Forum Games

[Shannon Apple]

I often wondered how other forums fair with this? As I have mentioned before, Sakuga City's predecessor was a really big forum with 120k membership. On that site, we actually had to nuke the fun and games (F&G) section and for a few of reasons. Specifically:

(a) The threads in there moved really fast, possibly 100s of posts a day and mods couldn't keep up. As a result, cybering between 15 and 16 year old boys and a 40 year old woman went unnoticed for a time before it was reported to us. Eww! There were a few other incidents too. Definitely not ideal and we definitely care about our members so this was a big NOPE! This one is not going to happen on every type of forum I know, only sites that attract a large number of children. SC is an older crowd nowadays though, so it's unlikely to happen there.

(b) The second reason was that there were people signing up specifically to spam in the F&G section and had no interest whatsoever in the subject of the forum. Making it the most active forum on the site and actually pulling activity away from the sections that matter. (Posts there did not count toward postcount btw). That included above 40 year old woman who called herself a cat name. (how fitting. *puke)

(c) Thirdly, the spam and shitposting spread to all the other sections of the site. Just because people were allowed to chat and shitpost in F&G didn't mean we were going to tolerate the same shitposting in say the anime, manga, games or even the general forums.

The solution was to nuke it from orbit and replace it with a chatbox on the forum index that we could monitor more closely. We have outright refused to add an F&G section to Sakuga City for above reasons, and mainly because we think it will lower post quality on the rest of the site. Donators (founders) and contributors actually have access to a private forum that they can spam in if they want, but they don't bother using it. Maybe they've outgrown it XD.

Just wondering if the shitposting and shennanigans happen for other forums that have F&G sections and if so, how you guys handle it.

 

[Bluezone777]

I guess being on a large board and with how easy it is to post in a forum game thread made such threads move so quickly that it likely became next to impossible to moderate them anymore which encourage people to do things that they would never do anywhere else on the board because it is not as easy to post in discussion threads hence why they would go slower then a forum game thread. I can't say I ever had anything remotely like the issues you faced but I probably would have done away with the section too if I had that sort of thing going on a regular basis.

 

[Shannon Apple]

That lady? It wasn't on a regular basis. I will say though that there were a couple of other creepy people who all ended up banned. one guy even tried to e-molest me. Hahah! You just don't want that kind of thing happening, not even once when there are vunerable kids. Kids watch cartoons, so creeps go to sites that have kids. That was the issue there.

These days I'm actually more concerned about the spamming, since I pretty much have eyes in the back of my head now and can smell creeps a mile off. XD

 

[Svoboda]

Have you played League of Legends ?It is my favorite game.

Seriously dude?

I hope you're not from Postloop because you're not even trying.

 

[Svoboda]

Back to the original topic, this is exactly why I did away with forum games on my largest forums. We had them when we were extremely young -- like the first year but then I just got rid of the subforum, merged the old topics into our main OT forum and they eventually just died off.

Probably also depends on the niche and demographics of your board.

 

[Shannon Apple]

I reported the above guy because I think it's a human-activated bot. The first few posts were made by a person, and since then it's been making posts that are vaguely related to the topic, sometimes hilariously so.

@Svoboda: was shitposting on the rest of the site a huge issue, or did most people just gravitate into the forum games section?

 

[Svoboda]

I reported the above guy because I think it's a human-activated bot. The first few posts were made by a person, and since then it's been making posts that are vaguely related to the topic, sometimes hilariously so.

@Svoboda: was shitposting on the rest of the site a huge issue, or did most people just gravitate into the forum games section?

Wasn't a huge issue but you definitely saw those that gravitated towards OT stuff start to infiltrate the other forums and try to be the 'class clown' so to speak. Ultimately the biggest offenders took off for Facebook, too.

 

[Shannon Apple]

I reported the above guy because I think it's a human-activated bot. The first few posts were made by a person, and since then it's been making posts that are vaguely related to the topic, sometimes hilariously so.

@Svoboda: was shitposting on the rest of the site a huge issue, or did most people just gravitate into the forum games section?

Wasn't a huge issue but you definitely saw those that gravitated towards OT stuff start to infiltrate the other forums and try to be the 'class clown' so to speak. Ultimately the biggest offenders took off for Facebook, too.

Yeah, that sounds kinda familiar, except the going to FB bit. ^^

 

[Lord Saru]

I usually donot permit the forum games board because of one simple reason and I had found that its correct in so many cases - having a spam board reduces the focused on-topic posts so much (and thats a huge price to pay) and it brings down the quality of posts in other areas too.

 

[Jason76]

Trivia games are fun, but sometimes people abandon the game. In that case, you have to give the person the point and post the next question yourself (assuming you're the game starter).

 

[Page]

adding it makes more allot of fun, But I tend to see it not active.

 

[Jason76]

adding it makes more allot of fun, But I tend to see it not active.

Maybe a drawing for a cash or forum currency prize would gain more interest.

 

[Page]

Maybe a drawing for a cash or forum currency prize would gain more interest.

even with FP cash they still won't get active, Unless it's a game giveaway or something that's real money to paypal