IF Forum
Taz
IF not then would people here be interested in participating in one.
What would you enjoy? What kind of sub-forums would you like to see, etc?
fel...@yahoo.com
> Is their an IF Forum?
Eh? r.a.i.f. *is* a forum. Except it's not web-based.
Oh wait... I'm using Google Groups :D
Felix
Gayla
There is the question of what an IF forum would provide that these
newsgroups don't. The two items I can think of is that more people
know how to use web-page forums than know how to use newsgroups, and
that web-page forums get included in web search-engine results. But I
don't think we could get enough traffic to support a stand-alone IF
forum since there isn't even all that much traffic on these two
newsgroups.
Maybe adding an IF sub-forum to an existing popular forum would be good
publicity. Sub-forums within an IF sub-forum probably wouldn't be
needed since the traffic would likely be even less than we get here.
Being a part of a larger forum could bring new people into the fold (if
enough of us made an effort to post there in order to keep things
going). I'm afraid that most folks on the Internet have never heard of
Interactive Fiction, and when they hear about "text games" they just
think about online multi-user MUDS. One needs to bring up the subject
of "Zork" to get anyone to think about downloading single-player games.
But it might be worth the effort to try.
-- Gayla
Emily Short
Gayla wrote:
> Being a part of a larger forum could bring new people into the fold (if
> enough of us made an effort to post there in order to keep things
> going).
Incidentally, there is this (but it doesn't get much traffic at the
moment):
http://www.justadventure.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=IF
There have also been occasional PennyArcade threads on IF, but that's
not quite the same as its own forum.
Taz
Sadly that's true. I've been pimping IF to the general public for years
now (both IRL and on other forums). It's easier IRL because I can set
all the software, etc, up for them. But even then it's battling up hill.
I think a modern equivilent of Adventure Blaster is what we really need
(or even updating the old one so it'll run on XP). It gives noob IFers
a good starting point, some games to play, and help if they have
trouble. It all comes with a funky, easy to access, interface.
Chephren
Emily Short wrote:
> Gayla wrote:
> > Being a part of a larger forum could bring new people into the fold (if
> > enough of us made an effort to post there in order to keep things
> > going).
>
> Incidentally, there is this (but it doesn't get much traffic at the
> moment):
>
> http://www.justadventure.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=IF
>
There's also one at:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/games/Interactive-Fiction-Games-forum-127.html
but this seems even less active.
David Whyld
There's an Adrift-specific forum at
http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboard.cgi
Way nicer than these ol' newsgroups.
David Whyld
Gayla wrote:
> There is the question of what an IF forum would provide that these
> newsgroups don't. The two items I can think of is that more people
> know how to use web-page forums than know how to use newsgroups, and
> that web-page forums get included in web search-engine results. But I
> don't think we could get enough traffic to support a stand-alone IF
> forum since there isn't even all that much traffic on these two
> newsgroups.
That's an interesting comment. I've been a member of a couple of
stand-alone IF forums for several years now and one of them is pretty
active, despite being restricted to discussion about just one of the IF
systems.
Emily Short
David Whyld wrote:
> That's an interesting comment. I've been a member of a couple of
> stand-alone IF forums for several years now and one of them is pretty
> active, despite being restricted to discussion about just one of the IF
> systems.
I think that might well be "because of being restricted...". There have
been a couple of attempts to move the traffic of rec.arts.int-fiction
to a mailing list or web forum, but they haven't really gathered
momentum; on the other hand, a completely separate community developed
for a purpose that is not quite the same as r*if's has more of a chance
of taking off.
David Whyld
And, too, forums look *so* much nicer. :)
Can you imagine today's teenagers choosing a newsgroup over a forum?
You'd find it easier convincing them to give up their iPods and use
vinyl.
Chephren
Actually, I was thinking, something like an official inform forum might
work. Especially if it prominent on the pretty inform7 site. Whenever
people found the website, they'd be easily able to find the forum. And
people from r.a.i.f. might be tempted to join, just because they need
to visit the site to get the latest version of inform, and so think
about dropping in on the forum.
rpresser
> And, too, forums look *so* much nicer. :)
>
> Can you imagine today's teenagers choosing a newsgroup over a forum?
> You'd find it easier convincing them to give up their iPods and use
> vinyl.
Reading Google Groups in Firefox, with Shafik's "Google Groups"
Greasemonkey script added to colorize each post, is prettier, cleaner
and much easier to use than any phpBB forum I've ever used.
Then again, I'm not one of today's teenagers, and I detest all those
animated GIF "avatars" they're so fond of.
essell
has already said, loads more people already use forums and feel
comfortable with them, and their presence in search engines is a bonus.
Avatars and signatures and most of all the other potentially annoying
features can be turned off on these things.
I myself was disappointed to find that the IF community sticks to the
newsgroup format, instead of using a forum, because I browse loads of
forums for other things, and had never touched a news group before. In
the end I stuck it out and re-adjusted myself to see what the IF
community was up to, but I know that loads and loads of people would
never do that.
I'm a regular reader of rllmukforum.com - a very dedicated ["hardcore",
for want of a better word] multi-format gaming community, and I know
there will be some people on there who would be more interested to take
a look at the IF community if it just meant signing up to another
forum, instead of delving into "those newsgroup things". It's another
small but significant turn-off for the wider audience that this
community seems to want to attract.
essell
> Reading Google Groups in Firefox, with Shafik's "Google Groups"
> Greasemonkey script added to colorize each post, is prettier, cleaner
> and much easier to use than any phpBB forum I've ever used.
yes, but expecting everyone to do that to make the thing less ugly is
exactly the kind of reason people don't bother.
seriously, forums are genuinely more functional than these things -
that's why the whole of the internet uses them now. I don't want to rub
anyone up the wrong way, but these things are outdated now. Newsgroups
do the job for those who're used to them, but forums can do it better,
in a more accessible and standardised way.
One well-executed, well-supported and semi-official IF forum would do
wonders to bringing new people in. I really think it's as simple as
that.
Mike Snyder
news:1154447077.8...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> One well-executed, well-supported and semi-official IF forum would do
> wonders to bringing new people in. I really think it's as simple as
> that.
Using a newsgroup has never really bothered me, personally. In fact, there
was a time when I could go out on NNTP (port 119), where HTTP (port 80) was
blocked. I guess that's not very likely to happen, but it's one small
benefit to using a newsgroup. Another is that no membership or sign-up is
required to post, if your ISP carries these groups (unless, perhaps, if
you're using a web-based service). The lack of moderation *can* be a
benefit. Signal to noise remains pretty high here, without any one person or
group making decisions as to who can and cannot post. Newsgroups are
subscribed and distributed. They aren't brought to a halt if one server goes
down, as would be the case with a forum hosted on a single server.
That said, I'm coming around to this other way of thinking. I'd be in favor
of a semi-official all-inclusive IF forum. I'd envision two categories as we
use now ("games" and "development"). The development group (the r.a.i-f
equiv) could be divided into Tads, Inform, Hugo, Adrift, and Other (or a
couple additional broken out of "other" too, if desired). Perhapse the
"games" group could be divided into "announcements", "hint requests",
"reviews", and "general" (for starters). Despite the benefits of a
newsgroup, I think a web forum would be a better decision overall. Even
though I don't think it'd be endorsed by everyone, I'd be in favor of it.
I'd even provide the site. I have a good server running RAID-1, may gigs to
spare, and way more bandwidth than I ever come close to using. I'm not
volunteering to set up a forum or be the admin, but I'd be happy to host it
and be a moderator. Maybe that's one of the reasons nothing like this ever
gets done -- everybody is lazy, like me. :)
--- Mike.
David Whyld
essell wrote:
> grrr at not being able to edit posts on these things :)
>
Which is another advantage forums have over newsgroups. :)
Of course, no one's touched on one of the other advantages: the
permanent banning of trolls and the deleting of their offensive posts.
Considering the sheer number of trolls that frequent RAIF, I'd have
said it was worth it for that reason alone.
Mike Robinson
> seriously, forums are genuinely more functional than these things -
> that's why the whole of the internet uses them now. I don't want to rub
> anyone up the wrong way, but these things are outdated now. Newsgroups
> do the job for those who're used to them, but forums can do it better,
> in a more accessible and standardised way.
The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
text medium. They are certainly not more accessible, as each forum is
different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader of
your choice. Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features, but
not all forums are accessible.
The only forum I'd support would be a 2ch-style anonymous forum, which
avoids many of the problems of traditional forums.
Rikard Peterson
news:1154452917....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
> Of course, no one's touched on one of the other advantages: the
> permanent banning of trolls and the deleting of their offensive
> posts. Considering the sheer number of trolls that frequent RAIF,
> I'd have said it was worth it for that reason alone.
But we've been troll-free for a while now.
Typical forums also get loads of spam-bots posting, requiring a lot
of work for the moderators.
Web based forums are much less useable when you're on dial-up and
pay per minute. This is getting less important as more people get
broadband, but it's still an issue.
They are notably slower, even on a fast connection. Both for fetching
the posts, and for reading.
Some forums handle marking posts read in a good way, but most of them
doesn't, causing everything to be marked as read when you leave. My
newsreader doesn't mark anything as read unless I've read it, or told
it to do so.
I currently follow two web based forums (and some more on a more
occasional basis) and I think the forum software used by Adventure
Gamers is pretty good, but personally I still prefer my newsreader.
--
Rikard
http://www.trumgottist.com/
essell
There's everything to gain by having both - so long as the "official"
forum is used and supported by the people here, to encourage new users
to join in, and give them a reason to stay.
This place would always be around as a safe retreat with a good
signal/noise ratio, where all the old-school regulars can complain
about why IF going more mainstream led to everything going wrong... :)
Neil Cerutti
Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
--
Neil Cerutti
The outreach committee has enlisted 25 visitors to make calls on
people who are not afflicted with any church. --Church Bulletin
Blooper
Mike Snyder
news:1154452917....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> Of course, no one's touched on one of the other advantages: the
> permanent banning of trolls and the deleting of their offensive posts.
> Considering the sheer number of trolls that frequent RAIF, I'd have
> said it was worth it for that reason alone.
I touched on it -- but mainly to say that it's not always a good thing. In a
private, commercial forum -- yes. In a public, community forum -- maybe not.
Too much moderation beyond just blocking spammers would probably ward
would-be users away. One appeal of these newsgroups is that nobody *can*
tell you what you can or can't post. I heavily moderate my Prowler
Productions forums (well, "heavily" probably isn't the right word -- there
usually isn't much I need to do, but if I feel like removing a post or
banning a user, I do) -- but my forums have a different goal than a general
use, public IF forum would.
And besides, I can't think of a single "troll" around here who hasn't made
at least some worthwhile posts and contributions. The beginning parts of a
good flame-war can even be interesting (as long as I'm not the one being
flamed... heh).
I'd recommend banning and moderating only in *extreme* cases -- actual spam,
for instance, or if somebody posts somebody else's real phone number,
address, etc. Most of the time, I'd say leave everything, but move the troll
posts to "off topic". You're not censoring. You're not blocking. You're just
putting the post where it's appropriate.
The biggest obstacle -- and one my pessimism tells me can't be overcome --
is that too few people would adopt a public IF forum as a replacement for
the newsgroups. And, as long as the newsgroups continue to be the primary
discussion areas, an IF forum would always be considered just an independent
off-shoot. If the people with the most clout don't endorse it and move over
themselves -- and I don't expect most would -- it's not going to work. The
best that could be hoped for is a thriving but separate community. It
probably wouldn't even be separate at first -- it'd be a subset of those who
are already here, until enough of these hypothetical newbies who can't use
newsgroups are members of the forum.
It's great that such strides are being taken to make IF authorship easier,
to encourage the creation of IF, and to make IF more accessible to play. I
just wish it was more obvious to others that the newsgroup model *is* a
barrier to some (many?) people. If there was an Interactive Fiction
Consortium, volunteering for all aspects of IF promotion (including an
attractive web forum), I think it would be easier to put an appealing face
on everything that is IF. What would be nice is one central URL as a
jumping-off point for everything (I now own "intfiction.org" and
"int-fiction.org", incidentally). What newbies need is out there -- IF
reviews, the IF Wiki, etc -- but... maybe I'm rambling now, but some central
and community-endorsed site could bring it all together. With forums. :)
---- Mike.
Mike Snyder
news:slrnecv55d....@FIAD06.norwich.edu...
> On 2006-08-01, David Whyld <dwh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
>
The web forum wouldn't need a newsreader, and anybody who's so inclined
could edit their posts using anything, prior to posting in the forum.
Anyway, I see the benefits of newsgroups. I listed a few, in an earlier
reply. But I also don't think that we should make it so difficult for others
to become involved, simply so we can have the convenience of what we've
grown accustomed to. For all that the the newsgroups provide that a web
forum wouldn't and vice-versa, I really believe the web forum would come out
on top.
Accessibility. Attractiveness. Moderation (even if only the editing of your
own posts). Easy for newbies. Familiarity.
I consider it a pipe dream, though. The only people who could effect a shift
from here to elsewhere won't. And I'm fine with newsgroups. I just wish we
all were more open to something else.
---- Mike.
Mike Snyder
news:pan.2006.08.01....@example.invalid...
> On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:44:37 -0700, essell wrote:
>
> The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
> formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least of which is
being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
> text medium. They are certainly not more accessible, as each forum is
Only true once you know *how* to read newsgroups. If anybody cares, I'll
take a poll of my co-workers. I'll find out how many have used web forums,
versus how many have also uses newsgroups. For those who've never used a
newsgroup, I'll try to determine how many of them *know* what a newsgroup
is, or have a clue how they'd either configure a newsreader to subscribe to
one or go to a web-based newsreader.
I can almost predict the results. Blank stares will abound.
> different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader of
> your choice. Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features, but
> not all forums are accessible.
The trick, then, would be to use an accessible forum. I've had good luck
with PHPBB, although I find the base install lacking in some ways.
My point is, this is a barrier for many people. It might be made of
tissue-paper, but it's painted like brick. Casual users are unlikely to try
pushing on it.
> The only forum I'd support would be a 2ch-style anonymous forum, which
> avoids many of the problems of traditional forums.
Problems such as?
---- Mike.
Rikard Peterson
> The biggest obstacle -- and one my pessimism tells me can't be
> overcome -- is that too few people would adopt a public IF forum
> as a replacement for the newsgroups. And, as long as the
> newsgroups continue to be the primary discussion areas, an IF
> forum would always be considered just an independent off-shoot. If
> the people with the most clout don't endorse it and move over
> themselves -- and I don't expect most would -- it's not going to
> work. The best that could be hoped for is a thriving but separate
> community. It probably wouldn't even be separate at first -- it'd
> be a subset of those who are already here, until enough of these
> hypothetical newbies who can't use newsgroups are members of the
> forum.
>
> (..) What would be nice is one central URL as a jumping-off
> point for everything (I now own "intfiction.org" and
> "int-fiction.org", incidentally). What newbies need is out there
> -- IF reviews, the IF Wiki, etc -- but... maybe I'm rambling now,
> but some central and community-endorsed site could bring it all
> together. With forums. :)
You could try making your own forum-interface to the newsgroups.
Google is the most famous one, but I've seen others too so I guess it
would be possible. Then you'd give the hypothetical newbies their
forum, while we who prefer the newsgroups could stay and everybody
could talk to everybody anyway.
I have no idea what the technical problems would be (maybe it's a
really bad idea), but I suspect it'd be at least theoretically
possible to make sub-forums too, by sorting out the [I7] and [TADS3]
etc. tags to their own places. (Just as I can filter them in a news
reader.)
--
Rikard
http://www.trumgottist.com/
Mike Robinson
> "Mike Robinson" <bl...@example.invalid> wrote in message
> news:pan.2006.08.01....@example.invalid...
>> On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:44:37 -0700, essell wrote:
>>
>> The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
>> formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
>
> Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least of which is
> being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
...which discourages proofreading.
> Only true once you know *how* to read newsgroups. If anybody cares, I'll
> take a poll of my co-workers. I'll find out how many have used web forums,
> versus how many have also uses newsgroups. For those who've never used a
> newsgroup, I'll try to determine how many of them *know* what a newsgroup
> is, or have a clue how they'd either configure a newsreader to subscribe to
> one or go to a web-based newsreader.
Google groups is an easy enough interface. Anyone smart enough to play IF
should have no problems with it. Those who want the superior features of
a traditional newsreader will have to make a bit more effort.
>> The only forum I'd support would be a 2ch-style anonymous forum, which
>> avoids many of the problems of traditional forums.
>
> Problems such as?
Mostly elitism and groupthink. This is of course still a problem on
Usenet, but it's worse on moderated non-anonymous forums.
Anonymity focuses the discussion on what is said, not who says it.
Trolling is also much harder when most people don't have a reputation to
destroy.
Neil Cerutti
> "Neil Cerutti" <lead...@email.com> wrote in message
> news:slrnecv55d....@FIAD06.norwich.edu...
>> On 2006-08-01, David Whyld <dwh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
>
> The web forum wouldn't need a newsreader,
A newsreader provides a much better interface, in my experience.
> and anybody who's so inclined could edit their posts using
> anything, prior to posting in the forum.
Yes, and I've done it that way. The process doesn't compare to
using a good newsreader with configurable editor, though.
> Anyway, I see the benefits of newsgroups. I listed a few, in an
> earlier reply. But I also don't think that we should make it so
> difficult for others to become involved, simply so we can have
> the convenience of what we've grown accustomed to. For all that
> the the newsgroups provide that a web forum wouldn't and
> vice-versa, I really believe the web forum would come out on
> top.
I know where you're coming from.
> Accessibility. Attractiveness. Moderation (even if only the
> editing of your own posts). Easy for newbies. Familiarity.
I was a newbie who couldn't get access to the IF community for
nearly a year after discovering that text adventures were not
dead. Back in those days, the if-archive itself was inaccessible
to a lot of people (including me) due to a weird configuration
issue--your ISP had to provide some sort of something or it
wouldn't let you connect. The *one* mirror worked OK when I
finally found it.
The net presence of IF is much stronger now than it was then.
Web forums have come a long way. I still don't like them as much
as a nice newsgroup, but they are usable.
> I consider it a pipe dream, though. The only people who could
> effect a shift from here to elsewhere won't. And I'm fine with
> newsgroups. I just wish we all were more open to something
> else.
I agree with that. The newsgroups are one of the earliest
foundations of the community, and likely won't be abandaned until
they cease to be widely available.
--
Neil Cerutti
Life is indeed precious, and I believe the death penalty helps
affirm this fact. --Edward Koch
Neil Cerutti
> news:pan.2006.08.01....@example.invalid...
>> On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:44:37 -0700, essell wrote:
>>
>> The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and
>> text formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of
>> a predominantly
>
> Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least
> of which is being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
That's arguable. On usenet, if I'm truly desparate to correct an
error, I post a reply to myself. Everyone who subscribes to the
group will see it, and know right away what the error was.
If I simply edit a pre-posted message, readers who already read
the orifinal might never see my correction. If they note that it
is edited, they might need to read the entire post to find out
what was changed, unless I post an "edited" note at the bottom,
which is basically 360 degrees back to the usenet way of doing
things.
>> text medium. They are certainly not more accessible, as each
>> forum is
>
> Only true once you know *how* to read newsgroups. If anybody
> cares, I'll take a poll of my co-workers. I'll find out how
> many have used web forums, versus how many have also uses
> newsgroups. For those who've never used a newsgroup, I'll try
> to determine how many of them *know* what a newsgroup is, or
> have a clue how they'd either configure a newsreader to
> subscribe to one or go to a web-based newsreader.
>
> I can almost predict the results. Blank stares will abound.
Agreed. You'd get similar stares asking them about internet
gophers (remember those?).
>> different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the
>> newsreader of your choice. Many newsreaders have excellent
>> accessibility features, but not all forums are accessible.
>
> The trick, then, would be to use an accessible forum. I've had
> good luck with PHPBB, although I find the base install lacking
> in some ways.
>
> My point is, this is a barrier for many people. It might be
> made of tissue-paper, but it's painted like brick. Casual users
> are unlikely to try pushing on it.
The solidarity of raif and rgif has been an ongoing advantage.
While I agree that the fact that they are usenet is a barrier, I
don't a see a way out.
--
Neil Cerutti
David Whyld
>
> The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
> formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
> text medium.
How'd you come to that conclusion? That's a bit like saying that the
only advantage of Word over Notepad is that it supports graphics and
text formatting.
Forums can do a *few* other things, y'know.
> They are certainly not more accessible, as each forum is
> different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader of
> your choice.
Did you computer come with a built-in newsreader that was
pre-configured and ready to use from the word go? I know mine didn't.
So if I wanted one, I'd have to go to the trouble of downloading one
(not knowing a thing about them or which is best or which features I
should be looking for), installing it, configuring it, etc. With a
forum, I just go to it and start typing. In what way that makes them
less accessible than a newsreader I don't know.
> Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features, but
> not all forums are accessible.
Which forums are these?
David Whyld
>
> The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
> formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
> text medium.
How'd you come to that conclusion? That's a bit like saying that the
only advantage of Word over Notepad is that it supports graphics and
text formatting.
Forums can do a *few* other things, y'know.
> They are certainly not more accessible, as each forum is
> different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader of
> your choice.
Did your computer come with a built-in newsreader that was
pre-configured and ready to use from the word go? I know mine didn't.
So if I wanted one, I'd have to go to the trouble of downloading one
(not knowing a thing about them or which is best or which features I
should be looking for), installing it, configuring it, etc. With a
forum, I just go to it and start typing. In what way that makes them
less accessible than a newsreader I don't know.
> Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features, but
> not all forums are accessible.
Which forums are these?
David Whyld
Neil Cerutti wrote:
> On 2006-08-01, David Whyld <dwh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > essell wrote:
> >> grrr at not being able to edit posts on these things :)
> >
> > Which is another advantage forums have over newsgroups. :)
> >
> > Of course, no one's touched on one of the other advantages: the
> > permanent banning of trolls and the deleting of their offensive
> > posts. Considering the sheer number of trolls that frequent
> > RAIF, I'd have said it was worth it for that reason alone.
>
> Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
>
Well
a) they don't need them
and
b) I have a perfectly good text editor on my computer called Word which
I can use to edit text before posting it on the forum if I'm so minded.
Mike Snyder
news:pan.2006.08.01....@example.invalid...
>> Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least of which is
>> being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
>
> ...which discourages proofreading.
Given the choice, I'd rather discourage proofreading than make it impossible
to fix honest typos that make it past the proofreading.
> Google groups is an easy enough interface. Anyone smart enough to play IF
> should have no problems with it. Those who want the superior features of
> a traditional newsreader will have to make a bit more effort.
Google groups is fine enough for searches. I liked it better when it was
dejanews.com. :)
It's not a matter of not being smart enough to play IF, or being able to
work a newsreader. In some way, it's about initial impressions. The old
adage "don't judge a book by its cover" seems to work best when a great
cover hides the crapola inside.
Maybe every single person who's smart enough to play IF is smart enough to
configure a newsreader, or make their way to Google Groups. What I'm saying
is, I believe they're less likely to do so. We have a barrier than *could*
be taken down. But it won't be.
>>> The only forum I'd support would be a 2ch-style anonymous forum, which
>>> avoids many of the problems of traditional forums.
>>
>> Problems such as?
>
> Mostly elitism and groupthink. This is of course still a problem on
> Usenet, but it's worse on moderated non-anonymous forums.
> Anonymity focuses the discussion on what is said, not who says it.
> Trolling is also much harder when most people don't have a reputation to
> destroy.
For the most part, an IF forum would be no more or less anonymous than a
newsgroup. People could still use aliases. People could still hide their
email addresses from public view. People could still figure out who's who
given enough clues. People could still choose not to be anonymous. I don't
think an IF forum needs heavy moderating. Mainly, just a few people to move
the off-topic posts to an off-topic forum (as opposed to deleting them
altogether), and to get rid of anything that's clearly spam (bots are a
constant thorn).
I just don't think there is enough interest in moving to a forum. Like I
said earlier, the best anyone can hope for is a well-used off-shoot. If the
community won't agree to endorse a forum, then nothing *but* the newsgroups
will ever be considered the "official" home of IF discussions. Again, I'm
fine with that. I'll be here. I just wish this book didn't have such a sad
cover.
--- Mike.
Neil Cerutti
>>
>> The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
>> formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
>> text medium.
>
> How'd you come to that conclusion? That's a bit like saying that the
> only advantage of Word over Notepad is that it supports graphics and
> text formatting.
>
> Forums can do a *few* other things, y'know.
>
>> They are certainly not more accessible, as each forum is
>> different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader of
>> your choice.
>
> Did you computer come with a built-in newsreader that was
> pre-configured and ready to use from the word go? I know mine
> didn't.
Most systems do come with a usable newsreader, requiring minimal
setup. Finding *access* to to a *server* is usually the hard
part. I'm thinking of Outlook Express, here.
--
Neil Cerutti
David Whyld
Neil Cerutti wrote:
> >
> > Did you computer come with a built-in newsreader that was
> > pre-configured and ready to use from the word go? I know mine
> > didn't.
>
> Most systems do come with a usable newsreader, requiring minimal
> setup. Finding *access* to to a *server* is usually the hard
> part. I'm thinking of Outlook Express, here.
>
> --
I have OE (never use it) but it wouldn't have occurred to me that the
way to access an online newsgroup was via an e-mail client on my hard
drive. I doubt I'm the only one.
Neil Cerutti
>> Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
>
> Well
>
> a) they don't need them
Perhaps not, but they would be improved by them.
> and
>
> b) I have a perfectly good text editor on my computer called
> Word which I can use to edit text before posting it on the
> forum if I'm so minded.
Not the editor I'd choose, but the cut+pasting required to use a
decent editor is a hassle from any web forum.
--
Neil Cerutti
All you're doing right now is just flabbergasting your mouths
because there are no solid answers right now. --Emmitt Smith
David Whyld
> >
> > Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least of which is
> > being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
>
> ...which discourages proofreading.
Not even the most careful proofreading can catch every mistake. Having
a long and well thought out post make no sense because of a typo or a
missing word makes less sense to me than the ability to edit your
posts.
>
> Google groups is an easy enough interface. Anyone smart enough to play IF
> should have no problems with it. Those who want the superior features of
> a traditional newsreader will have to make a bit more effort.
Why would they bother, though? Forums are easily accessible without any
extra effort. Introducing another obstacle, even a minor one, is just
going to turn more people away.
Mike Snyder
> A newsreader provides a much better interface, in my experience.
>
> Yes, and I've done it that way. The process doesn't compare to
> using a good newsreader with configurable editor, though.
Me, I *like* posting this way. I don't get page lag, I see *just* the list
of the messages, and it's easy for me to use. It's fast. It's convenient. It
works like email. I use Outlook Express, which is by no means even the top
of the line in newsreaders. In a perfect world, everybody would just
subscribe to newsgroups in their newsreader of choice.
There have been times, though, when I travel and find that I'm blocked from
the Cox news servers. I have to use Google. That's fine for reading, but
I've never taken the time to figure out how to sign up and post. Well, I
might have a long time ago when it was DejaNews, but if I have a Google
Groups account, I've forgotten what it is. These times, I wish RGIF and RAIF
were forums. And I can see where forums would remove the "news" barrier that
has to be keeping some worthwhile activity out.
> The net presence of IF is much stronger now than it was then.
>
> Web forums have come a long way. I still don't like them as much
> as a nice newsgroup, but they are usable.
Me too, but I have to think it's because I was using newsgroups before web
forums. And back then, web forums weren't what they are today. If I had a
choice between limiting usership to just those people who can figure out how
to get here, and giving up some of the speed and ease that I *personally*
enjoy to make this more accessible for new members, I'm sure I'd choose the
latter.
> I agree with that. The newsgroups are one of the earliest
> foundations of the community, and likely won't be abandaned until
> they cease to be widely available.
My guess is, newsgroups will *always* be available.
And who knows -- maybe browser-based newsreaders will evolve and fill the
gap.
---- Mike.
David Whyld
Neil Cerutti wrote:
> >
> > b) I have a perfectly good text editor on my computer called
> > Word which I can use to edit text before posting it on the
> > forum if I'm so minded.
>
> Not the editor I'd choose, but the cut+pasting required to use a
> decent editor is a hassle from any web forum.
>
Highlight text, copy, paste.
Not much of a hassle from where I'm standing. :)
Mike Snyder
>
>> Did you computer come with a built-in newsreader that was
>> pre-configured and ready to use from the word go? I know mine
>> didn't.
>
> Most systems do come with a usable newsreader, requiring minimal
> setup. Finding *access* to to a *server* is usually the hard
> part. I'm thinking of Outlook Express, here.
I can remember when newsgroups were *part* of getting an internet account.
My first dial-up accounts came with instructions on configuring a newsreader
(maybe FreeAgent -- I don't recall) to point to their NNTP server. Now, I
have to hunt around just to figure out what NNTP server my host provides
(made sense, once I found it). If I didn't already know about newsgroups,
I'd have no idea they exist. With broadband, people are just hooking up and
browsing the web. Often, they don't even get a real email address -- just
hotmail or gmail or something, even though most (if not all) ISPs provide
one or more email addresses.
--- Mike.
rpresser
Because nobody told you about newsgroups when you signed up for
Internet access. You didn't investigate the capabilities of the free
software that came with your computer because you had no interest in
newsgroups. Having no interest in newsgroups, you didn't explore them
until you developed an interest and were already biased against them.
Outlook Express started its life as a program called "Internet Mail and
News", a free add-on for Internet Explorer 3.0. The executable filename
is still msimn.exe -- see, MicroSoft Internet Mail and News. Microsoft
released this program because Netscape was way ahead of them --
Netscape 1.N already read news, and I am pretty sure, did email too.
Then Microsoft pushed its way in, destroyed Netscape through marketing
and bundled software and OEM intimidation, and tried to make newsgroups
disappear because they didn't like them.
So, now you want us to do it your way because you like it better. Well,
tough. I don't like your way better. So I'm stodgy and resistant to
learning new ways. Guess what: you're stodgy and resistant to learning
old ways. "Make new friends, but keep the old: one is silver and the
other gold." Things aren't better just because they're new. History
is as important as innovation.
Usenet is fault-tolerant. If your news server goes down, there are
hundreds of others around the world that you could theoretically get
your news from. A web forum is dependent on ONE web server -- if you're
really lucky, one web cluster, like Slashdot.
You (and Mike Snyder) keep saying "web forums can do things Usenet
can't." I'd like a list, please. At least three.
rpresser
essell wrote:
> grrr at not being able to edit posts on these things :)
>
> > Greasemonkey script added to colorize each post, is prettier, cleaner
> > and much easier to use than any phpBB forum I've ever used.
>
> yes, but expecting everyone to do that to make the thing less ugly is
> exactly the kind of reason people don't bother.
I don't expect anyone to do what I do. You, on the other hand, expect
everyone to do what you do, simply because you do it.
> seriously, forums are genuinely more functional than these things -
> that's why the whole of the internet uses them now.
I would wager that there is more traffic being carried by Usenet, even
now, than the aggregate total of all web forums. OK, most of it is
copyright violating binaries and spam ...
Just because all your friends do it does not mean that everyone does
it. I would wager that for any web forum you can point to, I can find a
newsgroup with MORE active readers.
> I don't want to rub anyone up the wrong way, but these things are outdated now. Newsgroups
> do the job for those who're used to them, but forums can do it better,
> in a more accessible and standardised way.
In other words, you're used to it because you saw web forums first. So
what? Tomorrow somebody may find something different and urge people to
stop using web forums. I'll enjoy watching you squirm and defend your
turf.
> One well-executed, well-supported and semi-official IF forum would do
> wonders to bringing new people in. I really think it's as simple as
> that.
Put your money where your mouth is. Build such a forum. We'll see which
lasts longer: raif or your forum.
essell
the potential to attract a wider audience, whereas newsgroups clearly
don't.
Tell the average Joe to look up a newsgroup online - without giving
them any instructions - and they will probably ask you what a newsgroup
actually is.
Tell someone who's a little more internet savvy to look up a newsgroup,
and they'll probably be surprised that people still even use the
things. Among even the more computer literate types, newsgroups have
very nerdy, 90's wannabe-hackers connotations.
If the IF community refuses to move the newsgroup, and update to the
forums that have replaced it as the new standard, then don't be
surprised if it continues to grow at the slooowww, sloooow rate it
currently is.
Considering that this newsgroup is supposed to represent the majority
of an entire artform's creative people, this place is absolutely tiny.
If that is ever going to change, the community needs to initiate that
change.
Emily Short
Mike Snyder wrote:
> The biggest obstacle -- and one my pessimism tells me can't be overcome --
> is that too few people would adopt a public IF forum as a replacement for
> the newsgroups. And, as long as the newsgroups continue to be the primary
> discussion areas, an IF forum would always be considered just an independent
> off-shoot. If the people with the most clout don't endorse it and move over
> themselves -- and I don't expect most would -- it's not going to work. The
> best that could be hoped for is a thriving but separate community. It
> probably wouldn't even be separate at first -- it'd be a subset of those who
> are already here, until enough of these hypothetical newbies who can't use
> newsgroups are members of the forum.
Maybe, maybe not. In the past, people have tried making a forum and
saying "hey, everyone, let's talk over here now" -- and, indeed, that
shift hasn't occurred. I don't think it will shift overnight; I don't
know that it will ever shift entirely. We have newsgroup history back
to 1987.
But conceivably a web forum could be made to be interesting in its own
right if you had a core of people committed to posting there who built
up a bit of content, then announced it to the rest of the world. I
think the content-first would be important, though it needn't be
plentiful: but still, some reviews, some game recommendations, some
discussion so that new people who came to the forum would find
something to respond to and talk about, not the appearance of a ghost
town.
By "the rest of the world" I include places where you might catch the
eye of all those folks may not be reading r*if currently, but who do
talk about IF and are interested in it: the JustAdventure forum,
SomethingAwful and PennyArcade, Armchair Arcade, grandtextauto, the
ADRIFT and Quest forums, Quandary, AdventureGamers, and the Italian
newsgroup and the Spanish IF community. Audyssey, too, if you'd worked
out a format accessible to blind readers. And anywhere else you could
think of that seemed relevant.
But, in any case, nothing will happen here unless someone actually does
it.
rpresser
essell wrote:
> Well the first one that springs to mind is that discussion forums have
> the potential to attract a wider audience, whereas newsgroups clearly
> don't.
Doesn't count towards answering my question, since (a) it's the point
you've been harping on since the start of the discussion, and (b) it's
not something discussion forums *DO*, it's a factor of their current
popularity.
I am looking for assertion of TECHNICAL superiority. I don't think you
can do it.
James Cunningham
> Given the choice, I'd rather discourage proofreading than make it
> impossible to fix honest typos that make it past the proofreading.
Honest mistakes *are* made, sure. But editing posts allows someone to
edit history, so to speak, and I really think forums are better off
without them; debates can become very interesting when unscrupulous
persons play fast and loose with edits.
The forum that I most often frequent - message boards for The Straight
Dope newspaper column, http://boards.straightdope.com - operates this
way. The occasional typo does not seem to affect anyone too badly.
(In fact, I think those forums provide a good model for what IF boards
could be like: no stupid avatars or hoggish, animated images; trolling
kept to a minimum without censorship for its own sake; an email-based
verification system to discourage the automated ad-bots that litter
Usenet. That creates a lot of work for moderators - sure - but the
scope of an IF board is far, far less than the SDMB.
The idea of a purely anonymous forum is so bad it's absurd, I'm afraid.)
Best,
James
essell
> I am looking for assertion of TECHNICAL superiority. I don't think you
> can do it.
I'm not going to bother trying, because I don't care about that debate.
If you stopped harping on about technical features for a moment, maybe
you'd realise that the wider audience doesn't care either. That's why
they're not here.
Mike Snyder
news:1154462502....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> You (and Mike Snyder) keep saying "web forums can do things Usenet
> can't." I'd like a list, please. At least three.
I have to assume you've never used a modern web forum. Their features are
plentiful. If you have, and if you're *still* asking this question, then
it's either rhetorical or what you really mean is "what can a web forum do
that usenet can't, that I'd really *want* it to do?"
Granting that newsgroups can also do things web forums can't, and I *like*
newsgroups just fine, here's a list off the top of my head (and assuming
pretty robust forum software). Some of these things might not be *desirable*
in all cases, but the fact remains that forums give the option and usenet
does not.
You can edit your own posts in a forum.
In usenet, what's sent is set it stone. Even "cancel post" features don't
reliably work.
Web forums are immediately accessible to the novice, who may even be
familiar with them already.
Usenet, easy though it is once you're in, is a mystery to people. I'll
refrain from saying "most".
Forums can be much more attractive. I'm not saying go overboard, but a nice
layout works.
You can view usenet in different ways, yeah, but I typically see it as
pretty flat and uninviting.
You can subscribe to specific threads in a forum -- get notices when new
posts appear.
If this is possible in some newsreaders, it's not a standard.
Forums are available in places where news feeds are not.
For instance, I can't use the Cox news servers and OE when I travel, unless
the hotel broadband is Cox.
It's easy to search a forum and get results within the forum environment.
When I search usenet, I use Google. I'm no longer in my preferred
newsreader.
You can attach files to forum messages.
Yeah, you can in usenet, but it's frowned upon except in .binaries groups.
You can send private messages (handy for distributing a beta).
Nothing is private in usenet, and it's often hard to demunge email
addresses.
You can get a good idea how many people actually use the forum.
Usenet has no members list.
A forum can be moderated -- if required or desired.
Most usenet is unmoderated.
Forums can require registration, making it harder for others to masquerade
as you.
Despite the ease of *not* registering for a newsgroup, this is still a point
for the list.
I've already said some of what newsgroups can do that forums can't or don't.
I'll repeat and extend that list, if anybody asks. All I'm saying is, given
the choice between usenet and a web forum, a web forum wins. That some of us
are very comfortable and very familiar with usenet doesn't turn back the
clock. We're a dying breed, sorry to say.
---- Mike.
rpresser
essell wrote:
> rpresser wrote:
> > I am looking for assertion of TECHNICAL superiority. I don't think you
> > can do it.
>
> I'm not going to bother trying, because I don't care about that debate.
I don't particularly care about your "wider audience" debate either. It
just sounds like another "Imminent death of Usenet! Film at 11" to me.
> If you stopped harping on about technical features for a moment, maybe
> you'd realise that the wider audience doesn't care either. That's why
> they're not here.
Indeed, the wider audience NEVER cares about technical features.
Witness Outlook Express, once the single most popular email client and
a very popular newsreader, despite horrible technical shortcomings,
bugs that lasted for years and through major releases, the horror, the
horror ...
Richard Bos
> "Neil Cerutti" <lead...@email.com> wrote in message
> news:slrnecv55d....@FIAD06.norwich.edu...
> > Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
>
> The web forum wouldn't need a newsreader, and anybody who's so inclined
> could edit their posts using anything, prior to posting in the forum.
>
> Anyway, I see the benefits of newsgroups. I listed a few, in an earlier
> reply. But I also don't think that we should make it so difficult for others
> to become involved, simply so we can have the convenience of what we've
> grown accustomed to. For all that the the newsgroups provide that a web
> forum wouldn't and vice-versa, I really believe the web forum would come out
> on top.
>
> Accessibility.
If r.a.i-f were a web forum, it would be inaccessible to me. I'm on
dial-up. Spending half an hour reading badly-formatted messages and
being forced to remain dialed-in to reply would mean I'd have to give it
up.
> Attractiveness.
Most web forums are butt-ugly, and not nearly as configurable as even a
poor newsreader, let alone a good one.
> Familiarity.
Once you're familiar with your newsreader, you're familiar with the look
of all newsgroups. Once you're familiar with Forum A, you'll have to
learn everything again for Forum B.
Richard
Richard Bos
> "Mike Robinson" <bl...@example.invalid> wrote in message
> news:pan.2006.08.01....@example.invalid...
> > On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:44:37 -0700, essell wrote:
> >
> > The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
> > formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
>
> Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least of which is
> being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
Bad, bad, _bad_ idea. Asking for a troll. Not to mention the
misunderstandings you get when person A posts a message; person B
replies to it; and person A goes back to edit the original post
(possibly in all innocence) so that person B's answer doesn't fit the
post any more.
> > text medium. They are certainly not more accessible, as each forum is
>
> Only true once you know *how* to read newsgroups. If anybody cares, I'll
> take a poll of my co-workers. I'll find out how many have used web forums,
> versus how many have also uses newsgroups. For those who've never used a
> newsgroup, I'll try to determine how many of them *know* what a newsgroup
> is, or have a clue how they'd either configure a newsreader to subscribe to
> one or go to a web-based newsreader.
>
> I can almost predict the results. Blank stares will abound.
While you're at it, ask them how many of them have watched Fox News.
Next ask them how many have read the Guardian. Clearly, Fox is a
superior news source to the Grauniad.
> > different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader of
> > your choice. Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features, but
> > not all forums are accessible.
>
> The trick, then, would be to use an accessible forum.
Yet another different forum interface. Oh, the joy.
Richard
Mike Snyder
I know this wasn't in reply to me, but I have comments.
> I don't expect anyone to do what I do. You, on the other hand, expect
> everyone to do what you do, simply because you do it.
What I expect -- no, that's too much -- what I would *hope* -- is that the
Interactive Fiction community would be willing to take steps to make the
community more accessible.
> I would wager that there is more traffic being carried by Usenet, even
> now, than the aggregate total of all web forums. OK, most of it is
> copyright violating binaries and spam ...
I would wager that there are vastly more web forums than there are usenet
newsgroups.
> Just because all your friends do it does not mean that everyone does
> it. I would wager that for any web forum you can point to, I can find a
> newsgroup with MORE active readers.
There are always the alt.sex groups.
> In other words, you're used to it because you saw web forums first. So
> what? Tomorrow somebody may find something different and urge people to
> stop using web forums. I'll enjoy watching you squirm and defend your
> turf.
I was a late bloomer, getting into Usenet sometime around 1995. Still, this
was well before I started using web forums.
If something better comes along to replace the browser-based forum, count me
in.
I think you're missing the point. If all we want to do is maintain what
we've got, maybe add a few members from time to time, the newsgroups are
fine. But *if* we want to involve people who know squat about usenet, and
*if* we want to provide the kinds of features that aren't available to us
now, we should adopt a community forum.
What you're saying is, we *don't* want those things. That's fine. I think
most of us realize how esoteric IF really is. But then we talk about
exposing IF to more people. It'd be nice if more of us were open to other
possibilities. What I get from you is very close-minded.
> Put your money where your mouth is. Build such a forum. We'll see which
> lasts longer: raif or your forum.
Are you *that* married to usenet, though? I can understand not seeing a
reason for change, but this kind of thinking is exactly why forums *won't*
succeed.
---- Mike.
Richard Bos
> Well the first one that springs to mind is that discussion forums have
> the potential to attract a wider audience,
If that audience doesn't learn to bloody _quote_, why bother?
> Tell someone who's a little more internet savvy to look up a newsgroup,
> and they'll probably be surprised that people still even use the
> things. Among even the more computer literate types, newsgroups have
> very nerdy, 90's wannabe-hackers connotations.
Sheesh...
Richard
essell
> > rpresser wrote:
> > > I am looking for assertion of TECHNICAL superiority. I don't think you
> > > can do it.
> >
> > I'm not going to bother trying, because I don't care about that debate.
>
> I don't particularly care about your "wider audience" debate either. It
> just sounds like another "Imminent death of Usenet! Film at 11" to me.
Man alive.
This thread is about the IF community and directions for it to go in -
not you and your beloved usenet, which you seem to blindly defend as if
your dad invented it. I think the IF community as a whole is rather
interested in the wider audience debate, which is why I'm talking about
it. Sorry if I was annoying you by talking about things with the
community - and not just you - in mind.
> Indeed, the wider audience NEVER cares about technical features.
> Witness Outlook Express, once the single most popular email client and
> a very popular newsreader, despite horrible technical shortcomings,
> bugs that lasted for years and through major releases, the horror, the
> horror ...
Yes, well observed.
Now, back to IF?
Richard Bos
> Mike Robinson wrote:
> >
> > The only advantage of forums is in support of graphics and text
> > formatting, which is mostly unnecessary for discussion of a predominantly
> > text medium.
>
> How'd you come to that conclusion? That's a bit like saying that the
> only advantage of Word over Notepad is that it supports graphics and
> text formatting.
>
> Forums can do a *few* other things, y'know.
Name them. Worthwhile other things that a decent newsreader cannot do. I
have yet to see a single one.
Richard
David Whyld
many forums I access but I've yet to see in a newsgroup:
* Sticky topics. Important threads and/or announcements can be "pinned"
to the top of the forum for ease of use or reference.
* Different sections. Split the forum into parts for games, reviews,
general discussion, off topic, etc. With a newsgroup, everything is
lumped together and it's often difficult telling what's what.
essell
> Bad, bad, _bad_ idea. Asking for a troll. Not to mention the
> misunderstandings you get when person A posts a message; person B
> replies to it; and person A goes back to edit the original post
> (possibly in all innocence) so that person B's answer doesn't fit the
> post any more.
If you used forums much, you'd probably know that this isn't a problem
at all. Except for correcting spelling and sentence mistakes, virtually
the whole of the internet has adopted the convention of marking edits
with notes like the one at the bottom of this post.
SImilarly, I've never seen a troll abuse the edit function in my life -
namely because if a troll wants to be annoying, there are much better
ways to do it.
[edit: actually, I think I'd rather catch a bus with a monkey driver!
ho ho ho]
David Whyld
rpresser wrote:
> Indeed, the wider audience NEVER cares about technical features.
> Witness Outlook Express, once the single most popular email client and
> a very popular newsreader, despite horrible technical shortcomings,
> bugs that lasted for years and through major releases, the horror, the
> horror ...
That's the second Microsoft bash from you I've seen today. Do you also
wear a t-shirt declaring Bill Gates as the Anti-Christ? :)
( See, now :) would be an actual smiley on a forum but here it's just
:). Not quite the same, is it? :( )
Mike Snyder
news:44cfbd49...@news.xs4all.nl...
> "Mike Snyder" <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
>> Accessibility.
>
> If r.a.i-f were a web forum, it would be inaccessible to me. I'm on
> dial-up. Spending half an hour reading badly-formatted messages and
> being forced to remain dialed-in to reply would mean I'd have to give it
> up.
Why would a community-endorsed forum *be* badly-formatted? And the idea --
the only reason I'm even *in* this discussion -- is to make it accessible to
*more* people. Becoming less accessible to *me* is secondary to that.
Anyway, you're exaggerating. I'm constrained to dail-up from time to time. I
have no problems with any but the most out-of-control forums. Turning off
images does wonders for usability.
>> Attractiveness.
>
> Most web forums are butt-ugly, and not nearly as configurable as even a
> poor newsreader, let alone a good one.
Again, why would a community-endorsed forum have to *be* butt-ugly? Even a
minimal look is a step up from how people are likely to view the newsgroups.
Once everybody has the experience we do, finding a news server's address,
installing and configuring a reader, and making it look "nice" may be easy.
I'm talking about the world at large, though. I'm happy enough with usenet.
>> Familiarity.
>
> Once you're familiar with your newsreader, you're familiar with the look
> of all newsgroups. Once you're familiar with Forum A, you'll have to
> learn everything again for Forum B.
The difference between a web forum and a newsgroup far exceeds the
difference between Forum A and Forum B. I've *never* had to re-learn
everything I know about using forums, whether I'm off to a
differently-skinned PHPBB, or on UBB or IkonBoard or something else.
The gist seems to be, *you* don't want to use a forum for Interactive
Fiction discussions. It wouldn't matter if I said web forums would stop the
aging process, help you find buried treasure, and lower taxes. That's fine.
You're far from alone.
---- Mike.
essell
Richard Bos wrote:
> "essell" <me...@essell.org> wrote:
>
> > Well the first one that springs to mind is that discussion forums have
> > the potential to attract a wider audience,
>
> If that audience doesn't learn to bloody _quote_, why bother?
>
Sorry about that - I'm used to a proper quote feature, and my posts
appearing in the conversation as soon as i press post. You know, like
in those (whisper)forum thingies(whisper).
Default User
> There have been times, though, when I travel and find that I'm
> blocked from the Cox news servers. I have to use Google. That's fine
> for reading, but I've never taken the time to figure out how to sign
> up and post. Well, I might have a long time ago when it was DejaNews,
> but if I have a Google Groups account, I've forgotten what it is.
> These times, I wish RGIF and RAIF were forums.
However, most forums require you to register to post. Some, like the
IMDB ones, require that even to read. I don't see how forums would buy
you anything over Google. Not to mention that Google is a one-signup
for every usenet group and Google group they carry.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Mike Snyder
> "Mike Snyder" <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
>> Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least of which is
>> being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
>
> Bad, bad, _bad_ idea. Asking for a troll. Not to mention the
> misunderstandings you get when person A posts a message; person B
> replies to it; and person A goes back to edit the original post
> (possibly in all innocence) so that person B's answer doesn't fit the
> post any more.
You know, in all my years using both usenet and web forums, I've had fewer
problems with the abuse of post-editing (which is to say, nearly none), than
I have had with the inability to edit or remove my own posts.
>> I can almost predict the results. Blank stares will abound.
>
> While you're at it, ask them how many of them have watched Fox News.
> Next ask them how many have read the Guardian. Clearly, Fox is a
> superior news source to the Grauniad.
So, given the choice between watching news on Fox and not watching news at
all, we go for the latter?
There are differences between usenet and forums. I've said this already. I
*like* a lot of what usenet can provide for me, but if I step back and look
at usenet versus a well-built forum, the forum wins. It *is* better.
>> > different, whereas all newsgroups work consistently on the newsreader
>> > of
>> > your choice. Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features,
>> > but
>> > not all forums are accessible.
>>
>> The trick, then, would be to use an accessible forum.
>
> Yet another different forum interface. Oh, the joy.
Yes. Oh the joy.
--- Mike.
David Whyld
Default User wrote:
> Mike Snyder wrote:
>
>
> > There have been times, though, when I travel and find that I'm
> > blocked from the Cox news servers. I have to use Google. That's fine
> > for reading, but I've never taken the time to figure out how to sign
> > up and post. Well, I might have a long time ago when it was DejaNews,
> > but if I have a Google Groups account, I've forgotten what it is.
> > These times, I wish RGIF and RAIF were forums.
>
> However, most forums require you to register to post. Some, like the
> IMDB ones, require that even to read. I don't see how forums would buy
> you anything over Google. Not to mention that Google is a one-signup
> for every usenet group and Google group they carry.
>
Because forums are nicer to look at than newsgroups and easier to
access. They're the two main reasons but there are dozens of others.
Default User
> On 2006-08-01, Mike Snyder <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
> > "Neil Cerutti" <lead...@email.com> wrote in message
> > news:slrnecv55d....@FIAD06.norwich.edu...
> >> On 2006-08-01, David Whyld <dwh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> >> Web forums haven't got good newsreaders or good text editors.
> >
> > The web forum wouldn't need a newsreader,
>
> A newsreader provides a much better interface, in my experience.
I agree. I haven't seen a forum interface that I thought was very good.
They have made some strides over the old ones, but even the very best
are only about as good as Google. None are good as a dedicated
newsreader, mainly because you're working with a tool (a browser) that
isn't designed for the task.
Centralization has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is
that posts are immediately available, are easy to edit and moderate.
The disadvantage is that a single server outage takes it out for the
world, or if the site owner sells, tires, dies, whatever the site can
be rendered useless. The distributed nature of usenet works against
that sort of thing.
Mike Snyder
> I am looking for assertion of TECHNICAL superiority. I don't think you
> can do it.
Who said forums were TECHNICALLY superior to usenet?
Anyway, if we're digging for technical issues between the two, tech folk
like to close ports which aren't essential to their business. In theory --
and my experience comes chiefly from our own network -- port 119 could be
blocked off where 80 isn't. This could be worked around, possibly with an
HTTP proxy, a web-based newsreader, or going in and opening the port
yourself, but it's another hoop to jump through that stops Joe Casual from
being here.
It doesn't help that we're comparing apples to oranges. I'm talking about
newbies, who have no idea what a newsreader is, let alone how to pick a good
one and configure it to outshine a web forum. You're talking about people
who already know what they're doing. Those people can already get here.
---- Mike.
Default User
> On 2006-08-01, Mike Snyder <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
> > "Mike Robinson" <bl...@example.invalid> wrote in message
> > Not true. There are many advantages to a forum, not the least
> > of which is being able to edit mistakes in your own posts.
>
> That's arguable. On usenet, if I'm truly desparate to correct an
> error, I post a reply to myself. Everyone who subscribes to the
> group will see it, and know right away what the error was.
There is a "supercede" feature in usenet. The problem is that, like
"cancel" not all servers honor it. Also, not all newsreader provide the
capability.
Personally, I dont' think it's that big of a deal.
David Whyld
rpresser wrote:
> >
> > I have OE (never use it) but it wouldn't have occurred to me that the
> > way to access an online newsgroup was via an e-mail client on my hard
> > drive. I doubt I'm the only one.
>
> Because nobody told you about newsgroups when you signed up for
> Internet access. You didn't investigate the capabilities of the free
> software that came with your computer because you had no interest in
> newsgroups. Having no interest in newsgroups, you didn't explore them
> until you developed an interest and were already biased against them.
(steps behind flame resistant wall)
Er... I didn't investigate the capabilities of the free software that
come with my computer because I had no interests in newsgroups? I
prefer to phrase it as "I didn't investigate the capabilities of the
free software that came with my computer because I didn't have a clue
what a newsgroup even was". However, when I *did* discover what a
newsgroup was I made a point of avoiding them for as long as possible
because of how shoddy they looked compared to all those nice new forums
out there.
>
> So, now you want us to do it your way because you like it better. Well,
> tough. I don't like your way better. So I'm stodgy and resistant to
> learning new ways. Guess what: you're stodgy and resistant to learning
> old ways. "Make new friends, but keep the old: one is silver and the
> other gold." Things aren't better just because they're new. History
> is as important as innovation.
>
Thanks for the history lesson. I like to think I'm quite prepared to
learn old ways. IF they're better than the new ways. But a newsgroup
better than a forum? Oh yes. I also know a caveman or two who swear by
square wheels.
>
> You (and Mike Snyder) keep saying "web forums can do things Usenet
> can't." I'd like a list, please. At least three.
>
Mike listed several already and I listed a few more myself. I'd quote
them here but, damnit, there's no quote button so you'll just have to
scroll back up and read 'em. :)
Mike Snyder
news:4j9ugqF...@individual.net...
> Mike Snyder wrote:
>
>> There have been times, though, when I travel and find that I'm
>> blocked from the Cox news servers. I have to use Google. That's fine
>> for reading, but I've never taken the time to figure out how to sign
>> up and post. Well, I might have a long time ago when it was DejaNews,
>> but if I have a Google Groups account, I've forgotten what it is.
>> These times, I wish RGIF and RAIF were forums.
>
> However, most forums require you to register to post. Some, like the
> IMDB ones, require that even to read. I don't see how forums would buy
> you anything over Google. Not to mention that Google is a one-signup
> for every usenet group and Google group they carry.
I only use Google for searching. I much prefer using OE for reading and
posting.
Google is probably find, but it comes back to (a) being *too* much for
newbies, and (b) putting a pretty face on the community. A central IF hub
with its own forum would be, to me, preferrable to redirecting users into
the Google groups framework.
As for registering, I think most people are familiar with and comfortable
enough to do that by now. We have the lack of a required sign-up now, which
doesn't really tip the scales in usenet's favor. Anyway, I think you *can*
set forums (at least some of them) to allow anonymous posting.
---- Mike.
Mike Snyder
> Centralization has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is
> that posts are immediately available, are easy to edit and moderate.
> The disadvantage is that a single server outage takes it out for the
> world, or if the site owner sells, tires, dies, whatever the site can
> be rendered useless. The distributed nature of usenet works against
> that sort of thing.
That and laziness are the biggest reasons this is all just excercise for my
ill-used debating muscles. :)
---- Mike.
Default User
I've not found a single one that looked better than usenet in a real
newsreader. Better than Google, probably.
Mike Robinson
> The idea of a purely anonymous forum is so bad it's absurd, I'm afraid.)
It's technically not 100% anonymous, but if this is true why is 2ch.net
the most popular forum in the world?
Mike Snyder
>> Forums can do a *few* other things, y'know.
"Richard Bos" <ral...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:44cfc063...@news.xs4all.nl...
> Name them. Worthwhile other things that a decent newsreader cannot do. I
> have yet to see a single one.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/a854f483e3c1f694
---- Mike.
Default User
> "Default User" <defaul...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:4j9ugqF...@individual.net...
> > Mike Snyder wrote:
> >
> > > There have been times, though, when I travel and find that I'm
> > > blocked from the Cox news servers. I have to use Google. That's
> > > fine for reading, but I've never taken the time to figure out how
> > > to sign up and post. Well, I might have a long time ago when it
> > > was DejaNews, but if I have a Google Groups account, I've
> > > forgotten what it is. These times, I wish RGIF and RAIF were
> > > forums.
> >
> > However, most forums require you to register to post. Some, like the
> > IMDB ones, require that even to read. I don't see how forums would
> > buy you anything over Google. Not to mention that Google is a
> > one-signup for every usenet group and Google group they carry.
>
> I only use Google for searching. I much prefer using OE for reading
> and posting.
There are better newsreaders than that. The point I was answering had
to do with general access away where your news server is unavailable,
and having to register with Google.
> Google is probably find, but it comes back to (a) being too much for
> newbies, and (b) putting a pretty face on the community. A central IF
> hub with its own forum would be, to me, preferrable to redirecting
> users into the Google groups framework.
A lot of newbies are figuring out how to use Google, believe me. Too
many, I think sometimes.
> As for registering, I think most people are familiar with and
> comfortable enough to do that by now. We have the lack of a required
> sign-up now, which doesn't really tip the scales in usenet's favor.
> Anyway, I think you can set forums (at least some of them) to allow
> anonymous posting.
I'm sure you can, but I seldom see them.
Taz
> "essell" <me...@essell.org> wrote in message
> news:1154447077.8...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
>>One well-executed, well-supported and semi-official IF forum would do
>>wonders to bringing new people in. I really think it's as simple as
>>that.
>
>
> Using a newsgroup has never really bothered me, personally. In fact, there
> was a time when I could go out on NNTP (port 119), where HTTP (port 80) was
> blocked. I guess that's not very likely to happen, but it's one small
> benefit to using a newsgroup. Another is that no membership or sign-up is
> required to post, if your ISP carries these groups (unless, perhaps, if
> you're using a web-based service). The lack of moderation *can* be a
> benefit. Signal to noise remains pretty high here, without any one person or
> group making decisions as to who can and cannot post. Newsgroups are
> subscribed and distributed. They aren't brought to a halt if one server goes
> down, as would be the case with a forum hosted on a single server.
>
> That said, I'm coming around to this other way of thinking. I'd be in favor
> of a semi-official all-inclusive IF forum. I'd envision two categories as we
> use now ("games" and "development"). The development group (the r.a.i-f
> equiv) could be divided into Tads, Inform, Hugo, Adrift, and Other (or a
> couple additional broken out of "other" too, if desired). Perhapse the
> "games" group could be divided into "announcements", "hint requests",
> "reviews", and "general" (for starters). Despite the benefits of a
> newsgroup, I think a web forum would be a better decision overall. Even
> though I don't think it'd be endorsed by everyone, I'd be in favor of it.
>
> I'd even provide the site. I have a good server running RAID-1, may gigs to
> spare, and way more bandwidth than I ever come close to using. I'm not
> volunteering to set up a forum or be the admin, but I'd be happy to host it
> and be a moderator. Maybe that's one of the reasons nothing like this ever
> gets done -- everybody is lazy, like me. :)
>
> --- Mike.
>
>
Thanks for your input Mike - and offer. That's awesome. I was going to
let the Forum thing slide, but with everyone's recent input I think
I'll give it a go. Your breakdown of what sub-forums are needed is
cool. Similar to mine, but, well, better =).
Are there enough hugo and adrift writers to warrent their own forums do
you think? I was just going to go with TADS, Inform, other...?
Mike Snyder
>> Because forums are nicer to look at than newsgroups and easier to
>> access. They're the two main reasons but there are dozens of others.
>
> I've not found a single one that looked better than usenet in a real
> newsreader. Better than Google, probably.
Everybody's missing my the point, I think. If everybody would install a good
newsreader, and if everybody knew how to subscribe to a group, no problem
exists. Moving to a web forum would open this door to people who may not
otherwise know how to get here.
Even if web forums were a step *backward* from what we have now -- and I
don't believe it to be -- we'd still be better off exposing a wider audience
to the discussion that goes on here.
Wouldn't we?
--- Mike.
Taz
> "David Whyld" wrote in
> news:1154452917....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>
>
>>Of course, no one's touched on one of the other advantages: the
>>permanent banning of trolls and the deleting of their offensive
>>posts. Considering the sheer number of trolls that frequent RAIF,
>>I'd have said it was worth it for that reason alone.
>
>
> But we've been troll-free for a while now.
>
> Typical forums also get loads of spam-bots posting, requiring a lot
> of work for the moderators.
>
> Web based forums are much less useable when you're on dial-up and
> pay per minute. This is getting less important as more people get
> broadband, but it's still an issue.
>
> They are notably slower, even on a fast connection. Both for fetching
> the posts, and for reading.
>
> Some forums handle marking posts read in a good way, but most of them
> doesn't, causing everything to be marked as read when you leave. My
> newsreader doesn't mark anything as read unless I've read it, or told
> it to do so.
>
> I currently follow two web based forums (and some more on a more
> occasional basis) and I think the forum software used by Adventure
> Gamers is pretty good, but personally I still prefer my newsreader.
>
The geek forum I'm on is pretty accessible. Even when I was on dialup.
Of course avatars are jpg only (so no animated gifs - woohoo!) and no
pictures onsite (you hyperlink to photobucket or something similar) -
which means none of those badwidth hungry sigs either. Like the
newsgroup it's only really the text you are downloading.
Mike Snyder
news:44cf...@quokka.wn.com.au...
> Thanks for your input Mike - and offer. That's awesome. I was going to
> let the Forum thing slide, but with everyone's recent input I think I'll
> give it a go. Your breakdown of what sub-forums are needed is cool.
> Similar to mine, but, well, better =).
>
> Are there enough hugo and adrift writers to warrent their own forums do
> you think? I was just going to go with TADS, Inform, other...?
Well, I'm a Hugo author, so I'd hate to miss out. :)
Adrift has become very popular. There is an official Adrift forum already,
but I was thinking more along the lines of a semi-sanctioned "official" IF
forum.
The ongoing discussion is... not positive. I don't think there will ever be
such a beast. Any forum that's put up is just going to be a niche -- an
off-shoot of the newsgroup, but never a replacement. So I'm still weighing
things. I'm not sure it would be worth launching a new forum, just to see it
unused. Of course, this thinking may be why it'll never happen anyway.
---- Mike.
Mike Robinson
> Mike Robinson wrote:
>> Many newsreaders have excellent accessibility features, but
>> not all forums are accessible.
>
> Which forums are these?
There is no need to mention specific examples (and I am not well qualified
to judge such things), because the fact that accessibility of a forum is
variable means average accessibility is always worse than Usenet, which is
as accessible as the most accessible newsreader.
essell
> Everybody's missing my the point, I think. If everybody would install a good
> newsreader, and if everybody knew how to subscribe to a group, no problem
> exists. Moving to a web forum would open this door to people who may not
> otherwise know how to get here.
>
> Even if web forums were a step *backward* from what we have now -- and I
> don't believe it to be -- we'd still be better off exposing a wider audience
> to the discussion that goes on here.
>
> Wouldn't we?
Yes. Lots of people are missing the point.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Even if web forums were a step *backward* from what we have now -- and I
> don't believe it to be -- we'd still be better off exposing a wider audience
> to the discussion that goes on here.
Given the last couple of discussions that took over RAIF -- including
this one -- I'd have to say we'd be better off hiding them in a
closet, at the bottom of a disused mineshaft, with a sign on the door
saying "I PREPARED EXPLOSIVE RUNES TODAY".
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't subjected you to searches without a warrant,
it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're an American.
Mike Snyder
news:1154463271.0...@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
> Mike Snyder wrote:
>> The biggest obstacle -- and one my pessimism tells me can't be
>> overcome --
>> is that too few people would adopt a public IF forum as a replacement for
>> the newsgroups. And, as long as the newsgroups continue to be the primary
>> discussion areas, an IF forum would always be considered just an
>> independent
>> off-shoot. If the people with the most clout don't endorse it and move
>> over
>> themselves -- and I don't expect most would -- it's not going to work.
>> The
>> best that could be hoped for is a thriving but separate community. It
>> probably wouldn't even be separate at first -- it'd be a subset of those
>> who
>> are already here, until enough of these hypothetical newbies who can't
>> use
>> newsgroups are members of the forum.
>
> Maybe, maybe not. In the past, people have tried making a forum and
> saying "hey, everyone, let's talk over here now" -- and, indeed, that
> shift hasn't occurred. I don't think it will shift overnight; I don't
> know that it will ever shift entirely. We have newsgroup history back
> to 1987.
I'd go so far as to say that it *won't* shift, unless the heavyweights of IF
endorse it. I mean *officially* endorse it, like "hey guys, we'll be over
there now."
Since that's not going to happen, a forum will never be "the" IF community
forum. Without that backing, it's just another wanna-be.
> But conceivably a web forum could be made to be interesting in its own
> right if you had a core of people committed to posting there who built
> up a bit of content, then announced it to the rest of the world. I
> think the content-first would be important, though it needn't be
> plentiful: but still, some reviews, some game recommendations, some
> discussion so that new people who came to the forum would find
> something to respond to and talk about, not the appearance of a ghost
> town.
This is probably the best case scenario. Start by building a community made
up of the hypothetical "general public" who can't or won't use newsgroups.
What the newsgroups have going for them is Zero Maintenance. That and
longevity.
> By "the rest of the world" I include places where you might catch the
> eye of all those folks may not be reading r*if currently, but who do
> talk about IF and are interested in it: the JustAdventure forum,
> SomethingAwful and PennyArcade, Armchair Arcade, grandtextauto, the
> ADRIFT and Quest forums, Quandary, AdventureGamers, and the Italian
> newsgroup and the Spanish IF community. Audyssey, too, if you'd worked
> out a format accessible to blind readers. And anywhere else you could
> think of that seemed relevant.
>
> But, in any case, nothing will happen here unless someone actually does
> it.
It'd have to be somebody who either doesn't realize it'd be just another
sub-group, or else doesn't care. :)
It might be worth pursuing, but I have a strong feeling it'd struggle for a
while, then die.
--- Mike.
Rikard Peterson
> The geek forum I'm on is pretty accessible. Even when I was on
> dialup. Of course avatars are jpg only (so no animated gifs -
> woohoo!) and no pictures onsite (you hyperlink to photobucket or
> something similar) - which means none of those badwidth hungry sigs
> either. Like the newsgroup it's only really the text you are
> downloading.
For me, the main disadvantage of web forums on dial-up is not the
time it takes to fetch the pages. That's typically fairly quick, and
you can always turn off the images in your browser if you really
want. It's the fact that you have to stay online while reading and
posting.
I'm sometimes a slow thinker, and it can take me half an hour to
formulate a reply. Half an hour where the phone line is occupied (by
an internet connection doing nothing) and half an hour of internet
access to pay for. The last month before finally getting broadband, I
actually had a higher internet bill for my dial-up than I have now
for my 1Mbit/s DSL. A large part of that was due to my active
participation on web-based forums at the time. (Things may work
differently elsewhere, but in Sweden dial-up is typically paid by the
minute, while you pay a monthly fee for broadband.)
That obviously means that I've used (and liked) web based forums
quite a bit. I'd most likely continue to follow r*if if it for some
reason suddenly would move to a vBulletin forum (no phpBB or worse,
please). I still generally prefer Usenet, but in the end even a
techically (and artistically) awful forum can be nice to visit if the
content is good.
On to a different, but slightly related topic. A bad thing about
separating forums is that it splits the discussion. I'd love to have
a central r*if-like hub for graphical adventure games. There has been
several attempts, but much of the talk is happening in the individual
forums for the various engines so nothing has been really successful.
There's a bit of "us and them" mentality here and there, which I
don't like. To make it clear, this comment is not an argument against
a web forum. I would be sad to see Inform / TADS / Hugo / Adrift /
... forums on their respective sites, though. I think it's valuable
that Informites, Tadsians and others meet here, and it also makes it
less of a line between Informites and Tadsians.
--
Rikard
http://www.trumgottist.com/
essell
> I'd go so far as to say that it *won't* shift, unless the heavyweights of IF
> endorse it. I mean *officially* endorse it, like "hey guys, we'll be over
> there now."
>
> Since that's not going to happen, a forum will never be "the" IF community
> forum. Without that backing, it's just another wanna-be.
>
> while, then die.
Why wouldn't "the people with clout" [as they will be mysteriously be
referred to] make an effort to show some presence in a new forum? Is it
not in their interests to do so? It's not like they'd be there to
babysit from 9 till 5...
Sounds like everyone's setting themselves up for a big self-fullfulling
prophecy here - "Let's not bother being interested in the idea, because
no one's going to be interested in the idea..."
If a forum was in the works, would we - the people in this newsgroup -
be able to promote the forum as the "official" one to all the big IF
sites [IFcomp, ifarchive, etc], and get the link spread around to
everywhere it should be?
Greg Boettcher
> "David Whyld" <dwh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Of course, no one's touched on one of the other advantages: the
> > permanent banning of trolls and the deleting of their offensive posts.
> > Considering the sheer number of trolls that frequent RAIF, I'd have
> > said it was worth it for that reason alone.
>
> private, commercial forum -- yes. In a public, community forum -- maybe not.
In case anybody is interested, I'd like to give my own answer to this.
Before I do, here are a few quotes:
Stephen Bond:
"...the IF community as I found it several years ago ... has now sadly
retreated from the newsgroups, for the most part. The newsgroup
community I saw then was something I wanted to be part of, in a way
that the current newsgroup community simply isn't -- to the extent that
it's a community at all."
http://www.plover.net/~bonds/writing_cabal.html
Graham Nelson:
"A newsgroup which avoids flame-wars is such a fragile and precious
thing, and RAIF when it works is a credit to the sense of community
which IF has always fostered. Let's hang on to that."
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/a2e7ef9af7c0df7f
Robb Sherwin:
"The Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction is pretty much a wasteland
where idiots, trolls and real gronks rule the day. With the state of
text adventures the way they are presently, does it even matter?"
http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/interview_bruces.html
Adam Thornton, in response:
"Yes. Those people piss me off nearly as much as dragons do. I don't
see what either Magnus or Emily did to deserve so much spleen vented in
their direction. The recent influx into raif reminds me of nothing so
much as a burst pipe in the inflow end of a sewage treatment plant,
only not so well-mannered."
http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/interview_bruces.html
As you can see, in the opinion of quite a few people, this newsgroup
used to have an atmosphere of friendliness and camaraderie, while
presently it does not. And, as you can see, some people believe that
this is due to trolling, flaming, and the like.
Mike Snyder wrote:
> Too much moderation beyond just blocking spammers would probably ward
> would-be users away. One appeal of these newsgroups is that nobody *can*
> tell you what you can or can't post.
A moderated newsgroup (or web forum, or whatever) would indeed require
a loss of freedom. But unless you really *want* the freedom to flame
people (as opposed to criticizing their ideas), very little is lost.
And this might be a way of trying to regain the sense of community that
has vanished here, according to one theory.
>From what I understand, some people will disagree very strongly.
Apparently David Cornelson got a strong negative response when he
proposed a moderated interactive fiction newsgroup. I'm not going to
argue with such people. I'm not even sure why I'm posting this, since I
don't expect to change anyone's mind. But here it is anyway, in case
anyone is interested.
Greg
David Whyld
Taz wrote:
> >
> Thanks for your input Mike - and offer. That's awesome. I was going to
> let the Forum thing slide, but with everyone's recent input I think
> I'll give it a go. Your breakdown of what sub-forums are needed is
> cool. Similar to mine, but, well, better =).
>
> Are there enough hugo and adrift writers to warrent their own forums do
> you think? I was just going to go with TADS, Inform, other...?
There's been an Adrift forum for years already so I doubt everyone
would migrate from that one to a new one. I don't know about Hugo (not
many people seem to use it) but I'm sure there are enough Tads and
Inform users to populate a forum.
David Whyld
Nice done. You dug yourself out of answering that with perfect aplomb.
:)
Johnny Awesome
people started being self-righteous and offensive for no reason that I
can see.
Background: I've been moderating the Penny Arcade message boards for
two and a half years now, and I've been playing IF since I was six.
Pros to a message board:
*easy to start with & read.
Frankly, I'm an example of this. I love IF, I love talking about IF,
but seeing as how I can't be bothered to learn a whole new paradigm
just to talk about things I stick to reading through Google Groups. I
don't even do that often because it's a huge pain in the ass to figure
out what I've read and what I haven't, and which have become pruned,
which are spam, which are trolls by Jacek.. Brings me to my second
point:
*easy to remember what the hell's going on.
Message boards have links that send you to the last read post in a
thread. Little icons telling you what's new and where. They even let
you subscribe to threads of particular interest.
*the ability to control the user group.
In good hands, this means no more Jacek and lots more quality posters.
In bad hands, that means a lot of Mr. Breslin's friends.
*editing posts for typographical mistakes.
I like this. It's nice. Ditto for the ability to embed images and
format text.
Cons:
*a new format which many people will avoid, as evidenced by this thread
Yep.
*the difficulty in maintaining a user base for an oft-ignored segment
of the video gaming community
I've tried to bring more light to IF with my threads on both the Penny
Arcade and Something Awful fora (both very large video gaming
communities), but they eventually die off because not that many people
play IF anymore. The release schedule is much slower than conventional
videogames, with major releases once a year in September, and as a
result discussion is equally slow, limited to help requests and bug
reports.
*choosing moderators who will not fuck up
It's hard, guys. Even people who apparently are responsible people will
surrender to the delicious temptation of banning people as a joke.
So, in regards to a message board: if you want it to work, you need to
attract people to it and make sure that the community is good and large
enough and the content easy enough to follow that they will stay.
If you don't, comfort yourself with the notion that it will probably
fail anyway.
James Mitchelhill
> The ongoing discussion is... not positive. I don't think there will ever be
> such a beast. Any forum that's put up is just going to be a niche -- an
> off-shoot of the newsgroup, but never a replacement. So I'm still weighing
> things. I'm not sure it would be worth launching a new forum, just to see it
> unused. Of course, this thinking may be why it'll never happen anyway.
An IF forum won't work in attracting new people to IF. Look at the
newsgroups - they barely function as a serious basis for discussing IF,
and pretty much everyone in the world who's aware of modern IF is aware
of them. Nobody reviews anything. The few discussions that get going
quickly become submerged in flames or fizzle out quickly. For the last
couple of months you may as well have renamed raif to
comp.programming.inform7.
Instead, I would suggest would be a Scoop based collaborative media
site. (see: <http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/>).
"A scoop site can be run almost entirely by the readers. The whole
life-cycle of content is reader-driven. They submit news, they choose
what to post, and they can discuss what they post. Readers can rate
other readers comments, as well, providing a collaborative filtering
tool to let the best contributions float to the top. Based on this
rating, you can also reward consistently good contributors with greater
power to review potentially untrusted content. The real power of Scoop
is that it is almost totally collaborative."
Essentially:
People generate interesting content (reviews, theory, innovations, etc)
because it ends up being visible and likely to be discussed. Being
posted means that your review, theory, innovation is valued by the
community, which is an incentive of itself.
Readers don't have to filter between the endless "[I7] Help!" and "Hint
request: That game you've never played" posts to get at the interesting
stuff. Finding interesting stuff to discuss is easier. Flames and
trolling sink to the bottom of the pile.
New people stumble across or are directed to a place where it's
simplicity itself to read interesting things about IF and to join the
discussion.
The newsgroups continue to fulfil their purpose. The scoop site opens up
new ways of discussing IF and attracting new people. Everybody wins.
--
James Mitchelhill
ja...@disorderfeed.net
http://disorderfeed.net
Emily Short
Mike Snyder wrote:
> I'd go so far as to say that it *won't* shift, unless the heavyweights of IF
> endorse it. I mean *officially* endorse it, like "hey guys, we'll be over
> there now."
>
> Since that's not going to happen, a forum will never be "the" IF community
> forum. Without that backing, it's just another wanna-be.
> It'd have to be somebody who either doesn't realize it'd be just another
> sub-group, or else doesn't care. :)
>
> It might be worth pursuing, but I have a strong feeling it'd struggle for a
> while, then die.
I agree that it's unlikely that you'll shift the traffic of this
newsgroup entirely to a new venue. But there *are* already other
thriving forums and communities: other language IF communities, special
interest communities for specific languages (ADRIFT, Quest) or game
styles (adult IF), ifMUD. They're not really trying to supplant r*if,
but they're IF-related, they're prospering just fine, and they're
fulfilling important functions.
If the primary point of the forum-creating exercise is to attract new
blood and interest people who aren't already veterans, then perhaps the
content of r*if is not exactly what you want to show them anyway. Why
not, instead, think about what kinds of information, discussion, and
support might best present IF to new people, while still being
interesting enough to attract some of the newsgroup regulars? I imagine
one would want some sub-forums for game design and that sort of thing,
but I also suspect a lot of the other useful content would be things
like reviews, recommendation threads, a few pinned sticky threads of
general resources.
I don't know; this might still be unsuccessful, but it would at least
succeed or fail as its own project.
David Whyld
>
> An IF forum won't work in attracting new people to IF. Look at the
> newsgroups - they barely function as a serious basis for discussing IF,
> and pretty much everyone in the world who's aware of modern IF is aware
> of them.
I'd disagree with that. I imagine the majority of people with an
interest in IF either stumble across the sprawling monstrosity that is
the IFArchive... and leave in dismay. Or stumble across here, see what
an ungainly mess it is... and leave in dismay.
Introduce them to a nice easy to use forum, though...
James Mitchelhill
You've missed my point. The IF newsgroups are filled with the people who
are interested enough to deal with things like the ifarchive and
newsgroups.
Even so, the newsgroups barely function most of the time. They're an
almost ideal place for hint requests and programming questions, but they
offer little reward to anyone who bothers to review games or post
interesting analysis. This won't change simply by transposing it to a
forum.
People with interesting ideas about IF will have more reason to develop
them if there is a higher chance that their work will be appreciated and
discussed. This doesn't just mean more people (although more people
would help), this means setting up a system that facilites all this.
Scoop is one such system - a forum would just perpetuate the problem.
Emily Short
James Mitchelhill wrote:
> Even so, the newsgroups barely function most of the time. They're an
> almost ideal place for hint requests and programming questions, but they
> offer little reward to anyone who bothers to review games or post
> interesting analysis. This won't change simply by transposing it to a
> forum.
A lot of the time if I have a review, I save it for SPAG or the
IF-Review (depending on how much I have to say and where the game has
already been reviewed). This isn't because I think the newsgroup is too
unreceptive to this sort of thing, but because I'd like those articles
to be filed with a bunch of other reviews and remain easily find-able
later on.
ChicagoDave
> Is their an IF Forum?
>
> IF not then would people here be interested in participating in one.
>
> What would you enjoy? What kind of sub-forums would you like to see, etc?
I just noticed this thread.
I think the hobby will always be centered around rec.arts.int-fiction.
I can't imagine that ever changing.
I think rec.games.int-fiction is good enough for the current set of
players. And if there were ever a need to have a "product" specific
forums then that would probably be the choice of whoever was doing that
sort of thing, like Adrift.
I think Google Groups is more than adequate as a forum client for most
users.
I too dislike the Avatar-laden forums that you see on many sites. But
then again, some our moderated well and I _do_ appreciate that.
David C.
essell
> Why not, instead, think about what kinds of information, discussion, and
> support might best present IF to new people, while still being
> interesting enough to attract some of the newsgroup regulars?
Yeah.
James Mitchelhill wrote:
> Even so, the newsgroups barely function most of the time. They're an
> almost ideal place for hint requests and programming questions, but they
> offer little reward to anyone who bothers to review games or post
> interesting analysis. This won't change simply by transposing it to a
> forum.
Emily Short wrote:
> A lot of the time if I have a review, I save it for SPAG or the
> IF-Review (depending on how much I have to say and where the game has
> already been reviewed). This isn't because I think the newsgroup is too
> unreceptive to this sort of thing, but because I'd like those articles
> to be filed with a bunch of other reviews and remain easily find-able
> later on.
A dedicated "Reviews" section within the forum would do a good job of
encouraging people to write reviews, post them up and comment on
others.
Mantar, Feyelno nek dusa
> forums can do it better, in a more accessible and standardised way.
ROFDL. "Accessible," and "standardised"? I do not think those words mean
what you think they mean. Neither one means "I like 'em better."
Taz
> On 2006-08-01 15:03:29 -0400, "Mike Snyder" <wy...@prowler-pro.com> said:
>
>> Given the choice, I'd rather discourage proofreading than make it
>> impossible to fix honest typos that make it past the proofreading.
>
>
> Honest mistakes *are* made, sure. But editing posts allows someone to
> edit history, so to speak, and I really think forums are better off
> without them; debates can become very interesting when unscrupulous
> persons play fast and loose with edits.
>
> The forum that I most often frequent - message boards for The Straight
> Dope newspaper column, http://boards.straightdope.com - operates this
> way. The occasional typo does not seem to affect anyone too badly.
>
> (In fact, I think those forums provide a good model for what IF boards
> could be like: no stupid avatars or hoggish, animated images; trolling
> kept to a minimum without censorship for its own sake; an email-based
> verification system to discourage the automated ad-bots that litter
> Usenet. That creates a lot of work for moderators - sure - but the scope
> of an IF board is far, far less than the SDMB.
>
> The idea of a purely anonymous forum is so bad it's absurd, I'm afraid.)
>
> Best,
> James
>
I'm part of a similar forum. No pics onsite - so the only pictures
linked are relevant, and you don't have to visit them if you don't want
to (for example you are on dial-up).
You can have avatars, but only jpgs (so therefore no animated gifs).
I joined the forum while on dial-up and never had any problems accessing it.
Quoting someone generally disallows edits - or shows what the edit was.
Most people do this when responding to a question, or even when
trolling =/. It's pretty uncommon for trolling to occur. There are a
couple of people who do, but they get sat on by the community pretty
hard, and people tend to ignore them anyway.
Taz
> rpresser wrote:
>
>
>>Indeed, the wider audience NEVER cares about technical features.
>>Witness Outlook Express, once the single most popular email client and
>>a very popular newsreader, despite horrible technical shortcomings,
>>bugs that lasted for years and through major releases, the horror, the
>>horror ...
>
>
> That's the second Microsoft bash from you I've seen today. Do you also
> wear a t-shirt declaring Bill Gates as the Anti-Christ? :)
>
> ( See, now :) would be an actual smiley on a forum but here it's just
> :). Not quite the same, is it? :( )
>
Actually Thunderbird put a smiley there, and my forum of choice doesn't
use them (I prefer it) - but I guess we can have them.
Adam Thornton
essell <me...@essell.org> wrote:
>seriously, forums are genuinely more functional than these things -
>that's why the whole of the internet uses them now. I don't want to rub
>anyone up the wrong way, but these things are outdated now. Newsgroups
>do the job for those who're used to them, but forums can do it better,
>in a more accessible and standardised way.
You are making me, and the Baby Jesus, cry.
Newsgroups have something which is inherent in their design, and which
is simply impossible in a web forum: decentralized flood-fill. If the
site that hosts a Web forum goes away, it's gone. Forever, unless
someone is lucky enough to dig it out of the Google archives or the
Wayback Machine. Newsgroups do not suffer from this problem.
Adam
Stephen Granade
> Emily Short wrote:
> > A lot of the time if I have a review, I save it for SPAG or the
> > IF-Review (depending on how much I have to say and where the game has
> > already been reviewed). This isn't because I think the newsgroup is too
> > unreceptive to this sort of thing, but because I'd like those articles
> > to be filed with a bunch of other reviews and remain easily find-able
> > later on.
>
> A dedicated "Reviews" section within the forum would do a good job of
> encouraging people to write reviews, post them up and comment on others.
This is where I sigh and shake my head in the direction of
http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/, since most of those reviews are
archived from the newsgroup.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade
stephen...@granades.com
Taz
Interesting concept, I'll look into it. If it's not easy and free to
set-up though I won't be doing it though, sorry.
The forums I am a part of have a 'gold' section. We might be able to
have something like that.
Maybe along the lines of your voting system? Best of both worlds?