unforum

[daisho]

Jeebus. I just want to be clear. I was not blaming mods, or any individuals, nor did I want anyone to feel singled out. I love the relaxed feel of uF, I was just venting because I could see no new info when I had about 10 new threads since the last time I logged in.

I was just ranting, and being a bit elitist. So I am going to continue to enjoy the story and buildup for this movie, and hope you all do the same.

And RedHatty, I think the underground, cool, small community horse has bolted, locking the gate may be a little late. Sorry.

[Her]

Wow, almost everyone strikes a good point. But the big point, I feel, is to ignore the stupid troll posts. Just by replying to them, we are feeding them.

Coming here due to Cloverfield has gotten me interested in the ARGs which are playing out here. Unfortunately, I know little to nothing about codebreaking, searching computer code, and the other tools needed to actively work on a game.

I'm trying to learn, but the duplicate, triplicate posts make this difficult and they annoy me too!

Now, even with the inane posts, this is still the best forum for finding out anything about Cloverfield.

So perhaps posts will be tagged and somewhat researched before being put out there. Then things should flow smoothly.....hopefully.

And lastly, in no manner did i mean to insult anyone. Just some general observations that may make this last month go a little smoother.

[Euchre]

It's easier not to 'feed trolls' when the trolls are obvious.
Problem is many members of this forum are so anxious for new information, they don't take as much time considering the nature of some of the posts and threads and jump to the next step of basing speculation on them. This "ready, fire, aim" approach is just a result of the fascination that this campaign can produce. That amount of energy when focused can be one of the most useful things at our disposal and can produce spectacular results (e.g. menu card translation that led to Tagruato). For those of us whose nature is to question as part of the process of speculation, it sometimes means catching a thread when it's only a few posts long to try to show it for what it is - before the more anxious run away building houses upon the sand.

If everyone can understand and try to respect the parts we each play in processing the games and campaigns, we can get much farther and a fuller experience out of all of it.

[InevitableDoom]

I understand the whole thing behind not deleting posts in terms of fostering a certain kind of environment. Admittedly, that's more wishful thinking and frustration talking than logic. But I don't really think you can stop people from feeding (obvious) trolls by telling them not to anymore than you can stop the trolls in the first place by telling them not to. Sure, when everybody ELSE replies to a troll they're massively annoying, but when THEY do it they are witty and charming and it's completely different and totally worth the thread bump.

Same goes for the infighting and snark that's been cropping up. Unless you're literally Dr. House, you're probably just going to come off looking like a 10 year old and/or a douche when you try to be clever and step on somebody's head. "You're a jerk!" "No you are!" "Pot meet kettle!" "Hi kettle!" SRSLY WAT. I'm having flashbacks to third grade, here. Everybody gets frustrated and snipes -- I'm not saying never do it -- but the newish people who are trying to build a rep on it or something? Lamesauce.

My point overall is that I think this forum has grown so much recently that it may have lost the ability to self-moderate successfully.

And then when people vent, mods step in from on high to offer such helpful gems as this:

[iconsumer]

[Teap]

I bet I wouldn't get banned even if I posted goatse.

[casemyo]

I dont think starting a new forum i necessary at all. the movie is a little over a month away and we have no legimate reason to believe that anything viral will continue after the movie hits theaters. If anybody feels like starting a forum that will last maybe a month after the 18th (and thats if everyone feels inclined to discuss the movie after seeing it) be my guest... ive already invested my time here so im not going anywhere.

I think everyone needs to get off their high horse. nobody's changing the world here. just discuss the game. no big internet revolution that means anything is going to come of a new forum being made. we've been through this before. new posters come all the time. deal with it. your livelihood is not affected by somebody posting a "i found the cloverfield monster artwork" thread linking to doug williams' whale bohemith thing for the thousandth time. just ignore the trolls and newbs and get past it... most of us established members seem to do just fine with that.

[MrToasty]

I think everyone needs to realize how much of a black sheep this campaign is here at uF. Take a few minutes and look around at the rest of the sub-forums. The rest tend to be civilized, cohesive groups founded around relatively well-formed games. In particular, have a look at another game that started fairly close to the start of this one, Tom Tooman. Read through part of the trailhead and you'll realize how much more an ARG could(should) be than what we have here, even with only ONE page of threads. Most other games move fast enough and provide challenging enough puzzles that those truly interested don't have enough time to waste on trolls and the less hearty players bow out on their own.

Some would then argue that the other games aren't as high profile as this, to which I would counter with "The Beast," granddaddy of them all and "ILoveBees" which I came here for which promoted Halo 2. ILB had regular updates every week, and that was still not often enough to keep up with demands at times. We have a lot of good minds here on this game, and I think it's natural that we are chomping at the bit. It's also natural that new players are eager to contribute and repost things prematurely. The trout exists for a reason, and while it may not be perfect, once explained most players will come to understand and accept it. The high profile also lends itself to attracting a high volume of trolls. Report trollish behavior to the mods and it will be dealt with as deemed necessary. We've seen that this works as several persistant trolls have been blocked successfully over time.

The best advice to offer sounds lame as hell, but be patient. When the clues do come we all come together and get them hammered out pretty quickly. This isn't going to go down in history as one of the all-time greats, but I still think it's pretty fun or I wouldn't waste my time. And for those who just can't take the way things get handled around here, there's alway IMDB

[konamouse]

Again, uF is trying not to censor and stifle creativity.
Locking troll threads just creates more troll threads. But some threads have become interesting (i.e. the "I AM...." thread).
So, if you want this place to be easier to navigate for the real information:

1. Stop feeding the trolls (if you don't post in the thread, it drops down to the bottom of the page and goes away).

2. Stop adding more to the obvious gamejacks/lies/reposts (if you don't post in the thread, it drops down to the bottom of the page and goes away).

3. RedHatty was trying to say "after the movie comes out, hopefully many of you will find THE OTHER GAMES HERE IN UF to play" and stick around in the areas of uF where you see how the community works together to play a real ARG.

Over the years I've met some wonderful people via uF, played some amazing games, and lived in some creative alternate realities.

[SpaceBass]

I am sure that RedHatty did not intend to imply that Cloverfield fans were unwelcome here; quite the opposite is true as we try to welcome anyone who wants to participate (assuming they play nice with each other). She also has not been around as long as some of the rest of us and may not remember other similar influxes of large player groups who were new to this forum. I Love Bees was an excellent example of this, with a huge amount of new traffic that crashed the servers for its kickoff.

So, sorry, but this really isn't a new concept for us. And we've weathered similar storms in the past without needing to compromise anything about how the forums are run or moderated in general, although on rare occasions we do take steps such as we have done here to disable guest posting on particularly chaotic subforums.

Besides the wonderful suggestions above about how to deal with troll and spam posts, something else you can do to help the moderators is to reply to trout posts politely and with an obvious link directly to the existing post that renders the trout redundant. Label it clearly, then when a moderator stops through the thread, it will be that much more likely to be quickly [TAGGED] as [TROUT] so you can then ignore it in the forum view.

Remember also that redundant posting is inevitable but that does not necessarily make it valueless. There is a certain meta-message to be considered when seeing repeated posting about the same subjects.

[Red Walrus]

[Fignut the Elder]

I heard that....

[rhesusmonkeyboy]

[SuperSquirrel]

Agreed...

[rekdal]

I still love this forum