't mod this place. d:

 

[Kanzler]

I'm going to have to mightily disagree there. The news threads in D&D, at least the good ones, are still meant to become in-depth and people are still meant to take and critique opinions, it's not "chat". The tags for [Discussion]'s and [News] were originally intended to clean things up, aesthetically speaking, so people could sort through the kinds of topics you'd see in D&D. News threads are still kind of a foil to the discussion threads, but they're supposed to be just as in depth and thought provoking - people need to get away from the formula of "link to thread topic + a "do you agree?" statement = discuss!" and add some questions or take a position on the effects of that particular news event.

Think of it this way, D&D is your Social Studies/Political Science/Debate Club class and Chit-Chat Cafe is your creative writing class. Some formalized structure on what to discuss, but freedom to choose how you talk about it. What separates them isn't so much the types of content being discussed, it's the ways in which they're being talked about. But I agree, CCC needs to get away from "bold the question + answer below = leave" formula and get back to just being about raw, light discussion of ideas and other chatter not covered in D&D. But pilfering more from D&D is not how you fix that.

Also, lets make sure that the issues are actual structural problems and not because of some other variable like the user-base, moderation, types of topics being made, etc, before we try and tinker with how things are set up. Best way to start fixing that would be to re-enforce our regulation of SPAM policies, 4/25 rule, etc, because I think that the care-free attitude when it comes to those things helps promote the lazy posting styles that I believe are the real culprit here.

YES YES YES

I think D&D is fine as it is. Don't touch it.

 

[Honest]

I think tampering with D&D at all in an effort to fix GC is definitely the wrong move.

 

[Altairis]

A bit late, but I really like the idea of getting rid of the DCC and having DCC-like threads in GC. I think they would be great as an addition, but I would love it if we could still have some threads like we do now, like the statistics and who-do-you-talk-to-everyday threads because the responses from those are interesting to read. :p

To me, I never had a problem with the post-and-go format of this section. It makes more sense to me because the moment two users begin having a conversation about a topic, the conversation will tend to shift over to another topic that is completely unrelated to the topic title. So in order to prevent other users from telling them "hey this has nothing to do with the thread", the two users will be better off heading over to the Daily Chit-Chat thread or private message to continue their conversation.

I mean, I don't have a problem with shifting topics and don't see a problem with it in general, but if we had DCC-type threads like the fashion one we have now, it would be harder to go off topic like you described and if people wanted to discuss something completely unrelated they could always make their own thread.

 

[Oryx]

I would be sad if the DCC went away. :(

 

[Nathan]

I don't really like the idea of eliminating the DCC either.

 

[Honest]

I mean, we're getting a multiple DCCs in the process though :c