WARNING: Off Topic is approaching critical mass.

[Baldy18]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Tons of free advertising is going on for Anand there - and isn't that what he wants? Positive influence, helpful people, constructive projects.. yeah, we really hear about alot of that going on in OT.

Yeah to Dweebs that use up his Bandwidth. You PNG's think you are so special when the truth is you are just a bunch on no life Geeks who are better off in the DC forum than boring the crap out of somebody in a resteraunt or bar talking about SETI . Hell if they closed DC Forum maybe some of you Pimple Farmer would actually go out and met a women and find out what sex is all about...

BTW Networkman, you have PM.

Contrary to your omnipitent beliefs I'm neither pimply nor geeky and my girlfriend looks very good (no I won't show pics I know how you OT peeps are). I don't know what your problem with DC is but attacking people the way you do for doing something they enjoy is never cool (unless what they do is illegal and I would say immoral but I don't want to go through that debate). Bottom line DC doesn't use much bandwitdh, provides some advertising (I'll admit is probably isn't much but it is out there), makes a lot of people happy, and doesn't require much moderation. So I think that it shouldn't require subscriber only access. [EDIT] Did we spend so much time in OT that we forget that AT is a "geek" site and they are trying to attract "geeks"?

As far as the hot deals forum goes just think how fewer deals would be listed if you had to be a subscriber. I know I for one would check other sites first if that forum was subscribers only because more deals and more info on deals would be listed else where.

Now back on topic. Isn't the off topic forum for screwing around and being childish in the first place? I expect when I come in here to see something crazy or stupid. I only come in here when I want to see something stupid or childish activity to chear me up. That is the fun of OT. I think it is the people that live in here and take it seriously that are the real problem.

 

[Wiz]

Ha!
What an ignorant rant Red Dawn, come on man get it together. If you have some real reason to be hostile towards the DC forum then 'out with it' but making up lame stuff like

"Dweebs that use up his Bandwidth. You PNG's think you are so special when the truth is you are just a bunch on no life Geeks who are better off in the DC forum than boring the crap out of somebody in a resteraunt or bar talking about SETI . Hell if they closed DC Forum maybe some of you Pimple Farmer would actually go out and met a women and find out what sex is all about..."

is truly the most half assed attempt at discrimination I've heard (or read) in ages!! (I hope you were joking )

FYI most of us in the DC forum are career professionals, many of us are business owners. Some are teen agers who present themselves as people who far exceed their years in tolerance, wisdom and knowledge. Quite a few of us are in our 40's - 60's. Run networks of PC's for something 'real' like a job and have an interest in a distributed computing project so we also run one or more of them on our network of computers.

We like to meet and discuss everything from our jobs and families to how to get the most out of our computer upgrade budget.

We answer all the technical questions of friends and foes alike, people come to our forum from all around to ask technical support questions because frankly you could grow some serious moss on your backside waiting for an answer on the AT Tech Support forum.
We help people whether or not they plan to stick around and join TeAm AnandTech. Lots do join up this way, some do not. That's Ok.

Out of nearly 4 million seti users we have a team with the name AnandTech on it that by the work and concentration of the people in the DC group has made it to #11 in the world. We are working hard to move up to #10. We are proud of this, and rightly so.

Most of us would like to see the name AnandTech up higher on that list.

There are plenty of other DC projects as well and lots of AnandTech members who are spending their own time to move the name AnandTech up to a prominent place in those contests.

And as for going "out and met a women and find out what sex is all about"...

Well first of all there are female members of TeAm AnandTech, and they may or may not go that way.
There are a lot of us who are married and have kids so obviously we already know something about it (I have 6 children myself),
and as far as I can tell most of the people over in DC seem to be pretty happy with their social life, well adjusted and very active.

Maybe if you spent a little more time getting to know the people you attempt to degrade you would find we are not nearly the "pimple farmers" you make us out to be

On the topic of OT, let Anand do whatever it takes to stay in business. None of us would enjoy the alternative.

 

[etech]

Ornery

It used to be frowned upon to "Nef". I move that we head back in that direction!

I'll agree with that. The orginal "Nef" was banned for nefing. Why has that unwritten rule been changed?


Baffled

Why not just go ahead and make ATOT subscriber only ? It would solve much of the problem,end a lot of the bickering and be less rigid and restrictive than a ton of new heavy duty rules.

Hanpan covered this pretty well. I don't see how making ATOT a subscriber forum would help at all. There would be fewer people there but the problem of neffing and what type of forum it should be would still exist. Uh Baffled, how can you say " a ton of new heavy duty rules" when the rules have not even been proposed or debated on? For myself I just want the return of the old rule that used to be enforced. Excessive nefing was not allowed in the past. Really pretty simple.

Azraele
I haven't seen anyone in this thread advocating an end to all silliness in the forum. I would like a return to the balance it had. It's usually quite obvious which are the silly/chat threads and which are discussion threads. All I am saying is if you don't have something worthwhile to contribute to a discussion thread, don't post in it.

Ok, one more rule.
Repost. One person may announce that a new thread is a repost. He must provide a link to the orginal thread. No more R E P O S T posting. That got annoying very quickly and just clutters up the forum bumping a thread up to the top at least 6 times.

 

[allisolm]

Maybe we should just close O.T. altogether

What? No more "OMG I Have a Date with a Real Girl What Do I Do? Pics! Pics! Check Out the Car my Mommy Just Bought Me! OH SH!T... I just drank sour milk!!! OMG Im a REDNECK" threads?

However would the forums survive?


I would support the decision to close it down.

An example of why - yesterday a member posted in OT a very polite request for help locating a coupon he needed. He was attacked for posting his request in OT, attacked for being on AOL, attacked for his email name and offered no help. That's what off topic IS but not what it SHOULD be. Just my opinion.

 

[Red Dawn]

Ah, what an enlightened and mature response, from an "Elite" member no less... such ignorant broad-sweeping generalizations AND name-calling to boot! Yes, these skills will surely show others that you must be in the right

Oh relax Networkman and the rest of you DC members, I was just yanking your chain

BTW, I'm still waiting for the PM.

Hmmm... I did send you one right after I posted that explaining to you that I was just kidding but it doesn't show up in my history. I guess there is a problem with PM's. I can understand why you would think me an asshole for posting that

 

[Red Dawn]

I would support the decision to close it down.

If that were to happen the Humor Challenged Members of DC might have to deal with the Neffs and Wiseguys posting in their Forum. Heavan Forbid!!

 

[Wiz]

ok Red, see what happens when you start yanking on chains?
Glad I included the line about my hope that you were kidding and a smiley face, or I would be embarrassed now!

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: N8Magic
Maybe we should just close O.T. altogether

AnandTech Moderator[/b]

Red had a great idea... why don't we just restrict it to subscribers? I don't want to lose more than half the fun here.

nik

 

[Ornery]

"Ornery, do you think mods policing threads to keep them on topic would help?" - Azraele 07/15/2002 9:01 PM

etech answered that for me:

• "The original "Nef" was banned for nefing. Why has that unwritten rule been changed?"

The original term, nef, was not an endearing one. I'm not looking for the mods to police this, but the members themselves. We can be proud of that fact that thievery, racism and violence are generally condemned by the members as well as the mods. I'd just like to see that same attitude directed at "neffing" and AOL type chat. It's time for the pendulum to swing in that direction, IMO of course!

 

[aphex]

I am in support of restricting the OT forums on subscribers only. Its only right that since it uses the most bandwith, it should be only accessable by paying customers.

 

[mastertech01]

Too bad they cant charge per post.. that would slow down the neffing.. LOL

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: aphexII
I am in support of restricting the OT forums on subscribers only. Its only right that since it uses the most bandwith, it should be only accessable by paying customers.

I have a hunch that you would lose about 80% of the traffic in ATOT if you blocked the non-subscribers, meaning that everyone would miss out on a lot of good discussions. It ALSO wouldn't fix the neffing problem, because the remaining high-post count subscribers would continue to treat it as their own private chat room.

The funny thing is that most of the people who are making 30 garbage posts a day in ATOT ARE subscribers. Most non-subscribers wouldn't even bother posting the volume of content that subscribers do, simply because the public servers often take forever to post a reply.

 

[etech]

So, would anyone in charge of the forums like to add their thoughts? Will this thread just turn out to be a forlorn gripe thread and the status quo maintained or will any of the suggestions be advanced to be debated and then acted on.

In other words, does anyone in charge care about the concerns with the direction of the forum that some of us have advanced?

 

[Azraele]

Originally posted by: etech
So, would anyone in charge of the forums like to add their thoughts? Will this thread just turn out to be a forlorn gripe thread and the status quo maintained or will any of the suggestions be advanced to be debated and then acted on.

In other words, does anyone in charge care about the concerns with the direction of the forum that some of us have advanced?

I believe the mods had said that they're discussing it, though I don't know what, if anything, they've concluded.

 

[hungrygoose]

i've posted threads on this topic several times in the past, only to be flamed......ATOT is making the AT forums in general go to sh*t......go to the today section and see what the top threads are.....90% are off topic BS that is completely unrelated to the technology world......AOL type chit chat is the perfect description......if whatever happens runs off those type of posters, then GREAT!.....all of these type posters are replying with "but i really enjoy chit chatting here, and i've met alot of nice people and had some great discussions"....well good, but that's what chat rooms are for.....i see no room for those types of chit chat going on in a technical forum.....you don't go into a seafood resturaunt and order a burrito do u???!!!y???....b/c that's not what the seafood restaraunt is in business to serve.....sure, they could probably cook you a great burrito, but then the people there to eat seafood are getting screwed b/c the cooks are too busy making burritos......do u see my point???get rid of them all together......then moderate the rest of the forums just like you have been.....ban more members.....this forum should be a place where us tech geeks can get away from the aol BS that is everywhere else on the internet, and it used to be, but now it's the same as everywhere else....also, i think the user rating system should be changed so that off topic posts not only don't reflect post counts, but also don't effect user ratings.....the top threads sections should be made to not include any topics from off topic as well.....

 

[AmigaMan]

ban more members.....this forum should be a place where us tech geeks can get away from the aol BS that is everywhere else on the internet, and it used to be, but now it's the same as everywhere else

I like that idea. I don't want to see a lot of that AOL crap where half the thread is PostCount++. Let's work on the three strikes sytem. One nef == one weeks vacation. Two nefs == two weeks vacation. three nefs == three week vacation, any more and you're permabanned. This way we can keep OT for non-subscribers too. Not that I care since I'm a subscriber. This however is just a bandaid on a much larger problem. That being one of size. Once you get too big, the only thing that usually works in large social gatherings is for splinter groups to form. AT is a victim of it's own success.

 

[Red Dawn]

hungrygoose, you want to talk tech go to the tech forums. Some of us who are in the business get tired of talking about tech issues and the last thing we want to do when we aren't at work is to talk tech with a bunch of eggheads.

 

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn
hungrygoose, you want to talk tech go to the tech forums. Some of us who are in the business get tired of talking about tech issues and the last thing we want to do when we aren't at work is to talk tech with a bunch of eggheads.

i'm actually going to agree with Red Dawn. :Q

The last thing i want to read in my spare 5 minutes is why the latest nVidia driver pulls 2.3 FPS while the core it OCed 185%. You can only look at that stuff for so long before your head explodes.

 

[hungrygoose]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn
hungrygoose, you want to talk tech go to the tech forums. Some of us who are in the business get tired of talking about tech issues and the last thing we want to do when we aren't at work is to talk tech with a bunch of eggheads.

if u don't want to talk tech....then go your as* to aol and find a chat room..........or yahoo, or wherever.....there are plenty of places that you can go to do this type of chit chatting at.........anandtech isn't here to make everyone happy.....it's here for a source of technical information and reviews.....if u don't want to talk or read about technical information, go elsewhere..........the next thing you know, there's gonna be an AT instant messenger, followed by chatrooms and you've got mail notifications.........great.......how freakin exciting.......but ur probably looking forward to that huh red dawn coz then it will be a better place to get away from the technology world rite?!!

 

[minendo]

hungrygoose read the description of OT.

A public meeting place, a Pub, if you will... A place for computer junkies to boldly post Off Topic... Things you might want to tell everyone... Or things you wouldn't say to anyone else.

If you have such a problem with OT, then stay the hell out of OT.

 

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: hungrygoose

Originally posted by: Red Dawn
hungrygoose, you want to talk tech go to the tech forums. Some of us who are in the business get tired of talking about tech issues and the last thing we want to do when we aren't at work is to talk tech with a bunch of eggheads.

if u don't want to talk tech....then go your as* to aol and find a chat room..........or yahoo, or wherever.....there are plenty of places that you can go to do this type of chit chatting at.........anandtech isn't here to make everyone happy.....it's here for a source of technical information and reviews.....if u don't want to talk or read about technical information, go elsewhere..........the next thing you know, there's gonna be an AT instant messenger, followed by chatrooms and you've got mail notifications.........great.......how freakin exciting.......but ur probably looking forward to that huh red dawn coz then it will be a better place to get away from the technology world rite?!!

Let me guess, you are 15 and have never had a job in the tech field? Anyone who works with computers all day needs to be able to tallk to fellow geeks about things other than PCs.

 

[hungrygoose]

Let me guess, you are 15 and have never had a job in the tech field? Anyone who works with computers all day needs to be able to tallk to fellow geeks about things other than PCs.

actually i'm 22 and am in web design/IT management

don't act wholier than thou just b/c u work in the field.....you're not the only one in that field assh*le

hungrygoose read the description of OT.

A public meeting place, a Pub, if you will... A place for computer junkies to boldly post Off Topic... Things you might want to tell everyone... Or things you wouldn't say to anyone else.

If you have such a problem with OT, then stay the hell out of OT.

you're missing the point....the whole conversation is about whether or not off topic should be limited or removed or charged for or whatever b/c it is overrunning the forums....i think that if you asked anand, or zuni, or even someone like nfs4 whether they would rather have the tech geeks talking about tech info., or the OT'ers if the had to choose one to keep, they would keep the people talking about something that makes a difference.....

 

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: hungrygoose

Let me guess, you are 15 and have never had a job in the tech field? Anyone who works with computers all day needs to be able to tallk to fellow geeks about things other than PCs.

actually i'm 22 and am in web design/IT management

don't act wholier than thou just b/c u work in the field.....you're not the only one in that field assh*le

does your company approve the lack of actual sentences and excessive periods?


my...... name ....... joe........

 

[hungrygoose]

does your company approve the lack of actual sentences and excessive periods?


my...... name ....... joe........

and u actually accused me of being 15?!....those type of posts are part of the problem that people are complaining about.....they add nothing to the thread but clutter.........if you don't have anything useful to say, say nothing at all

Hungygoose, try following your own advice.

 

[Red Dawn]

SillyGoose

if u don't want to talk tech....then go your as* to aol and find a chat room.

Oh the urge to flame you to a crisp!! Unlike Networkman it wouldn't be in jest and since this is Forum Issues I will refrain.

Now regarding your muddle minded statement suggesting "go your as* to aol and find a chat room" Why should I? I've been a member here since before the fusetalk days. In fact I remember back when Anand had the time to stop by and chat with us about things other than tech. Anybody remember when he use to post about movies or talk about what him and his girlfriend Jessica did on the weekends? I do.