What Purpose?

[Storn]

The problem I have with your point 3 is that I don't think the Forge ever set out to teach, or preach, but to explore and discuss. The practice of referring to old threads reflects this, for example.

A spin-off, of course, necessitated by the thread being closed down.

*IF* the Forge is meant to "explore and discuss" (which I agree with, btw), then why was that thread or ANY thread closed?

But no, quite often, threads are closed because the discussion wanders from the original premise, question, theme or what have you in the beginning.  But that is PRECISELY a dialogue of give and take.  The very nature of discussion!

So, the Powers that Be, want something from these threads as they've been channeled again and again.  What that exactly is, I'm not quite sure.  

And then the question gets asked and I've seen it before... does this forum exist to teach?  My take?  Kinda.  Does it promote discussion and exploration.. yes, but only up to a point.  You cross that line, you get cut off.  And I'm not sure where that line is.

Which goes back to the point that Lumpley was making in "Roleplaying Theory in Person" thread.  First Nixon said "stay on topic", then Edwards closed the whole thing down.  This forum is entrenched in some strange academic notion of what discussion is.  To me.  And frankly, I find it really annoying.

So guys?  What Purpose does RPG Theory serve?  Is it not about Discussion but about Debate in its academic form?

Here is what they say:  "This site is dedicated to the promotion, creation, and review of independent role-playing games.  "

I thought Lumpley's above mentioned thread was very much about the CREATION of role playing games, independent or not.  And how the Forge can retool itself in order to promote that.  If the discussion also included the nature and complexity of the Forge, my take is "why not?"... but obviously I was overruled.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Storn, you don't seem quite to understand what thread closing means. Or what the forums' topics are for, or what "thread topic" even means here. Nor do you seem interested in learning any of this, having arrived at multiple, apparently fixed conclusions of your own.

If anyone wants to take any of this up with Storn, please feel free. I'm not seeing much point in participating further. The only constructive course I can see is to move this thread to where it belongs, Site Discussion ... but apparently what this communicates (at least to some) is unforgivable ghettoization of the topic. God knows why.

So proceed here. Help this guy learn if you can, and if he's interested in doing so.

Best,
Ron

[Keith Senkowski]

Storn,

The reason for keeping threads on topic is to keep them manageable.  I mean if we start out discussing subject X for a time and then three people come in and start discussing subject Y the thread becomes a jumbled mess and difficult for others to read and understand.  Nothing is stopping you from starting a new thread on subject Y to discuss it.

Forums are very different means of communication from face-to-face discussion and have to be treated as such in order for them to be useful to people, not only for those in the discussion, but for those who come back at a later date to read through.

Keith

[lumpley]

Storn: it's just how we organize the forums. We choose shorter, current threads over longer ones with big time gaps in them; there's no hidden agenda, just strategies to make the discussions useful. They work great most of the time, so we live with them when they don't.

The Theory forum is for when the topic of conversation is roleplayers and what they do.

The Site Discussion forum is for when the topic of conversation is the Forge, its participants, and what we do here.

You opened with "My MAIN problem with the Forge..."! Of course it belongs in Site Discussion. Go post it in Site Discussion and you'll get replies and a conversation. Post it in somebody's preexisting Theory thread and you get this.

edit: I crossposted with Keith.

-Vincent

[Bankuei]

Hi Storn,

On other forums, typically threads are allowed to go anywhere and everywhere, and are only closed when flamewars occur.  

Here, a key point is that given the massive amount of discussion, making sure the thread labeled "Scene framing" is about actually scene framing makes it a lot easier to search and hunt down a given topic.  When the topic drifts and folks are asked to open new threads or the original is closed for drifting that doesn't mean, "Don't talk about this", it means, "Ok, that's cool, let's give this its own space to happen, so that topic A and topic B don't muddy each other."

That is a key reason that a lot of folks get the "Check the Forge Etiquette" message, because the rules here are more than just "Don't be jerks, and don't give us pornography".  And the rules aren't a judgement on the people involved- it's just a matter of making things easy to follow.

Chris

[Paganini]

What no one seems to have mentioned yet (at least, I haven't seen it) is that the Forge methodology is *constructive.* That is, more recent discussions are intended to build on material that was hammered out in previous discussions.

Closing threads has nothing to do with moderation of persons (i.e., it's not a punishment), it has to do with data access. The Forge is basically a database of articles. Like a big bookshelf full of National-Geographics.

The point of restricting each thread to a single topic is so that you can reference that thread, the same way that you can reference an article. You can link to it. You can find it easily with the search function.

A thread is closed when - (A) the initiator of the thread is satisfied that the topic has been adequately covered or - (B) when the thread is losing focus and starting to cover multiple topics simultaneously. At that point, it's time to close the thread and talk about each of the topics separately, so that each has its own thread for indexing.

Doesn't it explicitly say this in the guidelines? Didn't Ron just post a big explanation of this just a week or so ago?