I'll say I actually enjoy reddit. I find with most forums, and to be honest this one included sometimes, I often feel like I'm just talking at a wall. I feel like everyone just talks at each other and there's very little actual communication. [...]
I do feel you don't really get to know or recognize anyone though. Which is a plus to forums like this where you get to count on certain people providing the right info, unique perspective, or humor. I wish I had more time to get involved and interact more with this community. Love this place! But, reddit has a place too I suppose.
In some cases, I can attest to the lonely feel on forums like this one. Some of the other forums I've frequented implement a feature for sending "rep", which is essentially a way of privately letting someone know that you liked their post and if so inclined, you can leave as comment as to why you rep'd, or not. It's a nice way of feeling like your inputs are read or valued on a forum where post quoting every single time is not feasible. I think VGC could use a feature like that. If I'm not mistaken, I think this forum build might be the same one others have used which implement the rep feature. Perhaps it's an option?
I understand where
dharmajones93 is coming from; given the anonymous aspect of the Internet, the analogy that sometimes we could feel like we're "talking to a wall" in places like this (i.e. forums) is quite accurate—I can understand one could feel ignored after making a post. But, at the end of the day, is it really necessary to expect a "thanks", so to speak, from anyone that read your comment/post? The main reason, I believe, we visit and participate in these kind of places is to interact with others that share our hobby, and by and large that's exactly what we end up doing, so making an e-friend or two is a bonus. And mind you, by "thanks" I mean getting your comment/post noticed or replied to; I don't mean "thanks" in the literal sense, although I guess could also apply.
With that said, I'm well aware of forums with a "reputation system", and believe it's a useless feature that ultimately becomes a popularity contest and a way to promote an "elite" community—the “cool kids club” if we’re to give it a name. A good number of people in forums already think they're better than everyone else the bigger their post count is, so certainly a rep system will make that far more
enjoyable. And sure, one could say a system like that would help to "flag" bad users (i.e. trolls), but there's already a report feature set in place, so that angle becomes moot fast. Not to mention that a system like that lends itself for negative usage; and quite frankly, this website is long overdue of proper, genuine updates, so the least it needs is something as superfluous as a point system for the sake of adding something new.
Yeah pretty much this. Can't all be perfect. It's nobodies fault, just a limitation of the format I suppose.
I know this will sound mean, trust me when I say it’s not my intention, but; are you here to interact and share your love for the hobby or looking for validation? Granted, one could make the argument we as human beings look for validation in some form or another, but your comments/posts are being read by someone, I’m sure of that. I would guess that since most threads around here tend to be in the form of a question—this one being a good example—that’s why you’ll see some make posts that read as if they hadn’t read any of the other replies, which I admit I’m guilty of, but do try to not do as much.
All in all, I think you shouldn't get too hung up on whether your posts get read or not; I think being a part of the community is incentive enough—you're interacting with your peers as it is and are bound to be reciprocated in return one way or another.
