Ok, just letting out a bit of steam that's been building up inside me for a while. Has anyone on here noticed that the majority of the posts in the Skyrim forum are redundant and pointless? The countless threads about what people want to see, all the ones yelling at Bethesda to not screw it up, the pointless topics about why you dont want to see this or are glad that they didn't include something or did. It makes me sick. I myself am pretty much a hardcoe fan of TES, and when I get on the Skyrim forum I want to see legitimate topics discussing things that are relevant and new. For instance I just saw a topic on "Shields being useful against magick?", thats a legitimate topic that is worthy of discussion. However things like "Why this is going to be the best game of all time" are pointless and just fill up the forum with spam. And I cant even begin to explain the number of "One liner" replies I've seen that add nothing to the discussion.

The Skyrim forum has close to 400,000 replies....400,000 is A LOT for only being open for posting since last December. Oblivion was one of the most popular games of all time and it only has 280,000 and it's been open since what 2005? I'm curious as to what some of the pre-Skyrim members of this community think about this rapid influx of posts and how it's effecting the Skyrim forum.

I for one can say that it's kept me from posting in there ever since it opened due to all the pointless topics you have to wade through to find one that is worthy of posting in. And it really makes me mad, because I'm a die-hard TES fan and would love to discuss things about Skyrim.

Same with the Brink forum, though with Brink its either "I hate it" or "I Love it"

Hasn't it always been that way with new games?

That's why you never go to those forums till about 2 months after release sadly. Because before there is a whole bunch of kids and spam as you've seen. And after it gets worse as they all complain about how it did this and that wrong.
I learned the hard way with Fallout 3.

I just wish that the mods would take some action and tighten up the rules for that forum.

Your best bet is just to avoid it. :shrug:

Oblivion General was opened in the summer of 2004, the game was released a little less than two years after that, but if you look at the forum now the oldest open threads are from August 2010. The forums are purged of old posts every 6-12 months. In a very active forum like Skyrim General or Community discussion any threads that have been inactive for longer than three months will usually be removed; in less active forums threads from the past six months or year may be kept; in a few forums like TES Past Games forum threads may never be purged.

So yes Skyrim General has a lot of threads but you can't compare it to Oblivion section and suggest the latter number represents seven years of posting because this simply isn't true. Forums are most active in the months before and after a game's release so the Skyrim forums should be extremely busy, while the Oblivion forums are expected less active since the game has been out for a while and many people who were discussing it have moved to other sections or simply left. If you look you'll also see that the Oblivion section has more threads even though Skyrim General has far more posts. In Skyrim General individual threads get a lot of discussion, in the Oblivion forums it's common to post a thread asking a question and then get that question answered, which means there's no need to continue the discussion.

In my experience on the forums I'd say things are pretty much where they should be expected.

Yes many threads in Skyrim General are repetitive or unnecessary, but as long as they're legitimate and the discussion is well-behaved there's no reason to lock it. If there are multiple active threads about the same topic we will lock and redirect to a single thread, but a succession of threads about the same issues is to be expected. That's right, if you're sick of people discussing XYZ now realize you've got six more months before that topic might die - and plenty of those last far beyond the game's release.


We're start with needless complaint threads

If you feel that there are problems you should report them, and before starting a campaign of dozens of reports it's good to ask the mods if something is a problem or not. Three threads about spears on the front page is a problem, but the occasional thread on the topic is acceptable even if the discussion may have no affect on developement.