Yeah, you know what.... I've decided that the private forum kind of sucks. I know the point of it was to try and get more people to be constructive, but what it seems to be doing is just making everyone try and be someone they're not.
Thats the point to an extent. Its an attempt to create a forum where people can have discussion without the cluttering, and most times inevitable, relatively useless posts getting in the way of the actual discussions. If people start putting more effort into their posts and not things like +1, I agree etc. then they will eventually be able to be part of the forum and thats one more person whos a better contributor because of this new incentive.
More and more people are just trying too hard to sound like authority figures by telling people what to do (post this in so and so thread, please don't do this, etc) and it's just fake. I just feel like it's starting to become more like a cult with all these rules and it being taken a little TOO seriously.
I havnt really experienced any of this, in fact the only people who are posing as authority figures, are generally the actual authority figures. Sure there are going to be those few who tell others off, or try to be more like Stefan/Thom, but generally they are just jerks, and dont provide any useful information, and are fairly easy to ignore.
Sure, it's nice to have some good information to be able to find once in a while, when you need it, but at the same time, it's like some people are forgetting that it IS just the internet, it IS just a forum ( a place where people should be able to talk and have fun as well as learn) and it IS just a place where we should all be treated as equals and adults (even those that are young).
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I feel like this is where your main issue with everything is.
Sure you can look at this as 'just another forum' but generally this used to be a place where you would go to research a bunch of information (among other sites out there dedicated to cubing methods) as well as be able to come up with new ideas, and have interesting discussions about them, and every now and then you would see a joke thread, or a thread that had nothing relevant in it, but for the most part it was a very informative website.
Now its almost switched, all the good, thought provoking threads seem to drown in all the 'noise' of the forums.
As for people treating everyone like an adult, if you dont act like an adult, then no one should treat you like an adult.
Just because someone is faster and knows more doesn't necessarily make them better, smarter, or more deserving of being considered more "important" than anyone else.
Generally those that are faster do know more, thats why they are faster. (im not saying this is always the case at all) But, in general faster cubers have more to contribute, especially in regards to the improvement of the community.
I basically think we should all just chill out and try to enjoy the fact that we're all alive and able to have such a cool hobby like cubing, without being so uptight all the time, yelling at people that don't know what they're doing because they're new or whatever, punishing someone because they give a "silly" reply to something.
Most of the time, no one yells or even gets upset at the newbies. When I first got on here everyone was fairly helpful. And they still are. People get mad when the newbies come on here, and act like they know everything/blatantly lie to everyone or are just a nuisance. And at that point its not about being a jerk so much as trying to better the community.
Just learn to have fun and accept that everyone is different and stop separating everyone because some people are "cooler" than others, or friends with certain people (which you all know damn well that that's a big part of what's going on here).
The separation isnt really about whos cooler or whos faster. like I said earlier, its about those who can contribute to the discussion and not clutter the thread with useless information. Think of this as the anti-thesis of the off-topic sub-forum.
It's only about keeping things organized to a certain extent and you can say I'm wrong all you want, but I strongly see otherwise, and know I'm not the only one.
Its completely about keeping relevant and complex discussion organized, as well as an incentive to post better quality posts.
