So.... what happened?

Deleted member 45 · Sep 3, 2018

McNum said:
deltaplus

I'm beginning to wonder if this whole thing started off a wrong conclusion. "Hangouts is where threads go to die." is a neat one-liner with a kernel of truth to it, sure, but... from where I'm looking, that doesn't seem to be the case. And seeing how the OTs took over not just one but two boards almost immediately today, I think it's safe to say that the threads in Hangouts are not dead. Besides, if a thread needs to die, it can be locked and/or deleted. Moving it to Hangouts has a different purpose, then.

As I see Hangouts, they have two purposes. Containment and preserving. Containment kind of speaks for itself today. If the OTs are allowed to mix with the new threads, the new threads will suffocate and fall off the first page into oblivion rather quickly. It's probably this that makes people say that Hangouts are where threads die, since they are out of sight after being moved. But the preserving part is equally important, as threads in Hangouts are kept alive and well, without disrupting the normal postings on the site. The only other alternative is to lock a thread that's been going on for too long to make room for new threads, which does happen here, too. But instead, an old OT in Hangouts is preserved for the community that uses it.

Hangouts is essentially for OT overflow. Not for threads that are about to die, but for threads that refuse to die. Any future solution needs to have something to handle OT overflow.

So to sum it up with a more accurate one-liner: "Hangouts are where undying threads are kept."

Which changes things rather severely, I'd imagine.

I just wanted to say thanks for your detailed insight!

Flow said:
deltaplus Why are some OTS allowed to exist in ETC while others can only be hangout.

Some OTs in Etc are for currently active threads, such as shows / movies currently showing or weekly threads for sports. If you have a suggestion on threads that you'd like to see in Etc, shoot mods a PM!

TheSkullPrince · Sep 3, 2018

Last night/this morning was something else, glad I was there lmao

Arkanius · Sep 3, 2018

I think the solution passes by having a stricter criteria of what triggers an OT to pass to Hangouts.
Very active threads should go into Hangouts. Slower threads should never go there. Unless the community is active, OT threads should not be moved.

Shauni · Sep 3, 2018

Cochese said:
One thing you can do is have all threads start in the main forum (don't even allow a new thread button in Hangouts), then when they reach a set amount of posts in a thread they get moved to Hangouts, as by then they will have established themselves. 500 posts, 750. 1000. Whatever. So any OTs that aren't ever really popular can bob to the top occasionally in the main forum until they gain a good footing. deltaplus

I thought it was already like that lol

JeTmAn said:
I checked out GAF a bit last night while Resetera was down. The number of Trump supporters there is...astonishing.

AltGAF is essentially, or at least trying to be, the Fox News of forums

Moppeh · Sep 3, 2018

Rad Bandolar said:
After reading through the relevant threads from Friday, last night, and today, I think this experiment has revealed a fundamental misunderstanding between a good potion of the membership and the Admins/Prominent Members™, about what this forum is and who it serves, and that these two groups are talking right past each other.

There's a large portion of the community whose primary interaction with the forum is through EtcetEra and maybe a couple of OT threads. These members view EtcetEra as its own community. These are the folks complaining about the forum split, having to go past a bunch of OTs to get to the content they care about, and ultimately putting a bunch of people on ignore so they can interact with their actual community again.

On the other side are the admins, who through all of their posts repeatedly state that they consider OTs to be the foundation of the forum and they tie the health of these OTs to the overall health of the forums, so they're taking actions to promote these OTs. In this instance, the action they took ran right into a large faction of users who don't see things the same way.

And the most frustrating thing to me as I read all of these posts is that a lot of people aren't picking up what the Admins are putting down: that the OTs are the thing that take precedence, and that the Admins either aren't aware of, or are dismissive of, the community that has coalesced around EtcetEra.

Which is fair -- they pay for the maintenance and upkeep of it, so they get to decide what their forum is and who it serves. I would just counsel that a community isn't static, and that it begins changing and transforming after the events that led to its creation, so perhaps recognizing that fact and trying to understand it might actually go a long way toward promoting a healthy & vibrant forum. After all, you inherited this community from somewhere else, and that community can just as easily decide to move on from here.

Great post. My thoughts exactly.

AztecComplex · Sep 3, 2018

Blizzard said:
The events of today made me very sad and extremely reminded of mod behavior in a different place during a different tumultuous time. I'm glad at least one thread was allowed to exist to discuss this.

If any moderators are reading, please remember the core values Era was founding on -- transparency and actually interacting with the community as a whole.

AFAIK they merged the 14 threads about the same topic into this one. Unless Im wrong then I wouldn't call that censorship or whatnot. In a month we wont remember this even happened. Hell all of this happened while I was asleep, it was that fast.

pestul · Sep 3, 2018

Christ how hard is it to read the title of a thread and say ''Nope not for me.. next". If political threads get you down or annoy you, don't open them up and subject yourself to that stress.

saenima · Sep 3, 2018

Woolley said:
I just don't understand the need to keep trying to push community threads on everybody. The spotlights didn't work because people weren't interested so why double down on it?

If people want to join a community they know where to find it.

This.

Feels like dragging a rotten corpse up to someone's face and going 'DO YOU SEE IT?'

If threads die it's because people are not interested. No point in trying to force things.

Flow · Sep 3, 2018

deltaplus said:
I just wanted to say thanks for your detailed insight!

Some OTs in Etc are for currently active threads, such as shows / movies currently showing or weekly threads for sports. If you have a suggestion on threads that you'd like to see in Etc, shoot mods a PM!

sounds good. thank you

Deleted member 733 · Sep 3, 2018

AztecComplex said:
AFAIK they merged the 14 threads about the same topic into this one. Unless Im wrong then I wouldn't call that censorship or whatnot. In a month we wont remember this even happened. Hell all of this happened while I was asleep, it was that fast.

Nope, this post summed it up well:

Yiazmat said:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-cant-we-discuss-what-happened.66181/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/i-...omes-to-accept-and-deal-with-criticism.66179/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/whats-the-purpose-of-stifling-discussion.66176/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/stop-locking-threads-about-the-restructuring.66175/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-don't-you-want-feedback-and-communication-to-be-transparent.66171/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/thank-you-resetera-staff.66166/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/can-we-talk-about-how-era-leadership-make-decisions.66164/

One of the similar threads was silently locked with no explanation literally while I was writing a reply to it begging for the mods not to silently lock it with no explanation.

CountAntonio · Sep 3, 2018

TheSkullPrince said:
Last night/this morning was something else, glad I was there lmao

I was entertained.

Lindsay · Sep 3, 2018

I also missed out on the changes! Going by some this thread I'm guessing most of era's members in general missed it to, so the community at large never even got to experience it! This forums still real young so theres many more events ta come at least!

Enduin · Sep 3, 2018

I'll say again I think two decent alternatives that don't dramatically change the structure or feel of the site would be to merge Hangouts into the VG/Etc forum pages, but in separate sections. Both on the same page, but in clearly defined sections. And/Or introducing an invisible tag system so promo posts with link to relevant Hangout threads can be posted after the OPs of titles dealing with those topics.

HotHamBoy · Sep 3, 2018

I don't understand why we couldn't have an OT Hangouts forum for Video Games and Etc as before but also have an Entertainment forum with its own Hangouts subsection.

Seems like that would solve everything.

LowParry · Sep 3, 2018

I wish I could of lived through the change with everyone so I can be outraged. /s

Lady Bow · Sep 3, 2018

The Almighty Tria said:
What are you talking about. No one said anything about sticking your head in the sand.

You're under the assumption that everyone who wants an entertainment section are ignoring all politics 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Which is fucking DUMB.

People need to stop pretending everyone's lives are a message board with 40,000 members. Good lord. People do shit outside of this place, including consuming politics.

Once again, if it bothers you this much, go download the extension instead of complaining because a politics sub-forum isn't going to happen. Where the hell would you draw the line with that? Also, sticking your head in the sand is a euphemism for ignoring, which you already said you wanted to do so.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/by-popular-demand-the-return-of-hide-forum-threads.35590/

Tya said:
Exactly. There should be only one forum on this site, politics.

You gotta work on your trolling.

Deleted member 9145 · Sep 3, 2018

Everyone just wants GAF 2.0

I respected the team for making the change

wish they stuck with it

TheSkullPrince · Sep 3, 2018

CountAntonius said:
I was entertained.

You the real MVP

Syder · Sep 3, 2018

Novel said:
YOOO PEEPSHOW.

People wanted the Admins to poll the entire board but...

Lackless · Sep 3, 2018

Guys, I got it. You can close the thread now.

Videogames (it's now one word. This will help.)
- Hangouts
EtecetEra
- Left Politics
- Right Politics

Every two weeks, each Political subforum will pick their favorite thread and the mods will move the threads into the opposing political subforum so the opposing side can now discuss the topic.

Deleted member 176 · Sep 3, 2018

HotHamBoy said:
I don't understand why we couldn't have an OT Hangouts forum for Video Games and Etc as before but also have an Entertainment forum with its own Hangouts subsection.

Seems like that would solve everything.

It wouldn't. It's annoying having to parse through multiple threads- the classic example is this morning threads giving feedback about the new layout in etcetera kept getting locked because there was already a thread about it in entertainment. It just makes everything more confusing.

AztecComplex · Sep 3, 2018

Blizzard said:
Nope, this post summed it up well:

One of the similar threads was silently locked with no explanation literally while I was writing a reply to it begging for the mods not to silently lock it with no explanation.

Ok fair enough but do we really needed that many threads about the same thing? Its standard procedure to lock repeated threads in general. We still got to keep the one thread about this and its going 24 pages strong so far in a couple of hours. I still stand that some of you are making to big a fuzz over a board change gone wrong that was quickly reverted.

The Almighty Tria · Sep 3, 2018

Lady Bow said:
Once again, if it bothers you *this much,* go download the extension instead of complaining because a politics sub-forum isn't going to happen. Where the hell would you draw the line with that? Also, sticking your head in the sand is a euphemism for ignoring, which you already said you wanted to do so.

You gotta work on your trolling.

I never said anything about ignoring politics, what are you talking about. ResetEra isnt the entire world and it sure as hell isnt the only media to consume, stop pretending it is.

HotHamBoy · Sep 3, 2018

Nostremitus said:
I don't know, I thought the entertainment section was fine.

We need it. Bring it back and make a third Hangouts subsection for it.

The big problem was merging, not splitting.

Deleted member 733 · Sep 3, 2018

AztecComplex said:
Ok fair enough but do we really needed that many threads about the same thing? Its standard procedure to lock repeated threads in general. We still got to keep the one thread about this and its going 24 pages strong so far in a couple of hours. I still stand that some of you are making to big a fuzz over a board change gone wrong that was quickly reverted.

I saw your post earlier in the thread making the same argument. To be clear, at the time when I was replying earlier today I wasn't aware of any place people could discuss it, AND no moderator identified themselves and linked to said thread (or any of those other threads), AND the threads weren't merged, AND it's almost exactly what it looked like in the old place when things about a moderator were being swept under the rug until the tide couldn't be stopped.

You have to consider all those factors and the very important history of Era and how it was supposed to be different to understand why this is so bad.

Fuzzy · Sep 3, 2018

ryseing said:
I had a long standing issue with GAF about the placement of our threads. College football is only an active sport for four months of the year, and so I thought it was reasonable to have us on the main off-topic board for the season while sticking us in the Communities section for the rest.

I still remember on GAF a new Toronto-GAF thread was created in OT to replace the closed old one in Community that got to 20K posts. We wanted it there for a bit to attract new members but it was moved to Community within 10 seconds of being created. It was ridiculous. lol

CountAntonio · Sep 3, 2018

TheSkullPrince said:
You the real MVP

Totally did not expect that thread to turn into what it did lol.

Deleted member 45 · Sep 3, 2018

Blizzard said:
Nope, this post summed it up well:

One of the similar threads was silently locked with no explanation literally while I was writing a reply to it begging for the mods not to silently lock it with no explanation.

The reason this happened is a lot more mundane. We got inundated with duplicates of the same thread and decided it'd be easier to lock them all and then reopen one to consolidate all the feedback. There was some delay because after the reversion this morning, our staff was exhausted, some went to sleep after being up for 30 hours (not exaggerating), and it fell to me to decide which one to reopen. I was boarding a plane (and am currently on one) so it took a bit for me to get wifi and communicate which thread to reopen.

HotHamBoy · Sep 3, 2018

Brock Reiher said:
It wouldn't. It's annoying having to parse through multiple threads- the classic example is this morning threads giving feedback about the new layout in etcetera kept getting locked because there was already a thread about it in entertainment. It just makes everything more confusing.

The feedback thread should have been in Etc by definition.

I'd love to be able to browse Etc without seeing a shitload of Star Wars threads all talking about the same thing, i.e. who's opinions are right about which movies are good.

lenovox1 · Sep 3, 2018

Jombie said:
I liked the entertainment board.

I like the idea of the entertainment section and the idea of keeping OTs prominent. I ultimately think of this place as a pop culture site, and this place was indeed built off the backs and the tracks of these micro-communities, the OTs.

It just didn't work out for the obvious reason: the OTs smothered the "normal" threads.

Deleted member 176 · Sep 3, 2018

HotHamBoy said:
The feedback thread should have been in Etc by definition.

Exactly, but it wasn't. That's why more boards are bad when you really don't need them.

Siggy-P · Sep 3, 2018

I actually liked the idea but I feel like Off-topics would have been either buried themselves, thus reducing the intended extra visibility, or would have been flooded with the usual negativity and drive by posting that Etecetera normally is filled with.

For example, let's say if I a regular poster in the Star Wars Off-Topic. I wouldn't want that hangout community area suddenly flooded with the incessant arguing and fighting over TLJ that acompany every single Star Wars thread on Etecetera.

Same goes for threads like footy, or fashion, or DCEU or whatever.

I don't think that the worries about people avoiding polcitics is a real issue though. I mean you can do that anyway, just by sticking to the Games subforum.

saenima · Sep 3, 2018

Speevy said:

Best deal.

Deleted member 3812 · Sep 3, 2018

Well, I'm not a prominent member of ERA despite having the "Community Resettler" tag and I was the creator of two Etc OTs but I wasn't contacted for my opinions on this navigation change.

deltaplus If Etc OTs are for shows currently airing, why was my Etc OT on the Star Trek franchise moved over to Hangouts after the navigation revert to remove the Entertainment section?: https://www.resetera.com/threads/star-trek-franchise-ot-to-boldly-go.20345/

Why would you do that? · Sep 3, 2018

I often worry about the longevity of ResetEra and our community as a whole staying together, and honestly, threads like this one remaining open makes me feel much more confident in Era and its overall longevity. Even when mistakes are made and the discussion is critical in nature, I think admitting to them and in general having an open, honest dialogue with the community brings and keeps us together.

The Era admins I'm sure always mean to do well for the community, but they also need to look like they mean to do well for the community as well, and having an open, honest dialogue helps with that.

Koo · Sep 3, 2018

Got home from work and opened it on mobile and it was a complete mess; wasn't even a proper official feedback thread. Did we ever get a clear concise answer on how it was supposed to serve smaller OTs and make them healthier or whatever? Because people brought this up in the announcement thread that they would just have more to compete with.

Kinda funny that this change was supposed to promote OTs ended up doing the opposite once people started mass blocking/ignoring threads and thread creators. xD
Will people even bother unblocking/unignoring things now?

kylecoley182 · Sep 3, 2018

Perfectly balance like all things should be

HotHamBoy · Sep 3, 2018

Brock Reiher said:
Exactly, but it wasn't. That's why more boards are bad when you really don't need them.

People would have figured it out. It was 5 hours, man.

Nick Nehidnyk · Sep 3, 2018

Wrath Of Exodust said:
Well, here's an example for ya Nick Nehidnyk

Implying the mods are homophobic, with the addition of implying I am. When in no way did I say anything about homophobes getting off scot free, nor would I celebrate such a fact.

Ehhh I think this is kind of just criticism. Criticizing moderation should be allowed, but it is our responsibility to tell the critics when they're wrong. That's just my opinion, though.

Tarot Deck · Sep 3, 2018

Man, if Dr Forester is not a proeminet member, I don't know who is.

Goron2000 · Sep 3, 2018

Reminder that back in the day GAF had all of the OT's in the public discussion forums, I had no issue with it then. OT threads would surface to the front page when there was interesting discussion happening, you knew something cool was happening if it stayed up. Mods on this forum are way too controlling of everything. Just let things happen naturally sometimes and it will work itself out. If a thread has grown too long eventually people will get bored and leave for another. If the Op is silly, people will mock them and eventually it will slip away or the community will come together to make something fun.

This forum is depressing and it's not because of political threads.

FUNKNOWN iXi · Sep 3, 2018

What a ride.

Deleted member 25709 · Sep 3, 2018

LOL. I viewed 2 threads and even posted in 1 before realizing that era changed back. No wonder I didn't have the same difficulty navigating the site like I did before I slept.

Deleted member 176 · Sep 3, 2018

HotHamBoy said:
People would have figured it out. It was 5 hours, man.

Why bother though? It doesnt fix anything and just makes it harder to find what you want.

Wrath Of Exodust · Sep 3, 2018

Nevermind, don't want to go in circles. have a good day y'all.

Shauni · Sep 3, 2018

HotHamBoy said:
People would have figured it out. It was 5 hours, man.

Nah, the amount of time wouldn't have mattered. A lot of OTs aren't active, but there's enough active that they'd be on the front page all the time. It smoothed both Entertainment and Etc. It just wasn't workable as was.

Anyone who was there and looked at Gaming, then looked at Entertainment and Etc. could see the issues. It just wasn't a good issue, even if you take out the fact that it would have isolated political discussion into a more withered community.

Tya · Sep 3, 2018

Lady Bow said:
You gotta work on your trolling.

I'm not trolling. I'm pointing out the obvious.

This is what you posted.

Everything is political. Thinking otherwise is stupid as hell. Go download the hide threads extension if you want to stick your head in the sand.

Based on that, make a coherent argument for why the gaming forum should exist while also arguing that the entertainment forum should not.

Stiler · Sep 3, 2018

Like the main things I talk about on here are either gaming or in etcetc for both news/entertainment and just interesting topics I see. Splitting entertainment off (fragmenting etcetc) and then driving OT's to the front just felt a bit much, like completely changed the way the board was useful for what I used it for.

A forum I used to frequent many many years ago died off because at its height in popularity they decided to make a ton of new boards which basically drove discussions down across the whole thing. Instead of just popping into one "off topic" section to talk about....well basically anything you couldn't talk about in the other 2 boards you ended up having to go through a list to figure out where your topic belonged and then those smaller/niche topics just never got the eyes on them like they used to and slowly people left because the traffic just kept going down and down.

I understand wanting to make OT's important and get them recognized, so not sure how to do that really.

Flow · Sep 3, 2018

Goron2000 said:
Reminder that back in the day GAF had all of the OT's in the public discussion forums, I had no issue with it then. OT threads would surface to the front page when there was interesting discussion happening, you knew something cool was happening if it stayed up. Mods on this forum are way too controlling of everything. Just let things happen naturally sometimes and it will work itself out. If a thread has grown too long eventually people will get bored and leave for another. If the Op is silly, people will mock them and eventually it will slip away or the community will come together to make something fun.

This forum is depressing and it's not because of political threads.

I agree with this. Reset Era was made during election time and I didn't see any complaints about politics dominating the discussion and ruining ETC. Stop using politics as a scapegoat.

Communities are sticking to themselves are finding other places to go to because Mods/admins lack of fairness when dissing out bans and warnings.

spam musubi · Sep 3, 2018

AztecComplex said:
Ok fair enough but do we really needed that many threads about the same thing? Its standard procedure to lock repeated threads in general. We still got to keep the one thread about this and its going 24 pages strong so far in a couple of hours. I still stand that some of you are making to big a fuzz over a board change gone wrong that was quickly reverted.

The threads were made one by one as the previous ones got locked. If not for that, the mods wouldn't have re-opened this one for discussion. They attempted to sweep it under the rug, and failed.

So.... what happened?

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