(Right so I, decided to rip off the Round Tables with a little twist. Say hello to Community Talk, which is basically RT except we only talk about community stuff. If you all enjoy this, I'd like to do more in the future.)
Welcome to Decoy's Dirty Dungeon (Ed-We are not calling it that) Community Talk.
I'm Decoy Elite, the ultimate distraction, and since I'm good at pretending to be a mod anyway, I'll be the one moderating this discussion.
Today's subject will be the Battles forums and just where the heck all the debating went. But first let's have the our guest introduce themselves.
TDM: Sup fools, Texas here. Not really from Texas. Joined this site a little over 2 years ago because I thought Blade versus Achilles would be an awesome fight...obviously it was not. I like gushers and my steaks cooked medium rare.
RE: Heya mofoes, the name's ReVamp. I'm a pretty good troll, I like cookies and cheese and I have more nicknames than I can count... And I'm pretty good at counting.
GS(god_spawn): I'm GS. I joined the site a little over a year ago after referring to the site for about 2 years and I created the perfect faction the Frostitutes.
K4tz: k4tzm4n here. I guess if I had a motto it would be "go street level or go home." I've been on CV for... *looks at profile*...two years and nine months now.
Wait, really? Damn, that's a little depressing. Anyway, while I first joined to shamelessly pimp out my fan fiction (....will find link to shamelessly plug that later), my true love was the battles thread. My first debate was with Vance Astroll over Crossbones vs Bucky. Stuck around since and I'd like to believe I helped clean the place up, but now I see someone has made a mess out of it again. Sadness
Alright guys let's get this party started in here.
Q1: What do you think makes a good debate?
RE:What makes a good debate? Me. You have me in the debate and its pure awesome.
K4tz:A combination of knowledge and an open mind. Debating isn't about winning or losing and a lot of people forget that. It has nothing to do with your ego and everything about the chance to share your knowledge while learning from others. Too many people get caught up in their first statement of who they think wins and then refuse to budge. This results at grasping at straws, downplaying and just overall a very ugly style of debating. Go into each thread with the following in mind: "I want to have fun talking about these characters with other fans. I'll bring what knowledge I can but also accept the fact that I don't know everything (unless my name is Morph, then I'm a robot packed with knowledge on everything and then some)." There's no reason for things to get heated if someone disagrees. Just present why you think otherwise and be accepting of evidence that proves otherwise. The battles thread has come a long way from the style of discussion and now it's returned to "x wins," downplaying and stubbornness.
RE:Seriously though you asking what makes a good debate is kind of vague and there are obviously quite a lot of factors (or a lack of thereof) that help to help to make a debate better.
- Maturity can be pretty much divided into two things. I know that it like it should go without saying, but for a debate we need for the people to be completely mature so that they can accept that their favorite character loses. Just because your favorite character loses, it doesn't mean a thing, because its normal for a character to outmatched. Unfortunately, some people don't understand this and end up rooting for their favorite characters under claims that they 'know them better' and 'know they can win'. A Perfect example of what I'm talking about is in the Hulk vs Living Tribunal or TOAA thread. (Can't remember which). When one person claimed that the entity would wipe the Hulk out of existence, the pro-Hulk debater simply argued that the Hulk "could heal from it".
- Another manner in which maturity can affect the battle forums is to accept the fact that are laid out by other to you. Keeping anopen mind. This doesn't have to do with the phenomena of fanboyism/fangirlism as much, instead just being aware of what the other people are saying and comprehending what facts they are putting on the table and how these "feats" (as they are so aptly named) show the characters superiority.
- Respect is also very important, at least to me. You don't need to treat the other debater like they were a lost puppy in a dark forest at night, but a sense of mutual respect in the debate always helps to proceed and it is often through the use of respect that debates are resolved. People can either decide to "agree to disagree" which is common enough, but when there is respect between the two (or more) parties, then it is always easier for the incorrect party (or the one that has no more arguments to use) to admit that they "defeat".
- Lastly, the obvious other factor is Knowledge. Possibly the most integral part of a good debate is the knowledge that you have on the characters. Without knowing the characters in any shape or form you can't possibly make a firm argument, much less debate. You don't need to have read every issue of the character, you don't need to be an expert on every character that appears in every debate. What you do need to have is some basic information, which is why as a rule there should always be character links, to encourage people to have some base knowledge on the character. Also, if you don't have as much knowledge of a more obscure characters, more often than not you'll get a Viner helping you out with the capabilities and the average level that the character is at.
Of course, its not like you need to write this on your hand and read it off each time you post, but you should ideally just be nice, open-minded and pleasurable.
GS: I think debates should go by a simple motto. "Debate to educate". I think though maturity helps too but we can't ask that 100% of the time from 100% of the users. Everyone has probably had an instance of being less than respectable at time.
RE: Of course, I have to say I agree with Spawny, he's right. Asking a user to be 100% mature and respectable isn't feasible and all of us have our downturns, I was just trying to outline what makes the ideal debate.
TDM: I think one of the major issues is people's emotional connection with their favorite character. I get it that everyone has their favorite characters, but to blindly go with your favorite while refusing to listen to any other opinion is simply childish, and a kinda embarrassing.
Also, I've noticed that a lot of people in the past few months have been trying to incorporate real life MMA and martial arts when determining a character's fighting style, which is simply ridiculous. Like "Batman would never survive in a real MMA octagon" and all that jazz. LIke, come on people, there's a reason why comics are considered FICTION.
DE:Q2: Do you think that quality of debates has dropped down or that the quantity of debates has dropped down, or both?
K4tz: Q2: Both. A lot of the skilled debaters seem to feel like it's a wasted effort because they won't get an equal effort in response, or the responses will just be absolutely ridiculous. Dealing with a good deal of people can grow very tiring, so good debates have been reduced to pick and choose wisely instead of enjoying one in just about everything thread you can.
TDM: For question 2, QUALITY has dropped, while QUANTITY has increased.
Too many users don't think of their fights thoroughly before posting them (even misspelling the title in a typing frenzy). I think its always good to do a little research and read up on characters before blindly posting a half-retarded thread, for instance, any thread with a bloodlusted Nightcrawler versus a street leveler is silly.
TDM: Also, we should take into account that 90% of ComicVine users are probably 10 year olds.
GS: As far as quantity goes I haven't been here long to really answer that. As far as I'm concerned the battle forums have an overabundance of threads but compared to like 2-3 years? I don't know. I do think it is the quality has gone down but is slowly coming back up. When I joined about a year ago it was a month or two before the place that shall not be named was the hot spot for majority of the older and better debaters left to. When quality debaters leave, the quality of debates go down as well obviously. But I stuck around for some reason and CV was definitely in a dry spell. I could just tell by searching old debates and seeing guys like Vance, Power Nexus, Erik, K4tz, Morph, Static, Zoom, Atphantom and Buckshot going at it and doing like multi paragraph debates, scans were presented and they were respectable. But since the quality debaters left except for a few and new debaters always appearing the forums didn't keep up. I think quality is somewhat coming back up. A lot of the older debaters are coming back and making good threads. It just kinda stinks that spite and troll threads or another Superman vs Hulk thread is made and that gets like 200 replies in a couple of hours while a balanced thread gets 40 and then dies. It is almost as if one word answers are just replacing it. Though like I said earlier, quality slowly going back up at least from where it was a year ago. I'm glad we have new users like Dex_Starr, Citizenbane and Illuminatis around.
RE: Well as the person that has been on this site the least time and definitely the least time in the battle forum, I must say I may not be the best person to answer this. However...
In terms of Quality...
I think that for the short time I've been here Battle have in fact been diminishing, I rarely go into a battle thinking that I'll be able to get into an actual debate at length with another user. It happens less than one would expect. I guess it might also be correlated to the quantities of Battles that we see, since the more battles we see, the less battles are well thought out and thus, the less good battles we have.
Originally, though, I discovered ComicVine [about 2 years or so ago] when browsing battles on the internet, more specifically Wildstorm battles and a lot of those battles are done incredibly well, discussed at length with proper scans and good examination of the set 'rules'.
GS: I take that part back that a lot of old debaters are coming back, it's mainly one but the older users coming back are at least making threads better. I fix it.
As far as quantity goes I haven't been here long to really answer that. As far as I'm concerned the battle forums have an overabundance of threads but compared to like 2-3 years? I don't know. I do think it is the quality has gone down but is slowly coming back up. When I joined about a year ago it was a month or two before the place that shall not be named was the hot spot for majority of the older and better debaters left to. When quality debaters leave, the quality of debates go down as well obviously. But I stuck around for some reason and CV was definitely in a dry spell. I could just tell by searching old debates and seeing guys like Vance, Power Nexus, Erik, K4tz, Morph, Static, Zoom, Atphantom and Buckshot going at it and doing like multi paragraph debates, scans were presented and they were respectable. But since the quality debaters left except for a few and new debaters always appearing the forums didn't keep up. I think quality is somewhat coming back up. A few of the older debaters are coming back and making threads better and some make a good thread. It just kinda stinks that spite and troll threads or another Superman vs Hulk thread is made and that gets like 200 replies in a couple of hours while a balanced thread gets 40 and then dies. It is almost as if one word answers are just replacing it. Though like I said earlier, quality slowly going back up at least from where it was a year ago. I'm glad we have new users like Dex_Starr, Citizenbane and Illuminatis around.
TDM: Oh yeah, I totally forgot of the massive user resignation ordeal. That sucked.
DE: That's a good lead in to our next question.
Q3- Where did all the debaters go? Aka why did everyone leave and do you think they'll come back?
TDM: Well I thought most of them moved to k4tz's site, but if k4tz is here...who is running the Ledger?!
Eh if they've taken a glance at the Battle Forum threads since they've left, they're definitely not coming back.
GS: Depends on what you constitute as good. Older debaters yes have come back but some of the good debaters never really left like Vance and Static I saw on a regular basis. K4tz was really the big one who left but is a regular again and has given some of the best threads in the forums as of late and I shouldn't forget Silver either. Of course though we had a few solid debaters as well that stayed like JediXMan and Sherlock.
K4tz: Q3: I guess a lot of the blame can fall on me for that. I love this site and I was trying to so hard to improve my favorite section (battles). But all requests to help the quality were being ignored and nothing was being done over it. Remember that time Creator got banned because of Klandicar? Yeah, that set off a lot of people, too. I felt like my time and effort wasn't helping so I created a free proboards site where we could all chat and ban trolls on sight. It's an ugly site, but it's kind of like a second home to me. I mainly use it for off topic conversations with the loyal crowd there (many who are still here as well). Unfortunately, many of them no longer have the effort or energy to treat the battles thread like we all did in...I guess you could call it the golden age.
RE: Q3: Well to be honest I'm not totally sure where all of the debaters went, theres a couple of places that shall not be named, but apart from that I just think that a bunch of them just left and aren't thinking of coming back, especially with the state of the site as it is now.
DE:Q4-Do you think there's any way to improve the general quality of debates?
GS: k4tz clones.
K4tz: Nah, that would result in way too many Kraven threads :P
K4tz: Q4 - Yes, we can improve the quality of debates.
- Lead by example. Put an effort into each debate and, while it's cliche to say, treat others how you want to be treated.
- Help others. Many tend to get offended when you try to help them adjust to battle debating, but some accept constructive criticism and it's people like that who will make excellent additions to the site.
- Don't feed the trolls. I'm beyond guilty of this. I try to reason with these people but it's just giving them what they want and they should be flagged and then ignored. Don't get dragged down with them.
TDM: Interesting question, Decoy. I used to think taking a more active role and try to repel abusive users from the site would help, but then Static threatened to ban me.
I think there isn't much more that can be done. The Battle Forum rules are literally at the top of the site, yet people continue to disregard them (K4tz: TRUTH!). I guess we could ignore the trolls like k4tz said, but it's just too damn easy sometimes.
RE: Q4: Apart from agreeing with Spawny over there, because obviously cloning K4tz would be by fat the most efficient way, I think that there is no real way to do this, apart from giving an incentive to people to make sure they do it right. What that incentive could be I don't know... But I guess we just need good users to start making good threads and then monopolize the battle thread-making from there.
How can we improve the actual ongoing debates? Well, K4tz does this quite well (Erik gets a mention too) but he makes it easy for people to debate on the topics at hand in such a manner that users feel more at ease with the idea of making longer debates. I'm thinking specifically of the Mercenaries vs thread K-Four man (that's his new name) did a while back where he made people think slightly outside the box and on how different encounters within the teams might lead to different outcomes in the battle. If I were to use that thread at a template and think about what went wrong with it, I'd just say that there might be a slight lack of wanting to debate. Some people may just want to state their opinion and perhaps reasoning, but I remember than on that thread I was supporting the DC team and when I came back after a while I saw 2 or 3 posts who seem to support the opposite team, but none of them seem to want to counter or debunk anyone's arguments.
I don't know people just seem to be uncomfortable with it at times. Other than that I had another point I wanted to add, but I can't think of it. =P
GS:Seriously though I think the only answer to that is wait. Like I said earlier we can't expect 100% of the users on the forums to buck up or know 100% of everything which rightfully they shouldn't have to. There are a lot of people that twist things out of proportion or leave out facts or just downplay a character or fanboy etc but sometimes that isn't their fault but also sometimes it is. Maybe if more users were a bit open to questions and concede if they are wrong without having something last 9 pages just because you want your character to win would be the biggest improvement if you ask me but we can't expect that to happen over night.
TDM: I think one of the great things that happened on this site (and inevitably failed) was Final Arrow's Battle Forum Spotlights. As least for me, it personally encouraged me to create higher quality threads, and I noticed a lot of other users stepped their game up. Now that it's dead, all hope is lost.
DE: Battle Forum Spotlight eh?
Anywho that's a wrap say goodbye to the folks at home.
K4tz: But yeah, those are all good ideas. People will always try their best when they think there's a potential reward for their efforts.
Yes, I'm calling people greedy. We all are. Deal with it.
Oh, and bye!
GS: Ta ta
RE: Oh. Goodbye all y'all. See ya round.
TDM: [continues to talk about ways to fix the battle forums, forgets to actually say goodbye]
Log in to comment