this is the rants forum, not the complaints forum

A big hello to all you tip.it'ers out there! hows it going for you all tonight? good, i hope. well anyway, let me get down to business.

after your done reading, if youd like to post your opinion on this subject, or prefferably, if you like to continue reading this thread and post your opinions on what should happen to the rants forum, then please feel free to do so. there are decisions being made through this rant that could change the way the rants forum works, so please post your opinions on this matter!

warning: long post ahead. go to the kitchen, grab a snack and a drink, go use the bathroom, then come back, cause your in for a fairly long read.

ok, here it goes. i joined this forum... oh, about a year ago, i suppose... the specific time escapes me right now. anyway, in that time, ive observed many things changing around this forum. for a long while, ive browsed this particular board. ive lurked, watched, and read through many, many threads and theres a disturbing trend that ive noticed on this board in recent months. no longer is this the rants board, its become the complaints board and that HAS to stop.

what i want you to do, is go and hit the back button on your browser. go back to the "rants" board list of topics, and do two things. 1). look at all the locked topics. count them. compare the number of locked topics to unlocked topics. as of me writing this rant, there are... 46 total topics on the first page. 23 of those are locked. let me repeat that, because its the kind of thing that bares repeating. 23 of the 46 topics on the front page of the rants board are locked. for those of you who cant do simple division, that totals to an even half of the total topics on the front page.

now, do this: 2). look at the names of these locked topics. without actually visiting the topics, just judge the topic by its name. at the time im writing this, heres some of the name of the locked topics on the front page of the rants board: "BEAR FUR, CHICKEN FEATHER, GOBLIN MAIL WHAT IS THAT?", "The Wilderness", "Muted For Talking About Tip.It"... the list goes on. do you notice anything odd about these topic titles? i do, and if you dont, youll find out whats odd about them in just a second.

ok, now youll find out why those topics are odd. without even looking at the initial post, you can tell that they are topics about a person who has found something to complain about. now, dont get me wrong, when i dont like something, i can get vocal about it. but for something as trivial as goblin mail, or being muted? i dont see why i or anyone else should bother. i know its a waste of space and that posting threads such as that would be instantly frowned upon. unfortunately, with all the new, impatient members joining tip.it in recent months, theres less and less chance that people will read the "Rant Guide - How to Rant and What NOT to Post." sticky that contains all the information that anyone would ever need to know about writing rants.

what i believe, and feel free to correct me if im wrong, is that a few people are posting these complaintive threads, and before they leave the front page, people see them and think its ok to post other such complaintive threads. this is, of course, not the case. if i could merely change one thing about people today, it would be to make them more patient and watchful. i dont know about all of you, but before i do anything, i research it. i find out all there is to know about it before i do anything. its the same with any forum i go to. i browse, lurk, and otherwise watch whats being posted so that i can get a feel of whats acceptable material in that forum. if i were to just find this forum today, id assume that the rants forum was for letting out frustration at annoying people that have killed me for stupid reasons in the game.

im going to repost the list of things that are not ok to rant about that you can find in the "Rant Guide - How to Rant and What NOT to Post." sticky. hopefully, more people will see it here than have seen it in the sticky itself. here it is:

"What Not to Post

Don't duplicate or state the obvious. This includes:

All things NOOB...I'm tired of being called a noob, being a noob, players acting like noobs (n33b, nub, choob, etc)!

F2P needs updates!

I hate P2P or F2P people because...!

Rude/mean people stink!

I got muted/banned!

Rare prices stink/rares should be removed!

I got pk'd in the wild/running the abyss!

Players who pray or teleport in the wild stink!

I got hacked!

I got scammed!

I got outmined!

I hate macroers!

I hate this or that clan!

Boyfriends/Girlfriends, Weddings, etc. are stupid"

now, as you may have noticed, i have underlined a few things in that quote. those underlined things are the worst offenders that i see. in recent times, those few topics seem to have dominated the board and really must be put to an end. i can think of plenty of things that could qualify as good rants right off the top of my head. things such as "a basic stat potion for each class would really be helpfull for f2p", "i believe that making [insert character type here] was made too hard to effectively achieve", or "the language filter has a detrimental effect on gameplay". when properly structured, these topics can stimulate conversation, debate, and bring about differing viewpoints as well as give insight into a situation which may actually need attention from jagex for correction.

unfortunately, about half of what we seem to get is a slew of half thought out, poorly written, unorganized ramblings about being banned, meeting annoying people, and being tag teamed while walking alone in the wildy. this truely is a sad thing and its a shame to see so much space on the boards wasted to these topics.

so to sum it up, if everyone would just take the time to look things over, think things through, plan things out, and say things right, we would all be alot better off. and at least the mods wouldnt have to spend so, much time locking improper rants.

neogeo0823

THANK YOU.

Caps lock key thanks you as well.

Very well written, and I 100% agree. Many people think the rants board is to "just" blow off some steam. If you wanna just blow off some steam than get a journal, or play a violent game, or something. But, please, don't waste our time and lives reading this mindless garbage I always see in this forums.

oh my days, i rant i actually agree with and cannot pull apart like i used to enjoy.

This should be compulsory reading for those "i hate j00 n00b" people and may finally boost up the rants board to its former glory

off topic - were you the creator of the ultimate p2p vs f2p thread? now that was a fun thread.

OMG OMG OMG hes back! yay! now get raichase back and zubedoo and all the others in here and lets clean up the rants forum!

we missed you neo.

oh yeah, on topic: i would love to see an end to the useless non-rants. so please, if you dont read the rants guide, at least read this (which should be the rants guide).

ps. is your old topic being dredged up from anywhere?

=D> =D> =D>

Wish I could've written it half as well. I love the rants forum....well at least when there are actual rants.

I don't know if it's an option on these forums, but maybe, there could be some kind of "required amount of posts". This may not stop all these, but maybe, if they join to just complain about "being killed because they were muted for teleing in the wildy by a noob", they'll have to wait. And maybe, if they wait, they'll accidently click on the rules for writing a rant. (not saying all these posts are created by new users, but a good number are) That or since they can't post, they'll have a chance to calm down and realize how little good it would do to rant about such things.

Also maybe the description for the board could be changed, it does seem to lead people to think "rants" is for complaining about anything. maybe something along the lines of "Discuss and debate issues about the game and gameplay".

Great points made there, definately an issue which needed to be addressed.

Not sure if it correctly fits the criteria for a rant about the game, but IMO it needed saying anyway.

I'm about to write quite alot here, so if you don't want to read it all please scroll down to the bottom of my post. That way you can atleast read the suggestions I propose.

I've been lurking here again for the last week or so - And I've made a couple of [what I think are] relevant observations:

1)

The rants forum description appears quite contrary to what I had previously considered the purpose of this forum - Debate on the various elements on RuneScape Gameplay.

Blow off some steam by venting your game frustrations here

That's what people see, and that's what people do. They vent. Sometimes we get lucky, and a 'rant' is typed out legibly and well thought out. But most of the time we get random mumblings and 'venting'.

2)

Whilst being an excellent 'how to' guide to ranting - Ard Choille's sticky [The one which replaced Mullein's] Seems contradictory in parts:

Ranting is a process for relieving yourself of game-related anger and frustration. It is a tirade, a blowing off of steam.

Vs

The purpose for posting a rant on this forum is to stimulate discussion about the problem and the solution. If your ignore list can solve the problem, don't post it here.

The second quote promotes the well thought out type of rant that we all like to see. However, it seems to me that when most people 'blow off steam' they don't usually do it in the most well thought out and logical manner.

When people are angry, all they care about is telling the rest of tip.it that they are angry. Thus we get a typo strewn, un-paragraphed, poorly planned 'rant' with little room for discussion.

So, IMHO the problem we have stems from a mismatched conception of the PURPOSE of the rants forum.

Possible solutions:

The 'The latest update stinks because...' sticky appears to have been relatively succesful in stemming all the update spam. Good idea! Why not expand this idea further and create new stickies for other problem areas? Why not have a 'Customer Support stinks because...' and a 'The Runescape community stinks because...' sticky aswell? This may not completely solve the issue of people complaining - But it might put all the spam in one place, making it easier for the mods to regulate and easier for those of us who are tired of spam to ignore.

Alternatively - As it seemed to me that the problem is perpetuated by misconceptions of the purpose of this forum. Why not split the forum? Remove the 'debating' element from the Rant's forum and allow people to simply 'vent their fustration'. Create a new forum specifically geared towards debating elements of gameplay. Perhaps this creates more work for the mods [sorry :oops: ] but i'm sure it would reduce the amount of 'spam' and flaming.

Grr, I wrote too much. :x

:wink:

- Gid.

Good post Neo, glad to see you back. Gid too! Geez, it's been lame here without all the good ol posters. Heck, I even miss Striker.

I'm behind you all the way.

hello neo! i dont know u.....but hi!

agreed, by the way. there are many, many, MANY, MANY, (did i mention many?) useless threads out there that have been deleted, and personally, i'd love for it to end (even though i dont think its going to happen anytime soon ). i like the rant boards, and i dont want them to be flooding with spam. please people, read his words!!! :pray: :pray: :pray:

off topic - were you the creator of the ultimate p2p vs f2p thread? now that was a fun thread.

ps. is your old topic being dredged up from anywhere?

Good post Neo, glad to see you back. Gid too! Geez, it's been lame here without all the good ol posters. Heck, I even miss Striker.

anyway, great to see the feedback, so lets keep it coming :)

To be fair man, the "name" that you are given by Tip.It has no indication to your intelligence level, its merely there to rank you amognst the other, giving you a kind of status towards others.Whether you are a Scorpion Pit or a Chicken Feather you can still freely post on this forum, and nowhere in the rules does it say anything about your stauts reflecting your IQ.I think I made some quite relevant pints when I first joined this forum and nobobdy made any observational remarks about my status on this forum, and I think its wrong for you to class people in that way.To be fair, some newer ranters rants are not up to the mark of Tip.Iters such as yourself, but that is merely because they have not grasped the flow of the forums.For any inconvinience I have caused you with my "low" post count, I apologise greatly.

Hypocrisy is a great thing,merely because it is not realised by the hypocrite,which is the essence of the matter.You are complaining about people complaining, just merely in a more grammatically correct and structurally advanced way.Yes, that is what a rant is, a structure complaint.There is no other way to say it, but you are just complaining about complainers.

There are many topic sections in this Forum, and you ahve obviously been round for long enough to know that, so I suggest you find somewhere else to spread your words of wisdom, because if you expect more from a rant board then your standards are way to high my friend.

To be fair man, the "name" that you are given by Tip.It has no indication to your intelligence level, its merely there to rank you amognst the other, giving you a kind of status towards others.Whether you are a Scorpion Pit or a Chicken Feather you can still freely post on this forum, and nowhere in the rules does it say anything about your stauts reflecting your IQ.I think I made some quite relevant pints when I first joined this forum and nobobdy made any observational remarks about my status on this forum, and I think its wrong for you to class people in that way.To be fair, some newer ranters rants are not up to the mark of Tip.Iters such as yourself, but that is merely because they have not grasped the flow of the forums.For any inconvinience I have caused you with my "low" post count, I apologise greatly.

in regards to your first paragraph, how does that relate to neo's post in any way? he never said that we should ban all rat meaters from the rants forum, its just that many people with a low post count seem to misunderstand the purpose of the rants forum. whilst it is a place for one to relieve themself of any in-game generated stress, at the same time it is a place to debate and discuss possible solutions to this problem. both elements must be present in an effective rant, not just "P0MG 1 ju5t gawt killz0red bai sum pur3 str ch00blet!!!1!!!shiftone!"

Hypocrisy is a great thing,merely because it is not realised by the hypocrite,which is the essence of the matter.You are complaining about people complaining, just merely in a more grammatically correct and structurally advanced way.Yes, that is what a rant is, a structure complaint.There is no other way to say it, but you are just complaining about complainers.

 

 

 

There are many topic sections in this Forum, and you ahve obviously been round for long enough to know that, so I suggest you find somewhere else to spread your words of wisdom, because if you expect more from a rant board then your standards are way to high my friend.

this thread, and neo's past thread, are both effective in highlighting what the rants forum should be. he is far from hypocritical. frankly, i think most people (most people being those that dont make crappy rants) would agree that this thread is important in maintaining the standard of the rants forum. it is a mere shadow of what it once was. so, i encourage more of these "hypocritical" people like neo and the rants forum veterans to come back and make the rants forum worthy of being a part of tip.it.

Yeah, we lost your "final" thread and my "pixels" thread. I understand that they are totally gone, unless Google has them somewhere. I'm going to go check.

Edit: Tipit has an exclusion in their setup, so the robots didn't archive anything. Shame. The WayBack machine rules.

i think the opposite of you

there are way too many topics being locked , granted some for obvious reasons, but when i see 50% of the topics locked it just tells me that the mods are getting a bit over zealous

the point of the rant forum is to vent your fustration with the game, and god knows there are many fustrating things in the game, people need to vent their game problems , just because you dont want to read it doesnt mean they shouldnt be able too, no one is making you post on the thread or even read it

each individual person needs to do that at sometime or another to get something annoying off their chest

the things which are not supposed to be posted as threads belong in the rants forum

just because half the threads are about those topics doesnt mean they dont deserve attention and everyone has a different spin on them

of course we dont want the forum clogged with only those rants so maybe it would be better to create one thread for each of those topics for everyone to discuss it in

one thing i really hate about all those topics being locked is that some of them were actually contained intelligent conversation

yes maybe it was a forbidden topic or it contained the word noob or something but, there was no flaming in the thread and people were discussing the topic and debating it , and then a mod comes along and locks it because it didnt fit the forum rules even though it was a well conceived rant

instead of locking these rants mods should let them die a natural death, if the rant isnt a good one a few people will post to say something but then it will lsoe interest and get pushed onto the second page

if the rant has merit then it will be discussed regardless of whether it agrees with the forum rules

that way would be better than clogging the forum with locked threads

perhaps the text under the Rants forum should be changed from

"blow off some steam by venting your game fustrations here" to

" blow off some steam by venting your game fustrations here so long as it is not about getting hacked, dying in wildy, macroers, being banned , noobs etc. (which about 75% of all rants are about) and is written in a clear concise way with a solution to the problem"

well i ask you , what solution is there to those problems aside from the obvious ones which are always being restated in threads

Zyrm has a point, as much as I hate to admit it.

I'll push this up the chain a bit, bring it to the attention of some global mods and admins.

so there isnt a single copy of either thread anywhere?

edit:

perhaps the text under the Rants forum should be changed from

 

 

 

"blow off some steam by venting your game fustrations here" to

 

 

 

" blow off some steam by venting your game fustrations here so long as it is not about getting hacked, dying in wildy, macroers, being banned , noobs etc. (which about 75% of all rants are about) and is written in a clear concise way with a solution to the problem"

that is kind of what is stated now, and thats what we wanna aim for. yet even basic requests like that seem to go unnoticed.

edit 2: in regards to the moderating, i dont think the mods are being lock happy, but leaving the threads to die a natural death doesnt seem to work. the thread creator has numerous bumps or "nobody has anything to say" posts, leading to further spam. i think the best course of action is to lock them straight away.

so all the things in bold, we should not rant about. ok.

so can u make a list of the stuff we can rant about?

Let me just point out that there have been 15 replies to this thread with some extremely valid perspectives ... and yet they represent a wide variety of ideas about how the rants forum should be handled. A couple of you here and there agree, but in opposition to an idea that has been previously mentioned.

To that point, I hope you all can appreciate the decision-making process where policies, guidelines, thread-handing, etc. is concerned.

Now, on to the subject at hand...

neo (and those in agreement) -

• You are exactly correct in that many users don't read guides before posting. If we could structure the site to force users to the guides before posting, we'd have far fewer nonsense posts. Unfortunately that is not possible, which is why we have moderators out locking up the stray spam, nonsense, flamefests, etc.
   
   
   
  

Gidion (and those in agreement) -

• The forum description can certainly be adjusted if it's confusing. I'll put it on my "to do" list.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  As for the concept of creating an assortment of stickies for common rant targets...there are a few challenges. Many of the topics listed as "what not to post" are there because they become flame/spam fodder. Some of the Jagex-directed topics are often controversial as they attract rule breakers and flamers. The unlocked stickies we have for users to post to require continuous maintenance to remove irrelevant/spammy/flamey posts. Creating rant-based stickies will most likely require a great deal of moderator attention. That's not to say that they are completely out of the question, but careful consideration has to be taken before we post up a melting-pot sticky.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  I added a critical "however" to the opening paragraph of the existing Rant Guide. I hope it clarifies the disconnect between the two lines:
   
   
   

What is a rant?

• Ranting is a process for relieving yourself of game-related anger and frustration. It is a tirade, a blowing off of steam. HOWEVER, the purpose for posting a rant on this forum is to stimulate discussion about the problem and the solution. If your ignore list can solve the problem, don't post it here. Nitpicking, complaining, whining and gossiping do not qualify as rants.
   
   
   
  

Keep discussing people, you have my attention. If we can create a better Rant Forum without creating a moderating nightmare, I'm all for it.

many thanks for the clarifications, considerations, and comments, Ard, to be honest, i consider it the highest compliment when something im doing directly effects major decisions that will be made in the future and i will definately try to use tis thread to reach an outcome that will be agreable for(at least mostly) everyone :mrgreen:

now then, lets consider options that we currently have. when you get right down to it, there isnt much that can be done in the way of making people view the guides on what to post, so moderators are a must. im going to assume that hiring more moderators and/or making the existing ones work more/harder to keep the forum clean would be out of the question, as im sure you guys have a hard enough workload on your hands as it is.

now, our second option. creating extra threads for such topics, while a fairly decent idea in theory, wouldnt be an implimentable solution. as Ard stated, those threads are constantly being cleaned by moderators, and id imagine that creating a thread for every single legitimate rant topic would both take up a ton of space on the board(both memory wise as well as visual space), as well as take an exhuberant amount of time to maintain, clean, and police. not only that, but it would eliminate the need for the board itself, as everyone could just post in these threads instead of making their own. not only that, but it would take the originality out of any post that people could make. imagine, if you will, a thread made specifically for people who have been scammed. at first, it would be filled with stories and discussion, but as the pages wore on, people would begin to make posts in the idea of "well, i just had a guy try to pull scam #17 on me, but i recognized it and fooled him", while the next person would reply with "well, today i fell for scam #4. im so angry right now!" and so on and so forth. very boring.

then theres a third option which i had been considering for a while now. this idea is actually probably the most implimentable of the three, as far as i can see at this point. i was once a member of a forum, long long ago, that was faced with a similar problem. they had a board dedicated to, in more or less words, "coherent, intelligent discussion". they named this board the "babbling" board. now, the problem that they faced was that this board would often be filled with horrible, bitter flame wars, endless spamming, and all kinds of other problems. the way that they solved this, was to create a new board that was made for the sole purpose of hosting all these annoying flamers, spammers, and pests. they called this board the "incoherent babbling" board(described as "babbling minus intelligence"). for the while that i remained on that forum, things seemed to be going well with concerns to the problem they had. i dont know if helped in the long run, though, but its certainly worth the consideration. i would assume that we would change the name of the rants board to something like "runescape rants" (described as a place to intelligently vent frustration at aspects of runescape that you think can be improved) and the new board would be named something like "general ranting" (described as "a place to vent frustration at practically anything on your own terms"). the new board would be very loosely moderated, as it would be a place for the spammers, flamers, and other pests to hang out. the only real filtering that would have to be conducted would be things that violate the terms of service of the site, such as swearing, advertising the selling of your account, etc. etc..

i feel that if such a board were created, it would attract alot of the undesirable postings away from the other boards in general, as well as give angry people a place to validly argue on their own terms. the exchange that happens is that the "problem posters" as ill just continue to refer to them, will get a place to more or less post whatever angry thing they want, without too much moderation, but in exchange they have to put up with whatever other flamers and spammers are going to say because topics in that b wont be locked for spamming and flaming.

so lets recap: we have three options, as far as i can see right at this moment.

option 1.) police the board more. hire more moderators or make the ones we have work harder/more strictly

option 2.) narrow down the board. make generic stickies for each valid rant point, or

option3.) broaden the board. make a seperate board specifically for people who want to write flamey, spammy posts that dont belong on other boards and hope that that attracts them to there, leaving room on this and other boards for real discussion.

anyone who has any other ideas, objections, or arguements to make for or against these ideas are more than welcome to do so. in fact, i encourage it, because i want to know what other people think on this matter.

Many of the topics listed as "what not to post" are there because they become flame/spam fodder. Some of the Jagex-directed topics are often controversial as they attract rule breakers and flamers.

There are a few things I've wanted to say for some time. The collective nostalgia here makes me think that this is the time to do so. Perhaps my memories are painted a rosy hue, I will not deny that possibility. It's also roughly 2:30 AM where I am. Keep that in mind as I ramble at length.

I came here in April. Back when the old "How to write a good rant" sticky was in service. There were flame wars, and spam, and a fair bit of other garbage that didn't belong, but in the end of it you could trust that each topic had been analyzed from several points of view, if not annihilated entirely by karma or reference to a highly related thread. Neogeo0823's "T.U.F.W. on f2p vs. p2p" would be a prime example; no stone was left unturned. Another I recall was a rant on "PKer honor", which passed the 15 page mark. I know it changed my mind, and heck, it convinced Raichase, at least in part, as well. Those who are familiar with that name know that that is no small feat.

There came, I believe, a point of "critical mass", where veterans grew tired of the same arguments being made again and again when the issue had been fully examined elsewhere. Many went on hiatus or faded into the scenery. Many have posted or have been mentionned here. Hence the introduction of your own Rant Guide, and the list of topics which should not be ranted about. Case in point, I seem to recall you recently saying something to the effect of, "the noobtopic has been noobeaten to noobdeath", and for the seasoned members of tip.it, that was certainly true. However, for the inevitable stream of newcomers, this was, and is, simply not the case.

I'd like to raise the idea that said sticky came as both a blessing and a curse. In effectively banning certain topics from being discussed, and downtoning the importance of rants as being debate-based, any ignorance harbored by a newcomer is almost certainly doomed to remain ignorance. An easily offended youth is never fully convinced just how silly calls of "noob!" really are, and must muddle through his RS experience coping with such garbage any way he can; responding in kind, taking the taunt as a hit to his self-esteem...et cetera. A die-hard "anything goes" PKer and a die-hard "honor" PKer come to an impasse when they miss out on the chance to understand and respect each other's idea of fun, which only breeds more intolerance. A macro hater never gets to see (within the rant forum) just what is known about macroes, what has been suggested in the past, and hence remains convinced that something as clearly ineffective as IP banning must be the answer.

I can understand if you doubt such things. Some indivuduals join clans and get a lecture from the leader. Some make all the right friends. Some. Hence, I offer myself up as an example. I once believed all of this foolishness and more besides. My mind was opened so many times on the rant forum as it once was that I actually felt the need to create a new account, and cast off the old one with my silly predispositions. With the environment for that kind of 'fundamental' debate nerfed, I'm quite confident that I would retain said predispositions.

What's perhaps most infuriating for me, is that those 'duplicate' threads are still being made. They still require moderator attention. Less attention, perhaps, but attention. In this sense, something similar to "option #2" (Gidion's first suggestion) comes to mind. I rather wish that I could fly back in time, retrieve the links to such rants. If we could merely refer newcomers to those rants via a sticky (with a title such as "Before you post...", containing the list of abused topics and links to the better rants on each subject) rather than shelter them from such topics altogether, I genuinely believe less clutter would result. Then again, such rants would get bloody long. I can't deny that most posters would rather just start a new thread than bother reading some 20 page monster. Sigh, my hopeless romanticism gets me nowhere...

Complaining and ranting is somewhat similar to me, Its just that some threads that are being created should be more constructive such as "F2p deserves farming".etc etc. Just too unrealistic to happen.And about the "I died to the *** and ***" , they just can't accept it that its not anyone's elses fault but theirs

First of all, I would say I have to disagree with Zyrm that too many threads are being locked. When rants are locked, I usually still read them to see what happened and why it was locked. I usually find something like:

OP: I just got scammed by someone I thought was a friend.

Reply: *quotes from rants guidelines that you are not to post about being hacked

OP: Shut up, this is a place to vent frustration, that is what I'm doing.

Mod: Locked

Not any discussion at all, just an ember ready to fuel a flame war, which, as Ard said, is why it's on the "do not post" list in the first place.

As for a misleeding forum discription, didn't it used to be something like:

Vent your frustration AND discuss possible solutions

That was a bit clearly about what was expected in the rants board.

But I think this hits the nail on the head:

There came, I believe, a point of "critical mass", where veterans grew tired of the same arguments being made again and again when the issue had been fully examined elsewhere.

A great example already listed was the honor code thread about the wilderness. It is now on the do not post list because the regulars to the Rants board have already heard it and have come to an agreement. I remember at the time there were a few other rants about the same thing, which were easily resolved by refering to that thread or pulling out some of its stronger points.

The Rant Forum description has been changed. Hopefully the change will help.

Blow off some steam by discussing your game frustrations and their possible solutions.

Continue please.

I remember at the time there were a few other rants about the same thing, which were easily resolved by refering to that thread or pulling out some of its stronger points.

Regarding the forum description: The older sticky, as best as I can recall, stressed the rants forum as a place for debate and discussion first, and venting second. It surprised me how much added stress was put on the "venting frustration...blowing off steam" element of ranting when Ard's Guide replaced Mullein's. So, more or less in line with Jake Corsair's comments, I think "discuss possible solutions AND vent your frustration" would be more beneficial than "vent your frustration AND discuss possible solutions". General question here, if the Guide sounded a bit more like, "The purpose of posting a rant is to stimulate discussion about a problem and possible solutions as a method of relieving yourself of game-related frustration ", is there any chance people would treat the rants forum differently?

One more item for this post. A requirement for authoring rants sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe post count isn't ideal, because it's easy to dump one liner responses on multiple threads, but if Jake Corsair's suspicion that many authors of the lesser rants are newcomers holds any weight, perhaps a time constraint would do the trick. Let's say a newcomer tries to write a rant shortly after joining. They might be redirected to a little page that says something like this:

Warning: new users are required to wait 72 hours after registration to author their own thread on some boards, such as the archive of wisdom, rants, and help/advice boards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please be aware that this is not meant to be a punishment. We do this simply to discourage duplicate threads, clutter, and other spam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We strongly recommend that you to familiarize yourself with the search button found at the top of the page, so that you can locate any existing threads which may be relevant to your concern or answer your question.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, please take a moment to read the board-specific stickies, which often contain special guidelines or rules for that board, as well as important information that will help you get the most out of your thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, if you have not yet read the forum rules (found here), we suggest that you do so. Guidelines for what is permitted in signatures and avatars, as well as in conversation, are outlined here. If you have any other concerns, please contact a moderator via private message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~Some administrator

Thoughts?

somehow, i dont think that the 72 hour limit will help the rants forum that much. it doesnt seem like its the fresh of the boat newbies that are writing these rants. they come from the runescaper who has been around tip.it for a little while (and has played the game for some time) and feels the need to "vent their frustration" without reading all the other guidelines. i think the rewording of the forum tagline is the first positive step made. perhaps putting "discussion/debate" in front of "venting" would stop the pointless rants. so, no, i dont think that the time limit would help in any way.

ps. i think we should thank ard choille for taking such swift action following the creation of this thread =D>

...but if Jake Corsair's suspicion that many authors of the lesser rants are newcomers holds any weight, perhaps a time constraint would do the trick. Let's say a newcomer tries to write a rant shortly after joining. They might be redirected to a little page that says something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[insert warning message here]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts?

actually, i quite like that idea. a time constraint is something that ive seen on various forums before. it allows people to lurk a bit before posting. the only way that i could see such a thing failing would be if a new user were to sign up, see the warning and simply go away for a few days and wait for the warning to go away before mindlessly posting spam.

oh, heres an idea! now, first, ill say that im not sure of the implimentability of this idea, as its meant for a different style of forum, but maybe it could be the inspiration for a new idea.

im a member of the site www.roosterteeth.com (red vs. blue is teh awesome! :thumbsup: ) and one of the core components of their forum is a user "karma" system. practically everything you do increases your karma. everytime you put something new in your profile, every time you post a comment in someone elses profile, every time you give or recieve a new picture comment, or anything else that effects something else on that site, you get a certain amount of karma. after a while, your karma level goes up. if it reaches level 15, you get the ability to post new threads on a board, instead of just posting comments in existing ones.

i imagine that we could fully adapt this to our runescape fansite here. imagine each user having a... umm... lets call it... familiarity level. when they join, its at level 1. as they do things around the site, like post in topics, write pms, etc. etc., they gain familiarity xp. when they get enough xp, the familiarity level goes up by 1. if they do things that are counter productive, like get posts deleted or removed, get threads locked, start flamewars, etc. etc. a mod can remove familiarity xp from their level and even move them down a level if its bad enough.

while its at level 1, they can simply post in existing topics in the "general f2p and p2p" boards.

at level 3, they can post new threads in the various "market" boards as well in the "general f2p and p2p" boards.

at level 5, they gain new threads in "help and advice", "clues, clues, clues", the "clan recruitment" board, and the "off topic board".

at level 7, they gain new threads in the rest of the "clan" boards if they have a clan listed in their profile, as well as the "pker" boards.

finally, at level 10, they gain full access to all the boards just like we enjoy now.

after level 10, well thats basically a way of showing how long youve been here and how active youve been in the community, much like your post count, i suppose. of course, this is just a rough system that i pulled out of the top of my head. im sure that the admins will decide on appropriate levels and experience amounts if they decide to impliment this idea.

what do you guys think of this idea? and also, if anyone read my last post about the options i had seen at that time, what did you think of that? any feedback is appreciated.

EDIT:

ps. i think we should thank ard choille for taking such swift action following the creation of this thread =D>

hooray for Ard and (if i remember correctly, but feel free to correct me) her swift action on this subject! :thumbsup: \ =D>