Don't know if it's been said before...
 

But what about a forum for little things? For example, we had that wierd Rydelrocksyourworld person that kept making those stupid blogs. All these little subjects get flamed to death in Off-Topic and closed. So what about an extra sub-forum in Off-Topic? Basically, for things like someone asking about their new avatar, something in their life that just happened, ''e.g. Hamster died boohoo :('' or those horrible forum games we get all the time. But unlike the suggestion of a spam forum, it'd need to be a bit strict, e.g. no threads called ''omg leetz0rz'' which only contains the word cheese. or people just derailing threads. Like the Welcomes/Birthdays, the posts wouldn't count to prevent spamming. Most people will probably think, ''that's what Off-Topic is for, noob'' or ''Spam forum been suggested before'', but like I said, for the things people frown upon in OT and not really for spam.

I agree with CS's idea. It'd probably help cut down on annoying noobs asking dumb questions in the wrong places and would keep stuff that none of the members really want to hear (eg. the blog entry-type posts) elsewhere. It might also help stop people like rydel leaving, as they'd have a place to post their personal stories. Although I dunno if I'd want rydel back anyway, she was weird.

There should be a sub-section called Newbie Central in Off-topic Discussion. So noobs can get help and talk about pointless things.

That's what Forum Suggestions & Help is for :)

Alcar...

Speaking of, is it possible to create a new forum that doesn't count toward a users post count?

Just out of curiosity.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad as long as it didn't count towards the post count. If it did count, I'd be totally against it.

And I know this is kind of bad to say since Alcar just created a thread about being more nice to new members, but... I really don't want to encourage members with Ryddel's behavior and whatnot.

Why is postcount inclusion an issue at all? Who cares if people start posting to up their postcount? Postcounts are irrelevant and of no interest except to new people, but they soon get over it.
Of course, your issue could be that people would spam the, erm, spam forum to up their post count. Again, what's the big deal? There's spam - which apparently is encouraged should the forum be there so we get what we want, adn they get what they want - a higher "rank" thing.

Saying that, I'm against a new forum through and through. :p
It just puts down even further on what topics should go in the OT forum, and people will tend to just get confused. And of course, there's no point to spam.

However, I am for an "off-topic" thread, which, while not holding spam, would be used for things not worthy of an entire thread - general conversation, small things, etc etc.

Perhaps the Welcomes and Birthdays sub-forum could be decalred a place for general socialising, essentially what CS describes. Finally, a place for all those jokes we'd love to post but don't for fear of spamming.

Arn't we already doing that to a degree in there? :P.

Anyway, this is a bad idea and I don't support it. This is an ODDWORLD forum. So we have Oddworld stuff, and non Oddworld stuff, which generaly goes into Off-Topic. Games, random blog emo entries (which we won't even allow anymore btw) and other random stuff is all fine in OT. If people hate it, it will be closed and moved down the pile. As easy as that. We don't need a new forum for every sub subject. Go to some emo hippy happy forum site (like my old TC site XD) if you are looking for stuff like that.

No, we don't need this crap. Offtopic is bad enough. You need to keep in mind that THESE ARE THE ODDWORLD FORUMS, not the Stupid Hobo/What do you look like/What pisses you off Forums. People use the Offtopic discussion more than they use General Oddworld Discussion, which defeats the whole purpose of this Forum!

cyber Slig has a point, but let's make sure that the noobs know.

Yeah, it's possible. Welcomes and Birthdays is like that ... unless of course it changed during one of my absences. :p

I don't really think too much of the idea. OWF is kind of different to a lot of other forums, I don't really think it needs a diverse range of sub-forums for different things.

Abe Babe...

We are not supposed to addapt the forums to the new people. The new people need to adapt to the forum and how it works. It's not that hard and anyone who can't do that shouldn't even be here.

It's basically just supposed to be off-topic for other things.. Or like Max suggested, modify Welcome + Birthdays to make it a forum for these things aswell.

Some people are missing the point of the thing. It's not intended to be a cage where we force the newbies to post with all their crap. We get forum games sometimes, it eventually gets flamed and locked. The person ends up having that held against them for a while. I've also seen someone asking if anyone has an image on the web. And we get people saying ''is my sig/avatar cool? What do you think of it?''.

Ambi; It's not meant to encourage people to treat the place like an emo-blog, I guess the hamster thing gave a wrong impression of that. It's more of a place where people could talk about something serious that's happening in their life. Not someone finding a stray cat or losing the internet for a few days next week and making a whole new thread about it.

Havoc; Like I described to Ambi, emo blog things shouldn't be in it, more serious things only. And no, that doesn't include, ''I'm going to cut my wrists and hang myself''. Some new members always leave because of the harshness of Off-Topic. The new forum could simply be somewhere they actually get used to things. Everytime I see a new guy in OT making a mistake, I see lots of people simply telling them how much they want them to **** off and eventually the thread gets closed with a warning. Alcar, I'm sure you noticed it aswell. Wasn't your announcement about people acting like that?

Cullent; The general is active anyway. This will not become more of an Oddworld forum till OWI actually does something. They've closed down, the only news we've had in months is an Oddworld Movie. Sounds exciting, but not when that's all you get with nothing more for a year. You fail to know and respect that people get bored of talking about one subject for years, i.e. Oddworld. This forum may be based on Oddworld, but that doesn't mean people have to only talk about that and nothing else.

I hope that clears some things up.

I still like this idea. The Oddworld Forums are a community - we make friends and we like to chat, whatever it was that brought most of us here in the first place. It wouldn't detract from Oddworld, but it could bring the members closer together, which is definitely what this place needs at the moment.

If you're worried about pointless sub-forums, reintegrate non-Oddworld gaming into OT. It's so baren and an effort to remember to look in there when really it's discussion on a certain topic, instead of a different type of chatting, which W+B is.

This has probably been suggeted before, but Fan Corner could be moved to Zulag 1, leaving non-Oddworld creativity in Zulag 2. It would help to pad out Zulag 1, which is looking thin. Thus the Forums are would efficiently be divided into Oddworld-related talk and Oddworld-unrelated talk.

Not entirely divided. There'd still be Oddworld RP. SAlthuogh I suppose it could work if that got moved into Zulag 1 and then a Non-Oddworld RPG forum was made, although i dunno how active that'd be and also, that'd be a heck of a lot of work for the admins and staff.

I fully back up this idea all the way. The reason I don't post much is well ya i'm not that active as I once was, but also because I usually get the feeling i'm gonna say something stupid and people here usually don't like that. This idea could probably be my new home if created since it's probably gonna be...Less serious. :S

No, not nessecary from my view point. Though a lot of what CS has stated makes sense, I should bring up how many times before we have had the chance to consider creating more subforums, an ever changing topic, and noob spam solutions which have NEVER come into play, and things really haven't changed for the worse since then. Having noob troubles is something all forums will have to deal with, there's no getting around it. I wish you guys would take a look at OWF's history in 05 and then see if something like this is really that necessary. The whole soncept of a newb forum sounds stupid to me now, newbs post in the wrong forums enough as it is when the right ones are right in front of their eyes, what makes you think they will post their questions in a newb forum?

The idea of moving Fan Corner to Zulag 1 seems unessecary to me as well. If it would be for the reason of Zulag 1 "looking thin," well, size doesn't matter now does it?

To Max: I still don't get why OWF is this dark dingy place, in the eyes of everyone, as it was for half of 05. That was a short period of sudden depression, but since then GD has become considerably more active than before. I find myself looking in GD much more than OT these days.

Used, it's not intended to be a noob forum. Think of it as a ''light'' OT. In OT, we usually have threads discussing religion, sex, drugs, cars, music, appearances, deaths and politics. These are mostly some serious things. In the other board, you have lighter stuff. Your forum games, sports, talking about sig/avatars, some polls about things and many other things. Some people are also a bit shy for the OT, like metroixer said he was. Many of the people there will eat you alive if they don't like you or a thread you made. It could be considered a bit like a newb forum, in the sense that new people could post there to get the hang of OT. We all start out somewhere, and I still remember my first experiences in OT >.< But merely because it's a noob forum, that doesn't mean someone can post a poll, in AOL speak, asking people if they like macaroni. Those would be closed.

That maybe so, but like Havoc said, newbies should have to adapt to the forums, not the other way around.

I remember on my time on Shadows of Nothing Forums was flourishing with activity (not good activity, but still activity). It was because they managed to divide their range of forum subjects into a smart and even structure of sub forums, including a forum for just plain random drabble. It seems like a good idea for here, but I still don't think it would really do much for solving spam and noob problems, it would just add to the confusion and eventual flaming in either GD or OT.

Yeah, but the point I was trying to make is, that some newbies can't adapt to the forums. It's basically like sending a baby to work. I'm not sure what you mean with the flaming part, but there's no way anyone can find it'd be successful or not till it's been tried and tested.

I meant with the flaming part that nearly every single misunderstanding or mistake made by noobs erupts in flaming and closings, warnings and possible bans.

Yes, it would be smart to try the sub forum, but past experiments like the everchanging thread didn't do so well, and I am guessing that others won't.

Used, I wasn't describing the slowness of GD, I was describing the tendencies of people to be aggressive and wander off on tangents that don't aid the topic but which are just friends having fun. That's what the new area would be: a place for everyone to have more fun and community spirit, not a place for newbs to spam.

I still don't think it's going to work, let alone enacted.

Here's a suggestion to mull over. A flame forum. The amount of rage here is like... totally throwing off my Feng Shui. I'm serious. I think a forum where people could mindlessly vent, whether or not other members care, would be a nice addition. There's no way you're going to eliminate all the bad vibes here, so why not channel them somewhere where it's okay? The only problem I see is instigating members to be naughty. Most members end up doing that in OT, anyway.

And Used, touche, but I didn't make mine up ;)

Who said I did? :devil:

An inferno of sorts, eh? I'm familiar with a flaming area on another forum. Sadly, it gets a great deal of the majority of posts. :rolleyes: Although they can I'm not sure if I could agree with it... It could actually backfire, encouraging and increasing the hostility around here.

If people want to vent their anger, they can do it outside of the forums more than on the forums. Or do what I do, message it through very subtle methods, like quotes through the siggy, or in the av. (okay, did I just say 'do it in the snout, or in the ass'?)

Aye, that was one of my main concerns.

There are many approaches, but the seriousness of making a new forum sort of omits 'testing' said forum. Still, in droughts of creativity like the present, a trial forum may be in order.

A flame forum would be okay... but to be honest, if that happened then 75% of the members here would have a serious grudge afterwards. Alcar's already made a thread about flaming, so I don't think he'd be happy agreeing to it :S If you have a problem with someone, PMs are the way to go. Noone really wants to see people typing in caps lock and saying he wants someone else to die >.>

Anyway, can we test this out or not, Alcar/AbeBabe?