Does anyone else think that the quality of these forums has dropped considerably since when they wer

I'm curious if anyone else thinks that, as I sure do.

eric_schmidt wrote:

If you can't handle the heat of a mature forum, try a different forum.  Don't try to change this forum to match your standards.

I wouldn't call this a mature forum.

I think that other than the FreeTextBox, its alot better - pretty quick, except for the post page to load.

It has to wait for all the graphics to load before the textbox gets focus!

I could do without all the flamewars and political posts.

Beer28 wrote:

Ideally, to make these forums pristine, there would have to be constant moderation, and any post that deviates from Microsoft, and or .NET technologies would have to be swiftly deleted.

So much irony. Not sure I can cope ...

Cairo wrote:

I could do without all the flamewars and political posts.

So could I.

I've heard that somehow Bumbershoot startled trolls everywhere into action this weekend. Just a rumor... I'm going to go check on this fella to see if he's feeling uppity.

Channel9 would be much better if we got rid of the political threads, attached a shock collar to Beer28, and let niners vote on how often and how hard to administer "correction" :O until he starts making useful contributions rather than behaving like a one man Slashdot.

really?  he must have behaved differently before I got on the boards, think its been 2 months now

I think the quality can be raised with more puzzles.

Tonatiúh, people need incentives to do things. Many people here have no incentive to improve their posts; hence why it probably won't happen without some sort of rules (e.g. no politics).

Cairo wrote:

I could do without all the flamewars and political posts.

Exactly what I was referring to.

Shining Arcanine wrote:

Tonatiúh, people need incentives to do things. Many people here have no incentive to improve their posts; hence why it probably won't happen without some sort of rules (e.g. no politics). [...]

Excuse me Arcanine, May I understand that a rule is a kind of incentive? Never I have heard rules undesrtood that way.

I said they have no incentive. A rule won't change that. However it will change the ratio of high quality stuff to low quality stuff and that is progress as far as these forums are concerned.

Tonatiúh wrote:

Shining Arcanine wrote: Tonatiúh, people need incentives to do things. Many people here have no incentive to improve their posts; hence why it probably won't happen without some sort of rules (e.g. no politics). [...]

Excuse me Arcanine, May I understand that a rule is a kind of incentive? Never I have heard rules undesrtood that way.

A rule is an incentive only if there is some sort of punishment or reprimand if you break it.

There's some incentive. If you start your post responses like Orbit with "STFU" all the time, you'll get booted. Sounds like incentive to me

It'd be nice if we could see more software discussed here. I get a bit bored by the constant bickering. But, I'm even more bored by the idea that I'd need to play forum mommy. I ain't your mommy. Anarchy is OK. But the blogs are proving to be a better place to discuss ideas than forums. Which is OK with me too.

Translation: are you adding to the solution or the problem?

scobleizer wrote:

But the blogs are proving to be a better place to discuss ideas than forums.

Yes, and a dictatorship is a better place to discuss politics. A blog isn't a place to "discuss" anything, it is a place to be told something.

Further more a blogger can delete any commends they don't like the sounds of or can disable comments if they don't want to hear anyone else's opinions.

On a real forum (read: Not C9) every poster is equal, including the person who started the thread.

scobleizer wrote:

But the blogs are proving to be a better place to discuss ideas than forums. Which is OK with me too.

A lot of us don't have blogs (myself included, and we have our reasons for not jumping on the bandwagon)

scobleizer wrote:

Translation: are you adding to the solution or the problem?

Do you still beat your wife?