Only 400 active users?
 

Goodness! That seems a really low total. I thought we hovered a little over a 1000 not that long ago. Am I wrong about that? Have we always been this tiny?

Has all of the political/sexual/religious BS scared away those who just want to talk about Role Playing Games? If I had a vote, I'd vote to keep anything from Off Topic and P&R from showing on the front page. I don't have a vote though…

Do we want growth? Perhaps we were too big before and this is just settling to the right size…

How did you come up with this number (400 active members) ?

Four hundred isn't tiny in my book. Sounds kinda huge.

At the bottom of the forums, i think

Threads: 32,176, Posts: 601,460, Members: 11,842, Active Members: 449
Welcome to our newest member, never18

If we really want bigger numbers, the site should start covering overhyped garbage.
Destiny and Pokemon Go should be the site splashscreen.

I'm always tweeting and facebooking the watch :)

Please no! C'mon Joxer, don't give them ideas…. :)

You are wrong. The numbers never went much higher and myrthos produced a chart showing the numbers.

There was a peak around 700-800 if I remember at some point of some game's release and then it dropped to 400-500 and stayed there.


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Aha! I expected this a bit. So we've never been above 1000 active and we are small potatoes. That's okay. It is amazing that we get any notice at all; even from indie devs.

The place is like a clubhouse for grumpy eccentrics that won't allow it to be redecorated. I think it would go badly if you tried to change it or push for growth.

I dont think it is as dire as you as are saying. I think people are posting a lot more despite the low active user counts. I've been on forums though with a much lower active user counts and they post even more than here in the watch. Banter at least seems to be at an all time high at the watch.

Eh, never got lurking. What's the point of forums anyways?
The only thing I'd do is get rid of likes.

Good! I'm not complaining btw. I just thought we were getting smaller, but that could be because DArtagnan isn't posting 80 times a day.

I still miss DArt.

No way, keep the likes, but add dislikes.

Dislikes are a scourge, please dont add them. The dislike button is used to bully people in a lot of forums, while i am immune to them as i had a lot worse coming at me other people may not be.

Capital M ???? With a capital M, the word 'miss' has another meaning in English, right ? Unless you made it proposital and all…

Don't worry! There are other members taking his place and posting as much… :P

I capitalized the M by accident will fix now.

If a simple dislike button can bully you ( not you specifically) then internet forums are probably not for you.

So are we going to actively dissuade the more sensitive posters coming to this forum? I think some forums should be kept friendly. This is one of them.

While I agree that everoyne should learn to ignore "dislikes", I wouldn't want to see that option on RPGwatch and there is a reason why.
On Sims forums "once upon a time" there was also dislike button. Not just like, lol, awsome, insightful and whatever other buttons.
As everything else there, collecting a certain number of dislikes from other members granted an achievement. Then another bigger number another achievement etc. Then people started to compete who'll gather more dislikes, so what if achievements are irrelevant, guess what, it became trolls feeding ground. :)
A competition who'll be #1 with number of dislikes. So they removed it.

I'm pretty sure this forum can track statistics of members' total likes and dislikes if there were any, so let's not risk it.

I think we should all make a pact that, if they ever add a dislike button, we'll all dislike every single post sakichop makes. ;)

I dislike that idea, but since it's just saki, okay :p

It is good on sites like reddit (where you can silence trolls that way), but most discussions here are fairly civil, so there's no need for it. And grabbing "likes" is not really any better.
That codex icon parade they have below the comments is pretty hilarious though.

Eh, i like the "like button". It saves me the time typing "i agree" and no other content regarding it. For example my post replying to JDR13 would have been just "I agree".

I don't really like likes, either.

IF you want to agree then speak up, elaborate, set some tone or something. Just clicking an "I AGREE" button is a mindless sheeple action. What happens when someone makes a post, everyone clicks LIKE instead of replying? No conversation happens! The only people who write an actual worded post are disagreeing (the argument for a dislike button?). So, you call them trolls and the LIKE sheeple can finally join in the conversation by saying what a troll the dislike guy is or how boring things are now that he's gone.

But its worse than you think because of AI, otherwise known as Advertising Intelligence. You go picking what you like and soon you'll only see what you like. You'll be trapped inside your old likes, unable to grow, learn anything new, hear the story from the other side. Just look at utube recommended videos and I'll bet half of them are reposts of something you like, know and are bored off.

But bored is a great time to buy more! We love DLC, these days, because we like those games. We don't really like new games that are not what we like already. We don't buy things that we don't like and we can't like things that we haven't liked before.

But, lets think bigger like political elections. Say, you LIKE a rubbish candidate. You're not going to be convinced otherwise by your "team of likes" deciding you want links to the oppositions superior policy. You'll get what you know. It will reinforce what you think you know already.

So I try to imagine a positive application where instead of "likes" being used to deliver appropriate ads they can see missing gaps in your education and act as tutor which guides you though the vast amounts of useful information on the internet while developing your character and intellect, wisdom, charisma! But the cynic in me just assumes anything like this would be bought out and abused to make money with advertising. If not perusing more nefarious objectives, such as influencing public opinion.

I think people here dont even use the like button when they should.

No that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is

(Mini rant on) if your self worth is givin to you by others (i.e. Getting likes or dislikes in a forum and such) then you have no self worth at all. Self esteem needs to come from within not from others. For example nothing anyone says here or likes or dislikes will affect my self esteem because that's controlled by me not others. I think this everyone gets a trophy if they participate world we're building is counterproductive and builds a world we're people are ok with expecting little from themselves and achieving it. ( mini rant off)

I know that's a lot to get from simple like or dislike button but I got on a roll.:biggrin:

Anyway I think we should have both or neither imo, obviously people don't like my idea so I'll have to try and get through life knowing that. It will be hard but hopefully I'll persevere.:)

Just so there's no hard feelings I'll give everyone a like just for participating.:lol:

Back at you sakichop. I think you underestimate how little real self esteem this generation has, we are giving trophies out for PARTICIPATION. I think we need to toughen the young'n's up but that is a different topic altogether.

No. :P

Korplem just made a valid argument why we should add dislikes. :p

I agree with SirJames. I think in a forum, having like buttons removes from the discussion.

Just wanted to comment, I happen to find this topic interesting. (plus, I'm bored on a late Friday night as well…:p)

Adding a dislike button would just create endless and needless drama. You know how people are, if they see someone disliked their post, then many people will automatically want to go and dislike one of that person's posts, as a sort of "revenge". Then little mini-feuds start happening, Example -- ("you thumbed down me, now I'm gonna thumb down you!" "Oh yea? Fine, I will thumb down every thing you post from now on." "You jerk, now I will start attacking you directly for every post you make, and I'll get my friends to also help and gang up on you…etc. etc.) and it all becomes more and more silly as time goes on…if the proposed dislikes were to be disguised or hidden from public display, as a solution, then that is being cowardly in my view. If likes are public, so should any proposed dislikes.
So my vote is yes for keeping thumbs up on posts (a positive feature and one that reinforces a positive atmosphere and community) and staying away from a thumbs down feature. And those are my two coppers.

The quantity of users and forum buttons doesn't enhance the quality of a forum.
Proof: See Codex

Some people became famous due to the number of dislikes their vids got on YouTube.

I still wouldn't like to have dislike buttons here. Post-lazy folks like me would go around and click dislike buttons all day.

If you were to ban Celtic you most likely would get active users up and have no need for a dislike option…

I hear he is a bad seed.

I'm in favour of the likes system, and I use it a lot. I think that, much like smilies, they can be useful on a forum, where you don't have the cues of face to face communication. You can let someone know that you're interested or amused by what they've said, without necessarily having anything in particular to add. I think it does help create a friendly atmosphere.

I wouldn't add dislikes. I think it's better that, if you're pissed off enough to register a thumbs down, you should take the trouble to type out a spiky comment. It makes sense to me that positivity would be convenient, and negativity more of a chore.

Yeah. Adding an avenue for negativity will bring negativity. This place can already do with a lot more positivity as it is. Let's work on that. :)

To like or dislike something, that is the question. Neither are an action verb, so neither should ever require an action. They are in your own mind, and there they should remain.