What do you think of the state of the forum?

To the degree that posters can be characterized as having option-like value, it's true.

ivers view about interesting posters is close to my personal view, but isn't really the moderation style of the forum. Whether that should change or not isn't really up to me afaik.

as far as the volume in the pub, in werewolf or otherwise, I don't have an opinion. It's not something I've worried about, mostly because I don't think there's much I am personally going to be able to do about it either way, and because it's not really easy at all to isolate causes.

The best I have been a part of.

i can see both sides gambat

My participation has never been driven down by boring people. It has been driven down by people for other reasons.

A small group of people were willing to become full-time pub posters. It takes a significant amount of time to keep up with 700 new posts per day. Eventually those people will find other interests, and/or the less dedicated will just give up on the thread since they can't keep up with it anyway.

The downfall of the pub began when some big grievance blew up, and people didn't have time to keep up with both threads simultaneously. Eventually the grievance thread went away, and pub posting didn't return. That would seem to indicate that drama, despite being interesting, doesn't actually help the forum. It reallocates people's limited attention, and doesn't create an environment that's not worth returning to.

Put another way, is the goal of the forum only to attract more posting, regardless of the nature of the posting? 2p2 has 100 different subforums so that people can find what interests them. This is not the internet feud forum. I'd rather attract people who are interest in playing games and solving puzzles than people who are interested in having big drama. If that means fewer posts overall, then great. We're not losing anything.

Werewolf isn't in decline due to lack of drama. Werewolf is in decline because it requires an unsustainable time commitment and leads to burnout, and there hasn't been any fresh infusion of players in the last couple of years.

has twoplustwo as a whole seen a dropoff in the last few years?

I believe so, since Black Friday

The theory is participation as a whole. Maybe it's valid, maybe not.


This I don't buy. All forums have people that drop off; the healthy ones keep people longer and also do a better job of attracting new regulars. The reason POG hasn't may have more to do with decline in 2+2 generally than with POG specifically. I don't know.

i mean

this seems like the obvious answer to why we have seen a decline

I frequently forget this is a poker forum

ivers:

this is from the perspective of someone who is only here for the WW and does not care at all what happens elsewhere, so take it with a grain of salt (this means I might have missed Mac's supposedly awesome pub posts, since I almost never read the pub).

I fail to see a direct correlation from the drying up of WW games and Crossnerd's and McAvoy's demise.

-Sure, Crossnerd's contributions to WW were great, but most of her defenders kept playing WW even after she was gone.
As for Mac, he is definitely not a positive WW contributor and I'm adamant that the vast majority of active WW players don't want to play with him.

-I feel that WW games have started to dry up in the summer of 2013, and the process hasn't stopped yet. This was before last Crossnerd's perma.
TBH I don't know why the games have been drying up and it's something that concerns me quite a bit.

-As for the "panem et circenses" bit, idk what to tell you; it's certainly true that drama always stirs interest and discussion, but I feel like the downside to WW games is too high. Drama definitely hurts WW; to this day, a number of strong and respected players keep each other on ignore during games.

I mean seriously. McAvoy posted his new year's resolution was to have an even worse moment than Burn Notice. Then bragged after his VR harassment that he had succeeded on his goal. Can't believe anyone wants him back.

Elliott > soah itt

We used to have forum by forum stats. It would be intersting to compare the trends in, say, OOT/SE/Politics/POG over the past few years.

I can agree with that. Banning werewolf players doesn't help, though.

Crossnerd was a solid contributor when she played games.
vyk almost got perma'd, and who knows if that didn't leave a bad taste in his mouth, although his lack of posting in SE suggests he's probably just busy with IRL.
Andynan probably feels he isn't welcome anymore. The lynch mob seems to have won, which is regrettable.

We need to reconsider our ban-happy culture imo. The downside to letting someone play who ought to have been banned is that they screw up one more game. The downside to getting it wrong is that we lose a werewolf player who might have played dozens of games in the years to come.

Ok, never mind about mac. How bout xn?

I can appreciate ivers's argument simply from the perspective that usually the most cynical defense of something bad is the most sensible one.

That said, it doesn't sway me at all.

McAvoy won't be unbanned. If he is I'm prolly out of here. He's an ass through and through.

We've averaged about one ban per year in a forum with hundreds of active users. There isn't any ban-happy culture.

And to be clear with regard to Mac: I don't think for a second that him entering games caused an average count of +1 to the player list. Little by little I just decided to start entering games that he was in less and less, and eventually didn't want to touch vanillas he was in. I doubt that I was alone in that. Him entering easily could have had a negative expectation on overall participation numbers.

Yeah.

I mean even teddy

When he tried to come back what was the harm

This is about games. Banning people from games is bad overall

Yes people need to be punished. Yes people may need a break from games if they don't follow social norms or rules.

But perma?

Yeah

Mac was purposely heinous. A bigger crime than most of the other banned posters