What Type of Forum Posts are Your Favorite/Least Favorite?

[Curlypaul]

I'm a great big games are art faggot and I love deep discussions about the unique experiences that games offer and how genres have changed over time etc. Back when I first signed up we used to find a lot of those kinds of threads in here, now I just find a bunch of people selling stuff and a bunch of other people being dicks. I aways enjoyed the questions you used to pose yourself Racket, they always promtped interesting discussion. JT is filling that hole quite nicely at the min and I would def like more posts the same.

I did prefer the board when there were less people on here, the quality of the conversation is much higher when the thread consists of a few people that are responding to each others contributions rather than a bunch of people stating what they think.

So many of the old big posters have gone now

[Xonticus]

Generally, I do get a little weary of the b/s/t forums when I see people with 10 posts or under trying to unload some stuff, generally for above average prices. I'm not complaining about the prices people make, but that the potential scam rate has gone up due to this. I have had a couple people that either never got back to me about prices or in the middle of a PM convo just drop contact, never to be heard from again.

I would say a general encouragement to hang around the community and build up a slight rep before posting sell threads should by all the members could help this problem.

Then again, if it is just me, then disregard.

[RCBH928]

I like posts about:
*Useful tips and tricks(like how to make your console live longer)
*Hidden gems and forgotten games
*Posts with visuals

I dislike posts:
*When people argue for 7 pages and each person is writing a page long just to prove the other is wrong, and while you can sense they want to rip each other's heads off they keep it respectable
*Where rude people reply
*Childish posts "ps3 better because Sony always wins" and that is it. Another example would be "My brother ruined my Wii. What shall I do back to him?" I mean how is this the concern or interest of other people?
*Detailed posts. Honestly I wouldn't want to read 3 pages of why Sonic is better than Mario, this would be like an essay.
*Non-ending posts. How can a post have 100 pages, you can't expect any one to read the conversation or search through it for anything.

[zxqdms]

My favorite posts are by people who completed a project that they are really proud of. I love it when people write up a detailed report, so that I can try the project also. The most interesting topics to me are hardware mods, the kind that involve things like custom controller adapters, installing modchips, or adding standard av ports.

[J T]

I'd like to see a sub-forum for gaming philosophy. I like topics that have something to do with game design, societal effects of games, how games effect us emotionally, values expressed through the gaming medium, etc.

I've been wanting to start a series of threads about how games elicit emotions. I want to start with some basic psychological definition of the emotion to map out the territory, then move into some case studies of games that manage to elicit that emotion, then discuss creative ideas for how the emotion could be better ilicited through gameplay than it currently is. The problem is, the only sub-forum that would really fall under now is the 'whatever' section, but what I'm thinking of writing would take some effort on my part, so I wouldn't want it to just get buried in the chatter. If I'm going to invest time in a thread, I'd like it to be read by more than 2 or 3 people before it slides down the page and disappears forever.

This is actually a common problem for messageboards. Creative topics often only fit in the 'whatever' section, but they get drowned out by the noise. This inhibits people from writing anything particularly substantive. A music forum I frequent came up with a nice solution to this though- they have a sub-forum for the classic threads of the messageboard. Only mods can add threads there, though everyone can comment once a thread is there. People can pm a moderator to request a thread be moved to the 'classics' section if they think it is worthy. This way there is a section for the threads that stand out for being particularly funny, creative, dramatic, or thought provoking; and it keeps those threads alive and thriving.

[Erik_Twice]

*Detailed posts. Honestly I wouldn't want to read 3 pages of why Sonic is better than Mario, this would be like an essay.

I think everyone here prefers a meaningful discussion, this means detailed posts because you can't have a meaningful discussion in other way. And yes, it would be like an essay and that's good.

[Curlypaul]

I've been wanting to start a series of threads about how games elicit emotions. I want to start with some basic psychological definition of the emotion to map out the territory, then move into some case studies of games that manage to elicit that emotion, then discuss creative ideas for how the emotion could be better ilicited through gameplay than it currently is. The problem is, the only sub-forum that would really fall under now is the 'whatever' section, but what I'm thinking of writing would take some effort on my part, so I wouldn't want it to just get buried in the chatter. If I'm going to invest time in a thread, I'd like it to be read by more than 2 or 3 people before it slides down the page and disappears forever.

Now thats the kind of thread that I would get involved in

[General Chaos]

I'd like to see a sub-forum for gaming philosophy. I like topics that have something to do with game design, societal effects of games, how games effect us emotionally, values expressed through the gaming medium, etc.

This is a superb idea. As a scholar who occasionally studies issues dealing with games and gaming I would love to see this. JT, I've seen you post an article or two about gaming, and I'm constantly coming across them. If nothing else else the forum would be a place for people to share their own ideas and link others to some of the gaming research that's out there.

[dsheinem]

I'd like to see a sub-forum for gaming philosophy. I like topics that have something to do with game design, societal effects of games, how games effect us emotionally, values expressed through the gaming medium, etc.

This is a superb idea. As a scholar who occasionally studies issues dealing with games and gaming I would love to see this. JT, I've seen you post an article or two about gaming, and I'm constantly coming across them. If nothing else else the forum would be a place for people to share their own ideas and link others to some of the gaming research that's out there.

I echo this, as some of my recent conference papers have dealt with gaming in one way or another and I'd love to share some of my thinking with y'all in an appropriate venue.

[grittykitty]

i like when threads about a particular game or series get started and people can get super detailed and nerdy and you can learn little known trivia or game tips you wouldn't find elsewhere. i think a neat idea would be a section for something like this, for particular popular games (eartbound would be a great example, as i'm sure there are plenty of fans) and people can also mention super obsessed fan sites that go beyond the call of duty. an example, i found this site with sound ripped from the zelda games - compare and contrast the original zelda north-american cartridge sounds with the japanese famicom disk system sounds! some are completely different and it's pretty interesting if you're as nerdy as i am about... nerdy things
http://noproblo.dayjo.org/ZeldaSounds/

so, i think having a dedicated section for this specific type of nerding-out could be fun