For a "general site" it's good, but for specific content not great. For example, the Source is specialized in Legacy. There's a lot of great reading to be had at there for the format. I don't like TMD's formatting as that's probably the most elitist of the poster packs and the forum also reflects the elite nature of Vintage.
Standard is more vulgar and the forum reflects that as well as having various niche forums which encourages more casual people with varied interests. Creating more of an "elite" forum like TMD I think would be futile with tiered membership, however looking at sharp distinctions between Salvation and Source deal with moderation and system style for moving around content.
But yea, general forums like the Rumor Mill expecting a dynamic breakdown and synthesis into new theories and the like? Not going to happen until play testing emerges to see what can be done with said card, I never read beyond the first post. Even reading some of Source's commentary is chicanery.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
I think the two sides (competitive and casual) could co-exist a lot better if they understood each other a little better. But there are some issues that are going to come up when they mix.
A) I don't bag on casual players for being casual. That's cool if that's what they want to do.
However...
B) If they're posting in a competitive area (outside of dedicated casual forums) I'm not going to sugar coat my criticism of a bad card. If you want to tell yourself that your favorite card is awesome, that's cool. But don't try to sell me or others on it when it is clearly inferior. See Flameblast Dragon v Inferno Titan.
C) If you're posting on a network and talking about decks, don't bring up netdecking and how awful it is. It's stupid. Really stupid. Like, so unbelievably stupid it is hard to comprehend. If you don't want to play against netdeckers, stay at the kitchen table. It's what I do when I play EDH. I want to have fun playing EDH. If someone comes with their uber fast turn 2 combo kill, I'm just not going to play against them any more. It's that simple. If you don't want to play against netdeckers, don't go to competitive or semi-competitive events. Meanwhile, don't complain about it when you do.
Because there is a huge potential for "crowd-sourcing" deck building and tweaking, lots of valuable feedback to be had about changes and the meta, but more and more it seems to be drowned out by "white-noise" casual players. I literally had someone argue 61 cards was ok when discussing optimizing puresteel and I mouth-vomited a bit.
61 cards is, from a mathematical standpoint, optimal if the deck in question gains enough value adding from the 61st card to offset the decrease in probability of drawing any given card in the deck. This is likely a very rare situation, but none-the-less it is possible.
You have no idea how tempted I am to respond with just "Cool story, dudebro."
I don't think that sort of response, however tempting it might be, is very constructive. People won't feel like they have a reason to post in Community Issues if an argument is approached that way. Whether or not he's right, he's allowed to hold an opinion and express it, and outside of 'I have a problem with Moderator So-and-So' threads, opinions on this portion of the site deserve more than a juvenile 4chan-style reaction.
That being said, this is hardly the sort of website pros or grinders or whomever would frequent anyway, regardless of the deck quality people possess. If people don't want to netdeck or use certain cards, or at least say that on the Internet, the point isn't worth arguing.
I agree that discussion of new cards in the Rumor Mill tends to be irrelevant, but it's more about posting fast than posting intelligently in those regions. I recommend just looking at the new card and maintaining a discreet silence.
Like many posters before myself have said, I too would like a citation or two. But I think the OP just kinda "feels" that the pros have a negative view of MTGS. He "feels" a lot of different ways about many things that others have or have not said. Life is a lot more subjective, I think he'll find, than even he wants to admit.
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Standard:
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
I don't think that sort of response, however tempting it might be, is very constructive. People won't feel like they have a reason to post in Community Issues if an argument is approached that way. Whether or not he's right, he's allowed to hold an opinion and express it, and outside of 'I have a problem with Moderator So-and-So' threads, opinions on this portion of the site deserve more than a juvenile 4chan-style reaction.
Which is why I didn't do so, and gave an actual response instead. My intended meaning was not that I wanted to be dismissive and rude towards dudebro's concerns; I meant that I noticed an easy and relevant pun regarding his username and thought that was amusing. I figured the fact that I did give a thought-out and constructive reply after that joking comment would have made it clear that I wasn't simply being facetious.
I am friends with two local pros. (one of whom is an extremely well known) Neither like this site.
Honestly, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with mtgs -- even if that's what people seem to say. They simply have allegiances elsewhere.
Ah, but why would they form allegiances elsewhere?
Honestly, I agree with the OP. This site is like you know there's pirate gold somewhere nearby, and you have a map to it, but instead of just comparing the map to a newer one and saying "ah, the gold must be in one of the caves along the beach!" you have to go through all these trapped rooms and avoid all these mobsters along the way because they're there too for no adequately explained reason.
Face it, though, "content written by the users" has obvious pitfalls as well as benefits.
I am friends with two local pros. (one of whom is an extremely well known) Neither like this site.
Honestly, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with mtgs -- even if that's what people seem to say. They simply have allegiances elsewhere.
And they've been to this site...how many times? You see, your version of 'pro', as is anyone's, is subjective, whether they are well known or not. And to say that you know a couple of 'pros' without any information as to how many times they've actually visited the site and viewed its contents on a consistent basis to make such a determination, is well, sketchy at best.
As I am sure has been stated before, if a 'pro' happens to view the non-standard, non-modern areas of the forum, then turn around and say "This site is useless" or some such, has nothing but themselves to blame when they were obviously looking for Standard/Extended/Modern (I think those are the tournament variants?)
The same can be said if they happen into the Rumor Mill during spoiler time. Quite frankly it's scary in there :muh:.
So the whole tl;dr gist of it is: Saying you don't like this site because it's not 'pro' enough for you is a really boring excuse because you couldn't find something that's marked accordingly.
Forums are never going to be the premier place to come up with original, cutting edge decks. As has been mentioned above, professional magic players don't work in public, they keep their work secret. The reason makes sense: that's the bread and butter on their table, they're not going to ship it to the entire world for free on a forum. At the very least, they're going to get SCG to pay them for it - something we can't do here at MTGS on our shoe-string budget.
So if providing original content is something we can't use to compete with SCG or Channel Fireball or TCGplayer, what do we do to make MTGS more relevant?
To my mind, MTGS has two strengths. One, we have the most massive, most active forum-based population of any MTG site on the internet. Two, we made a name for ourselves on data compilation with the rumor mill. We don't come up with original content - we report it, and provide it in an accessible format to our audience.
Up to date metagame information is something that every competitive Magic player is interested in. It takes time to compile and to research, and I think there's market interest in short-cutting that information in a single place. At TCGplayer, a very similar thread that I updated for several months was a major success with the userbase.
But we need people willing to step up and help us update this (most importantly), and also promote it in article format and on Facebook. I'm talking to the Standard mods/the committee about resolving the issue that's being buried amongst ten different stickies. Potentially, we'll throw some redirects to it in other subs.
If this idea takes off, I can see porting it to other formats, and if we can get some support from Hannes, potentially a frontpage link. But it's going to need community support to get this rolling. If you're interested in that, contact me.
I'm making a new thread to highlight this issue, as well.
Personally, for Salvation to live you need to respect the bigger guys in the community, and if those people are feeling this way, then it can only hurt the forum in the long run.
Like many posters before myself have said, I too would like a citation or two. But I think the OP just kinda "feels" that the pros have a negative view of MTGS. He "feels" a lot of different ways about many things that others have or have not said. Life is a lot more subjective, I think he'll find, than even he wants to admit.
I 'feel' that all my friends who are involved in the magic community 'feel' that this website is not worth posting on.
Why?
Because the rules don't make any sense anymore.
This message board can't exist with a ruleset that was created well over 10 years ago. The internet has changed.
According to recent tweets - Inkwell Looter just got moderated for linking to his blog? Klug chimed in to state his distaste for the site as well.
Remember how Tom from MNM got suspended? XFD
Continually, this website is pushing away members of the community, rather than giving them reason to stay. Once someone on the site makes a name for themselves, they leave or are banned.
Rumors are drying up and/or inexistent, yet everyone still comes here to read about them. But why? MTGS isn't always the first source of information anymore. The discussions on rumor mill threads are, as some have put it, 'comparable with youtube comments'.
The spoiler is not the 'go to' it once was. Other sites have better spoiler systems, and everyone updates at the same speed or faster.
Twitter and Reddit accomplish most, if not all, of what MTGS used to do for the community.
Most magic sites have pushed forums out and embraced facebook. MTGS has next-to-zero social media presence.
The internet is all about adapting and evolving. Even SCG can do this, but MTGS is just wholly resistant to change.
The main thing holding MTGS back, is the enforcement of the rules.
It is a hugbox for people to post really poorly thought out opinions and strategies, because they can never have the truth be told to them - as it would if they went to FNM or anywhere else and repeated the same. Flaming is one thing, but calling a spade a spade is another.
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News and spoiler contributor for GatheringMagic.com
What Seds said above holds a lot of water. And to add to that: when MTGS was made, the rule set from the long-time defunct MTGNews was carried over for the sake of familiarity while the community adjusted, but was never meant to stay and merely tweaked over time, or stay and just become more convoluted. The rule set is rather draconian, and despite that several users have adopted the mentality of "we're better off without anyone that breaks rules so why should we care?", they aren't considering how that effects everything beyond the scope of one or two users while being self-righteous keyboard warriors. MTGS has no momentum. It grew way larger than it's predecessor ever was, but lost it's soul when the purpose of the Rumor Mill became null and void years ago and everything else failed to fill that void, leaving it to simply exist as a living tomb for the spirit of a dead website that wasn't all that great to begin with.
The main thing holding MTGS back, is the enforcement of the rules.
It is a hugbox for people to post really poorly thought out opinions and strategies, because they can never have the truth be told to them - as it would if they went to FNM or anywhere else and repeated the same. Flaming is one thing, but calling a spade a spade is another.
I would say that our consensus is that it's okay to attack ideas, but not the users. Meaning that I can say that your deck is terrible, no problem; but I can't say that you are terrible.
Example of a perfectly okay post:
This deck is absolutely terrible, and here is why. You have waaaay too many four-drops, and not nearly enough early game. Plus, having Slagstorms in the same deck as Birds of Paradise is a really bad idea. Either you need to use ramp that doesn't die to your own spells, or you have to use cards like Arc Trail instead of Slagstorm.
Example of a post that is not okay (because it's flaming):
I can't believe how bad you must be for making a deck like this. You have waaaay too many four-drops, and not nearly enough early game. Plus, having Slagstorms in the same deck as Birds of Paradise... Are you really this stupid? Either you need to use ramp that doesn't die to your own spells, or you have to use cards like Arc Trail instead of Slagstorm.
Example of another post that's not okay (because it's spam):
This deck is absolutely terrible.
Tl;dr: as long as you're not excessive about it, feel free to call a spade a spade.
To the people decrying the rules (specifically urzassedatives and Chaotix), could you please be more specific about what rules don't make sense? I mean this genuinely; I've never had a problem with any of the rules so I don't understand why people complain so vehemently about them.
To the people decrying the rules (specifically urzassedatives and Chaotix), could you please be more specific about what rules don't make sense? I mean this genuinely; I've never had a problem with any of the rules so I don't understand why people complain so vehemently about them.
seds mentioned a couple of specific examples. reread his post. i'll reiterate the ones that seem most relevant to me.
We are too strict about perceived advertising. We discourage people from trying to promote their blog, webcast, store, or any other thing that is actually integral to the magic community. This site becomes an isolated little island because of this. We need to make a better effort to become part of the global magic network and this means letting people promote their own stuff (within reason, spam should still be infracted).
We spend too much time pushing away members. We repeatedly get into fights about what users on this site should be allowed to do and not do. What they can have and not have. Why did we waste any time worrying about whats going on in the gutter? Why do we have so many ways for a user to have a negative experience from this site (flamed by a user, infracted by staff) but so few ways for a user to have a positive experience here?
seds mentioned a couple of specific examples. reread his post. i'll reiterate the ones that seem most relevant to me.
We are too strict about perceived advertising. We discourage people from trying to promote their blog, webcast, store, or any other thing that is actually integral to the magic community. This site becomes an isolated little island because of this. We need to make a better effort to become part of the global magic network and this means letting people promote their own stuff (within reason, spam should still be infracted).
We spend too much time pushing away members. We repeatedly get into fights about what users on this site should be allowed to do and not do. What they can have and not have. Why did we waste any time worrying about whats going on in the gutter? Why do we have so many ways for a user to have a negative experience from this site (flamed by a user, infracted by staff) but so few ways for a user to have a positive experience here?
I saw seds examples but I wanted to see if other people had thoughts. I honestly don't understand the problem with a rule against advertising. You're allowed to advertise your blog in your signature; why should you also be allowed to make posts that do nothing but shuttle traffic away from this website?
Saying we spend too much time pushing people away doesn't make a lot of sense when multiple other posters in this thread have pointed out that we continue to be the largest MTG community; aren't those two points at odds? And saying we "push people away" still doesn't really explain what rules are posing the problem.
Being the biggest community doesn't mean much when the signal to noise ratio is so high and you're pushing away one user that contributes for another ten that sign up to make one post about every new creature dying to removal and or that some card is good in whatever deck (and in actuality not) without rhyme or reason. As for examples? I have little time to dig up many examples, but they're all over the place beyond the rosey glasses. Speaking of time, time vs. reward is another argument in itself in terms of taking the time to read through posts in the competitive sections.
The signal to noise ratio is a good point and I'd be interested in hearing any potential solutions you have to it.
So you know that there are many rules that don't make any sense, and those rules are bad enough that they give you a negative impression of this site, but you don't actually know what those rules are and would have to go "digging" to find them?
On my initiative, the staff has already launched a review of our current policies and the current forum rules, not long before 'seds posted. Two of the rules that I've highlighted for scrutiny/clarification are spam, and backseat moderation. If there are other suggestions, I'm quite open to hearing about them. From my own review, the current version of the forum rules seems pretty reasonable. In the past, I think we've had some personnel issues that centered around draconian interpretations of the rules, but that's another area that we've been pursuing aggressively over the past month. The rules themselves - not unreasonable.
Advertising is a tricky area to navigate. It's not been my impression that we're stifling sharing useful resources. Certainly, we don't want spam PMs and product advertisement threads that no one wants to see.
Which is pretty much what the current version of the rules should allow:
Advertising
The promotion of other sites, forums or products is only allowed in signatures. Putting advertising links in posts is only okay as long as it contributes to the topic. Accounts whose only purpose is starting threads meant for advertising will be Banned instantly.
We're also looking into revamping the formatting on the rules, so that they're not a gigantic wall of text, but broken into more manageable chunks, potentially with hyperlinks.
The social media front is another that I've been concerned with - our presence there is very small. The major stumbling block there is that we'll need to have a dialogue with Hannes to receive control over the Twitter and FB accounts, and possibly do some work on the front page, and other forum features. I've dug up Hannes' contact info, so with a little luck we'll see some movement on several fronts.
And they've been to this site...how many times? You see, your version of 'pro', as is anyone's, is subjective, whether they are well known or not. And to say that you know a couple of 'pros' without any information as to how many times they've actually visited the site and viewed its contents on a consistent basis to make such a determination, is well, sketchy at best.
As I am sure has been stated before, if a 'pro' happens to view the non-standard, non-modern areas of the forum, then turn around and say "This site is useless" or some such, has nothing but themselves to blame when they were obviously looking for Standard/Extended/Modern (I think those are the tournament variants?)
The same can be said if they happen into the Rumor Mill during spoiler time. Quite frankly it's scary in there :muh:.
So the whole tl;dr gist of it is: Saying you don't like this site because it's not 'pro' enough for you is a really boring excuse because you couldn't find something that's marked accordingly.
Anyway, just my two cents.
The pros I describe are objectively pros. But that's pretty immaterial to what I'm saying.
Again, I felt that their negative reaction had nothing to do with the content here. So whether they've been here 0 or 100 times also is immaterial.
I felt it was due to other allegiances. (sponsorships, loyalty to sites whose owners they knew)
Personally, I enjoy the site. That's why I come here. I've seen a lot of extremely draconian moderation, but I've never myself been a victim of it.
Personally, for Salvation to live you need to respect the bigger guys in the community, and if those people are feeling this way, then it can only hurt the forum in the long run.
I am the poster of the aforementioned Tweet and I would like to elaborate on the content. From talking to a good number of MTG community members, either in real life or the Twitter community, the same feeling that I reflect in this Tweet is reciprocated. When I posted that earlier today, I got various replies that were all examples of what I believe to be poor moderation/management strategies -- this is what I believe is one of the negative features of MTGSalvation that drive/will drive members away.
I know urzassedatives in real life and he hit a lot of good points in his post; we've spoke frequently about the state of MTGSalvation. The bottom line is clear: you can't lag behind on policy, and you have to adapt for the future as the internet community continues to develop. I'm glad to see Azrael bringing news of a possible revision in policy. I have made several infractions in my time here, but I believe only one to be a truly warnable action, which I will admit my own fault on. The others that are on my record are infractions that exemplify this issue of poor moderation/management strategies.
Allow me to provide a small anecdote from someone who was a former moderator on a different website, with years of experience working behind the scenes. In theory and in practice, the rules that are currently in place for MTGSalvation are a set of rules that I have dubbed as a "low population community set," which is precisely what it sounds like; a set of rules for a small population. The management style that would fit this rule set is on same level as management in a small business. That is, each member of said business is on the same level, they've had the same training, or they will eventually be on the same level/had said training. Applying this scenario to a forum board, it is easy for each community member to coexist on this rule level.
Enter the growth and increase in popularity of this game. Enter the free registration. Enter community members that come to this forum and have no idea 1) how to access rules documents, 2) how to navigate themselves on this now-vastly large forum or within its community, 3) how to make a forum post (!), and lastly, 4) how to conduct themselves on the internet. As the number of people who are introduced to the community increases, this population set quickly becomes a "high population community set," which quickly deviates from our previous model. All of the sudden, each member of this community is no longer on a level playing field. The first step to realizing how to mange this type of situation is to realize that they will never be.
The rift that the MTGSalvation moderation staff has made a mistake in is to manage a large community with a low population approach. People with minor mistakes such as making a double post by accident are warned on sight. I've seen people with less than a few posts have this type of infraction; do not try to deny this fact. Has the moderator issuing the warning ever realized the conditions that I described above? What if it is someone's first time on a message board, and they don't know how to edit their post? Or even, what if it is someone's first time on a computer and they don't know how to move about the forum? If you punish this type of behavior, this is where the new member suffers, and as a result through word of mouth, through the internet, the MTGSalvation community suffers. You have many members in this community. But what about the ones you couldn't retain?
What is my anecdote? I was in the same position. I was brought into a moderation position for a community that was more than twice the current population of MTGSalvation. I set out to rid of the world of its small wrongs. I quickly realized that a) it's not possible, and b) there are much more important things to worry about. As a staff member, it is your job to sell your product, to sell this forum, and the first step is not to drive them away with piddly infractions. You can sell your product by being as helpful as you can. Move posts and notify your poster. Give a friendlier message to someone who commits a minor infraction (what is an "infraction" in real life? How does this translate to a new internet environment? Think about it). Track down the real threats to the health of this message board: the people who flame, the people who advertise non-MTG related garbage, the people who post suspicious links to binaries/Trojans. Encourage more use of the Report button so you can filter what is important and act on that type of behavior faster.
Right now I believe the staff here is too trigger happy on the infractions. You tell the user nothing if they get an automated message with "sorry, you get an infraction." If you want to take moderation to the next level, grab a voice-to-voice chat system like Ventrilo or Skype and have weekly meetings. Often times, the moderation staff may not be on the same page and the chaos at that high of a level will only trickle down into more confusion. A shift that I described should help. I think this community can get better, but the staff here needs their eyes to be open.
I hope this is food for thought; it's a much longer post than I had intended but I truly hope that it is for the better. Thanks,
I was beginning to wonder when the conversation would take that inevitable turn towards blaming the strict moderation for all of the site's woes.
I, myself, rarely post in the deck construction forums. When I do, I try to make my comments short, not too abrasive, and with a strong point. I couldn't care less what sort of unfair infractions they hand out, and I doubt most people are that concerned either; heck, I'd wager that at least 50% of the people who read those particular forums even have an account on the site, making that point moot to them.
I was beginning to wonder when the conversation would take that inevitable turn towards blaming the strict moderation for all of the site's woes.
I, myself, rarely post in the deck construction forums. When I do, I try to make my comments short, not too abrasive, and with a strong point. I couldn't care less what sort of unfair infractions they hand out, and I doubt most people are that concerned either; heck, I'd wager that at least 50% of the people who read those particular forums even have an account on the site, making that point moot to them.
Well, to be fair on my part, I didn't really say it was the sole reason.
Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on it, but hey, former moderator, see the world through moderation's eyes. It happens
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Just some dude.
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Standard is more vulgar and the forum reflects that as well as having various niche forums which encourages more casual people with varied interests. Creating more of an "elite" forum like TMD I think would be futile with tiered membership, however looking at sharp distinctions between Salvation and Source deal with moderation and system style for moving around content.
But yea, general forums like the Rumor Mill expecting a dynamic breakdown and synthesis into new theories and the like? Not going to happen until play testing emerges to see what can be done with said card, I never read beyond the first post. Even reading some of Source's commentary is chicanery.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
A) I don't bag on casual players for being casual. That's cool if that's what they want to do.
However...
B) If they're posting in a competitive area (outside of dedicated casual forums) I'm not going to sugar coat my criticism of a bad card. If you want to tell yourself that your favorite card is awesome, that's cool. But don't try to sell me or others on it when it is clearly inferior. See Flameblast Dragon v Inferno Titan.
C) If you're posting on a network and talking about decks, don't bring up netdecking and how awful it is. It's stupid. Really stupid. Like, so unbelievably stupid it is hard to comprehend. If you don't want to play against netdeckers, stay at the kitchen table. It's what I do when I play EDH. I want to have fun playing EDH. If someone comes with their uber fast turn 2 combo kill, I'm just not going to play against them any more. It's that simple. If you don't want to play against netdeckers, don't go to competitive or semi-competitive events. Meanwhile, don't complain about it when you do.
AKA, I agree with metamorph. As usual.
61 cards is, from a mathematical standpoint, optimal if the deck in question gains enough value adding from the 61st card to offset the decrease in probability of drawing any given card in the deck. This is likely a very rare situation, but none-the-less it is possible.
Check out my expected lands table at:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Airj6A6lYAz_dG05T2JETnVTak1xQ0tqOHNSdEJLWVE&hl=en_US#gid=0
I don't think that sort of response, however tempting it might be, is very constructive. People won't feel like they have a reason to post in Community Issues if an argument is approached that way. Whether or not he's right, he's allowed to hold an opinion and express it, and outside of 'I have a problem with Moderator So-and-So' threads, opinions on this portion of the site deserve more than a juvenile 4chan-style reaction.
That being said, this is hardly the sort of website pros or grinders or whomever would frequent anyway, regardless of the deck quality people possess. If people don't want to netdeck or use certain cards, or at least say that on the Internet, the point isn't worth arguing.
I agree that discussion of new cards in the Rumor Mill tends to be irrelevant, but it's more about posting fast than posting intelligently in those regions. I recommend just looking at the new card and maintaining a discreet silence.
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Which is why I didn't do so, and gave an actual response instead. My intended meaning was not that I wanted to be dismissive and rude towards dudebro's concerns; I meant that I noticed an easy and relevant pun regarding his username and thought that was amusing. I figured the fact that I did give a thought-out and constructive reply after that joking comment would have made it clear that I wasn't simply being facetious.
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
Honestly, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with mtgs -- even if that's what people seem to say. They simply have allegiances elsewhere.
[Limited] will see you through the flight!
Ah, but why would they form allegiances elsewhere?
Honestly, I agree with the OP. This site is like you know there's pirate gold somewhere nearby, and you have a map to it, but instead of just comparing the map to a newer one and saying "ah, the gold must be in one of the caves along the beach!" you have to go through all these trapped rooms and avoid all these mobsters along the way because they're there too for no adequately explained reason.
Face it, though, "content written by the users" has obvious pitfalls as well as benefits.
And they've been to this site...how many times? You see, your version of 'pro', as is anyone's, is subjective, whether they are well known or not. And to say that you know a couple of 'pros' without any information as to how many times they've actually visited the site and viewed its contents on a consistent basis to make such a determination, is well, sketchy at best.
As I am sure has been stated before, if a 'pro' happens to view the non-standard, non-modern areas of the forum, then turn around and say "This site is useless" or some such, has nothing but themselves to blame when they were obviously looking for Standard/Extended/Modern (I think those are the tournament variants?)
The same can be said if they happen into the Rumor Mill during spoiler time. Quite frankly it's scary in there :muh:.
So the whole tl;dr gist of it is: Saying you don't like this site because it's not 'pro' enough for you is a really boring excuse because you couldn't find something that's marked accordingly.
Anyway, just my two cents.
Right now, my best idea to attack the problem is the following:
The Standard Gauntlet Thread.
Forums are never going to be the premier place to come up with original, cutting edge decks. As has been mentioned above, professional magic players don't work in public, they keep their work secret. The reason makes sense: that's the bread and butter on their table, they're not going to ship it to the entire world for free on a forum. At the very least, they're going to get SCG to pay them for it - something we can't do here at MTGS on our shoe-string budget.
So if providing original content is something we can't use to compete with SCG or Channel Fireball or TCGplayer, what do we do to make MTGS more relevant?
To my mind, MTGS has two strengths. One, we have the most massive, most active forum-based population of any MTG site on the internet. Two, we made a name for ourselves on data compilation with the rumor mill. We don't come up with original content - we report it, and provide it in an accessible format to our audience.
Up to date metagame information is something that every competitive Magic player is interested in. It takes time to compile and to research, and I think there's market interest in short-cutting that information in a single place. At TCGplayer, a very similar thread that I updated for several months was a major success with the userbase.
But we need people willing to step up and help us update this (most importantly), and also promote it in article format and on Facebook. I'm talking to the Standard mods/the committee about resolving the issue that's being buried amongst ten different stickies. Potentially, we'll throw some redirects to it in other subs.
If this idea takes off, I can see porting it to other formats, and if we can get some support from Hannes, potentially a frontpage link. But it's going to need community support to get this rolling. If you're interested in that, contact me.
I'm making a new thread to highlight this issue, as well.
https://twitter.com/#!/AllSunsDawn/status/159331592693751809
Personally, for Salvation to live you need to respect the bigger guys in the community, and if those people are feeling this way, then it can only hurt the forum in the long run.
Come join us in the MTGSalvation chat ||| My trade thread. ||| My Personal Modern Blog: The Fetchlands
I 'feel' that all my friends who are involved in the magic community 'feel' that this website is not worth posting on.
Why?
Because the rules don't make any sense anymore.
This message board can't exist with a ruleset that was created well over 10 years ago. The internet has changed.
According to recent tweets - Inkwell Looter just got moderated for linking to his blog? Klug chimed in to state his distaste for the site as well.
Remember how Tom from MNM got suspended? XFD
Continually, this website is pushing away members of the community, rather than giving them reason to stay. Once someone on the site makes a name for themselves, they leave or are banned.
Rumors are drying up and/or inexistent, yet everyone still comes here to read about them. But why? MTGS isn't always the first source of information anymore. The discussions on rumor mill threads are, as some have put it, 'comparable with youtube comments'.
The spoiler is not the 'go to' it once was. Other sites have better spoiler systems, and everyone updates at the same speed or faster.
Twitter and Reddit accomplish most, if not all, of what MTGS used to do for the community.
Most magic sites have pushed forums out and embraced facebook. MTGS has next-to-zero social media presence.
The internet is all about adapting and evolving. Even SCG can do this, but MTGS is just wholly resistant to change.
The main thing holding MTGS back, is the enforcement of the rules.
It is a hugbox for people to post really poorly thought out opinions and strategies, because they can never have the truth be told to them - as it would if they went to FNM or anywhere else and repeated the same. Flaming is one thing, but calling a spade a spade is another.
Twitter
(Also known as Xenphire)
I would say that our consensus is that it's okay to attack ideas, but not the users. Meaning that I can say that your deck is terrible, no problem; but I can't say that you are terrible.
Example of a perfectly okay post:
Example of a post that is not okay (because it's flaming):
Example of another post that's not okay (because it's spam):
Tl;dr: as long as you're not excessive about it, feel free to call a spade a spade.
seds mentioned a couple of specific examples. reread his post. i'll reiterate the ones that seem most relevant to me.
We are too strict about perceived advertising. We discourage people from trying to promote their blog, webcast, store, or any other thing that is actually integral to the magic community. This site becomes an isolated little island because of this. We need to make a better effort to become part of the global magic network and this means letting people promote their own stuff (within reason, spam should still be infracted).
We spend too much time pushing away members. We repeatedly get into fights about what users on this site should be allowed to do and not do. What they can have and not have. Why did we waste any time worrying about whats going on in the gutter? Why do we have so many ways for a user to have a negative experience from this site (flamed by a user, infracted by staff) but so few ways for a user to have a positive experience here?
I saw seds examples but I wanted to see if other people had thoughts. I honestly don't understand the problem with a rule against advertising. You're allowed to advertise your blog in your signature; why should you also be allowed to make posts that do nothing but shuttle traffic away from this website?
Saying we spend too much time pushing people away doesn't make a lot of sense when multiple other posters in this thread have pointed out that we continue to be the largest MTG community; aren't those two points at odds? And saying we "push people away" still doesn't really explain what rules are posing the problem.
(Also known as Xenphire)
So you know that there are many rules that don't make any sense, and those rules are bad enough that they give you a negative impression of this site, but you don't actually know what those rules are and would have to go "digging" to find them?
Advertising is a tricky area to navigate. It's not been my impression that we're stifling sharing useful resources. Certainly, we don't want spam PMs and product advertisement threads that no one wants to see.
Which is pretty much what the current version of the rules should allow:
We're also looking into revamping the formatting on the rules, so that they're not a gigantic wall of text, but broken into more manageable chunks, potentially with hyperlinks.
The social media front is another that I've been concerned with - our presence there is very small. The major stumbling block there is that we'll need to have a dialogue with Hannes to receive control over the Twitter and FB accounts, and possibly do some work on the front page, and other forum features. I've dug up Hannes' contact info, so with a little luck we'll see some movement on several fronts.
The pros I describe are objectively pros. But that's pretty immaterial to what I'm saying.
Again, I felt that their negative reaction had nothing to do with the content here. So whether they've been here 0 or 100 times also is immaterial.
I felt it was due to other allegiances. (sponsorships, loyalty to sites whose owners they knew)
Personally, I enjoy the site. That's why I come here. I've seen a lot of extremely draconian moderation, but I've never myself been a victim of it.
[Limited] will see you through the flight!
I am the poster of the aforementioned Tweet and I would like to elaborate on the content. From talking to a good number of MTG community members, either in real life or the Twitter community, the same feeling that I reflect in this Tweet is reciprocated. When I posted that earlier today, I got various replies that were all examples of what I believe to be poor moderation/management strategies -- this is what I believe is one of the negative features of MTGSalvation that drive/will drive members away.
I know urzassedatives in real life and he hit a lot of good points in his post; we've spoke frequently about the state of MTGSalvation. The bottom line is clear: you can't lag behind on policy, and you have to adapt for the future as the internet community continues to develop. I'm glad to see Azrael bringing news of a possible revision in policy. I have made several infractions in my time here, but I believe only one to be a truly warnable action, which I will admit my own fault on. The others that are on my record are infractions that exemplify this issue of poor moderation/management strategies.
Allow me to provide a small anecdote from someone who was a former moderator on a different website, with years of experience working behind the scenes. In theory and in practice, the rules that are currently in place for MTGSalvation are a set of rules that I have dubbed as a "low population community set," which is precisely what it sounds like; a set of rules for a small population. The management style that would fit this rule set is on same level as management in a small business. That is, each member of said business is on the same level, they've had the same training, or they will eventually be on the same level/had said training. Applying this scenario to a forum board, it is easy for each community member to coexist on this rule level.
Enter the growth and increase in popularity of this game. Enter the free registration. Enter community members that come to this forum and have no idea 1) how to access rules documents, 2) how to navigate themselves on this now-vastly large forum or within its community, 3) how to make a forum post (!), and lastly, 4) how to conduct themselves on the internet. As the number of people who are introduced to the community increases, this population set quickly becomes a "high population community set," which quickly deviates from our previous model. All of the sudden, each member of this community is no longer on a level playing field. The first step to realizing how to mange this type of situation is to realize that they will never be.
The rift that the MTGSalvation moderation staff has made a mistake in is to manage a large community with a low population approach. People with minor mistakes such as making a double post by accident are warned on sight. I've seen people with less than a few posts have this type of infraction; do not try to deny this fact. Has the moderator issuing the warning ever realized the conditions that I described above? What if it is someone's first time on a message board, and they don't know how to edit their post? Or even, what if it is someone's first time on a computer and they don't know how to move about the forum? If you punish this type of behavior, this is where the new member suffers, and as a result through word of mouth, through the internet, the MTGSalvation community suffers. You have many members in this community. But what about the ones you couldn't retain?
What is my anecdote? I was in the same position. I was brought into a moderation position for a community that was more than twice the current population of MTGSalvation. I set out to rid of the world of its small wrongs. I quickly realized that a) it's not possible, and b) there are much more important things to worry about. As a staff member, it is your job to sell your product, to sell this forum, and the first step is not to drive them away with piddly infractions. You can sell your product by being as helpful as you can. Move posts and notify your poster. Give a friendlier message to someone who commits a minor infraction (what is an "infraction" in real life? How does this translate to a new internet environment? Think about it). Track down the real threats to the health of this message board: the people who flame, the people who advertise non-MTG related garbage, the people who post suspicious links to binaries/Trojans. Encourage more use of the Report button so you can filter what is important and act on that type of behavior faster.
Right now I believe the staff here is too trigger happy on the infractions. You tell the user nothing if they get an automated message with "sorry, you get an infraction." If you want to take moderation to the next level, grab a voice-to-voice chat system like Ventrilo or Skype and have weekly meetings. Often times, the moderation staff may not be on the same page and the chaos at that high of a level will only trickle down into more confusion. A shift that I described should help. I think this community can get better, but the staff here needs their eyes to be open.
I hope this is food for thought; it's a much longer post than I had intended but I truly hope that it is for the better. Thanks,
--Mark
I, myself, rarely post in the deck construction forums. When I do, I try to make my comments short, not too abrasive, and with a strong point. I couldn't care less what sort of unfair infractions they hand out, and I doubt most people are that concerned either; heck, I'd wager that at least 50% of the people who read those particular forums even have an account on the site, making that point moot to them.
Well, to be fair on my part, I didn't really say it was the sole reason.
Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on it, but hey, former moderator, see the world through moderation's eyes. It happens