New management!

[Lochton]

Oh fuck me I am going to bed good night.

Good night, deary *pats*

[Flarelaine]

If your "fun" means monopolizing an entire forum, then yes, I find it wrong.

Monopolizing? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

The offtopic forum exists side-by-side with the others. There is a Heroes of the Storm section. There is an Overwatch section. I don't visit those forums and you don't see me wailing they should be gone. I don't even visit the WoW forum much because there is too much vicious debate about how one should play. But I don't think they should be gone just because I don't use them. I'm not that entitled.

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My issue with OT is that so many topics are banned. That's why discussion is so limited there.

And I'm sad broad topics are banned but even more sad to see that the mods were right about those. I've seen those topics spiral into the Abyss any number of times near instantly. This is why we cannot have nice things.

[Flarelaine]

We cannot have nice things because those topics were allowed to spiral into the Abyss. I mean the classic example; we talk about gender, we get a parade of homophobes dehumanizing gay people, then a day later everyone got infracted, both the homophobes and everyone who took offense to them. The issue is not the topic the issue is that people cannot help but take offense at others calling fellow humans any number of things and are penalized exactly as much as those who just came in to insult others.
Of course we can say there are just not enough mods. But there has never been a zero tolerance policy for bigotry here which is why those topics inevitably go downhill.

Fair enough, that is part of the problem.

[Flarelaine]

Btw at the same time there should be zero tolerance for bullying. E.g. I absolutely detest Sulla's stance on most anything but every time he comes back from a ban, a dozen people gang up on him trying to corner him into a new infraction. he always manages to fall for it soon after but it doesn't change the fact that that is bullying.

In principle, I agree, but Sulla is also fishing to get others infracted all those times. He usually gets a few bites before he gets canned himself.

[Flarelaine]

it is just generally degenerate behaviour all around

Not every poster assigns so much of their posts to baiting. Well, other than burner accounts.

I just don't see that there is a way out of it and I am unsure there is much of a will either way. It is a very nice sentiment to say that people should be able to freely post what they believe but in the end the only result is that we have an ever shrinking option of topics. Politics was essentially an attempt at containment and even after, how much of Gen-OT belongs in politics anyway? Or in someone's personal blog instead? There is little of general interest that is not politics left that we can discuss.

Well, it's true. I mean, there could be sport or movies, but those have their own sections already. Still, there are good non-political threads every now and then like the ones @Techno-Druid keeps posting (and @Connal used to). And absent those, the existence of Gen-OT is a buffer for those that want to stay away from politics provided the mods shovel political threads in their right place promptly.

[Adam Jensen]

it doesn't help that some of the more decent posters left after the 2016 election.....

And that nothing is done about the influx of ban-evading trolls who do nothing but argue in bad faith, which I think got worse after the 2016 election. We've always had trolls, no site can be immune to them, but it wasn't as bad as it is now before the election.

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Exactly. I hate finding politics in a gaming forum. I don't mind the odd funny thread about your favorite toy as a child, how much one works out weekly, funny stories and the likes. I absolutely despite politics, especially politics related to a country I've never seen that seems to be shoved down everyone's throat here.
If your "fun" means monopolizing an entire forum, then yes, I find it wrong.

An entire forum is being monopolized? Politics has been quarantined to one sub section of a subsection. Stop being dramatic.

[Eveningforest]

Moderation has been so ineffective, Gen-OT started attracting some of the grossest internet trolls. It turned the average gamer away. If you want to keep alienating a big chunk of MMO players, feel free to keep Gen OT the way it is. I really doubt the idea that "anything goes" is good for business.

[Darknessvamp]

Tbh my only hope is that Magicfind don't do to MMO Champion and it's community what was done to The Escapist by the people who bought it. It was a pretty poor way to handle the community as well as outright lie to the people who stuck around.

[breadisfunny]

Tbh my only hope is that Magicfind don't do to MMO Champion and it's community what was done to The Escapist by the people who bought it. It was a pretty poor way to handle the community as well as outright lie to the people who stuck around.

what did they do to it?

[Temp name]

Tbh my only hope is that Magicfind don't do to MMO Champion and it's community what was done to The Escapist by the people who bought it. It was a pretty poor way to handle the community as well as outright lie to the people who stuck around.

The Escapist does anything other than Zero Punctuation?

[Darknessvamp]

what did they do to it?

Before the new site launched the new owner promised that a bunch of changes were coming to revitalise the site which was pretty dead at that point apart from Yathzee doing his weekly video and the small community on the forum being the only reason to still visit the site and one of the things they explicitly stated as part of the changes was there was going to be zero politics. Long story short, politics of any kind had always been something discussed on the Escapist that there was even a dedicated major forum section for it alongside Religion (R&P was nuts) but since the site wasn't policed as such it was being discussed everywhere but people were completely prepared to give up talking politics as well as seeing any articles that came anywhere close to it.

Cue a few months later when the new site was finally published and the old community was able to migrate their accounts over, lo and behold one of the first and most prominently displayed articles was one filled to the brim with identity politics and how games could and should cater to them more. Of course some of the old users asked what was going on and what happened to the zero politics stance and the site owner personally replied that this was the sort of content they were planning to have from now on, argued that it wasn't really politics because it was someone's opinion and said it was important to have articles like it. He then began banning members of the old community who so much as raised a counter point as well as banned users he had already replied to before leaving a final statement that there would be zero tolerance towards anyone who didn't agree with the article and were posting with an issue about it. He then pretty much viewed anyone from the old community as problems.

Since then they've been a site that mirrors Kotaku pretty closely and has had it's fair share of hot takes and hit pieces and is kind of a terrible place to visit now.

The Escapist does anything other than Zero Punctuation?

Well it used to have interesting articles, community stuff and people producing other video and comic series in addition to ZP. Now it's poor articles, a community sourced from Destructoid and Resetera, Movie Bob returned and Zero Punctuation still.

[Temp name]

Well it used to have interesting articles, community stuff and people producing other video and comic series in addition to ZP. Now it's poor articles, a community sourced from Destructoid and Resetera, Movie Bob returned and Zero Punctuation still.

They did Extra Credit for like.. Half a season, didn't they? Honestly kinda wonder why Yahtzee is still there instead of having struck out on his own.. Maybe his language would foul him on Youtube so he wouldn't get paid?

[Milchshake]

The Magic Find guy had a reddit thread here. Try making appeals to him.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone..._find/eqsodyx/

Honestly, GEN-OT would be a lot better if they just banned the 3% of the worst actors.

[breadisfunny]

im confused what happened to hearthpwn? did it get shutdown and sold? or just sold? or did the staff leave before it was announced to be sold? i used to visit that site back when i still played hearthstone for the decks.

[araine]

Welcome, MagicFind. Hope you love us.

Do you plan any major changes to MMO-C?

If i could give an advice.. close the off topic or at least the political part. The former team was not really able to moderate that.

Yep they have had a problem for a long time where right wing nonsense is allowed to go uncontested

[MechaCThun]

I give it at least 1 year or a year and half before they shut this place down, lmao

[Lochton]

I give it at least 1 year or a year and half before they shut this place down, lmao

Doubt it with the traffic, and the fact so many paid to get premium.

[rhorle]

Doubt it with the traffic, and the fact so many paid to get premium.

They were bought to avert a closure. Clearly there isn't some treasure trove of profits with the site. I am sure though that Magic Find will do what they can to keep the site open because it seems like it is a "labor of love" and they have passion for the site. Something previous owners might have lacked.

[Nurasu]

I have this image in my head now of all the people in this thread who are compelled to click on every GenOT topic that pops up on the front page for reasons they can't understand, all while grimacing with disgust at the topic and their own pathetic impulse control. Pretty sad, tbh.

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I also don't think getting rid of GenOT will make the community any more positive. WoW is in a bad state, and it's just hard to get excited about anything. Wowhead has to delete dozens of comments on every major article, and the ones that are left typically aren't beaming either. The official forums are an actual cesspit. MMO Champ is pessimistic for sure, but not as awful as the official forums. The game is declining, the site is declining, and I don't see what's so terrible about letting people keep interacting over what they can after 10 years together on this site.

[breadisfunny]

Yep they have had a problem for a long time where right wing nonsense is allowed to go uncontested

yep cause it's not like any u.s. bashing ever goes uncontested....nope.