- Primo84
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"Sometimes life gives you lemons, and then you have to say 'f**k the lemons' and bail."
If you're reading this, you need to stop stalking me. If you can't stop stalking me, you might as well go here.
Hello, Community. I know I'm five days early with this, but everyone stop what you're doing and focus on me.
Everyone paying attention? Good.
When I joined this website seven years ago, I was a semi-retarded, immature, inarticulate kid. Now, I am a semi-retarded, immature, inarticulate kid that can also grow a beard.
Oh how the times are a changin'.
I have a friend from work, his name is Ted, and Ted is an avid Reddit user. Needless to say, he's one of the few people I know in real life that I can say is "from the internet." That being said, Ted and I often find ourselves bull-blam!- over the latest e-fad, or some internet-centric news story that hasn't been covered by the mainstream media yet. Anyway, I sometimes mention things I've seen on B.net, sometimes negative, and he many times has asked me, "Why do you bother?"
Why do I bother? I feel I'm not alone when I say that I sometimes think I've outgrown the general populace of these forums. I'm aware that makes me sound like a dick, but c'mon, I was fifteen when I joined here. I've found it increasingly harder to participate in many discussions in the public forums over the course of the years. Each forum's topic cycle has become blatantly obvious, and also damn near predictable; I don't understand a lot of the recent trends; and the names of each forum's regulars has drastically changed, and change scares me.
I've essentially become one of the bitter, grizzled old members that I detested in my early days here on Bungie.net.
So why do I bother?
To me, Bungie.net is like that promiscuous fat girl at all the parties. You know, you say you'd never hit it, and she comes on to you once or twice; no big deal. So you've had several drinks too many one night, and you end up taking her back to your room. You sneak her out and make her do the walk of shame the next morning, swearing that you were drunk and it'll never happen again. Sure enough, it does. And then another time, and another time; it gets to the point where you're not even inebriated anymore when taking her home. You're not rushing to squeeze her out the window in the morning, you're making her breakfast. Before you know it, you're taking her home to meet your family during the holidays, you're making plans, and you're weighing the options of getting hitched to this whale of a girl.
Bungie.net is my fat chick.
I came to Bungie.net as a cocky high-school jock, somewhat embarrassed about my association with such an acne-ridden, wedgie-receiving, pocket protector-wearing collective. I quickly got over myself, dismounted from my high horse, and accepted that I was just another guy in the crowd. Despite my original mindset, I quickly found that I wasn't among a herd of moth-breathing nerds trying to steal my identity and score naked pictures of my sister. Sure, we probably have a few of those types in this community, but for the most part, I found the lot of you not so different from myself. .
While I'm not quite over Bungie and Halo like some of my blue-bar'd brethren, I'm well past that point where I'm here to only talk about the games. Over the years, I've forged friendships and bonds with many members here on this site. That's what keeps me coming to Bungie.net. Sure, I'll indulge in the occasional canon argument or the latest Skibur-induced drama, but I've come across plenty of people here whom I wouldn't mind getting together and hanging out with in real life.
So there we have it: thank you, Bungie.net Community.
Anyway, other than a self-absorbed soap box which to stand on and rant incoherently about my take on the community while simultaneously swinging my e-peen in public view, similar to a drunken homeless person, what would this thread be without some bullet points?
So what's it going to be then, eh?
The Flood
While I agree that many of its regulars have gotten a bit uppity in the past, I can't help but feel that those of you of the "nuke The Flood" mindset are bat-blam!- crazy.
As many who have been long enough have likely figured out, on-topic discussion eventually turns stale. C'mon, one can only discuss Halo and the ins and outs of the forums themselves for so long. I think The Flood serves as important a purpose as any other public forum on this website. Think about it: what do we discuss during Bungie's downtime? Where do we go when things have gone dark? Telling everyone to sod off to private groups, offsites, and the like isn't exactly what I'd consider beneficial to membership longevity.
If (and hopefully when) private groups receive a much needed overhaul, The Flood is where we go when Bungie has to put us on the back burner.
All that considered, yes, The Flood has its fair share of drawbacks. Rather that the unsavory nuclear option that an alarming number of people seem to support, why don't we take a step back a try a different approach. (Don't take that literally; I'm in no way suggesting that the structure of this site is a community effort.)
I've gotten the sense that some people join just to participate in The Flood. In theory, there's really not much wrong with that. Then again, it does tend to raise issues regarding account value and membership longevity.
I like to think that the structure of things here is what separates sites like Bungie.net and 4chan. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these vecks that thinks The Flood is turning into 4chan; far from it, actually. But is there really a distinct dividing line between the likes of sites like Bungie.net and monkey -blam!--throwing fights like 4chan? I'm trying not to delude this into some slippery slope fallacy, but I can't help but feel that this bypass of the traditional membership routine is a common attribute of sites like 4chan.
What brings most people here? Bungie's games, i.e. Halo. As I mentioned earlier, and correct me if you think I'm wrong, but the general idea is that people turn to The Flood when they grow tired of the game-related forums. Unless we're dealing with some ADHD member who bounces from forum to forum from the get go, chances are that your average member is going to spend some time in these other forums and get acclimated to the site, right?
The longer one is here, the more they understand how these forums function and what's expected of them as a member. When you have people bypassing that process and creating an account only to jump headfirst into The Flood, there's a chance of trouble. There's no value to the account in question. It's a throwaway. Why should anyone give a damn about the rules when they can easily create a new account to circumvent a ban and and continue on with said unfavorable behavior in a matter of minutes?
1. Create bogus email account.
2. Create new WLID.
3. Create new B.net account.
4. Post stupid -blam!-.
5. Get banned.
6. Rinse.
7. Repeat.
There should be some obvious value added to forum memberships; something that's relevant to the end user.
As the administrator of my own little offsite clique, I've never really liked the idea of features that functionally serve to limit one's ability to participate. (Shameless plug!) I like expansion, and I'm of the mindset 'the more, the merrier." However, I feel that there should be some posting restrictions to The Flood. There's not much stopping an established member from spamming up the place in some account suicide, but I like to think that's far less likely compared to the creation of throwaway accounts.
So how would something like this be implemented?
Hell if I know; I'm more of a conceptual, big picture kind of guy than the type who gets down to the nitty-gritty and nails out the particulars. In general, said system would require a member to reach a certain status/level in order to create threads, create polls, and if we really want to be extreme, reply to threads. (Although I'm not too crazy on that last part.)
How these status/levels would be defined? I have no idea, but allow me to go on record and say that it should have nothing to do with member titles. I know from experience that a grey bar can be just as competent as a blue bar, and that a blue bar can be just as incompetent as the Berlusconi administration.
It's nothing that hasn't been suggested before, so I'm probably beating a dead horse with some of you. All things considered, I feel this is a legitimate course of action and that it has the potential to result in more thoughtful, meaningful discussion.
[Edited on 12.23.2011 11:03 AM PST]