Sites that Could be Great

[davidn]

First of all, I'm astonished that the bug in Word that makes it not recognise files in directories with spaces in them is still there. I would have thought that in the ten years between Windows 95 arriving and now, it would have been fixed somewhere along the way.

But the Internet is what I really want to talk about - I was writing a CV up today and I realised that now (especially on the Internet) being able to communicate competently is something to be proud of rather than something that you should expect of people. There are a number of sites that could be very intelligent and worthwhile but are made almost unbearable by the incoherent masses that frequent them. I'm not doing this because I'm unnecessarily strict about use of English, but rather that I'm disappointed that these sites have potential that just doesn't surface because of some of the participants.

Exhibit A: GameFAQs

GameFAQs has fallen to rather a huge amount of advertising and commercialism recently (quite like a lot of recent games, actually) but I’m not going to hold that against it. It had quite an unfortunate reputation for being a home for idiots a while ago, but since the site merged with Gamespot the population level seems to have exploded. The majority of the petty popularity wars can be avoided by visiting the boards for less recent games which are underappreciated by most of the image-obsessed - indeed, the Classic Gaming board on the site is now one of the few bearable places to be.

It’s quite upsetting, really, because I have contributed a considerable amount to the site (especially when I was still at the school age that most of its membership seems to be) - now places such as the original Unreal Tournament board have been swamped with tidal waves of gibberish. The Silent Hill boards were some of my favourite forums in the past - the games are rather involved and so provoke more intelligent discussion than most, so they haven't been hit as hard, but the difference is still noticeable.

Exhibit B: Newgrounds

Newgrounds is a great idea in theory. It's a place to share and comment on Flash movie files - I haven't ever tried Flash myself, but it does seem that anyone with a fair amount of talent can produce something worthwhile with a little effort. Unfortunately, effort and talent are sadly lacking in some of the uploaded files, but the site has a fairly good system to allow users to get rid of the content that is lacking in quality.

My main problem is with the feedback sections, which often tend to degenerate in to flamewars about how good Halo is, or an unreadable tirade of abuse from someone who didn't get the joke in the Flash cartoon or couldn't work out how to play it, lacking the necessary brain capacity to read the instructions. Typically the author of the Flash politely points them in the right direction a couple of times, then gives up as the situation escalates and the pressure of morons per square inch becomes too much.

Exhibit C: The Daily Click

I should say right now that I don't categorise this in the same way as I do the other two that I've mentioned so far (largely because I'm an administrator there and doing so would probably get me booted) - in fact, some of my frustration is because I'm known as being one of the most calm and level-headed administrators, and this means being totally unable to express my opinions on some of the site members. Many times I've thought of a great comeback to someone and have refrained from posting it.

The site is primarily for the discussion of Multimedia Fusion, which in my opinion is one of the best things to have happened to multimedia authoring - its object oriented system allows creation of decent applications in a very understandable way. Add an object to a frame, give it some "If... then" style conditions and actions, and allow everything to work together from there. The whole thing is built on C++, so if there isn't an object to do what you want, you can just drop down a level and code one.

You'd think that intelligent discussion could be maintained among people who use something like this, but there is a definite conflict of egos between many of the site members, and the head admin is victimised almost constantly (some of this was deserved, some was not). On top of that there are the semi-illiterate and impatient newcomers who can't work out how to use the program but have seen the results generated by others.

I'm going to admit that many of the discussions on the site cause me a great deal of unexpressed hilarity rather than frustration.

happigamer-billybobjoe198, September 18 2004
What i meant if u voted in the past on this game dont vote again!!!!!! and u never won the europian lotter the ony forighn thing that happend to us that was luky (aka me) was that we found the aribic drivers licens the person got a C on the test

AsparagusTrevor, September 20 2004
Just stop. Nothing you say makes sense. Don't talk anymore please.

Everything that I was thinking, expressed concisely. And this is one of the more recent examples, thanks to kingradix, who is completely opposite to me in that he's never afraid to be blunt with people. It was during a discussion about the significance of the number 420. (I thought his first reply was rather harsh, but to be fair it is a fairly accurate assessment of the member in question.)

nuklear: It is 420 because the police #'s for a drug bust is 420. Like, my school was clam baked today. It was awesome.
Radix: 420 isn't the police code for anything anywhere, idiot.
nuklear: 420 is the police code, everywhere, idiot.
Radix: Here nuklear, I'll lend you some neurons. Six just isn't enough.
nuklear: I dont understand nerd humor.........THat I am not kidding........what the hell is a neuron and why should i care.

Fortunately another admin locked the topic before I exploded from laughing.

Some of the otherwise more intelligent members of the site sometimes let the side down as well - recently a hacking program has been submitted. There isn't a specific rule about potentially harmful programs, though I think that there should be. What is significant about this one is that it requires you to send a file to the victim, get them to run the program, then ask them to turn off their firewall and get them to check their IP address before you can do anything to them. That seems such a hilariously ineffective way of hacking that I almost just allowed the program on to the site.

Exhibit D: The IMDB

The IMDB is a fantastic resource. Hours can pass while wasting time on it, clicking on various people and finding out pieces of useful information such as that Treguard from Knightmare was also a character in Peter Molyneux's Fable, or that Jim Cummings seems to have voiced every cartoon character to have ever existed.

Where it all falls down is on the forums - many of them contain pointless arguments which could only be found otherwise on GameFAQs. The worst place for them are for mindless action films - half of the membership thinks that they're the greatest films ever, the other half think that they're above that sort of thing. An example that springs to mind is Van Helsing - I loved that film because I don't think that I actually stopped laughing all the way through it. Its merit as a cinematographic piece, however, is suspect, and the battle still rages on in the forums.

It's amazing what people do to avoid revision, isn't it?

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

The IMDB forums are so polarised because nobody comments on films to say "it was alright, i guess." You'll only do it to say "OMGWTFBENKENOBI!!!" or to flame it and everybody who liked it. Some of the forums are just full of fandom wars, like Harry Potter vs Lord of the Rings vs Star Wars vs The Matrix, or some cretins going "The incredibles sucked; it wasn't funny, Shrek 2 had Donkey LOL."

no point to this, they just annoy me

[distantj.livejournal.com]

Haha, well put!

[distantj.livejournal.com]

Net people hate everything anyway, no matter what. There's stuff I LOVE, and all my RL mates love, but step into a discussion of it on the net and you get "OMFGWTFSTFU TIS ARE TEH SUK!!11 NE1 HOO LIEK IT ARE TEH N00B!!!1"

[clonion.livejournal.com]

I rarely look at the boards, and did so recently for Downfall. They made me sick. Neo-Nazi/white supremacists claiming that the Holocaust was a lie, etc. Reminded me (in a rather extreme way) why I don't look at the boards.

[humphrey-clarke.livejournal.com]

This is the worst forum ever

http://forum.ogrish.com/index.php

[humphrey-clarke.livejournal.com]

And this is the worst thread ever

http://www.betweenthecoasts.com/archives/000232.html

[distantj.livejournal.com]

Wow, like to complain, don't we.

Meh, arguing on the internet is like taking part in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.

My suggestion? Go out and talk to some people in real life about stuff instead, a real life discussion is always more fun and reasonable.

[kingradix.livejournal.com]

And lucky us, the Cox brothers have decided to visit us again this month. They've even started submitting those wonderfully well-thought-out reviews they're so terribly good at.

[davidn]

Such an appropriate surname, really.

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

I just would like to point out that Nuklear is right about about the origin of 420. At least in the USA.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Really? I'd heard it was just an urban myth/legend (even in the USA). Then, again, you do live there.

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

it has become quite a legend. Although I also feel that legend is often based in reality. The radio codes have been changed since the emergence of rampant drug culture surrounding 420. So, now it really is legend. I think in more recent years 420 has become more than just Marijuana, but an excuse for people to do evil things (ex. Columbine, Oklahoma City bombing). But I think those are more based on the fact that 20th of April is Hitler's birthday. I have heard and read that 420 started out as a time and not a day. To be perfectly honest I have alwasys seen it written 4:20, and all through high school it was a time when people would meet on the lawn and get high.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Plus, of course, all the clocks in Pulp Fiction are 4:20

[kingradix.livejournal.com]

Wrong. First of all, different states use different police codes. So it can't be "At least in the USA." The term actually originated with a group of Californian kids at San Rafael High School. The Californian penal code entry 420 has to do with obstructing access to public resources or something.

Seriously, look it up. Don't believe what your friends tell you; your friends are idiots.

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

Ah, you like David made the same mistake, a penal code and a police code are different. And there is no San Rafael High School. I don't think it really matters anymore where it started or why, I think people's perceptions of how things originate are just as important. Also, the radio codes stay the same no matter what state you are in, that is how they catch people over state lines. :D

[kingradix.livejournal.com]

Some states share police codes, but it isn't nation-wide. Look it up.

There's is no police radio code 420, in california or anywhere else (actually I think india uses 420 for something). Look it up.

The history of the phrase 420 is actually fairly well documented. Look it up.

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

look it up is a fun phrase, isn't it? They have changed police codes since the number started being associated with heavy drug use.

[danbodaxter.livejournal.com]

That's true, to say the least. That phenomenon you have experienced there is known by demographers as "deficiency of a compulsory IQ test before registration on an ISP".

I'ld say you forgot Urban Dictionary, but that's probably a good thing, given what you can find there with a little time.

[davidn]

It's funny you should mention that, because the very same thought occurred to me today as well - I knew that there's something that I'd forgotten to include.

Urban Dictionary could be a great resource, ideal for things such as looking up common slang terms that you're too embarrassed to ask someone about (that's what I use it for). Instead it's full of adolescents defining parts of the anatomy that they will never reach.