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There are a lot of people who have a lot of suggestions for how GW could be run better, or how they could run their games better, etc. Often, these threads wind up in forums that don't have a lot to do with what the purpose of the forum is. For example, people opining on the idea that GW writes rules so that people will buy more models in the 40k forum. In this case, it's really a thread about GW, not a thread about 40k. Others might start threads to talk about how GW's support for tournaments, or the means by which they produce fluff that wind up in tournament forums or background forums. Once again, it's not about tournaments or background, it's about GW, and the way they run their business.

These topics seem to come up a lot, and wherever they come up, they're not really on topic. As such, I propose a special sub-forum for people to discuss GW and how it operates.

People who have ideas would want this. If they have suggestions or want people to sign petitions for letters to send to GW, then it would be much better organized to have everything on this subject in one place, and if any GW employees actually read dakka, it's more likely that they would actually see suggestions if they were all put into one place, rather than having them spread out over a dozen other forums.

People who don't care would also like this as well, as it would help curb the endless trickle of off-topic threads that annoyingly pop up in the forums that they regularly frequent.

Really, it's a win-win for everybody.

Plus, there's the volume for it. As of this writing, there are currently five open topics about the way that GW operates, which have 241 posts in them. All five were created in the last WEEK. To put that in perspective, if you assume this is average volume, you'd have more GW threads from just the 40k general forum than you would in the hordes and warmachine forum. If we can have a forum for Lord of the Rings and Mantic Games and Blackwater Gulch, all of which have lower traffic, then surely we could have a forum dedicated to a suggestion box for GW.

I do think this is a good idea, however, if GW people are on Dakka they surely would've seen all the complaints already. I think that a separate forum for GW complaints would help but it would be best if there was one on the GW site, but I realize that that probably won't happen...

Two major issues there.

#1: You are assuming that GW actually cares to read what it's players care about.

#2: You are assuming DakkaDakka can handle amount of hate mail that would be posted in this section daily.

GW is a corporate business. They do what they do to make profits and make their stock holders see dividends. Nothing else matters to them and unless people vote with their wallets and stop buying models from them, they do not care what people have to say. This is why they took down their facebook and other forums of official contact.

Biggest issue with this suggestion: There will not be enough traffic to make it worth it, and this is something the admins don't like to do.

Threads would be locked on a constant basis, and most of the threads would be trash. It will turn into another GW official forum *shudders*.

It would be an echo chamber frequented only by people who don't benefit from being reminded of the general discontent in the community (those who benefit being: the people who might be near the tipping point of dropping GW or at least branching out to another system) and trolls looking to stir up flamewars with the malcontents, you'd still wind up with a lot of random anti-GW threads spread throughout the forum, requiring as much mod interference as they do now, and all the threads would basically just be duplicates that would be immediately locked.

The current system seems to be working just fine: duplicate threads get visibly slapped down, the thread titles are seen by everyone looking at the board, and despite radically contrasting viewpoints they remain civil and at least somewhat productive (as much as such things can be productive).

I think it is a good suggestion but it would be the most toxic thread section on these forums. People who are solution orientaitet usualy do something posetive with their energy. "Haters" complain because they get a very good ventelation for their frustration and they can find good enjoyment in the esthetic of comptempt.

I say chuck them all in on the same place on the forum.

I second the idea of having a special section / thread for these. It will be entirely useless, but it would improve the other forums as those threads disappear and most users then know which place not to go to.

There is no reason to do this, at all. Games Workshop has made it abundantly clear that they don't give one single solitary flying feth about what the community thinks about how they run their business. It's why they shut down their forums, and it's why they shut down their facebook. In all of their interactions over the last few years, their message has been clear and unwavering: They do not want to hear from you. They want you to come into a retail store, spend $800, and then go away, forever.

I don't think we should spend even a second of developer or moderator time (not to mention however much bandwidth usage and forum fracturing) and trying to drag a horse to water. If they want to know what we think, they already have numerous methods open to them (which they have eschewed). If a kid doesn't want to eat Brussel sprouts, he's not going to want to eat them no matter what plate you put them on.

If you absolutely must communicate with Games Workshop, they have a preferred method for that: write a paper letter, stick it in an envelope, and mail it. In a week, someone in Nottingham will be happy to throw it out unread, and the net effect for both parties will have been exactly the same.

TL;DR:

Ouze I think you are missing the point here. It is not to the benefit of the people complaining in these threads.

Or techniquela I do think they would get over their unique rage issue sooner.

However the other forums would be free of them. That is a benefit.

I see. So only complaints about Games Workshop would be moved to this hypothetical forum?

Or is any thread talking about Games Workshop going to be moved here? New Releases, 40k Tournaments, Tom Kirby Punched My Mom, Games Workshop Stock results, Chapterhouse Lawsuit thread, How tall are Space Marines, these are all no longer on-topic anywhere else but all fit into the same hypothetical forum despite the myriad themes?

It is sarcasm or oddly worded frustration Ouze. It is hard to tell just with just the text. I do not think sarcasm is a very good argumentation teqnicue. Dragging a good suggestion into the dirt by being childish about the subject matter is not strengthening your case.

I would not think it would be much work on the behalf of the moderators to make a new sub forum. They would not need much more maintenance the other such toxic threads. We would just keep then under lock and key instead of having them swamp up elsewhere. And these are not people we are talking about putting in a getho, merely sifting out spam to the elephant graveyard where anger threads come to howl.

I like how you indicated clearly that you didn't understand my tone, and then just immediately assumed the worst and called me childish.

Are you going to answer any of the questions I asked in my post? I thought they were legitimate questions. Are we only moving "complaints" to this new subforum, or is it anything Games Workshop related? Who is the arbiter of what makes a thread "toxic", as opposed to when it would just normally be locked now? I mean, what exactly do you consider, to use your word, "spam" to be sent to the elephant graveyard?

How exactly is this supposed to work, in practice? Games Workshop's annual price hike is almost upon us - does this mean that anything related to this topic would automatically go with the rest of the "anger threads"?

I am well and truly perplexed with what this is intended to accomplish, and why anyone would think the unpaid volunteer mods for this site are interested in working on their own time to polish the PR of a multi-milliondollar global corporation by relegating threads that paint that corporation in a bad light to some dusty corner of the site, with the rest of the (again, your word) "haters".

The intent is to get fewer of these threads in the other forums. Just by having a forum such as this many of the more experienced dakka users who attend these threads will suggest that they should be posted in whatever pleasant name that forum will have. Something like "Suggestions and complaints to GW" with a sub heading of "this section is not for rules suggestions, these should be posted in "rules suggestion". Something the general public will feel like a legitimate forums for such things and one that suggests a constructive attitude (of course, that will probably not always be the case.)

On the working hypothesis that this would fan threads about this subject into that sub section of the forum over time it would be worth it. Of course if the work required to create this sub forum would be big this is not worth the coders free time.

As for moving threads into that sub forum I do not think it is something that should be highly prioritised by the moderators but if a lot complaints do come in it should be moved. Most threads are probably diaspora belonging in several other forums, but some threads are quite clearly just opened up to went some frustration or positive suggestions from people who do not have your inside information regarding their PR input sensors.

I do not mind people painting GW in a bad light, but I do not like people who complain a lot about something I am very aware of and that I completely agree with but using a lot of energy on it is not worth it. I want them out of my soup so to say.

As for the dictionary of haters and toxic. Haters come from the meme "Haters gone hate" and it refers to people who get a lot of satisfaction out of complaining, ether by the aesthetics of the vocabulary or by some other means. Toxic threads are threads where this happens a lot.

Although I do feel both you and me Ouze have probably invested more energy into this argument then this is worth. If the programmers like it cool. If not it was just a suggestion.

Bitching about GW is part of the hobby. And it is just as relevant in its appropriate forums (news or discussion) as Kickstarters are.

If we move everything every time somebody gets tired of looking at something we would be a very fragmented forum that is very hard to navigate.

 Niiai wrote:
Something the general public will feel like a legitimate forums for such things...

If we set up a sub-forum and lead people to believe that it is a legitimate place to pass feedback to GW, that would be misleading.

On the working hypothesis that this would fan threads about this subject into that sub section of the forum over time it would be worth it. Of course if the work required to create this sub forum would be big this is not worth the coders free time.

The work required to create a sub-forum is minimal.

The work required to police it would be more substantial. Like Ouze, I'm a little confused as to just what you see as valid material for such a forum. Having a forum like that isn't going to stop people complaining in GW threads on other boards.

What if, instead of it being a Suggestion Box, or even a Games Workshop forum, it was a Corporate Entity forum?

Then it could encapsulate topics such as:
Games Workshop
Tom Kirby
GW vs Chapterhouse
GW vs blogs
GW vs Internet Retailers
Foam Wars

I would be very excited to see such a modification, and really, they're a topic all to their own. I mean, a GW discussion isn't really appropriate for anything in 40k or Fantasy anymore than discussing Tau would be appropriate in a Space Marine thread.

I suppose they make sense in Dakka Discussions, but I still think there should be a corporate thread.

 daedalus wrote:
What if, instead of it being a Suggestion Box, or even a Games Workshop forum, it was a Corporate Entity forum?

Then it could encapsulate topics such as:
Games Workshop
Tom Kirby
GW vs Chapterhouse
GW vs blogs
GW vs Internet Retailers
Foam Wars

I would be very excited to see such a modification, and really, they're a topic all to their own. I mean, a GW discussion isn't really appropriate for anything in 40k or Fantasy anymore than discussing Tau would be appropriate in a Space Marine thread.

I suppose they make sense in Dakka Discussions, but I still think there should be a corporate thread.

Aww but we already have the video game forum

 daedalus wrote:
Foam Wars

The Foam Wars were the golden standard of wargaming drama to which other, lesser dramas are compared and found wanting.

What is Foam Wars and where can i read about these "Goldend standard" of Dramas?

Here is a chunk of it:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/314511.page

Although I don't want to threadjack this, I do feel I should mention that what Alf posted was only part of it. For example, the guy who sent the C&D was Romeo, and a few weeks later the Warstore had a sale with coupon code "Juliet". There were about 6 or 7 threads at one point and the factionalization was fierce as hell.

insaniak wrote:Having a forum like that isn't going to stop people complaining in GW threads on other boards.

But all of those complaint threads could be moved to that forum so they don't clutter up everything else.

I'd much rather that nonsense bile threats have a proverbial trash can that they can be thrown into than to have the garbage strewn about everywhere else. There's no technical reason to lock the threads, but there is enough traffic generated by them to move them somewhere else.

If there are threads of people talking about something, then that is because people think it is something worth talking about. Just because you don't like the subject doesn't mean that it should be put into a corner in the forum. It's no different than the people always asking for Kickstarter forums.

Also, nice necro...

Thread terminated. Please don't revive threads that are more than 30 days dormant.