Proposition 1123581321: Bring back AI

Proposal:

BE IT RECOGNIZED THAT as it pertains to numerous discussions created as derailments or side-arguments in many non-Flames threads

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT many posters have mature and well-mannered discussions and wish to maintain an non-Flames posting standard on aforementioned discussions, derailments, and side-arguments

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT these discussions, derailments, and side-arguments have no central location in which to take place

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT a precedent has been established for sub-forums with limited interest to be created in a more general forum

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT discussions of these orders are pretty gay, nerdy, and otherwise unfit for decent company

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED THAT the administrators of Casual Discourse shall create a sub-forum of Nerdcore, tentatively entitled "Armchair Intellectuals" to be renamed later, to meet the needs of these posters, discussions, derailments, and side-arguments

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the rules of the newly created Armchair Intellectuals sub-forum shall remain in-line with that of other non-Flames forums and not stricter or more mentally masturbatory as in previous incarnations of said sub-forum with similar names.

Signed,
Atmosfear
Lord High Chancellor of the South
Champion of the Free Market

Wait... Yeah... That's the Fibonacci sequence... but that only makes sense if it's in order. What if... the letters are scrambled, too?

So Dark the Con of Man...

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Originally Posted by MalReynolds

Wait... Yeah... That's the Fibannaci sequence...

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I did not notice that at all, keen eye good sir.

Also I like the idea of AI. It keeps intelligent discussions out of flames and casual intercourse, such as I enjoy.

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Originally Posted by djwolford

I did not notice that at all, keen eye good sir.

Also I like the idea of AI. It keeps intelligent discussions out of flames and casual intercourse, such as I enjoy.

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The DaVinci Code you halfwit.

Fibonacci would not be happy you spelled his name wrong.

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Originally Posted by TheOriginalGrumpySpy

The DaVinci Code you halfwit.

Fibonacci would not be happy you spelled his name wrong.

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I've never seen that film. I initially gained interest in the Fibonacci sequence because of Tool's Lateralus. True story.

atmosfear, you're becoming a huge vagina.

no, AI sucked, and if people are having pseudo-intellectual discussions in places where they can be told how stupid what they're saying is then it's for the better.

I will vote yes on Proposition 1123581321 with these amendments:

Proposal:

BE IT RECOGNIZED THAT as it pertains to numerous discussions created as derailments or side-arguments in many non-Flames threads

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT many posters have mature and well-mannered discussions and wish to maintain an non-Flames posting standard on aforementioned discussions, derailments, and side-arguments

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT these discussions, derailments, and side-arguments have no central location in which to take place

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT a precedent has been established for sub-forums with limited interest to be created in a more general forum

BE IT ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT discussions of these orders are pretty gay, nerdy, and otherwise unfit for decent company

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED THAT the administrators of Casual Discourse shall create a sub-forum of Nerdcore, tentatively entitled "Armchair Intellectuals" to be renamed later, to meet the needs of these posters, discussions, derailments, and side-arguments

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the rules of the newly created Armchair Intellectuals sub-forum shall remain in-line with that of other non-Flames forums and not stricter or more mentally masturbatory as in previous incarnations of said sub-forum with similar names.

BE IT RECOGNIZED THAT the forum "The Great Outdoors" shall be renamed "Call of the Wild"

BE IT RECOGNIZED THAT the said forum "Call of the Wild" shall be moved to it's rightful spot on the front page.

If you help me on my project I will give you my vote.

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Originally Posted by sycld

atmosfear, you're becoming a huge vagina.

no, AI sucked, and if people are having pseudo-intellectual discussions in places where they can be told how stupid what they're saying is then it's for the better.

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no way dude

AI sucked, but at least it was an outlet for exploring an idea and arguing your points. As it stands, I could still do this across the main forums, but it would be better if there was a centralized forum for it.

Also, the problem with you calling shenanigans on how stupid an argument is suffers from people like Kal el and Tidus saying "get out" or ":lol: ur gay", respectively. If people want to call me out on this shit, I want to argue with them back, and having a forum for such discussion is a good idea.

If the moderator really cared, they could transfer posts from de-railed threads into threads in the pseudo-AI so that people who just want to circlejerk on an internet forum are free to do so away from civilised discussion.

edit: atomic you don't belong in this thread, let alone AI

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Originally Posted by sycld

atmosfear, you're becoming a huge vagina.

no, AI sucked, and if people are having pseudo-intellectual discussions in places where they can be told how stupid what they're saying is then it's for the better.

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I disagree. A few months back I'd have agreed with you but I'm starting to grow fond of Atmosfear.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

edit: atomic you don't belong in this thread, let alone AI

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K. Do you have another door or should I leave through the one I came in?

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Originally Posted by sycld

atmosfear, you're becoming a huge vagina.

no, AI sucked, and if people are having pseudo-intellectual discussions in places where they can be told how stupid what they're saying is then it's for the better.

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If you were capable of reading and/or cognition you would see that I wasn't asking for different posting standards in AI compared to any other forum. Typical of you, you made a dumbfuck assumption before reading the thread. You're exactly the type of moronic troll that AI was made to keep out, except that instead of stupid posting standards, we'll just bury it as a subforum.

You also seem to be of the opinion that it's more important for people who want to have meaningful discussions to be able to be made fun of than it is for OPs to be able to keep their threads on-topic. Fucktard trolls like you who opposed infractions and then further oppose non-moderator solutions really ought to just stay out of SSQ.

Seconding/Thirding/Fifthing the motion to recognize this proposal.

Motion to announce more people should post in this thread to agree.

I can't wait to troll gwahir.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

If you were capable of reading and/or cognition you would see that I wasn't asking for different posting standards in AI compared to any other forum. Typical of you, you made a dumbfuck assumption before reading the thread. You're exactly the type of moronic troll that AI was made to keep out, except that instead of stupid posting standards, we'll just bury it as a subforum.

You also seem to be of the opinion that it's more important for people who want to have meaningful discussions to be able to be made fun of than it is for OPs to be able to keep their threads on-topic. Fucktard trolls like you who opposed infractions and then further oppose non-moderator solutions really ought to just stay out of SSQ.

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I just don't get it, really.

You're seriously one of the biggest trolls on these forums, or at least you used to be back when it was LWS/CD I. You even became a moderator just so you could troll with your moderator powers. Just another example of your typical hypocrisy where anything you do is fine, but other people should have their actions reigned in.

Where exactly did I say that I was asking for a different posting standard from other forums? Maybe you're the one that needs to brush up on his reading comprehension.

Also, yeah, I like making fun of people that take themselves too seriously or inflate the novelty of their own stupid derivative ideas and calling them out on it when they do. Maybe if CD had a critical mass of intelligent people that actually had critical thinking skills, then I would support this. But as it stands, it doesn't.

In addition, I don't oppose the infraction system, though I don't know if it's time to implement it yet. Which post made you think that I was completely opposed to infractions-- the one that said "CD does rule!" or the one that said that http://letmegooglethatforyou.com is awesome? Or are you just making a "dumbfuck assumption" as usual?

Finally, you seem to like forgetting how inane AI was in LWS. The most intelligent conversations were probably in CD, while AI was a forum for 13 year old philosophers that wouldn't recognize a logical fallacy if it bit them on the nose.

In conclusion: just shut the fuck up atmosfear. You have absolutely no room to call others out on anything.

I'd just eat a handful of LSD and post in AI.

Do we need more megalomaniacs?

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Originally Posted by sycld

I just don't get it, really.

You're seriously one of the biggest trolls on these forums, or at least you used to be back when it was LWS/CD I. You even became a moderator just so you could troll with your moderator powers. Just another example of your typical hypocrisy where anything you do is fine, but other people should have their actions reigned in.

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With greater contribution comes greater leniency. This has always been the way it has worked whether it was permaban followed by unbanning a week later, mods looking the other way, or warnings instead of infractions. The reason the majority of the best posters have all been banned one or more times is because when you contribute, minor violations are overlooked.

Examples of contributions include things like epic threads, hard work as a mod, development and furtherment of memes, seniority, wit, etc. This isn't the way I make things work, this is the way they have worked since before 2007 (or whenever you got here, worthless babby)

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Originally Posted by sycld

Where exactly did I say that I was asking for a different posting standard from other forums? Maybe you're the one that needs to brush up on his reading comprehension.

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"if people are having pseudo-intellectual discussions in places where they can be told how stupid what they're saying is then it's for the better."

Since this is already the case, you are implying that a new location (AI) would prevent this. The means of preventing this is stricter rules.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Also, yeah, I like making fun of people that take themselves too seriously or inflate the novelty of their own stupid derivative ideas and calling them out on it when they do. Maybe if CD had a critical mass of intelligent people that actually had critical thinking skills, then I would support this. But as it stands, it doesn't.

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hurfdurf mouth-breathing. Ignoring for a second that none of that is a part of the stated purpose of reviving AI, the fact that there is nothing here to attract "intelligent people that actually had critical thinking skills" would tend to prevent those types of people from showing up. There is no emo forum, so there are no emos. There is no forum that requires thoughtful discussion, so there are no people who seek out thoughtful discussion.

And nowhere in here did I say the purpose was for intelligent people with critical thinking skills to have a place to have philosophical discussions. The purpose was to prevent derailment of otherwise viable threads only minimally related to those discussions by providing an easy place to conduct them. When a bunch of militiafags started posting about guns, we effectively brought back The Armory.

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Originally Posted by sycld

In addition, I don't oppose the infraction system, though I don't know if it's time to implement it yet. Which post made you think that I was completely opposed to infractions-- the one that said "CD does rule!" or the one that said that http://letmegooglethatforyou.com is awesome? Or are you just making a "dumbfuck assumption"?

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Same difference.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Finally, you seem to like forgetting how inane AI was in LWS. The most intelligent conversations were probably in CD, while AI was a forum for 13 year old philosophers that wouldn't recognize a logical fallacy if it bit them on the nose.

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Not the same purpose :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by sycld

In conclusion: just shut the fuck up atmosfear. You have absolutely no room to call others out on anything.

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The next time you bitch about me getting special treatment, don't try to use a meme I created, fucking knuckledragger.

To be honest, I really don't are if AI comes back or not. I didn't really care that much in the first place to argue the point to this extent.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

With greater contribution comes greater leniency. This has always been the way it has worked whether it was permaban followed by unbanning a week later, mods looking the other way, or warnings instead of infractions. The reason the majority of the best posters have all been banned one or more times is because when you contribute, minor violations are overlooked.

Examples of contributions include things like epic threads, hard work as a mod, development and furtherment of memes, seniority, wit, etc. This isn't the way I make things work, this is the way they have worked since before 2007 (or whenever you got here, worthless babby)

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What do you want, a fucking ribbon? Your dick sucked?

That's how every forum works, but you take it to a whole other level. Handing out warnings instead of infractions is one thing, but becoming a mod just to fuck things up is completely different.

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"if people are having pseudo-intellectual discussions in places where they can be told how stupid what they're saying is then it's for the better."

Since this is already the case, you are implying that a new location (AI) would prevent this. The means of preventing this is stricter rules.

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And your stated purpose is to prevent people from having side-arguments or from having threads de-railed, which would also require stricter rules.

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hurfdurf mouth-breathing. Ignoring for a second that none of that is a part of the stated purpose of reviving AI, the fact that there is nothing here to attract "intelligent people that actually had critical thinking skills" would tend to prevent those types of people from showing up. There is no emo forum, so there are no emos. There is no forum that requires thoughtful discussion, so there are no people who seek out thoughtful discussion.

And nowhere in here did I say the purpose was for intelligent people with critical thinking skills to have a place to have philosophical discussions. The purpose was to prevent derailment of otherwise viable threads only minimally related to those discussions by providing an easy place to conduct them. When a bunch of militiafags started posting about guns, we effectively brought back The Armory.

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and again, having AI in CD I or LWS didn't suddenly bring in a boat load of intelligent people.

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Same difference.

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no

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Not the same purpose :rolleyes:

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How are you going to make it different then, aside from just saying that it's going to be different?

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The next time you bitch about me getting special treatment, don't try to use a meme I created, fucking knuckledragger.

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Sorry, I forgot that the internet is srs bsn.

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Originally Posted by sycld

You even became a moderator just so you could troll with your moderator powers.

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Man it is a good thing that Atmosfear is capable of granting himself mod powers on any forum of his choosing. This was a fine display of critical thinking.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Also, yeah, I like making fun of people that take themselves too seriously or inflate the novelty of their own stupid derivative ideas and calling them out on it when they do.

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This is what this forum is for.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Finally, you seem to like forgetting how inane AI was in LWS. The most intelligent conversations were probably in CD, while AI was a forum for 13 year old philosophers that wouldn't recognize a logical fallacy if it bit them on the nose.

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Did you say the most intelligent conversations in LWS were in CD? That's a load of bullshit. Even with it's massive user-base (admittedly, mostly emos), lws still only had a handful of people who could come up with an intelligent argument and argue it without having to resort to flaming and cussing. I challenge you to find a single thread in the LWS and CD archives that rivals in the clear thinking and presentation of Exodite Prime or Pansophist.

There are enough people here who can intelligently argue a point to warrant a subforum for them.

edit: ignoring the fact that this argument doesn't particularly apply to me, I fail to understand why sycld is so rabid about this subforum.

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edit: ignoring the fact that this argument doesn't particularly apply to me, I fail to understand why sycld is so rabid about this subforum.

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Originally Posted by sycld

To be honest, I really don't are if AI comes back or not. I didn't really care that much in the first place to argue the point to this extent.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

Man it is a good thing that Atmosfear is capable of granting himself mod powers on any forum of his choosing. This was a fine display of critical thinking.

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Did I ever say that Atmosfear granted himself modding powers? Also you don't know what I'm referring to since you weren't here, and I don't feel like explaining anything to you.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Did I ever say that Atmosfear granted himself modding powers? Also you don't know what I'm referring to since you weren't here, and I don't feel like explaining anything to you.

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Perhaps I oversimplified it. You said:

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Originally Posted by sycld

You even became a moderator just so you could troll with your moderator powers.

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The implication is that the only reason that Atmosfear became a mod was so that he could troll with greater effect, but to become a moderator means he has to have shown an outstanding contribution or quality of character on the forums that the admins are willing to grant him these powers. If his sole intention was simply to troll the forums, he would not have become a mod as admins generally do not mod trolls. Since he is, nevertheless, a mod, the astounding leap in logic comes from him granting himself these powers, as no sane admin would do so to a troll of the calibre that you describe.

Also dismissing me based on the fact that you don't feel like explaining yourself means that you yourself are one of those terrible AI posters who shouldn't be there.

Dear God create AI to confine these homosexuals. Amen.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

Perhaps I oversimplified it. You said:



The implication is that the only reason that Atmosfear became a mod was so that he could troll with greater effect, but to become a moderator means he has to have shown an outstanding contribution or quality of character on the forums that the admins are willing to grant him these powers. If his sole intention was simply to troll the forums, he would not have become a mod as admins generally do not mod trolls. Since he is, nevertheless, a mod, the astounding leap in logic comes from him granting himself these powers, as no sane admin would do so to a troll of the calibre that you describe.

Also dismissing me based on the fact that you don't feel like explaining yourself means that you yourself are one of those terrible AI posters who shouldn't be there.

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lol lurk mor newb.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

Also dismissing me based on the fact that you don't feel like explaining yourself means that you yourself are one of those terrible AI posters who shouldn't be there.

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I JUST DON'T FUCKING FEEL LIKE POSTING IN THIS THREAD OR FUCKING TALKING TO YOU, THAT'S WHY I DON'T FEEL LIKE EXPLAINING IT OKAY?

Jesus. I don't fucking care if there's a fucking AI forum or not.

successful troll is successful

GREAT TROLL A+++++++++++ WOULD TROLL AGAIN

I like the idea of AI coming back. I never posted there before because I felt dumb, but now that I'm much older, wiser, and have a beard, I think I'm capable of such ventures.

Angry thread is angry.

I think that this thread, where intelligent thought devolved into a series of personal attacks, is evidence that we should not have an AI and things should just stay the way they are now.

This thread is a logical fallacy. YOU'RE A LOGICAL FALLACY. And a straw-man. Burden of proof. Corollary. Dictum. Other buzz-words.

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Originally Posted by Mr. E

I think that this thread, where intelligent thought devolved into a series of personal attacks, is evidence that we should not have an AI and things should just stay the way they are now.

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you're right

let's take these kinds of arguments and smear them across the whole forums instead of having a centralized location for them

edit: sycld was asking for it

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

you're right

let's take these kinds of arguments and smear them across the whole forums instead of having a centralized location for them

edit: sycld was asking for it

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They already are smeared across the whole forum, however creating AI would pretty much be creating a place that would not only be filled with this, but would also breed more of it. Also, I wasn't passing judgment either way.

breed more of it? the userbase on this forum is pretty well established, and we don't get many new people. Having this forum is an outlet for the people who are here to have a long discussion about a topic that interests us without derailing whatever thread about guys and pickle jars you are reading.

If stricter rules were enacted, then that kind of posting wouldn't be tolerated. It occurs because a signifigant proportion of the posters here are active in Flames, where that kind of posting is expected, much less tolerated. If you make a statement about the required kind of behavior within a forum, and enforce the rules to the point where the posters understand what is expected and don't fuck with it, then that kind of douchebaggery won't be present. It will take moderation, but what doesn't?

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

breed more of it? the userbase on this forum is pretty well established, and we don't get many new people. Having this forum is an outlet for the people who are here to have a long discussion about a topic that interests us without derailing whatever thread about guys and pickle jars you are reading.

If stricter rules were enacted, then that kind of posting wouldn't be tolerated. It occurs because a signifigant proportion of the posters here are active in Flames, where that kind of posting is expected, much less tolerated. If you make a statement about the required kind of behavior within a forum, and enforce the rules to the point where the posters understand what is expected and don't fuck with it, then that kind of douchebaggery won't be present. It will take moderation, but what doesn't?

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The way things are now doesn't take moderation. There have been many threads in CI of an intellectual nature that functioned just fine. There is no point in creating another forum for this. This is the internet. A certain amount of douchebaggery is to be expected.

There was no point in creating 'the Great Outdoors', because people posting guns and talking about fishing happend outside of it anyway, sans moderation.

to quote atmosfear: "a precedent has been established for sub-forums with limited interest to be created in a more general forum"

the armory was one of the slowest sub-forums on LWS, a site with signifigantly heavier traffic than this site receives. However, it gets revived here, and experiences traffic as well.

The forum is not zero-sum; people who post will psot in this sub-forum in addition to regular posting elsewhere. There is no finite amount of posts each person has and uses in a single session.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

There was no point in creating 'the Great Outdoors', because people posting guns and talking about fishing happend outside of it anyway, sans moderation.

to quote atmosfear: "a precedent has been established for sub-forums with limited interest to be created in a more general forum"

the armory was one of the slowest sub-forums on LWS, a site with signifigantly heavier traffic than this site receives. However, it gets revived here, and experiences traffic as well.

The forum is not zero-sum; people who post will psot in this sub-forum in addition to regular posting elsewhere. There is no finite amount of posts each person has and uses in a single session.

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That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried because strict moderation in one area is the gateway to strict moderation all over. Plus AI also attracts the worst kind of faggots, which will then spread around the forum. Making the smarties have to deal with the occasional digression and idiocy keeps pretentiousness away.

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Originally Posted by Mr. E

The way things are now doesn't take moderation. There have been many threads in CI of an intellectual nature that functioned just fine. There is no point in creating another forum for this. This is the internet. A certain amount of douchebaggery is to be expected.

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The issue is that a lot of these discussions were the result of a few people derailing the thread. "What would you do if you were president?" turned into the merits of privatized education. That's not the purpose of those threads, and it's unfair to the OP and the people who post in them to have to wade through a bunch of derailed nonsense.

The most recent example of this, I think, was when you asked me about advertising. If there had been an AI, I would have just linked to a thread in AI and anyone who was interested could read it there and anyone who wasn't could continue the thread as normal. As it was, I derailed the thread and then received a handful of "tl;dr" posts in the middle of an otherwise lively thread.

Long, off-topic discussions amidst other threads makes them difficult to approach, because once derailed it is frustratingly difficult to follow. You may recall this is why we hated MrDie.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

The issue is that a lot of these discussions were the result of a few people derailing the thread. "What would you do if you were president?" turned into the merits of privatized education. That's not the purpose of those threads, and it's unfair to the OP and the people who post in them to have to wade through a bunch of derailed nonsense.

The most recent example of this, I think, was when you asked me about advertising. If there had been an AI, I would have just linked to a thread in AI and anyone who was interested could read it there and anyone who wasn't could continue the thread as normal. As it was, I derailed the thread and then received a handful of "tl;dr" posts in the middle of an otherwise lively thread.

Long, off-topic discussions amidst other threads makes them difficult to approach, because once derailed it is frustratingly difficult to follow. You may recall this is why we hated MrDie.

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Well, there is merit to this argument, but in most cases it doesn't seem that the OP actually cares. The nature of a discussion forum is to discuss, and my discussions start one place and end someplace completely different all the time. In the end I don't really care though, were there an AI it wouldn't really bother me, just so long as a wave of intellectual and pseudo-intellectual posters don't show up and start acting like they are better than everyone else in places other than AI.

Doesn't matter if the OP cares. From the standpoint of fostering discussion and promoting growth, if there are two ideas in a thread worthy of discussion, derailment ends the discussion of the first idea and allows only a single topic. Meanwhile, if there is a forum to foster those discussions, then both ideas can be expounded upon, generating more posts and ultimately more users.

Woahh.... what about multi-thread threads. How fucking gonzo would that be? It'd be gonzo as fuck.

When I get home from work in about 20 minutes I am going to set up an Armchair Intellectuals forum and it will be named such until a better name is suggested. Atmosfear will be in charge of moderating this forum.

this is jem's dad
he was hit by a gas attack via the atmosphere on the way home and has been condemned to a wheelchair for the rest of his life

rip

I don't support making a new AI subforum. Before you jump down my throat, consider the idea that perhaps we'd like to grow the forum a little bit. I'm not talking about wristband gimmicks or emo subforums or trying to play the odds on the newest SEO trend. Tengu is not TGO and this isn't a business, but more traffic wouldn't be a bad thing. Getting new members could be great for CD. But simply having an AI subforum wouldn't do that, because right now we just don't have enough traffic to do it.

Making subforums like The Great Outdoors isn't really a problem because it doesn't remove traffic from one area of the site and put it into another one (presumably to be hidden away under Nerdcore, anyway). Many threads in CI are threads that could be put into an AI forum (assuming you say that posting standards won't change in the new AI), but that means they wouldn't be in CI. CI is our General Discussion forum, and the General Discussion forum needs to have enough traffic to make random users who browse by want to stick around. A GD is a vital area of a forum, which is why TGO was always trying to find new shit to make LWS' GD stand out (those failed, but the effort was for the right reasons).

I propose a compromise. No AI just yet, because if the post standards aren't increased, there isn't any reason to confine threads into one spot; in fact, if we did want to increase standards, we'd need greater numbers of more thoughtful and intelligent posters or the forum would be dead anyway. However, we can have more moderation in CI threads. Derailment isn't a huge problem when it's intelligent derailment - threads can always be split by a moderator with good judgment. Random, flames-esque comments in CI threads don't honestly seem to be so pervasive as to actually impede discussion, but if you guys want us to, we can start moderating that, too.

I want to make sure this place keeps its spirit of being a community first, and not a business. But if we don't try to make sure we're at least marginally attractive to new users, we'll end up stagnant. We just don't have the forum postcount yet to be dividing discussion further.

i have yielded to chrissy's having thought about this rather than following my impulsiveness and unthinking slavery to atmosfear's will. no AI for now.

Depending on which way you see things, there are two issues with that, sole:

First, if you think the site as a whole would suffer because AI would simply divert GD traffic into a tucked-away subforum, then you're making an argument for a new main forum, or possibly a subforum of GD (which I would be completely okay with.) If this traffic diversion is so significant, it should be pushed to the forefront of visibility because, at the moment, there are a number of main page forums that site there not due to traffic but due to tradition.

Second, if you're advocating more moderation of GD (something I also support), then you're undermining the vote we all took regarding infractions, increased moderation, and improved posting standards. To me, if GD is your premiere forum, then its posting standards should be upheld in every forum (except, obviously, Flames; it's lack of posting standards is its purpose), which would mean we need to revisit the vote we took (or we could get rid of the democratic process entirely, which I'll also support.)

It seems fundamentally silly to me to now expect moderators to break threads apart within GD, link threads to their derailments, etc. when the real, underlying problem with it is the posting standard being too lax (off-topic posts should eb disallowed, not to mention multiple tl;drs on a tangential discussion and now you can't find the main subject... we could just prevent the tl;drs which is not only easier for moderators, less subjective, and easily applied to all forums, troll removal is more attractive to new users anyways.)

We have identical goals, I just don't think your methods advance us in either the democratically (stupidly) preferred direction or the direction of our goals, because the two might as well be mutually exclusive.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

First, if you think the site as a whole would suffer because AI would simply divert GD traffic into a tucked-away subforum, then you're making an argument for a new main forum, or possibly a subforum of GD (which I would be completely okay with.)

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No, I'm not making that argument at all. I'm not necessarily saying the site would suffer, first of all - I'm saying that it would deter new growth. But beyond that point, you're drawing conclusions out of what I've said that genuinely don't make sense to me. I'm not making an argument for a new main forum because a new main forum drags numbers down. Let me explain how this works. When you create a forum on the Internet, your forum's activity is the most important advertisement that you make to guests. There are a few numbers that are of vital importance on your index page: Threads: X, Posts: Y, Members: Z. Those are arguably the most important numbers to focus on when your forum is new. But they aren't the only numbers to focus on - the other ones are seen in the columns to the right of every forum - the specific forums' threadcounts and postcounts. These indicate how much activity your forums are getting as individual areas of the site. Even if your total number of forum posts is high, low specific forum activity will make your forum look inactive. Right now, if you browse to CD, it looks like a wasteland. Flames is the largest number-padder we have at CD, so our total forum thread/postcount isn't too bad, but our individual forum counts are fucking abysmal.

Making a new subforum of CI for AI would be just about the only way to combat that issue, but I'm still supporting an effort to try being as active as possible in the forums we already have. You don't need a specific AI forum to have intelligent conversations - as many people have pointed out, AI's previous incarnations weren't ever very impressive in the first place.

I'm not saying we should never have a debate forum. I think we should. The problem is that this is a tiny website with a small following and a debate forum would literally serve us in no way unless we just don't give a shit either way whether anyone signs up for a new account.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

...there are a number of main page forums that site there not due to traffic but due to tradition.

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Right. I've been very lenient about letting new forums sit with less than stellar activity, but there is a method to my madness. You have to achieve a balance - too many forums on a site with no posts in them is a bad thing because it makes your forum look less active than it really is. Huge numbers of forums, even when they're active, can make a site too overwhelming to new members. But CD isn't huge and it doesn't have a very significant amount of forums. If you have too few forums, and you just have four forums with all of your traffic divided between them, your site looks too disorganized and it will be a headache to read threads posted in those four forums. The Great Outdoors wasn't taking away traffic from any other part of the site and hiding it. It was just providing people a place to make threads they literally would not have made anywhere else. Even if the traffic in that subforum is low, its location makes it plump up Sports' postcount on the index a little, and that's great. If a ton of people in Sports had been posting about things that belonged in The Great Outdoors, though, it would have been a different story this early on. I'm not going to explain every hypothetical situation here, but there is a logic behind the decision process when it comes to making new forums.

I guess what I'm really saying is that I understand why you want AI, but I would like it if you trusted me on why it's better not to bring it back just yet. I am explaining my reasoning the best I know how, and I'm not cockblocking in any way - I think a debate forum is a good thing to have on site like this, but I just don't feel that we have enough traffic yet to warrant it - instead of cleanly dividing up threads due to overflow, it would just take away a bunch of them from CI. Even as a subforum of CI.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Second, if you're advocating more moderation of GD (something I also support), then you're undermining the vote we all took regarding infractions, increased moderation, and improved posting standards.

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No, I'm not undermining anything. You'll notice that when I proposed this compromise, it was a proposal instead of a mandate. I never said, "now we're going to be a lot more strict in CI." My whole point was that we can have a little more moderation in GD if that's what people want to see.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

To me, if GD is your premiere forum, then its posting standards should be upheld in every forum (except, obviously, Flames; it's lack of posting standards is its purpose), which would mean we need to revisit the vote we took (or we could get rid of the democratic process entirely, which I'll also support.)

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I'm not getting rid of the democratic process. This community is small enough that votes on certain things actually count for something. At LWS, any attempt at democratic methods was a nightmare because there were too many people who were far too ignorant on the whole about forums and how to run them, so giving them choices about how to proceed would have only tied our hands in unpleasant ways. CD, on the other hand, is made up of LWS veterans who are smart enough to know what kind of community they want to build. You may want things to be run a certain way, Atmosfear, and that's understandable. I wish people would have voted for a little more moderation in that previous thread, but I don't want it to be up to me. I want it to be up to everyone else. This doesn't mean I think everything ought to be a vote - certain things like forum creation really should be left in the hands of people who have run forums before (with considered input from others). But I'm not going to just decide that we need stricter moderation and then enforce that upon everyone else, even if the majority of the site would prefer we kept things lax.

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Originally Posted by Atmosfear

It seems fundamentally silly to me to now expect moderators to break threads apart within GD, link threads to their derailments, etc. when the real, underlying problem with it is the posting standard being too lax

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If the members of this site want to be able to make some silly posts outside of Flames, then that's how it will be. I don't see it dragging down the overall quality of the site right now. LWS had to have strict posting standards because we had over 80k members. CD is made up of the people who were around at LWS the longest and (for the most part) were the top-tier posters. We don't need to police them heavily, because they know how to post.

If you think it's stupid or silly to split threads (which is very easy to do), then don't split threads. Let other mods do it.

If you make a poll, I will vote yes...probably.

Sole: could the direction of this shift into a subforum of CI that is either a debate forum (the one in AI back in LWS had pretty good activity, IIRC), or perhaps an archive of the threads that have solid, quality content? Not so much a BOTB, but threads like this genetic disposition one going on in CI are ones with some real value to them. So let the inane, banal threads melt away and die, and cull from them the threads that contain valuable content?

With it as a subforum of CI, the postcount won't change, and the quality that CI can produce is readily accessible, even and especially to potential new posters.

edit: I don't know too much about forum growth or maintenance, but I still think it makes sense to divide above-average threads from the rest, and plant them obviously in the flagship forum.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

I don't know too much about forum growth or maintenance, but I still think it makes sense to divide above-average threads from the rest, and plant them obviously in the flagship forum.

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Yes, it makes sense to divide them and display them, but only after there is enough content to keep that divide from doing more harm than good.

You're basically right about the subforum idea. The thing is, right now CI needs to be moving faster. Making a subforum in CI will not detrimentally affect the thread/postcount numbers on the index of the site, but it will affect the way threads move in CI.

I'm totally open to making a debate subforum in CI when there is more activity going on there. Let's just give it a few weeks and see how it goes. When there are more threads, there is more of a reason to separate them. Right now, we do have a thread rating system that can easily show people which threads are considered by the community to be of good quality.