CREATION'S PROFILE

It's going beyond the original issue because so many people feel the need to decide whats worthy of discussion. It's not ok for someone to decide what a worthy blog is, though. That's just downright fascism.

There's a hint of irony, or is it hypocrisy, that you defend the right to play mafia and use the forums however you want, then turn around and dismiss my right to discuss something however I want.

Help! Police! My right to discuss something is being violated!

The real joke is the attitude towards discussing something in a reasonable manner.

I'd talk about something else but it seems to be the main focus of all the nay-sayers.

You can have a different opinion without attacking me. I did not attack you. Why you gotta be so mean? I thought we were sort of chums, Dude. Did you have a bad day, too? I get it, you feel I'm spewing nonsense about something that you don't care about. Go ahead and click the back button, or X if you opened a new tab, and continue doing what you do. How is me talking about this affecting your usual activity in any way?.

That’s kind of true though. For some reason it’s something I’ve only really seen at rmn.

People are generally super, super, SUPER defensive about any kind of feedback related to rmn. If you start a discussion about something you dislike/ care about/ would like to improve, you instantly get those dudes parachuted out of nowhere with their:

“Shut up! This doesn’t matter to me and thus, it shouldn’t matter to you.” or the rmn classic: "I don't agree with you therefore this discussion is stupid"
I always the make the point of taking things a step further when I get those kinds of replies, if only to make the point that this is the feedback section and I’ll discuss whatever I feel like discussion around here.

If it doesn’t matter to you: stay off the topic or otherwise support your position with some reasonable arguments in a polite fashion. The whole point of giving feedback is to improve rmn. It doesn’t necessarily mean improve it to the detriment of some members by following one solution but rather discussing a variety of solutions and trying to find which one is the most viable which is why posts like: “Stop this heated discussion! I don’t care about this so everyone should therefore shut up” are not only completely useless but also lead to more confrontation and unnecessary hostilities.

People have a right to discuss what is important to them. It doesn’t mean they break down in a fury at their place smashing furniture. It just means they find some things a little annoying/irritating and would like to discuss it.

I personally find the Mafia thing is excessive and floods the whole place but not enough to create a topic about it. This being said, I respect Link’s right to do so even if I don’t think it’s that much of a big deal myself.

Haha quality control for the front page. Deciding if something is good or bad is subjective to each person. Asking the staff to weed out the "bad" to make way for the "good" is an awful idea. What gives them the right to make such a decision?

I disagree. Link _2112 gave a good example about this:

Imagine if a newspaper ran stories like "City Hall decides on the green drapes in the lobby". You wouldn't see that on the front page. That's a "shitty" story. I don't think it's wrong to show off the best looking information. Or at least push the nonsense aside.

Good and bad is not only subjective to each person although it’s relative to a general point of comparison. There’s such a thing as mediocrity although there will be a range of opinions as to what it constitutes.

Generally speaking, this screen:


Will be considered more beautiful than this one:

What gives them the right to make such a decision?

What prevents them to? They already select the game of the month and accept/reject game reviews. Following the logic you’ve mentioned, there’s shouldn’t be a game of the month and all reviews should be accepted no matter how bad they are since there’s no standards and everything is just a big mess of subjectivity.

This is why I disagree with you.

I also wanted to respond to:

-Blogs that are utterly worthless (one or two sentences with no useful or discernible content) will generally be deleted. Double posting blogs is similarly prohibited.

-Some leniency will be given to obviously new users who clearly don't know the rules yet.

-Repeat offenders will be contacted privately by a staff member.

-If you see a blog of questionable quality, please contact kentona or Deckiller privately with your concerns so that they can take care of it, rather than confronting a user yourself. No backseat modding.

-Please remember that kentona and Deckiller are the final arbiters of what is acceptable material and what is not.

Perfect, although I’ll miss backseat moderating.

Users can only post "Creation approved" blogs?

That’s a pretty good idea. I’d say I have a pretty good judgment.

Just so you know, I'm recommending that we move the Blog posts that show up on the front page to a less prominent spot so they aren't as highlighted as they currently are. This should help actual content additions like Media and Reviews get more views - you know, the things that (should) garner attention (and MS)?

This is such a good idea! I approve wholeheartedly.

it's hard to picture many developers voluntarily clicking a "No Buzz" flag

Why so? If you’re aware that a specific conversation would probably only interest a handful of people who will reply back and forth msn style, it seems to me like a very good option to have on hand. I could certainly use a break from the custom content buzzathon.

One more thing:

Still, I'm fairly convinced I'm not the problem here, and I think I can illustrate this somehow. Not too long ago I approached somebody with advice for his drawings. This person had made two drawings, one a little better than the other. I complimented the better one and pointed at flaws of the worse one; You know, with the best of intentions to help someone develop his style. Well, soon after my critique, people flocked to discourage the author from taking it into account... What do I get from this? That people is unable to discern quality, or that they are just to happy conforming to pleasantries and silly jokes. Anything beyond that is frowned upon.

It's the same with blogs, or reviews, or anything else. People would rather forget that things can be improved than having the subject being brought up in the first place. "Is easier to ignore blogs", they say. But my whole premise is based in the idea that blogs are a fundamental part of game development too. People constantly ask for feedback in them, and hence they should not go unnoticed. But for people to pay attention to blogs, I believe these need a minimum grade of quality that invites for that feedback...

I think the thing is that some people just don’t really care about anything improving. They’re happy with things staying stagnant because changing something might involve making it worse. From the time I’ve been around here, there’s always a strong reaction to any change, no matter how significantly small. People were raving about the “Ignore” function, foreseeing doom and the end of RMN. Obviously things didn’t turn out to be that way and this new function is just a nice addition.

The same goes for drawings or screenshots. Some people show their stuff exclusively to be told they’re good and are super hostile to any sort of criticism because, let’s face it, they just want to be praised.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to create a new section in the Game Development where people who want criticism and who are willing to make changes to improve their works could post? That would weed out everyone who just want a pat on the back? I’d personally like to give honest feedback but I’m worried someone won’t be able to handle it and delete their game.

It's an equity thing, really. Games get bumped to the main page via "latest blogs", and it's unfortunate to see people with in-depth blog postings get bumped off by one-liners (or multiple short blogs from the same project in one afternoon).

I don't understand why some people would be against that but it doesn't really matter.

Double-posting blogs will result in the deletion of the second blog, regardless of the quality of the content.

*Falls off stool at McDonald*. To think that’s exactly what I said when we had this huge debate about blogs all that time ago. This, good sir, deserves you a good old fashioned: “I told you so!” (just teasing you).

This rule should have been implemented a long time ago.

Yes.

Whenever I have time, I'll be patrolling recent blogs and warning/deleting any that do not meet this criterion. However, as the OP said, we'll need your help identifying any others. We may also do something to encourage high quality and detailed blog posts in the future.

Again, yes, this is definitely the right thing to do.

You can always put your shitty blog on some other site, or use the comments section of your game page instead (which is basically just a blog with a simpler interface, anyway)

Or even better, have the option not to display a blog on the front page. That way, everyone is happy. People who want to machine gun their blogs can do so without spamming the front page and people who take the time to write informative blogs will get the time they deserve on the front page.

Um, I have a question. Sometimes, if I work on graphics (like character portraits, sprite overhauls, not stuff like recolors or screenshots) I'll post a bunch of them to my blog without saying much else (the images are pretty self-explanatory.) Would that be okay now?

Why not post them as screenshots then or better yet, wait until you have more stuff and write an in depth blog? There’s no rush to blog about things, quality of quantity.

I never post blogs, unless it's REALLY important or I have something just exceptionally badass to promote.

And I couldn’t agree more with you my good sir. Again, quality over quantity. Less blogs of good quality.

I'm a pretty lenient guy.

I couldn’t agree more.

I think this is stupid

What's stupid about it?