So I just spent like an hour reading through everything here, all seven pages. Most of what I would say has been said. I've been a forum mod before, admin as well, for an active if not small community. I know that ya'll don't just flip out and ban stuff without at least first talking it over as mods, and I doubt that one of you would act singularly without at least discussing it with your color coded brethren.
The reason that alot of people are up in arms, is because the rules ARE a bit vague. Even if you don't actually act the way they fear, and haven't in the past, they are afraid that it leaves the door open for someone to do so. I have to admit that from a Mod/Admin standpoint "Don't be a jerk" is a good rule. It's short, simple and to the point. But as a user, and one that has posted in forums FAR more strict and uptight than this one, I agree that it can be rather intimidating to not always know just EXACTLY what you might get banned for. General users mostly just want to be able to make a post without having to truly worry about mod wrath. People that come to site to make trouble, of course, have to worry about how their posts are worded if they want to make trouble for some time. Regular posters don't want to have to worry about that.
I have to say I agree on the vulgarity thing. While I don't believe something like a bunch of dead baby jokes would be acceptable, I've always followed my own rule on the matter when it comes to sights like this. If I watch a video of say, Zero Punctuation, and hear the word "fuck" twenty eight times in a review, I know I don't really have to worry about posting something like that in the forums, at least in response to that itself. I mean if you're trying to keep the forums kid friendly by limiting vulgarity on the forums, if they've already watched the video then there isn't much more the forums could do to them. Again, as a former mod/admin, I see where it's a good idea to keep things under control so that more people come to your sight. But as a user, I shouldn't have to worry about swearing up an down (which I prefer to avoid in the first place,) when commenting on a video that swears more than any sailor on the open seas.
Now as I've said, I've been to some TRULY terrible forums (try to roleplay on the DragonCave forums, and have a good time without being a literary major.) and I doubt this will go any different than it ever does. Users will complain, but ultimately will do nothing and accept the rules as they are. You'll lose a few top posters if it gets real bad, a few oldies or just really invested people. You'll get people that'll leave because those people left. And so on and so forth until the ripples settle. Sadly, no one will really care. People will be upset, people may harbor resentment and grudges, but again, they'll complain but not really do anything about it. The site will continue to function, despite the loss of even the best member.
The staff will most likely do one of two things. They'll take all the criticism, defending their choices to the bone and doing their best to ease any discomfort people have, and then not change anything. Or they will cave and tell everyone that if they want it so specific, it will be, and the rules will either revert to the old ones or become so completely tight that no one enjoys posting here. (The users will respond as I've said above.) It's not that I have little faith in ya'll that you'll listen and adapt the rules as they're addressed, thats just how it works. It's basically like parenting. This thread, in my opinion, is like any other when the rules change. It's there to tell you that regardless of your reasons for hating it, the rules are here and you're just gonna have to get used to it.
It happens in just about every forum I've ever been too. What's happening now is an age old internet growing pain that happens whenever a community changes something. Smaller communities are usually torn apart when this happens (and most communities seem to go through these things in cycles,) with the members "for" ending up staying and the members "against" leaving to form their own boards, with both failing. It's basically "United we stand, divided we fall," on the internet. The good news is that such a community as this, so huge and constantly attracting new members, won't collapse from a few upset forum members.
This basically shows (not use it in a negative light,) what I mean:
Virgil said:
You couldn't possibly be more wrong. That's because you're operating from the perspective of a viewer, and not the point of a content producer. We have a vast amount of information available on how content is doing, and we already know exactly how much that doesn't match up with what the comment threads look like. Here's some of the things we know about a video that you don't, for example:
How many views it gets.
How many unique users view it.
How much it costs to produce.
How much it costs to serve, in bandwidth.
How difficult the creator is to work with.
How much work our editors have to do per video.
What advertisers are interested in it.
What "industry" people think of it
How much traffic it gets outside our site (embedding, etc).
How well the ad units in the video perform.
How well the back catalog performs.
How much the staff like it.
Those statistics are far, far more important in determining the success of a show than forum comments. For example, a show that gets moderate traffic numbers but doesn't cost much, gets shared and embedded, pulls in new users, has above-average ad performance stats, and gets industry contacts fired up to work with us is one we'd consider to be doing well for us, and would be worth keeping around, even if the forums complain about it. I'll let you guess what show that was.
We see time and time again that some shows do well and get terrible comments, while other shows do poorly and get great ones. Why is that? Two reasons:
Once a forum thread turns negative, it stays negative, and the people who would say good things stay away to avoid being attacked.
People that complain about serial content frequently come back to do it again for each episode, repeating the cycle.
The people who comment on our forums represent .3% of the people that look at our content. That's not a typo, it's less than half of one percent.
What it comes down to is that the reason we don't need to see negative comments is because we can already see how well things perform based on hard numbers from our whole audience. The only thing the negative comments do is prevent a community of people that enjoy that content from building up around it. Because of that, we don't want them around here.
Like I said in my previous post on the topic: "If someone doesn't like a particular piece of content, they don't have to watch/read it." If you don't like something, accept the fact that maybe, just maybe, it's not for you, and let the other people who do enjoy it do so. If you do enjoy it but think some things could improve, then post away.
Not to sound rude, but this basically shows what most people in something like this knows. It's a numbers game, and we can be replaced Or (as shown in this case) not really much of a part of the equation. We could all post till we're blue in the face about not really caring for, say "I hit it with my axe," but if the numbers show otherwise, it won't matter if the entire forum hates it. It's the same with Television and movies. "Transformers II" and Justin Beiber will continue to exist even if there are lots of people against them, simply because the numbers show differently. If there's one thing I've learned about life from work, it's that you're really nothing special, and that your number and your contribution can be replaced almost instantaneously, now matter how great that contribution may be. And don't let this post fool you. I know full and well that applies to me and what I post here. I post this expecting that most will glance over it and it'll never be heard from again. Being just a number is the way our society works now, it's not just reserved for big unfeeling companies as it might have been in the fifties.
Now don't get me wrong, I love this place and it's one of the few communities I've felt at home and post at simply because I enjoy the people that post here. I really didn't notice any negative influence taking the site to the dark side, but then again I'm just one guy that only posts sporadically anyway. I've never been moderated here and I hope I don't get moderated. But even in the worst places of the net, I've never posted with a fear of "I don't want to be banned." I won't ever let someone have a position of power (note: not authority) over me because they control something I like. It's served me well so far because most people understand that I respect them, and usually they respect me for it. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as a human, because I know that even the most terrible people have hearts and are usually just human. It's served me well on other boards and this one as well, and I'm not going to change now. It's basically the same for the forum. Nothing is really going to change, the mods will moderate as they always have. The site will function and survive no matter how many people we lose along the way. The users will post as they always have, and the rules will be what they are now no matter how many are against it. It's happened a hundred times before on hundreds of other websites, and it'll happen again on this one.
