The forums are getting a little depressing...

Oddly enough it was started by Sweep when he publicly "nominated" me on one of his blogs to become the next community manager. Rorie's doing a better job than what I could have done by the way.

Jesus time flies by...I promised the site a while back that the moment when every member of the community does not get an "ItalyCanadian," reference I'm just going to resign.

You've still done a damn good job with your unofficial Giant Bomb twitter account and by throwing up a community spotlight every week -- without fail! The fact that they decided to put up that Community Showcase thing instead of better highlighting your spotlight feature was a real dick move, I think.

@zombiepie: didn't that happen when they removed the +1/-1 feature from the site? And some asshole spammed the forums with some shitty Marvel Civil War photoshops?

@zombiepie: As long as I'm here, you're keeping your day job.

Take me back, man. Take me back to the beginning. To the days of NAKED CARTOON PUSSY and creepy raper guys.

Also yeah, certain elements of this site seem like they've been forgotten and left out to die. The wiki feels almost like an after thought these days, where initially it was part of what made this site so unique.

You're a little depressing....

I honestly think the "fanboyism" is pretty minimal. Sure there was that initial bandwagon "Xbone hate", but that died off real fast.

The reason the forums are dying this slow death is because of poor site design (sorry guys but its true), The amount of technical issues with posting on the forums itself is staggering and has been going on forever, double / triple posts, taking minutes to post a reply, notifications being fucked. It's a shitshow.

The search function is FUCKED, and unless you do exactly the right phrasing and modifiers to the search you wont find jack shit on the forums. Yet the mods will lock and punish you for making a duplicate thread to a 6 month old thread. It's ridiuclous. I don't make threads here specifically because "hell there might be a thread like this thats a year old that a mod remembers that i dont and my shit will get locked for no reason cus of it". I've seen that exact scenario happen over a dozen times. It's disgusting and discourages posting. And don't give me that "oh it reduces clutter!" cus you need alittle clutter, especially when the forums are as dead as they are right now. Plus a discussion can be started again with new perspectives 6 months after a similar discussion and the old discussion would be actually a detriment to the new discussion taking off and being successful / interesting.

Just lock old threads. OH and all the necro's. It's fucking crazy. 3 year old thread necro's why is that even possible? The fuck?

I LOVE giantbomb, i love the community. It's just the forums are honestly the worst i've experienced...like ever. It's a shitshow. They should be ashamed.

Now that I thought about it a little, I still think these forums and comment sections are better than other sites and worth visiting. Occasionally there's dumb stuff happening (bad dumb) but overall it's the best I could expect out of a gaming forum. One that keeps growing and won't be as tight knit as five years ago, so the quality control just can't be there anymore. A bad thread that isn't breaking any rules is just gonna happen. Doesn't mean the whole community is doomed.

But busted notifications and occasional posting issues will hopefully be addressed sooner than later. Small stuff, but turns out they're actually pretty big when it comes to useability.

Anyway, things will be fine. Make the change you want to see. At least people aren't complaining about the lack of videos this week.

Keep calm and love the Bomb.

Soooo shortly after it launched?

I've been mostly absent recently, but what the fuck is with the recent topics on the homepage being there one day, then gone the next, but then it's back, and now it's gone again?! Make up your damn mind!

I agree with some of the posters that the old forum layout was a lot better. It was easier to recognize familiar members and identify mods/staff which are always fun to have involved in a conversation. The whole dynamically adding my post after I add it is kinda pointless though, it doesn't update other posts so i'm going to refresh anyways to see if the discussion has progressed while I typed out my response.

All forums have been a shit show since the console reveals. I was initially pretty hot on the PS4, but the giant internet circle jerk has completely killed my excitement for it. Oh, and Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons being better than all the launch games.

You post on my blogs on occasion. Therefore you will be spared when the great and dreadful day of my ascension cometh.

Part of it's just natural growth - the site had a more intimate (get your mind out of the gutter, @zombiepie) feel to it because we basically had a lot more easily identifiable regulars. With growth comes a certain degree of splintering, but there are still a lot of the old guard around. True, I do wish following those people via status updates and a friend/community blog feed was easier (or re-implemented), but I continue to hope that things will improve technically once Gamespot is brought up to speed. I know the Top Duders are working their asses off.

In the meantime, I'd love to see more people posting blog series on the forums. Those are a great way to gather a small community of.... friends? Acquaintances? We need an Internet equivalent to those words. Hmmm... anyways, it seems like we don't have nearly the number of visible bloggers that we used to, so get 'em attached, people! Let's see you folks do some writing!

I've heard popularity leads to intimacy. Can you confirm or deny?

My only complaint would be that I wish the mods were a little quicker to ban some people. I feel people who are obvious trolls and generally add nothing to any conversation they partake in are left to just spout their dumb bullshit without any consequence.

But if it was up to me, posting on the forums would be a premium feature so maybe my opinion is a little on the extreme side when it comes to this stuff.

Also, as someone who has been here since day 1, believe me, the "good old days" that people are apparently wishing for are looked at through some serious rose-tinted glasses. You think there's a lot of forum drama now? You have no idea.

@clonedzero said:

Not that it makes it any better, but I've never ever seen a good search function on any forum with a large community. I'm convinced that such a thing doesn't exist and it is the holy grail of web programmers everywhere.

@veektarius: @otacon: Notifications should be working for everyone - have you checked your settings lately?

I can think of two significant events from the "Good Old Days" that are better left in the past. Nothing good can come from digging up those old skeletons.

This is an unfortunate bandaid that sometimes gets enabled when site stability is at risk - the forum module on the homepage is pretty intensive for that pageload, so when things get dicey they pull it down. It has been down quite often lately, though.

This is an unfortunate bandaid that sometimes gets enabled when site stability is at risk - the forum module on the homepage is pretty intensive for that pageload, so when things get dicey they pull it down. It has been down quite often lately, though.

The notifications doesn't seem to work and that sucks. Also all the threads about sexism has really ruined this forum, I think it might have been a legitimite issue once, but now it has become so ridicolous that I just don't care. The white knighting has to stop. Women aren't super fragile beings that die if a woman wears a bikini in a video game.

@castiel: Notifications should be working. Can you check your settings to see if they're flipped on?

I don't think the forums are too bad. Certainly still better than most gaming forums I visit. And for those longing for bygone days, I think you're looking through some rather rosy glasses.

To me, one of the bigger issues is problematic regulars. Prolific posters who generally either drag down the forums with bad or inflammatory threads or bog down decent threads with inane or ignorant replies. We have a good stable of quality members, but when you know your little thread is just going to be ignored for the next baited argument or angry hot topic, it discourages quality members from providing more posts and distracts from the decent posts they do make.

I see far less issue with new people who post occasionally than I do with some active people who are just poisonous for the community. The fact that you can basically say anything with impunity as long as you aren't directly saying it about another member or spamming seems to be hindering the community and distracting from the better members who still provide quite a bit of fun and interesting content.

Thanks for all the comments, guys. I appreciate the thoughts. Part of my purview is ensuring that the forums stay healthy, but I've been getting pulled in a lot of directions lately, so I probably haven't been doing as good a job at that as I should have. If any of you were/are on the Screened forums, you probably know that I like being involved in the community (still somehow have the second-most all-time posts over there despite not posting in a year and a half).

Let me mull on some of this and see what I could do to drive some more forum traffic. I think that there are a lot of interesting conversations that happen around here that people don't stumble over, for whatever reason. Marino already does a great job of floating these via the community promos; maybe I can take a more active role in promoting the best stuff via our twitter feeds and the like. I also need to just straight-up contribute more than I have been. I originally wanted to post a blog or two every week, but with my writing style they take a hecka long time to put together, just because I wind up writing such long pieces.

As always, if you have any concerns about anything, feel free to get in touch via PM. I try real hard to respond to everything I get.

Honestly, I kind of wish there was a little area on the top or right side of the forum page that included highlighted blogs. Like, an official version of what ZombiePie does each week. Some things do get promoted on the front page, and that makes a difference. But something just about the forums would be nice, as well. I'd love to go to the latest forum posts page and see a list of good threads over the last few days instead of just trying to fish through the forum to find the gems.

Honestly, I kind of wish there was a little area on the top or right side of the forum page that included highlighted blogs. Like, an official version of what ZombiePie does each week. Some things do get promoted on the front page, and that makes a difference. But something just about the forums would be nice, as well. I'd love to go to the latest forum posts page and see a list of good threads over the last few days instead of just trying to fish through the forum to find the gems.

@truthtellah: If you ever want to discuss users that you feel are problematic, feel free to PM me directly and I can look over stuff. To some degree we give leeway to people who've been around for years, but we still wield the banhammer when people step over the line.

@csl316: I just checked and it looks like your notifications were turned off. I flipped them back on for you, so you should get notifications now.

I've been thinking about ways to better highlight the community spotlight, too. On Screened we used to throw it on the homepage on the weekends. Maybe I could see if Jeff would be cool with allowing that to happen on GB, as well.

Thanks for the reply to this topic Rorie.

We all just want the community to be as good as it can. I know the technical issues aren't yours but if there are other possible solutions or ideas I'm sure those could help.

@rorie: Thanks, Rorie. It's tough, because in some cases it seems like people who were alright for a long time but have kind of become very cavalier and even a bit like bullies after a while. There are also some who are just shockingly bigoted, and Giant Bomb's forum has just become a platform for them when they're angry or bored. I'd like to think things may improve with them, but I'm less and less convinced of that.

In other words, I feel like we may need someone to fight for the users and lay down the law...

Anyway, thanks. I'll definitely consider it and get back to you. :)

@rorie: Thanks, Rorie. It's tough, because in some cases it seems like people who were alright for a long time but have kind of become very cavalier and even a bit like bullies after a while. There are also some who are just shockingly bigoted, and Giant Bomb's forum has just become a platform for them when they're angry or bored. I'd like to think things may improve with them, but I'm less and less convinced of that.

In other words, I feel like we may need someone to fight for the users and lay down the law...

Anyway, thanks. I'll definitely consider it and get back to you. :)

That whole thing was blown way out of proportion. I wrote a couple of blogs (They are still up on the site, if you want to read them), the first saying that there should be more focus on the community and the second saying that it seemed pretty dumb that facebook integration was being prioritised over community showcasing. The first was met with almost unanimous approval, while the second earned me a public lashing from Snide. Several other users decided to argue back and promoted the idea of this moronic "Civil war". The whole thing was fucking ridiculous. And, as if to vindicate that ridiculousness, less than a year later I was made a moderator. War is hell, eh?

I swear this thread gets remade every six months. I'm going to say what I always say: the potential for meaningful and thoughtful discourse is, as always, still prominent on this site. I have always found that people will mirror the effort and reflectiveness you put into your own work: If you want to see a larger sense of community then do something about it. Years ago we had the IRC, we had weekly bombing runs, we were organising google hangouts and community podcasts and meet-ups at conventions - this is all still happening. If you don't believe me then check out the community page (Which, incidentally, is what I asked for that sparked off the "Civil War").

@rorie I'm thankful you are paying attention to the users concerns and taking the time to shift through them. Sometimes it feels like we don't have much of a voice. Our concerns and issues comes from a place of love for the website and we just want to see the forums be the best they can be. As good if not better than before. It's great to know you care about this as much as we do.

I'm guessing everyone's notifications were turned off at one point somewhat recently, and--ironically--no one was notified that would be happening, so a great deal of people just assumed that the feature was broken. I know that is true for me.

@sweep: Sometimes it seems like every thread gets remade every six months, including the "things are going downhill" thread.

Also I moved this to the Grief Beard forum.

The site used to be really fun and unique. I came here and there were quests, lists, the wiki - everything seemed very integrated. Now after the redesign Giant Bomb looks like a dozen other gaming sites out there and offers similar functionality if not even less. This coupled with the fact that it seems like were still in Beta a year later makes it kind of rough. I mean sorry Alexis, I understand this was supposed to be better and I'm sure you and the crew worked hard on it but I just don't see any benefits that the users are reaping from the changeover? The site looks bloated, barren and unorganized. I'm a regular user that comes here several times a day and knows when something is going to be up, and still I'll have trouble actually finding the QuickLook that I KNOW has gone up already. Is it in the top square, bottom squares, mixed somewhere in between?

As to content well thats everywhere. People are more civil here than in other places, just go visit GameTrailers and sift through the comments section on any video. You'll come running back to Giant Bomb as if theres some plague out there and this is the last safe haven on the internet.

Is there any chance that we could bring back mini bios and different colored user names? Those were great to help you get a little bit of perspective on people.

Good, I'm not alone in thinking this. That's great. To add to this, it seems the site has more trolls than it did a few years ago (with these trolls being way less interesting), and the old giantbomb balance of harmless ribbing and full on trolling has shifted much farther towards the trolling side. I can honestly say that I don't provide as good of content nowadays as I did back when I had more free time in college, and I also get trolled into bad replies much more often than before. I'll try to work on that.

Honestly, the boards don't seem any different to how they've always been beyond the fact there's less activity?

This is why you're my favorite moderator.

@sweep: haha. I originally thought you had just moved this to a "Grief" board, like a complaint board, but this is so, so much better. Well-played.

I'd just like the forums to work properly after the redesign. The latests posts board gets busted every few day, quoting is still screwed, searching for threads or even your own posts is an exercise in pointlessness. Add the fact that there's no real activity feed and tracking what your followed and followers does is pretty much impossible. It's just not friendly at all.

As someone who only started posting semi-actively this past year, it seems to me like a huge part of the problem is simply that the forum structure is really fucking difficult to navigate, at least relative to almost every other videogame forum I've read. While most forums have a huge Games section with threads for individual games or issues, the way Giantbomb's wiki is integrated into the forums kinda forces threads about a specific game into a relatively obscure and hard-to-find position (that game's dedicated wiki page/subforum). Unless it's a hugely popular and highly-discussed game like The Last of Us, virtually no one is going to just stumble on that discussion unless they actively go seeking it out by going to the game's page and checking its posts, and people casually reading and posting on an internet forum rarely ever actively seek things out - rather, they tend to just read or comment on threads which interest them that happen to catch their eye.

Plus, if one wants to start a thread about a game and it's not one of the popular games in the Forums drop-down, it's not immediately obvious where one needs to go in order to do that. I mean, just think how unusable it is from the perspective of a brand new poster who wants to discuss a game: They'd start by checking the forums page or drop-down in search of some larger list, fail to find their game unless it's particularly popular, maybe eventually realize against all logic that they need to Search for the wiki page for that game (wiki pages are not typically known for open discussions) so that they can click the Forum tab there, and then decide whether they still even want to post it or not considering how hard it is to find and how unlikely anyone is to respond. As someone else said in this thread, it feels like the existence of forums on GB is kind of an afterthought... which is fine, but just don't expect them to be very active.

Short version: The Giant Bomb forums are incredibly awkward/almost impossible to casually browse, because the only way to see an overview of a variety of topics is to sit around refreshing the Recent Discussions page. The forums design is not engaging, extremely un-intuitive, and doesn't foster familiar, active communities.

Also, minor gripe, there doesn't seem to be any Preview Reply button. I find it really annoying to not be able to proofread my posts as they will appear, even with the ability to edit posts after the fact.

The site does has its annoyances after the redesign, but stuff like can be fix within time. As for the community it has dropped abit compared to last year. For most part its still pretty strong and user friendly compared to other sites. Some sites I've been too I saw mods treat people like shit, and a community that basically likes to hate and talk shit all the time. GiantBomb is nowhere near that level, and the mods do a good job of keeping the site civil for most part.

Rorie's been a cool guy from the start. Hell he's surprising alot more friendlier then some of the mods. I don't know why some people want to put blame on him for the site's issues. Seems like the mods and staff are doing their best to keep the site running, even after Ryan's passing. Anyway the problems that the site is having are fixable, and within time the site will regain a stronger community then before.