What's the state of the ZDoom forums?

[R4L]

Interesting thread. I stopped logging to ZDooM forums quite a long time ago. I think it was at the time when longer passwords were enforced. Which is another thing that contributed to complete death of ZDooM forums.

This forum needed change in moderation staff long before "the event", that was just step too far for everybody. Getting banned around here was really easy. Say that you don't like something from the mods, you get immediatelly pressed on and if you stand your ground than banned. Just look at older project, the flood of banned accounts speak for itself. This community grew toxic and nobody want's to have anything to do with it anymore.

I agree. Punishable action was too easily handed out. Moderation culture then was less than ideal. However, that was then. I for one am not about to enforce any toxic moderation culture and that's certainly not the goal of the new staff, which again is under Cali's leadership. As for the password enforcement, I was also not pleased but I work at a job where its common so it was more of an annoyance for me. The ReCAPTCHA issue IMO is more annoying and something that I think needs to go, but I don't know anything about the backend to change this unfortunately.

It's too bad, because when this place was alive, it was best place to get help with project, find inspiration or just wonder about the new stuff. Now this toxic stench moved from forums and Discord to GZDooM itself. People will rather pick DSDADooM than to deal with GZDooM and maybe be forced to deal with people around here.

I don't agree. Both the Discord and this forum are still great places to get information. The forum is a treasure trove of knowledge and continues to be. Scripting is still active and knowledgeable people like Jarewill, Player701, Agent Ash, phantombeta, Enjay and others I'm forgetting are still helping out. There aren't any mods flying off the handle every time someone breaks a rule, not here or on Discord. I think we're a pretty reasonable bunch. I don't think its fair that we get blamed for the past staff's actions.

I can't speak for GZDoom. There's definitely a tightly closed hand on development there. VKDoom looks promising though!

Seeing all the replies that read as similar as yours, I have to ask: What would bring the forums back to their original glory?

[neoworm]

I agree. Punishable action was too easily handed out. Moderation culture then was less than ideal. However, that was then. I for one am not about to enforce any toxic moderation culture and that's certainly not the goal of the new staff, which again is under Cali's leadership.

Glad to hear that, but the point is it is too little too late. This should have happened years ago. Right now, I don't think there is way back. Stigma is here to stay.

[dpJudas]

Resurrecting a 6 month old thread just to say this? Forums on the internet are generally doing pretty poorly in 2024. The forum isn't recovering because all that the older actions did was accelerate a trend that you can also see on any other forum: most project communication has moved to a combination of Discord and Github. If you take a close look at GZDoom's github page you'll see that pull requests still arrive - they just aren't mentioned on forums anymore.

[R4L]

I agree. Punishable action was too easily handed out. Moderation culture then was less than ideal. However, that was then. I for one am not about to enforce any toxic moderation culture and that's certainly not the goal of the new staff, which again is under Cali's leadership.

Glad to hear that, but the point is it is too little too late. This should have happened years ago. Right now, I don't think there is way back. Stigma is here to stay.

While I agree it should have happened a long time ago, I don't agree that the "stigma is here to stay". Improvements need to be made on the forums for sure, but the moderation team is not the same. I'm sorry the past moderation team fucked things up so badly, but I'm not carrying that torch and neither is anyone else here!

Resurrecting a 6 month old thread just to say this? Forums on the internet are generally doing pretty poorly in 2024. The forum isn't recovering because all that the older actions did was accelerate a trend that you can also see on any other forum: most project communication has moved to a combination of Discord and Github. If you take a close look at GZDoom's github page you'll see that pull requests still arrive - they just aren't mentioned on forums anymore.

This is pretty much the best answer. Forums are great for information but Discord and Github are used vastly more often now. Even still, this forum has a trove of information that makes it still valuable and should still be used as a place to share ideas and projects.

[SanyaWaffles]

As long as the ZDoom official side of things is continuing in some capacity and not dying, I'm much happier for that.

[Professor Hastig]

I agree. Punishable action was too easily handed out. Moderation culture then was less than ideal. However, that was then. I for one am not about to enforce any toxic moderation culture and that's certainly not the goal of the new staff, which again is under Cali's leadership.

Glad to hear that, but the point is it is too little too late. This should have happened years ago. Right now, I don't think there is way back. Stigma is here to stay.

As long as people think like this and just write the forum off without giving it a chance, yes, there is no way back. In other words: Don't be part of the problem - be part of the solution instead by bringing back some positivity here!