OT: What're the best D2 names you've ever seen?

[CelticHound]

Do you people actively try to drive people out of these forums??

Occhi has already apologised, so I won't touch on that.

But I would like to explain, if not excuse, the situation here.

Think about this outwar person. If you read his posts before they were edited, it's obvious why we want to drive away someone like that. Your posts didn't have foul content, but they were a bit of a chore to read. You were called down for that, but why?

The Lounge is known as a crucible for ideas. It's not unknown for people from other sites who are writing a strategy guide to post a draft here to be critiqued. Comments can be harsh, but the end result is a better guide for their own site. Passing the test here counts as an accomplishment.

There are two parts to this. The ideas and the way they are communicated. We place value on both.

If you go look at what's acceptable on the b.net forums, it can be pretty sad. Here's quick quote of a post today by someone with a nick of 'hate16':

"LIKE i said before the poeple that LIKE the patch are the was STOP PLAY LONG TIME AGO TY. Go back to the other game u play for 2yrs yes!"

Do you understand what he was trying to communicate? I don't, and it's not worth my time to try to interpret it. There may be some gems over there, but in general I don't want to go through the slop to get them.

If you want to get your ideas across, you don't want to make it a chore for people to read your posts. (In-game chat is another thing. You want to say something quickly and then it disappears. Forum posts tend to hang around indefinitely.)

Good writing makes for better reading. It's good practice for when you need to write about something in the "real world" - you'll make a better impression. Also, for people who aren't native English speakers, I believe well written posts are a service to them, both to make reading easier, and to give a good model for their own English.

The Amazon Basin is generally considered a friendlier place than the Lounge. I think they are looser about, grammar, etc. Even so, pretty much all the respected regulars I can think of take care in their writing. And new members who want to fit in also start using punctuation and maybe even the occasional capital letter.

Even in the alt.games.diablo newsgroup, it looks like most of the posters there do the same, these days, and NNTP groups are completely out of control!

In the past we've made fun of a couple of the big D2 forums, but there are people who claim "dual citizenship" - MongoJerry is the great current example. Look at his writeups. There is a fair amount of effort there to create something that many people will enjoy.

You might want to check out this link to Lounge Etiquette

-- CH
[silly, new age thought for the day: Belonging to a community is not a passive state. It takes effort. (I think I'm stealing that from Thomas Moore.)]