Should we ban quit threads

[Kestra]

Do people who quit and then go and post it on the forums realise how much they are degrading the game for everyone else?
Just because its no fun for them anymore or because they have chosen to go and do something else doesn't mean the rest of us should be bugged with it everytime. Most quit threads start with the topic "I'm leaving.." or something simiar so even if you don't read any or all of it, you still know what its about.
There are people who still enjoy the game a lot, there also might be new comers who are considering playing the game but decide agianst it when they see 20 quit threads on the forums and not a lot of anything else, not realising themselves that a few thousand other players are "not leaving".
I think people should do the PA community a favour and stop making it seem so morbid by constantly displaying the fact that they are quitting, its their choice to do so but they should go quietly and just mention it to their friends on the way out the door. Its bad form and it looks bad for the game to have all these threads on the forums, when in actual fact only a small amount of the entire community make up the number of those quitting. It just leaves a general bad feeling seeing them splashed everywhere when there is still so much more around then the few quitters.

[n4m3l355]

Originally Posted by Kestra

There are people who still enjoy the game a lot, there also might be new comers who are considering playing the game but decide agianst it when they see 20 quit threads on the forums and not a lot of anything else, not realising themselves that a few thousand other players are "not leaving".

its the thousens that have quit & are quiting you dont hear about
thats what is fair :P
if they would put in a diagram about how many have left every round its a miracle the game excists
i mean by this that there are for sure people who love the game but its a certain thing that people leave the game and not for no reason. those who post it here (like me) want to let the rest know how much they enjoyed the early rounds, what they think what has gone wrong and to say goodbye to those they havent seen much for a while due political standings.

[Nadar]

Why not make an own forum for quit threads? I'm sry if someone said that b4, but I cba to read all posts
anyways.. ppls should be allowed to tell that they're quitting etc... just my opinion tho

[Leshy]

Out of the current topmost 15 threads on PD, 9 are quit threads and 1 is about them (namely this one).

May I suggest renaming PD to 'General Quit Forum'?

[virogenesis]

quit threads are useful as you can thank your enermies + allies & believe a person who has spent rounds playing has the right to.....
why shouldn't they inform friends that they are leaving like a bc....who has worked....to get a title deserves to have a i miss you lot thread....

[Leshy]

Then post on your alliance forums, go to your enemies and say goodbye. 9 out of 10 people have never been on these forums before, or used to post on other forums. And 99 out of 100 don't actually fk off, but remain around.

Why should we be dealing with goodbye posts from for example AD users? If they want to say goodbye, let them do it on there, where people know them. But no, there it's off-topic and spam and whatnot.

And no one 'deserves' a miss you lot thread. It's just an ego boosting 'look at my ePenis being big because everyone says how great I am' thread. They can't go onto IRC to thank their friends and enemies and say goodbye, but they can go onto IRC to spam every friend and enemy with the URL to this thread. Hypocrits.

Edit: I love being able to give my honest, direct, non-politically correct opinion \o/

[Intrepid00]

FYI, I stoped playing after Round 4 and a bit of Round 5. Tried again at 10 but its lost its simplicity and still no thieves and pirates.

[virogenesis]

[quote=Leshy]
Why should we be dealing with goodbye posts from for example AD users? If they want to say goodbye, let them do it on there, where people know them. But no, there it's off-topic and spam and whatnot.

And no one 'deserves' a miss you lot thread. It's just an ego boosting 'look at my ePenis being big because everyone says how great I am' thread. They can't go onto IRC to thank their friends and enemies and say goodbye, but they can go onto IRC to spam every friend and enemy with the URL to this thread. Hypocrits.

-------------------
1. AD mods used to say its a PD topic & used to close the thread.

2.
a) you can post a long thread where as with irc you can only line by line unless you flood out by pasting tons of.....stuff....

b) if a bc\dc\hc has helped members in their alliance....in a way they have helped pa....to say that someone who spends time & money to help pa.....out is entitled to this.....
ie: WA for paying for ppl who have no way of paying...
& what about the coders.....proganda teams.....
all this help makes pa what it is\was.....

[Leshy]

[quote=virogenesis]

Originally Posted by Leshy

1. AD mods used to say its a PD topic & used to close the thread.

That's because AD is for discussions about alliances. PD is for discussions about planetarion. PD doesn't mean 'Player Discussions'.

a) you can post a long thread where as with irc you can only line by line unless you flood out by pasting tons of.....stuff....

Fine, then write a sodding text file on your ISP webspace and spam the link to there around IRC. But I guess that'd mean losing the ability to have people tell you how great you are, so that's not an option

b) if a bc\dc\hc has helped members in their alliance..

Then let them say goodbye to their alliance. On their alliance forums. On their alliance IRC server.

to say that someone who spends time & money to help pa.....out is entitled to this.....

Every single player has spent time and money on PA, that doesn't mean they're suddenly 'entitled' to anything, especially on this free forum.

all this help makes pa what it is\was.....

Yeah, a game which didn't use to have 50 odd quitting threads on it's forums.

[virogenesis]

sometimes....ppl lose contact.....by having a thread on the forum..this solves the problem of telling......ppl.
What next you gonna make a rule saying a alliance can not make a disbanding notice....lmao its one big joke....yeah this makes your job harder but why stop ppl from leaving a message to pa....

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by virogenesis

sometimes....ppl lose contact.....by having a thread on the forum..this solves the problem of telling......ppl.

Bollocks. Most of the threads get replies because the link gets spammed around on IRC channels. Half the time people posting the goodbye threads have hardly ever posted on the forums before, as have the people replying to them.

What next you gonna make a rule saying a alliance can not make a disbanding notice....

Certainly not on Planetarion Discussions.

People can post whatever the fk they want, as long as they do it in the appropriate forum, and PD isn't one for quit threads. Let them do it in General Discussions instead. But oh wait, there they won't receive the dozens of asskissing replies, but people telling them they don't give a fk about them sodding off.

[Lupin]

yo ban em all!

[Aryn]

if you've lost contact with people then why would you suddenly need to let them know that you've quit?
i mean who knows.. they could have already quit too.

i think that's the point of this thread. WHY do you have to let people you have little or no contact with anymore know that you've quit. anyone that you're sincerely concered with you will have emailed, msn'd, icq'd, phoned, or chatted to on irc either before or after you've posted the thread. i don't really see why you also need a thread. i mean seriously.. does anyone who knew me in r2 who now has little contact with me now actually care if i quit or not? (lo TOA <3)
i think it's a bit doubtful.

this is all i want to know. why?

[wakey]

The aspect that annoys me most about I quit threads is the fact that most of these people dont actually quit. Yes they may have stopped playing the game but they are still hanging around the forums, IRC ect.

Now why on earth does anyone need to say goodbye when in reality they havent gone anywhere. If it was only those who were servering all ties to the game and were really leaving the community who posted these threads it wouldnt be half the problem it is now

[Structural Integrity]

Sod it... 99% of all quit threads are meant to draw attention and the maker wants to hear how awesome he was to others. It's somesort of personal assurance that he (the quitter) didn't really waste a lot of time on PA and that he actually made a difference to a lot of people.

I'd say ban the fkers...
1) they deprave the forums
2) they are useless as there are other methods of notifying people that you're quitting
3) they are bad business for Planetarion as the first place newbies look is the Planetarion Discussion forum
4) it's no more than attention whoring, and if I remember correctly attention whoring is not allowed by the forum rules (not that I care about the rules, but I needed a fourth point)

So, in short these threads are useless to anyone other than the maker himself for he gets to wank off to the thought he really was "da man" here.
Thereby, if you "lost contact" with someone in the first place, the other person prolly doesn't give a shit about you quitting anyway.

[Jackal2112]

Should we also ban annoying MOD's who post lame voting polls?

I vote yes

(anyways no clear majority voted yes or no, so i guess nice try)

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Jackal2112

(anyways no clear majority voted yes or no, so i guess nice try)

Too bad the forums aren't a democracy.

[GReaper]

If quit threads get banned...

...does this thread get banned as well?

Just reorganise them into some subcategory or something, or maybe have one quit thread only.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by GReaper

If quit threads get banned...

...does this thread get banned as well?

People who've played an important role in either Planetarion or on a specific forum can of course get a Quit thread. If any of the AD mods were to quit, they'd have a Quit thread on AD as well, despite Quit threads normally don't belonging there.

[Aryn]

except that i wouldn't post a quit thread on AD cause they really wouldn't care anyway

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Aryn

except that i wouldn't post a quit thread on AD cause they really wouldn't care anyway

Hey! I'd care!

[Razorback]

Originally Posted by Leshy

People who've played an important role in either Planetarion or on a specific forum can of course get a Quit thread. If any of the AD mods were to quit, they'd have a Quit thread on AD as well, despite Quit threads normally don't belonging there.

So by your logic if someone like Sid who created fury and played an important role throughout many rounds and even partly in development quits he wouldnt be allowed to post a quit post but some boardmod of pa team dude who was maybe pa team for a round ?

Disclaimer i use sid just as an example here since i wonder who dares to evaluates "important" role and where the specs for that are. Is someone who runs a 100 player alliance and "works" there 10h aday important or must it be 200 players and 15h ?? Or arent they at all but instead someone who idles in helpchannel and helps ppl for half a year 5h per day?

[General Martok]

Originally Posted by Leshy

People who've played an important role in either Planetarion or on a specific forum can of course get a Quit thread.

Indeed. Why would someone who happens to be a Moderator or PaTeam get to have a quitthread, and noone else? What do you have to do to play an IMPORTANT role in Planetarion? No offence, but i can name mozens of players who meant more for Planetarion that someone like Dragonlord (who?) and you for example. Lets face it, moderating is important, but for example someone leading a major alliance plays or has played a bigger role... So it all depends on perspective.

PS read my new siggy Leshy?

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Razorback

So by your logic if someone like Sid who created fury and played an important role throughout many rounds and even partly in development quits he wouldnt be allowed to post a quit post but some boardmod of pa team dude who was maybe pa team for a round ?

Yup.

No one said life was fair.

And good job on bringing up Sid as an example. The single most known PA player with arguably the biggest impact on the game's history, and he didn't need to create a Quit thread to stroke his own ego. If Sid didn't need a quit thread, why would anyone else?

[Jackal2112]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Too bad the forums aren't a democracy.

Then why hold a vote you you you wanna-be dictator!

Ah well, you are in the PA team, so I guess ignoring 48% of the players is normal.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Jackal2112

Then why hold a vote you you you wanna-be dictator!

It's not my vote.

Ah well, you are in the PA team

No, I'm not.

[Jackal2112]

Originally Posted by Leshy

People who've played an important role in either Planetarion or on a specific forum can of course get a Quit thread. If any of the AD mods were to quit, they'd have a Quit thread on AD as well, despite Quit threads normally don't belonging there.

You seem to be quite clueless.

If there is rules, there is rules. Which obviously aren't here at the moment. Rules usually apply to all posters. Be it they 'are' famous, or be it they 'find themselves' famous, people will always say 'I am important to myself, so I can post a quit thread'. What you are saying is that some people have more right to post a 'quit thread' then others. This is very subjective and discrimination --> it will never work. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking... heh.. pietje can post a thread because I think he is important.. jantje should fk off and isn't allowed to post because meh, the mighty mod, don't think he is very important. wait, let's hold a vote about every player to let the players decide if someone is famous or not.. DUH..

Anyways.. someone delete Leshy's quit thread, he aint important ffs

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Jackal2112

You seem to be quite clueless.

Talking to ourselves again, are we?

In case of forum moderators, having a quit thread would be particularly welcome, as they are the people directly taking care of a particular forum. If someone is appointed to that position, or resigns from that position, you'll want to inform the users about said course of action. Unless you think appointing/firing/changing moderators without notice to the users is a sign of "having a clue". In which case I hope you'll never get into any management/public relations position.

What you are saying is that some people have more right to post a 'quit thread' then others. This is very subjective and discrimination --> it will never work.

If the prime minister quits his job, it's on national TV. If I quit mine, it's not. Blatant example of discrimination!

To sum it all up:

Originally Posted by Jackal2112

You seem to be quite clueless.

[Razorback]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Yup.

No one said life was fair.

Didnt this attitude do us already enough good ? "if you dont like the game dont play it"
It really helps to encourage new players right ? "lets hide ppl are fedup and leave the game, maybe some utter newbies join and keep the game alive so the forum mods still have their justification"

Sad truth is if you ban the quit threads half of your important mods can resign because you dont need 10 mods to moderate an empty board.

And good job on bringing up Sid as an example. The single most known PA player with arguably the biggest impact on the game's history, and he didn't need to create a Quit thread to stroke his own ego. If Sid didn't need a quit thread, why would anyone else?

This might have 2 reasons, a) he didnt give a ratsass what ppl think unlike others like dingo i.e.
b) he didnt quit.

Nevertheless evaluating who did more for pa, some boardmod named "dragonlord" who moderated what forum exactly ? (disclaimer no ill feelings towards dragonlord as a person) or someone like i.e. Teas or Marduk or Dingo, who ran successfull alliances for rounds and rounds in the public limelight seems to get in your hands abit off the reality.
Dragonlord might have done his fair share of work but hardly comparable to their work for the community and for their respective alliances.

So the whole logic (like even lord dain says) to say "youre not important enough to post" seens not well thought through, but pateam wouldnt be pateam otherwise, right ?

[JC]

Originally Posted by Razorback

Sad truth is if you ban the quit threads half of your important mods can resign because you dont need 10 mods to moderate an empty board.

We dont have 10 mods on PD and quit threads only appear on PD. I dont see how stopping quit threads would effect mods on other forums.

Nevertheless evaluating who did more for pa, some boardmod named "dragonlord" who moderated what forum exactly ? (disclaimer no ill feelings towards dragonlord as a person) or someone like i.e. Teas or Marduk or Dingo, who ran successfull alliances for rounds and rounds in the public limelight seems to get in your hands abit off the reality.
Dragonlord might have done his fair share of work but hardly comparable to their work for the community and for their respective alliances.

Dragonlord wasnt a mod, he was a PAteam member. He worked for the portal team, and probably did a few other things beside that.

[Razorback]

Originally Posted by JC

We dont have 10 mods on PD and quit threads only appear on PD. I dont see how stopping quit threads would effect mods on other forums.



Dragonlord wasnt a mod, he was a PAteam member. He worked for the portal team, and probably did a few other things beside that.

The quote about the board was in regards to aryn, since the quit threads seem atm beeing the only justification that there still is a PD. Apart from those threads its very dead.

What dragonlord as a person exactly did was not as important as the statement he is more valueable or important for the community than anyone else.
I personally dont like the portal as it contains not much information and is certainly not my style, so infact for me personally dragonlord had not much impact on the game. This will surely be different for someone who knows the portal inside out. Nevertheless i doubt you can judge who of us is right or wrong.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Razorback

It really helps to encourage new players right ?

And you think a forum full of Quit threads does? Hey, if you're going to give arguments, at least don't give ones against your own point.

This might have 2 reasons, a) he didnt give a ratsass what ppl think unlike others like dingo i.e.
b) he didnt quit.

So what you're saying is that either Sid wasn't an attention whore and the rest is, or that him posting once every three months and never/hardly being seen on IRC constitutes him being around more than those that post a goodbye thread and are on these forums/IRC close to every day.

Nevertheless evaluating who did more for pa, some boardmod named "dragonlord" who moderated what forum exactly?

DragonLord voluntarily gave his time to work for Planetarion. Just because you haven't seen him work doesn't mean that he wasn't doing anything.

Alliance leaders have played the game. Sure, they've had an impact on the people around them, good for them. Let them say goodbye on their alliance forum, to the people they've worked with. Hell, let them pay a visit to an enemy alliance server and say goodbye to the HC there, whatever.

"youre not important enough to post"

It's not about being important enough to post. It has to do with the fact that this forum is not meant for ego-stroking quitting threads. If any PD Moderator of PA Team person quits, it needs to be publically announced, as the players have a right to know about it. Hence, they get an announcement on the forum. Any other thread about the quitting of some random player doesn't belong on this forum.

PS - You don't need to use your PATeam blabla nonsense, I'm not PATeam. Nor a mod. \o/

[Razorback]

i know ure not pateam/mod anymore Leshy. Yet uve not brought up the issue, Aryn did and she is both.

You might consider the option sid is not useing sid as a nick and useing irc as much as anyone else. I agree useless quitthreads (ppl who just attentionwhore and dont quit after posting) are a pain but thats completely a different matter then a real quitthread of someone who just leaves the game.

A player has made alot of connections/friends after 10 rounds of playing and if he wants to post one thread about it on an offical board i think he deserves to do so, simply because he invested also his time and money into this game.
Every player who invests time and money into it has the same impact as a pateam member imo.
He makes the game for others playworth, offers competition and in alot of cases payed or supported others during the rounds of changeing alliances.
How often you post, how much time you invest or how many ppl might know you is not a measurement for popularity or beeing known. And if a portal coder stops the players are as much deserving to be informed as if a long time pa player stops. Why ? because "working volunteerly" gives you no special rights since you volunteer for it and its only work, which will be done by someone else after that.
In all honesty, 99% of the players give a fk about the fact who codes the portal aslong as there is a portal so i dont see in the simply "codeing something pa related" a justification of importance or popularity like you do.

Towards the "board full of quit threads" part of your posts:
I personally dont see pa going into another round and many ppl share that view. Surely you can fire off anotehr freeround with 12k players but the first time it turns into p2p it will be another <2k poor users.
And hearing the voices not only from my alliance but from throughout various alliances (consider virus, seraphin, tot and smaller alliances just quit or plan to quit along with most alliances loseing the majority of their playerbase to inactivity and quitting) which support this view so i think that a board full of quitthreads might be not "nice" or "productive" but reflecting the reality of pa.
In addition to it i believe further that the players deserve the chance after 2 or 3 years to post on the general boards if they leave and to take credit for the time they were part of this dying game.

If you still believe into a miraculous rebirth and a renewal of the golden age i must dissappoint you because apparently youre one of the few with such visions and the number of them drops every day. ( how many ticks will this round go on? 700?).
This is not r5 anymore. the time for the final curtain seems closer then ever reflecting from the recent events and from the general atmosphere in the community of those who are still left.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Razorback

i know ure not pateam/mod anymore Leshy. Yet uve not brought up the issue, Aryn did and she is both.

And since when is posting an opinion poll to get an idea of what people think bad?

You might consider the option sid is not useing sid as a nick and useing irc as much as anyone else.

If Sid isn't posting or being Sid on IRC, then for all practical purposes, he has quit.

I agree useless quitthreads (ppl who just attentionwhore and dont quit after posting) are a pain but thats completely a different matter then a real quitthread of someone who just leaves the game.

...

Seriously. You should've just said "Oh, right, I give up, because I'm out of arguments." So the mods should allow quit threads, but keep a close eye on whether the poster has quit or not, and if after 3 days he is spotted somewhere by someone one IRC or on the forums, his quit thread should be instantly deleted. Because then his quit thread is a pain, whereas it's not when he has really left.

A player has made alot of connections/friends after 10 rounds of playing and if he wants to post one thread about it on an offical board i think he deserves to do so, simply because he invested also his time and money into this game.

Yeah, I've invested a lot of time and money in the local cinema. When I quit going there, I deserve to have a big poster put up there to say goodbye to everyone.

I personally dont see pa going into another round and many ppl share that view.

Which has zilch to do with my point. I don't care whether PA will have another round or not when it comes to quit threads. A board full of quit threads looks shit, whether the board will run for another 10 years or whether it will be pulled offline tomorrow.

[GReaper]

Move them to General Discussions instead of Planetarion Discussions?

Planetarion Discussions should be about the game itself and not specifically the players. Just move the threads so people can say goodbye if they really have to, while everyone in this section of the forum can continue to talk about the game itself.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by GReaper

Move them to General Discussions instead of Planetarion Discussions?

That would be the preferred option.

However, then the GD regulars would flame the shit out of the quit thread posters, and they only want to read how great they are and how they will be missed. They don't want to read that no one gives a fk about them leaving.

[Razorback]

Leshy you go daily 6-8h to your local cinema and spend hours there talking to 100 ppl ?

Im sure if it was like that they would feel when you left, assuming 6-8h = 3-4 films a 5 euro = 15-20 euros daily = 600 euros + food etc such a person wouldnt be unnoted after 3 years i guess, and may it be just the portier who says "bye leshy nice knowing you"

doubt thats a good example and i guess id depends alot on your social skills if youre missed or not. your example only shows a that somene who would do nothing noteworthy or who is without any social skill wouldnt be missed, ill give you that point.

[lofty]

People only post quit messages to gain attention. They always come back a few days/weeks later to see how many people replied. Ban them.

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by Leshy

That would be the preferred option.

However, then the GD regulars would flame the shit out of the quit thread posters, and they only want to read how great they are and how they will be missed. They don't want to read that no one gives a fk about them leaving.

God damn... I see that hanging 'round GD really made you smarter!

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Structural Integrity

God damn... I see that hanging 'round GD really made you smarter!

GD is dude

[Bashar]

Isn't this thread/poll kinda redundant now?

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Bashar

Isn't this thread/poll kinda redundant now?

Indeed. Now that there's a separate quit thread subforum, could someone please close this thread (and Zeus')?

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

Indeed. Now that there's a separate quit thread subforum, could someone please close this thread (and Zeus')?

I need closed also? wow, didnt even know I was open

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Zeus

I need closed also? wow, didnt even know I was open

Drunk Irishmen are open 24 hours a day

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Zeus

I need closed also? wow, didnt even know I was open

Zeus', not Zeus!

/me buys Zeus another pint.