Anybody else having trouble keeping up?

[glynnahab]

By the subject title, I mean to ask:

With the recent influx of new people here in the past few months, there has been a helluva lot of activity here on the forums. This is obviously a good thing since we still have a very low Dumbass Ratio in spite of racketboy's growing community. I'm just wondering if anyone else is having trouble keeping up with all the new threads and the rabid posting? Specifically, I would imagine that the moderators are way busier these days, with all the duplicate/unnecessary threads, keeping people cordial (which has always been Mozgus's area of specialization), and whatever other moderator duties they have.

I used to be able to come here, read everything that interested me within 10-15 minutes, post my responses if necessary, and get on with my life. Lately, there has been so much activity that I'm only able to read about half the new posts before I simply give up.

To reiterate, this is not a complaint about the presence of new people. It's more of an expression of worry that the larger the community gets, the more likely it could become on of those "OMFG L00k @ all teh fuqqin n00bs" type of places that you usually see on the internet.

[Mozgus]

I do spend a lot more time lately merging threads, deleting spam/spambots, and such lately. Kind of sucks. I don't really see an increase of meaningful discussion. Instead I see like a 400% increase in b/s/t treads, and pointless knockoffs of "your fav games" threads. It's still pretty easy to catch the threads that are actually worth responding to though.

[aaron]

i only read about 2-3 threads every time i log on. you people need to make your subject lines more interesting if you want my attention.

which, believe me, you do. you do.

[grittykitty]

short answer: yes

long answer: a lot of what there was to talk about has already been said, so we're just repeating the same things with different people now. pretty much the only exciting things in my opinion these days are updates on new games/developments/whatever (a.k.a. "news") or people talking about a game no one really knows about - which i usually check out hardcore gaming 101 for anyway. granted i don't mind talking about the same gaming related stories to different friends in person and sometimes on various messengers, but in a forum it can tend to get stale. that's where the new blood comes in a generally talks about the same things, but it's fresh for them, just like it was in the beginning when there weren't so many topics already posted. not trying to sound like a bitter old fart, but i might be a bitter old fart. and i'm not that old, or even bitter. also, it's getting harder to keep up with all the different usernames - trying to remember who's who and such. it's easy to get lost in the crowd in a big community. let's all join together to make our own city, and things might just work out

[RCBH928]

When the community is small it sucks
because it takes a long time until you get a reply, and the chance is smaller to receive information or find some one with the information you want

if it is big, then there are a lot of repetition and meaningless threads, one thing I hate about big communities is sometimes , some people come and post comments like this "Give me an UG invite" and that is like his first post and thats all that is in the post.

Medium, which is about where we are at, is good. At least when you post a topic its not dead for two days, and its neither 3 pages old after 6 hours of posting.

Maybe racketboy should start granting memberships or do some kind of a selective process to make people join than a free for all

[Peffico]

But isn't that the point of a community? To grow and become stronger? It's nice to see what seemed to be a small website start to bloom and become relatively big. The articles that racketboy puts up and the forums are what draw the people here. I know that's what drew me here.

It would seem quite unfair to only let a few people post on the forums and exclude the rest of the retro community.

Everyone was a "noob" at some point in time. I mean I didn't know anything about how rare or valuable some games were about a year ago. Now if I see a sega cd at the goodwill for 5 bucks I snatch it up. And because if this site I'm trying to pick up soldering and such.

As people who do know something wouldn't it seem like we should teach instead of hate on newcomers. I know I haven't been here long myself but I feel like I've learned a lot since I have been here.

[PGchris]

Man I hope this doesn't turn into a old grumpy users resent the newer users type of dynamic. Yeah, I've only been here 4 or 5 months and yeah I recently made a thread that was simply "name you all time favorite game," and while that is not the deepest gaming discussion it's still fun to see wide variety taste that people have and could lead into checking out some new games. I hope that people don't get all pretentious about post content because so far on racketboy I haven't really encountered much of the "dude, your such a n00b" mentality.

[jp1]

I'm pretty new here as well and admittedly the lion's share of my posting is done in the b/s/t threads. I think this is mostly because I have an odd taste in games and the general discussion around here is about stuff I have never tried and will probably never be interested in. I read most of the new threads and when I do see something of interest I take part. I visited the Racketboy site a lot for the articles long before I ever even ventured in to the forums.

I've got to say though, and I am not directing this at anyone so don't take offense...The whole elitist thing on a forum is just ridiculous. I mean who ever goes anywhere else (restaurant, bar, retail, etc..) and is considered a "noob" because someone else ate,drank,shopped there before? Someone could go to any forum and have far more experience pertaining to the topic than all the current members but because it is the first or tenth or whatever post they are a "noob". I haven't seen a lot of that happening around here and I'm happy about that, the topic just reminded me about it and I had to spout off about how ridiculous it is.


Also, just to be clear on the analogy in the above paragraph by "Someone" I DO NOT mean "Me".

[HeavyMetalMe]

All I ask for is a literacy test upon registering, that'd solve a lot of problems.

[Mozgus]

I can't stand people who say noob. Those people are the lowest of all internet lifeforms. I may have spent a lot of time here, but I still get called a noob on hundreds of other places over the years, and that attitude usually just drives me away.

However, I do wish new users would make an effort to search for an existing thread before making their own clone of it. They have no right to get pissy with me when I merge the two threads.