Is there a way to measure a forums tone/style as things seem to be going downhill here at least as far as I can see?
This is just a general observation, are there any forum analysis tools that can scientifically detect changes in a forums mood and style over time.
Or is it that most of the professional game developers are too busy and that just leaves the near do wells to loiter and troll in the dungeon that the Unity Forum is turning into!
PS If you made a game that was about your experience of the Unity forum would it be upbeat or downbeat and where would you set it e.g. Luxury holiday with tropical sunlit beaches amazing service or Oozing moaning diablo esque dungeon from hell.
Or is the Unity Forum going through the same online community life cycle as every other online forum?
Actually the forums are quite helpful and nice when I show up, I love the number of knowledgeable people I can find. It seems more trollish to you because you keep posting batshit insane threads.
Nothing is going downhill except your ability to find new topics to discuss. You’ve continually created threads about concepts, had them shot down because they were genuinely not correct, only to recreate them again at a later date as if somehow that will change the results.
Fixed that for you. General Discussion is the only section that seems to truly change in any way. Other sections have largely remained the same since I first joined barring those that didn’t exist initially of course.
Seems fine to me! We still have our newcomers who post in the wrong forum or what us to help them find an idea for their game. We still have the serious newcomers who ask for help in all the right places. We have the curmudgeony types who have tons of posts and shoot down whatever anyone says, but we love them anyway. We still have the upbeat optimists who make us feel better. We have the insightful posts that make me want to take notes in case I forgot the wonderful nugget they gave us.
And we still have those who feel the forums are getting worse because no one agrees with them…and the ones who love the forums because everyone likes their posts.
I would say most likely it is going downhill for you specifically.
You ask a thing (usually related to a buzzword), ignore responses you get, then keep arguing about it even when you obviosuly don’t even understand what you’re talking about, then run away, and next week return with the next buzzword.
You’ve been doing that for at least a year. Obviously people are going to get fed up with you and will start acting in less positive fashion.
See? Same thing. Completely ignoring previous resposnes, and posting a next buzzfeed-style nonsense headline.
“Are game developers secretly lizards? Click here to find out the shocking truth!”
Then there are threads concerning game concepts, creating a very rough prototype and claiming it is a finished project.
Or simply put him on ignore. Some of his threads have sparked interesting conversations in the past but they’re starting to feel very stale now and frequently devolve into arguments and debates.
The Decline, the formation of cliques and factions, incidents of abuse, of intellectual violence and namecalling. The software becomes encrusted with patches and extensions, the unwritten rules are flouted regularly and the meta-rules all but forgotten. It is a time of either shrinking membership, or overwhelming growth.
However, I think that things are better now than they were a year or so ago. I remember some really nasty attacks on posters, especially when discussing things like diversity. Now, it seems we can have some really good discussions without it always devolving into some personal rant.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and it could be that I ignore all those people so don’t see it but in my eyes, that means it is better.
@Arowx - The attitude towards you and your threads is dropping fast. Elsewhere the rest of the community is ticking along fine.
If you want to change things, why not focus on responding to other people’s threads for a while. Spend time outside of the general discussion forum and outside of your own threads. You’ve managed to create a weird ecosystem inside your own threads, that doesn’t match up with the rest of the forum. And since you post almost exclusively on your own threads, you aren’t getting to see some of the wonderful stuff that’s happening in the rest of the forum.
You can script, so go to scripting and help some noob find a semi colon. Jump into getting started, or game design or editor support, or any of the dozen other forums we have. Respond to other people, and help them out.
Otherwise you’ll find the bubble you are in will get continue to get smaller and more toxic.
The forums are great here. Even for beginner like me who ask stupid questions everyone is very friendly and helpful, especially after learning how to use code tags…
Where’d this come from? I see potential correlation, but no little or no causation between some of the things in that description (eg: software patches and formation of cliques/factions). It also seems exceptionally subjective. How can something be considered a “decline” if it could be a period of “overwhelming growth”?
It sounds to me far more like someone describing a thing they don’t like than it does any kind of formal analysis of a stage within a system. “I don’t like it when this stuff starts happening, so I’m going to shove 'em all in a group and name it and act like they’re related”.
