Dima wrote:Personally i don't see any change in atmosphere. The atmosphere is always the same.

We joined in the same week, and I have seen changes. Your perception may be biased against acknowledging them for some reason.

It's just that more people start to understand that everything isn't so perfect or great

Honestly, in recent months, if the few complaints that pop up from time to time about how bad the forum is were removed, then I would see hardly anything to complain about; it is the complaints themselves that seem to generate the most friction now. Maybe we're looking for different things in a forum?

like the staff wants us to believe. Of course not the whole staff. Monk Ed was the only that said not everything is perfect and that lately they are trying to do their best, while NemZ and Sachi only gave attitude and never accepted any criticism.

You are not privy to the staff's views; and what appears to be trying to set them one against another is unlikely to be taken favourably.

pwhodges wrote:We joined in the same week, and I have seen changes. Your perception may be biased against acknowledging them for some reason.

You keep saying the same things again and again...... We joined in the same week blah blah..... What this has to do with anything? There are members you joined abefore us or after and share the same opinion as mine. My perception is not biased at all. It's yours that is biased because you are part of the staff so it's harder for you to see it.

pwhodges wrote:You are not privy to the staff's views; and what appears to be trying to set them one against another is unlikely to be taken favourably.

I edited the names shortly after my post and long before you posted in order to not start a new argument so i don't know how you caught the unedited post but anyway. Saying that i try to set them one against other is very filthy and your only objective is to make me look like a terrible person. Because your post is offensive towards me either take it back or edit it and stop bothering me with your nonsense.

That post does not come across as looking terribly rational. Just FYI . . .

Dima wrote:We joined in the same week blah blah..... What this has to do with anything?

It's good practice in discussion to make it clear that we are talking about the same thing - same period of the forum in this case.

i don't know how you caught the unedited post

By clicking it before you edited it? I then took time to compose my response, because I try to avoid saying things I immediately wish to change.

Dima wrote:You keep saying the same things again and again...... We joined in the same week blah blah..... What this has to do with anything? There are members you joined abefore us or after and share the same opinion as mine. My perception is not biased at all. It's yours that is biased because you are part of the staff so it's harder for you to see it.

As somebody who joined a mere month after you did and who is decidedly not staff (the purple boxes are because I do favors every now and again-- I have no actual power here) I concur with PW and SSD. I have certainly noticed a shift in forum atmosphere, particularly in how forum members relate to and act towards one another. Even if you care to make the argument that we're only saying what we are because we're biased, that doesn't do anything to address what we're actually saying.

Dima wrote:Because your post is offensive towards me either take it back or edit it and stop bothering me with your nonsense.

Weren't you against the special-snowflake attitude?

You know what? I do recall some form of change in EGF's history. Specifically, it was with Amanda Winn Lee's joining of our forum, and the amount of guff she immediately got (from one forum user in particular). After that, I started seeing some improvements as to how the mods and admins handled things. I don't think that was the inciting incident that accounted for all of the improvements made, nor do I think it was the last time EGF changed their ways. It's just a very particular incident that sticks out in my mind as being the one that pushed for improvements in the forum as a whole.

Dima wrote:Of course not the whole staff. Monk Ed was the only that said not everything is perfect and that lately they are trying to do their best, while the mods only gave attitude and never accepted any criticism.

I don't recall ever giving you attitude. I know you have a problem with NemZ, but as for me, other than disagreeing with you on certain things I don't see what I've done that could be seen as giving you attitude.

Dima wrote:You keep saying the same things again and again...... We joined in the same week blah blah..... What this has to do with anything? There are members you joined abefore us or after and share the same opinion as mine. My perception is not biased at all. It's yours that is biased because you are part of the staff so it's harder for you to see it.

There's also plenty of members that have joined before and after the two of you that share the same opinion that he does.

Saying that i try to set them one against other is very filthy and your only objective is to make me look like a terrible person.

How do you know that this is his objective? This statement toward him seems more like libel than anything he's ever written toward you.

Regarding the atmosphere of EGF, I have two observations to make.

The first is that the forums are not as active as they used to be. That may simply be because Rebuild 4.0 has been postponed and there isn't a whole lot of Evangelion stuff attracting new people like it was back when I joined in 2010 when Rebuild was just kicking off. A lot of the old guard have also left and those were the users I grew accustomed to when I was super active on this place back in 2011 and 2012 which makes a difference as those users tended to contribute a lot, particularly to off-topic which has become a bit stale in recent months. Used to be we'd have at least three different posts in the "what movie did you watch last thread" daily, now we can go up to a few weeks without anyone posting.

The second is that there is some lingering animosity between certain members of the forum which occasionally spills over into public discussion. Political discussions have also polarized the forum to some extant and driven in a wedge between certain groups of the community that didn't exist before. I think anyone who's been around as long as I have knows what I'm talking about. This kind of animosity has contributed to keeping off some of the older members of the forum and even though things have quieted down from were they were a year or so ago, there is still a bit of that underlying tension especially whenever a new political thread shows up which is what inspired me to create start this discussion in the first place.

Feel free to agree or disagree with me, this is just how I see it.

We've had several different cliques develop, some gone and others still around. The particular balance of such subgroups certainly has a powerful effect on the forum climate as a whole. This is natural and expected.

As the new forum settles down into a more stable form with the bugs worked out (and after Monk and Paul have had a well-earned break from such troubles) we'll be looking into how the new tools and available plugins might be effectively used to improve things. Now is an excellent time to share your thoughts on the subject either here or by PM, and we may be opening up some items for open discussion after the new year.

Switching to bb3.1 is just the beginning of the 'rebuild of evageeks'.

Elaborating on what Tank said, i was a moderately active member of the forum infamous for FML chuuniposting. The vital development and wisdom (not to say the eventual friends) i got thanks to other members's helping hand has always left me silently thankful and attached (to some degree) to this forum. The wave of forum culture change that started sometime around 2014 made me cut my losses (notice the avoidance of the word "choice" there) and dissattach from the forum as much as possible, but emotional inertia and reasons i don't feel like mentioning have left me in this semi-lurker limbo.

Incidentally i had seen the foe thread before and was displeased by it at first sight (my first draft was far more acidic) but decided to try and avoid it when i logged in as i feared voicing discontent would net me the love i have become accustomed to from certain elements around here. On that note i'd like to emphasize that, contrary to popular belief, i do not hate all the forum. I just find it unfortunate that i need to wade throught so much unpleasantness in order to hear from the few members/threads i like hearing from, and that all the recent-ish drama wound up polarizing and fragmenting the place so much that a significant part of our old userbase (most of whom were the kind of people that made this place great to me) saw themselves forced by cirscumtance to leave.

FWIW checking my last 3 pages of posts (going as far back as August 8) i can only find 3-4 posts with forum climate as the topic, 1 (the most recent one) of which could be classified as negative bitching. It might feel more visible, however, because limiting my activity on the forum to 1-2 day sessions every couple weeks condenses my posting to a little bit of everything, although it might be important to mention that most of the posts are 1-2 lines long off-hand remarks that can be made with little effort. That is because over time my disposition with the place changed from "hang around and participate in a nice vibrant community" to "take the least amount of catnip possible while you do what you set out to and log off ASAP". Actually intended not to come here until after new year's eve, but wanted to look for advice in a specific thread. Though really, it's curious to think that what i intended to be a vague but passive distaste with the forum environment net me two GTFOs along with being called a toxic, hateful bile-spewer. If you intended to convince me further of how bad an idea it is to get involved in this place, you've succeeded.

Finally, i'd like to clarify that i do visit (and to lesser degree participate) more than what is perceived on the forum, mostly throught lurking and occasional skype chats with regular and staff members. I'd classify my grasp on the improvements* as pretty good, which might feed into my heavily dim view of the forum as well as it's future prospects. If no ill assessments exist it's because the people who would have given them have long been kicked from the forum. Although i've already established my complaining makes for less than 10% of my total activity i also disagree with the idea that complaining itself deserves only censure. A healthy body is necessary for goodness, and i consider the same for communities (an agrupation of bodies). A steady march to a precipice still leads to a bad end, and i'd be thankful -not scornful- to someone who would point to me if i'm going to such a bad direction.

This post is getting long enought as is so the more general stuff on the actual forum environment will have to wait for another occasion.

*part of this disagreement being objectively bad (in my opinion of course) and part of it admittedly might fall into diverging ideas of what a good community entails.

Dream wrote:The wave of forum culture change that started sometime around 2014 made me cut my losses

Can you be more specific? What exactly is it that changed and how would you propose we could change it back?

Incidentally i had seen the foe thread before and was displeased by it at first sight

Why? You said you thought Dima had a point, but didn't actually explain your reasoning.

all the recent-ish drama wound up polarizing and fragmenting the place so much that a significant part of our old userbase (...) saw themselves forced by cirscumtance to leave.

Are these people who were banned or those who chose to leave on their own? If the latter, what keeps them away? What is it you think we should do about it?

Dream, you're just being far too vague with your comments. I believe you genuinely mean well but I don't feel any closer to a solution after reading your post.

Here, let me give you some structure to build on:

• What is the problem?
• Why is this a problem?
• Can the problem be fixed?
• What would we stand to gain by fixing it?
• How should we go about fixing it?
• What other problems might arise as a result of this fix?
• How do you suggest we minimize these secondary issues?

Edit: Discussion with Dream has been taken to PMs. Anyone else is also welcome to answer these questions here or by PMs, whichever you feel more comfortable with.

I can't understand why people kept quoting me while i was banned..... I couldn't reply or defend myself. Maybe they were expecting that i will respond after 2 months and continue this argument when my ban lifts? If yes (because i can't think anything more rationale), then i am sorry i will disappoint you, i won't. Personally i would never keep arguing with a banned member (or talk about a banned member in general) because it shows lack of respect. Of course i shouldn't be surprised with this. Not everyone can be a well behaved person.

Oh well. More members for my ignore list!

If it means anything, I had no idea about your requested time-out until after I'd submitted my reply. I suspect the same might be the case for the others. Not everybody checks the ban notices thread first thing when they log-in. As well, I was surprised when I did check the thread afterward to see that you had been banned.

Welcome back.

Thanks!

I thought that someone might have not seen it (that i was banned) but when i visited the site again i just saw 3-4 posts quoting my last message and i was .......

Anyway it's good to be back.

If I may chime in, I see several users talk about how the atmosphere keeps changing. I don't see it? The only thing I see is possibly a low population but at the end of the day is that really a bad thing? If you don't like low pop. forums, what are you going to do say five years down the line after Final is released? We'll already have discussed every little thing there is to discuss about Eva so what's after that? As far as behavior I have seen nothing change in the almost five years I've been here, and although I go extended periods of time not posting a single comment, I still come on here regularly throughout the day to check up on what I could or could not post. The only time I feel the need to post is when I have something to contribute to the discussion. But then again, maybe that's why I'm not seeing anything, I'm just watching other people post for posting's sake which may spark some unwanted friction. I dunno, I have a feeling someone is going to come out of the wood work and assure my the atmosphere has changed and I'm bland as a bat, but I swear I see no difference from when I first came here back in 2011.

I would say it's changed, but only in the way pretty much all of the internet has changed. Everything is polarized these days, and most camaraderie is just a means to end rather than an end in itself.

NemZ wrote:I would say it's changed, but only in the way pretty much all of the internet has changed. Everything is polarized these days, and most camaraderie is just a means to end rather than an end in itself.

I definitely wouldn't say that. I agree things have become polarized, but these days I feel the friends I've made on the 'net are genuine friends, whereas I never really believed that previously (going on some 25 years on the 'net now). I still don't have many, mind, but the ones I have now don't feel like transitory in the same way they did even just five years ago.

The one upside to controversy, I guess, is that it lets you see who will stick by you in rough times and who won't. It's not always who you might expect, but it is illuminating.

So read this thread out of boredom and a lot of it sounded kind of depressing. And I doubt you guys need to hear this but just felt like sharing anyway:

I usually come to this site at least once a year and spend a few weeks or more on it and I'm more of lurker/reader than a poster. Over the years this site has come to have intrinsic value to me because I consider it an incredible resource even if I don't agree with everything I read. And frankly like 90 percent of my opinions on this show is really just a synthesis of stuff I've read from other users over the years. So I just wanted to say that I think you guys do a amazing job in general when it comes to maintaining the site.

@Reichu You are actually the first person to ever make me feel stupid and angry on the internet lol. Evageek was like first website I ever participated in that wasn't related to instant messaging or ebay and when I posted my opinion on something eva related and you basically gave me a hard "NO, you are wrong". I remember being very angry but that made me to look up what you where talking about and I kinda face palmed afterwards. So anyway it was a very humbling experience since I never really had that kind of argument with a person in real life. So at the risk of sounding corny I just wanted to say you kinda helped me grow up a bit in the sense that you indirectly taught me to be more open minded.

Also your post have always been very interesting to read. I remember like devouring a lot of your post when I was kid. So you are my favorite user on this site and I like the straight forward style of your past posts and I don't really care if I don't agree with something you write. I know I'm a stranger but I just wanted to share since I though some of what you said was kinda sad to me.

Anyway the site is free and wanted to show my appreciation. TY!

zlink64 wrote:Also your post have always been very interesting to read. I remember like devouring a lot of your post when I was kid. So you are my favorite user on this site and I like the straight forward style of your past posts and I don't really care if I don't agree with something you write. I know I'm a stranger but I just wanted to share since I though some of what you said was kinda sad to me.

Amen, brother. Big Sis Reichu has always been a major draw to the site for me. One might even say I joined the site because of the topics I read back then (which might not even have been contemporary to my time of reading them) which heavily featured her.

I, too, had my internet cherry popped by Reichu. Things that cannot be unseen, I have seen. A lot of my knowledge of Eva came from her contributions back when I first joined up nearly a decade ago.