Epicenter
Well-Known Member
I've been using this forum for quite a while now, and it seems like there needs to be a few new rules, or some more strict moderation to enforce the quality of posting and the quality of members coming into this forum. Things have been steadily getting worse since this forum opened to discussion of the gp2x (I was not around for the GP32 side of things)-- but a few particular threads in the past few days have prompted me to want to write this and make my opinions known.
First of all, most threads are inexcusably poorly written. Let's take for example this one, I won't put a name on it, and I don't mean to single out the individual who wrote it ...
First of all, there is barely a single word in this post that is spelled correctly. Second, no capitalization in the correct places, incorrect punctuation or a total lack thereof in some areas. Looking deeper, it's full of technical inaccuracies such as suggesting wireless game play over "GPS". We should be able to play games wirelessly over 30-year-old global positioning system satellites? I know not everyone knows the correct terminology as to 802.11b, Bluetooth, GPRS (probably what he meant?) et cetera, but if you are not knowledgeable about the topic, you probably shouldn't be making a thread about it. The author even goes as far as to think the GP2x came out long ago and it's 'over and done with', and that we need to start discussing the gp3x already. The rest of the post's problems could easily have been fixed if the author had just looked over it, proofread it for just a moment, before submitting it.
Then, we have the problem of repeat threads. Users who make no attempt to search if their question has already been answered. We have people asking about GBA emulation or PSP Emulation or things even MORE ridiculous like XBox 360 or Dreamcast emulation on the system. These are questions that anyone with even the vaguest bit of hardware or software knowledge should already know the answer to-- logic and common sense should dictate that if a SNES game does not run at full speed on a console, you should not be expecting a system released 8+ years later than the SNES to run on it, either. These issues could be taken care of with a simple search, but no one seems to take the effort to do that. Or at the very least, not ENOUGH do.
Now, I realize that the GP2x was marketed primarily as an ideal platform for portable emulation, and let's face it, the emulation scene is ridden with people who don't give a thought to the way they present their ideas, type, or even relate to people most of the time, and are more concerned with how they can more quickly and effectively get their games running, with nary a concern as to how much they piss off a whole community doing it. By appealing to emulation fans, we're going to get very low-quality members mixed in with some very productive, helpful and well-behaved ones.
This is why effective moderation to stem the flow of bad threads is vital. At the present point in time, we have loads of new information pouring in all the time. New updates to software, discoveries, hardware accomplishments and firmware announcements are made HOURLY, and the speed of the forums is very, very fast. I was away for 9 weeks and as many of you likely saw, I had to make a "Catch Up" thread to try to get some concept of what was going on in the torrent of threads that were popping up as I tried to get through things months old!
But with things moving so quickly, many quality threads containing essential knowledge are being lost and buried tens of pages back by worthless threads that don't help anyone.
So, I'd like to propose the following rules be cemented in place and properly enforced-- it can't be afforded to just look the other way when these threads are created and these offenses committed, some action has to be taken or it will NOT stop happening.
- THREADS MUST CONTAIN DECENT SPELLING, PUNCTUATION, CAPITALIZATION AND READABLE GRAMMAR if the author is a NATIVE English speaker. - There's no reason we should have 10 threads on the first page that contain things like 'n e 1 who nose wh at over cluck i ned 2 gats gb advaen c emu run 1 hunderd %% so I ken palay caestalvenia' because the poster could not be bothered to take 15 seconds of his time to look over what he wrote, wasting the time of everyone else who has to read it.
- THREADS ASKING QUESTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ANSWERED TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT CAN EASILY BE FOUND WITH A SEARCH ARE FORBIDDEN -
If the question has been answered before, the thread should be removed. Simple as that. When people learn their questions won't be answered this way, they should stop making them.
- POSTERS SHOULD MAKE SOME ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE POSTING ABOUT. - There should not be threads with questions like 'Can I run Doom 3 on my GP2x'. Asking if emulation of the SNES or the NES are reasonable, logical questions and had they not been answered thousands of times before (see the above rule..) they would be perfectly logical and reasonable questions. But even a cursory glance at the system requirements that Doom 3, for example, has for a modern gaming PC, should reveal that the question is fundamentally absurd and the thread should not be created.
- IMPORTANT THREADS AND ONGOING EVENTS SHOULD BE STICKIED and DISCUSSION SHOULD NOT STRAY FROM THEM. - There are MANY incidences of new threads about the GP2x programming competition and projects for the deadline branching off from the main discussion of the event-- this doesn't make sense and it clutters the forum. Discussion of individual projects in their own threads makes perfect sense. But more and more threads about "I can't wait for Feb. 20th!" et cetera benefit no one. Ensuring all threads with ongoing discussion for an extended foreseeable period of time are stickied to the top of their relevant forums should help stem the tide of these space-wasting and time-wasting threads.
Furthermore, I'd like to propose a greater degree of subdivision of the GP2x subforums. In particular, Emulation discussion (partaining to the possibility of emulating X system or game, technical support with the use of emulators, and general emulation theory discussion), Technical discussion (about the GP2x's hardware, alteration, repair, modification, etc.), Software discussion (Discussion of homebrew applications and ports), leaving News for announcements, General Discussion for discussion of GPH-related questions, firmware issues, and things affecting all users of the machine or its development. This would supplement, of course, the existing Developer forums for more specific questions on how to use, say, C/C++/SDL/ASM more effectively in programming the machine.
Now, I'm sure my choices for how I'd lay out the forums won't agree with everyone else's idea of organization, but it's what seems the most effective to me to attempt to 'slow' an overly fast-moving forum so it will be easier for newcomers and forum veterans to find what they are looking for. This will also be instrumental in keeping posts like "Is N64 emulation possible, part #8174" out of the mix with threads about critical firmware issues, etc.
Thanks for your time you spent reading this, and I hope it hasn't been a bother for you. I look forward to hearing your response to my proposals, agreeing or not. At any rate, I hope we can work together to make this an effective community, to give this console the best opportunity to fulfill its potential in the hands of a community that will recieve it well.
First of all, most threads are inexcusably poorly written. Let's take for example this one, I won't put a name on it, and I don't mean to single out the individual who wrote it ...
First of all, there is barely a single word in this post that is spelled correctly. Second, no capitalization in the correct places, incorrect punctuation or a total lack thereof in some areas. Looking deeper, it's full of technical inaccuracies such as suggesting wireless game play over "GPS". We should be able to play games wirelessly over 30-year-old global positioning system satellites? I know not everyone knows the correct terminology as to 802.11b, Bluetooth, GPRS (probably what he meant?) et cetera, but if you are not knowledgeable about the topic, you probably shouldn't be making a thread about it. The author even goes as far as to think the GP2x came out long ago and it's 'over and done with', and that we need to start discussing the gp3x already. The rest of the post's problems could easily have been fixed if the author had just looked over it, proofread it for just a moment, before submitting it.
Then, we have the problem of repeat threads. Users who make no attempt to search if their question has already been answered. We have people asking about GBA emulation or PSP Emulation or things even MORE ridiculous like XBox 360 or Dreamcast emulation on the system. These are questions that anyone with even the vaguest bit of hardware or software knowledge should already know the answer to-- logic and common sense should dictate that if a SNES game does not run at full speed on a console, you should not be expecting a system released 8+ years later than the SNES to run on it, either. These issues could be taken care of with a simple search, but no one seems to take the effort to do that. Or at the very least, not ENOUGH do.
Now, I realize that the GP2x was marketed primarily as an ideal platform for portable emulation, and let's face it, the emulation scene is ridden with people who don't give a thought to the way they present their ideas, type, or even relate to people most of the time, and are more concerned with how they can more quickly and effectively get their games running, with nary a concern as to how much they piss off a whole community doing it. By appealing to emulation fans, we're going to get very low-quality members mixed in with some very productive, helpful and well-behaved ones.
This is why effective moderation to stem the flow of bad threads is vital. At the present point in time, we have loads of new information pouring in all the time. New updates to software, discoveries, hardware accomplishments and firmware announcements are made HOURLY, and the speed of the forums is very, very fast. I was away for 9 weeks and as many of you likely saw, I had to make a "Catch Up" thread to try to get some concept of what was going on in the torrent of threads that were popping up as I tried to get through things months old!
But with things moving so quickly, many quality threads containing essential knowledge are being lost and buried tens of pages back by worthless threads that don't help anyone.
So, I'd like to propose the following rules be cemented in place and properly enforced-- it can't be afforded to just look the other way when these threads are created and these offenses committed, some action has to be taken or it will NOT stop happening.
- THREADS MUST CONTAIN DECENT SPELLING, PUNCTUATION, CAPITALIZATION AND READABLE GRAMMAR if the author is a NATIVE English speaker. - There's no reason we should have 10 threads on the first page that contain things like 'n e 1 who nose wh at over cluck i ned 2 gats gb advaen c emu run 1 hunderd %% so I ken palay caestalvenia' because the poster could not be bothered to take 15 seconds of his time to look over what he wrote, wasting the time of everyone else who has to read it.
- THREADS ASKING QUESTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ANSWERED TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT CAN EASILY BE FOUND WITH A SEARCH ARE FORBIDDEN -
If the question has been answered before, the thread should be removed. Simple as that. When people learn their questions won't be answered this way, they should stop making them.
- POSTERS SHOULD MAKE SOME ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE POSTING ABOUT. - There should not be threads with questions like 'Can I run Doom 3 on my GP2x'. Asking if emulation of the SNES or the NES are reasonable, logical questions and had they not been answered thousands of times before (see the above rule..) they would be perfectly logical and reasonable questions. But even a cursory glance at the system requirements that Doom 3, for example, has for a modern gaming PC, should reveal that the question is fundamentally absurd and the thread should not be created.
- IMPORTANT THREADS AND ONGOING EVENTS SHOULD BE STICKIED and DISCUSSION SHOULD NOT STRAY FROM THEM. - There are MANY incidences of new threads about the GP2x programming competition and projects for the deadline branching off from the main discussion of the event-- this doesn't make sense and it clutters the forum. Discussion of individual projects in their own threads makes perfect sense. But more and more threads about "I can't wait for Feb. 20th!" et cetera benefit no one. Ensuring all threads with ongoing discussion for an extended foreseeable period of time are stickied to the top of their relevant forums should help stem the tide of these space-wasting and time-wasting threads.
Furthermore, I'd like to propose a greater degree of subdivision of the GP2x subforums. In particular, Emulation discussion (partaining to the possibility of emulating X system or game, technical support with the use of emulators, and general emulation theory discussion), Technical discussion (about the GP2x's hardware, alteration, repair, modification, etc.), Software discussion (Discussion of homebrew applications and ports), leaving News for announcements, General Discussion for discussion of GPH-related questions, firmware issues, and things affecting all users of the machine or its development. This would supplement, of course, the existing Developer forums for more specific questions on how to use, say, C/C++/SDL/ASM more effectively in programming the machine.
Now, I'm sure my choices for how I'd lay out the forums won't agree with everyone else's idea of organization, but it's what seems the most effective to me to attempt to 'slow' an overly fast-moving forum so it will be easier for newcomers and forum veterans to find what they are looking for. This will also be instrumental in keeping posts like "Is N64 emulation possible, part #8174" out of the mix with threads about critical firmware issues, etc.
Thanks for your time you spent reading this, and I hope it hasn't been a bother for you. I look forward to hearing your response to my proposals, agreeing or not. At any rate, I hope we can work together to make this an effective community, to give this console the best opportunity to fulfill its potential in the hands of a community that will recieve it well.
