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Should All Specific Game OTs go in the Community Forum?

G

Gowans

Member
Before I get tag quoted let me explain.


Currently in GAF gaming threads are made in the Gaming Forum, become mega threads and then some are cherry picked and moved to Community where they continue on as mega threads and new news is open posted as individual threads on the Gaming Forum.

However there are so many gaming coming out now and the fact that they're bigger releases I'm starting to get lost with the bigger threads in the Gaming forum and missing out on a tonne of news and now finding myself having to look around alot more to get it buried in with all the other info.

I know new news is encouraged to be moved into new threads but why don't we just be consistent and move all OTs into community from creation for new games and let that forum blossom as well as encouraging new news in Gaming.


This is not meant as a rant or back seat modding, GAF is my fave site on the internet but at busy times like now I think it highlights the OT & news issues and after looking around in the FAQs I didn't get any clarity.
 
G

ghst

thanks for the laugh
i wouldn't be totally adverse to a fourth forum which served purely as an lOTl cache.
 
Y

Ydahs

Member
Fair point. In a month or so, the front page is going to consist of UC3, Zelda, Mario Land, Mario Kart, Skyrim, BF3 and CoD OTs.

But then again, they'll just be replacing their already active threads on the front page.
 
G

Gowans

Member
Elixist said:
I agree op, its kinda annoying having to sort thru the OTs when all you would like to see is new news.
Click to expand...
The worst thing for me is when I game is out or coming out and I don't want to get spoiler, OT's go off limits and then I miss a lot of news.

I know new news for new threads are encouraged, with the mods picking up the work sometimes by themselves to split threads but OT's in the main gaming forum discourage the need for it just as much I feel.
 
B

Barack Lesnar

Banned
I've wondered about this too. The |OT|'s are like the whole forum... GAF is like a big compilation of OTs now. Any interesting news thread that pops up is like a diamond in the rough and gets lots of attention. Could be why a little tweet by Geoff Keighley gets like 1500 posts. I wonder what the forum would be like if all the OTs were put in a separate forum and we could just talk about the news and start discussions about games in this section.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
I think if OTs are still active after, like, three weeks, then they should go to Community. To send a not-so-active OT to Community will probably just kill it.
 
W

web01

Member
If you had community, gaming and an official thread section that is starting to get a bit complicated. And moving every OT to commnity punishes lurkers.
 
O

Orayn

Member
Why would you ghetto-ize them like that? :<
I can see sending some continuously active OTs there, but all of them? Heck no.
 
W

walking fiend

Member
speedpop said:
An Official Thread section would be great.
Click to expand...
And then another for review scores, one for sales-age threads, one for new media, and eventually we will have ones for every platform.

No, it'll just damage the gaming side unity's wholesomeness.
 
G

Gowans

Member
web01 said:
If you had community, gaming and an official thread section that is starting to get a bit complicated. And moving every OT to commnity punishes lurkers.
Click to expand...
I forgot lurkers can't see that forum.


Orayn said:
Why would you ghetto-ize them like that? :<
I can see sending some continuously active OTs there, but all of them? Heck no.
Click to expand...
Why not, what are the down sides?
 
R

Roto13

Member
I think the threads that get cherry picked to go in Community are the ones that stay active for an exceptionally long time because the game in question has a strong multiplayer component. (Pokemon, fighting games, etc.)

OTs are basically the heart of Gaming side.
 
F

FStop7

Banned
We wouldn't want threads about playing video games cluttering up the threads about review scoring, the legitimacy of games journalism, and speculation over the death of handheld gaming, would we?
 
G

Gowans

Member
FStop7 said:
We wouldn't want threads about playing video games cluttering up the threads about review scoring, the legitimacy of games journalism, and speculation over the death of handheld gaming, would we?
Click to expand...
The thing is that for me OTs become much more than about playing games but spoiler zones and almost sub forums for the games and information often isn't surfaced to the top and is hidden in a wide variety of posts.


Tomat said:
Community is where OT's go to die.
Click to expand...
That is only because you are looking at how it is now they exist in both forums, if they started their life in community then it would be different.


Anyway it's not really my place to solve the problem but I'm just staying I think there can be one with OTs in the main forum (for me), especially this time of year.
 
H

Hey You

Member
Elixist said:
I agree op, its kinda annoying having to sort thru the OTs when all you would like to see is new news.
Click to expand...
This. Or give us an option/extension where we can hide threads from the forum listing. You click a box or something and that thread won't show up.

Tomat said:
Community is where OT's go to die.
Click to expand...
Except the Halo OT's, we're on our 7th Reach thread :)

Edit: Damn.
 
R

rainking187

Member
Gowans007 said:
That is only because you are looking at how it is now they exist in both forums, if they started their life in community then it would be different.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they'd probably have a hell of a lot less posts. I'd be interested to know how many members actually visit the community section on a regular basis.
 
A

Aeana

Member
I'll quote myself from the Dark Souls thread on this matter:


Aeana said:
The community forum is where active threads go to die. Or to be more specific, it is where they dwindle down to impenetrable insular communities, which is pretty much the same thing. What you'll see happen is that now that the thread is moving to community, the people who care at this point will subscribe to the thread, and once it is moved, they will be the only ones left.

I really strongly disagree with this community forum initiative for OTs of games that are single-player-oriented, but in this case of Dark Souls it is especially weird because the game is so new.

The mods are always going on about how they want to foster discussion, but the result of moving this thread to community so soon will really do the opposite.
Click to expand...
 
J

José Mourinho

cocknose
You know, I've been here for a few years now. And let me tell you, the Community forum is news to me. Shows how much attention I pay. I'm really an Off Topic man though.
 
graywolf323

graywolf323

Member
Gowans007 said:
That is only because you are looking at how it is now they exist in both forums, if they started their life in community then it would be different.
Click to expand...

they'd never really live if they started out in community, just right now community has less than 10% the number of people viewing gaming

rainking187 said:
Yeah, they'd probably have a hell of a lot less posts. I'd be interested to know how many members actually visit the community section on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

honestly I forget it exists half the time, my main bookmark for GAF takes me straight to the Gaming forum
 
G

Gowans

Member
Hey You said:
This. Or give us an option/extension where we can hide threads from the forum listing. You click a box or something and that thread won't show up.
Click to expand...
That would be a great addition to the GAF chrome extension library.
 
E

erpg

GAF parliamentarian
rainking187 said:
Yeah, they'd probably have a hell of a lot less posts. I'd be interested to know how many members actually visit the community section on a regular basis.
Click to expand...
That doesn't have anything to do with it.

If all OTs went to Community, do you really think people would stop discussing games on NeoGAF because of a tab?
 
H

Hey You

Member
Gowans007 said:
That would be a great addition to the GAF chrome extension library.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've been meaning to make a request or something about it for a while. Make a Firefox Greasemonkey extension as well and I'll be the first to download it :p
 
G

Gowans

Member
rainking187 said:
Yeah, they'd probably have a hell of a lot less posts. I'd be interested to know how many members actually visit the community section on a regular basis.
Click to expand...
It went up when it was changed from online to community and started getting OT threads, sure the same would happen.
 
A

Aeana

Member
Lyphen said:
That doesn't have anything to do with it.

If all OTs went to Community, do you really think people would stop discussing games on NeoGAF because of a tab?
Click to expand...
If all OTs were created in community to begin with, it would create a MASSIVE shift here and the result would be much more activity in that forum. As it is now, threads are created in gaming and then just disappear into community with only a small amount of notice. It becomes as if they just haven't had posts in ages - people forget.
 
S

Seda

Member
I think keeping |OT|s on gaming is fine. When a game is brand new, sure that get a bit hard to follow through, but one year to several years later if you have a question/comment about a game that isn't worth a thread, you can search for it and bump it's |OT| and discussion can begin again for a time.
 
A

Aeana

Member
Well, even though this thread is primarily about OTs, since you mention news, there's another issue that's been going on that is actually somewhat related. For a while, we had the wonderful mantra "new threads for new news" going on, but lately megathreads have had a resurgence. Now you get gigantic megathreads with news buried in them, with the only difference being that Nirolak updates the title on occasion. This really isn't that much better. If you actually go into these massive news threads, what you get is "community" thread off-topic nonsense talking about fanart and other non-news-related things.

I consider myself much less informed than I used to be simply because I don't want to wade through that crap to find the news and discussion about that particular news.
 
E

erpg

GAF parliamentarian
It'd also be a hell of a lot easier to find an OT on a tab with fewer pages (they'd have to change the cut-off period in Community though).

I subscribe to a few just because they're still in gaming and I wouldn't know if they were bumped.
 
G

Gowans

Member
Aeana said:
Well, even though this thread is primarily about OTs, since you mention news, there's another issue that's been going on that is actually somewhat related. For a while, we had the wonderful mantra "new threads for new news" going on, but lately megathreads have had a resurgence. Now you get gigantic megathreads with news buried in them, with the only difference being that Nirolak updates the title on occasion. This really isn't that much better. If you actually go into these massive news threads, what you get is "community" thread off-topic nonsense talking about fanart and other non-news-related things.

I consider myself much less informed than I used to be simply because I don't want to wade through that crap to find the news.
Click to expand...
Thats my main problem with OTs becoming mega threads in gaming and they are so big now.

I used to get the news on everything first without going to other sources. Now it's hidden on these huge OTs and even reported by different people in the same thread pages later. I do not envy the mods.

OTs are great and foster amazing sub communities but at a expense at times.
 
A

Aeana

Member
Gowans007 said:
Thats my main problem with OTs becoming mega threads in gaming and they are so big now.

I used to get the news on everything first without going to other sources. Now it's hidden on these huge OTs and even reported by different people in the same thread pages later. I do not envy the mods.

OTs are great and foster amazing sub communities but at a expense at times.
Click to expand...
Well, yes, posting news in OTs is bad, but we also have gigantic "news threads" that suffer from the same problem. That's why I feel like these two subjects are very closely related.

I strongly feel that the way things are now is not working.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Aeana said:
Well, even though this thread is primarily about OTs, since you mention news, there's another issue that's been going on that is actually somewhat related. For a while, we had the wonderful mantra "new threads for new news" going on, but lately megathreads have had a resurgence. Now you get gigantic megathreads with news buried in them, with the only difference being that Nirolak updates the title on occasion. This really isn't that much better. If you actually go into these massive news threads, what you get is "community" thread off-topic nonsense talking about fanart and other non-news-related things.

I consider myself much less informed than I used to be simply because I don't want to wade through that crap to find the news and discussion about that particular news.
Click to expand...

My preference would be that "news megathreads" only exist for games where there is an unending barrage of small/irrelevant news, like daily development blog updates or something, and even in those cases, I'd prefer that when relevant news does arise, it gets moved out. One example is The Secret World, what has been putting out tons of news updates. The OP of the "news megathread" for that game has been in contact with me, and basically he posts all the updates as they come in. Very few people are replying to the thread and there's very little discussion, like <5 replies for every piece of news, so it's less intrusive to do it that way.

But yes, the community elements from those threads should be purged.
 
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