QCDN's future without a Flameboard

Decidence, while some kind of order to the flameboard might be beneficial, the existance of it is not a bad thing. I don't really see it as a tattle-tale mentality, but it's infact often the only reasonable recourse available to deal with something. GM's are worthless and almost never do anything even with proof, and that's the only in-game method of conflict resolution besides "just take it." Sure, you could MPK people or take some other unsavory vengance-related action, but that's not a realistic solution.

As for your alternatives, on a point-by-point basis:

1. Most of the threads aren't about something that can reasonably worked out or that in-game methods have failed. So and so MPK'd, they stole an item, or the flames warning people not to party with the person because they suck; whatever. If something happens and your first action is to make a flame, then yes, those kinds of flames shuold be removed but there is no blanket standard for flames. A perfect example was the Valkyrs flame, they tried to work it out in-game, they waited days to try to work it out in private, but got stone-walled. The only option besides just accepting they got screwed and forgetting about it was to post a flame. Eventually things worked out, largely due to all of the bad PR they were getting due to the flame.

2. I agree, attacking someone's real life is unwarranted and just stupid. At the same time though, people need to stop bringing up their real life as a justification of whatever they're talking about. I agree with Blazeoffury in the whm tanking thread, if you don't want your real life to be attacked, don't bring it up. People's real life situations don't often have a large effect on the game, nor would it often have an effect on their posts on qcdn. No one really cares about your real life situation, so trying to use it as a defense for something doesn't work.

3. I also agree, but it's still on a case-by-case basis. If the individual is doing something by themselves, there's no need to bring their linkshell into it; but if the individual is doing something where they represent their linkshell(stealing/mpking at hnm's is a good example) then their linkshell should be brought into it. Again I'm bringing up the Valkyrs flame, where they obviously represented their shell, the leader was even involved; and the flame was justified for targetting the linkshell as a whole.

I don't think that just posting on qcdn gives some inherent "poor reputation," but that your reputation is influenced by the content that you post on these boards. If you act like an idiot and and asshole on the boards, you're generally an idiot and an asshole in the game. The only people who change their personas in between mediums just want to start trouble and just thrive on attention; they could be banned or put on read-only and the quality of the boards would improve. There are plenty of legitmate threads on the flameboard, but they usually get derailed, often by those attention whores or people who want the original matter forgotten.

Sculli has posted rules about thread-crapping and derails, but I haven't seen much enforce of them. They might happen when I'm not reading the boards, or you might get to them before people can read them, but I haven't seen many changes to posts about their content. Maybe a little harsher enforcement of those rules would also improve the quality of the boards.
 
The biggest problem I have with the flameboard is that it seems to me that in some way the moral minority have a strangle-hold over it. For example buying gil - we all know for a fact a huge percentage of the player base buys gil yet there's no way to talk about it rationally because the loudest people intimidate anyone who might feel differently.

When the purpose is persecution then any attempts at understanding are thrown out the window. People instead find things some might consider immoral and use the flameboard as a conduit to try and injure people they can personally gain from injuring, while at the same time be completely uncaring if someone they have nothing to gain or lose from does the exact same thing.

This becomes troubling if your views on what's moral or immoral different from what's accepted in the mainstream, more precisely, what's accepted >openly< in mainstream.

Consider Jean Paul Sartre's philosophical question and answer...

In it a young man's torn between his sick dying mother and his country on the brink of invasion by Nazis. He has to choose between caring for his mother or going out and defending his country. So he asks you what is the moral thing to do?

The answer is then, the moral thing to do is what the young man feels is best. What you, or me or anyone else thinks he should do is then irrelevant. People have to decide for themselves how they should weigh moral conflicts and simply ramming a set of beliefs down someone's throats is forcing them to accept false morals.

The QCDN community generally believes the exact opposite. That how someone else weighs morality is public domain. That pleasant gaming can only come from conformity and that whoever speaks the loudest is then the moral authority.

I've always tried to interject into discussions as a devil's advocate here, to try and balance this out if possible. Of course usually I just have to give up eventually.
 
Perhaps stricter more solid rules and harsher punishments for breaking them? No more personal attacks, no petty crap.. also perhaps split flameboard to have a general "Rant" forum.. to rant about BS things like Pre-ordering ToAU and them selling it behind your back.. whereas youre not "attacking" someone, but it keeps General clean.. I dunno, I love QCDN, and I notice FB has 2x the count of any other board 90% of the time.
 
I like flameboard. It is a way to rant about things that you don't like and to recieve (both positive and negative) feedback from other individuals points-of-view.

I don't like flameboard. Because 99.95% of it is crap. I don't care if Yomammasuks is someone who talks smack behind your back. I would like to know if Ipimpedyourmoogle is a bad red mage (like really horrible... lvl 70 with no dispel or refresh [god lets hope not]) though.

I would say no flames on flameboard without proof but people like me who play on ps2 have no way to frap conversations, picture of inventory, or things like that. So that puts us at a disadvantage.

The only thing I can suggest is as soon as a thread goes out of hand.. lock it or simply remove the off topic parts. But then... we lose things like Westyles funny pictures like in the flame about me. That shite was funny! (related and yet not after a while)
 
So how many people would like to see a Rant board? as a replacement to flames? a subforum to flames? or a new forum all together with separate Moderators?

May be interesting.
 
Moriki said:
So how many people would like to see a Rant board? as a replacement to flames? a subforum to flames? or a new forum all together with separate Moderators?

May be interesting.
Click to expand...

But would the rant board turn into another flame board? I think Sculli's issue is that he didnt mean for the flameboard to turn into what QCDN is known for, where people are using baseless (in many cases) attacks on people to neglect them from joining a certain ls. Usually the flames turn into he said, she said w/ friends on both sides defending a person, and namecalling the other side.
 
But where would I get my daily source of entertainment from if there was no more flameboard?!

Well, I'd aggree to the fact of decreased traffic due to the removal of the flameboard, and I'd also say it would probably help to screen out more of the... How should I say, "assholes", from QCDN. I think that removing the flameboard could only benefit the future of QCDN, although only with proper moderation of those that still wish to bad-mouth others.

On the "QCDN has an ill-effect on reputation" matter, I think that this is only true to those who frequent the flameboard. There are plenty of other people who post mainly in the better areas of QCDN that I look up to and respect, and I feel that they have a certain amount of fame for keeping their images up and out of harm's way from the flameboard.

But hey, theres no real way to say if removing the flameboard from QCDN will be a good or bad thing untill you do it, or atleast perform say, a week long trial? Possibly less, it depends how many less hits you recieve as an effect I suppose.

Blabj
 
Sirelrohir said:
But would the rant board turn into another flame board? I think Sculli's issue is that he didnt mean for the flameboard to turn into what QCDN is known for, where people are using baseless (in many cases) attacks on people to neglect them from joining a certain ls. Usually the flames turn into he said, she said w/ friends on both sides defending a person, and namecalling the other side.
Click to expand...

Stricter moderation to kill any rant before it turned too nasty. Admitedly, a good flame is fun to watch and fun to partake in, but bad for the community. I am glad we have the oddballs in this community who lighten the mood of flames (Westyle) with random junk shouted regularly.

So maybe all that is needed is a review of flameboard rules and regulations?

I dunno, but I know I am prolly thinking about this more than I aughta and Sculli will pimp slap me for doing so. Simelar things happened on another forum I use. We had to turn a flame board from "Anything goes" to "Flame, but keep it civil." Sadly the forum is now rarely used, but the other parts of the forum are more used and populated than ever. Admitedly it is a small community with a little over 70 active members.
 
Delete the flameboard? And lose all that scrumptuous e-cock?!

eeg.gif


Are you mad?!
 
Moriki said:
I visited the KI board for Quetzalcoatl, seems some ill feelings towards QCDN from there...
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Moriki's right. I seen bad blood about it too... and in past ls's and just talking in party chat, it seems that once qcdn.org is braught up, people right away think of the FB. And then people seem to hate it, because its just really heated discussions that get out of hand. But i got an idea. Mabey if Cursing those "bad words" alot less in the FB (or any board) will make the boards seem less vile. It may be unrealistic, but it's just an idea. People wont loose their lid as often if they're not being cursed at. Plus, theres minors in here.... like me 0.0
 
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I could care less if the Flameboard were to dissapear. I rarely even enter it let alone post there. It's existance doesn't make me not want to come here and it certainly doesn't make me want to come here either.

The solution? I don't know. It seems if you want this to be a resource for the playerbase axe the entertainment factor. Take away the Flameboard, Off-Topic, Reality Sinks In, maybe even Good Times and RP and just keep posts related to civil game discussion.

Take all those things away and I probably wouldn't log in as much but I would still check General Discussions and my LS forum every once in a while.
 
While I myself am not a frequent visiter of the flameboard compared to gen disscusion I'll add my 2 cents. I think the easiest solution would be a semi-scrict enforcement of flameboard posts. Let it remain the "flame board", yet remove excessively aggresive posts. While that is a matter of opinion of what's too aggresive, I think most people would have fairly similar concept of what is fine and semi constructive, what is completely offtopic, and what's going too far.
 
I'd just like to add I could care less though of what becomes of the flameboard.

I think other measures should be tried before it is removed. It may drive off some people, especially trouble makers. Regardless though, I think the people just looking for a place to meet with the community will still continue to come here.
 
Taking away the flameboard all together would be best.
There are guys that haven't even come to QDCN because they don't want to see the flame board (Jinzo). When you say QDCN, people think flameboard.
 
I think a few people have already said this, but I'll say it myself...

We have flameboard rules.

Enforce them. And I don't mean just a billion warnings and nothing done, I mean one, maybe two warnings, and then big red text

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Thread crapping, etc... We have rules against them, obviously the people ignoring the rules don't give a rat's ass about the rules... We need to give them a reason to care.

Also, we need the flameboard. Without it, all the crap on the flameboards, migrates elsewhere. Even if we have rules against it, it'll still show up. Heck, it already does, but it far smaller numbers than it would without the flameboards.

*ninja edit*

Omniscientx said:
Taking away the flameboard all together would be best.
There are guys that haven't even come to QDCN because they don't want to see the flame board (Jinzo). When you say QDCN, people think flameboard.
Click to expand...

People think flames when they think of BlueGartyr or Allakhazam (well, more trolls than flames there)... But plenty of people still go there. At least we have a separate section for it.
 
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I hate to see a person's 3 year hard work got bashed just for 1 section of this fantastic website. However with all the respect to the hard work of sculli I do believe FB is not a good thing for our server.

Compare to other servers, our server seems to be still crawling in the stone age. How many NA ls had taken down the wyrms? How many NA ls had really went after the 3 kings? How many LS had any progress in sea?

When "A" ls makes a mistake, ls B, C, D will join the fest and bash them to hell on the FB. A LS loses some members due to the flame on FB and join B,C,D. 2 weeks later B ls wiped to kirin, and A, C, D ganged up on B and B loses its member to A, C, D. This is just a bad cycle.

Flames like these prevent A, B, C, D to work together coz at some point they all have beef with each other. What's worse? All those flames were DOCUMENTED. Remeber the best flame thread competition? Yes I can understand sometimes people need their place to rant and those individuals might need some help from getting jacked. But for all the endgame communities out there, the flame board just hurts the oppuntunity for us to work together or reunited. One member of certain ls did something dishonored, and the effect of the FB would automatically labelled the whole LS to be evil, FOREVER, no matter the member involved in the incident is still in the shell or not.

QCDN is a great site, just not the flame board.
 
Mai Ikari said:
I think a few people have already said this, but I'll say it myself...

We have flameboard rules.

Enforce them. And I don't mean just a billion warnings and nothing done, I mean one, maybe two warnings, and then big red text

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Thread crapping, etc... We have rules against them, obviously the people ignoring the rules don't give a rat's ass about the rules... We need to give them a reason to care.

Also, we need the flameboard. Without it, all the crap on the flameboards, migrates elsewhere. Even if we have rules against it, it'll still show up. Heck, it already does, but it far smaller numbers than it would without the flameboards.

*ninja edit*



People think flames when they think of BlueGartyr or Allakhazam (well, more trolls than flames there)... But plenty of people still go there. At least we have a separate section for it.
Click to expand...
Theres a huge difference between Alla and QDCN. QDCN is supposed to be a nice community of players from the same server. Alla is crawling with 10 year olds from all the servers.

A lot of people shy away from QDCN because it DOES hurt your rep ingame if you start to get in a scuffle with somebody because of a disagreement.
 
Flameboard really isn't my thing...it's where I end up if there's nothing else new/interesting to read.

I don't necessarily think we should get rid of it (though I honestly wouldn't miss it if it were gone)...but if it were balanced out with more positive posting it might not be quite the center of attention it has become.

I have to say I've been disappointed by some of the "screw you...figure it out yourself...I want it all for myself...MINE MINE MINE!" types of posts I've seen lately. It's not that I want someone else to do all the "hard" work for me. I guess it's just that if it were reversed and I had the information I'd be happy to share it. I just don't see a whole lot of cooperation outside of certain "cliques".

Don't get me wrong...there are some extremely helpful and generous people on this site. I've had people that I barely know give me crafting tips etc. But at this moment in General Discussion (one of the first places a new person might visit, as well as one of the only places the new ToAU info is being discussed) there are posts where this is happening. This is the first online gaming community I've been involved in where people have been so secretive with information.
 
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re: enforcing current FB rules
It's not practical to do so.
It just takes too much time out of one's day to read through some 500 crap posts per day, and then to decide which is less crappier and thus potentially worth keeping.


When I created QCDN the Flameboard seemed like a good idea. I participated in EQ boards were the FB was a huge hit. Of course the FB is a huge hit here at QCDN as well, however, I am for one tired of the negativity the FB brings to QCDN.

It was not supposed to be this way. Look at the General section, people who are new to the server, or new to the game, ask for some help or advice, and most of the time they get collective attitude instead of help.

To me that is a function of prolonged FB exposure.

An MMO is a collaborative game, the goal ought to be to work together to make the entertainment time more enjoyable, not to devise any number of ways to ruin someone elses day.

Treat others the way you would want to be treated in that situation.
This is not a difficult concept, if everyone would act on those words, then QCDN would be the #1 FFXI resource outperforming all the RMT supported sites, alla, and whatever else there is.
 
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