Forums too much of a clique?

Kinesia

We all have our pet problems and solutions, we all know each other and socialise here...

All of that is fine, it needs to be. But it was recently pointed out to me that it can seem like a closed environment to newcomers.

Some posts by newcomers can picked up and carried on our shoulders, but others get ignored and disappear beneath the weight of our banter and existing concerns.


When someone puts the time and effort into joining (and it's _definitely_ an effort just to be able to post in the first place) they need encouragement and assistance.
Even if we don't personally agree with what they are talking about, that they have jumped through hoops to say it and it therefore matters, even just to tell those of us in this walled garden what is going on in the outside...

Things we have long ago discussed and relegated to history still persist outside these forum walls and are often bigger concerns to the overall health of the game than some of the topics we are currently dealing with.


There is no magic bullet, but if you see a name you don't recognise, try to pay _more_ attention, not less.

HarryMason

This is a good question. It's a similar issue to paper magic . It isn't a closed community, by any means. It is, however , an established community with its own established 'cliques'.

The best example I can give is the crumbling of the alliance. It gets talked about on the forums like a major cultural event, but a newcomer isn't even going to know what you're talking about. Even I only know second hand .

In most situations, it's easy to tell who's cliqued up , and it can be a bit intimidating being the noob, doing noob things asking noob questions. Especially when the thread is about why this mythic or that masterpiece needs a nerf or a boost .

It's also not the most positive environment. It seems like there's been some conscious effort towards positive threads , but the majority of content is 'this is stupid',  'this card is too good', 'you lied to us to get our munnies'. These are often issues that noobs can't relate to. Sometimes it feels like this is the place where top 10 coalitions go to talk about top 10 things. 

Even myself, who is definitely not a noob and has top 10 probs, sometimes avoid the forums for some of the above reasons . It kind of feels like being the new guy at the overly cliquy fnm, or being the filthy casual in the room full of grinders . 

FindingHeart8

and this is when the Dungeon Master stops the game and tells us we're all being too meta lol

I was pretty intimidated when I first came to the forums myself, especially as a leader of a rogue coalition that had no ties.  I've made a lot of friends on these forums since then (something I'm quite thankful for), but there was still that "You need to step up to the plate and prove yourself," feeling.  With the limitations of thread-posting, I'm not sure how much can be done to fix this (beyond what @Kinesia has already accurately pointed out), but it would be cool if there was something to make new commenters feel more invited.

Idea: Hey! Why not have a "Welcome new players!" thread that always stays at the top like the Announcement threads.  What do you think? @Brigby

Laeuftbeidir

I like the welcome thread idea. A nice and cozy feel-good place for the first start - why not?

Worst case scenario - it won't get used a lot.

Although I agree on several of the points mentioned, I want to point out that the community was actually quite helpful and nice when an obviously new face posted a thread about known things /asked questions that most of us regarded as "solved".

Most of us here are actually nice. We're just all emotionally involved!

Mburn7

As someone who was super new to the forums not too long ago I don't think its quite as bad as you make it seem.

That being said, I do agree that it feels like 80% of all posts are made by either myself or @FindingHeart8, which does not help the situation.  

I like the idea of a noob intro thread, it would be a nice easy way to get them their first couple posts and get all the easy-to-answer questions out of the way.  I also like the idea of just being a bit friendlier to new names and faces here.

madwren

It can definitely be intimidating. I think that's true of many forums, but many of us have the benefit of being in the coalitions or alliances that have built up relationships outside of the forums. That can definitely lead to insularity. 

I admit, part of why I dialed back forum participation so much is that it became so repetitive--same people, same arguments, same annoyances.  However, I agree we should remember that newcomers to the game haven't been through these cycles; a lot of their questions, concerns, or problems may seem ignorant (or worse), but often they're the same things that we have discussed previously. It isn't their fault they're newer to the game or haven't had the benefit of spending two years immersed in daily discussion.

FindingHeart8

Mburn7 said:

As someone who was super new to the forums not too long ago I don't think its quite as bad as you make it seem.

That being said, I do agree that it feels like 80% of all posts are made by either myself or @FindingHeart8, which does not help the situation.  

I like the idea of a noob intro thread, it would be a nice easy way to get them their first couple posts and get all the easy-to-answer questions out of the way.  I also like the idea of just being a bit friendlier to new names and faces here.

I.am.everywhere.

to be fair, I usually counterbalance it by not being on here at all after 5pm or during the weekends.  Basically anytime where I'm not at work

And we do often engage with new players when they post.  If I was a new player who had just made their first post, I'd much find it more encouraging for additional participation if it was answered in a friendly manner by someone who frequently comments on here...rather than not have it answered by anyone.

One could argue that the ideal would be for beginner questions to be answered by veteran players who don't frequently comment on the forums, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be to create a dependable pattern for that.