Saving these forums

[Ric_Flair]

And Zherbus sayeth:

If this [the open] forum doesn't seriously stop sucking so much ass, it's getting combined with the newbie forum and closed down.

When I first found the site I posted stuff in Legend and MoloDet's Ankh Sligh forum and being a total newbie did not understand the protocol or the propriety of the forum.  I kept trying to change the subject, interject off topic things in to the discussion, and I was an all around PAIN IN THE ASS.  I publicly apologize to Legend and MoloDet for this.  

I think that the quality in the Open forums has dropped off considerably because people lack decorum and do not post thoughtful or thought provoking comments.  I also think that people have become inappropriately radicalized about budget issues.  They have also become obsessed with policy debates.  I know there is an protocol sticky somewhere, so I will only repeat a few of those comments.  I think that people posting in these forums need to do the following things:

1.  Playtest.  I am preparing for the bar and graduating law school this year so my tournament attendence has been paltry, but I still try to regularly playtest.  If you post a deck with no playtesting results please take it down.  If you were Kai or Roland, you would have gotten a full membership when you applied.  And only those caliber of players can post without playtesting.

2.  Do not post decklists with card comments like "Mana Drain: 'Nuff Said"  We all know that Mana Drain is good.  There is no need to explain some things, but other comments require explanation.  People seem to fail to recognize these two types of cards and the comments end up spending three paragraphs on why Oath is required but no discussion of odd ball choices like Prohibit or the like.  These are just examples, not particular instances.  I am trying not to point fingers.

3.  EDIT AND SPELL CHECK.  Once you post, read it through for content, grammar, and spelling.  I get so angry when I see people with AWFUL content spelling like a second grader and no edit tag.  Unless you are ESL, there is no excuse for this.  

4.  Post thoughtful things.  I am SO tired of reading posts about the restricted list.  We all know that things can come off the list, but the people that post merely repeat what others have said.  How many people have really tried to break Doomsday?  How many people can provide solid data to show one card or another is worthy of moving on or off the list?  Don't form your opinions by using other people's opinions, try facts for once.  If you have a unique approach or a narrower approach to a topic great, but I am sick and tired of retreads of topics discussed days before.  I understand that B&R threads will appear on a semi regular basis, but we are getting proxy threads WEEKLY.  Either add to the original thread, take a new approach, or SHUT UP.

5.  Listen to what people said.  I love arguing.  We all do.  That is one reason why forums are great.  But at some point we all have to listen to other people.  There is a lot of collective wisdom on this site, not just about Magic.  Some of these people have shaped the format and the game.  Listen to them.  People that post a comment then REFUSE to change ANYTHING they said should not be in a forum.  Get your own website and yell at us there.  Here, we like to discuss things.

6.  Stay on topic.  Budget issue discussions invariably beome libertarian v. socialism debates.  That is not on topic.  B&R discussions turn into what deck can I not beat discussions.  That is not on topic.  

7.  Read about the issue.  Steve has done a lot of work that is available on SCG.  So has JP and Phil.  Many people have spent a TON of time on primers.  Read them before you complain, criticize, or alter their comments or decks.  If you want to talk about the B&R list, do your research.  Read Steve's article, and (tooting my own horn here) my letter.  If you want to talk about the metagame read Steve's, JP's, and Carl's posts.  If you want to talk policy and metagame read Phil's stuff.  Also find the "hub threads" and read those.  Rich (AtogLord) has a thread on Control Slaver.  Read that before you start your own.  Jacob has a Worsethanfish.dec thread, again read that.  Also, when posting there, realize that these people have done a lot of playtesting and random comments about "add card X" are not usually helpful, especially when they are stated in an adversative way.  These people know what they are doing.

8.  Stop the Budget Bitching.  Look we all had to go get cards.  We all have financial pressures and limitations.  If you do it right you CAN get the pricey cards.  In the meantime, use the proxy rule and make the best decks you can.  But making decks that eschew Power to be in line with a "political" belief about the price of cards is silly.  Quit complaining and go get the cards.

9.  Do not use only anecdotal evidence.  I am so incredibly fed up with people saying things like "it is good in my metagame." Great, when I play against you and your three friends I will remember that.  This place, however, has to consider larger issues.    But the use of anecdotal evidence does not end there.  People trying to make policy arguments need to remember that once does not make a trend and your own, personal experience is just one drop in the bucket.  Talk about trends, logical relationships, and common experience.  Anecdotes only prove what happened to you.

10.  Quote authorities.  If you are going to make an outlandish claim either support it yourself or find a person that is an authority and quote them.  Bear in mind that you need to quote good authorities in order to support your argument.  In other words if you are arguing with Steve using Rakso quotes you lose.  

11.  Be polite.  There is no reason not to.  People like courteous responses and it engenders better discussion.

12.  Don't take things too personally.  Just because we all hated your deck idea does not mean people think your a bad person.  If you have a history of retarded ideas, then maybe something needs to change.  We all post something stupid every once and a while.  Just don't make a habit of it and don't feel bad when people call you on your mistakes.  That happens in life.

13.  Pretend like you are making a logical argument.  There is, never was, and never will be a reason NOT to run on-color Moxen.  They are ALWAYS good.  They are simply put, better land.  So when people say things like "This deck works better without Moxen" I know, and everyone else knows, that person is being stupid.  This goes for all sorts of things.  Try to make arguments as rational, clear, and coherent as possible.  This is not a logic class, but everyone appreciates statements that make sense.

Let's see if we can save the Open forums.  People need to post more thoughtful comments.

[Androstanolone]

I think people just need to stop creating a thread for every stray thought that crosses their mind or every cute pile of cards they wanna show everyone.  



- androstan

[swooop]

Yeah stop posting decklists on old decks with no new tech im sick of reading about sui black and void, they can still pull out wins but nothing new has been added in a year and they dont deserve 10+ posts.

[Josti]

And Zherbus sayeth:

If this [the open] forum doesn't seriously stop sucking so much ass, it's getting combined with the newbie forum and closed down.

Although i'm really supporting your post and objective's don't forget Z. only said this about the budget forum, and not about the T1 Open forum.

And what did the budget forum brought us:

Most of the decks in there are silly stripped down keeper, tog and MUD list's which won't work because of the missing br0kiness. the only good thing the budget forum brought me is this: the newbs and serious budget players didn't wasted my time in the newbie/T1 open forum.

Don't get it up side down. We need to improve the posts on this forum, and the quality has to come back again, like on the ol' TMD

My oppinion, Josti.

[Tempe]

Unless you starting using tags denoting budget, and hopefully denoting a type of budget (See Sig for details), the budget forum is a necessary evil. No one wants to open a Hulk deck to see if they can improve theirs, just to find out that ther person's hulk deck is budget. This rarely helps.

Personally, I think that some of those rules are broken simply because it happens to every forum. Unless the mods become really strict on things like random comments and bad grammar, it will always happen. Of course, that's why Zherbus has split the community in two, so that at least one forum doesn't have that kind of stuff. The downside is that those who have opinions and are following all of the rules are sometimes not realized and can not post in that forum. Not only do other people miss out on his/her ideas, but he/she misses out on getting feedback. I think we can all admit that more serious discussion goes on at the "real" Type 1 Forum than in any other forum.

Ric, just wondering, what do you mean by #8? Do you mean the people who constantly whine how power is too expensive and they want reprints? Or just budget deckbuilders in general. I think that any game where there can be an investment of $300 or more will have players who can't afford to, or don't want to do that. Therefore, there will inevitably be a lower tier where players who don't have that commitment can still play the game. I hope everyone can admit that Budget Decks will almost _always_ (there are some rare cases otherwise) be subpar when compared to a non-budget counterpart.

Otherwise, I completely agree. I just think there is not much we can do without taking drastic measures like severe modding or applying for membership at all. Personally, having 1 forum where you don't really care what happens to it, and all of the bad posters that are breaking these rules can go there, that wouldn't be too bad. Let them take a taste of their own medicine.

--Tempe

[Dr. Sylvan]

By "Budget Bitching", I think Tony is referring to people constantly starting threads about proxy issues. Issues in general are healthy to discuss, but if you're going to start a thread about it, you have to know when it was last discussed. If it's been a week or even one month, there better be a damn good reason you're bothering to start another thread.

[Tempe]

Ok, that makes me feel a little better, since I am I a strong supporter of building budget decks for the less fortunate. This is also why I would like to keep the Budget Forum. I completely agree that the Proxy threads have gotten way out of hand. The most ironic part about it is, though, nothing _ever_ comes out of any of those threads.

--Tempe

P.S. I always thought your name was actually Ric Flair, but I guess its Tony :-p.

[Plainswalker]

When I first found the site I posted stuff in Legend and MoloDet's Ankh Sligh forum and being a total newbie did not understand the protocol or the propriety of the forum. I kept trying to change the subject, interject off topic things in to the discussion, and I was an all around PAIN IN THE ASS. I publicly apologize to Legend and MoloDet for this.

Although I agree with Ric on everything, what he basically says at the start concerns me. If a full TMD member was a pain in the ass, can't we expect the same to be true for lots of other newcomers? The number of people I've seen with 1-10 posts all of sudden has been a huge jump in the community and it's a little off balance right now is all I feel.

I think this huge group of locks all at once is probably a good idea to grab some attention since nothing else has seemed to work, but combining the two forums does two things, neither of which I'd be happy with.

1.) It would be that much harder for all those who want full membership to get it, since there would be that much more stuff to shift through and would only make the job of the mods harder with double the number of threads jumping up and down as people tried to get in their point about a topic. At least even now with the huge amount of shit topics that have popped up, I can skim through what I want to see by just opening up the page and not scrolling around looking for it.

2.) It means we've been given up on. This isn't meant to provoke a fight or something, I just mean to say that we've really been cut in half as a community if that happens. I've already talked to a few Full members here about it, and it's pretty much unanimous that none of them even want to look at the newbie forum anymore except for mod reasons. Moving everyone to a newbie forum would literally cut the community in two.

The only solution I can think of is some how make the forum rules appear right out on the front page, which isn't desired of course, because it's for new news. Basically it comes to this, if you have a tested mainstream or new deck, post it in the Open forum. If you have a deck that is new and untested or that isn't budget, but has been talked about quite a bit and you only want help with it, post it in the newbie forum. I won't say anything about single card discussions and the like because I don't know myself where they best belong, although I usually post anything like that in newbie.

There are many idiots online and I don't believe by putting them together with the people that have more intelligent things to say could possibly be the right answer. All answers should be exhausted before that happens, we'll have to see how the number of locked threads affect how people post for now. Remember though we get new comers all the time so this is only a temporary solution.

Anyways, that's what I've got to say on it. I personally don't care about full membership because I only useally come out around big tournaments or important topics like this. I know Zherbus and the others aren't looking for this. Don't wreak it for the people who do though by posting a billion Show and Tell decks. Keep old threads open and really get into a good discussion about decks. Don't be so lazy that you open your own thread on the topic just because you don't feel like reading through 6-7 pages of material. Personally I liked those deck that were showing up, but they belong in Newbie or Casual because they are not tournament decks, if you can't realize this then you haven't played enough yet. Sorry.  

[jpmeyer]

If you follow rules and know what you are talking about, there is nothing to fear.

And besides, how likely is it that somebody who doesn't feel like taking the time and effort to work within a system is going to be productive or a useful addition to the community?  It's not like you are required to make crappy posts or start crappy threads when you can always read existing posts or read existing articles on other sites.

[Alfred]

I have been a member of these forums for over half a year now. I enjoy the intelligent discussion and debate. It has been only recently that the forums have changed and the new, open T1 forum has been implemented. Though I haven't been the most  active poster, I still enjoy the fact that I am able to comment on discussions if I want. As for the quality of the posts, there seems to be a gap between the bad posts ie: "SEEKING CARD - red or artifact anti-enchantment", and the good ones: see Smmenen's Draw7.dec.

I realize that it is a hassle for the mods to move, ban and warn so many people, but for the rest of us, what's the big deal? If you see a topic that reads "Type 1: The bizness" or something equally retarded, you just move on and accept that with an open forum comes the reality that people who have NO idea what they are talking about will make posts, and will do them poorly.

For example: "River boa in fish eh? don't seem to good, everytime some post a good deck people ruin it by added there own "tech" to it sad really."

This was posted in the WTF discussion. Personally, I love seeing these posts. The humor comes in the fact that they have horrible spelling, 0 punctuation, and are extremely ignorant. People like these make the rest of us sound brilliant in comparison.

To a lesser extent this is why I like the open type one forum. I like the fact that there are a whole host of different opinions and skill levels. I'm sure that some of the more experienced TMDers post in the open forum because their insight into certain topics seems that much more enlightened, when compared to the less experienced. And contrary to many people's beliefs newer members can contribute to the TMD community.

[Lucentspirit]

Something I've noticed lately is many people that don't have a full account want to post tournament reports. They can't post in the tournament section and all these reports end up flooding the open T1 forum. I don't think these reports add a huge amount to the topics in the open T1 forum, but I do oftan like to read them. Is it possible to have a tournament report section for non-members to help keep the open T1 forum free for topics better suited to open discussion?

[Plainswalker]

That's the thing though, I doubt anyone reads the forum rules when they first come here, I know I never have when I post anywhere else. There useally not this strict. Obviously they are for a reason and I agree with them, but if someone is on there 1-5 posts, they should be given a chance at least. People have been saying lately that T1 has become much more popular, and with that there will be many more new people coming here. As I said, things are just out of balance right now and time and effort will fix it in good time. Then there is just the small flow of noobs coming in afterwards that can be dealt with more easily.

If you follow rules and know what you are talking about, there is nothing to fear.

Everyone thinks they know what they're talking about if they are new to the game. I can't talk people out of playing Tsunami maindeck where I play at college because they have always played with a random number of cards in a deck with no sideboards. They all agree that this is fine because that's what they have been taught. If everyone knew what they were talking about then there would be no reason for discussion.

how likely is it that somebody who doesn't feel like taking the time and effort to work within a system is going to be productive or a useful addition to the community?

Simple, me you and others give them time and patient to become better and make them productive members. Maybe I have a little more patient with kids and people learning new things because I want to be an elementary school teacher. The only point I'm trying to get across is that by combining the two forums, all that will happen is decent players will stay decent, and bad players will stay bad. People will not improve if they are being helped by people who know as little as them. It's like the blind leading the blind.

[jpmeyer]

I personally haven't had much of a problem with the volume of postings, just the quality of them.

[Suckamouf37]

Has there been any thought of just banning people?  I'm not talking about new members with like 3-7 posts but people who have made 50 or so posts, all of which contain complete shit.

[Jacob Orlove]

Has there been any thought of just banning people?  I'm not talking about new members with like 3-7 posts but people who have made 50 or so posts, all of which contain complete shit.

See: Rancor/Centroles.

If you have a complaint about someone, send Zherbus a PM with links to examples of that person's poor posts.

[Dr. Sylvan]

2.) It means we've been given up on. This isn't meant to provoke a fight or something, I just mean to say that we've really been cut in half as a community if that happens. I've already talked to a few Full members here about it, and it's pretty much unanimous that none of them even want to look at the newbie forum anymore except for mod reasons. Moving everyone to a newbie forum would literally cut the community in two.

I actually constantly look at the Open and Newbie Forums, even if I dismiss a majority of the threads based on titles I'm not interested in. And I'm neither a Mod nor a VA with Mod privs. I'm not sure if this is a minority activity, though.

One observation I've made is that most people post to the Open forum when they probably should use the Newbie board. If there's a problem in undertrafficking the Newbie board (compared to how many threads belong their) and low quality in the Budget board, perhaps they should be combined. Thoughts?

[jazzykat]

I for one would be all in favor of merging the newbie and T1 forum, and then having it more strictly moderated. That way we can:

1. See everyone's ideas because I never look in the newbie forum and I have a feeling alot of other people don't.
2. Make it easier to mod.

I also am in favor of keeping the budget forum around as, I don't want to read about a budgetized version of Tog which is obviously inferior to a fully powered version, but is still important if someone who does not have full power wants to play with it.

[Ric_Flair]

Phil said:

I actually constantly look at the Open and Newbie Forums, even if I dismiss a majority of the threads based on titles I'm not interested in. And I'm neither a Mod nor a VA with Mod privs. I'm not sure if this is a minority activity, though.

I do this too.  In fact, I remember reading your posts there and remarking to mods about how high quality they were.  Often times I read a newbie post and see one or two pieces of good tech or random good arguments.

To other people who worry about promotion:  people do get promoted.  They get promoted because they make quality posts and contribute the community.

In short, people are watching.

[DEA]

don't mind me, but the way i see it, people are posting long primerish threads or decklists with hardly any coherent discussion simply because of the promotion thing
imo, if people just posted for the sake of the game instead of *hoping* to get noticed blah blah we'd have a lot less of the quality problems

[Plainswalker]

I actually constantly look at the Open and Newbie Forums, even if I dismiss a majority of the threads based on titles I'm not interested in. And I'm neither a Mod nor a VA with Mod privs. I'm not sure if this is a minority activity, though.

I made the assumption from people I've talked to and what I've seen, I have to live with it if I'm wrong, but we'll see. I'm glad you and Ric do, and I assumed Ric did of course since he made this thread in the first place. I should not have made this sound so much like an attack, I'm sorry if it came off that way.

One observation I've made is that most people post to the Open forum when they probably should use the Newbie board.

That's the problem right there, and that's what need to be dealt with I believe. It's the answer to this we need to look for now. It's easy for me to just say "Mod's just move more threads" but I have no idea how much time and/or work this entails. Again, as the good doctor said, thoughts?

[skecreatoR]

The quality of good posts have most surely dropped over the weeks and imho, the reason might be closer then we think.

First, when the number of people increase, especially in a format like T1, dominated by +18, intelligent and mature people, the number of idiots also increase. That's a fact, especially on the internet.

Some people post comments, just to post comments. I like to post, but on a forum like TMD, I darn well know when to shut up, at least at times. There is a elite, not saying it is a bad thing, but there is a elite in the T1 community, and while the format is becomming bigger and bigger, that elite becomes gradually smaller, in perspective, of course. When I started posting about 6 months ago, I wasn't really knowing the personalities behind modern Type1.

Zherbus, Jacob Orlove, Smmemen, jpmeyer and a bunch of other guys who over the years have contributed to creating the meta, the tech and the envirroment. We have those guys to thank, and you know who you are, Paragons, Hadleys &  MeanDecks.

My local monthly tournament was two months back 30 players. Then a record of 44, in ONE month we jumped to a astonishing number of 74 players. 74. That is a bunch, considering we actually almost rose 250%. This plain sucks.

When we were 44, it was all good. I was getting somewhat proud of our meta, being about 40% powered and the latest craze at the time (OStompy, TnT) was widely shown in different versions. I enjoyed that meta, it was challenging and you would with 80% chance face either an archtype or a well tuned meta deck. That was the way it was. Last week, I chose for the tournament to play Darg0n. My first match, I open with Underground Sea, and passes the turn. He go Swamp > Dark Ritual (At this point im horrified.) > Royal Assasin. Royal "Timmy" Assasin? What the heck. What's the point. I crushed him beneath me in about a total of 5 rounds in both games, and I was annoyed that my first match went like that.

I saw elves, soldiers, suicide.suck and other decks I hoped died with the leaving of Onslaught block. I don't want Type2 in Type1, I want Type1.

The point being that when the community expands, the idiots claim their entrance. I'm 15 and from Denmark, i'm in worst case one of those, but I chose to learn and understand the fundamentals. I read the articles, I read the whole Extreme Vintage board through, just to get fundamental knowledge of the format. Now, I far from have the wit the oldschoolers enjoy, but I have a grip of tech and metagaming, and thats pretty much it. The old TMD was very well run and organized, the new one is growing out of hand. We went from The Shire to Manhatten in size, metaphorical. Then, the quality of posts dropped. And boy did it drop. I read everything in the closed forums, just to get the grip. People blabber (Hold's a mirror in front of my own face) on and on, they want to become Vintage Adept.

Vegeta deserved it, and got it. Thats totally fair, and some others might deserve it too. But not all have intelligent stuff to say in those forums. The niveau there is just plain higher, and I wouldn't, for one, be able to follow the discussions there. I like to watch, and thats the thing im going to for a little while. Watch those topics grow. It is like a Mozart symphony reading Zherbus defending his MD choices in Keeper, discussing what to drop for the "Wish able carddraw in the SB" and so forth. People discuss it with the fundamental knowledge and understanding of both Keeper, Type1 & metagaming. And that is beatiful to read.

But in Open, few people have that wit. (You are out there, no doubt, you know who you are) Therefore, the quality of posts is naturally lower. As soon as the average age is dropping, the quality is. That's just the way it is. TMD need a harder line to avoid this. Banning & deleting(locking) posts should be done more often, and warning messages be dropped reguarly. That would teach people to STFU!!!1 when they didn't have anything neither proper or wise to say.

I probably end up being one of those perverted, pesky nerds with 1000+ posts, but surely not with a Vintage Adept status. I don't want it and I don't need it. People must begin to understand that there is a elite, and to become a part of that elite, you must first understand everything the elite proclaim. That is the first step. Then being active and making sense is the next. Im Basic TMD User 4life, and i'm fine with it. 97% of the people here has nothing to say in the closed forums. N o t h i n g. If more people were fine with that, Basic User status and accepting you don't have to comment on everything, we would have a better forum, in general.

My $0.02.

(Sorry for spelling, grammar, punctuation. My english is suffering from vey poor grammar! Darn english teacher!)

[jpmeyer]

Honestly, like the only advantage of being a full user is that you get to post in like the non-Magic forums.  With regards to like status on the site, it's just an e-penis thing.  It's not like VA status where you are a mini-mod.

[cssamerican]

Perhaps the answer to this problem is having the Basic TMD User level access as it is currently. However, when some idiot post a decklist followed only by the sentence "This is the best deck in the World" than drop their access to Newbie and restrict there posting to the Newbie forum.
This way the Newbie forum is exactly that a "newbie" forum. This also seems like a punishment that is a lot easier to deal out for a moderator since your not completely banning the person from ever posting on the site again. This also give people a forum in which they can ask newbie questions without be look upon as a horrible poster. And in time if these people's posting improves they can re-earn their Basic TMD User level access.
This way you don't keep new uniformed members from interacting within themanadrain community, but you organize it in such a way that they don't continually detract from the level of discussions going on in the more regulated forum.

[Shadow Ninja]

Perhaps the answer to this problem is having the Basic TMD User level access as it is currently. However, when some idiot post a decklist followed only by the sentence "This is the best deck in the World" than drop their access to Newbie and restrict there posting to the Newbie forum.
This way the Newbie forum is exactly that a "newbie" forum. This also seems like a punishment that is a lot easier to deal out for a moderator since your not completely banning the person from ever posting on the site again. This also give people a forum in which they can ask newbie questions without be look upon as a horrible poster. And in time if these people's posting improves they can re-earn their Basic TMD User level access.
This way you don't keep new uniformed members from interacting within themanadrain community, but you organize it in such a way that they don't continually detract from the level of discussions going on in the more regulated forum.

I would think creating an additional level of membership would increase the mods and VAs work exponentially, because now you have to look for the regular members who suck too much and should be newbies, or who provide good solid posts and should be promoted.  Furthermore, you have to watch the newbies and see if any mature enough to become regulars again, or if they're lost causes, in which case they either remain newbies for life or are banned or whatever.  That'd be a lot of time that would be better invested in further developing the format.  

I consider myself someone who knows a little about a lot in T1, and I've found that I know a lot about little (my experiences being mostly with Stax, TnT, and Sui Black).  When I post things about those decks, though, I really can never be sure if my comments are being taken seriously, or if they are just falling on deaf ears.  This is most likely because of the natural arrogance exhuded by the full access members.  You full access guys have worked hard to become the best, and I applaud you for that, but sometimes this status leads to the point where the best are the only ones who matter.  I don't believe that's how it should be.

A good case in point would be everyone's good friend Dr. Sylvan.  Having known him personally and having seen him play, I can attest to the fact that, while he may not be the best player out there, he certainly does bring a sharp analytical eye to the game, and this analytical eye has led to some very interesting looks at decks and the format in general.  However, Phil's already had earned his respect, and his shtick for analysis will be his forever.  For those of us who have yet to earn this esteem, and with it full membership, it can seem like there is nothing we can do and no way we can hope to provide "what it takes" to attain that level of awesome.  

I guess what I am trying to show is that there may be some good souls out there who just don't know what to say that hasn't already been said.  I could go on and on about U/R Trinistax for hours, but Toad's already done a pretty good job with his development of that deck, so why should I bother,  especially if I, for the most part, agree with his build?  It provides a very difficult challenge for knowing what I can do to prove my worth.  But I am content to wait awhile, and at some point opportunity will knock.  In the meantime, I post very little, as there seems to be little to say about those things I do know about.

[Zherbus]

No need for multiple topics.