[3SA] The State Of 3SA

I want to talk about this in public and I'd like my questions addressed in public. I've posted this twice now and both times it's been in a thread that's been either deleted or locked without reply. This forum is for the public discussion of these forums, so let's dicsuss 3SA. If it's locked or deleted again or I'm referred to PM yet again, we can all assume that the administration think this forum is redundant and users questions/opinions are irrelevant

I have issues with the overall quality of the forum. In my experience, social threads have no place in dedicated film discussion forums and when a large thread like the one that is constantly atop 3SA gets going, the posting habits of the forum regulars devolve because they can't distinguish the difference between Community-style posts and serious discussive posts.

Like I mentioend in the other thread, I think the forum mods need to look at where they want 3SA to go because the quality of posting in there atm is quite poor and it's not something that can be fixed with an "Official" thread for every second topic. that only allows for the removal of redundancy. There are ways to improve the forum but it seems to continue to devolve....it's actually unusual to get more than a 1 or 2 sentence response in there these days, pretty much always with no evidence to back a theory or statement.

How do other users and the mods for the forum feel? ?

 

DA, DA, DA. How you doin'?

Doing my best to take what I hear via PM's, our community polls, forum guides, fact threads, spy reports, extremely low redundancy and problems, some of the fines mods I've ever worked with, good discussion, I feel that these times are some of the best the spoiler forums have ever seen. We have a rhythm and know one another's personalities.

The forum is a blast and people tell us all the time. And you've only started posting there recently. I respect what you're saying but I know there's more to this. So, what would you like to discuss in terms of specifics?

And for the record:

1) I responded to Crimson's first thread.
2) I responded to Crimson's second thread.
3) I responded to Crimson's PM immediately after I locked the second Comms thread.
4) You have never, until this thread, PM'd me about the 3SA, brought up anything about it in the Mod Squad, and it was only until we momentarily had our backs to the wall that you became the voice of the 3SA.

So I will respectfully answer you, but at the same time we won't let this be some open-ended, amorphous, generalized free-for-all with only the four or five of us to defend ourselves. So be forewarned that it will get locked if it becomes anything but constructive criticism and helpful tips rather than something less than the best of intentions.

 

I have issues with the overall quality of the forum. In my experience, social threads have no place in dedicated film discussion forums and when a large thread like the one that is constantly atop 3SA gets going, the posting habits of the forum regulars devolve because they can't distinguish the difference between Community-style posts and serious discussive posts.

Like I mentioend in the other thread, I think the forum mods need to look at where they want 3SA to go because the quality of posting in there atm is quite poor and it's not something that can be fixed with an "Official" thread for every second topic. that only allows for the removal of redundancy. There are ways to improve the forum but it seems to continue to devolve....it's actually unusual to get more than a 1 or 2 sentence response in there these days, pretty much always with no evidence to back a theory or statement.

 

I started posting actively in 3SA since Hyperspace debuted.

I am consistently impressed with the efficiency of moderation there in taming redundant/spammy threads.


More importantly... I must weigh in on the issue of social threads in non-social forums.
Keep 'em I say.
I do not post in the social threads for the actual movies themselves, but I DO post in the social threads of two 'dedicated forums' (Fan Films and Music) and would hate to see such opportunities taken away.



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

DA, we had discussions ad nauseum about the 3SA social thread in the Mod Squad to which I don't ever remember hearing from you. It was decided by a near unanimous decision that the one social thread was important to that forum and one that had built so many friendships that have lasted over the years. That's the ONLY social thread we have ever had.

 

1-3 you have failed each time to address the issue at hand, Sape.

Why does a lack of *posting* necessitate a lack of *viewing*. I view 3SA nearly 10-20 times a day, yet I post there probably 5 times a week. I don't see how posts are relevant here.

I feel there isn't much to discuss(in 3SA), so I certainly don't see the point in talking about moot point after moot point, and getting worked up about fanboy wet-dreams concerning saber colors and the near-nakedness of Padme.

New relevant topics are few and far between, so what happens? The forum gets filled up with social wishlists, and irrelevant topics. Thus, when we do get a bit of news that might be useful, it gets buried by the crap on top.

Even if I do have great discussion topics that I would like to post in there, they will degenerate into jibber-jabber threads, so I don't waste my time. I still like to check out new information, but it's just hard to do with all the garbage threads that are dominating the board.

That is the topic at hand.

 

I lurked the 3SA forum before I joined up and become spoiler free, and during that time I find the forum quite enjoyable. However I can understand what you saying DA. The 3SA forum is going to attract alot of casual posters because of it's nature and content. I think the more serious posters will venture out and post in the other movie and social forums. I personally don't know if your going to get around the short posts, or the lack of quality posts. Mods can lock redundant threads, and keep the trolls away, but the quality of posts comes down the poster. And unless rules and regulations are changed in a way that will keep these types of posters away, I think your going to be stuck with it.

 

I can't help what threads people create nor how they respond. We moderate the behavior. If the thread's appropriate for our forum and it's not redundant, it stays. It's for everyone.

So why not get out of Comms for a moment and go create the kind of thread you want to see. Seriously, you and DA go into the 3SA and create those threads. Because for your daily times that you're in the 3SA, I'm on it for 10 hours a day. And in that time, I really can't recall your guy's threads or much input before into improving the forum except for when we weren't online and then when we locked the Comms thread and it was a prime opporunity to hang us by our necks.

This isn't just about Ol' Yeller. You're also talking about the forum that Grilled-Sarlacc, RolandofGilead, darth-sinister, and dehrian have dedicated their unpaid time, love, and devotion to. Are they just as bad as me or is it all me? I look around sometime at what we've done and where we're all at and I'm pretty sure we're doing something right.

 

"we had discussions ad nauseum about the 3SA social thread in the Mod Squad to which I don't ever remember hearing from you"

Are you saying I missed the chance to offer my opinion?
That users can't raise issues they feel are relevant at anytime in Communications? I hope not, we might as well remove Communications and have MS Updates dropped into the read-only Announcements forum in that case

Yes, it's the one social thread and it dominates the forum, it's rarely below the top ten threads. The trend that it forms is that everyone posts in it and thinks it's OK to make Community-style one liner posts out in the rest of the forum without thought to form or content....you included Sape. Your single social thread has now blown out to "Community Polls" and forum games for colours/title.

The quality of the forum suffers because it has a Community attitude, that one liner fanboy threads with no hope of getting more than 12 replies before being locked and redirected to the Official version are welcome and even encouraged.

There are probably scant few older members who remember the work up to AotC (because they've all gone elsewhere due to 3SA's diving quality), who remember the storyboards and first script leaks and a forum that ran like clockwork, mods in different timezones who knew what was an acceptable thread, what constituted a spoiler and how to guide discussion to turn off-topic threads back to on-topic without posting "Get back on-topic or bans will follow". Warnings don't need to be issued in 3SA now, ieverything is locked and redirected to an Official thread before it has a chance to even get off the ground.

Edit: And don't give us the "pity me" routine you put in everytime something concerns you or your job with this site. It won't cut it so stay on topic and just try to be objective for a change, OK? Maybe the other 3SA mods would like to come and speak for themselves, this isn't an inquisition or anything, we just want to get a discussion going about the quality of 3SA

 

Mods can lock redundant threads, and keep the trolls away, but the quality of posts comes down the poster. And unless rules and regulations are changed in a way that will keep these types of posters away, I think your going to be stuck with it.

Thank you for recognizing this. That's what we're trying to get at here.

Emphasizing these points alone will do a great deal, even if there were no change in "policy". The mods saying, "Hey, post something of value", and doing so a 100 times, instead of encouraging posters to do otherwise by their own posts, is what needs to happen.

I'm out for a few hours, we'll see if we can get anywhere without turning this into a pity-party.

Just a question for Sapient though, something to think about; what's more important, effort or results?

Think about it for a while.

 

As far as engendering better discussion, there's very little mods can do. Yes, I do agree that the quality of posts has falling since the days of pre-TPM discussion, but there's not a great deal mods can do to change that. That's up to the members. We do have some great posters that start interesting and thought-provoking threads, such as Darth Sin and bad radio, and while I don't always agree with them, I always appreciate the thought that they've put in to them.

3SA, almost by its very nature, attracts a constant stream of new users: we have a lot of young members who are discovering the saga through the PT for the first time, which is wonderful, and we try to encourage their interest; we have a constant stream of new members who are trying to find their way: the cumulative effect can sometimes be something like a schoolyard playground. But the mods can only enforce, they can't tell people how they must post. The desire is for something egalitarian, not totalitarian. (BTW, I'm not implying that all 3SA members fit this bill, but rather that we do have a lot of young and new members that seem to flock to that particular forum.)

With TPM, the forum was made up almost entirely of people who had grown up on the OT and wanted to speculate about the new trilogy. These were adults who had had twenty years to form opinions, many of them fashioned by experiences in life, from college to travel, etc. These new members, however, haven't had years to think about it and obssess over it as we have. The pre-TPM crowd had every OT line memorized and had spent twenty years speculating over inflections in Obi-Wan's voice. The new crowd has trouble getting their quotes right.

It's different. Not worse or better. Just different.

The 3SA does have some very interesting discussions going on, but it's also has some threads I myself wondered about when I was a mod. But as I told people who invariably asked me to lock a thread because they thought it was stupid: "I don't lock threads just because I don't agree with them. If it's Ep3 related and people want to talk about it, I'll let them talk."

In a way, it's great. The new members sometimes take an old line or an old idea and present it to us in a way you would never have thought of before. Sometimes I think they're crazy, and sometimes they make me stop and think. They're here to learn from us as much as we're here to learn from them.

But we can't tell users, "All, starting today, everyone has to post smarter." We can try to lead them that way, but they're only going to follow if they want to. And as mods, it could certainly be taken the wrong way were that to be done. What are mods supposed to say, "Post smarter or you're out of here"? A mod can say, "Please try to be more constructive next time," but that's only going to happen if the user wants to be more constructive next time.

Other than that, a mod could spend all day writing that to no effect, other than a new mod version of +1.

 

As a recent 3SA mod, what do you think could be done to lead the users (and therein the whole forum) that way Dehrian? ?

 

I believe Sapient may have already addressed that;

"So why not get out of Comms for a moment and go create the kind of thread you want to see. Seriously, you and DA go into the 3SA and create those threads."


Really it's up to the users of the forum who want more "quality" threads to lead by example.

 

Yeah...but I was asking dehrian there jp-30.

As it happens I have been in the topics I feel are decent, giving what I hope are some insightful, thought provoking posts. It's kind of disheartening to have it met with a single line reply like "Mace rely iz teh traytor so there OMGlolololol!!!!11!!", makes one feel like not bothering to make decent posts at all because it's like talking a small bland-looking parrot.

The only place such one-line drivel can be of any relevance to a topic is...you guessed it...the 3SA social thread.

 

*DIdnt understand any of the above posts*


*Waves to DA*

Hi!!

 

Our "Get in Line: The Social Countdown to Episode III" thread is just fine.

 

> Yeah...but I was asking dehrian there jp-30.

So now mods aren't allowed to answer questions in Comms not specifically directed at them, even if they may be able to provide an answer?

I hope not, we might as well remove Communications and have MS Updates dropped into the read-only Announcements forum in that case.

 

Agreed.

Josh

 

Nothing, to be honest.

There are three inherent problems:

1. Anyone can start a thread. There will always be redundancy, parodies, silly threads, etc. Those can be locked when necessary, but they will continue to sprout. 3SA is such a busy forum (second, I believe, only to YJCC) that quality control is a bit like being a Ford Pinto assembly line technician whose job it is to test the gas tank to see if it explodes.

2. The constant stream of new users. It doesn't matter how hard you train the old users to post a certain way, there will always be new people who won't.

3. The older members who aren't really interested in posting more responsibly. It's like how communism fails: it seems to work on paper, but in practice all it takes is one freeloader to screw the whole thing up.

In a perfect world, it would be lovely to have the 3SA be a place where people can post with the kind of intelligent posts that PSA used to get in late '98 and early '99, but that's not going to happen. It's not a perfect world. (It's not a bad world either. It just takes some getting used to.)

I point to the Saga forum. It was designed exclusively to be a place where people could post intelligently about the saga, without the kind of posts that you're lamenting for 3SA. And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't. I used to have to close so many threads that I would prune them after two days just so that the first page of the forum wasn't a compendium of threads with lines through them.

I understand your desire for a different kind of forum, but it's a bit like wishing for different color eyes. You can put on contact lenses, but they'll always be the original color underneath.

As for this kind of post: "Mace rely iz teh traytor so there OMGlolololol!!!!11!!" I sympathize, but there's really nothing we can do. I just ignore those posts, to be honest. I glance briefly, make sure they're not swearing, and move on.

 

I think we need a thread like I had in AOTC spoilers(it's been pruned by now)- The Shmi/Dipa Billaba are sisters ridiculous speculation thread. Yes, most theories were crap, and completely unfounded(like a lot of the stuff I post under socks now), but at least it was all in one thread. We could direct new users there instead of making them feel like asses for suggesting Padme could be Mon Mothma in a world where Ben is Obi Wan and Anakin is Darth Vader and Sidious is Palpy.Chances are, also, if Lucas does throw in a surprise, it'll be guesses there where people think outside the box that figure it out instead of just congratulating each other for ordering Hyperspace.

I volunteer my services for starting the thread and filling it up with theories as popular as Naboo=Dagobah, and as off the wall as Han Solo is just a sentient dingleberry from Chewbacca's ass hair.

Let me know if I can do it because I don't want to type all this quality stuff up and have it be deleted by Mods(which happened to the poor girl from Nickolodeon who posted about Walrusman's cameo yesterday).

Edit: Fixed some of my rambling.

 

Please stop baiting jp-30, it's not very becoming of a mod. The question was asked to get an opinion, not to get a definitive administration-sponsored answer that the rest of the mods (yourself included) can tow for each other. Communications is all about the free exchange of opinions, right? Do you have an opinion on the matter or do you agree with the administration?

Now, back on-topic. I despise the way mods like you come in and derail these threads to try to make them into drama so they can be locked and the status quo maintained for a few more days.

The 3SA social thread is just fine apparently. Sure, as a social thread it adheres to the criteria of no definate topic and short, rapid fire answers that keep it up in the top ten threads on the front page. But what it's doing it making this film forum into a Community forum (along with the polls and games and whatever else). We have Community forums and we even have an SW-related Community forum now. Why do film forums need all this useless social content? ?

 

3SA already has an official silly theories thread.

Why do film forums need all this useless social content?

Well, to be honest, 3SA's had one game in the past year that I can remember, and we rarely start polls. They're disabled, so only mods can start them, and it's not done as a matter of course. And we do try to deter people from socializing. For instance, in the "What's on the Hyperspace webcam?" thread, when people started socializing, we stepped in and made them stop, telling them to go to the social thread if that's what they wanted to talk about and to reserve the thread for actual discussion of the webcam contents.

 

Where is it?

 

Crazy theories thread. It's linked to in the official threads link in the header, as well as in the Essential Guide to Threads.

 

Please stop baiting jp-30, it's not very becoming of a mod. The question was asked to get an opinion, not to get a definitive administration-sponsored answer that the rest of the mods (yourself included) can tow for each other

Take your own advice, and please leave the moderating to the moderators. You can consider yourself warned.