At 8/7/06 12:47 PM, Earfetish wrote:
Shut the fuck up if you don't like my sig, I don't fucking care, it's entirely irrelevant.
I'd argue against that reasoning. Everything is relevant because everything affects something else. But, i'm not that worried about your sig so don't take it as me critisizing you. My one point is that every little thing that a person sees will effect him/her and how they percieve the place. Since pictures are much more attractive to the eye than text, people will notice your sig first before your post.
As for the state of the bbs, I generally agree that with the current trend, or rather consistant unchanged trend, there will be no explosion of intelligent growth on our beloved bbs. It isn't, however, that no one intelligent comes to newgrounds. You, I, and others disprove that theory entirely. It has more to do with what kind of person is going to stick around for the forums.
In fact, most animators have above normal intelligence. IQs generally range well above 110 for the average animator. Why don't we see a lot of animators? Because they are animating. Forums are for discussing, not drawing. And further, most animators don't want to deal with the hassle of having fans or "haters" whenever they come to talk about something unrelated.
But then there are also intelligent people who come to view flash. Why don't we see them here? Perhaps because they are intelligent enough to find other more productive or social ways of wasting their time. The internet attracts a lot of people, but the people that stick around generally aren't the most loved by society. Sure there are some who do a lot out there, but in their off hours they generally can't find anything better to do than post or navigate the internet.
You also have to think about how a user would find the forums, or why they would be motivated to come to the forums. Upon first glance, the only motivation is a few buttons and an offer to talk about flash in the portal on the left hand side. Most users that come here have a question, and a lot of the time its because they've broken a rule on another part of the site or don't understand how the site works. People who have understood the site and havn't broken rules have less of a motivation to come here. Still some do, but a smaller (maybe not significantly) portion of intelligent people make their way here than idiots.
Now we come to the final reason our site is the way it is in my opinion, choice. As soon as you come here, the bbs, you have a choice. You either post or you don't. If you are just curious, you read first. Maybe you see the rules, but you probably are more interested in whats being said. Being attacked by viciously stupid topics you either laugh, agree, or realise just how stupid this place is and then you leave. Or you find one original topic that interests you and you stay. Or you are an idiot and everything seems funny and you stay. And maybe, just maybe a couple of pictures prominent on the bbs influence your decision one way or the other.
It is a very complex decision, full of twists that happens over seconds or hours. The current state of things obviously has the largest impact on what kind of people remain. As long as the state remains unchanged for any significant period of time, the kind of people that come in and ultimatly stay won't change either.
The method of changing things is completly unclear and possibly impossible to find. Stricter modding is one alternative, but just deleting all the crap you can find is a temporary solution to a current problem. Deletion does about the same thing. Even though you remove current idiots, the new ones have already been influenced. The small crop of regulars that stay are usually somewhat intelligent, but far too few or worn out to really be able to make a difference on their own and moderators, some of the "best" users on the site are busy cleaning it up instead of necesarily contributing the way they used to.
The only possible way to change things is for enough people to suddenly decide to change and lead by example. Extremely strict moderation would also help, but might not be enough. Its extremely unlikely.
I don't know what to do about it all. I'm all in favor of a higher quality bbs with better threads and a somewhat more mature and intelligent conversation status. I just can't see it ever really happening. I make an effort to make a couple good threads with some sort of consistancy. Sometimes I fail in the effort and part of the problem is that I'm constantly putting forth effort that sometimes I can't think of anything and end up posting something stupid or something that doesn't appeal to enough people to make a difference.
So basicly, we could keep the status quo with out much of a problem, but change would be difficult and probably unappreciated leading to lots and lots of strife for users who don't want to change. A gradual change which I didn't talk about would be difficult without constant persuasion.