I have a question for you imms.

Have you considered removing these forums all together?, perhaps replace it with only more constant announcements or limiting it in some way.

The reason for this question is because from my perspective, we seem to get a lot of immortal burning-out from things said in this forum.

I mean, I personally love whenever I read immortal posts because it gives me insight into their mindset and/or about the game itself.

But where do you draw the line between losing volunteers(imms) and getting valuable input from the community?.

How many immortals and coding power would we have kept if not for these forums?

-J

Used to be we didn't even have a web page.

Then some folks started making CF-based web pages (Zulg was one of the first - this was before he immed - or maybe after he immed the first time but before the second time).

Some of those pages started allowing forum-type stuff. One in particular stuck around and is still going today. And Imms would go over there and comment about stuff.

Which got hairy after a while, because the immstaff had no way to shut down a topic that revealed questy information, speculated on who played what, had character assassination, or spread misinformation.

We set up a forum of our own, and for a time tried to comment and respond on both forums, but the above issues didn't ever resolve themselves, really, so we made a policy that we do not post on any non-official CF-based websites (other than stuff like Topmudlisting and that sort of deal).

Also, one of the ways CF is funded is by our Premium Battlefield stuff. I imagine if we didn't have a forum where people could discuss things, that revenue would dry up.

Unfortunately, it does get very tough to take what the peanut gallery says with a grain of salt. As others have mentioned, what happens on the official forums is actually the least bothersome (again, because we have a modicum of control over it). Some of the stuff that was posted a few years ago on a "private" CF-based forum was really rather denigrating and tough to hear about.

While you make a good point about immortals and coding power lost, there isn't a simple solution - and nuking this forum would very much not accomplish anything positive in the long run.

I like having a place I can ask game-play questions and get an answer that I can be fairly confident is correct. It's like Snopes for Dio's.

gr