I suppose you could split this issue into two related parts:
1) Why
does something (and someone) deserve hyping on the General board? What criteria set it above everyone else who doesn't get a hype? Should everyone have (or nor have) the right to preannounce? (The social problem)
2) What makes an advert such that it deserves equal (or more) amounts of time devoted to it as any other post? Is the General Board appropriate for preannouncements? (The cluttering problem)
I believe the cluttering problem (number 2) has been covered by other people, so I'm mostly going to be talking about the implicit social problem (number 1) I mentioned above in this post.
masonjason wrote:
Agaricus is taking it as axiomatic that the forum ought to be democratic. But why shouldn't Larrymurk be able to get away with posting things that a new poster wouldn't? My answer is that he should, because he's repeatedly proven that he won't abuse that leeway, and I'm shocked by the number of people who don't simply trust that what he's pre-announcing is in some significant way worth pre-announcing.
Okay, so what's the definition of "
he should, because he's repeatedly proven that he won't abuse that leeway"
, then? At what point do we say that the statement above is or is not applicable to person "
x"
? Rank points? Holds? Personality?
For example, I've never preannounced anything. Therefore, should I be allowed to preannounce? More importantly, if I did, would you appreciate and respond to it in the same way as has been done to other preannouncements, since that would be why I did it? What if an architect working on a first hold in private that is of very high quality wants to preannounce?
The
social issue here is not just a matter of whether we trust if the announcement is "
in some significant way worth pre-announcing"
. It's also about how significant that announcement is compared to whatever anyone else wants to say on this board. Each thread on this board is created reasonably equal; everyone can read them, everyone can post opinions, all of them are also readable, and the thread is contained as a unit. By posting what is essentially an advert, you are elevating yourself and your message above this level, and essentially saying that your post and object is in some way deserving of hype that other threads do not have.
I personally don't like the whole shout-out in advance business, but I'm willing to go along with it as long as we resolve it in a defined way, as I described above. As I've said before, I think it's dangerous to have social bending of rules for people to do things that most others cannot. One of the good things about this forum is the fact that we are all accountable to each other for what we do, which helps us all to post well, repect other people's opinions, and generate this nice atmosphere. Even as a content editor, I am as responsible for my posts and actions as any of you; if you don't like what I've done, then you've a right to say so. Similarly, I do not have a monopoly over what goes onto the site. In fact, what goes on is pretty much determined by what the community has done and currently wants; I'm only compiling it.
And do you really care if there are a few pre-announcements per month on the general board? If you don't like them, that's at most five seconds of your time wasted. If you do, it adds to the whole "eager anticipation of new info" atmosphere that I think is the very essence of this forum, and that's got to be a good thing.
The major difference is that DROD is something that applies to and is important to all of us DROD players. A preannouncement of something else by someone is more applicable to that said person and object, because it increases the importance of the thing relative to all other related things present (DROD can't be elevated above itself; it's DROD!). A measure of how much an announcement is "
cluttering"
or "
enhancing"
the board could be how relevant it is to the community in terms of DROD "
the game"
.
On the social aspect of the problem, if we allow some people to preannounce and not others based on some highly subjective or arbitrary criteria, we get elitism. Such a person could preannounce in a way that would get attention and acclaim, while if someone else mimicked this, the result could be ignoring and stigmatism. We've already had problems where people have perceived they were targets for negative behaviour, even though this wasn't true, so it wouldn't be wise to encourage it to happen for real.
Our community is growing like never before; we could well be entering a new phase in the Forum's social development (the previous one was the moderation system), so this might possibly be one of the unfortunate side-effects.
Edit: Actually, I think I'm kind of going in a circle with this point, so I'm not going to push it any further. Anything I've said regarding the issue is probably now fully covered.
____________________________
Resident Medic/Mycologist
[Last edited by agaricus5 at 11-15-2006 02:12 PM]
/dy
I haven't been here for long compared to some people. But say some old good member was being stupid, probably, I say probably, people would just say they were being funny or some excuse like that. Now say a new member did that, he would be modded down into oblivion and be disabled. Okay, maybe not disabled but there still is a huge difference. Just my opinion.