Has the console forum been axed?

[scificube]

London-boy:

That not fair. There were instances where those who have been here a while were also acting up in the console forum.

Some of us new people did try to contribute to the discussions. Sure some of us didn't do our part but allot of us did. What can we do...the post count always starts at zero despite how long we've taken in the discussions.

I know you're not saying all the new posters to the forum were generally riff raff but would you think it fair you get tossed out with the bath water too if in a similar circumstance?

Cut us some slack ok. Some of us did try hard to uphold the standard.

Give us and the system a chance to make the console forum work. Why not? If it fails again then let it die for good, but not to try seems a crying shame given the wealth of info and good discussion that was there to be had and could be there again.

I'm all for a stricter system and the means being made available for that system to be upheld. Whatever it takes. If I can't post for a while so be it. If the forum needs to use sub-forums to separate technical discussions from those generally expressing excitement about this or that or whatever that'd be fine too.

I'm sure I'm not alone. Allot of us just want to forum back period and whatever it takes is whatever it takes. If you don't intend to cause trouble in the first place the extra restrictions will be transparent to you anyway because you'll rarely if ever run into them in the first place.

It was such a good place to come...that has to mean something.

 

[BlueTsunami]

When it comes down to it, the ADMINS don't have the power to keep the room in line. Thats all there is to it. The ability to ban a user that has been blatantly causing problem in the forum and dissrupt the community would create a world of differences. But unfortunatley, as was stated, only one person is allowed with banning rights.

But like Digi said, create a offsite forum where you would be able to administer the forums correctly. It must be hard as an admin, to have your hands tied as much as Sonic and JVD do.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

First, I think it's sad that the console board was taken down. But, just reading this thread in its entirety, it's pretty obvious that some posters are held to a different standard than others. The attacks and trolling that has happening in this thread alone from "respected" or "older" posters are far worse then some of the supposed instances that have lead to threads being locked in the console forum and ultimately to the forum being removed.

I also enjoy reading the tech forum, and industry forum. And those forums are no less filled with fanboism, trolling, and "old wars" than the console forum was.

Finally, let me say that Dave can't hate or "not care for" the console forum. I remember when he responded to one of my posts in that forum about the need for the PS3 to have gigabit ethernet (and how it hurt the X360 not to have it) to stream video. He corrected me on that, letting me know that 100Mps will stream video just fine. So he was reading the forum, he was correcting technically incorrect beliefs, and he left me with more knowledge by doing so.

 

[Ty]

It is simply that getting people to "sit back and shut up" for a few days, and the ability to kick them for good, are necessary tools to clean up a forum when it starts to snowball too far and too fast.

Hear hear. Hoping that people will not reply to obvious trolls is not and has not worked imo. For a good example moderation working, witness what happens when Sonic gives Person X a warning. All of a sudden the board calms down and everything is very nice for awhile - till they inevitably slip back into troll mode. But hey, at least it was smooth sailing for awhile!

 

[jvd]

gurgi wrote:

But reading jvd's, neeyik's and the PC elitist's posts, it's pretty clear that this site doesn't want us here anyway. Later all, I'll keep an eye on this thread in case people migrate to a more welcoming community.

Well Im not part of this site and I never was . I was just a helper . I have no say in anything and less now .

Personaly I think the console forum never belonged here . If it does come back it should be posted as console tech forum and put down that no game talk allowed. It should be for just talking about the tech of the console .

With that said there would be about 50-60% less posts and you would see exactly how long the intrests last . Since there is only so much tech inside of a the 3 consoles it wouldn't last long .

Since it would be a higher degree of tech speak and understanding needed than "OH my god Look at this pic its real time !!! " it would cut out 90% of the trolling

 

[BlueTsunami]

Its just sad that the conosle forum had an easygoing tech atmosphere about it. You can socialize about current media and will often be injected with talking about new hardware and technologies that made what you see possible. It was THE perfect jumping pad for console gamers that where slightly interested in what makes consoles possible to learn more about the technology. In all honesty I put the console forum with the Politics, and General forum, it felt like that to me.

The reason thats a GOOD thing is because it wouldn't get as stale as some of the other forums are. The console forum was the most active forum for this one reason....

Where on the cusp of the Next Generation consoles being released...

I say deal with the problem now before the system can come out and we can all anylize them. So if this means trying to clear the sickness that the Console forum had before we start hitting some good information...then so be it..thats a good idea. If it means taking away one of the best console forums on the net permenently, one that gets quoted and linked to from many different forums....then you have just brought the internet down a notch (and its already low to begin with...you know..with animal porn and all >.>)

 

[scificube]

Why would the discussion die in the console forum if that happened jvd...the discussion areas which deal with tech on this site in other areas have not died.

I would think there would be alot to talk about for a long time as there are many varied and interesting things about next consoles on the technical front all by itself.

I'd prefer to be able to talk about console games but maybe that should be seperate or perhaps the gaming forum could be split into console and PC gaming discussion areas.

At least this way you could direct chatter you felt needed to be elsewhere to it's proper place.

 

[cthellis42]

The Console Forum belongs here just as much as any other, really. More than many of the other more "offtopic" ones, since it actually involves a lot of 3D-specific hardware and software as well, and is such a big topic all around that it really does need its own playground as opposed to overpowering other more generalized or PC-centric forums.

What one has to look for, however, is what kind of forum it should be. The subject matter itself is perfectly fitting, but we all know that even more blatant fanb0yism (is that still restricted? ), heated words, competitiveness, and snarky remarks are going to come out of that end than the ATi/nVidia "wars" or AMD/Intel, etc. So to get the kind of forum B3D wants may take more care and attention, but that's very much different than saying "it doesn't belong here."

I, for one (among many), have enjoyed hearing development voices in here just palling around and tossing out info and insight that we really don't get too often, and I would like to see it be a desired hangout for them--as well as the technical-minded and inquisitive--once again.

Certainly you can't get rid of all the squabbling (like any forum does), but the normal push and play is fine. There are lines, however, that CAN be drawn and CAN be maintained, and if it takes a bit of tough love and spanking to and heavy-handed policies to show people what we want B3D's forum to look like...? That's fine by me. Console forums especially tend to attract the immature--especially when console news heats up like around generational launches--so you adapt. We've been through it before, and we can go through it again.

The main difference is if "what's desired" doesn't have any the planning behind it, the definitive information on the channel, and most importantly the substance behind it... The only thing you can hope is that the noise doesn't get too loud. The last time we went through this we really just had a "forum time out" and sat on the stairs, banned one or two folk, and then started up again with very little different. Now that we're at that generational transition point and people's hopes and speculations are keyed just about to the highest degree... we see that the foundation is neither solid enough to offer proper support nor flexible enough to sway with those winds.

If it's mainly "no one wants it to be any bother," well then... You really can't have an open and active forum that is "no bother." You get a little more activity, a little more noise, even more activity, even more noise... You can toss a few more mods on the barbie, but that's just a quick fix. The only way to make it relatively painless would be to privatize the forum and make it invite-only. (And I'm not sure how well THAT could be supported by phpBB either.)

To go about it the right way, though, there are steps one can take to make it relatively painless, but... you need the structure in place, the community to know the tone and standards that will be found acceptable, and the mods to have the appropriate tools to back it up. If that's in PLACE, it wouldn't actually be too bad, either... It's just right now--when things have snowballed too far and ran over way too many things--that it is hardest to make the necessary changes.

 

[jvd]

Why would the discussion die in the console forum if that happened jvd...the discussion areas which deal with tech on this site in other areas have not died.

Discusion will increase . Bickering , trolling , useless posts and that type of stuff will decrease . However there is only so much about each console that is tech related and a new console doesn't come around every 6 month like graphics cards. They come around every 4-6 years . So we are in that period where most likely till the end of 2006 there will be things to talk about . x360 right now , ps3 in a few months as more about rsx is known and then finaly the rev . After that what else is there to talk about ? Just look how few tech topics we had last year and this year for the ps2 , xbox and gamecube and most of them were rehashes . We have 20 game threads for every 1 tech thread

I would think there would be alot to talk about for a long time as there are many varied and interesting things about next consoles on the technical front all by itself.

Na . Look once the noise ratio is droped by getting rid of games in the forum . Questions can be asked about the hardware and talked about . Sure there will be less threads a day and less posts . But the quality will be far greater . This in turn will make more devs post here as they will find it a more hospitable (sp? ) place . As i've said after we kow everything about these 3 consoles there is only so much else to be said . That wont last 4-6 years and it will become less and less each year .

Its the same in the 3d tech forum. You get a new card you talk about it for 2-3 months and thats it . 2-3 months later a new card is out and u talk about that . Here we have much bigger down times.

I'd prefer to be able to talk about console games but maybe that should be seperate or perhaps the gaming forum could be split into console and PC gaming discussion areas.

As i've said the games don't have any place here in my view . That is what the problem is in the console forum . That is why there are more trolls in that forum than any part of the forum. Because when you talk about games you don't need the same level of understanding to start trouble .

IF you don't know what your talkign about in a thread about xenos you are quickly put in your place with teh correct info . For games its allmost all opinion.


Pc gaming is fine . There hasn't been a trolling post in that section in at least the last year . It mostly consists of us talking about the upcoming games and if we like the eatures or not .

Just look at any project gotham racing thread in the console forum (Well its gone now ) Its quickly droped to a no its fake , no its real , no it doesn't look as good as gt5 will look . That is the crap that needs to be avoided and to do so you need to get the games talk out of the forum .
By giving it , its own sub catagory you are just moving the problem to another part of the forum .

 

[BlueTsunami]

So basically one of the reasons (Besides the trolling) the console forum was taken away because it was detracting from the other Forums?

 

[-tkf-]

I'm not sure how frequent it is, but there seems to have been a very irritating phenomenon consisting in new users signing up to the forum,

I have never linked to the Forum for the same exact reason, i have used info gathered there left and right but have never made a direct link.

 

[Saem]

I talked to a friend a while back. We were discussions problem solving in the people space.

The first thing we figured is blame is ENTIRELY useless. The fact of the matter is that there is a problem and blame is not a problem solving tool. The only thing one can do is control what we can do ourselves, passing the buck isn't going to be useful, you'll just be stuck arguing and nothing will happen.

One thing I would advise is not to look at whom to blame, but rather reshape the environment such that the activities that are deemed inappropriate no longer take place. In otherwords, figure out the discussions and posts that caused problems and work out enforceable guidelines to help resolve it.

Most everyone knows that a mod such as jvd and sonic, have the power to edit, lock and delete, that's the tools. Within this framework and possibly a few one time changes such as renaming of the forum and redistribution of what's allowed where responsibilities, I hope people are willing to post solutions. That might actually help the site owner and they might be more amenable to giving things a go.

I would rename it to "console technology", allow only hardware dicussions with some software if it's very relevant, like blah algorithm using the hardware in some inventive way. Have the games stuff moved over to the games forum, or create a console games forum.

 

[Pete]

However, the admins still haven't manned up requiring ban-rights so that they can do their job.

So, I just hope Dave mans up and gives moderators the right to ban.

He can't, the board software don't work that way!

Honest, there is no good/easy way to give mods banning powers with this boards software...period.

If Dave trusts someone enough to give them ban powers, then it would seem the easiest workaround to this board's shortcoming is to have other mods simply PM him who they want banned, and Dave could do it without having to look into each and every request (hence the trust factor). The technical issue of expanding ban power to other people seems besides the point, IMO. And surely we wouldn't be banning that many people that it would create more than a few minutes' extra work for Dave?

Sorry if this has been covered, as I just replied straight from page two.

 

[digitalwanderer]

If Dave trusts someone enough to give them ban powers, then it would seem the easiest workaround to this board's shortcoming is to have other mods simply PM him who they want banned, and Dave could do it without having to look into each and every request (hence the trust factor).

I already suggested that they should just give me admin powers, I'm always here and I'd be too scared of losing me posting privelages here to dick around with 'em.

 

[ERP]

I think the best solution is to leave it closed.

The console forum was originally created to get the console bickering out of the General 3D thread around the time of the PS2 and Xbox launches.

It actually became a pretty good forum, but over the last 4 or 5 months it's really been in the toilet.

If it were up to me I'd just limit the number of posts an individual can make over a time period, almost everyone I'd like to see gone have extremly high posting rates new or not. Threads that consist of 2 or more posters bickering are a waste of space.

Then if it were up to me a lot of people would have been banned long ago, including some "respected" posters... But i have a very low tolerance threshold.

 

[scificube]

There's plenty to talk about jvd

Thread level parallelism - how to get it done for AI, physics etc.

Streaming ____ is actually a bad thing...

unified shaders - how are they? how'd they turn out? what can we now do we couldn't before? can we do anything at all we couldn't do before because of the level of abstraction?

the X360's tesselator unit - this appears to be this and they actually did displacement mapping by that

coding for in-order CPUs - to do this you could use this

special relationships between the CPUs and GPUs - it appears that because Cell/XeCpu can do x with/for the GPU/VPU or visa versa that we can do this now or discovered this new cool technique

It seems this system is bottlenecked by X,Y,and Z thus devs have done this to work around or eliminate them

AI path finding is now better/worse because of X,Y,or Z.

here's how ambient occlusion and global illumination was pulled off with or approximated with

Is this X procedurally synthesized? How'd they do that?

The SPE's LS really come in handy when trying to do X because...

The XeCPu's VMX do this really we...

Unlike WGF2.0 the Xenos Directx API...

This previously undocumented capability lets us...



I believe there are plenty of interesting topics that can be talked about down the road as more devs get more familiar with the HW and their revelations trickle down to us. Often these would be interesting questions to pose or ideas to exchange in the PC tech discussions as some next gen problems and solutions are common to both arenas.

We will learn more and have more questions.

The reason I don't want to make games off limits is that they are the needed proof of concept and usage that at times convey what it is we'd be getting at far better than words we'd stumble over. We can talk about games in beyond the scope of just "ooh" and "ahhh" but in the context of "how the heck did they do this?" and "what is that?"

That's why I want it to be allowed...somewhere...if it's bothersome it can be in a place where it can be ignored by those it has the affect of doing this to.

I just think there'd be some much lost without a place to come and share ideas and information of this kind with people in the know and what to discuss intelligently

 

[Apoc]

If a mod or an admin can tell me what is the monthly transfer only for the forum, maybe I'll be able to setup a temporal forum to discuss TGS and so. The admins and mods can be the same as here (if they want, of course).

 

[scificube]

nevermind...the admin message said it all

Don't get me wrong...I am still grateful.

 

[DudeMiester]

Well if we can get the content from beyond3D that would be perfect. Maybe that's what Beyond3D should do, create a spinoff site, although there would be a very real danger of it overtaking the origional site in popularity!

 

[MechanizedDeath]

The CF needs to come back for one reason, and one reason alone....DeanoC's Heavenly Sword. Where else will he be able to give direct feedback on the progress of his game? We are lost in the wilderness right now. Seriously...the CF was great once, it can be great again. PEACE.