My feelings on The Demon Rush
Quote:
argh
yes
Quote:
argh
Your tears, they are so sweet.
You can come discuss this in the staff channel. Or not!
SDA Forum
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Hi, we moved the IRC channel to #sda on irc.speeddemosarchive.com
If you don't have an IRC client or know what that is, basically you can chat with us in real time by going to mibbit.com and at the top selecting "other server" under "connect to IRC."
For server: type in irc.speeddemosarchive.com
Nick: whatever you want to be called
channels: #sda
I realize we had some curious people join due to the old channel being on freenode, but hopefully any of you who fall into that category will stick with us on the "new" server. This move puts us on our own server, which gives us greater control and we're not dependent on other people. Freenode gets DDOS'd semifrequently, netsplits due to multiple servers, and with our own server we can actually ban people when we do ban them (like you know, a certain guy who still hangs around freenode and sends PM's on alts). If we ever get some outage, we can keep the IRC server up by pointing it to dl.
Also this timing was clearly affected by de-modding Lag (nothing personal, he's done nothing wrong, he's just harmful to SDA by looking like he has any authority), but Nate wanted to host #sda on m2k2/sda from the beginning.
If you don't have an IRC client or know what that is, basically you can chat with us in real time by going to mibbit.com and at the top selecting "other server" under "connect to IRC."
For server: type in irc.speeddemosarchive.com
Nick: whatever you want to be called
channels: #sda
I realize we had some curious people join due to the old channel being on freenode, but hopefully any of you who fall into that category will stick with us on the "new" server. This move puts us on our own server, which gives us greater control and we're not dependent on other people. Freenode gets DDOS'd semifrequently, netsplits due to multiple servers, and with our own server we can actually ban people when we do ban them (like you know, a certain guy who still hangs around freenode and sends PM's on alts). If we ever get some outage, we can keep the IRC server up by pointing it to dl.
Also this timing was clearly affected by de-modding Lag (nothing personal, he's done nothing wrong, he's just harmful to SDA by looking like he has any authority), but Nate wanted to host #sda on m2k2/sda from the beginning.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Quote from illum1nat3d:
You guys fired Lag?!
Anonymous guests everywhere and members posting as guests (hi IMW) go wild in celebration.
Seriously, should have done it a long time ago but eventually it was just too much to put up with having to hunt down people that he gave blatant wrong information to set them straight. That is the #1 thing. He seriously passes off his random opinions as actual SDA policy, and while it's kinda good for lulz, it's not really a great idea. Lag's not a bad guy at all, but he's a terrible representative for SDA. He can still do whatever he wants, it just won't look like SDA is condoning it (people think mods = SDA). There's a whole lot more I could say but there's really no need.
Quote from Zurreco:
Lag is still the best mod on the forums and the shift is pretty ludicrous. Allow me to go in to a great diatribe about why I feel nonplussed about this situation:
The best mod on the forums would be whoever ends up banning you btw, and you know this. Also I thought you were ALDCFL.
Anyway he comes closest to locking the most threads to your satisfaction, but this is because he reads the most and I don't click on stuff I don't want to read because who has time for that? If you want a thread to be locked, you should contact a mod about it, you know? I'm saying this for serious.
Josh is also a goon and he completely disagrees with you about SDA forum FWIW. TASvideos forum OTOH is the worst thing ever and ought to be filled to the brim with goons, but I think it is already, so clearly it doesn't help.
sda loyalist
So, what do I do with #sda? Hmm. Put SDABot back on and have it randomly pick dictionary words to ban people for saying? Go on and on about how I was the mod who did the most work? Only let people in who actually speedrun games?
The people will speak.
No hard feelings, but I do think you(pl.)'ve made a bad decision. The forum trudges ever onwards towards gamefaqville and now there isn't some random sniper on the road shooting people who are wearing the wrong sort of hat.
The people will speak.
No hard feelings, but I do think you(pl.)'ve made a bad decision. The forum trudges ever onwards towards gamefaqville and now there isn't some random sniper on the road shooting people who are wearing the wrong sort of hat.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Quote from Lag.Com:
So, what do I do with #sda? Hmm. Put SDABot back on and have it randomly pick dictionary words to ban people for saying? Go on and on about how I was the mod who did the most work? Only let people in who actually speedrun games?
The people will speak.
No hard feelings, but I do think you(pl.)'ve made a bad decision. The forum trudges ever onwards towards gamefaqville and now there isn't some random sniper on the road shooting people who are wearing the wrong sort of hat.
The people will speak.
No hard feelings, but I do think you(pl.)'ve made a bad decision. The forum trudges ever onwards towards gamefaqville and now there isn't some random sniper on the road shooting people who are wearing the wrong sort of hat.
Up to you, just like Psweiger's bounties. Hmm. I think this would be the best possible idea, seriously. You only do the most work if you take the absolute value of that work, otherwise you do the least and force others to clean up after your mess. Great idea, but problem is, you would have to ban yourself first.
The people don't like you, and you don't listen anyway, so you'd probably delete what they have to say.
No hard feelings, but I don't know why you even hang around this site now that you can't power grab, credit whore, and attention whore anymore. You can get a thread locked almost as easily by telling a mod about it, SDA is less like gamefaqs now without you modding arbitrarily, people will now know why they got killed due to our face-to-face beatings rather than your snipings, and gamefaqs is better than somethingawful anyway.
I know this comes off really rough, but I don't dislike Lag as a person, this post was just too ripe not to respond to, lol. But seriously, nobody has even once told me about a thread that should be locked, so the people that complain that more threads should be locked don't really have a leg to stand on. Do we really need to lock more threads anyway? I've never seen another gaming site even 10% as strict on what it allows as this one currently. TASVideos allows basically everything, for example.
sda loyalist
Yeah, the thing is, people always told me about threads that could/should be locked, because
The comments about attention whoring puzzle me. I don't think anybody else has called me out on that, but then again, don't-upset-the-angry-(recently-)mod effect I guess.
I still hang around because I like speedrunning (despite you claiming I haven't done any, when apparently I have 89 quake records), and I want the community to flourish (despite being 'fired') because I'm not petty. I just don't want it to flourish into something shit.
Uh, also... IRC channel! On topic, I swear. After all, there's no point making a new topic just for me to baw in.
- I was actually online and not afk
- I listened to what they said (usually "<someguy> lag can you look at http://sda.com/postlink") [li]I visibly perform moderation duties? Just a guess
The comments about attention whoring puzzle me. I don't think anybody else has called me out on that, but then again, don't-upset-the-angry-(recently-)mod effect I guess.
I still hang around because I like speedrunning (despite you claiming I haven't done any, when apparently I have 89 quake records), and I want the community to flourish (despite being 'fired') because I'm not petty. I just don't want it to flourish into something shit.
Uh, also... IRC channel! On topic, I swear. After all, there's no point making a new topic just for me to baw in.
.
Quote from Enhasa:
Anyway he comes closest to locking the most threads to your satisfaction, but this is because he reads the most and I don't click on stuff I don't want to read because who has time for that? If you want a thread to be locked, you should contact a mod about it, you know? I'm saying this for serious.
Josh is also a goon and he completely disagrees with you about SDA forum FWIW. TASvideos forum OTOH is the worst thing ever and ought to be filled to the brim with goons, but I think it is already, so clearly it doesn't help.
Josh is also a goon and he completely disagrees with you about SDA forum FWIW. TASvideos forum OTOH is the worst thing ever and ought to be filled to the brim with goons, but I think it is already, so clearly it doesn't help.
Kay. I disagree with the first point and I question the logic behind the second one.
First of all, having moderator status is all well and good until you rely entirely on the posters to police themselves. While Lag.Com's overzealousness towards people being mildly retarded isn't the best way to go about it, neither is waiting for someone to complain before fixing it.
Secondly: I fail to see how TASVideos and SA have anything to do with SDA but if this is just an in-joke thing between you and Zurriepoo then ignore me because I don't know what I'm talking about.
On topic: Yay, more IRC servers to connect to. I'll pass, but thanks.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
I don't know what is the first post and the second point you're referring to, sorry. You mean first point = first paragraph? I don't really see why anyone cares about General Chat anyway (SDA is about content, not random gaming talk), but I don't know why there would be some epidemic of gamefaqsness in the future? As far as I can tell, although it's only been a couple days, it's less like gamefaqs and random flaming already. Also it's not going to kill you if a thread stays unlocked a little longer? Lag wasn't on 24/7 already. At any rate, it's not hard to find mods. We could make any number of people mods right now who would lock just as many threads as Lag.
I talked about this a lot with DK64 after Prot was banned and we almost moved the IRC channel right then, but the worst part about moving is definitely excluding the freenode people who don't want to connect to another server. OTOH, we gained some m2k2 people for that very reason (including DJ who actually is someone worth having around), and selfishly, I only have to connect to one server myself now and my #sda and staff channel logs are finally separate. BTW I think Zurreco is more anti-Nate and m2k2 than anything (due to all the original cheatruns hijinx), and I don't know if he'd have a problem with going from #sda to say, #speeddemosarchive on freenode.
I think I did a terrible job in emphasizing this, because nobody seems to get it. Lag wasn't fired because he's an overzealous mod or he locks too many threads or he's a meanie poo or whatever. Has anyone ever unlocked a thread that he locked? If not, nobody disagrees on what to lock. All mods essentially do nothing in terms of replacement value, so thinking that any particular mod is good or bad is inherently silly. All any mod does is lock a thread before another mod would lock it anyway.
Lag was fired because people automatically think of mods = admin, and he's not admin, and he does an amazingly poor job of representing SDA. Like I said, each individual mod basically does nothing. Being a mod is not about locking threads. It's about what voice in a channel (not freenode #sda) should be about, which is knowing your shit and being someone that people can trust what you say. bman and ballofsnow are tech support mods for this very reason. Lag couldn't be worse at this if he tried. You don't know how annoying it is to have to hunt people down after skimming the IRC logs. Typical example, someone from TSC came on, asked half a dozen ruling questions, and Lag gave completely ludicrous answers for every single one. In fact, I don't know if Lag has ever given a correct answer.
It also doesn't look good for a representative of SDA to (humourously!) say he's going to "fucking kill" another member. That seems a little off the deep end. Not to mention the hundreds of times someone like Molotov will say he bought a Wii to run FE10 or whatever, and Lag will say "QUIT RUNNING TERRIBLE GAMES." It's not truthful, it's just idiotic. If he was a responsible op, he would kickban himself. Just because you're a dick doesn't mean you're right. If a newbie came on #sda and got treated that way, of course he would just leave. It's not about how nice he is or how he phrases things, it's about if what you're saying is intrinsically sound or not.
I don't give a shit about expanding SDA and public face and interviews and all that BS. I just want to see more and better speedruns, and by driving people away pointlessly, Lag does hurt the site. Now to his credit, I know that he is honest and always speaks what he thinks (like me, except the only reason I don't have to hide things is because I'm a nice guy and actually do like people), so I wouldn't want him to self-neuter. There's really no difference now. He still says whatever he wants, and he still has the same no power as before. The difference is that he doesn't look like he's speaking for SDA anymore.
Again, he hasn't done anything wrong. He's not an incompetent mod, he's an incompetent SDA spokesman. We put up with it for a very long time because he's not a bad guy in the least. It's like the kid who is terrible at sports but enthusiastic, who is on your YMCA sports team. For a while you deal with him and let him do what he wants, tell him what he can do better, but after a while you get up to high school sports and you can't keep it up. You have to just drop him. I mean, he tries, and he thinks he's helping, but you know, that's life.
I read SW's post first.
I think it's more like, the only people who ask for anything to be locked, are TASVideos people and Europeans who naturally would ask you first since you hang out in #nesvideos or you're on at the same time. I could be wrong. In general, people ask me to do tons of shit all the time, I just don't draw attention to myself. For example, TheVoid asked me to shorten someone's sig today, and I just did it. OTOH you might post OMG HUGE SIG and lock the thread. So maybe the perception affects who they might ask, but I'm easier to reach (depends on the person), a billion times more likely to listen, and perform way more administrative duties. It's all about replacement value. If they ask Mike instead of you, there's no dropoff. Just like when a player who scores 20 points a game gets injured, the team doesn't score 20 less points every game. Just because you do a lot doesn't mean you have a lot of value (nothing personal, it's true for any of us). I talked to dex, and if you don't mind (i.e. feel like we axed you for him), I think he would be a good mod. Also anyone who thought you did a great modding job would probably feel that way about him too.
Being completely honest, you are the most credit whoring and attention whoring person I've encountered (typical example: asking us to include you in the first FAQ question even though you do nothing for SDA itself and there's no reason why we shouldn't include a whole host of people if we include you... another typical example: creating the new forum thread even though you didn't do anything... etc etc etc). Power hungry is up there, but for example Prot is worse at that.
Guess what? The Quake records are the main reason why you are still a Quake mod (that and, there's no new Quake runners to scare away), and that's where you have the most respect. Not tough to understand.
If you really want SDA to flourish, which I believe you really do, I think you would accept this. I know you have a thick skin and you're a rational guy (not worried about retaliation like with Marie), so keep on doing what you do. Although seriously, one last time, what's the deal with people taking General Chat seriously? Who cares if GC or #sda "flourishes to shit"? If GC becomes an unreadable cesspool, and speedruns improve slightly, I'll take that any day of the week. SDA is not about gaming discussion.
I talked about this a lot with DK64 after Prot was banned and we almost moved the IRC channel right then, but the worst part about moving is definitely excluding the freenode people who don't want to connect to another server. OTOH, we gained some m2k2 people for that very reason (including DJ who actually is someone worth having around), and selfishly, I only have to connect to one server myself now and my #sda and staff channel logs are finally separate. BTW I think Zurreco is more anti-Nate and m2k2 than anything (due to all the original cheatruns hijinx), and I don't know if he'd have a problem with going from #sda to say, #speeddemosarchive on freenode.
I think I did a terrible job in emphasizing this, because nobody seems to get it. Lag wasn't fired because he's an overzealous mod or he locks too many threads or he's a meanie poo or whatever. Has anyone ever unlocked a thread that he locked? If not, nobody disagrees on what to lock. All mods essentially do nothing in terms of replacement value, so thinking that any particular mod is good or bad is inherently silly. All any mod does is lock a thread before another mod would lock it anyway.
Lag was fired because people automatically think of mods = admin, and he's not admin, and he does an amazingly poor job of representing SDA. Like I said, each individual mod basically does nothing. Being a mod is not about locking threads. It's about what voice in a channel (not freenode #sda) should be about, which is knowing your shit and being someone that people can trust what you say. bman and ballofsnow are tech support mods for this very reason. Lag couldn't be worse at this if he tried. You don't know how annoying it is to have to hunt people down after skimming the IRC logs. Typical example, someone from TSC came on, asked half a dozen ruling questions, and Lag gave completely ludicrous answers for every single one. In fact, I don't know if Lag has ever given a correct answer.
It also doesn't look good for a representative of SDA to (humourously!) say he's going to "fucking kill" another member. That seems a little off the deep end. Not to mention the hundreds of times someone like Molotov will say he bought a Wii to run FE10 or whatever, and Lag will say "QUIT RUNNING TERRIBLE GAMES." It's not truthful, it's just idiotic. If he was a responsible op, he would kickban himself. Just because you're a dick doesn't mean you're right. If a newbie came on #sda and got treated that way, of course he would just leave. It's not about how nice he is or how he phrases things, it's about if what you're saying is intrinsically sound or not.
I don't give a shit about expanding SDA and public face and interviews and all that BS. I just want to see more and better speedruns, and by driving people away pointlessly, Lag does hurt the site. Now to his credit, I know that he is honest and always speaks what he thinks (like me, except the only reason I don't have to hide things is because I'm a nice guy and actually do like people), so I wouldn't want him to self-neuter. There's really no difference now. He still says whatever he wants, and he still has the same no power as before. The difference is that he doesn't look like he's speaking for SDA anymore.
Again, he hasn't done anything wrong. He's not an incompetent mod, he's an incompetent SDA spokesman. We put up with it for a very long time because he's not a bad guy in the least. It's like the kid who is terrible at sports but enthusiastic, who is on your YMCA sports team. For a while you deal with him and let him do what he wants, tell him what he can do better, but after a while you get up to high school sports and you can't keep it up. You have to just drop him. I mean, he tries, and he thinks he's helping, but you know, that's life.
I read SW's post first.
Quote from Lag.Com:
Yeah, the thing is, people always told me about threads that could/should be locked, because
The comments about attention whoring puzzle me. I don't think anybody else has called me out on that, but then again, don't-upset-the-angry-(recently-)mod effect I guess.
I still hang around because I like speedrunning (despite you claiming I haven't done any, when apparently I have 89 quake records), and I want the community to flourish (despite being 'fired') because I'm not petty. I just don't want it to flourish into something shit.
Uh, also... IRC channel! On topic, I swear. After all, there's no point making a new topic just for me to baw in.
- I was actually online and not afk
- I listened to what they said (usually "<someguy> lag can you look at http://sda.com/postlink") [li]I visibly perform moderation duties? Just a guess
The comments about attention whoring puzzle me. I don't think anybody else has called me out on that, but then again, don't-upset-the-angry-(recently-)mod effect I guess.
I still hang around because I like speedrunning (despite you claiming I haven't done any, when apparently I have 89 quake records), and I want the community to flourish (despite being 'fired') because I'm not petty. I just don't want it to flourish into something shit.
Uh, also... IRC channel! On topic, I swear. After all, there's no point making a new topic just for me to baw in.
I think it's more like, the only people who ask for anything to be locked, are TASVideos people and Europeans who naturally would ask you first since you hang out in #nesvideos or you're on at the same time. I could be wrong. In general, people ask me to do tons of shit all the time, I just don't draw attention to myself. For example, TheVoid asked me to shorten someone's sig today, and I just did it. OTOH you might post OMG HUGE SIG and lock the thread. So maybe the perception affects who they might ask, but I'm easier to reach (depends on the person), a billion times more likely to listen, and perform way more administrative duties. It's all about replacement value. If they ask Mike instead of you, there's no dropoff. Just like when a player who scores 20 points a game gets injured, the team doesn't score 20 less points every game. Just because you do a lot doesn't mean you have a lot of value (nothing personal, it's true for any of us). I talked to dex, and if you don't mind (i.e. feel like we axed you for him), I think he would be a good mod. Also anyone who thought you did a great modding job would probably feel that way about him too.
Being completely honest, you are the most credit whoring and attention whoring person I've encountered (typical example: asking us to include you in the first FAQ question even though you do nothing for SDA itself and there's no reason why we shouldn't include a whole host of people if we include you... another typical example: creating the new forum thread even though you didn't do anything... etc etc etc). Power hungry is up there, but for example Prot is worse at that.
Guess what? The Quake records are the main reason why you are still a Quake mod (that and, there's no new Quake runners to scare away), and that's where you have the most respect. Not tough to understand.
If you really want SDA to flourish, which I believe you really do, I think you would accept this. I know you have a thick skin and you're a rational guy (not worried about retaliation like with Marie), so keep on doing what you do. Although seriously, one last time, what's the deal with people taking General Chat seriously? Who cares if GC or #sda "flourishes to shit"? If GC becomes an unreadable cesspool, and speedruns improve slightly, I'll take that any day of the week. SDA is not about gaming discussion.
Just call me the cynicism machine
Quote from Enhasa:
BTW I think Zurreco is more anti-Nate and m2k2 than anything (due to all the original cheatruns hijinx), and I don't know if he'd have a problem with going from #sda to say, #speeddemosarchive on freenode.
I would appreciate it if people would quit trying to speak for me, especially when I have so little impact on the site/this argument/anything, really.
To set the record straight and clear the air (don't read all of this):
I do not prefer nesvideos to SDA. I probably dislike more people there than I do here, although I'm not at liberty to actually tally that, since I sure hate a lot of people in both communities. However, I have more history there, including publications, and their overall focus on actual running versus "game culture"/etc has kept me at a steady neutral with them. I have no idea why people think I prefer tasvideos.org when I barely visit it anymore (aside from doing what I would consider due diligence for the Workbench, Ratings, and Off Topic).
I do not prefer SA to SDA. The only parts of that forum that I frequent are a gaming community and a gaming-trolling subcommunity, neither of which is of actual importance to me. I just appreciate that there is a constant level of "rules x apply here and rules y apply here" that has disappeared from SDA as of late, but that is not enough to force preference. Yes, I preferred SDA when Radix was still in charge, but things change and I don't care enough to do anything about it. Hence the lack of interest in this site.
I am neutral when it comes to nate. What he has done for this community is countered by his ego in the past. Otherwise, he is so docile that for the most part I overlook his posts and IRC chatter. When I do note his presence, its usually timid enough to forget, although I should say that 'lol' is bad form for IRC and forums alike.
I am neutral to m2k2, since I have only been there a few times. The only thing I can say is that Arkarian is one of the worst people to have ever been given any sort of power over anyone. That being said, I don't frequent their forums at all and so this opinion should hold no value.
I am LDCFL rather than ALDCFL. If not because he seemed to be one of the few who would actually listen to me when I opted to be serious in #sda, it's because he was also one of the few mods who wouldn't play favorites. No, this isn't pandering to treatment or whatnot: I just prefer consistency. Also, LDC never took the holier-than-thou route aside from "you made a shit post and therefore you are an idiot" (which almost always seemed to be justified). While I can appreciate why he was stripped of his status on the forums/IRC (though I can't attest to ever experiencing said incongruity with the site), I disagree with the manner that it occurred, and this whole situation has left a sour taste in my mouth towards Enhasa, rather than the whole SDA modship otherwise. Very very tasteless, and this is coming from the guy who thinks schadenfreud should be considered acceptable. The fact that he is part of my d24p group has no bearing on how I feel about him. If that were the case, I would have to actually acknowledge Xaggoth's replacement via remembering his handle (which I don't).
I am neutral to switching IRC servers. However, there is too much shady business involving the recent shift. Furthermore, #sda on freenode has become a pleasant shift back towards speedrunning conversations amidst casual chat, which is what it should have been all along. Getting +o hasn't affected this, but being able to talk about current projects without sifting through a lot of non-game related bullshit has been nice. Yes, I know that I'm not the poster child for staying on track. However, Tiki's wang chung shenanigans were infinitely more interesting than "hey guys did you vote for this weeks shmup deely" that seemed to pop up every few minutes otherwise. Also, I'm really lazy, and I don't want to have to add another server to my perform list in mIRC.
That being said, leave me out of this nonsense. The fact that my name is being thrown around at all gives me this fear that people are actually listening to me half of the time. That implies that either people are taking my sarcasm seriously or they are actually looking up to me when there are more respectable members of the forums. However, I think this situation as a whole reflects really poorly on pretty much everyone on this site, as no one has been able to elicit a stance that doesn't seem spiteful or arrogant in some manner. This includes my stances.
sda loyalist
SDA used to be about Quake only, right? Then Radix in one clever move expanded it to include 'all games', or at least enough more games for a wide range of people to be interested.
All good! In fact, it became so popular that it practically replaced Quake, a move which has upset many veterans of the site, but which is inevitable given the age of the game etc.
Now the front page doesn't even have a direct link to /quake/; again, I don't necessarily disagree with this move, although I know a fair few people who do. Which is a shame, really, because it's (generally) really difficult to find speedruns on the main site which are anywhere near as optimised, or for that matter runners who are as selfless, a trait we should all aspire to as it pushes us onwards to better speedrunning itself rather than just our own trophy cabinets. It feels to me as if the site has 'lost' this massive collection of incredibly precise and visually spectacular speedruns, though a relatively minor decision. Sure, you can still get the quake section, either by 'knowing the URL' or by navigating through the games list, but the chance of randomly happening upon this site full of great runs has become virtually zero. This has hurt the community enough that, now the summer is over, updates are infrequent and contain only a few demos, especially compared to some of the updates we had when I was originally hired. It's dying, and though few people care, it's also nigh-on impossible to see dying. Which means it has no chance, despite being one of the most physically and mentally demanding games to speedrun.
Yeah I know, that seemed pretty tangential. Here's my point. I've seen (during my fairly brief time here) a shift in forum users. As the forum has got more popular, the number of users has grown very fast, but the number of speedruns... has it grown quickly too? I don't have any statistics as I don't know how to get at them, or even if they exist, but I would guess it hasn't. Of course the number has grown, it can't exactly go down, but it sure isn't keeping up with the number of users. As one small contributor to this deficit, I started working on a speedrun of Blaze & Blade a month or so ago, and also the 4-player Diablo II speedrun project thingy is starting up again now everybody's ready. I guess now, I have a lot more time to do it, har de har. However, I know there are trillions of forum users who will never do a speedrun. That's not too bad in itself, after all sometimes people come on and give one tip that ends up changing the entire run. The problem is the people who will never do a run and who sit around talking about their favourite game. It's believable that after a few pages of discussion, a game name might pop up that inspires someone to do a run, but... eh. It sure isn't likely. These topics pull all kinds of people in to comment, speedrunners and non-, which is much the problem, it distracts those people from actually doing any 'work'. And because speedrunning is hard, and people like things to be easy, it stops some people from ever finishing or getting anywhere.
Evidently either you think this effect doesn't exist or it's small enough to be ignored. I don't, and I've fought it for as long as I've been a moderator. I guess I lost.
When the forum was just for Quakers (not guys in weird hats), the discussion was not exactly fruitful. It was pretty much like an IRC channel, but without the kickbanning. However, whenever anybody new signed up and posted, people used to PM them asking where they were from to see whether they could coop, and they'd actively be encouraged to make demos even if they sucked! Just so they could get into the practice and mindset of running. People used to produce demos non-stop, improving their own stuff and sending in the best. Now it's lucky for SDA to see 4 in a month, and the Quake section of the forums sees about that many posts too.
In other words, much as 'that other games section that Radix started' has become SDA, I see General Chat becoming SDA too. Or at least, enough of it that people who actually get the job done will look elsewhere. Call me paranoid, but I really don't want that to happen.
Edit: Yes, I've been the moderator of some other places where this has happened. Whether it can happen here or not is yet to be seen, which is my point really.
All good! In fact, it became so popular that it practically replaced Quake, a move which has upset many veterans of the site, but which is inevitable given the age of the game etc.
Now the front page doesn't even have a direct link to /quake/; again, I don't necessarily disagree with this move, although I know a fair few people who do. Which is a shame, really, because it's (generally) really difficult to find speedruns on the main site which are anywhere near as optimised, or for that matter runners who are as selfless, a trait we should all aspire to as it pushes us onwards to better speedrunning itself rather than just our own trophy cabinets. It feels to me as if the site has 'lost' this massive collection of incredibly precise and visually spectacular speedruns, though a relatively minor decision. Sure, you can still get the quake section, either by 'knowing the URL' or by navigating through the games list, but the chance of randomly happening upon this site full of great runs has become virtually zero. This has hurt the community enough that, now the summer is over, updates are infrequent and contain only a few demos, especially compared to some of the updates we had when I was originally hired. It's dying, and though few people care, it's also nigh-on impossible to see dying. Which means it has no chance, despite being one of the most physically and mentally demanding games to speedrun.
Yeah I know, that seemed pretty tangential. Here's my point. I've seen (during my fairly brief time here) a shift in forum users. As the forum has got more popular, the number of users has grown very fast, but the number of speedruns... has it grown quickly too? I don't have any statistics as I don't know how to get at them, or even if they exist, but I would guess it hasn't. Of course the number has grown, it can't exactly go down, but it sure isn't keeping up with the number of users. As one small contributor to this deficit, I started working on a speedrun of Blaze & Blade a month or so ago, and also the 4-player Diablo II speedrun project thingy is starting up again now everybody's ready. I guess now, I have a lot more time to do it, har de har. However, I know there are trillions of forum users who will never do a speedrun. That's not too bad in itself, after all sometimes people come on and give one tip that ends up changing the entire run. The problem is the people who will never do a run and who sit around talking about their favourite game. It's believable that after a few pages of discussion, a game name might pop up that inspires someone to do a run, but... eh. It sure isn't likely. These topics pull all kinds of people in to comment, speedrunners and non-, which is much the problem, it distracts those people from actually doing any 'work'. And because speedrunning is hard, and people like things to be easy, it stops some people from ever finishing or getting anywhere.
Evidently either you think this effect doesn't exist or it's small enough to be ignored. I don't, and I've fought it for as long as I've been a moderator. I guess I lost.
When the forum was just for Quakers (not guys in weird hats), the discussion was not exactly fruitful. It was pretty much like an IRC channel, but without the kickbanning. However, whenever anybody new signed up and posted, people used to PM them asking where they were from to see whether they could coop, and they'd actively be encouraged to make demos even if they sucked! Just so they could get into the practice and mindset of running. People used to produce demos non-stop, improving their own stuff and sending in the best. Now it's lucky for SDA to see 4 in a month, and the Quake section of the forums sees about that many posts too.
In other words, much as 'that other games section that Radix started' has become SDA, I see General Chat becoming SDA too. Or at least, enough of it that people who actually get the job done will look elsewhere. Call me paranoid, but I really don't want that to happen.
Edit: Yes, I've been the moderator of some other places where this has happened. Whether it can happen here or not is yet to be seen, which is my point really.
Jumping Turtle
Quote from Lag.Com:
SDA used to be about Quake only, right? Then Radix in one clever move expanded it to include 'all games', or at least enough more games for a wide range of people to be interested.
This has hurt the community enough that, now the summer is over, updates are infrequent and contain only a few demos, especially compared to some of the updates we had when I was originally hired. It's dying, and though few people care, it's also nigh-on impossible to see dying.
This has hurt the community enough that, now the summer is over, updates are infrequent and contain only a few demos, especially compared to some of the updates we had when I was originally hired. It's dying, and though few people care, it's also nigh-on impossible to see dying.
Once you go from one game to all games, of course it's going to drastically increase the amount of runs being sent in. These days, though, the standards are getting more strict, because there are so many runs that aren't even that good. Perhaps that's the reason people are getting discouraged. There are also a lot of really good runs up, and over time it's getting less and less likely for people to be able to break these records. I admit there are still tons of games that don't have good runs, and even many games that don't have runs at all. Maybe it's getting to the point that the people that have the set-ups to do the runs have done most of the games they've set out to do.
Quote from Lag.Com:
Yeah I know, that seemed pretty tangential. Here's my point. I've seen (during my fairly brief time here) a shift in forum users. As the forum has got more popular, the number of users has grown very fast, but the number of speedruns... has it grown quickly too? I don't have any statistics as I don't know how to get at them, or even if they exist, but I would guess it hasn't. Of course the number has grown, it can't exactly go down, but it sure isn't keeping up with the number of users.
Actually, I'm thinking speedrunning is just finding its audience. I've noticed as I talk to people in real life that they don't really enjoy playing video games as much as us. Believe it or not, there are people that have gone through several video games ONLY ONCE! It's crazy, but it's true! But a lot of people still enjoy seeing crazy runs of tough games. Usually, an athlete has to play before fans start spectating. It's only been a couple years since SDA used to be an "underground" training camp for the hardcore gaming subculture. People are increasingly starting to pile into the stands. This doesn't automatically mean there is supposed to be more speedrunning.
Bottom line is, it's natural for the rate of submissions to decrease and the rate of users to massively expand. I just hope people don't get too discouraged if their first couple dozen runs don't even come close to the records. I hope people aren't getting too discouraged. They just have to realize that most of these runs are the result of thousands of restarts. An acceptable record might only require a hundred total tries.
Quote from Lag.Com:
I know there are trillions of forum users who will never do a speedrun.
I'm sorry :^(
Though I haven't really given up. I just have to overcome my technological inferiority and ignorance, and it's taking more time than I have free.
Also, I don't agree about the last couple paragraphs of alucard's post. O_o