I hate doing that because I feel it's not the right place to discuss it, but let me try to address some of the issues encountered here.
1) Concerning the Smasher case, let's put things back into perspective. Smasher was perma-roombanned from the 64 section for years and the only reason he got back was because all permabans got removed due to Smashboards changes. This means that he should normally
not be allowed here, but he actually is (against our will) and that could, at best for him, be an opportunity for him to show he has changed and that we should revert our judgement. With that in mind, you will understand the thin-ice policy about his case. Now Umbreon says he has a legit problem that needs to be addressed? See it's always the same problem : you need to pay attention to the
context. And I'm not even saying that based on an old bias toward his previous behaviour (pre-ban area). If some regular average poster suddenly made that exact same thread as smasher, I would have a little red flag lighting up telling me there's something wrong and that he actually has a legit issue, and trust me I'd act differently. For example, when gav made
that thread, while he's usually contributing to the community, it showed something happened and it's a shame I wasn't there to handle things properly (
mea culpa, even though I shouldn't have to apologize for needing a one-week break from the site).
But let's go back to smasher's case. What is the standard tone of his posts? And what is the content of them? Let's see some of his recent threads (on the first page).
First one: no content. No harm/no contribution, just useless.
Second one: flaming like crazy a user with invalid points. Telling a senator that he has no write to post here is completely ignoring Smashboards rules, doing so by insulting is worse, and doing so by creating a thread is even worse.
Third one: first sentence calling everyone ignorant; last sentence saying everybody disagreeing doesn't know how to play. That's not the correct way to interact with others.
Fourth one: making a thread to call a list of people "trash"? Again, aggressive inappropriate behaviour. Finally that
fifth thread, with him insulting everyone
once again. If we sum up, 4/5 with him insulting/flaming and 1/5 on-topic and discussing the game. And I'm not even mentioning some of his posts (here's
one, here's another
one) where he comes off as agressing other members. His style of writing revolves around agression and insults, so the cinetic of his posts points out how his last thread wasn't out of his "normal" tone. With that background, how can he still have credibility in having a hard time and letting his hurt feelings speak beyond his thoughts? So if you don't know the whole story stay out of this. I'm not even answering to the "to others, it might appear differently" thing, since others already dismissed that argument. And saying he made that last thread in a constructive manner? Well yeah I'm not even answering that either...
All in all I think smasher's behaviour hasn't changed since his pre-ban time and the problem with him is that he can't interact and have a discussion in a civil manner.
Now enough talk about him, if someone still isn't happy,
post in FORUM SUPPORT.
2) Why did I even talk about smasher? Oh right, because the way I acted towards him shows why newcomers are not welcomed here, right? Well I hope I showed how smasher was a special case and thinking we act the same way towards newcomers than the way we deal with smasher is a weird assumption (how would that even cross one's mind?).
So are we not-welcoming newcomers? Let's see what has been done for them. First we have a brand
new index, simplified, explaining all the basics really well. But I guess that's scarying them away. Now to be even more unwelcoming, when one creates a thread, I always try to chase them away (see
this post,
this post,
this post, etc.). No wonder why they don't like this section, since we're always so mean to them. Again, I don't think that's a valid point trying to bash our community.
With that being said, I don't mean there's no issue with the 64 smashboards community. On the contrary there are a lot of room for improvement.
3) Trolling and spam. There's clearly an issue with trolling and spam. I'm not talking about
why there's so much trolling/spam (people are bored, there aren't enough interesting topics to discuss, whatever). It's just an observation: there is a lot of trolling and a lot of spam. The pathogenesis is fairly simple: someone makes a spam thread, and then there's a synergistic phenomenon among all the trolls and spammers. This happens by waves with the Koroshiyo often being the trigger. This needs to stop for several reasons. First, all of this floods the main page and hides actual active threads and therefore it is disrupting the others' browsing experience. Secondly,
that can in fact scare away newcomers. I know that when I personally go to a forum and only find spam threads, I end up not posting because I feel there will be no legit discussion possible.
Unfortunately this is hard to contain, because of that synergistic activation. Also people tend to get mad when receiving infractions (what do they expect? They break rules and are all pissy because they get infracted for it, dismissing all the occurences where they did
not get infracted) and that creates a spiral of anger and flaming (see Karajan's case with Aerodrome, I don't think I need to link posts for that). Finally, in my opinion infractions don't last long enough. It's easy for one person to juggle between 5 points and their expiration. So if 3 persons do that in alternance, the whole section will be easily demolished.
4) Inactivity. That's also what I believe is a major problem with the section. Is it because it's an old game and we've reached the limit of everything? I think everybody agrees that's not the case, so I don't see a legit reason for this inactivity.
By inactivity, I mean gameplay wise. There's no backroom to discuss things, there's no active
contructive matchup discussion, etc. The main problem is (and has almost always been in my opinion) that top players don't express their thoughts enough. I'm not naming anyone because my point isn't to make accusations, but when someone has a matchup question for example (like
this post), no very good player hops in to answer them. I try to wait a bit hoping someone will, but then I end up answering them myself, because that's better than nothing, although I don't think I'm really appropriate for that. Same goes with tier list questions (like
this one): I desperately wait hoping a top player will give his opinion, but end up answering myself without confidence. (And this thread is the intersection of all of the 4 points I made lol.)
The best poster in that regard is probably mixa with all his well done gifs to illustrate his points. I think his Fox double jump perfect landing on dreamland has been the most noticeable improvement in my Fox game for years.
I'm not saying everything is bad either though, technical-wise we've reached the highest point ever thanks to Madao and Framedisplay and I had never hoped that my compilation thread would be that complete.
Oh well I don't even know why I wrote such a long post.
