How come the Giant Bomb Resetera forums tend to be more active than our forums?

I've lurked around the Giant Bomb Resetera forum and noticed its on its 5th Original Thread (past 100 pages of posts now too). Its neat that apparently the Giant Bomb community there is one of the most active in all of Resetera, but it does make me wonder one thing. Why is it that the Resetera GB community tend to make more forums posts there rather than participating in Giant Bomb's community in the actually site? I get that Resetera is a gigantic forum webpage for video games and Off-Topic subjects, but GB has its general discussion and off topic forums too and I feel our threads have been handled with great care by our mods. Plus I know Giant Bomb is different to Resetera in that its not just a forum webpage, but an editorial site where the gang will post reviews from time to time and post lots of video content to entertain our community. Still, it makes me wonder why Resetera would be the preferred forum for some Giant Bomb followers rather than the site's actual forums? Is it because those members prefer how Era runs its online forums? Perhaps a good number of those community members are mutual members on this site, but go by different usernames. Maybe a mutual member on both sites could help explain.

The community there does seem cool, but there are some funny posts from time to time ranging from obscure Garfield videos posted for Garfield for Gerstmann to random PUBG praise posts claiming its the GOAT video game (but those posts are nowhere found on PUBG's Resetera thread). They're wrong, but opinions are opinions.

Hi, Era thread member here; since the thread was linked there I thought I’d stop by to offer my perspective directly. I’ve only been actively involved since this past E3 (usually I’d be around to post during E3 briefly, if that, and then stop but this time I just stayed) though, so I don’t really know what things were like before then due to how little I saw of it.

For me it’s definitely that the Era (and previously GAF) thread is sort of a mini community where we can basically talk about whatever and not just GB. It becomes somewhat of a social network, in a way, which I’ve valued in addition to using Twitter as I usually do. I also have a decent idea of what everyone there’s like as a result of it being a community, and I don’t really have that here. My perception of the wider GB community is... not very fond, I guess. I know lots of wonderful people who like GB too, but also have seen some pretty scummy things said by people with the implication that the staff would agree when that’s absolutely not the case, and it’s hard to know how many of those people are still around. And, well, far as my views go, I lean more towards Austin/Alex/Patrick’s takes on things, let’s say, and obviously not everyone is great about that. Even within this thread I can scroll up and see people talking about moderation and I have no idea what that implies about who’s usually posting here, so I’m not sure if it’s somewhere that’d be comfortable or not if I did want to be here.

And, honestly, if I wanted to post on a smaller forum for other discussion... well, I have Discord for that, but I’d also head to Waypoint’s forums since it’s very refreshing to have a place to discuss games where I know everyone will take/make criticism in good faith and will definitely be respectful about certain things.

...I hoped that helped, I guess?

There is an overlap, but if I remember from lurking the old NeoGAF GB threads, and Resetera is pretty much just old NeoGAF members, then a lot of them just don't like the way the forums here are structured, and some don't like the moderation here.

I'd say personally I don't enjoy the way the GAF/Resetera GB community kind of obsessively talk about staff members a lot of the time. A lot of assumptions or really mean comments that would probably get banned on here.

Eh, GAF was a hivemind of villainy long before the wheels fell off. My overall impression of that place is that it was full of hypocrites who scared off (or chased off) anyone who didn’t fit the mold long before the fraud, drug schemes, and sexual assaults surfaced.

Maybe resetera is better, but the lingering stench of GAF keeps me away.

I’m sure there are fine people there, but I can’t help but notice the forrest.

This place largely seems pretty relaxed, which is cool.

There was a large exodus from this forum 4ish years ago and it's never really recovered.

I honestly have no idea. This seems like the wrong forum to ask this given how the question is framed, might get more informed answers over there.

Because people feel more free to say whatever they want on a forum non affiliated with giant bomb is my guess. This forum seems to used by mostly premium members which I actually like a lot

If i had to hazard a guess it would be a combination of a more general service and moderation. The mods here do the job they are tasked with rather well, but I understand why a lot of people may not get along with that style or with the community here. If I cared enough to make the effort to add another community to my browsing, I'd probably seek out a more diverse and open community with lighter moderation... but I don't and generally enjoy the site's forums and there are advantages to the smaller, more focused and dedicated community we have on the site.

I don't mind, the site is still pretty active for my needs.

Really? I've been here the entire time and I never noticed such a thing, nor heard anyone else even mention it.

I always found GB to be quieter and less active forum probably because Restera/Gaf has alot more folks so if your looking for discussion your better off on a busier platform and having a moderated place where all gaming is discussed and GB helps.

It wasn't all at once, but the whole time Patrick was on the site he brought a lot of new members to the forums that clashed with the existing videogame fans and these forums became more and more aggressive to the point that it looked like the old guard started leaving or getting banned, then gamer gate happened and Patrick left and all those new people left too. Just the way things seemed to me.

On Giant Bomb, community discourse is spread across many channels, while on an outside forum like ResetEra, discourse is all concentrated in a single thread. On GB, during livestreams, community discourse happens in the chat; for every video/review/podcast/etc that is posted, community discourse happens in the comments section; and then the GB forum is in addition to all that. On ResetEra, all of those sources of discussion are condensed into a single thread. If all the community discourse that happens all across GB's many channels were summed up, it would probably be greater in volume than what's in the ResetEra thread.

I see people offering theories, but to reinforce the initial statement--there are DAYS i come on here and its like 3 threads being commented on. I only go to 3 sites on my phone and the lack of activity has helped convince me to degrade from a smartphone, can just go on the forums when i get home.

Edit- Discord might also be a factor, i dont use it.

There have been numerous dedicated off-site GB threads for years, thanks to the notoriously heavy moderation here driving people away. And game discussion often gravitates to the respective subreddit or dedicated thread since the threads here are woefully slow for anything short of a big budget title.

I'm no extremist but it's definitely easier to discuss criticism surrounding things like new staff and the state of content off-site, although I agree that it borders on obsession at times and becomes presumptuous and unpleasant to read. Even so, with how dismissive the staff can be of comments and how chat is reprimanded like children over anything resembling a touchy subject or backseating, I often find myself reluctant to say anything at all. So I guess I understand the sentiment.

Looks like I need to check out these forums. One of the old ideals of Giant Bomb was to treat their viewers like adults. Sometimes I feel I'd be able to speak more freely in a Mormon commune than on Giant Bomb.

fwiw, I feel like GB forum use has been especially down in the past few weeks. The launch of GB Infinite seems like it has pulled some people into that permanent chat room, who might have otherwise posted in the forums if they were bored. And more recently the Korean spam is necroing a bunch of old threads which stay on the Recent Topics list even when the spam is deleted, so Recent Topics isn't useful right now and I'd guess that some actually interesting topics are getting pushed down to the 2nd and 3rd page because of the spam. I know sometimes I can't be bothered to find the topics that are actually active and not just Korean spam necros.

People who still think it's SO hard to post and not be a jerk slay me. The idea that this forum is somehow keeping people from discussing topics like adults is also very comical. If you're getting banned or your posts are getting removed, they deserve it basically 99% of the time. That might drive some forum traffic down but, if so, oh well.

I have no idea, I just hang out on both forums.

Well, I decided to just ask over there. First response is about the look of the forums being bad, followed by heavy moderation and spam bots. Just check that link for further answers to your question.

people have so many ways of talking about a thing now. Some do it on discord, some do it via steamchat, some use the GB forums, some use the Neogaf / Resetera forums. Some use Twitter,some facebook.

Personally i prefer livechatting with folk about GB instead of creating threads myself. I'll reply to a thread if it catches my interest though. I go back & forth on the 1 thread idea of resetera though. It makes it easier to make small quips about random GB stuff since you don't actually need to warrant starting a thread for it. On the other side, that also means that you can't really discuss / question 1 thing becuase the majority decides where the conversation flows towards.

Well, that site is simply a forum and nothing else. Giant Bomb has multiple different aspects to it, so not all discussion and activity is focused onto one single thread. In fact, I'd go as far as to say the forums are one of the least interesting facets of GB. The videos, live streams and wikis are much more important.

I feel like most video game discussion is focused around news and the reality is 1. Giant Bomb isn't a news site and 2. not a lot of people are posting news stories on the forums. You get a handful a day, but like just as example, the Netherlands is pushing for legislation on lootboxes, the God of War team put out some early concept footage, Agony just got a release date and is being censored on consoles, TotalBiscuit is sadly back in the hospital, State of Decay 2 might be coming to Steam, a new trailer for KH3 came out, and the Yakuza team is working on a new IP. Those are just a bunch of random stories I looked up just now (not the biggest news stories, but you get my point lol) and all that is just from the past few days and there have either been no threads on any of it or very posts if someone has started a discussion.

I appreciate a lot of the discussions that go on around here, but if you want more - if you want to be able to constantly see and talk about all the news - this site clearly won't be your first, second, or third choice.

Don't take this the wrong way or anything because it's not a complaint, but people here just don't seem to care for discussing all the new shit happening every day while other forums and communities do. It just is how it is. Nothing wrong with that.

Also, I'm just gonna be real. Our little slice of the internet here isn't always as welcoming as it may seem. I won't open up any specific can of worms for obvious reasons, but suffice to say I've seen screen caps of happenings around here that's been posted on other forums and gone "yeeeaaaah...I get why you don't want to post here anymore." Sometimes it's not even bans. just some people here being snarky jerks for no reason and no one calling them out on it. Just saying. It is what it is.

@dudeglove: I don't know if I would go to a different site to discuss GB content, but I do agree with a lot of what you said, especially regarding the technical aspect of the forums. Quoting is still a mess, and other stuff doesn't work all that great. I mean they work, it's fine, but there is no flair to it. Now I'm not sure if thats really driving people away or not. I do think the website overall could use from some sort of news drip. I go to GameSpot in order to gloss over their headlines because they seem to have a decent rundown of new things happening in the gaming world. The articles themselves are pretty bad and at times are almost embarrassing in how little actual content there is behind the headline, but at least it's something. GB doesn't really have any news, and even when Patrick was here it wasn't that much better. As such the forums are dedicated to talking about what is happening on the site itself, or whatever tentpole game release of the month. The moderation is a double edged sword because on one hand the forums are civil for the most part and comments are miles beyond anything you'll find out there on other gaming sites. On the other hand sometimes it can be a bit aggressive and personally being on the receiving end of some weird moderation decisions it does make you hesitant to post as much in the future.

@sethmode: different ideas of being an adult. It's their place, their decision, but GB absolutely sacrifices diversity and liberty for an abundance of safety. For me as someone who has different views than most people in a very politically correct and liberal community, I've been run out of town for just bringing up controversial topics.

This is a place where I have to think hard about asking about a straight playthrough of Dream Daddy because I don't know if I'll be called a bigot or worse just for being curious. I had my post deleted for saying I'd been sexually takin advantage of/falsely accused of rape and shared a critical opinion of the staff's conversation about allegations in the industry. That's frankly a bit much not being able to discuss things the staff is talking about with personal experience, and I feel like I've seen people mentioning their experience as victims of assault not being moderated, which further muddled my understanding of why my comment wasn't acceptable.

They do it all for a reason and it seems to work for their desired results, but some of us prefer freedom to speak over forced "safety." Especially when as a Christian, gun owner, and a male I'm not seen as a priority for said protection when people equate me to a murderer or say shitty things about faith etc while others are. I don't want that protection and this is not a "poir me" but the limitations that are enforced to protect what are viewed as vulnerable groups can be frustrating at times. "Don't be a jerk" is so vague, moderation ends up like youtube, up to the broad interpretation of the moderator and their agenda.

Even moderates run afoul of this here. It's kinda intense, and as the staff gains new members who feel even more strongly about those kinds of issues, I don't expect to get back to the days when mods were mostly concerned with people screaming and cursing and hurling insults/slurs.

But hey atleast we don't have Polygon writers for mods. I still enjoy the site's community but it very limited.

It's one thread instead of many.

Also:

This is true. It happened around the time CBS bought Giant Bomb back in 2012. The Giant Bomb forums had started to get pretty toxic at that point. The moderation team here wasn't doing a good job; personal attacks and shitty comments were aplenty, which made conversations not fun anymore. That's why I left for NeoGAF at the time, as it was more well-moderated.

@bta: Thanks for the reply. That really helped me understand how Resetera's GB community is one of the more ongoing off-site communities for the site. Not to mention that its a singular thread rather than the multiple threads, o the singular thread will have many different posts about Giant Bomb reviews, staff, game you'll are playing and other miscellaneous topics. Plus I understand that you'd would rather stick with a community that you've bonded with overtime rather than going on this site's forums which I know you follow GB's content, but i can that our community has had some unsavory looks (For the record, I quite like the GB community here, but there's been a few moments where I wish some of our community members would behave better).

Also about me picking your post as the best answer, honestly maybe I should have just left this thread as a simple General Discussion thread. Again, your answer gave me plenty of insight on why fans of GB would rather talk about the site's content or games in general on an offsite thread instead of the actual website. However, it was my mistake to have this be a answerable question thread because it is silly to just push your post as the second post because I chose your reply as best response. Also with GB's forum functionality, I enjoy it for the most part, but there are some issues that I wish were fixed. Quoting can be stupidly challenging and the fact that I might lose my links when I'm editing a post on mobile honestly sucks.

Also thank you @hamst3r for the link to the Resetera thread. Interesting replies from the community over there. I'm thinking about joining Resetera myself, but I'd still like to be active in the community here.

If every Comments section from a podcast or video on Giant Bomb was separately broken out as a thread on the forums, then people would see the real level of activity of the Giant Bomb community. Can't judge it just based on looking at the Forums section. Also, with Giant Bomb Infinite, you now literally have 24/7 activity of the community surrounding Giant Bomb content.

I browse ResetEra for the headlines and because the discussions seem more active. I like the way it's organized where every interest has its own topic. I tend to use GB more for its wiki nowadays than participating in the community.

I can't speak for resetera since I've never used it, I can only speak from experience on the GB forums. In terms of moderation, I've noticed posts (some mine) get deleted without warning or notification if discussion gets a little heated or political. It's conditioned me not to put effort into or engage with heavy topics. The comments section of videos and podcasts is where the real activity is, but some people in this community have colorful ways of conveying their unhappiness in the comments section that is off-putting. Granted they tend to be from lurker accounts who are only active about once a month. It seems more wild west there than the forums. In terms of functionality, the forums still have a lot of jank when it comes to quoting people and posting replies. It's pretty much impossible to quote someone first and write a reply. I need to write my reply, then quote the user who I'm replying to, then cut and copy the quote above the reply I wrote. I've been a member since 2010 and I still don't know what the difference is between general discussion and off topic. Is general discussion for gaming in general or GB content in general? Is off topic where all the movie topics are? Also not fun to use on mobile which I imagine is how most people post on discussion boards these days. It's not very intuitive. The forums feel very outdated and needlessly granular in terms of categorizing topic sections. It needs a big overhaul.

Also when you have one consolidated GB thread and even on a subreddit, it's gonna be more active than if you spread that out across a whole forum. In a dedicated thread/subreddit you can bump it with discussion about the staff member's latest tweet or what Dan thinks about Spiderman Homecoming. You virtually never see anyone talk about that stuff here on the forums because making a topic on here is a bigger deal than bumping a single thread or making a reddit post on the GB subreddit. People never make threads on here talking about Dan or Jeff's latest tweet or a friend of the site posting a picture with a staff member, etc.

mods are too strict here for me

I frankly don’t have the mental energy to devote to another internet forum, but Resetera (and GAF before it) operate a different speed and tone than our forums here. I can certainly see the appeal of a unified general topic talking about Giant Bomb when things are slow or scattered over here. It ESPECIALLY doesn’t help that podcast comments have now been split into 4 different pages thanks to video and premium versions, or that the blogging interface is still kinda terrible.

However, I’m going to have to agree with some others that our little group over here has been... less than inviting in the past. Around 2013-2014 when GamerGate was happening (and a bunch of stuff with this site was in flux) things got weirdly toxic for a while. Moderation eventually (and belatedly) started to crack down, but we lost a lot of regulars during that and the ensuing fallout. It doesn’t take a detective to look at the list of top posters and see how few of them are still active. I’ve never had much conflict with the mods (other than justifiably getting slapped on the wrist for dumb or mean shit I’ve said) but you can’t endeavor to keep things squeaky clean and civil without hurting some feelings or scaring people off in the process.

@savage: Speaking of how discourse is spread out, one thing I really wish they did was consolidate the comment threads for the podcasts. Having comments spread across three or four articles looks like it leads to less engagement for the community.

I've never heard of the forum as i'm not a big forum guy anymore, but my guess would be less strict moderation and since (i guess) it's one forum they don't have to worry about post specific topics in specific forums etc. I prefer this forum now as it's easier to avoid shitty posters, only issue now is the flux of korean spam that up old ass threads making the forum hard to read sometimes.

@mocbucket62: Oh, just to be clear- I don't blame you for picking it as best answer; I did answer the question after all. I was just surprised because 1. I had no idea that a forum would even have that functionality and 2. I was reloading the thread to see if anyone else had posted and thought my post had been deleted for a couple minutes.

I will add that it's very funny to me to hear that people think Era's moderation is less "strict"? Maybe it's over specific things I'm not picking up on (ex: obviously things are a little more hands off regarding talking about staff members just due to the nature of it being a different site, though if lines are crossed they'll thankfully pop in) but Era's moderation is, I'd say, still decently left-leaning in terms of what's considered appropriate behavior. And as I alluded to earlier, personally I'm in favor of that, and it makes me much more comfortable posting there knowing there are certain standards that are not up for discussion. So I don't think that differs too far from the "strict" moderation I'm hearing about here. Though I'm sure a lot more is allowed than here in terms of political/offtopic discussion, and also posters being warned and having a little room to walk things back a bit before they cross the line into explicit ban territory (or alternately shove themselves right past it), I guess? And the forum software allows those warnings/bannings to be a little more transparent. Hmm.

Also, I want to say @minipato (...having @ing someone being "calling someone out" has a weird connotation for me, huh) has a very good point! Being on Era in a single thread totally lets us, for better or worse, discuss pretty minor things about the staff/site. If you have to make a thread about it here... it can't really be a thing you talk about offhand and move on, you're dedicating a thread to it and treating it seriously.

Here is how our moderation process generally works. A user gets a written warning, then a 2 week suspension if warranted, then ultimately a ban. Everything is done via group private message to make sure the user understands why their post was deleted or why they are receiving a warning. Some extreme situations may warrant jumping a user straight to a suspension or even a ban but that happens maybe once per year at most. Everything is done manually and as a group, and it is almost always a group discussion when someone is up for a suspension or a ban. Both of those happen VERY infrequently when talking about "real" users and not spam accounts or obvious drive-by trolls. We also don't discuss individual moderations publicly, so it's a little difficult when, for example, you see a user complaining about strict or unfair moderation who got their "Who is the hottest girl on GB staff" topic deleted or something like that. No, I'm not making that one up. In a similar vein, you should also take people's posts on other sites with a grain of salt. I can't even tell you how many times we have seen Reddit posts or submissions on other forums from users who were "banned for no reason" or something to that effect, when it turns out they had a moderation history pages long going back literally years. 99% of users have no interactions with moderators at all.

I've never personally had any trouble with the mods, but I will second some of the comments here that ever since Gamergate this place has basically never been the same. I remember a period of time where it felt like friends of the site on Twitter would every so often take screenshots of the forums where someone was saying something gross and it completely changed the reputation the site's community had and made the moderation of this place incredibly defensive and almost pre-emptive. I get the sense that most people just don't even try to have even remotely contentious conversations on the forums anymore because they just don't last at all. I've noticed even the GB subreddit has had "big" threads around certain things when the site itself just kind of didn't. It seems like whenever something important is going on, viewers of the site go almost anywhere else because it's just easier.

It really is a bummer, though, because I would love to be more active here, but I refresh the forums pretty often and somedays there's just nothing being talked about that makes me want to jump in. Even when big things got announced, sometimes it takes ages for anyone to talk about it here, if it ever happens at all. There's still posting activity on the site, it just seems to be on video comments and not the forums, these days. It doesn't help that there are basically no written articles here to comment on anymore, either.

I'll also agree with some of the sentiment that moderation can feel a bit restrictive here. It's also why I tend to just stay here. Other places can get pretty intense and I'm too tired to deal with a lot of the usual internet drama.

*shrug*

i like it enough around here. definitely not the most active forums on the planet, but active enough that i feel as though the daily smoke on the street is being discussed. i actually kinda enjoy the slower pace.

they really do need to consolidate comments though.

If moderation on ResetEra seems less "strict" it's probably down to it just being a single thread - so you'll never see anything being locked, just moved away from.

I don't like one singular thread for everything because it makes it difficult to carry conversations about things.

I will say that I absolutely agree about comments on podcasts needing to be consolidated. Between the live stream, the archive video, the premium audio and the regular audio there's just too many places for the same conversations to be happening.

Consolidate comments! That being said, on a quick glance it did look more like a chat-room. Had to close it after I noticed the GIFs had eaten almost all my remaining data for the month.

@mike: in response to the banning proces, it would be nice if editing comments to remove stuff that is against the rules was done in a way that might let someone salvage a comment they spent time on to discuss an important issue instead of entirely wiping out the comment because it goes against a rule that maybe just required a bit of tweaking. Someone else has mentioned comments being just abruptly edited/obliterated without even a simple copy paste of the original message to allow the content to be fixed or at least provide context for what isn't allowed.

I doubt anyone is going to make an effective argument for a change in rules or moderation style but little tweaks like that might help encourage more posting/conversation on the site.

Again I get the moderation motto here is safety first, but some room for users to adjust would be nice, especially when it makes some of us feel unable to share our perspective or experiences.

I think your process for bans is fine from what I've seen, but editing comments is maybe something I would suggest could be improved upon.

Especially for those of us who at the very least lurked about in the days when a thread about being sexually assaulted by velociraptors managed to garner a decent amount of responses before the poster's more elicit content brought it all crumbling.

And to be clear I am not endorsing threads about dino assault.

I think a forum/message board has to be fostered by the owners and key members through interaction, good ideas/discussion starters, etc. On Giant Bomb that does not happen often and on top of that the rise of social media and aggregate message boards like Reddit have decreased the need/want for more limited message boards.

@opusofthemagnum:Yeah I've seen chunks of discussion get deleted. Especially during Far Cry 5's release and all the political and artistic discussion around that. Sure, some of the discourse gets heated, but there should be some amount of trust in the community to be able to talk about subjects that are inherently intense. It's weird when a discussion happens on the podcasts and seems to get squashed on the forums because of a lack of trust in us to handle those same discussions. As other posters said, it seems like the forum is on preemptive strike mode because of the gamer gate era stuff.

Some joke threads get locked for lack of discussion value when the same subject would be the source of many jokes in an email section of the bombcast/beastcast. The criteria for what can exist as a goof and what can't seems vague.

The forum enters a bland medium of not being trusted enough to handle heavy topics and not being allowed to be too jokey and ends up with 10 threads about "terrible/bad/mediocre/good games you hated/loved." No shade to those threads, a gaming forum needs that type of thread every once in a while for people to vent about games people loved or praise games people hated, but a whole bunch of em cropped up at once recently.

@hassun:

I give props to Rorie for sometimes popping up in the forums to interact a bit. Staff mostly post in comments section, but generally on-site interaction in the forums is low. Twitter is where it's at and the easiest way to interact with staff and fans. Fobwashed and Jeremy Medina post all their stuff on twitter because it gets more play on that platform than GB's community spotlight/showcase and they can be retweeted by the staff. I honestly refresh GB just to see the staff's twitter updates since I do not want to make a twitter account.

@minipato: Rorie is definitely the champ when it comes to forum interaction! And yeah, the big social media platforms have become the go-to place to reach people and be reached yourself.