[Toups]

So SB has been afloat for close to half a year now. We've had our ups and downs but things have gone pretty smoothly, I think. At this point I'm considering where we should go next and I'd like to hear what people have to say about how things have gone so far, how I've performed as site master, and what the future should hold.

For my own part, I've been very satisfied with SB. I find here nearly all of the same things that kept me at the IC forums, along with some of the same warts, of course. My biggest complaints have to do with lack of good frontpage content, which I mostly blame myself for. Still we've had some good stuff and enough of it to keep a decent trickle of new posters coming in.

Some people have mentioned the tone of discussion still being unfriendly, which I haven't really noticed, but I'm not always as sensitive to stuff like that as others are. I've done my best to keep the discussion as civil as possible but I'm open to any suggestions people may have.

Anyway, please review your experience with SB in this thread and offer suggestions and comments. Feel free to speak your mind, but keep it polite and don't make anything personal. Quabbles with individual posters should be handled via PM; I'd prefer if everyone kept things more general in this thread.
_________________

[aderack]

Yeah, you've done a pretty good job. Though the tone is still often shouty and dismissive, it's better than it was and it's better than the IC forums were for the last year or so.

I was going to say you need more word filters. I'll let you know if anything serious comes to mind.

[psiga]

Agreeing with Sir Aderwaugh.

The only in-depth thing that I can think to say is that the place is better than IC was toward the end, but it still feels like a forum on the internet rather than a deep black well where eccentric chatterboxes find words for strange thoughts. A lot of the current crew wouldn't want it that way, anyhow, so I can't even call that a problem with the forum.

Translation: bloo bloo she ain't what she used to be bluh bloo bloo

Your leadership has been A-OTAY though. Sweatin' the details that matter, and not sweatin' the details that don't matter.
_________________

[Felix]

if nothing else, i'm thrilled as anything that it's here. sometimes i feel like it's lacking this person or that person from IC, but i'm completely at a loss for specifics, so i don't know what's to be said about that.

[DecentBee]

Sticky the IRC thread.

[Maztorre]

The handful of new (non-IC) posters who contribute regularly have been great so far, so really all I can advise is push the site into people's faces more so we get more shake-ups and new people instead of letting the situation go stagnant and cliquey (again, IC forums).

Almost everyone else has been either their likeable self on the previous forums or has improved. This is most pleasant!

[Mikey]

I think the best indicator of how I feel about this place is the fact that I visit daily (often several times a day). I've actually had people ask me "What the hell is that forum you're on all the time?"

I forget how I was first clued-in to insertcredit. I loved the articles. I never bothered getting involved with the forums because they seemed like a really well-established community and I was a little intimidated, to be honest. I jumped into the forums over at largeprimenumbers when they started up and hung around there for a while. Then the IC forums imploded and Pikachu (I don't mean to single him out - his username is just easy to remember) and a few IC regulars popped in and started fighting and at around the same time I stopped visiting those forums for unrelated reasons.

Then I heard about SB and decided to give the forum thing another go. Since it seems like largely former IC forum regulars I occaisionally feel like an outsider, but I've been involved in some really good discussions and I know there will be more where that came from.

Attitudes around here form a broad spectrum. There's negativity, yeah, though no more than I'd expect to see in a classroom or maybe an office.

[dark steve]

[Ebrey]

To advertise:

We could put up a video on youtube showing that picture of Ging looking awful and then him after getting a haircut, with "Before SelectButton" and "After SelectButton" subtitles. Then Patsy could talk about how he grew up on this site.

[aderack]

Following psiggity-schwa and others, and tying some stuff together: we definitely need more range of perspective around here. If there's one thing that irritates me, it's how "gamery" the place is in comparison to IC at its best. It's dour Internet porridge. Input a bold yet unthreatening statement and ouput five pages of back-and-forth derision, in which nobody is interested in examining the other perspective or, generally, thinking analytically about anything. The only way out is not to bother posting in the first place.

Putting some of the more interesting discussions or ideas front and center, to draw in a new audience, might go some way to address the situation.

[Toups]

[chompers po pable]

i think it's going good, and this thread is proof that it's headed in a good direction. i did hear someone mention that they overheard someone else say that it'd be cool if aderack stopped posting in just one thread :)

[smartblue]

Man, I've felt completely at home on these forums. Toups you do a real great job keeping things in order I'd say. I hope one day I feel comfortable and compelled enough to contribute something main page wise. Hell, this KE3 thing? That may very well just be called a love letter to sb in a way, not that I don't have other reasons for getting this thing together with John and Joe. I hope this becomes a thing, yeah? I will try to take lots of pictures and invoke lots of fun good times and hopefully the sense of community you're looking for (I think that's what this is fundamentally about) will show itself. We're gonna have a blast and these forums will tell the tales for some time to come.
_________________

[boojiboy7]

Personally, I think these forums are doing well. There are some problems, but there always will be, and most of them are fairly minor. occasionally some tempers flare up, whatever, and I know I am not innocent in this regard. However, as for how the forums are doing, I think they are doing pretty good. I am comfy with this as my net home, and I feel so far it is going well.

Yet, some ideas:

1) I am thinking that a new subforum might be a good idea for people playing games together online to meet up and discuss things. The Halo 3 and the Gears threads brought this to mind, just because I know they take up space in the game area, but are not so much about discussing the games as they are for meeting up with people to play the games.

2) Frontpage: Hmm, I have been thinking about this for the past couple of hours, but I am not sure what to do with it. Part of me is thinkin maybe we should let some people have like weekly columns on it to talk about whatever the want to. I like the linking into the boards for discussion, but I do think there needs to be more regular content up there to talk about in order to keep it moving. If you are looking to attract random people to the site, there definitely needs to be more regular stuff to draw them in.

I think that is about it for ideas, and those are just some thoughts. Overall, I like the site, and I think things have come together pretty well on it. I miss some of the old regulars, but the new people have more than made up for any of that, so that is cool. And I still have yet to find a place on the internet I like to talk about videogames more at.

[boojiboy7]

[GcDiaz]

Personally, I get the exact feeling from this forum that I got from the IC forums, and to me that's the ultimate sign of success. Couldn't have hoped for a better successor.

EDIT: Just to add, as IC was before it, SB is still the smartest videogames forum I know of. We as a group enjoy videogames subjectively, while retaining our ability to objectively apply brutal analysis. No sacred cows here, is what I'm trying to say. Standard internet e-tardation is at a minimum, and accounted for (God bless The Axe).
_________________
Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[IIOIOOIOO]

I profoundly dislike the method of front-paging articles. The way you do it moves them out of the forum they originated from and virtually guarantees that I'll miss the juiciest discussion.

Also

STFU TOUPS

[negativedge]

[Toups]

[Felix]

[boojiboy7]

Toups, I never thought you had that opinion, but BogateL and a few others voiced it today, and I think it should be said that it isn't true.

[Toups]

[Toups]

[diplo]

[smartblue]

It's not that nobody wants him here, just a few. You could say that having Joe not around would justify him coming back but I think Toups has a bigger picture that he's basing this judgement on that involves a lot of drama that doesn't belong in public. Seeing this picture a bit from Joe's side and from my other encounters with him out in internet land, I guess you could call me biased or a party to nepitism or what have you, but seeing the trends of how James provokes people with their own personal issues is not a habbit I'd like to see return. I also don't think he's capable of not ridiculing people around here. Even now for this disclosure I feel like I'm drawing party lines and I don't like it. I don't need it! I have no beef with the guy. I just wish he'd chill out and leave Joe alone.
_________________

[Toups]

It's just a question of how harmful someone is. It's not really my business to judge people's characters; joe may be an acerbic son of a bitch, but for some reason people know to ignore him and he never seems to rankle anyone's chains. James has consistently proven otherwise.

It's an entirely practical decision, and one that I know isn't perfect, but I really can't see anything better to do. The fact that James' only response to all this is "YOU SHOULD BAN EVERYONE I HATE TOO" while coming back with dummy accounts to accuse me of being an e-skirt-chasing, mad with power dictator only makes it harder on me. How am I supposed to respond to that sort of thing, anyway?
_________________

[rf]

I'm not sure how useful this viewpoint is, but I'll state it for the record. I started posting at IC sometime last summer, and barely used it at all during the school year since I was a lot busier. Now that school's over, I've come back to find SB, and I haven't noticed any consistent change. It's almost creepy, how I can come back and find that same idiosyncratic tone (or tones--the axe is the same, too) again. I hadn't noticed a change of demographic or an increase in "gamery" topics, but I was used to avoiding topics that don't interest me since I use the "posts since your last visit" feature, so a change would be difficult to notice.

I'm not sure how useful this is, since the IC of last summer may have had some of the features ascribed to current SB (it's not like it would be an abrupt discrete change, naturally). And maybe I'm too drunk on the uniqueness of the IC/SB style to recognize more subtle, though still significant, changes in that style. Still, the magnitude of the IC-ness is far eclipsing the magnitude of the deviations, and that's a good thing in my book.

[remote]

[boojiboy7]

Yeah, James vs. Joe got to be a little too much. Ideally, I would like for them both to be here, but that ain't looking like it is going to happen, so yeah, here we are.

As for the more esoteric topics, I would be all for that. One of the reason I proposed the separate forum idea above was to separate out things like the halo 3 thread to leave room for the esoteric stuff. This alone doesn't mean more esoteric stuff, but yeah, I will try to contribute more on that end myself, and I think anyone else who can contribute should.

Also, I would really like it if people would try to avoid threads fr stuff they don't like. This isn't to say that people shouldn't disagree, just that popping in to say things like "lol halo sucks" and other such pointless one liners is not only counterproductive, but stupid.

[Koji]

Toups, I support here your choice to ban James. Not only when it came to Joe, he just has an inflammatory personality. He was known as 'shouty-pants,' for crying out loud. I'll further add that you should not hesitate to ban people who engage in shouting contests outside the Axe.

That's pretty much my main problem with SB right now. The overall amount of meaningless posts (hi winker) has decreased since the IC days, so that's an improvement from before. And the front page is fun in that it adds variety to ordinary discussions. We can march forward into a bright future, from here.

[Isfet]

i think that in the past month or so, something has started happening that's making me enjoy this place more than i had been before. it wasn't that i disliked these forums, but something about it seemed kind of forced. there were all the basic elements of what comprised the IC forums, but there was a certain spark that seemed to be lacking.

maybe it's starting to feel comfortable in its skin. or, alternatively, maybe there was a bit too much drama and post-drama fever going around. whatever it is, i find myself enjoying the atmosphere here more lately.

i'm interested to see what direction things start going in from this point forward.


the decrease in constant bickering has also been nice.

[falsedan]

The frontpage is working well at showing off the cream of forum discussion. Infrequent updates means that it's a pleasant surprise when a new post pops up. Also frontpage this thread.

The 500 errors were annoying as hell (but they stopped, hurrah).

The only thing SB lacks from IC is doomquake come home doomquake
_________________

[haircute]

Toups, I think the forums are great and this place is totally excellent.
_________________
Get Wild and Tough!

[dongle]

[SplashBeats]

guys, my trolling is mostly just theater that i constrain to the axe because i find it funny and don't want to ruin important discussion. i don't hate anyone here, and i don't try to turn people's psychological/life issues against them as ammo, and that's what makes me different from jamesE, and why i haven't been banned.

i engage in playful banter that i never take outside the forum, and i don't try to seriously anger anyone. i like being obtuse and abrasive. i think every forum NEEDS a guy like that.

if this one doesn't, then, sorry, i guess? maybe i just don't fit in. it seems that those who dislike me seem to be the loudest voices, but not the majority. i'd honestly be fine with jamesE posting here again, since it's toups fucking business what he does with his forum, and until i pay the hosting bill, i'm not going to presume i know how to run it.

anyway, i'm pretty sure the only reason his "corpse rises to get kicked" is because he keeps coming back. we don't still talk about fucking killy, do we?

god, i came back at a shitty time.

toups, keep up the good work. i feel massively uncomfortable here, but at least i'm not on a damn ban list.

[Corinth]

[Quick Shot II Turbo]

As a community SB is somewhere between "totally fucking awesome!" and "good on its good days." but as a platform for serious discussion it's usually "eh." Now all we need is to figure out what we want it to be, cause getting the best of both worlds sadly doesn't seem to be an option anymore.

I also vouch for the unbanning of James. I'd rather have half of the Axe-only crew banned than him.
_________________

[aderack]

[remote]

[slipstream]

[slipstream]

Just so things are clear, how much does this site cost to run, exactly. People toss around the "TOUPS IS FOOTING THE BILL, SO SHUT UP" stuff, but let's cut the bullshit. Astound me with the operating cost of this site.

I doubt it's so much that everyone couldn't chip in a few bucks and end the tinpot dictator justification for everything.
_________________