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Advantages of MUDii forums over in-game chat and Discord |
Zalagar
pioneer
Joined: Mar 05, 2002
Posts: 288 |  Posted: 09-10-2018 17:06
These forums haven't gotten as much use as they used to. Primarily because there's new competition for discussion with live chat sites like Discord. And of course there's always chat in the tearoom or elsewhere within MUD2 itself.
But the forums DO have some advantages over chatting in MUD2 and on Discord.
Here, it's possible to have lengthy, multi-paragraph statements on a variety of MUD2 and sort of related topics (gaming, fantasy, role-playing), inviting further in-depth discussion. We can have lengthy light-hearted humor threads, or more serious in-depth discussion on MUD2's game mechanics. We can discuss in-game events or MUD2 article sites such as Muddled Times in-depth as well.
And we can do it without having to repeat ourselves for the benefit of those who weren't in the tearoom (or in MUD2), or on Discord when we had the initial discussions. People can browse and read through threads and get insights from months or even years ago.
I've been going back and re-visiting a lot of the older threads from years ago recently. And it's surprising how many of them are still very relevant today. Some are so relevant that one could post in them and get the discussion started again almost seamlessly.
The downside of forums is that they have to be constantly moderated and looked after, to keep spammers under control. As I've said elsewhere, forums are like gardens. They have to be tended to on a somewhat regular basis, or else the weeds will take over.
In any case, forums generally have a greater longevity than live chat. Because unless someone logs the chats and posts them to forums, people who weren't there don't get to see the points being made.
Okay, I'm rambling. If anyone else has any points to make on the value of the forums, feel free to comment.
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Havoc
pioneer
Joined: Feb 16, 2003
Posts: 360
From: portland, oregon, usa
| Posted: 19-10-2018 15:12
I think it would be best if we moved over to a discussion forum like Discus. There they will take care of making it hard for spammers to spam. Also they have lots of great mechanisms for getting people engaged in the forum.
If someone gave me the keys to the forum I’d be willing to put the work in to migrate the content.
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Havoc
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Zalagar
pioneer
Joined: Mar 05, 2002
Posts: 288 | Posted: 19-10-2018 16:01
Quote:
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On 19-10-2018 15:12, Havoc wrote:
I think it would be best if we moved over to a discussion forum like Discus. There they will take care of making it hard for spammers to spam. Also they have lots of great mechanisms for getting people engaged in the forum.
If someone gave me the keys to the forum I’d be willing to put the work in to migrate the content.
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An interesting idea. Not sure if it'd work, though.
It is true that this forum is running on an older version of phpBB, though perhaps that explains why it's able to keep topics and posts from so many years ago. I'm not sure if it's possible to migrate posts without just copying and pasting everything, with attribution of the original posters.
But I'm not a forum technical expert, so I don't really know.
In any case, I started this discussion to defend the value of forums in this era of live chat and social media sites. In fact, I think a good vehicle for lengthy, in-depth discussion online is more important than ever these days.
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