Combined Forum?

[thehef]

Though I posted a suggestion early in this thread, I see a lot of good arguments for alternative approaches. I still like my idea but don't have a strong preference...

At any rate, a few posters here have brought up the lack of historical discussion compared to the volume of historical long-term sims (aka "historical dynasties"). IMO, the primary reason for that is simply that most of the workarounds and other ideas we used to bat around have been implemented over the years. For example, there used to be a significant demand for - and plenty of discussion about - alternate databases (Spritze and I think Gambo had versions of them) and this is how we accessed minor leaguers. And somebody provided one that essentially cloned and renamed certain HOF major leaguers in order to give us some of the Negro League greats. And pretty sure there was one that included Asian players... I remember somebody had created a spreadsheet that listed all of the MLB name changes (like Superbas becoming Robins, then Dodgers), relocations, expansion, ballpark changes... so we'd know when we needed to manually make those changes. Now that's taken care of automatically... Heck, I remember doing sims where on the 15th of each month I'd manually make every historical transaction for that entire month. What a chore that was! Now, that's in the game...

So many things we used to spend a lot of time discussing simply became part of the game over the years...

[Syd Thrift]

OK this is the right answer:

A forum marked Historic/Fiction that handles both historic and fiction leagues and discussion.

A forum marked Al that cover Al-based leagues - like for instance a "what if" league where a team built entirely out of Al Martin clones plays in the NL in 1997 - and also, so that we don't get confused, anything AI related as well. I think it's vital that we keep Al and AI together.

A forum marked "Stupid Ideas" where we put crap like "Maris should average 61 homeruns in every 1961 simulation but if he ever hits 70 it's an error in the sim however 50 is fine". I'll go ahead and let the mods put anything they want into there.

A forum marked "Everything Not Al" which is where you'd put anything that looks like it might be Al-related but doesn't actually include Als. For example, I did a replay several years ago in which Angel Salazar insisted that he be called by his given name, Argenis. That dynasty would go into there because you'd look at Argenis's name and you might think that his nickname would be "Al". In fact, I'd go so far as to put any league where you have an entire league based on a guy going by a different name - for another example, Willie Hernandez wanting to go by Guillermo earlier in his career - as well as any league where you replace all players with clones of one player, for example Jason Kendall.

A forum dedicated to political discussion but only within the confines of baseball dynasties.

A forum dedicated to other sports leagues but that use baseball as their sport, like if you took the NBA and made it a baseball league. This would also be where you'd put a league based on 25 clones of, for instance, George Foreman playing 25 clones of, for instance, Muhammad Ali.

A forum dedicated to leagues that are entirely one player being cloned 25 times in a baseball sense, for instance a league where a team of 25 Cal Ripken Jr's playing a team of 25 Billy Ripkens.

A forum dedicated to leagues that are entirely one player being cloned 26 times in a baseball sense, to account for modern roster sizes.

A forum dedicated to leagues that are about celebrities being clones 25 times in a baseball sense. Here you'd also put leagues in which Markus or perhaps Matt Arnold are cloned 25 times.

A forum dedicated to leagues that include Markus Heinsohn or Matt Arnold or any other OOTP developer being in the league only they aren't cloned.

A forum dedicated to people who were banned from this forum, as either players who are cloned 25 times and playing in a league against other banned people, or against other celebrities.

A forum like the above but where the people who are banned play against OOTP developers.

A forum for all mods.

I think that covers everything. Please DM Markus Heinsohn directly if you have any questions.

[Charlie Hough]

Ultimately, the OOTP forums are suffering from the long-term effects of a number of issues, and there is no simple answer. There are countless other online forums that have gone through the same thing, and many of them no longer exist or only exist as a shell of their former community.

The different OOTP forums and sub-forums once made perfect sense because there was far more activity, and each forum had plenty of posts to justify it. That has changed dramatically, which is why some folks can't understand why things are still organized the way they are, and others are concerned about re-organizing things and the potential negative impacts this could have.

In the end, I think we need to start looking at ways to preserve the massive trove of knowledge and posts that can be found here, and I think we need to look at expanding more into other digital channels to help create communities of OOTP historical and fictional players, share knowledge, and answer questions. This is particularly important as the game continues to reach new generations of players who do not use online forums at all.

What we've seen here in recent years and what I'm seeing in this thread make me nervous about the future of these forums. I'm done sharing my opinion or preferences about this sub-forum merger because there are far bigger issues to tackle. Instead, I will focus more on what I can hopefully do to help people with their historical games through other ways.

[David Watts]

Didn't take long did it?

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by thehef

Though I posted a suggestion early in this thread, I see a lot of good arguments for alternative approaches. I still like my idea but don't have a strong preference...

At any rate, a few posters here have brought up the lack of historical discussion compared to the volume of historical long-term sims (aka "historical dynasties"). IMO, the primary reason for that is simply that most of the workarounds and other ideas we used to bat around have been implemented over the years. For example, there used to be a significant demand for - and plenty of discussion about - alternate databases (Spritze and I think Gambo had versions of them) and this is how we accessed minor leaguers. And somebody provided one that essentially cloned and renamed certain HOF major leaguers in order to give us some of the Negro League greats. And pretty sure there was one that included Asian players... I remember somebody had created a spreadsheet that listed all of the MLB name changes (like Superbas becoming Robins, then Dodgers), relocations, expansion, ballpark changes... so we'd know when we needed to manually make those changes. Now that's taken care of automatically... Heck, I remember doing sims where on the 15th of each month I'd manually make every historical transaction for that entire month. What a chore that was! Now, that's in the game...

So many things we used to spend a lot of time discussing simply became part of the game over the years...

This is what I was getting at when I said it will be interesting to see how quickly a forum dedicated to strictly historical game play questions and methods of play withered into the dust due to non participation. I wasn't trying to be all doomsday in any way, just being honest based on what I've seen over the years perusing the historical simulations forum.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

OK this is the right answer:

A forum marked Historic/Fiction that handles both historic and fiction leagues and discussion.

A forum marked Al that cover Al-based leagues - like for instance a "what if" league where a team built entirely out of Al Martin clones plays in the NL in 1997 - and also, so that we don't get confused, anything AI related as well. I think it's vital that we keep Al and AI together.

A forum marked "Stupid Ideas" where we put crap like "Maris should average 61 homeruns in every 1961 simulation but if he ever hits 70 it's an error in the sim however 50 is fine". I'll go ahead and let the mods put anything they want into there.

A forum marked "Everything Not Al" which is where you'd put anything that looks like it might be Al-related but doesn't actually include Als. For example, I did a replay several years ago in which Angel Salazar insisted that he be called by his given name, Argenis. That dynasty would go into there because you'd look at Argenis's name and you might think that his nickname would be "Al". In fact, I'd go so far as to put any league where you have an entire league based on a guy going by a different name - for another example, Willie Hernandez wanting to go by Guillermo earlier in his career - as well as any league where you replace all players with clones of one player, for example Jason Kendall.

A forum dedicated to political discussion but only within the confines of baseball dynasties.

A forum dedicated to other sports leagues but that use baseball as their sport, like if you took the NBA and made it a baseball league. This would also be where you'd put a league based on 25 clones of, for instance, George Foreman playing 25 clones of, for instance, Muhammad Ali.

A forum dedicated to leagues that are entirely one player being cloned 25 times in a baseball sense, for instance a league where a team of 25 Cal Ripken Jr's playing a team of 25 Billy Ripkens.

A forum dedicated to leagues that are entirely one player being cloned 26 times in a baseball sense, to account for modern roster sizes.

A forum dedicated to leagues that are about celebrities being clones 25 times in a baseball sense. Here you'd also put leagues in which Markus or perhaps Matt Arnold are cloned 25 times.

A forum dedicated to leagues that include Markus Heinsohn or Matt Arnold or any other OOTP developer being in the league only they aren't cloned.

A forum dedicated to people who were banned from this forum, as either players who are cloned 25 times and playing in a league against other banned people, or against other celebrities.

A forum like the above but where the people who are banned play against OOTP developers.

A forum for all mods.

I think that covers everything. Please DM Markus Heinsohn directly if you have any questions.

Hey Syd, a necessity of board performance art is to amuse some of the audience. A true master will be able to amuse and anger the same people depending on what part of the post they're reading. A post that intends only to anger causes its author to be perceived as a grumpy old man.

Another thing is there is too much repetition. Multiple paragraphs have the same point, just said with different examples. The post should read like a developing story ideally piling it on thicker and heavier along the way.

I hope you'll be able to improve. However I have my doubts given the juvenile embellishments that adorn your avatar.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Didn't take long did it?

Nope.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by luckymann

The fact of the matter is that the toxic nature of these boards and the dissipation of the old crew's interest in being exposed to it is why this had become the case.

In parting this thread, I will say that it's ironic that some of the same toxicity started playing out within this discussion. Most of it was some good and productive discussion, and some good points were made on all sides. But I'm just not interested in engaging in angry arguments, sneering derision, or similar behavior anymore, especially considering the context. Life is too short.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

In parting this thread, I will say that it's ironic that some of the same toxicity started playing out within this discussion. Most of it was some good and productive discussion, and some good points were made on all sides. But I'm just not interested in engaging in angry arguments, sneering derision, or similar behavior anymore, especially considering the context. Life is too short.

Ironic, and yet unsurprising. Be thankful it took place under the auspices of the sugar rush brought on by a new release or I suspect it would have been far worse in this regard.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

In parting this thread, I will say that it's ironic that some of the same toxicity started playing out within this discussion. Most of it was some good and productive discussion, and some good points were made on all sides. But I'm just not interested in engaging in angry arguments, sneering derision, or similar behavior anymore, especially considering the context. Life is too short.

How many times are you going to leave?

[Jeff1787]

After reading through this thread, my head is spinning! My last league (in my signature) I posted in the Dynasty thread.

Now, I am starting a new random debut historical league. I will be manually importing some Negro League players each season. Where would I post this?

Historical and Fictional Simulations or Dynasty Reports?

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Jeff1787

After reading through this thread, my head is spinning! My last league (in my signature) I posted in the Dynasty thread.

Now, I am starting a new random debut historical league. I will be manually importing some Negro League players each season. Where would I post this?

Historical and Fictional Simulations or Dynasty Reports?

Post where you think there will be the most interest. I don't know if board management realizes this but users decide where topics belong. That's you. If management gets into moving threads and censoring content they kill the board.

Even if this forum had "fictional" removed from the name the long time users would be glad to have your thread here because it has real players. Likewise, you've had good success posting the dynasties forum and I'm sure they'd welcome you too.

"You can't please everyone so you got to please yourself"

[pauwoo]

A separate fictional simulation and historical simulation made sense to me. If we’re looking to cull one, it should be fictional. That can and most often does end up in the Dynasty Forum.

The Historical Simulation forum has been an active part of the community. It’s also one of the more interesting sections to read in my view.

But, whatever, I’m in the rear with the gear, so I doubt my 2 cents matter. As a reader, I liked having a specific section to go to when I wanted a historical fix. There are 6+ threads that I seek out consistently and a few others that I check in on periodically. I’ll find them either way, but would prefer that historical has its own sub-forum.

Edit: I understand the assertion that searching for a specific solution can be difficult in the historical sim forum (though the search function on this board is basically Ask Jeeves, so…). But, the idea that questions asked in that forum go unanswered or get buried/shuffled (what’s the word count score now, kids?) is demonstrably false.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

A separate fictional simulation and historical simulation made sense to me. If we’re looking to cull one, it should be fictional. That can and most often does end up in the Dynasty Forum.

Looking at the low traffic in the fictional forum I can see why they thought it wasn't very useful. As you say, the fictional posts end up in dynasties which is very active. But they probably figured what they saw in fictional was ALL the fictional posts, and so it seemed like a good idea to kill it and ask the users to post in historical with its topic coverage expanded.

Realization that there are a lot of fictional posts and that they are in the dynasty forum should result in a decision to cull the fictional forum, take fictional out of the name of this one, and let people post where they have decided is the best place for them.

[Brad K]

There are a few things I've picked up over the years. One is that you can only lead people where they decide they want to go. It may be possible to convince them over time but unless there's an immediate "Hey, that's a great idea" response its a long sell and likely not to be very successful.

Boards work best when management where there's an ongoing process to adjust the board to match how people are using it. A good example of this is the removal of the new users forum in 24. Perhaps this was an attempt to segregate questions that had easy and obvious answers but reality is newbies ask complicated and sometimes unanswerable questions just like veterans do.

Board management that doesn't realize that a successful board requires providing users what they want does so at their own peril.

[thehef]

On a related note, in the 24 boards there isn't a New To The Game forum. I'm not suggesting there should or shouldn't be one, but it does seem to be a place where new users feel safe posting their questions, and they definitely do not get overlooked. So if there is consideration to re-naming some of the forums or adding & re-organizing, perhaps that should be considered.

Also, I would imagine the same applies to Fictional, but for Historical, when there are questions about settings & "how do I...?," etc... those questions - for v23 & previous versions - can be found in the General Forum, the New To The Game Forum, and the Historical Forum. And regardless of the fact that historical dynasties make up the majority of the Historical Forum posts, those questions do get answered. Though I can see how this is somewhat of an issue when searching. Personally, I'd prefer to have questions & discussion separated from dynasties/long-term sims, but then we get into Fictional vs Historical sub-divisions for both (Q &D, dynasties), and that's probably too much (admittedly, that was my original suggestion).

At any rate, hard to imagine how a discussion about how to best organize these boards has brought on such angst and derision, but it is what it is...

For the 24 boards, the answer is probably just some minor tweaking to the descriptions that are underneath each forum header. Or maybe one add'l forum is needed. No solution will come anywhere close to pleasing everybody. Regardless, the majority of us will adjust as needed and all should be well

[Brad K]

Nobody has complained about the removal of new users.

Nobody complained about anything in 23.

People are complaining about fictional being combined with historical in 24.

[Brad K]

Removing fictional from the name of this forum would be a nice gesture of good will after their public relations fiasco of heavy handed censorship via word banning and thread locking on the discussions of the Unmentionable League.

[David Watts]

I would love it if the historical forum would return. To make it so everyone is happy, just call it the historical forum and make a sub forum for game sims. Am I the only one that hears the theme from Cheers every single time I think about the old historical forum. NORM!!!!

[Brad K]

My view is no problems noted, no changes needed.