I gave up on the console forum when, despite having an incredibly low post count (pretty sure some people post more per-hour than I do in a year) and despite actually just posting in the last few instances to argue for a bit of calm and perspective, I was basically accused of bring a troll/fanb/whatever myself. I realised I just didn't actually care that much anymore - the battle was lost and I wasn't interested in fighting it.
As much as I liked the forum of old it has been heading down the pan since the site move a few years ago and certainly in the last year.
It was a victim of it's own success. It became well known and "respected" enough to attract a sufficiently annoying bunch of ignorant trolls and, much like tribbles, you just can't get rid of them once they get a foothold and start to breed.
I'd like to see a solution that brings back a forum with intelligent conversation, but I have no good suggestions.
Moderation would work (by which I mean, every post must be approved) but might stifle conversation a little and would require a very good, very dedicated moderator. Who'll work exceedingly hard for free. Maybe if a person's first 100 posts or something were moderated and they could be moved back to moderated status if they transgress a bit much...
Oh I don't know. Clearly any solution will require work that if *I* were the site admin, I'm not sure I'd care enough to implement.
Likewise I have no interest in a read-only forum for developer posts, nor would I want to contribute to such a thing. There are plenty of developer-only (either invite-only or screened) places around where I can chat freely to developers without noise - I don't need another. I came here for open discussion with all manner of random folks to get a non-developer centric view of the area in which I work, while hopefully sharing a bit of knowledge along the way.
Besides which, if developers have any sense they'll be keeping their mouths shut a bit more, now that concrete information is in their hands and the companies that employ them have shiny new strict NDAs to enforce... I know I don't like to say too much, and I'm relatively anonymous. Some people here tread a very thin line - all respect to them for doing so, but I can't blame them if they decide to shut up again. Also, why would they bother posting anything if their audience seems to be less a bunch of clued-up enthusiasts and more a bunch of insult-hurling buffoons?
However I also don't care about reading a site on 3D in any form which ignores the contribution that consoles make. They drive hardware design and are one of the few places where any piece of hardware is truly driven as hard as it can be. Hardware in a PC, I would warrant, hardly ever gets a proper test of its full abilities. PC-centric tech sites are probably about as common as troll-ridden console forums, and I don't read any of them.
If the admins do nothing else, I cannot say I blame them, but I would like to encourage them to at least have the old forum available as a locked archive. There was some good stuff in there and it would be good to keep.
