"Other Message Board Experiences"

[Mouse]

Imho, one of the primary reasons for this board being the success is the self-restraint and self-policing undertaken by the membership.

99% of the time you manage to conduct yourselves completely within the ToS boundaries and for that I and the other mods thank you. You make our jobs so much easier

Even when someone (usually a newbie) steps out of line you generally try to bring him/her back into line without flaming. Once again thanks.

And when a troll shows up - well we have all seen how quick the mods and Z react then [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]

I have said before that ultimately I would like to be in a position to resign as a mod because my input was no longer needed because the membership of IW would be 100% self-regulating. As it is, you guys and gals are close but not quite there yet.

Keep up the good work [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[ 09-18-2002, 05:22 AM: Message edited by: Mouse ]

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Albromor: Relic, is your current name on IW the same as on the old BG Dungeon? If not, could you tell me what it was? I basically keep the Albromor name on most boards. I was contacted by people here as elsewhere inquiring if I was the same Albromore from the BGD days. It was cool being contacted by them.

I wonder who did that... Btw Albromor, the last e-mail I sent you was 2 months ago, did you ever receive it?

As for the Black Isle Boards, well... Let's just say I'm glad Ironworks is much more mature and less spammy, cause that board definitely takes the cake. They even removed post counts alltogether at one point to discourage the spammers, and it didn't (!) even work. [img]graemlins/uhoh1.gif[/img]

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by The.Relic: LadyZ you are soooooo right. IW is by far the best forum I have known and I have been a member of quite a few gaming boards as many people here have. Many of us remember the demise of IW biggest competitor "BG Dungeon Tavern"! I actually started out there before I found "Ole Blue" and even though IW was tiny by comparison, this is where I stayed. I still visited the "Tavern", but gadz, what a nightmare. The place turned into a "flaming troll central". I remember the notice that they posted when they closed the forum, stating specifically that it was because of the flaming and abusive nature of the members that they closed it.

Not entirely true... Sure, the number of trolls was ridiculous in the end and 4 moderators (only 3 of them active) to moderate a board with 15,000 members was by far not enough, but the real reason it was closed down was because the webmaster wasn't able to pay the ridiculously high bandwidth bills anymore. And he lost interest, kinda (he didn't post a single message since September 2000, while the board was closed down in March 2001... You do the math).
Used the same username then as I do now; after I lost my password, I posted the last few months as Marsplm over there (with a picture of the Marsipulami in my signature ).

[ 09-18-2002, 05:26 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Megabot]

Hmm maby IW are good but there are another one i like almost as mutch as IW and that is this one: http://www.ttlg.com/ the members there are wery cool and no flaming and thingies there and it is a game forum to. I spend alot of time there to [img]tongue.gif[/img] and it is a pretty big forum.

[Kaltia]

The Nalia romance message board has no moderators, and no TOS. You can imagine the swear words and chaos, trolls have won over; it's horrid, it really is.

[Reeka]

I am a member of a number of boards(even have my own), but Ironworks was my first and it is still "home."

[Night Stalker]

The only other message board I goto on a reg basis is Slash-dot /.
www.slashdot.org

It's a techie board, so you would think that quality and maturity of posting would be abit more ... say ... elevated. But no, /. is riddled with trolls and script kiddies as bad as any forum (but here [img]smile.gif[/img] ). They do have the feature of ranking posts ... so trolls and flamebait get modded down pretty quickly, but it's not uncommon to see a thread (esp if it's about M$) with 500+ posts and only 100 or so readable at your desired rank level (and even those are ? sometimes).

[Cloudbringer]

Originally posted by ladyzekke: I remember that about the BG Dungeon back then Relic. I had never gone there, but somebody I think on IWs talked about it, and I clicked on the website and read something there that the forum was closing because of excessive flamers. Even though I had never been a member there, nor never even had yet visited their website before, I still felt bad for them. That they took so much time and effort to make a haven for gamers to come together and talk about Baldurs Gate, only to have it crushed by a bunch of essentially losers with nasty mouths. Messed up.. Oh and nice to see you around Relic [img]smile.gif[/img]

I went and checked BGDungeon out after Mems told me about it. I was not impressed. There were maybe 5 decent posters and a mess of trolls and some members who treated the place like their own 'bash everyone' playground. Several were openly hostile to female members. I couldn't believe how much more mature and fun our own IW younger members were compared to those people. IW was definitely a more friendly site.

Since then, I've joined 6 or 7 sites, mostly gaming related and I have to say that not one of them holds a candle to IW. I never visit most of them these days and the few I do go to from time to time are pretty slow moving . Many of them tend to attract the sort of people who like to hurt others to make themselves feel better about their own lives or out of sheer boredom. A small number of people post and the few newbies who join see a place where it's ok to pick on someone mercilessly and take pleasure in belittling others. Not really a pleasant way to spend one's free time! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Give me Ironworks at it's worst, over the others, any day! It's head and shoulders above them all. Ironworks is my home on the net and I'm proud to be a member and moderator here. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Cloudbringer: I went and checked BGDungeon out after Mems told me about it. I was not impressed. There were maybe 5 decent posters (..)

Hopefully I was one of them... [img]graemlins/uhoh1.gif[/img]
And I can safely say there were more than 5 decent posters, most definitely hundreds even, they were just a bit pushed aside by the trolls.

[Attalus]

Originally posted by Mouse: I have said before that ultimately I would like to be in a position to resign as a mod because my input was no longer needed because the membership of IW would be 100% self-regulating. As it is, you guys and gals are close but not quite there yet. Keep up the good work [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Even the best-regulated towns have a police force, so stay, Mouse.

Galadria made quite a few friends on the BIS boards. But, yeah, she says that it is spammy, except the PS:T forum, where she really had a great time discussing the theological implications of Fall-from-Grace's name and the intricate images of the opening movie. Those guys are serious about PS:T. One of their sigs reads: "People say that in my next life, I'll be reborn as a foul-mouthed, floating skull."