Super Friendship Club Exists(Post problems/suggestions here)

[Valeour]

I think there's a Skype icon under our avatars, but how often people actually look there, I don't know.

[Ian Snyder]

Please before reading this, understand that I mean no disrespect or complaint in anyway.

Regarding Draknek's post here, I'm just wondering; why can't we have a general discussion or 'mingle' forum? I mean, there's alot of people here who'd like to get to know each other, and I know they could externally, but this just brings up another realisation;

If we're not here to 'mingle' or make friends; why is it called the Super FRIENDSHIP Club? Personally, I see that name as a place to make friends.

Don't get me wrong, I love it here and everyone is so nice, and your aim of just having a helpful forum is great and is definitely working for alot of people, but there are some people who do want to make friends and or just chat about certain topics other than game dev. SFC doesn't even strike me as a game/indie discussion board, which is why I'm at a bit of a loss.

Just my '2 cents' I guess.

Absolutely, these are valid concerns.

We feel that forums which place emphasis on the social aspect of the forum eventually create an atmosphere that is consumed by jockeying for social standing within that forum. We've seen this happen in several places before and we're not keen on letting it happen here.

It is not that we want to discourage social interaction, not at all! This is the SUPER FRIENDSHIP CLUB! The friendly atmosphere that currently exists here is wonderful, and that's all due to you, the users. So if you feel that you disagree with our actions, do not hesitate to pm us. We will listen to your concerns. If we're being too authoritarian, that's just as much a problem as too much distracting material on these forums.


Now, I want to go into a little bit more detail regarding why we want the focus on game design in favor of eschewing social element such as a 'general' board. As I've said earlier, we feel that these social elements encourage a different kind of atmosphere to eventually form within a forum, and this has to do with creating a place that serves the needs of game players more than it does game developers. The difference between them is key. A player's mindset tends to be a more self-serving one (and I am not implying this is universally true), it is focused on finding new games to play, which at its heart is focused on finding means of entertainment. General forums and the like are fuel for this behavior. They give places for the selfish members of the community to entertain themselves, they give that part of the community an opportunity to grow, and even to become the main focus of it (essentially, a community focused on itself, a brood of narcissism). Developers, however, will be mostly focused on improving their own games, and we find are typically more excited about helping other people improve theirs as well. They tend to be focused on acts of creation, rather than ways to pass time for themselves. They tend to be less selfish community members (and again, this is not universally true, there are certainly developers who care only for advertising their own projects). These are the kinds of people we want this community to serve primarily.

Our reason for not including things like a general forum is not because we're trying to squash social activity, not at all! We want community, we want a place this is focusing on helping others and not on serving itself. Although it is counter intuitive, avoiding these social aspects is part of the experiment we are trying here to create a better, more inviting community for all. The absence of a general forum and the other things is not abut discouraging social interaction, it is about making sure the wrong kind of community doesn't slowly fester and grow here and eventually kill this place.

And, I want to point out that this is still very much a work in progress. We are likely still to change elements that aren't working. These forums are still in their formative moments. Hearing from you guys is the single most important thing that can happen right now. Ultimately, this place is not about the mods, it's about the users, it's about the people making games here. We are doing our best to create the best community for you we can, and we need your help to do that. I just hope this clears up our current policy a bit.

[Ardbob]

Ah, I see. Well I'm excited to see how these forums turn out then later. I suppose if the formula doesn't work you'll just end up creating a general forum eventually, but can understand your reasons for not doing so now. Thanks for explaining.

[Valeour]

Perfect, thank you.

I totally understand the whole 'attracting wrong kind of attention' bit, so yeah, I'm cool with that.

My only last remaining concern is the whole "SFC" thing, I mean, two things;
1. No relation to game-dev at all.
2. In the most polite way I can say this; it sounds a bit 'gay'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with it, but it's sometimes hard to talk about in real life conversation, and again, because there's no hint of game-dev, if I just mentioned the name, people might just assume I'm someone who wants to go make friends with everyone, and where I live, that isn't always a good thing.

These are completely my opinions, and I'm more or less 'thinking' out loud, I'm happy with the way things are, but those are the only things I could probably point out.

[Ardbob]

Haha, I actually love the name. It's stupid, but in a good way.

[Nexidian]

I personally think that getting to know the people who are helping you makes for a much stronger community.

I mean i do understand completely that you want to keep focus on game development, but a general section wouldn't change that, because the people who come to this site ARE here for game development so i cant see any reason why that would change their focus.


I think this site has the potential to go far with or without it, but for me, personally i think it will boost it

-Nexy

[Jack Sanders]

Please before reading this, understand that I mean no disrespect or complaint in anyway.

Regarding Draknek's post here, I'm just wondering; why can't we have a general discussion or 'mingle' forum? I mean, there's alot of people here who'd like to get to know each other, and I know they could externally, but this just brings up another realisation;

If we're not here to 'mingle' or make friends; why is it called the Super FRIENDSHIP Club? Personally, I see that name as a place to make friends.

Don't get me wrong, I love it here and everyone is so nice, and your aim of just having a helpful forum is great and is definitely working for alot of people, but there are some people who do want to make friends and or just chat about certain topics other than game dev. SFC doesn't even strike me as a game/indie discussion board, which is why I'm at a bit of a loss.

Just my '2 cents' I guess.

Nobody's stopping you from socializing with other forumers. The idea is to keep this place strictly productive-- to be a place solely focused on developing and becoming a better developer.

There are plenty other ways and places to socialize. And by all means, use them. But again, I think the idea of these forums is to create a separate place which you solely associate development and productivity with. I'm all for that, personally.

[WBojangles]

I can see why the moderators wouldn't want a general chat forum, the arguments against it are strong. I can also see why the users (in general) want this forum, because they want a place to get along with each other without interrupting game development threads.
I am indifferent as to whether the general chat forum is created or not - if the place remains as it is, I will still enjoy the development community. If the general forums are created, I admit I would look in every once in a while.

I wonder if there would be some way to compromise here. The moderators aren't particularly in favor of the general chat proposal because it would distract from helpful game developing. But what if it were placed somewhere that wouldn't distract? What if it could be somewhere that wouldn't bother new users, so they could come in and instantly see what the site is intended for through the main forums as we would hope? This would mean that wherever it is hidden, only those who know how to get to the general forums could get to it; it could be only linked in some thread, or only available by typing in the address as opposed to linking, etc. Just a thought anyway for the users who would like the general chat.

[Ashkin]

I say just set up a #superfriendshipclub irc channel. I don't really want this forum's productivity diluted by a general section :|

[Ardbob]

I say just set up a #superfriendshipclub irc channel. I don't really want this forum's productivity diluted by a general section :|

I was about to suggest the same thing. The only problem is that right now there would almost never be anyone on the irc. Once things pick up a little it would be much more worth it to have one.

[Valeour]

I dunno, there are quite a few people here, and maybe an IRC would encourage more activity?

My only concern is; on a previous forum I was on, we had a Chatango chat. Now, everyone just went there, and rarely ever posted, because they could just post it all on the chat, so in the end we went into a massive debate about if we should remove the chat or not.
But that might just be the fact that there was only like, 12 active members. This place should have a few more, so maybe it'd be different.

...and I've never used IRC either, although I'd probably find out how for SFC.

[Ashkin]

What would be better than an IRC (though this is but a dream) would be a Super Friend Chat program.
It would work a lot like, say, Steam's integrated chat- just a simple thing. Except we could build in some features like GitHub integration and easy file-sharing. That probably won't happen, but the point is that a one-on-one chat might be best: people could get to know each other and socialize if they needed to, but posting projects and junk would still be done on the forum for proper attention.
Of course, an example of IRCs and forums coexisting is TIGsource- they have a healthy IRC community, as well as the forums themselves. Neither are dead.

[Valeour]

Actually, why not make a Super Friendship Club steam club/community/group thing? I mean, not only can we all join and talk easily, SFC admins can make announcements for pageants and such the like. It'll be convenient for those that use Steam anyway.

[mcc]

Several posts including one of mine seem to have disappeared from this thread. Do you know what might have happened?

[Digitalistic]

Several posts including one of mine seem to have disappeared from this thread. Do you know what might have happened?

I noticed a couple other threads have posts disappear as well.