Senate The Senate is splitting off

seriously though. if your goal is to create a little tiny sub forum where four people can discuss all the world's problems IN PARAGRAPHS over and over again at the rate of 1 new thread a month or something, this is a great move.

if your goal is to create a space where different people with different opinions can come and talk about more serious things with an emphasis on substantive discussion, this is the wrong direction.

easier, maybe. But wrong.

 

It absolutely could be. Based on the overwhelming majority of responses from actual Senate users, they'd probably even welcome this.

At this point, it's not at all clear to me that any of them support this move outside of Lowbacca and Superwatto. Anyone?

 

dammit, prenn, if you **** this up for me...

 

Indeed, do we need the tags at all? Can it just be the JCC?

I'm relatively new, so I really don't know.

Amph seems pretty chill, mostly. I've seen super serious lengthy posts, quick, casual responses and some humor. Does Amph have serious posting rules anything like Senate? Or is it more similar to JCC? To me Amph appears to be the JCC but media-related discussion only. I'm really not sure why Amph exists. I'd welcome an explanation just for curiosity's sake. I remember on the IGN boards that one mod used to bump threads with lengthy posts and no one would respond. There'd be an entire page of threads all bumped by the same mod with no responses.

I've never really checked out Arena. I used to be a huge sports fan but bailed on sports entirely at the start of 2009. Does Arena have rules at all similar to Senate? Can it simply be fully integrated with JCC?

I admit I'm biased, I'd prefer one big JCC with no segregation, no tags. I don't have a problem if other communities simply don't want it that way.

EDIT: Looks like others beat me to it.

I guess certain topics could get buried and the tags would help one find them, but then again the search function works perfectly now.

 

^what this thread should look like

 

In some forums the tags are really neccessary like fanfiction, otherwise it used to be a mess before they seperated fanfiction into their own forums, and all the names of the tags here used to be what the forums were called. So to keep everything from becoming confusing, each merged forum got its own separation tag.

 

This is good news; the caliber of people who have bled into the JCC from the senate has been a detriment to the overall cohesion of this place. Quarantining those people is the best thing, I think. Because they're gross.

 

I never browsed Arena so I can't speak of it, but generally the idea with Amphitheatre was that in-depth analysis and the like was more welcome than it was in the JCC, although it wasn't extensively mandated per se; in addition, the topics covered could generally get a lot more niche just because it didn't move quite as fast. You still got snippy quips and short reactions mixed in, though.

That said, Zas/Nevermind's... unique approach to prolonging threads did periodically make it hard to find the actual, ongoing discussions. Today's Amph tagged threads read more like a mix of the JCC media threads of old and the Amph threads. Which, frankly, I think works better, and would probably be ideal if we hadn't lost so many of the Amph regulars in the move. Since we did, though, it'd be fairly pointless to re-separate the two.

 

I guess I should have clarified that I was only talking about Community and not the rest of the forums.

 

Pretty much what Ramza said. I had always argued the exact opposite with what we're talking about here when it came to Amph. IMO it just didn't become distinct enough for it to be separate from YJCC so I think merging it was the right move. But with Senate there was definitely a difference and I leaned toward leaving it on its own.

 

Yeah, I think bringing the Amp threads back to the JCC has been a net benefit for all concerned. Like Ramza said, the current Amp threads are kind of a mix-match and I love it. I like the fact that they're tagged Amp just to signal that the threads will be welcoming to serious discussion, but I also like that the serious discussion is loose enough to allow funny lines and silly posts in the mix too. I was skeptical at first, but things turned out really well.

I understand that the Senate is for really serious discussion, but I don't really see why they can't also allow some jokey stuff in there too or some less serious posts. The mix really works perfectly for the Amp threads, so I think it would for the Senate threads too. But if the Senate posters don't think so, I mean, whatever.

 

The main issue here is the different ruleset the Senate has. Community can still have serious discussion, only without the special Senate rules. Those are being separated into a special, small dedicated forum. If you are never going to visit the Senate Floor, it's as if the rules of Community had been streamlined. And one of the reasons we are giving a one-week warning is to give people the chance to say "okay, I want my Senate thread to be retagged as Community and remain here".

Is this disappointing, as many of you have mentioned? I feel it is, of course. I would have loved it if we could have worked together and if the reintegration had worked.

Is it the best move right now? Yes. It's the only one, actually.

 

Why is it impossible to simply eliminate the Senate rule set, as pretty much much all the posters in this thread (who, again, represent a sizable fraction of the entire historic "Senate" population to begin with) seem perfectly willing to do? Who exactly opposes this move, and why?

 

That hasn't been the opinion of the Senate moderating team. They prefer a slow moving forum to complete disapparition, and that's totally fair given that that is what they were chosen for.

 

I don't get why the vast majority of JCC users care considering most don't post in senate topics.

 

I was under the impression that they were chosen as volunteers to help facilitate a particular style and substance of discussion for visitors to this website. A style which, as it happens, there is no longer any demand for, and a level of substance which is often equaled or surpassed in Community sub-forum.

I guess I must fundamentally misunderstand the role of moderators if their personal preferences automatically override those of users or greater importance is placed on their jobs than the actual functions those jobs were supposed to serve. Color me bewildered by the most recent developments.

 

I thought your goal was to completly destroy the Senate not see it branched off?

 

That's exactly what they are doing. They consider the only way to keep style and substance is apart from the Community forum. And I don't know how you can say there's no demand for it, when the first post in the Communications thread is one celebrating the decision.

 

How does it even remotely make sense to let them speak for the entirety of the Senate regulars? We're all right here. There's a small enough number you wouldn't even need any sort of poll. One could do a direct, complete census.

Let alone the demonstrably incorrect nature of their "considerations." There are multiple non-Senate threads on the first page right now, with a number of posts that match anything the Senate has ever produced in terms of depth or quality of discussion.

 

Taking that kind of decision is our job too, Jabba-wocky, we don't poll everything (and I'm not even going to bring the old "the JC is not a democracy" lecture in here, because I know you know it). Given that our opinion was unanimous there was no reason to delay this more than it has already been delayed. We don't want people to post pictures of Ents when refering to us (hi Barriss_Coffee )

And about the non-Senate threads that you consider high.quality, they are not being affected. They are going to remain the same, in the same place, and under the same ruleset. What are you trying to say here?

Your disappointment has been noted, but your arguments are (as I'm sure you expect) arguments we had already considered, discussed and rejected.

 

i agree with wocky that it is beyond non-sensical to have the MS decide the future of a forum on behalf of a userbase... without even consulting the userbase.

further, what makes a Senate thread a Senate thread?

In short:

• Threads to promote in-depth discussion - no reaction threads
• Posts that don't attempt to contribute to discussion will be considered spam
• Criticise ideas, not other posters
• Someone else violating a rule does not justify following suit

how does that actually differ from a JCC topic on an even relatively important topic?

 

Hey guys, c'mon, ever since Sci-Fi 3D went away we've needed a comically inactive forum.

 

Well, epic, we didn't make a poll either when we merged the forums, and that affected much more people.

According to the Senate mods the difference exists, and it's really important. We asked ourselves that same question when we made the merge, and we knew what we were going to try. The Amphitheatre and Arena mods considered their forums didn't need a different set of rules; the Senate ones did. We deferred to their opinion because they, and not me, and not you, are the ones that have spent years being users and moderators of the place. And now, we did it again.

anakinfansince1983 - I don't know what a C-SPAN is. Log off and come back tonight with a culturally sensitive simile.

 

1) frankly, we have a poor, unrepresentative MS if they were unanimous on a topic that most people outside of the MS (including a large number of ex-MS) disagree with.
2) the point about intelligent, non-Senate threads is that they can, and do work within the JCC. so... what's the point of the Senate, then?