Has anybody read the comments on the mainsite, recently?

[Action Lemon]

It is really toxic. Complete contrast from the forums. It's crazy.

[VinnyVideo]

Yeah, some of the mainsite comments are kind of... bad.

Speaking broadly, the mainsite seems to attract a different audience compared to the forums, and there's a few bad apples on the mainsite who stink everything up. Also, with the current mainsite software, it's difficult for us to monitor what's going on unless users report bad comments. We actually can't see the list of new comments unless we click on individual submissions, or else manually query the database - and either way is cumbersome. The launch of lumaSMS will give us some new tools that should help improve the quality of discourse.

In the meantime, please feel free to report any discussions that need our attention.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Evil Yoshi Toes]

Yeah, lately there's been more activity which is good but they've mostly been pretty bad comments, which is not good. It seems like the biggest issue is people thinking the best way to teach what's probably a 12 year old kid how to make a good Mario fan game or sprites is to totally pulverize the kid.

[Syaxamaphone]

Mainsite was a mistake.

My games | My twitter | My stream | Sprites Unlimited

[Cap'n Coconuts]

If you're talking about the comments for one game in particular, let me say that they wouldn't be "totally pulverizing" the kid if he hadn't made an utterly redundant clone of one of MFGG's most hated games. And although the comments for Super Paper Mario World have gotten out of hand (which is part of the reason I stopped getting involved), "totally pulverizing" is a bit of an overstatement. To me, a full-scale flame war would be more along the lines of "totally pulverizing".

Part of the problem with the mainsite community is that there are many children there without any developed sense of netiquette. That, combined with the apparent difficulty of moderating comments there, can only lead to trouble.

[Evil Yoshi Toes]

Totally pulverizing may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but the initial comments on that submission were extremely negative and blunt which usually isn't effective with children and can turn them off from a specific hobby really quickly. Look at how art is taught in schools: elementary school focuses on letting the children explore their creativity without critiques of their work, middle schoolers start to understand what makes certain art more effective than others but still are mostly encouraged to just get their creative ideas down physically, high schoolers start to become more competitive, and college art students are critiqued somewhat harshly to prepare them for the real world. If you told an elementary or early middle schooler that their artwork is a pile of trash, they're going to stop making artwork. I'm not just talking about that specific game because, while I don't agree with how people presented their critiques of it, he did intentionally create a bad game, but I've seen it done on some newcomer's sprites that actually aimed to be good.

I suppose that brings about the question as to where mfgg wants to go. If we become a more professional site with only high quality submissions going through, we'd probably lose a lot of the young kids, which could either be a good or a bad thing depending on what the site aims to be.

[VinnyVideo]

Try to be patient with new users, even those who don't seem to "get" what you're saying. From the perspective of new users, it's exciting to find a place on the Internet where you can share this cool thing you spent hours making. It might seem bad (or downright terrible) in the eyes of others, but to you it's your baby - a baby that you think is pretty darn awesome. It can take a while to get down from that "high" and acknowledge your game's many flaws.

Adding to what Evil Yoshi Toes said, sometimes how you say something matters just as much as what you say, especially when you're dealing with less experienced users. I'm certainly not saying that you should praise a bad game - in fact, that's one of the worst things you could do to a budding artist. However, a gentler tone helps when pointing out flaws in someone's work and reduces the odds of them getting defensive.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Dimentio]

There is no excuse for that comment chain, none.

I don't give a darn how much you hate the game, that nonsense is uncalled for.

Even I, a supervillain, can see that.

[Cap'n Coconuts]

Okay, I will admit that I personally could have behaved better in the comments for that particular game.

I still don't understand why anyone would do a vanilla remake of one of MFGG's worst games, even taking into account that the user is probably a child.

But yes.

[OssieTheOstrich]

Shouldn't this forum be moved to General Chat or something?

List of projects I eventually plan to finish after the indefinite hiatus is over, assuming I don't abruptly cancel them:

Spoiler

Mario's Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario's slightly unusual Boss Rush (Completed), Mario vs. Some Unusual Foes (In development), Mario's VERY Unusual Final Frontier (In development))
Sonic's Foray into Random/Unusual Zones (spin-off of Unusual Trilogy, in development)
Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy (In development)
Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition (In development)
Super Hilda DX (In only conceptual phase)

Yes, I am aware that I have about 6 or so fangame projects currently in development at the same time. And yes, I am also aware that all of this is very ambitious.

+ List of projects I'm helping out with in some small capacity during my hiatus:

Spoiler

Super Mario Bros Dimensions 2 (as a spriter, only for Mario's sprites)
MFGG Community Fangame Project 3 (as a spriter)
WordGirl ReWired (as a artist)

[YoshisIsland3]

Shouldn't this forum be moved to General Chat or something?

I was thinking that too.

[Mariotroid]

Shouldn't this forum be moved to General Chat or something?

I was going to say that earlier.

[GeekyDave]

Are there any examples of bad comments? Either I'm blind or I haven't seen much of bad comments on the mainsite.

[OssieTheOstrich]

Example 1: AwsomeZack's Modern Mario Sprites: Seriously, when @mit said that the background of the sprite having more effort than the Mario sprites themselves, a flame war happened. a big flame war in fact.

It got so bad that Zack removed the background in order for the flame war to end.


Example 2: Super Paper Mario World: Look at it yourself, it's really bad.

List of projects I eventually plan to finish after the indefinite hiatus is over, assuming I don't abruptly cancel them:

Spoiler

Mario's Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario's slightly unusual Boss Rush (Completed), Mario vs. Some Unusual Foes (In development), Mario's VERY Unusual Final Frontier (In development))
Sonic's Foray into Random/Unusual Zones (spin-off of Unusual Trilogy, in development)
Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy (In development)
Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition (In development)
Super Hilda DX (In only conceptual phase)

Yes, I am aware that I have about 6 or so fangame projects currently in development at the same time. And yes, I am also aware that all of this is very ambitious.

+ List of projects I'm helping out with in some small capacity during my hiatus:

Spoiler

Super Mario Bros Dimensions 2 (as a spriter, only for Mario's sprites)
MFGG Community Fangame Project 3 (as a spriter)
WordGirl ReWired (as a artist)

[Kritter]

This topic should probably be in the Suggestions forum or General Chat, seeing as it's relevant to the site.