The state of the forums... and the site.

Important, please read.

PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE THING BEFORE REPLYING. I WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY OFFENSIVE/INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS IN THIS THREAD.

Hey everyone.

This isn't the usual post I would make, but I think this is a good idea to just share my honest thoughts about the state of the RealWorld Designer site. But anyways, here I go.

Ah yes, rw-designer.com. It's a good place to share your cursors and icons to the world so they can use them for their own... or is it just that? Well, no. Of course not. There's the forums and the option to comment on sets and different pages on the site. Is it good though? Simple answer: No. The site's filled with problems. Yea, there's some usual ones like the site being http, but it goes farther than that. From what I've seen, most of these problems come from the comments and forums.

First and foremost, the anonymous users. I have seen some ones that are actually responsible on the site, but a majority (and I mean a majority) of them are absolutely hideous. I've seen comments from them such as containing racial/homophobic slurs, containing inappropriate content, and many other problems. One main spot for their "activities" are the general forums.

One prime example I saw here was the creation of an "18+ chat" thread. I absolutely hate it. This site is meant for everyone, not just for a specific age group. They need to be aware that everyone on the site and click on your thread and read everything that's said on it. That includes people under 18. Also, the fact that the thread was made by an anonymous user as well just makes it stupider. I'm not saying all anonymous users are bad. It's just that most of them aren't very good.

About the comments they make, I hate most of them. I'm totally fine with people who make comments to give opinions on it, but from what I've seen, they're very bad comments. Like I said before, these comments include racial/homophobic slurs, inappropriate content, and such. Thank goodness for the option to delete anonymous user comments on sets. It does help a lot, but they still are around though. I think it can be a little better.

In conclusion to all of this, the state of the site is not very good right now. I think it could be better with what anonymous users are doing to the site's forums and comments. Again, I'm not criticizing against every anonymous user on the site. Some of them are actually not too bad. I've thought up of some solutions that could possibly help with all of this. I know these ideas probably wont be implemented on the site, bit I think it's a good idea to share my thoughts.

• More forum moderators.

The site had sixλxis as a forum mod, but they retired about a few years ago. I'm completely fine with them being retired. They probably have life to tackle so I'll let them do that. But I think it would be nice if we had a few more forum mods hired. They should be trained to look carefully at posted forums and to delete ones that could be offensive.

• Actual site rules

I'm not sure of this is already implemented or not, but we do have a Terms of Service page on the site. I've looked through it, and it basically goes through main things about the site, like how you can't make alts or about posting assets to the site. I think it could be improved a little to include posting rules as well. Yes, there's the Posting Rules thread, But I think it's a good idea to include these rules not just for forum posts, but for comments too. It would tell the user about these rules beforehand.

• Restricted forum usage for anonymous users

I think the things that anonymous users can do on the forums should be restricted a little bit. Something that could help is manual acceptance by the thread creator. Let's say a user crates a thread on the forums, and an anonymous user makes a reply with a racial slur. When they make that reply, only they and the forum post creator can see it. This is so that the creator of that thread can manually accept or decline that reply to be shows on that thread publicly. This can make it so logged-in users have control over what's posted on their threads. This can make the site a better place. Well, anonymous users could open new threads, and them being anonymous users... well, you know. Maybe this next idea could help with that...

• Reporting forum threads

This would actually be a good idea. Logged-in users could have the option to report threads on the forums. There could be a report button somewhere on the thread's page. The user can select which rule it breaks, and can type in a description of how to breaks rules. The info can be sent to mods and they can manage that thread if needed. This would help clean up parts of the forums.

Well, I think that's all I have to say. If I missed anything, please let me know in the replies.

Have a nice day. Hope to see better from this site soon.