Off-topics should be locked

This is controversial, because the forum is so small, but let me know what you think....

As everyone can see, there are several topics on the forum that are getting VERY long, but not because it's an interesting topic, but because the topic keeps changing, in other words, the posts are beginning to be "off-topic." In busy forums, these topics are usually closed because everybody has already discussed the topic, and if the new topic that everyone is talking about it important, then there needs to be a new topic made. If we have the drifting topics closed, then the posters will have to make a new topic.

This would make posting a little more organized, and it would prevent topics from drifting too far away.

Here is an example:
I posted a topic about the forum looking funny sometimes, where it would be messed up when you load it. I just checked out the topic a little bit ago, and people were talking about the tamashii bar ranking! come on people! There is a topic for this!!! XD
The topic was already discussed, so it should be closed to prevent people from talking about tamashii bar rankings in a completely different topic.

It's not to be strict on users, but it would make the forum more organized if off-topics were closed to prevent information from being posted in the wrong place.

Chit-Chat is the exception.


Thoughts?

actually i agree with you.

i kinda wished that whatever posts we post is somehow related to the topic.

coz if its too off-topic, then its just ... well, msn!

at 1st i wanted to say something about it.
but the forum is still young,
so i thought its ok for now as it will make people feel comfortable, post more and get attatched to this place.

but yea, now that you have mentioned it

we should watch what we posts and dont let it stray too far off.
or else admin and yuu's gonna have a hard time cleaning up the mess

sorry yuu
sorry admin
>.<

just an afterthought


maybe we should lock the seriously off topic threads.
or start new ones

and then, we shall all try our best to stay on topic

There would probably have to be some sort of guideline for closing off topics though, such as
-Topics is Chit-Chat and Introduction are exceptions
-If there are up to X consecutive off-topic posts, then a notification
-If there are up to Z consecutive off-topic posts, then topic closed

Something like that.

I think there are quite a number of topics that are off.
People tend to sway off from the original topic. Especially those in the suggestion section. haha, well, i intend to lock it for those sloved.

Nice
You rock!

Haha, now it looks neater. Total 6 topics here locked.
Will put those into archives after i completed the dreadful assignment.. xD

lol so many locked. hahha
but its a good thing

Will be moving them all away to another archive section soon..
Or shall we call it Taiko Dump?? haha

LOL how about forgotten history?
closed chats?
rubbish dump?
storage space?

Locked topics and put into "Forgotten history"??
Sounds nice~

=Thus, this history will be forgotten=

How about "Forgotten Island"? or any fancy name for locked topic??

none at the moment.
haha
brain dead le

I've finished "throwing away" the topics into the archives.
So are we still on the discussion of off-topic being locked?

LOL
good good nice dumping ground

I would rather say.. A collection of the unwanted ones
=p

Has anyone been noticing? Many threads are going off-topic...

Yes, i noticed that too.. lolz~

Probably because our only moderator, Yuu has been away. It's good to have you back!

Alright, this is slightly off the topic for this thread, but I think now is the time to ruffle some feathers.

As one of the founding members of this forum, I'm quite happy that this forum is steadily gaining the publicity it needs. In fact, if there's even anything I can gripe about, it would be that we aren't growing fast enough!

However, there are some issues about the current state of the forum which I would like to express. Note that I'm not pointing fingers at anyone here; neither is this a ranting thread about my dissatisfaction - which at the moment is none.

Too many off-topic threads and duplicate threads
As Pyrozz stated above, Yuu is our only moderator at present. This is all well and good since our numbers haven't even touched half a hundred. However, it is quite apparent that when she is absent...let's just say that things become a bit disorganized?

I understand that some of us are very enthusiastic about this forum, and so we try to participate actively by replying as often as we can. However, we must always bear in mind the topic of the threads that we are replying to, and try not to veer off-track.

Regarding the topic of duplicate threads, I think of them as threads which have overlapping purposes. Something can be done about these too, in my opinion.

So what we can do on our parts is to keep our replies to the point; banter attracts more banter. In addition, if anyone sees that a topic is off-track, feel free to put the discussion back on track tactfully (if you're replying) or not reply at all (if you're not). I think this could handily solve the problem of duplicate threads too.

Elitism
For the note, I'll just reiterate that this forum is open to all taiko enthusiasts, not just players aspiring to be like BLYX or YUU.

Having said that, and having read the replies of some of the more recent posters, I've come to the conclusion that our forum is becoming a bit intimidating.

At present, almost all the active members are oni-players. As such, our discussion tends to gravitate around that level. Anyone new to this forum and not at that level yet will find it hard to break into the discussion.

It does NOT help that we're friendly and not condescending. In the end, it's a psychological barrier. How would you feel if everyone was discussion about calculus, and you want to ask anyone of them what is 1 + 1? Exaggerated, but I hope you see my point.

What we can do right now...is to not limit our targets to just muzukashii/oni players. We are preaching that, but are we doing that? Actually I'm very guilty of this too, because now that I'm playing oni, I find it hard to think like that of a kantan/futsuu player (mint can tell you that now I yawn a lot when I look at kantan/futsuu songs), and subsequently identify anyone who is enthusiastic but not at my level yet.

At present, I don't see any solutions for this. In any case, it takes a brave soul to break the clique, but once things start, it won't stop, hopefully.

I rest my case.

I have to agree that the forum is getting intimidating, but there also has to be room to discuss more high-level stuff.

and it is also very noticeable that many people find it hard to fit into discussions or even speak up, resulting in constant browsing of the forum yet no posting.

I think for now, all we can do is to encourage fellow taiko-ers to speak up and express their views and questions, because we cannot entirely stop discussing about high-level goals, targets, scoring, method of play etc,i mean this is also part of the forum's purpose, that we have a space to discuss this.

Another point raised was the great social stratification as stated by ck. people all seem to have been classified into specific oni, muzukashi, fuutsu or kantan players to the extent that it's been used to classify if they are really interested or have enjoy taiko.

Yet, even though we try to minimize this in deciding if someone enjoys/has interest in taiko, it is obviously, and most of the time as well, hard to decide if someone is purely interested if we do not look at the level of difficulty one is playing. We do know that part of the players who play fuutsu or kantan are really enjoying themselves, but we just can't differentiate them unless they express it enthusiastically that it catches our attention.

We also know that if we just randomly invite players to this forum, not looking at level of difficulty at all, a high chance would be that many of the players we invite are people that do not really enjoy taiko, and instead just come to the forum for the sake of coming to the forum, and post for the sake of posting. We don't want that.

What I have said thus far has only expressed the constraints and limitations of such regulations to make this place a better one, and the difficulties faced in the process of doing these.

There are no solutions in what I have just posted. Please do actively post possible solutions to this. This is just a build-up of the second half of points that chinkai has made.