This seems to have come up an awful lately, so I figured I might as well just ask everyone in here, seems controversial enough. There has been a movement as of late that believes Controversy Corner exists as some sort of Off-Topic Forum part 2.

Maybe I'm interpretting this wrong, but I always believed the CONTROVERSY Corner of the forums does not equate to "Post threads here where you tell everyone in it to STFU" or "Post threads asking inane polls involving Oz and Wonderland". In my opinion, thats why we have the OFF-TOPIC FORUMS, for OFF-TOPIC THREADS. Rants & Randomness didnt appear to be enough for you people, we had to go and change it to purely off-topic, and now even THAT doesnt seem to be enough, and you have to bring that stuff in here.

The way I see it, this forum exists as a destination for threads that have gotten out of hand with flaming, serious debate threads, and threads where you want people to be honest as hell, and dont care if a flamewar erupts (Like this one).

So, tell me, am I overreacting here? Is Controversy Corner not just a place for controversy, but off-topicness as well? Or does anyone here agree with me? If it turns out I'm in the minority, I will fully conceed defeat and change my tactics to fit the new interpretation of this forum.

ive allways had problems with people who dont understand that the categories in a forum actually have something to do with their content.

this forum is for discussing gun-controll, pro-choice and politics in general aswell as religion and other topics where people will strongly dissagree

i dont think youre wrong here oobey and i urge dna and dev and to keep the rendomness in the off topic forum (that is not to say that you alone are to blame. i too have been posting randomness in this part of the forums) and that goes for the rest off you to

i hereby declare that i will post random things in here no more

While we're at it, here's a few of my rants about people's posting habits on the boards in general.

1)  Grammar.  Poor use of it shows you're either uneducated, don't care, lazy, stupid, or else a poor speaker of the English language.  The last of these I can understand where people who do not speak English as a first language are concerned, but there is no excuse for not punctuating and capitalizing the first letter in a sentence.  Grammar rules may differ from language to language, but the basic concept that a sentence contains a complete thought does NOT.  When I see posts that look like what madman and Dire Hamster make fun of in the PQ mailbag show up on the board I cringe.

2)  Irrelevant conversations in the middle of a serious topic.  dev/null and dna, you're both horrible for doing this, but practically everyone is guilty of it.  I do it myself once in a while, but I try not to.  A thread is started about, oh, let's say a certain thread regarding monsters.  Somewhere about a few posts down it turns into something like this example where several people are involved:



... and thus a thread regarding monsters turns into a discussion about game consoles.


3)  Repetition of something already addressed in the middle of an unrelated topic.  Let's say a thread is going on about code updates regarding some bugs fixed with the BFG or something and somebody pipes up "Hey, are you going to get that grenade to stop shooting out sideways?  When are we going to see more player models/skins?" when BOTH concerns are in the manual/readme and on previous posts.  It's one thing if it's a new forum visitor who might not know this has been adressed, and another when it's the same person pestering/nagging or having been told when it will be handled before.

4)  Reposting about a closed topic.  If a topic is locked, it means either 1) don't go there or 2) move on to something else.  Don't be surprised if you post a new topic about something that's been closed and see that post vanish from the forums.  There are more important things than reopening old wounds or "just getting your two cents worth in", especially if you missed the entire conversation until that point.

5)  Starting a new topic with the effect of "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not" directed at the team, the game, or the moderators in general.  It's one thing to propose an idea, and another to ram it down someone's throat.  If you think something totally sucks that's fine, come out and say it, but I expect a "because" to follow "This sucks" along with the explanation of WHY it sucks.  "This rocks!" never needs explanation.

6)  Topic spamming.  If it's regarding a thread that already exists, or looks like it should, put it as a reply.  Don't spam a gazillion new topics about trivial matters and push more important ones off the board please?  This is especially important on the main mod boards.

7)  Reply Spamming.  That is, a string of back-and-forth single line replies like you're in a chat room.  Sometimes a single-line reply is apropriate, but when it turns into an html instant messaging service then enough is enough.  You want to do that, use the PM function on the new boards instead of spamming a thread into oblivion.  That's what the PM function is there for.

This might sound nitpicky, or like the bird's tailfeathers are pinching him the wrong way, but it's how I feel about a lot of what I see here.  We're pretty lax on the rules to a point, and I understand natural conversation wanders a bit, but when someone says "let's get back on topic" and it goes back OFF topic immediately again that's absurd, especially if it's an important topic.  If you want to discuss anything and everything we have IRC, as well as the web-based IRC if you can't get a normal chat session up and running due to firewalls, etc.  I'm NOT saying stop posting, that's what the boards are for, but we could all benefit a bit more if it's kept a bit less chaotic.  :blink:

I'd just like to say I think dev and dna have gotten a LOT better as of late. I think it's just what you two used to represent that makes you such easy examples

Ah, okay

I didn't read any of this due to lack of interest in reading at the moment, but the way I see it is.......... isn't being controversial also being off-topic? Think about it, all of the controversial issues that arise could also be posted in the off-topic forums, and if any are Gen related they could go in the Generations forum. That's just my take on it though... but in any case... rock on!!