Hi Tom.
Well I agree keeping topics in correct rooms is a moderator's responsability
and one job I do on audiogames.net, however there is another side to things.
I have seen forums where any post that a certain mod considders to not match
the subject gets utterly crucified, or gets their posts deleted, which just
makes for an unfriendly atmosphere. To take one example, in a brouser game I
played recently, I couldn't find any in game help at all, so i posted a
general introduction on the forum, said who I was etc, and asked if anyone
could please tell me where the in game help was which, for an intro message
I didn't see as unreasonable at all. however I instantly get three members,
including the admin jumping down my throat for daning to ask a game help
question in the intro forum, ---- needless to say that is not a forum i
visit anymore :D.
People can be real nazis about those sorts of things I find.
The rule I use with audiogames.net, is that so long as there is a continuous
discussion thread from one message to the next in a topic, it's fine, even
if this means discussion changes slightly. So for instance, we might be
discussing swamp, which leads on a general discussion about fps games and
discussions of the relative merrits of shades of doom. This is fine, even if
the topi subject were still about swamp, since afterall everyone can read
the continuous discussion and understand why! we're suddenly talking about
shades of doom. if however someone jumped into the thread and asked about
something entirely different, like how to run Jim kitchin's games for
instance, then! it would be off topic posting and I'd likely post a mod
warning. of course, if it did! spark another thought that was completely
unrelated, say someone got to thinking about comparing ideas for in game
monsters, they'd likely post another topic and refer back to the old one as
you describe rather than derailing the thread completely with a tangent.
that system seems to work very well for audiogames.net, and is imho the
right balance betwene order and free discussion. Then again, something like
that would of course not! work on a mailing list, since obviously past
messages are not visible thus the flow of discussion is less obvious to
anyone joining the thread later. This is however once again another reason
why forums and mailing lists both have their good and bad points.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
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