Current Events > The whole point is to shut down the board with the least amount of blowback

(+) Yeah! (+)

That's it.

If they shut down CE overnight, it's not difficult to imagine what would happen next. So they're going to isolate it, restrict it, and shrink it, until it's small enough for them to drown it in a bathtub. People being sent to purgatory is about to skyrocket.

The only value Gamefaqs brings to Fandom are its guides (which they reguarly steal from) and gaming boards. Eventually they'll be merged into Fandom proper.

Everything else is a hindrance.

that would make sense if that was the plan

Going to be interesting to see how minor infractions turn into purg-level offenses.

While this would make sense, I'm starting to believe that they don't actually have a plan

GF guides >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>fandom guides

Bump

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3aede4da.jpg

CE has NEVER been a good board to begin with. It's always been...what it is. That being said it was becoming 261 2.0.

Combine that with the staff's inability to properly moderate politics related messages properly and you reach the conclusion that it's for the best to just get rid of political discussion overall on this site.

If it's going to to continue to be handled poorly (always was and always will be), it's just best not to even have it and deal with the issues surrounding.

I guess the question is whether it'll be limited to CE, or if the plan is to get rid of the boards altogether.

Actually, if you read Timmy's posts, the goal is to eliminate all non-gaming related discussion. He doesn't state that outright, but his statements make it pretty clear that this is Fandom's goal.

If you wish to stick around, all you need to do is follow the rules.

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

Actually, if you read Timmy's posts, the goal is to eliminate all non-gaming related discussion. He doesn't state that outright, but his statements make it pretty clear that this is Fandom's goal.

I'm guessing the goal is to get rid of the social boards more then anything non gaming.

I highly doubt they're all that worried about the Sports boards or whatever.

NES4EVER posted...

If you wish to stick around, all you need to do is follow the rules.

Dude, this saying is as old as dirt and just dated at this point. Anyone who has been on this site long enough knows this isn't necessarily always the case. Rule enforcement has never been consistent.

Are there people who ignore the rules? Sure.

Is that also used way, way, way too often as a crutch to justify sloppy rule enforcement consistency? Absolutely. Has been for years.

That's just how it's always been. The userbase has historically had issues understanding and following the rules and so to has the staff. In other news - it's another day that ends in y.

Where's my tinfoil hat!?

electricbugs2 posted...

I'm guessing the goal is to get rid of the social boards more then anything non gaming.

I highly doubt they're all that worried about the Sports boards or whatever.

Yeah, I'm thinking this is at least their first goal as well. This would allow them to force a topicality rule across the entirety of the site. It's obvious from the way they've been talking, however, that their goal is to make the Gamefaqs boards exclusively about gaming and gaming-related discussion. Again, here are the key excerpts from a couple of Timmy's posts. I underlined the most significant one.

while we understand the passion surrounding political discussions, we believe it is essential to maintain a focus on gaming-related content

While we recognize the value of healthy debate and diverse perspectives, such discussions must remain respectful and relevant to our gaming-focused platform.

this decision aligns with how we operate other parts of our platform, and how we want GameFAQs to be positioned in broad gaming discourse.

political discussion does not make sense as a core driver of conversations on a site dedicated to video games and gameplay.

All you need to do is think about it from the perspective of obeying stakeholders and advertisers. They don't want politics, hornyposting, or really even communities forming at all. They just want people who will click on ads.

It's the same trap that basically every website is falling into - youtube, reddit, etc.

well it's obvious they want to remain game-centric, which is essential to the identity of the website. but i'm pretty sure they're only banning politics and hornyposting because those are the ones that led to the most moderations, possibly even throughout the entirety of the site's life.

they probably said "where are all the problems? where are people getting banned and angry the most?" and they saw, clearly, that it was a result of politics and this whole 'walking the line' thing with horny posting. so they were like "ok let's kill this so it stops being a problem". now they also won't have to deal with constant moderations over these topics.

GuerrillaSoldier posted...

well it's obvious they want to remain game-centric, which is essential to the identity of the website.

That's what's funny. The community at this point doesn't necessarily all care about games the same way we used to; I mean, I know I do, bit a lot of other people have mostly moved on from video games and use Gamefaqs as a social club or a place to talk about this and that other hobby or even get news. Fandom wants to focus on a thing that hadn't actually been the focus of the larger part of the community on the boards for ages

The plan is to shut down all forums, replace the site with bad AI-written wikis and a note saying "sorry but our forums are not available right now."

The endgame is to remove all boards and replace them with Q&A.
One question, one answer, Fandom content.

pinky0926 posted...

or really even communities forming at all

Counter-intuitive if their goal is really to increase the userbase and increase activity here.
With topicality enforced on game boards, most of them are a desert. The only ones with a lot of activity are evergreens like Smash/COD, etc. Any other board is dead until it comes out, active for a month or so, and then dead again. Save for, of course, the social boards. Twilight Princess Social Board was, for example, much more active than the game board at any given time, but whenever anything related to the game dropped everyone rushed over there to talk about it. Then when the news got stale, it was back to the social board.

Building relationships with other users has a direct correlation to site activity. Being able to discuss the goings-on of our lives, get to know one another. Socialization is key to building a strong userbase. It's why reddit and Discord are so active while GameFAQs flounders, in addition to the simple reality that your modern gamer who comes here for the first time is going to expect a few basics that are absent - emojis (they can be posted but there's no easy UI for it, it's not even immediately obvious they can be used at all), reactions, live chats, more profile customization, etc.

I've said this already, and I probably won't talk about it anymore since it doesn't matter and I'd hate to become a broken record (and likely it's only a matter of time until speaking out against it becomes moddable), but the reason I'm so uncomfortable with these changes is because what the powers that be are saying and what they are doing just don't align. They talked about wanting to see 10,000 concurrent users, but they aren't doing anything to make that happen so it just rings false to me. Their actions, at least right now, really do align more with the notion that they want to squash activity here and eventually shut these boards down.

pinky0926 posted...

All you need to do is think about it from the perspective of obeying stakeholders and advertisers. They don't want politics, hornyposting, or really even communities forming at all. They just want people who will click on ads.

Don't the communities make up a large percent of those being targeted with ads? Having people who come here regularly, some posting at all hours throughout the day every day of the week, seems to be where the traffic is.

That's why this whole thing doesn't make sense to me. Then again I know very little about how internet milking works.

LeoRavus posted...

Don't the communities make up a large percent of those being targeted with ads? Having people who come here regularly, some posting at all hours throughout the day every day of the week, seems to be where the traffic is.

That's why this whole thing doesn't make sense to me. Then again I know very little about how internet milking works.

What they want are people creating free content and people using that content, all with ads.
The forum, while it do generate ad revenue, is a cost that needs to be lowered.

The valuable parts of the site can easily be stripped and incorporated into the existing Fandom ecosystem. The boards are of little value so they don't care about 'community' building.

Plenty of game and console boards are much more 'toxic' than CE. The TLOU2 boards used to have guys doing Nazi race science unpunished. Closing this board and purporting to ban politics is just the thin end of the wedge to shutter the message boards generally.

I wonder what like being a mod at this very moment. They must have some inside scoop about what Fandom wants. What's it like knowing that in a few days you're going to have to pull on the trigger on almost every user you have grown to known in the past decade. Sure you may not have gotten along with all of them, but they were still people you shared almost a lifetime with. These were people that were there with you when Breaking Bad was still airing, when Super Smash Brothers Brawl got announced, and for many other precious moments. how can you honestly be okay with yourself for having to send your own brothers and sisters into purgatory for Fandom's Scorched Earth initiative? you are tasked with eradicating the current userbase to get rid of any board culture so the new userbase can create a new standard of strict gaming discussion.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

I wonder what like being a mod at this very moment. They must have some inside scoop about what Fandom wants. What's it like knowing that in a few days you're going to have to pull on the trigger on almost every user you have grown to known in the past decade. Sure you may not have gotten along with all of them, but they were still people you shared a laugh with . These were people that were there with you when Breaking Bad was still airing, when Super Smash Brothers Brawl got announced, and for many other precious moments. how can you honestly be okay with yourself for having to send your own brothers and sisters into purgatory for Fandom's Scorched Earth initiative? you are tasked with eradicating the current userbase to get rid of any board culture so the new userbase can create a new standard of strict gaming discussion.

Mods are community volunteers, not employees or slaves. I think you're slightly overselling their involvement in this.

pinky0926 posted...

All you need to do is think about it from the perspective of obeying stakeholders and advertisers. They don't want politics, hornyposting, or really even communities forming at all. They just want people who will click on ads.

Yeah, they don't want hornyposting so more people click their hornyads.

On one hand, mods have access to info that normal users dont.
On the other hand, I cant see Fandom posting a big sticker in the mods-only forum saying "Be ready, we are going to move all political topics to CE and turn them private next week".

Foppe posted...

On the other hand, I cant see Fandom posting a big sticker in the mods-only forum saying "Be ready, we are going to move all political topics to CE and turn them private next week".

The mauds were aware of it in advance. Some of them outright said as much.

Foppe posted...

On one hand, mods have access to info that normal users dont.
On the other hand, I cant see Fandom posting a big sticker in the mods-only forum saying "Be ready, we are going to move all political topics to CE and turn them private next week".

I can't speak for the site under Fandom, but in the past mods generally had no more advanced notice of those things than other users did.

Those 10,000 new users not using adblock on the game boards better be worth it!

no one is going to want to sponsor gamefaqs if the community is full of horny posters and people that want to discuss politics on a site about videogames

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

no one is going to want to sponsor gamefaqs if the community is full of horny posters and people that want to discuss politics on a site about videogames

*looks at all ads*
Seriously, are you being satiric or are you a Fandom shill?

Why is this a problem to begin with? Why should they give a damn if someone gets offended by boobs or calling out fascists, as long as they dont stop clicking the links?

Good thing Fandom is keeping the non-toxic and welcoming system boards.

Foppe posted...

*looks at all ads*

Especially the horny and political ads.

mustachedmystic posted...

Why is this a problem to begin with? Why should they give a damn if someone gets offended by boobs or calling out fascists, as long as they dont stop clicking the links?

Yea. I don't get it either. I think Reddit solution is better and why they are growing while GameFAQs is dying. If you want to talk about politics go to r/politics. If you want to do hornyposting go to those subs that can't be mentioned here since GameFAQs is for 13 year olds and it against rules to link to those porn subs. They didn't ban all the politics or horynposting/porn boards. They still have several.

They want to sanitize the boards for their eventual plan to merge gamefaqs and all their gaming wikis. From gamefaqs youll have a link to the relevant wiki. From a wiki youll have a link to the relevant message board and guides.

uwnim posted...

They want to sanitize the boards for their eventual plan to merge gamefaqs and all their gaming wikis. From gamefaqs youll have a link to the relevant wiki. From a wiki youll have a link to the relevant message board and guides.

I'd also point out that Fandom has literally never wanted its sites to have distinct cultures or communities. They're the kings of corporate whitewash online.

pinky0926 posted...

All you need to do is think about it from the perspective of obeying stakeholders and advertisers. They don't want politics, hornyposting, or really even communities forming at all. They just want people who will click on ads.

It's the same trap that basically every website is falling into - youtube, reddit, etc.

How does destroying communities make money?

Sad_Face posted...

How does destroying communities make money?

Their target audience is people arriving via google or whatever.

Sad_Face posted...

How does destroying communities make money?

The FAQs are the main source of traffic, nothing else matters to them. They'll incorporate those onto their shit platform, pump up google results and call it a day, moving on to the next thing they'll buy and ruin.

voldothegr8 posted...

The FAQs are the main source of traffic, nothing else matters to them. They'll incorporate those onto their shit platform, pump up google results and call it a day, moving on to the next thing they'll buy and ruin.

Actually, I believe game boards are the main source of revenue. Social boards are essentially a waste of resources to them (someone has to babysit them and they don't make much if any revenue).

The only thing is, I don't see why they would care about any 'blowback'.

It's not going to have any real impact.

Fandom is owned by private equity, they bought gamefaqs likely as part of a package deal to get GameStop/giant bomb. My guess is their goal is to boost the fandom brand to show how much of online gaming traffic goes to their sites & build the prestige of the brand. This positions them better for an eventual IPO. They dont give a fuck about the boards or communities, this is just a liability to them

Seeing the shit and contradictory response to closing 261 and their shit and contradictory response to this whole fiasco, I think it's pointless to speculate WHAT their actual plan is because it seems they either don't have one or they are just flat out lying to us.... or probably both really.

NES4EVER posted...

If you wish to stick around, all you need to do is follow the rules.

Everyone makes mistakes, and there's not much we can do if punishments become more severe.

bover_87 posted...

Actually, I believe game boards are the main source of revenue. Social boards are essentially a waste of resources to them (someone has to babysit them and they don't make much if any revenue).

Yeah, when you Google something about a video game a bunch of Reddit and gamefaqs message board posts are in the top results.

Vigero posted...

CE has NEVER been a good board to begin with. It's always been...what it is. That being said it was becoming 261 2.0.

Combine that with the staff's inability to properly moderate politics related messages properly and you reach the conclusion that it's for the best to just get rid of political discussion overall on this site.

If it's going to to continue to be handled poorly (always was and always will be), it's just best not to even have it and deal with the issues surrounding.

Trumper whines about their "conservative views" being modded instance #84366434578865322568997653347886