Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(

[Tifone]

O_O

No, really.
I've been out for a while, taken in the tentacles of RL, i come back here to give a look to the threads of the good old times and what do I see?

Sombre, Omnirizon, Trumanator (among others) have been banned?

I mean, those were among the most distinctive guys of this forum, very good contributors, and at least Sombre was also a mod-maker.

What in the hell could have ever happened in an already medium-sized-at-best community for so many of its veteran members to be permanently banned?

[Kheldron]

We had a Sunday Bloody Sunday of our own a few months ago.
You can still meet Sombre and the others in these forums :
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx

FYI read these threads :
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45509
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45498

[Gandalf Parker]

As with most bans, at least part of the story can be chalked up to being "voluntary".
Basically raising your hand and saying "go ahead and ban me".

I consider this to be one of the harder forums to get banned from. You can get slapped forever here but as long as you dont directly challenge them you tend to last forever. But you do have to be willing to bow your head to the alphadog and say "I will be good from now on"

[NooBliss]

Ankh-Morpork does, however, ahave an extraordinarily high suicide rate, due mainly to the city's view on what constitutes as suicide. For example, walking alone through the night-time alleyways of the Shades is suicide, as is asking for a short in a dwarf bar. It is very easy to commit suicide in Ankh-Morpork if you are not careful.
(c)

[thejeff]

What happened to the community? Not much really.

A bunch of people got upset and left. A bunch more stayed. The forums are still active, games are still being organized, new people still show up.

There's a new site. There's cross-pollination between the two. The other site seems fairly hostile to newbies, which isn't good for it's long-term health, but this place is welcoming so maybe they'll pick up people who learn a bit here first.

The usual predictions of doom seem overblown.

[Ferrosol]

Originally Posted by thejeff

What happened to the community? Not much really.

A bunch of people got upset and left. A bunch more stayed. The forums are still active, games are still being organized, new people still show up.

There's a new site. There's cross-pollination between the two. The other site seems fairly hostile to everyone

fixed your post

And of course its debatable how welcome the forum will remain without at least half a dozen of the most active forum posters and modders. Now I cross post on both forums so it does not really affect me but any newbie coming in and asking questions is going to have a real hard time finding answers after the forum lost some of its most knowledgeable vets.

[Gandalf Parker]

@thejeff
Excellent post. Altho Im not sure about the "long-term health" thing. Some people seem to thrive in an environment where part of the fun is trying to differentiate between the help and the sarcasm. Such a place obviously cannot be run by "official corporate" admins. It would have to be a user-run site. Im thrilled that such people have a place to go to. This forum will survive and be more along the line of what the admins want.

"The only un-censored site is your own."

[Gandalf Parker]

Im seeing what COULD be Zen tracks.
Id love to see him log into the new forum and give his viewpoint. Im surprised they didnt include him in their poll there. I dont think the implications and effects of the Sombre incident holds a candle to the Zen incident.

[thejeff]

There are still plenty of knowledgeable people here. Questions still get answered. New players tend not to ask the questions that only the most knowledgeable can answer. They're more helpful with the deep weird behavior stuff that comes up from time to time.
And some of those who left tended to snipe at those asking what they considered simple questions. Which is not very welcoming.
So knowledge has been lost, but not the type that's useful to newcomers. And when the weird stuff comes up, we can go looking over there.

I'd be more concerned about the modding, except that there still seems to be enough interaction that I don't think much has really been lost. It's just a bit split up.

As for "long-term health", I'm aware that some people like that kind of environment and I'm fine with that. I'm sure the site will continue as long as they want it to. My experience with environments like that is that they tend to pare down to a in-group that it's very hard to break into. With few new members, the site dies as people leave for one reason or another.
I've usually seen this as a takeover of an existing site, not a splinter faction. It may well be in this situation, new people who prefer that environment can come here and build up enough cred playing or modding to get accepted over there. It's an interesting little social experiment. We'll see how it plays out.

[Gandalf Parker]

Exactly.
Everything has its pros and cons. I was actually smiling at the predictions of the wasteland death of this forum due to losses of experts.

Elites, and Experts, can actually be the death of official and distributor-run forums. Discussion, discovery, rapture, and answers on the level of the in-game tips file are its bread and butter. The impression that everything is already known, the winning strat is found, the community elites win all the public games is not conducive to sales. Im NOT saying it was done on purpose (I know the staff well enough not to suspect that) but the predictions of lost sales and dead forum were naive. Examples of the pros and cons have existed for longer than internet and have been studied by psych students for decades to be used by business students.