As noted by many of you this forum has really taken a dive recently. In the past few months the majority of threads have just been new accounts asking very basic questions or posting very basic/low effort content, and then a few people helping/tell them wrong thread, and then a few people sarcastically respond, and then a few people throw insults at each other and then sometimes the post gets 3 pages long of bullshit.

After some discussions on the community discord last night we came to the conclusion that in order for any meaningful moderation to be done we need some actual written rules. I'm currently reluctant to moderate anything due to the lack of clear agreed upon rules and basically not wanting to start policing/censoring the community based on my judgement alone.

So this thread is hopefully a discussion on what the rules should be. Obviously threads that are just the word "fuck" or spam bots should just be insta removed (and have been) but it's more what is the go to action (if any) for stuff like:

Necroing 7 month old shitty threads

Creating a new thread asking what mods are allowed 4 posts down from the stickied thread explaining what mods are allowed

Asking how to use 16 by 9 aspect ratios 1 year after a thread explaining everything to do with aspect ratios

Not knowing how to read Speedrun.com correctly

Category suggestions (thankfully we don't get LS% ones any more)

OP deleting their account and or all their posts so the thread makes no sense (a lot of these)

Locking threads after the answer was given

Discussions on questionable runs

Nice but ultimately pointless threads

Very basic and not SA related speedrunning questions

(I decided to stop there) And of course all the pointless bickering and vile thrown at each other. Hell should we do something about low effort meme posts/responses even, and try to keep the forum purely to the point and professional because of how it represents the community/stuff is documented forever. I really have no idea on how extreme to take this.

I tried looking at other leaderboard forums for any examples/guidance but I couldn't find any written rules anywhere (even the main Speedrun.com forums). What I did see were forums full of people asking the same noob questions despite having a thread on it already and everyone seemingly being fine with it? Oh and also the moderation tools are really limited (You can lock or sticky threads, and delete individual posts. That's it) so try to keep this in mind when suggesting rules.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd go

(oh yeah and we're discussing adding new mod(s) but that's a whole other mess)

(oh yeah #2 I'm going to actually moderate this thread to keep it on topic shocked emoji)

I posted these in the discord, I think these are okay ideas:

[1:19 AM] lev: The problem we can actually solve is people baiting others and acting retarded [...] [1:23 AM] lev: I posted a thread called "information for new runners" for gta3 that links to the discord and shit [1:23 AM] lev: Something like that with guidelines would make things better probably [...] [1:24 AM] lev: Well Josh when people go to the forums and all they see is massive amounts of diarrhea then they will just add more to the pile [...] [1:26 AM] lev: Maybe merge common question threads and answers into an faq [1:26 AM] lev: More work but it will probably pay off [1:27 AM] lev: I'd delete at least like half of the threads after getting the faq done [1:27 AM] lev: Cause most are just questions [1:28 AM] lev: That will tell people who are new not to create threads for questions [1:29 AM] lev: [...] if people create threads anyways, answer if you can in a reply, tell them to get on the discord and nuke the thread the next day or some shit

Also,it would be much easier and faster to just join the discord server and ask anything about the game there,without creating a whole thread about it: https://discord.gg/7gCbWuq

Yeah @blacklev and @GReeN96 an "information for new runners" should be made with FAQ-y stuff in it. That much I could do on my own, but forum rules are a "what does everyone think/want" kinda thing :P

For an actual rule, not allowing unproductive complaining would help. For example, answering this to a thread that was made for a question already in the FAQ is not good: [quote]Fuck off with this stupid question that have been already asked 100 times hurr durr[/quote] Answering this and then locking/deleting the thread should be better: [quote]Read the FAQ, and join the Discord to get help for your further questions[/quote]

Also, not allowing pointless circlejerk would be an improvement. Pretty much anything useless that is written with a bad intention should get nuked, I'm not sure about other offtopic posts that are in good faith. If they become spam then sure they can go, but I'm not sure how you can formulate that as a rule.

while a lot of us share this idea of a thread becoming/is spam needs to stop and making rules behalf of it with the list you've made it really comes down to a respectful response and getting to the point in these threads so to me " memes, arguments, name calling, pointless banter and anything alike of such " flat out needs to stop. As well if a thread is made that goes over a simple thing such as "what mods are approved?" is real easy to tell someone "go here (link)" and done and over with no need to lock a thread. Just keep out of mention above and I honestly think those inside the community and new comers can start to see less and less of the toxic that has drawn even myself to want to stay away from. In short professional questions and answers.

My biggest problem is the attitude some of our community members harbor. It's vile and hateful and perpetuates negativity, counterproductivity, and is harmful to the community's health as a whole.

When people engage with the community or visit the forums and see hate, shit memes and generally gross behavior they're going to fuck off and go somewhere else. Rightfully so. We lose out on curious parties, potential runners and effectively stagnate because we treat each other and outsiders like garbage. This has to stop. It is completely unacceptable.

I garner enough bullshit in my day to day life. I would love to come to this community at the end of the day and wind down and connect with others over the games we love and the hobby we partake in. But I can't, because we treat each other terribly. So I end up avoiding the discord and forums as much as I can. It's not a home to me anymore.

That's where we should begin: changing the tone of the discussion. It's unhealthy and offputting as of now. Offending parties need to clean up the act and behave like adults. In regards to basic forum offenses like bumping old threads and posting useless shit, those threads should be locked once a mod has made an appropriate response to it.

Elsewhere, when people ask easy to answer questions, they should get one proper reply and that's the end of it. There is no need to shit up a thread with memes and hateful discussion. We should be able to trust our community to interact with our newcomers appropriately. We clearly can not. As such it comes back to my point: the tone of the discussion; the way we interact. It has to change. Full stop.

Whatever rules we do end up adopting I think we could add something along the lines of “don’t argue about or point out rule violating posts within the forum itself.” If you feel something needs to be looked and addressed don’t point it out and make a scene on the forums, it is better to handle that stuff on discord or in private. Even if your intent is to be helpful there is a right and a wrong way to handle rule violations.

Ok now let's not turn this into some sjw/safe-space place. You all can go do that on your personal twitter/twitch etc.

Please tell me how requiring basic social graces turns this community into "some sjw/safe-space place"?

I agree that the community has problem with people's toxicity and overall arrogance by people in the forums. Like there's some people who quit the speedrunning community for this reason. Overall to insult somebody or say pointless stuff is total uneeded for dumb reasons.

My first impression of a forum made by me with insults and telling stuff that ain't true in extensions. https://www.speedrun.com/gtamemes/thread/ecs2r PS: I am not taking it to a further discussion of the topic.

So in my opinion, making a discussion into a hateful discussion is where nothing good comes out of it and total uneeded for. That is all.

I read that discussion and it wasn't bad at all, in my opinion. Please don't confuse saying useless shit on the forums with disagreeing with you. People explained why dupeless is dedicated to the meme boards, they weren't wrong.

If the mods don't want to do their job, then they shouldn't be mods to start with, i swear this is so simple but somehow people overcomplicate this.

Is it so hard to mod people who have been in the community for a while and want mod? Does it cost money?

We have mods right now that probably don't even have the game installed.

coollertmb seems to want to moderate, like mod him right now, today. Why not? What will he do, go rouge? Pls stop with this "not trusted" nonsense

Mods themselves are complicating things.

Cooller's approach is reasonable - a bit authoritative, but if done correctly it would work well. Forums like Something Awful and Facepunch operate in a similar manner; new threads are rare and almost all discussion takes place in an existing thread.

The downside is they can be cumbersome to read once a thread gets many pages long, and the same problem arises anyway: people won't sift through hundreds of pages of a technical support thread, for example, so they post their question and you'll end up with reposts. If <i>all proper information</i> to <i>every possible problem</i> is consolidated into the first post of the thread, then MAYBE you'll nullify reposts, but don't count on it.

@Joshimuz has already stated interest in appointing new mods - something I agree with as well, given that gtasa's only mods are those that are auto-appointed because they're GTA series mods. However, I am not eager to agree with coollertmb as a mod due to his history of shitposting.

I just deleted a bunch of trash off of here, sort of what cooller said. There's probably more hidden in some decent threads that I haven't seen but let me know if there's anything that needs to be policed. I locked all of the threads that Josh linked as bad examples rather than deleting because hopefully people will see one of these examples and think something along the lines of "this guy stole the words out of my mouth! oh wait, I probably shouldn't post about it here then!"

Also stickied what was a reply by S to a category suggestion because it gets the point across that they really shouldn't be half-developed ideas, especially on the main game.

So it’s been a month since any on topic posts in here. Any update for us? Are you working on it?

I kinda went a did a whole bunch of other stuff and didn't really finalise anything here (did start moderating stuff though). The only extra thing I can think of for this is something about new accounts making new threads but I don't wanna just prevent people from asking stuff. Problem is we get loads of fresh accounts made to just troll/rage bait about crap all the time.