What can WE do for the BBS

Eh, there is nothing wrong with the BBS... there is just alot of idiot users though. Look, when you try to make a topic that involves user interacting and intelligent debate you're not exactly gonna get the most well-minded individuals from posting in the topic with out reading it. I figure, if atleast a couple of people take notice and think your threads are good, it's a bit of a victory. But, there are too many stupid and pointless topics created by some dumb ass users. But, I have done the same thing so I won't rag on them too much. The last thing Newgrounds needs is for the regulars to leave newgrounds. Believe me when I say, the only way something can make progress is to see it through to the end. A little bit of optimism goes along way.

The first fucking thing we need to do is stop all the complaints, yeah the BBS sucks but instead of bitching about it and saying "WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING" how about we actually do something, like I dunno, contribute intelligent well thought out and humourous topics and posts on the site; or focus our attentions on another aspect of the site.

That said, my only REAL suggestion for the BBS is to get rid of Politics. I think users are generally friendlier if you leave that shit out of it. Or, the very least, limit Politics and Religions to Blogs or what have you, not the forums.

Personally, I think some bad things are firmly rooted in the BBS subculture so that it would be hard to make a positive change regarding them. That said, it could probably be done if more users put their minds to it. The problems that we might find with some examples here e.g: flame wars erupting over the same things over and over again, questionable maturity, or certain users getting away with supposed mass-abuse, are actually pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. We all know that the BBS isn't everything... but we love to use it still. With that in mind, I think people getting less upset (or trying not to be taken back by certain things so much) and not getting all vendetta-y with certain things. I don't think there's many acceptable reasons to try and make everyone else's experience as bad as yours. I'm not referring to anyone specifically, and this might sound pretty vague. Regulars leaving for long periods of time is different, but what annoys me is when a regular constantly stays active just moan about "how bad the BBS is" and how new users are always terrible. Eh, I don't really have any solutions or anything.

I also think that this "us and them" thinking between regular users and mods needs to slacken a little. This feeds into the above point a little bit, because constantly talking/complaining about one mod (and this might sound a bit hypocritical in a way going off a few things I've brought up before) will only have that mod looking at you in how you present yourself, and that view might be passed onto other users who had nothing to do with the intial squabble. At the end of the day, you've got everyone unhappy... unhappy, yet increasingly loud. Just re-arranging some perceptions or whatever, on both sides, would probably help this and make the place friendlier to everyone. I don't have any specific solutions.

I don't think I'm being "too serious". I just don't feel like reading pointless arguments every day, as funny as they sometimes are. It might be a slightly cynical view of things, but I think an underlying philosophy of many users comes from Saturday Night And Sunday Morning: "I'm out for a good time - all the rest is propaganda!". You know, if that that's the case, perhaps we should just learn to enjoy things a bit more... if you see what I mean. I'm a bit jumbled.

So yeah, just some healthy thinking is in order I think. We shouldn't expect everyone to always be coming up with hilarious, insightful, interesting discussions; just like how not every Flash submission is going to be a Chuck Jones classic or like how not every piece of fan-created lliterature will be a new Great Expectations... but we can try a little to not be the things we don't want to see. I mean, it's not going to be perfect, but if a few things can be cleared up, I'll be more than happy to take it.

Eh, I don't know. Haha.

I would love it, there there was a very accurate way to check ages on the internet, im all for removing minors from NG... well, not so much minors as <15 users... sure im on the higher end of user age (poozy's a year older than me).
However if that were to happen NG would lose Ad revenue... its so annoying though, i haven't posted in days, the overall quality of the threads is pathetic.
It doesn't even feel worthwhile anymore... oh well, i can always post here now with the more intelligent users.
<3

Lost_Chances wrote:

I hate it when people write in full caps and then
write "NON CAPS". If you're going to write in all caps, do it all the
way and risk the fucking ban, or don't. Honestly, if I was BBS mod, I'd
just ban people doing that shit on sight.

HELPSWALLOWEDCAPSLOCK was hilarious.

I've been trying to post more paragraphs rather than a sentence or two. I occasionally make a sarcastic remark that's usually only a sentence which is pretty much worthless spam that's unfunny. I've been thinking harder about the topic I'm replying in and writing more in depth and intruiging posts. The main fault of the BBS is posts that are a sentence full of insults, cock jokes, pictures that aren't necessary, etc, and posting responsibly can help.

CapnCrunchDaPimp wrote:

posting responsibly can help.

not to the overall forum, i dont think.
even if you make a very intelligent post, it would simply get buried by the whole
COCKS threads that plague the site... it's a losing battle i think

Another thing I've noticed is that when I write a well thought out response, it tends not to get quoted, which is counter-productive to discussion. Discussion is what keeps threads going, and interesting, and when everyone just puts in their opinion and leaves, nothing happens.

This is probably just me though.

One problem may be is that a lot of people's only goal is to become well known and famous for being a witty, funny user. They'll attempt a hilarious response to the topic, leave, and check back and forth to see if they got any response. No attempt to discuss--just cracking one-liners and sarcastic remarks.

Counter-productive, in my opinion.

I lost interest in the bbs a long time ago. I barely post anymore.

MissingNYC wrote:

CapnCrunchDaPimp wrote:

posting responsibly can help.

not to the overall forum, i dont think.
even if you make a very intelligent post, it would simply get buried by the whole
COCKS threads that plague the site... it's a losing battle i think

Yeah  I suppose it's hopeless. I do agree what Sensationalism said about how one or two sentences of a post isn't necessarily spam though, and with people avoiding discussion and just throwing their opinion out there too.

Timmy wrote:

Actually I was talking with Luis the other day, and he said that the age demographic on Newgrounds has shifted dramatically, with a large percentage falling in the 18-25 age group now. They're concerned that the site just isn't attracting new, younger users anymore.

That may be true, but you can't deny the more vocal demographic is the 13-15 year old group. Newgrounds is notorious on the internet for being one of the more immature BBSes.

InsertFunnyUserName wrote:

I think I've rambled enough, so I'll wrap this up. Here's to hoping I make sense. [/color]

You speak absolute truth. While I do think that there are a lot of new idiots flowing through the bbs, I don't think it's any worse than in any given year. I've never gone so far as to blame new users for anything on the bbs, that's just scapegoating. Every so often though, I see someone with only a few posts, post intelligently, and it warms my heart.

Something that doesn't make sense though is how people can say it's possible to outgrow the BBS. If the average age of users is getting older, the older users should generate more mature conversation, instead of watching the youngins make threads about dick jokes. Logical, no?

Edit: I stand corrected. Lol.
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1091963

I've been banned on the BBS for roughly 80 days now, coming up 100.

The hell do you get banned so much Maximus?

15 day ban - Discussing torrents.

Then extended to 30 day for "Spamming/Raiding"

After those 45 days I was unbanned, and got in about 3 posts.

But then Poozy banned me for another 30 days for "spamming on alt account, ban evasion"

That 30 day got to about 10, and then I went to check and it went back to 30.

And i'm still waiting.

The most I've done is that medal point users list, but that's only in the Wi/Ht board, and mostly only what the people who are on that list or close to it care about.

As for General, call me stumped as to what to do about that right now.

There's nothing to be done sadly, i don't think... even if we all (here) joined forces and tried to single handedly to do anything about the forums, i think we'd be out manned... and I don't like to admit that because for the last 3 years, NG has been fun, but recently it's been so sad...

Actually, I have an idea. We can plan a superthread in this thread. Kinda along the lines of posting most of the improvements we want in a single thread, by the first poster. Of course, the post should be concise, contain visual aids, and be full of cock jokes, or else the average BBS user won't pay attention.

But we can do this if plenty of people contribute. YES, that means you. I dunno how we can teach the new users to be funny, but we can teach them how to act like a newgrounder. Gentlemen, bring your whips.

i agree with IFN.... then we come across as assholes... i blame Tom Fulp a lot for the bad things on the forums...

I wouldn't really care if I was permabanned.

Maximus wrote:

I wouldn't really care if I was permabanned.

I would care! It would make me sad! I'd miss you.

I got banned once for posting while banned. Cept it wasn't meeee. Dude told me his pass and I signed in to check if he was truthing and he was. They checked ip or whatever and thought it was my account. Lmao.

Just to add on to my last post and to add in what Elder said about making a thread to change various attitudes and so on, I'm afraid I agree with IFUN too. Some "guidance" threads are only trying to help obviously, but some will definitely see the attempts as a way of telling off new users for... well, being new users and older, more long-time users will just accept that nothing can be done and you have to just sit back and swallow it. The threads and the original posters will mean well, but as has already been said, people don't tend to act on them. I see a bit of a sense in that in a way: some users absolutely hate it when the BBS is taken even the tiniest bit "seriously", and will not stop at anything to make this painfully clear (which has a bit of irony in it, in that those users will probably end up taking things too seriously themselves in order to do this).

Just to link this in a little easier, while I think the Open Discussion thread is a good idea in theory (and it's actually an interesting/funny read overall), it doesn't help if people just mindlessly complain about everything they can think of all the time... and this applies to both sides of the argument, and I don't like the way I used "both sides" there. I just think we can be at least a little reasonable about stuff like this without overdoing it. Eh.

This is bearing in mind that I'm no saint in any way at all, so maybe I'm preaching too loudly. Well... even I get boarded/bored sometimes ; )

As I've said before, I think it's just largely a matter of changing some of the thinking. Some of the "typical" features of the BBS are also some of its worst points: people worshipping certain users for stupid reasons, making assumptions about the user base (pointed out in this thread by Dobio; it may be true to a degree, but with all the negative e-connotations of "thirteen year olds", it could be toned down a lot I think), posting soley to be "respected" and/or a mod in the future, and using conflict as the focus in many types of discussion don't make the BBS all that enjoyable at times.

They're not exclusive things to the BBS of course, it's just the apparent best way of working things online. In an ideal world, I'd like to see a sort of paradigm shift affect the way we treat each other online, like we stop subscribing ourselves to cults of personality and going out of our way to piss people off. Newgrounds has a close-knit community, and it's great for most of the time. The trouble is that when people find problems with the place en masse... well, drama unfolds. And it's not always funny either, just see many pages of the Stickam thread for examples.

Too serious? Your choice. If you look through my past posts, it might seem like I talk about this sort of thing a lot without giving much else to the community. I see it myself. I read a lot of threads, but I won't neccessarily put the effort in to respond if I don't want to. I like the community regardless, and I guess I can just put my thoughts in. The same applies to my literature-based ramblings without having a decent back-catalogue of material myself, but eh. I'm still working on things here, haha.

MissingNYC wrote:

i agree with IFN.... then we come across as assholes... i blame Tom Fulp a lot for the bad things on the forums...

I see what you mean in some ways, though I'm thinking that the staff don't really have time for the general communities, bar Wade on the PR front. With the Flash and art communities still going strong, I'd say the staff are more inclined to work on them. It's not that I think Tom Fulp "doesn't care" about the users "only wants the money", but yeah, I guess he's got to make a living. That, and I believe he's off promoting games, getting involved with other stuff anyway. Ah, I don't know, I might be making some unfair assumptions here, haha.