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I am in favor of re-integration. As I posted in the Diplomats Empire thread over in the Empire forum:
"...I think that this exile is a form of slow death for empires. I myself might not have joined any empire had I not seen MW's post in the GF. Many players are missing out on the empire experience from not reading about it in the GF. I believe that new players now view the empire forum as something out of the mainstream, isolated away from Galciv itself."
I think that DW's idea of starting new shorter threads and perhaps setting a limit on thread length after which a new thread is started (to avoid threadzillas) could be a nice compromise so as to not intimidate newbies.
         
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My concern would be the recruitment wars that would quickly follow as new members posted messages.
Look at the reaction to people posting in the strategy section.
It would be nice to be able to help the newbies and show that there actually is and active Galactic Civilizations community.
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| setting a limit on thread length after which a new thread is started (to avoid threadzillas) |
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Absolutely! One of the things that scared me about joining the Fellowship way back when was trying to catch up to their 1300+ thread. Thankfully, Ray said not to worry about it and set my mind at ease.
I don't know what the Guardians would do. Start a new thread every week?  
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| My concern would be the recruitment wars that would quickly follow as new members posted messages. |
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Recruitment wars are not the problem in and of themselves. It's the tone of the war that makes a difference. I think competition is healthy and some good natured competition for a newbie actually would be good for the Metaverse as a whole!
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Oof... I just responded to this over on the main forum  Link
Maybe that is one reason that the forums should be reintegrated. As for recruiting, I'm not sure that recruiting is being hurt by having the forums split - see my post at the above link as to why. Maybe the main forum is hurting by not having us there...
Is there a way to link to a specific post instead of the entire thread? My post is #8.
[Message Edited]
     
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#6
by Citizen Kazzryl - 4/6/2004 9:19:06 PM
As a relatively new member, I have to agree with Dream. I had bought the game last summer, played it a bit, but I didn't get involved, and had no idea what empires were about. I thought they were some how multiplaying the game, which I don't like. I pulled out the game again in December. I had few questions, so I posted on the forum. Several players answered my questions and suggested joining an empire, so I investigated further. Boy, I was glad I did that. There was whole community I didn't know about. And I'm sure there are other players who don't realize the community that is here. It is shame that a few have spoiled that for the rest. I imagine, part of the fun was trying to recruit new members...now that is gone.
Now that some time has passed, perhaps together we can come up with a simple solution. I don't see why one thread per empire is too much. We have to have some self control, and be polite to all new players. With AP coming out soon, I imagine there will be a new influx of players, and I would like this solved before then. My 2bc's.
 
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Why ignore the results of the poll ?
   
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#9
by Veteran Gerakken - 4/6/2004 10:53:07 PM
Well, as one who helped bring this up again in the GF when I was expressing my feelings of disconnection and wanting reconnection but with moderation, I do not like how the experiment has turned out over the last three months.
First, my statements from the Diplomat's thread:
"I know everybody thought they could just bury the issue after a hasty compromise and a gentleman's agreement a few weeks ago, but it was a temporary fix that may not last. Is this sort of exile really the answer? I am not saying anything crazy like re-integrate the forums or allow total unrestricted recruiting over in the other forum, but I do feel like the empiring community has a valid voice over there on issues just as much as anyone who can post about hating the game or has a Meta problem or bug issues or even wants to talk about the weather. The current fix feels restrictive, like the Secret Police are watching and will pounce on anybody that dares mention the word empire over there. And then we get the few totally anti-empire people. Why do their opinions count for more? I apologize if I help stir up a mess again, but I feel like a cover-up happened a few months ago."
The way I see this is that people in empires are a major part of the Galciv community. Our voice cannot be silenced just because the easy solution is to banish the word "empire" and all of its associations from the GF.
Before anyone gets the idea that I am preaching "power to the people; we own the place", a disclaimer first: Do we dwell in a police state of a forum? Yes, we do to an extent because all boards are private and are inherently owner controlled, but the cops (Stardock) have so far let us handle this affair our way. They can step in at any time and impose and enforce solid rules.
With that being said, though, if we are going to police ourselves, is our way going to like that of the Taliban where anyone who deviates an inch from a very tight set of social mores gets punished? Cover the women up, because men are tempted; don't play non-religious music, because music should only extol the virtues of the faith; so forth. Well, empiring is kind of getting the same treatment under the current experiment. Cover the empiring types up. They are shameful and indecent and lack self-control. I agree we cannot let empiring get out of hand, but a better solution is to punish the individual transgressors that step too far out of line, but not to punish the entire group. Right now the entire group takes the fall.
Oops, looks like Gerakken's old fire came back out. Apologies to any who may be upset with the Taliban references, but I don't want to be walking down the street in the GF one day mentioning something about empires and have one of those anti-empiring types clubbing me to death because somehow their opinion is worth more. I am not going to fight with a hand tied behind my back because of that. Unless, of course, the board owners take a more direct hand in our affairs. But until then, we are on our own and how we handle this issue reflects who we are as a community.
    
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Gerakken,
That was an inspirational speech. I think you should take that to the GF also.
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I would have never looked at the Empires forum had I not joined the forums just before it was instituted. I learned about the empries on the GF. I too think we should start some new threads there. I also agree with post length cut-offs - ours is nearly 7k long now. (Props to Major Dallas for reading the enitre thinf when he joined us a week or so ago.)
 
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I will add my 2 euro cents:
Being online at a different time that the USA and not checking all threads in the various Galciv forum the saturdays and the sundays means that I am very happy to be able to see all non-empire threads first when I connect to the GalCiv site.
And some empire threads are very painful to follow
I don't think that recruitement threads are needed: they could easily degenerate. More, we should respect the result of the poll about the splitting.
I will add that the better way for people to understand empire is to give them a good perception of the various empires. And you can't have it if they feel attacked by recruitement posts: you want that they came to you, not that they turn back.
And don't forget that not everybody want to be in an empire or submit games to the metaverse.
We must have something that keep them interested, an incentive to join an empire. And spam clearly don't qualify for this.
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I have to agree with Peace Phoenix here. If the empire threads were returned to the main forum, with their current level of activity, a non-empire post would disappear off the bottom of the screen in a very short time.
This could well have the effect of putting new players off the game and the community altogether when they feel that no-one cares about their questions, and only cares about the empires. Not true, we know, but the perception will be there that the only important thing in the forums are the empires.
Also, none of the pro-return voices here have answered the question: "Why ignore the results of the poll?"
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| Also, none of the pro-return voices here have answered the question: "Why ignore the results of the poll?" |
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Agreed the poll says people are happy the way things are now.
So the question is why can not the minority live with the results of the poll ?
| And some empire threads are very painful to follow |
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I checked some empire threads agreed again.
I also agree a new user posts a question and in a few hours the question is on page 2 or 3 and total over looked because it is not a the front page.
The Empire Forum is Required for 3 reasons.
1) New Users Questions need a easy working way to post and get questions answered without getting buried by all the Empire Threads.
2) Why expect new users are interested in Empire threads. Which often are painfull to browse and contain no real game play information.
3) WHY IGNORE THE RESULTS OF THE POLL !!
The users that voted said leave it alone.
[Message Edited]
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| WHY IGNORE THE RESULTS OF THE POLL !! |
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Because exile was voluntary in the first place, and the poll therefore can only be said to be advisory.
Say that you decided to leave Canada. Say that some newspaper decided to conduct a poll about whether you should come back to Canada. The results were "no". Do you come back or no? If you were the one that chose to leave, then would you use the results of the poll as that you were barred from returning to Canada, Tech?
We are not barred from returning to the GF. So I for one would like to see some discussion about whether or not we should return. Obviously, the ultimate decision will be on the one's returning. Unless that is overruled by the forum OWNER, which has not chosen to assert their will in this matter, yet.
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| Say that some newspaper decided to conduct a poll about whether you should come back to Canada. The results were "no". Do you come back or no? |
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Different situation Slothrop. In this case, the people voting in the poll are the ones directly affected by the decision.
As it stands, there are 247 votes, and it looks like around 75% (185?) have voted against a return to the main forum. The vast majority of those will probably be active empire members. By all means discuss it, but the final decision has to be the majority one, and unless you have some other way of proving that the majority decision is different to the poll, then that is the only indicator we have.
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| By all means discuss it, but the final decision has to be the majority one |
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Not true.
What is true: The final decision must be permitted by the forum owners.
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| the number of active empire threads combined with the stickies pushed almost all non-empire threads off of page 1 in the GF. This made the Goddess' job more difficult. |
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Please don't forget that the Goddess specifically said that the Empire forum was intended only as on opportunity and not as a requirement. Neither Stardock nor the Goddess ever took action to exile us to the Empire forum. We did that to ourselves.
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Thinking on this... could it be that this whole problem is just down to the fact that this forum is of a different style to those we are used to.
Take the Senate Halls for example, if that style were used for the GalCiv forum you would have your main index page which would have 4 entries: Galactic Forum, Strategy Forun, Mods Forum & Empire Forum. Is that not the way that most forums are organised with main subject headers presented on the front page, and indivdual topics and threads within those.
Could it just be, that because the default forum link from the galciv.com homepage just takes you to the Galactic Forum, and you have to find and click on the seperate Empire button from the nav bar, that this is the cause of all the problems.
Are we really arguing over (sorry, discussing) something as simple as a matter of presentation and style of forum?
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