Eldar Online. I dislike it and there's a plethora of excellent reasons why. Some are just a matter of personal taste, like how I find a lot of the topics to be rather repetitive (i.e. "What's the best craftworld?", "What's the best aspect?", "What's the best Phoenix Lord?", etc). I don't hold that against anyone, however; I've been known to ask a lot of stupid questions in my life, so I can't exactly point a finger at someone else.Another reason is that I find it sometimes smacks of the condescending argumentative nature which defines Dakkadakka; it's not unusual to have one person telling another that their idea, their painting, their army list or whatever is "useless", "pointless" or some other perjorative adjective. I find that unneccesary. Dakka is much worse, but EO still has that problem (I'm a lot more frustrated when it's the admins who are doing it, as they should know better). I very sincerely believe that if admins aren't cultivating an atmosphere of encouragement and mutual support, then their forum is going to have nothing to offer either novice or experienced players; it'll just be a matter of sumo wrestling between over-inflated egos.
The main reason that I dislike EO, however, is that the admins are positively thread-lock-happy. If there's one thing that turns me off, it's admins who lock threads down for the flimsiest of reasons. Locking a thread is your last option for getting a completely out-of-control discussion in hand; first you guide, warn, encourage... whatever it takes to get the discussion going in a good direction. I'm also a believer that unless a discussion is a) encouraging illegal activity or b) somehow interfering with other peoples' ability to enjoy the forums, that an admin should stay out of it (as the head admin of a large online forum, I have given this much thought). I go to EO, pull up a random part of the forums, and see something like the pic to the right (go ahead and click it). I just shake my head in disappointment; for a nation that has an irrational obsession with free speech, people sure like locking the clamps on other peoples' desire to talk.
I'm going to talk to one of the admins about it, because I do think EO is a really great resource in a lot of ways. I am not interested in going onto EO and posting publicly about my thoughts, as that's just trying to stir up trouble. I'll just make my points here on my little blog that no-one reads.
Anyhow. Back to Deep Space for me.
2 comments:
Yeah, they are a little nutso there about that.
Lomendil, thanks for the measured and even reply. I read and re-read it with attention. You, Ramses and Dark Flame have all taken time out to respond, and I appreciate it.
If you visit this thread, you'll find my responses to Dark Flame. Note that I found his posting on Deep Space (rather than here) weird and unneccesary, and I found his comments much less thoughtful than yours. Please take no offense from what's written on Deep Space, as none is intended. I felt like Dark flame had one kind of agenda, and you have a different one, and so my responses are different as well.
For what it's worth, it was probably careless of me to post something so critical and curt about EO (or 40kO), and I apologize if your hard work to make it into a good site was disrespected by it. I really do. It was a rant and, while rants have a place in the world, it's not helpful to discuss problems without offering viable solutions. Bad on my part. Nonetheless, I believe my points stand and I haven't yet read anything which makes me think that I'm missing any important points (yeah, of course sometimes threads have to be locked. I'm not arguing that). That being said, I'm not at all closed to listening and promise to carefully consider everything that's said to me in this thread so long as it's courteous in the way that you have been.
If, however, I get any comments which suggest I couldn't possibly understand the heavy burden of being an admin at 40kO and that I "just don't get it", I'll be a lot less open to that. :)
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