Lurker Lounge now a hack site

[FenrisWulf]

Whoof. Tough set of posts to respond to. :P

@Kyrene:
Sigh, valid point of view. Again, I don't see things in quite the same way as you concerning the general malaise of diabloii.net, so it's difficult to offer up acceptable defenses; we both reach our conclusions in appropriate manners (well...I think I do), but we're not starting at the same place. You (and just about everyone else here :P) are right, there is a sizeable amount of bad among the good over at diabloii.net; I just value those goods enough to live with the bad. Eh. Point, advantage Lurker Lounge.

@Roland:

Originally posted by Roland
And I was mostly commenting on the quality of their guides.

Owwwww. :D I worked hard on my guide. Though you're correct...it needed more Volcano.

I'm not sure that I could really counter your opinions on the subject except by giving my own, and I'm pretty sure that everyone and their brother has already heard those. :P Soo...I disagree! *runs*

@Jarulf:

Originally posted by Jarulf
...something you have obviously no idea what it is all about and obviously don't have the whole understanding of?

Owwwww. :D

Okay, now for the entire quote:

Still originally posted by Jarulf
You mean we are not allowed to discuss something at another place (at a site that is NOT the one in question) just because you feel there are other ways to "deal" with something you have obviously no idea what it is all about and obviously don't have the whole understanding of?

No, sorry. Don't get me wrong, you have every right to gripe at diabloii.net both here, there, and anywhere. I'm just exercising my right not to like it very much. :P To me, all this talk about how diabloii.net content is "mountains of manure" and how the members there are "arrogant and ignorant" (while I understand the subtleties of this statement a bit better now, Kyrene, it's still insulting)...well, it's pointless, for one, and it seems to be fairly blantant self-inflation, which always annoys me. You guys are great, yay. You have the best damn Weredruid guide ever (thanks, Jonathan Spectre!), and perhaps a few other decent ones. :D Your game knowledge is l33t. Do you really need to fluff your egos by pointing out that, hey, we're awesome and diabloii.net sucks a nut? The fish in the barrel, they're asking, "Please stop shooting us!"

You know how Conner MacLeod recently left due to the outcry over the misguided way in which he defended the Lurker Lounge and maligned diabloii.net? I don't see a lot of the content of this thread being much better.

Anyway, that's just on the general anti-dii.net vocality for a host of random reasons, not at all concerning the administrative policies of dii.net staff. On that note, I must leave for a trumpet lesson; I may have to throw in my towel for further argument, though, because I can't make a valid stance any more without actually knowing what's going on inside the heads of the diabloii.net admins. Thanks.

[Jarulf]

> Do you really need to fluff your egos by pointing out
>that, hey, we're awesome and diabloii.net sucks a
>nut? The fish in the barrel, they're asking, "Please
>stop shooting us!"

Have I ever claimed that site to suck nut? Sorry if you come off feeling I am fluffying my ego. I can't see how that would be true though, but hey, if that is the idea people get of me, sorry.

>No, sorry. Don't get me wrong, you have every right to
>gripe at diabloii.net both here, there, and anywhere. I'm
>just exercising my right not to like it very much. :P To me,
>all this talk about how diabloii.net content is "mountains
>of manure" and how the members there are "arrogant
>and ignorant"


Where have I *EVER* said such things? DOn't attribute such things to me and don't argue about them if it has to do with someone else. If you reply to my posts, at least stick to what I say since my post in reply to you was ONLY about what you said.

[FenrisWulf]

My apologies. Quotes attributed to Roland and Kyrene, respectively. I will watch who I'm replying to more closely in future. "You" was being used in the general sense, applying to any number of people who have criticized diabloii.net in comparison to the Lurker Lounge, not necessarily including yourself. Kind of like "vous" in French.

[nookiestar]

Some of the latest stuff:

http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.php...threadid=164326

http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.php...threadid=165851

cu

[Sourskunk]

They really do enjoy digging their own grave, don't they?

[CelticHound]

You know how Conner MacLeod recently left due to the outcry over the misguided way in which he defended the Lurker Lounge and maligned diabloii.net? I don't see a lot of the content of this thread being much better.

I'm going to equivocate for a bit. This may be a bit stream-of-consciousness, so be warned!

I think of Conner as being enthusiastic. It's a trait I share, and sometimes it's admirable and sometimes it causes me to embarass myself. On the whole, I'd take it over being a zombie, though. (That's not meant for anyone here - I'm thinking about something work-related.)

Personally, I haven't participated in the dii.net forums so I have nothing to say about them, either way. From looking at the rest of the site, it's a mix. But there is so much stuff there - and they do more games than D2 - I can understand it's difficult to keep things up to date.

I'm not really thrilled with bashing another site here. To me, it feels too much like talking about someone behind their back. I'd much rather bash Bolty in front of his face. ;) (But that's because after his major contribution to the D2 community in building the LL, I have extremely high expectations of him - quit an honour don't you think? :P )

On the other hand, Jarulf has always seemed pretty reasonable to me. He's built up a positive bank balance as it were, so I'm willing to cut him some slack if he needs to blow off some steam.

I can also see that different sites have different specialties. Phrozen Keep for mods, LL for mechanics, Dii for popularity. (Ever hear the phrase "Quantity has a quality all it's own"? :) ) Why study law at MIT or rocket science at Harvard, when you can do the opposite?


-- CH
(if dii.net didn't exist, everyone there might be on the LL today. :o )

[Brista]

At times I've been a bit taken aback by some things here.  But I have to admit that people like Pete do act like a dose of chlorine in the gene pool.  :P

Is this a flame?

If so rather an unfair one, I was just thinking when reading the Haxxors thread how intelligent his post was

[True Seeker]

I decided not to waste my time bashing diabloii.net when they do such a good job themselves. Post edited by me.

[Brista]

Quite the contrary, I like to think I helped sites such as the Amazon Basin get popular

I certainly think this :)

[south]

Nookiestar has a point in one of the above threads, how honest is it to use information garnered by others with hard work and not give proper credit. It's the kind of thing I would not like my kids doing....
I personally believe that the dii.net put enough honest work into their site that some friendly rivalry would enhance their site rather than take away from it.
But their attitute seems to take away rather than enhance.
Maybe we have a higher opinion of their work than they have of it....pity.
As said before I like dii.net a lot.
Btw no matter what someone may try to do this community is intertwined in a complex form.

[monkeycid]

Quite the contrary, I like to think I helped sites such as the Amazon Basin get popular

A-yee :)

[CelticHound]

Is this a flame?

Flame? I'd think he'd take it as a complement.

If you interpreted me as saying I thought Pete was not intelligent, then my writing skills are even poorer than I thought. To illustrate what I meant, if you were to go through the archives of the LL, I think you'd find that Pete is a poster child for the phrase "does not suffer fools gladly".

-- CH
(ever hear the quip "what the gene pool needs now is a good dose of chlorine"?)

[Brista]

At any site there are a few absolutely outstanding posters

Here, in the past, DaShiv, Trucidation, Crystalion, Bolty and Sirian particularly stand out for me. As well as Jarulf, Tommy and Ruvunal

On Diabloii.net Flux stands out for me. And until recently Garwulf who has now stopped posting there. Also the posters in the Stats forum

Now I understand that Stats is not her forum but Elly has managed to antagonise three of Diabloii.net's absolutely outstanding technical contributors in the one thread: Jarulf, Ruvunal and Tommy

Now people like reading the posts and making them but the core attraction is that there is genuine unparalleled expertise around and that an expert contribution might be made

They are, I think, on a very slippery slope and one which, as Nookiestar stated above, would be quite sad to see them slide down

If they lose the handful of people who know the game inside out they will then start to lose the people who are simply veteran players/intelligent posters. (And there are many there).

If they lose enough of those then they will then start to lose even the casual or thoughtless posters because it is pointless posting a rate my sorc post if every answer to any question is Storm/Shaft/Gaze

I hope that they reconsider their policy. Perhaps a chat room meeting and really thrash out what they feel is best

Because if they lose Jarulf and Ruvunal they may find their audience slowly and incrementally slipping away and frankly I don't think we want everyone from Diabloii.net here instead (remember Bolty's piece summer before last on how this place was declining ;) )

At the end of the day academic style cross-referencing must be allowed if you want truly intelligent discussion

A further point about "competition"

If I write a piece about crafting charms I can link to the affix calculator, the diabloii.net item tutorial, the workshop posts here and any other posts I like. If I write there then I am limited to what I can do without external links

This will have the tendency of lowering the quality of their thoughtful, essay type posts relative to other sites

It is uncompetitive AGAINST their own sites.

I hope they see this and decide to review their policies, it is one of the reasons that I no longer post there

[Bolty]

I'm not really thrilled with bashing another site here.  To me, it feels too much like talking about someone behind their back.  I'd much rather bash Bolty in front of his face.  ;)  (But that's because after his major contribution to the D2 community in building the LL, I have extremely high expectations of him - quit an honour don't you think?  :P  )

Well, that can create problems. There are those who place WAAAY too much stock in my opinion. All I do is maintain this website. The posters here do all the work. But for some reason people then give me too much credit.

That's why I sometimes hesitate before posting. I worry that if I post my opinion on something gaming-related, I'll stifle the opposing viewpoint and/or encourage anyone with my viewpoint to feel they can "jump on the bandwagon" simply because I said it. Yes, the work I do on the site gives me some privileges, like the right to ban anyone I catch cheating. But it doesn't give me the right to just boot off someone I disagree with.

Anyway, threads like this are dangerous. I made a post in this thread stating that I didn't agree with dii.net's policies, although I think they run a great site. After that I noticed the dii.net-bashing suddenly increase. And then take for example Conner's next post after mine:

Conner Macleod, Mar 22 2003:

I'm happy to see Bolty is on board there. LMAO! Let the outright carpet-flaming of Dii.net begin!

I don't like seeing blatant ripping on the dii.net posters, since generalizations like that will just lead to dii.net posters making generalizations that LL posters are a bunch of jerks. It goes both ways. And I don't like seeing blatant public ripping on the dii.net web admins. They are fellow fansite administrators of mine. They have put in more work than many will ever know (a heck of a lot more than me, as they have 50 times the content of the LL) on a venture that makes little dough. They have the right to run the site as they please, and you have the right to either go there or not. But the open personal attacks on their webmasters here just makes this place look bad and embarrasses me. If the LL is supposed to be "so much better" than dii.net, then what's with the petty namecalling? Anyone else catch the irony?

Sorry CelticHound, this isn't aimed at you, just the thread in general.

-Bolty

[Roland]

That old argument. Yes, the admins there probably do alot more work, because they have alot more to deal with. But does that make them deserving of more respect? Especially since here tends to have better QUALITY content, as opposed to just more of it?

I'm not trying to insult the admins there. I have no stance on them, as I have no interaction with them, or any other part of DII.Net. I'll give them respect for running such a large site, aye, but I won't respect them for filling it with mostly junk / crap.

Just because they're big doesn't mean they deserve respect. At least in my book. Now I'm not bashing them, or at least, not intentionally. I just don't see that they are so deserving of respect when they offer SO MUCH that amounts to SO LITTLE.

But, just my 2 cents. I don't hate DII.Net, nor anyone there. I just don't go there. Not worth my time. I can get more out of 5 seconds of scanning the forums here than I ever could by intricately reading every single page that site has to offer, down to the copyright information at the bottom of each page. So, I stay here. Not there.

And I can understand your comments about "people jumping on the bandwagon". But then, that's cause there's two kinds of people: those who go their own path, and those who just tag along. Life's full of the latter, and always struggling to find the former. :) Just the way it is, unfortunately. I'm just glad I'm not a bandwagon kinda guy. ;)

Good to see you're still around, in any case, Bolty. Hope things are doing well. Take care.

[Archon_Wing]

I don't like seeing blatant ripping on the dii.net posters, since generalizations like that will just lead to dii.net posters making generalizations that LL posters are a bunch of jerks.

So yea, that's fairly true. I don't like snobbery of any kind. Of course, I can understand how many long-time posters here can have a err.... deep affiliation with this site. Obviously, many people do think LL is the best, for why would they keep posting here if they don't. I don't mind that.

Granted, I don't think anyone in particular is really a snob although I will admit that Conner was trying to be such, and I'm not sure he was... that... serious.
======================================
General thoughts, not directed really at anyone:

Like I said before, I do originate from the cesspool some of you may call dii.net, explaining my chronic use of smilies. :) I personally think this kind of cross-forum superority complex is kind of silly- the posters make the forum, not vice versa. Likewise, I do realize there are more trolls/fools there, and that would easily fuel some of your assumptions.

I'm not really offended. That's rather silly. I don't consider myself belonging to any one particular forum. But I would like to point out that the terms "good" "bad" "best" are subjective terms. As in one may prefer here and others may prefer www.battle.net forums (*shudders*) :D I do not think you can really compare them.

The Lurker Lounge has a small population, but has many mature and informed posters.

Dii.net has a large population, but the skill level of posting is someone dilluted. Is that really a bad thing? Not really, if you like to gamble. :) I mean more people ca be good in one way... more variation in opinions. This also means more fools, but you can't have everything.

I find I can post a little more casually on dii.net though ;) You can't expect me to make coherent posts all the time! But some jokes have to be cracked on the Lurker Lounge. I have no clue why.

But if for some reason, you wanted to stop by dii.net, I recomond you check the off-topic forum. You won't be disappointed.

Battle.net forums has errr.... GFrazier! :)

So whatever floats your boat.

So the main point of this post is not why dii.net sucks, but complaints about a policy that is potentially self-destructive. We can only hope they can approach this with an open mind.

Edit: as another stupid piece of info, when I first posted on dii.net, i used choppy sentences and used *cough* AIM talk. So believe it or not, I actualy matured on those forums a bit. ;) And no, I never spoke "l33t" although making fun of it remains my hobby to this very day.

[Jarulf]

I'm not really thrilled with bashing another site here.  To me, it feels too much like talking about someone behind their back.  I'd much rather bash Bolty in front of his face.   ;)   (But that's because after his major contribution to the D2 community in building the LL, I have extremely high expectations of him - quit an honour don't you think?   :P  )

Well, try posting something close to criticism or worse, try to discuss it (even calmly and sensibly) on their site and you find yourslef getting a very harsh, defensive and almost hostile reply quicker than you can spell your own name. Of course, thread is closed immediately and depending on who you are and your relation with the admins, you might end up banned as well. They simply can't handle ANYTHING that is even remotely close to being critcism or bad about anything theirs.

Remember, you are on their site and you should be honoured by being allowed to be there, it is for your own good since every time you post, you get more people to read what you post than anywhere else (so in reality, they can't even grasp why anyone would want to post anywere else really). But always remember, they run it and you have absolutely no point in trying to tell or sugest how they should run their super site, after all, you don't pay the money for it. Well, perhaps not those words are what you will hear, but along those lines and more.

[Jarulf]

>Well, that can create problems. There are those who
>place WAAAY too much stock in my opinion. All I do is
>maintain this website. The posters here do all the
>work. But for some reason people then give me too
>much credit.

Yeah, stop giving him so much credit, he is just the janitor of the site :P

[FenrisWulf]

First off, many, many thanks to Bolty for explaining my thoughts better than I was even able to think 'em. :) That's why you get the fancy Adminstrator tag, I suppose.

Also, nookiestar, thank you for posting those links. The manner in which pmak0 responded to the link deletion over in the Statistics Forum is far better than anything I could have come up with, and I would love to see more people follow his lead. I'm sorry that you got put on probation in the process. :(

I don't have the energy to address each poster in turn, but much appreciation to all of you, either side of the issue. In general, it's good to see fresh points of view speaking up (as I'm sure you were all wholly tired of mine :D); also great to see that not everyone completely disagrees with me. :P I was getting worried there.

[Ice]

Some of the latest stuff:

http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.p...did=164326

http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.p...did=165851

Wow. I never knew things were getting so bad!

For a period of time where I used to post at the dii.net amazon forum, it was actually a rather pleasurable experience:
- There was a rather good pool of regulars who actually knows what they're talking about (with regards to both common knowledge and the intricacies of odd variants).
- Flames were quickly suppressed and typical dumb questions got pointed to their respective places then ignored.
- Although links to other websites were frequently thrown all over the place (Zen's bow speed tables, ias calculator, some guides and discussions elsewhere etc), they were largely left there untouched, even after the period of heavy onslaught against offsite linkages in other forums.
- Errors in diabloii.net database and guides were pointed out (repeatedly) though no attempts seemed to be made to correct those.
- And generally no problems because there was simply NO official moderators for the amazon forum... and the one particular mod that drops by occasionally help out by stickying some stuff but would generally close one eye to all the offsite links that were there.

Sometimes I really wonder if there had been an inflexible mod (like the one in the two threads above) at the zon forum as well, I'd probably have been banned by now considering how many times I continued to link to offsite threads and guides after the onslaught was declared.

Just like to say that while much of the management and administration of the forums leave much to be desired, there are definitely at least 1-2 mods who are genuinely helpful and different from the rest and deserving of respect.

----------

The one main thing I don't like is the unwillingness of the ppl there in general to accept new info (or worse still info contradictory to what's on dii.net) or for gameplay, builds which defers greatly from the norm UNLESS such information is given by an already well-established name in the forums.

When I made my first post in the zon forum (incidentally slamming a guide for inaccuracies), I got almost totally toasted, barbequed and flamed for 3-4 pages over more than 2 days for bringing up the viability of a non-leech mageazon in hell. If not for boredom and the intervention of some regulars who managed to turn the flames into good discussion, I'd probably have left by then. Likewise, when I made my first post at the sin forum about how a ribcracker blade shield sin is actually viable in hell, I simply got called a n00b, idiot, don't be stupid etc by almost everyone there at that time.

Now, with a new "generation" of regulars at the forums who seem to take all the info and guides at dii.net to be the ultimate truth (which is hardly the case in several areas), the quality of the posts there just went spiraling downhill, especially when the ppl who used to correct such misinformation no longer do that as frequently as before.


As for offsite linkages as competitive, I see it in a completely different light. The site should of course seek to offer as much information or strategy as possible, but it's virtually impossible to gather ALL the information at one site. By having some quality offsite links occasionally, I think it would actually make it more worthwhile for ppl to frequent the site, since they would be able to get more information either from the site itself or from links off the site.

Denying such links would just be restricting the amount of information available to its users and chasing away good quality posters hardly help the situation. The less quality posters there is there, the more likely ppl would want to move to other places and as time passes, whatever knowledge is left there would just get diluted over time. I really wonder how much accurate information there would at dii.net if and when v1.10 comes out, especially if all those bans on other sites continue. IMO no sites can possibly deliver all the information all by itself.


Just some thoughts.