This thread locking is getting ridiculous.

Seriously? We can't even have friendly discussion of the weather, in an otherwise on-topic post?

W... t.. f...

Seems like they've added Adolf Hitler as a moderator. Might as well lock the whole forum if this keeps up.

Nah, if they did he would let anything pass.

Don't say such rubbish! The forums should not be for member to member bashing and off-topicology. The only thing that should be going on here is people trading experience, helping others with code, and talk about everything related to technology (because that's awesome ;).

..me personally doesnt give a sh*t what mods doing, but i agree that its a bit strange to lock pretty much everything what is just a 'bit' away from IT-Games related stuff..I mean, thats whats for general threads, right?? But again..'God' complex is hard to deal with, keep that in minds Swifty ;) and dun worry man.. :)

Not here it isn't: "A forum for general discussion about computers, technology, videogames and related topics."
I don't see why there should be off-topic talk here.

..ahhh..then my bad..lock..lock.lock..lock.. :)

How exactly is Virtual World software off topic in "A forum for general discussion about computers, technology, videogames and related topics."? I don't particularly care, but the ridiculous inconsistency is just going to annoy people and drive what few people remain away too. (If you've never stopped to notice just how few people are actually active on this forum, I highly recommend it.)

Oh yes, very few, in fact just not too long ago the forums were literally dead.

I see 3 locked topics on the first page of the this forum, all of which clearly have degenerated into going entirely off topic or flaming.

Shawn, maybe http://www.talkweather.com/forums/index.php is for you?

Serious non-belligerent-tone question: is deleting the offending posts an option instead of locking the whole thread? I know in the past I've had posts deleted, and in context, it was fair enough.

Seems like that's all they should be doing, unless the thread was started as off-topic.

How many of us work from home? I do!

Imagine you worked in an office, and everytime two or more people started to congregate in the break room to chat about their wife and kids or that great football game last night, the boss popped in and yelled "Okay, that's enough of that!"

Would you stay at a company that treated you like that? One which allowed no social interaction whatsoever?

Such a stifling enviornment would quickly kill morale.

Same thing is happening with this forum. We're indie developers. This is our office. These are our coworkers. And our "bosses" aren't allowing us occasional idle chit chat.

Family?

Find another fully off-topic forum to discuss things (seeing as no officials want you, or anyone else, to do it here)?

Oh sure, we could go elsewhere to discuss off topic things, but becoming friendly with the local waitress doesn't improve the social dynamics back at the office.

When Bob needs some assistance with a broken copier, who's going to come to his aid first, his buddy Dave who likes camping and fishing, or that guy three cubicles down who Bob's never spoken with?

Also, if social interaction between folks in this community is so unimportant, why do we bother occasionally having get-togethers?

What office? your not in one.

do you's think it's anything to do with bandwidth and stuff ?
maybe they're trying to limit the posts or something so they
don't have to store so many .... other than that it would be great
if they had an off topic section again.

Sunshine:
No. Text takes up almost no bandwidth/space. One post might have 200 characters. One image would have 200,000.

I really don't understand why anyone would be against off topic posts. Mark could easily create a "tech" discussion forum, and one for truly off topic posts, and you'd never have to look in the off topic forum if you didn't want to read stuff in it. But the people who WANTED a little social interaction with their fellow blitzers would have a place to do so.

Where's the downside, other than the mods having to occasionally prune a topic which gets a bit heated? (As opposed to having to prune EVERY off-topic post which is 10x more work.)

I swear, the stereotype of programmers being socially inept must be true if most of you folk have no interest in chatting it up with your peers, and even balk at the idea of others being allowed to do the same in your presence.

..i want social interaction with Swift, RossC, GFK, Walnut, Puki, Leonardo(i dont know his nick :)), Mikhail, MadJack, Rob Farley , Wedoe, Maximo, Taumel,_33 and mr Mark :) Those are my fav , maybe few i forgot at the moment :) hehehehe

oh yes..Filax and StevieG are my fav too :)

Judging by past posts related to this topic however, GFK doesn't want social interaction with anyone. And that goes for Rob as well.

Also, is Puki still gone?

It would seem so. My theory is that Puki has been abducted by the aliens; his last post contained a rather cryptic "Oooh, I love alien stuff."

sswift has some very good points that can't be easily denied (which unfortunately means this thread will most likely be deleted soon).

The whole "moderation" system here is either totally flawed, or there's some moderator(s) who aren't doing their job correctly, to say the least. For reasons well illustrated by sswift, this attitude against community interaction is literally going to kill the blitzbasic.com forums. Don't take my word for it - look at results yourself (forums getting less and less active, more and more people moving away from blitzbasic and to other languages/engines, etc.)

It was odd how Puki disappeared right around the time that 'Limbo of the Lost' scandal blew up...

The only problem with that is that it very quickly degenerates into a "blind leading the blind" situation.

For once sswift and I agree on something completely. Him and Gabe have very valid points about people leaving. Why? Because when you've reached the stage when only a handful of people here are able to help constructively with your issues, and they've either left (Noel Cower) or aren't particularly talkative (Simon Armstrong), there really isn't much incentive for staying (other than addiction).

I agree with the double forum idea. Personally, I like just the tech stuff, but I don't have to look at the other one if I don't want to. Just as sswift said; everybody wins.

But I can see both sides, really. I mean, if you wanted to talk to specific Blitzers, wouldn't an e-mail or IM suffice?

Is talking about the forum itself off topic? :)

Don't start that again...

In favor of BlitzBasic's prosperity, please make an off-topic section.

No!

No off topic forum!

I hate off topic forums!

They bore me STUPID!

The Web's boring enough without more boredom!

My site, my rules, if don't like it, go somewhere else!!!!!

(Sorry, post-semi-major-release release possibly...)

Anyway, hope you get my general point.