I can see where you're coming from, but I wonder what we could do to generate discussion? If someone makes a post/discussion/contribution, what will make people read it? Interest in battle reports, modelling, fictions, surely. If they are not interested, they won't go there. If they can't well put into words why they think something is good or bad, they might not post.
That's personal choice, nobody can make anyone post, but clicking buttons isn't the solution, because it doesn't generate any activity. The problem with this place is that there are very few active contributors, and new members, like myself, who post on more active boards, are not going to be encouraged to get involved in discussion if there is very little discussion to participate in.
As far as increasing forum activity is concerned, regular members don't have the final say. Of course, we can offer opinions, but in the end it's the staff who have to make these decisions, and the necessary changes to move the forum forward. As a Staff member on another forum, I can say that fora have a more difficult time in recruiting new members, and keeping them, these days than in the past, but this seems to be magnified here. I haven't been around long enough to explain the reasons, so I'll leave that to experienced members of the community to discuss, but I can offer my views on what I think will not help (see below).
Don't underestimate the boundary breach of putting your opinion in words, where others can read it and link your name to it. Where you might make a fool out of yourself, or get ridiculed for having a weird/different opinion. Not everybody does that as lightly as perhaps you and I do.
The same goes for creating a constructive, good, non-offensive but helpful reply that doesn't beat around the bush. You need to be able to put into words what you thought and why you thought it, how it could be improved, or why it was bad (preferably both, tbh). As an example, I spend about 15-20 min writing my reply to one of Wargamers fiction post, trying to figure out why I thought the things I thought about it, what I felt could help make it be better, what I particularly really liked about his style, and so on.
If people flame or troll you, then that's against the forum rules, and should be moderated, so unlike blogs there is a safety net here.
Good, constructive posts take time to assemble. My army list critiques, for example can take around fifteen minutes to put together properly, and articles take even longer. This is a good thing though. Spammish one liners are of little use in the context of a discussion forum.
Perhaps a 'like' button might cause people that made short replies, or no replies, to press it and not reply at all. But it leaves me wondering, would they have made the step to meaningful discussion posts/replies anyway? I don't know. It all comes down to the kind of person behind the PC. I agree that a 'like' button isn't facilitating, but if people are too lazy to post, then what are they doing here?
A lot of members sign up to fora, but never actually post. This has been the case for years. What counts is the quality of those who do post. A load of spammers clicking a button, or posting one liners is bad either way, and that's the point I think that we need to remember
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You are still presuming to dictate to me (and I mean that in a generic sense, extended to all the forum's users) what my future actions will be as if you know better than we do, however.
Because it's entirely predictable how most people will behave when given a button, you only need look around the internet to see its impact.
Replying "I agree" or even "I agree because X" breaks up a thread's content-posts, and often comes across as inane, so people don't do it. Not doing it? Good for spam, bad for author having an idea of whether people give a damn about what they wrote or not. The internet is faceless; a writer can't know if people see or care about or like their material unless said people leave a mark of somekind.
Ticking an "I thought this was neat" button lets the author know they've garnered positive or interested attention. It doesn't interrupt a thread. It doesn't have to make a relatively contentless and inane statement to convey the message.
If a thread doesn't generate discussion, it doesn't generate discussion. The first ever threads I posted on one forum were completely ignored in terms of replies, but had a high number of views, so I wasn't deterred. Having a like button stops people from replying at all. If someone has more to say, then the probability is that many will just think 'oh, I'm too busy, I'll click the like button'. You end up cutting off your nose to spite your face.
If someone has constructive comments to make, let the comments be made. Don't give people lazy short cuts. I say again, this isn't Facebook.
So we're all lazybad forumgoers for not wanting to have to write an analysis paper just to let someone know we exist, took a look, and thought their story or art or whatever was neat?
And like buttons are simultaneously bad because you assume they mean people will get lazier and stop writing the posts... that they don't write, anyways, and never did, and that you're griping about their laziness in not writing?
Can you see how silly and self-contradicting that sounds?
Only because you twist it to fit your own preferences
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It's very easy to write a constructive post, and it's very easy to explain why you thought something was good, other than by typing 'I agree'. I see it done regularly, and these comments are far more valuable than clicks on a like button. Like tells you nothing. It doesn't explain why the person thought it was good, where you could have improved, or what their favourite elements of your post/thread were. It's completely useless.
You are bemoaning the supposed loss of posts which do not exist in the first place.
NOW: If you have something to discuss, you post about it.
If you don't have something particular to discuss, just saw and liked the material, you do nothing because you have no response options other than undesirably cluttering up the thread with noncontent, and so the author sees nothing. It feels like no one is taking an interest in their work. Why keep writing when no one seems to take an interest?
WITH A LIKE BUTTON?
If you have something to discuss, you post about it.
If you don't have anything in particular to discuss or contribute, and you don't want to clutter up the thread, but you do want to show your interest and appreciation, you hit a like button. The author sees that X number of people have hit the like button and feels good about their work and the fact that they can observe people taking an interest in it. If the writer is anything at all like me, this is an impetus to write more and post more.
There is no loss of posting or discussion. There is the addition of a means to express something you could not express effectively before.
I disagree entirely, as it just means fewer people are likely to reply at all, as they will just click the button instead (see above). As a result, you lose traffic and content, so it's a bad idea.
You seem to be labouring under the false impression that clicking some kind of button equates to recognition. To me, that doesn't equate to recognition. All it means to me is that people were too lazy to type anything constructive, so just clicked a button. How does that tell me that my work was any good if they were too lazy to write a good quality reply? How does it tell me what was good about it? How does it tell me where, or if, I could improve? A like button does none of these things
As for karma, since this really needs to be discussed separately, I'll just say that it has the potential to cause cliques, elitist behaviour, and there are far better ways of moderating people for breaking rules than through a karma system, based on my experience, but I suggest that a new thread is started if we are to debate this in detail.
Neither do avatars or vanity custom-titles. Are you going to tell me we should ditch those next, because they encourage people to be lazy by selecting a picture to distingush themselves as a user, rather than distinguishing themselves through posting and discussing stuff? Or that it's just an ego contest between who can get the spiffiest avatar/custom title?
These are just features which distinguish users as individuals, and have no relation to forum content or posts (unless a negative custom titling system is used for serial rule breakers). Karma and like buttons relate directly to threads and posts, and clicking on them removes the need to post constructive replies. As a result, the comparison you're trying to make is flawed in my opinion.
Please do enlighten us on some of these other options then, though I should give fair warning that if they seem to consist of "Stop being so lazy you bad lazy people" I will grab a pair of socks and be on my way towards buying a pewter Dreadnought to go with them.
It's up to the staff to solve forum activity issues. The main problem I see here is that everything has become very general, and there just isn't much of a community or base for many of the armies. Maybe the forum needs to play to its Tau credentials more, as that's it's primary base, or at least it used to be. The problem you have here is that this is a breakaway site (I know about the history of Tau Online to a certain extent), which is trying to compete against other 40K fora with many more members, and a lot more content, such as articles, blog sections, connections to social media, and so on, which this place simply doesn't offer.
As it happens, I'm a forum purist, and not a fan of social media, or other bolt ons, but without these I don't see how fora can really compete. Other 40K fora also have a much stronger history, a longer term membership base, and for that reason have such a big head start on Second Sphere, that I don't know if the gap can even be closed.
These are all matters of the Staff to discuss in detail, should they feel the need to.
As for the rest of that quote, I do think that it's important to maintain an appropriate tone in this sort of discussion, don't you
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