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No Holds Barred

Are you interested in a "No holds barred" forum?

  • yes

    Votes: 36 50.7%
  • no

    Votes: 35 49.3%

  • Total voters
    71

Ron Bron

Former President
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Stratics used to have a forum with relaxed moderation standards and it was fairly popular. I would like to know if there is interest in seeing a forum like this again. It would be hidden accept to those who elect to participate, and would be unmoderated. Unmoderated does not mean free for all; the forum would still be bound by the website Terms of Service, which would prevent use of the forum for commercial pursuits (e.g., RMT), illegal activity (e.g., unauthorized software distribution) , and other activity that would bring legal liability to the site (e.g., threats or racism). Essentially, the forum would serve as a location to express strong opinions, controversy, flaming, trolling, venting, etc. Again, the forum would be hidden from public view, but anyone with a registered account could elect to participate. Please provide your feedback.
 
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kelmo

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Lemme think about it.
 

kelmo

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Ya have to rename it.
 

kelmo

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OK. I am intersted. The last one got a little weird at the end. First time I have seen a forum "deleted".
 

Nexus

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OK. I am interested. The last one got a little weird at the end. First time I have seen a forum "deleted".
Yea it did, but the way it disappeared wasn't exactly the best either.
 

FrejaSP

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It's not really that hard to "express strong opinions, controversy, flaming, trolling, venting" on the forum we already have, as long you do it in a respectful way and stop while the going is good or someone ask you stop so I won't need it.
People just need to learn to behave nice :p
 

Nexus

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It's not really that hard to "express strong opinions, controversy, flaming, trolling, venting" on the forum we already have, as long you do it in a respectful way and stop while the going is good or someone ask you stop so I won't need it.
People just need to learn to behave nice :p
I can agree to that, and it's why we've been discussing it as an "Opt In" type of thing and not a public forum. This way those who do find it difficult or honestly enjoy aggressive bantering can have a place to do so, without subjecting the rest of the forums to it. Basically with the way we've discussed it internally, if you don't "Opt In" you won't even see the forum at all.
 

TheScoundrelRico

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Seeing that most of the people who actually made the forum popular got banned by the last owners, I'm not sure it will gain the traction it had. That being said (as one of the frequent posters of that forum) I'd say give it a go...la
 

cazador

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Kelmo was always very lenient with my vacations but yea I don't see why not? Maybe a pvp and a general. And just make it known showing hacks or how to do them is a no-no. No selling items in those forums like game times gold blah blah..the trade forums are good as is. But a single place for trash talking wouldn't be such a bad idea..enter at your own risk Grown-Children at play! Would sum it up nice


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

hen

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It was the second busiest forum on the site, so I can understand the desire to bring it back. I just don't know where the posters are going to come from, almost all of the old ones have moved on.
 

TheScoundrelRico

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It was the second busiest forum on the site, so I can understand the desire to bring it back. I just don't know where the posters are going to come from, almost all of the old ones have moved on.
Many are on Facebook (Trin, Mags, Frappy, etc...) Others are still gaming, I saw Budner a few weeks ago on one of the new UO game forums...la
 

kelmo

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We will get new ones... same as the old ones.
 

kelmo

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Every no vote is a tear I collect.
 

kelmo

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We all pretty much have done this before. It always gets weird. Do ya really want to do this again?

I lost 10K snarkey clever (in my own mind) post counts when NHB was deleted.
 

Flutter

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Not with your current staff, no. (sorry kelmo luvyameenit)
 

Merlin

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This is something I'd like to see a test run for. It has potential for both good and bad, would be interested to see how the overall community responds in actual application here.

EDIT: Upon thinking of this a bit more, I've changed my vote. See additional post below.
 
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CrazyJoe

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As someone who was very much involved with NHB years ago, there's a few reasons for it.

Community love hugs and feelgood answer : HELL NO LET IT DIE

Business wise, pay the bills, bring in traffic : ITS A NO BRAINER, DO IT.

Nobody HAS to go into that forum. However people that want to smack talk, crack wise about your mama, discredit your abilities in PVP, many forums simply don't allow it and there's no place for it. Make that place, corral it off, keep it separated, and reap the benefits of impressions, ads, etc.

I could say more, but this took forever to type because I'm at work and now I gotta do more work.
 

TheScoundrelRico

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Jesus! I didn't realize the former staff were just whiners. That forum definitely had it's place and shutting it down was stupid...la
 

Merlin

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After thinking about this a bit more, I vote a loud and clear no. Even though I'm someone who would benefit from a no holds barred forum with my sometimes salty style of response, I think it would cause more grief than its worth and it would be something the moderators would have to back track on eventually.

In another thread, I proposed the idea of a forum that surrounded around PVP and Fel. One where Fel-haters wouldn't be permitted to run-over any discussion just because they don't like PVP. However, even there, I wouldn't want major amounts of swearing and smack talking. Nothing wrong with a friendly challenge and what not, but there would have to be some clearly set guidelines and parameters.
 
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Spock's Beard

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I voted yes, because honestly what's the downside? You throw up a forum, a mod occasionally spends thirty seconds glancing over it for spam, and anyone who's butthurt about it doesn't have to go there.

But honestly, I don't know who would even post in it. Most of the good posters were chased away years ago because Petra and friends thought if they could just make the forum "civil" enough then they would magically get traffic. Yeah how'd that work out?
 

Taylor

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Tags. Without a custom add-on, the tag "@Username" would send the user a notification, even if they weren't participating. Not insurmountable, but not free.

Ads. Ad networks have become increasingly sensitive to objectionable content, because their clients don't want their brands displayed adjacent. Until Stratics is doing 300k uniques/day, it'll mostly keep using ad networks vice direct buys. Why jeopardize revenue?

SEO. Inexplicably, Google seems to have starting dinging sites for objectionable content.

OTNHB folks have a new, more appropriate home. I think all the regulars there would probably agree.
 

Elenni

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Ads. Ad networks have become increasingly sensitive to objectionable content, because their clients don't want their brands displayed adjacent. Until Stratics is doing 300k uniques/day, it'll mostly keep using ad networks vice direct buys. Why jeopardize revenue?

SEO. Inexplicably, Google seems to have starting dinging sites for objectionable content.
These being the primary issue that would need to be resolved, before any real discussion on adding this could commence. I've asked if a forum node can be "hidden/no-crawl," but been told that feature doesn't exist. Taylor, maybe you know of a solution...?

Then, of course, we'd have to address age-verification and policing access by minors. :-(
 

Taylor

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These being the primary issue that would need to be resolved, before any real discussion on adding this could commence. I've asked if a forum node can be "hidden/no-crawl," but been told that feature doesn't exist. Taylor, maybe you know of a solution...?

Then, of course, we'd have to address age-verification and policing access by minors. :-(
You can disallow crawlers to certain forums by updating this: http://stratics.com/robots.txt. I know this would prevent those forums from showing up in search results. Does that for certain prevent Google or advertisers from finding out? I'm not confident enough in SEO-fu to know for sure.
 

Elenni

Stratics Sr. Leadership team member
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You can disallow crawlers to certain forums by updating this: http://stratics.com/robots.txt. I know this would prevent those forums from showing up in search results. Does that for certain prevent Google or advertisers from finding out? I'm not confident enough in SEO-fu to know for sure.
Correct -- and that's something we'd want to know for sure. But then we'd still have to deal with the other issues as well.

Don't get me wrong; it is on the "list" of possible projects to look in to...but that is also a long list. We'll be looking at putting together our strategic planning session for prioritizing projects for the first 12 months now that we're getting close to completing the tasks that were related to the site transfer. This is one possibility that's been suggested so I'm sure it will be discussed.
 

Taylor

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Correct -- and that's something we'd want to know for sure. But then we'd still have to deal with the other issues as well.
Definitely. In a risk vs. reward equation, seems there are a lot of risks to address before the scales balance.
 

Spartan

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OK. I am intersted. The last one got a little weird at the end. First time I have seen a forum "deleted".
Izzat what happened to NHB? That certainly was a crazy-farm. But it could be fun. I abstain from voting .. I would get into so much trouble it would hurt.
 

Xarrot

Visitor
Stratics used to have a forum with relaxed moderation standards and it was fairly popular. I would like to know if there is interest in seeing a forum like this again. It would be hidden accept to those who elect to participate, and would be unmoderated. Unmoderated does not mean free for all; the forum would still be bound by the website Terms of Service, which would prevent use of the forum for commercial pursuits (e.g., RMT), illegal activity (e.g., unauthorized software distribution) , and other activity that would bring legal liability to the site (e.g., threats or racism). Essentially, the forum would serve as a location to express strong opinions, controversy, flaming, trolling, venting, etc. Again, the forum would be hidden from public view, but anyone with a registered account could elect to participate. Please provide your feedback.
I would like this!
 
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