crystal ash: Spartan15:You spelled " Potential" wrong at the ending of your third paragraph.
I have to disagree with you where you state in your first paragraph about not blaming the moderators or forum administrators. They are responsible for whatever happens on this site and they should be able to take critercism aswell as hearing nice things about the game. They are the one's that created this site and thus allowed us to put our opinion's forward for the game.And we should allowed to blame them for the lack of updates we were getting on the game before it got released because Aloysius never really answered any questions that were asked in the ' Ask a Mod" thread, which i consider to be extremely ignorant for someone who is supposed to be there to answer questions and to keep the forums up to date.
You also need to further elaborate which threads you are talking about that " Lack in information" . Normally the first post of a new thread should fill you in with all the information that is required for entering that specifc thread. Then again half the threads don't even make sense on here because they are simply just spam or off topic subjects.
I partly agree with you in your last paragraph but we don't necessarily have to look at how other communities are run. Before MS took over this site, the community was fine but now it's all gone to piece's since the removal of signatures and the lack of questions answered by the new moderators.
Apologies for the typo...at least you got what I meant.
My thought about not blaming Moderators was specifically regarding some posts that seem to blame Moderators for the quality of content and/or type of people on the forum. I think Moderators and Developers should be able to take critasism; however in my own personal experience, they do. Now, it is clear that there are some historical issues with this (some posts above as an example), and so I understand your point; these stem from a time before I was present here, and so I don't know enough to be able to comment on this. I can say that it is surprisingly hard to receive critasism, especially when it is surrounded by posts that basically say "you suck"!
I think it is important to differentiate between Moderators and Developers, however it is my understanding that Aloysius can be counted as both. You cannot expect Mods to be able to always offer in depth, 100% accurate information, and likewise Developers cannot be expected to be on hand to instantly provide answers to everything. Moderators can, however, work to ensure good information/points are highlighted to the attension of the right people. I have however, only seen the presence of Aloysius on the forum (are there other Mods?) - and so would be interested to hear how practical/difficult it is for him to manage the space and provide information (the guy has to eat and sleep after all!).
Your question asked about the "lack of information", and by that I was specifically referring to the answering of questions, rather than the forum information provided. If there were more answers provided to some of the regular issues raised, then this might help reduce the constant reccurrance of some posts - or at least users could redirect new users to already posted information. My issue is that I am finding it harder to find good information, as I'm beginning to 'glaze over' posts that I see as repitition. I totally agree with you regarding posts not making sense.
Finally, your last point suggests that it was the removal of sigs and lack of answers that caused the community to "go to pieces" - that does not seem logical...is this the cause, or the effect? I would suggest that it has simply be put into a state of change because of an influx of new users - particularly given that many users will have come over from Halo, which seems to have a higher than average numbers of 'misguided' people (and I realise I am generalising terribly there - apologies!). Being the "Official" game forum, it is inevitable that many people will come here to raise issues, and vent frustrations about the game, in the hope of being heard, and that this can sometimes lead to a negative vibe...unfortunately, the best we can do is manage this as best we can.
Well there is a massive difference between Moderators and Developers as you can tell and my point was more towards the moderators than the developers. I'm not exactly sure what Aloysius's role is at MS. I, like you, believe that he may be apart of the developing team for Halo Wars but it is not yet proven.
I think you will also find that not all the moderators on here take critercism well. I do recall certain people being banned for expressing there opinions of what the game will be like and stating what areas of the game they think will be rubbish. I don't think any of expect the moderators to go into depth about the game when giving us information but my point was more the lack of any information that they have given us, especially when MS took over from ES.
I think you will find that the general information on here isn't as good as what it used to be, but there are still regular updates on the home page of the forums which is something i suppose. You are right in suggesting that it is so much harder now finding good quality information as not much of it is posted these days as it was before the game got released.
Also with the signatures being banned, it was part of the reason that the forums have collapsed because several of the older members and a few of the newer ones raised an uproar about it and have since either left or been banned. The other reasons are as you stated above for people leaving because of the influx of new members. It would be excellent to see these forums have a total revamp someday and get back to what it used to be when i first joined.
I stand proud and dominant in the heat of a battle.