Re: Rachel VIP-Edition
First
Toxic, you scare me.
From a lurker/downloader's perspective, I'll typically take a look at new threads that come out to see if there's anything good. If I can't glean anything of the game from the OP, I'll just move on. I don't want to accidentally start playing a game with hardcore guro or shitting dick-nipples.
No reason to be scared of me. If you see the "Captcha" thread in the Forum Development section, you'll see us talking about the best way to prevent dumpers. Obviously, the best is what LDF suggests, with people just reading and using common sense. Obviously, you're one of those people. However, possibly unfortunately, we're still a community and sometimes you come to trust users for links and it could even not entirely be their fault a link is screwed up. And as a mod, I'm expected to keep this section clear, but if a game doesn't come across my fancy, then I won't download it, and I'll never find out whether or not it's a safe link. So there are members who will just download what is posted, figuring that if it hasn't been deleted, there shouldn't be a problem.
Speaking of trusting members, I've already spoken on how John is clearly not some demented evildoer, so I may trust his links, but the fact that there is little info might not get me interested. On top of that, other members who see that clearly don't link his posting style and have started neg-repping him, meaning when other lurkers see his threads, they'll see links posted with little info by a person with negative reputation, which will get even less people interested.
And speaking of dumpers and negative rep, those are two points to my argument as to why there should be info.
A comment like this coming from a Toxic is quite different from if it came from a normal member. You are the moderator, which gives you right to *ahem* request members to follow certain posting templates. However, if it came from some random member it feels like back seat moderating. I guess I just don't like lurkers coming in and telling the rest of us how we should run things.
Now I will have the final say if I feel things are out of control. However, I've NEVER been the type to use any power over my words. Even the arguments I've had with Stiffy, til we came to a very powerful mutual hatred, I wasn't editing/deleting his posts. However, I still can't see from the opposite point of view here, other than laziness hiding behind charity.
By downloading the game, uploading it, managing links, searching these forums for the japanese and/or american name for the game, and then posting it, you've already done the most difficult part of the original post. Why is "You play as _____. You go around ______ing and have ______ kinds of sex. The art is weird when it comes to ______. Sometimes the controls are a little ______. I have trouble with _____" difficult? What about asking for that makes everyone ungrateful?
Not to mention we just got through deleting and keeping out dumpers. Dumper threads are actually not so bad, but one of the biggest problems is it's just an image or two which doesn't really show anything about the game, and then links. The threads we're arguing about right now have
even less information than that. So why is it that getting kept over dumper threads?
It gets people who don't know enough about the game to actually get interested in it. And on top of that, it informs people who
aren't interested in it. Namely the moderators like myself who can't download every single game, but still have to make sure that there are no repeat threads in a section which has very lax rules on posting, which is why sometimes we'll end up with a game thread, and then later, a thread dedicated specifically to the artist(s) who already made that game we posted. Then the information about it that people look for slowly gets split into more and more threads. That's what I'm trying to avoid and I'm slowly trying to just clean this up because it's not just a click and share community.