What about a "Forum Games and Roleplaying" subforum?

[KittyTac]

It would be placed in the Sandbox and would host forum games like "Corrupt a wish" and roleplays. WOuld boost the forum's popularity a lot, and inevitably make more people interested in GoL. I can bring in the population of a forum I know to give it a kickstart.

[M. I. Wright]

Hm. Forum games like Mafia or Corrupt a Wish would IMO be a wonderful addition to the Random Posts thread or the Sandbox (that is, the subforum, not the section!), but I have a feeling that role-playing activities wouldn't be much of interest to regulars in the mostly-academic spirit of the forum at large -- and therefore perhaps better-relegated to their own thread than to a subforum, if accommodated at all.
Likewise, I don't really feel that bringing in a bunch of new users to kickstart a specially-made roleplaying-slash-forum-games area would go over smoothly, because an interest in those activities would presumably translate shakily (at best) into any sort of interest in GoL, and they would likely after a month or so find themselves isolated in their participation... eventually either quitting or staying in their own bubble and effecting a weird dichotomy between the two sections of the community.
So I'm not too sure, especially with regard to how this could boost the forum's popularity in the long run. I'm aware that my own two cents, however, aren't necessarily shared by the rest of the forum, so I'll wait for somebody else to weigh in before writing it off entirely!

[AforAmpere]

Likewise, I don't really feel that bringing in a bunch of new users to kickstart a specially-made roleplaying-slash-forum-games area would go over smoothly, because an interest in those activities would presumably translate shakily (at best) into any sort of interest in GoL, and they would likely after a month or so find themselves isolated in their participation... eventually either quitting or staying in their own bubble and effecting a weird dichotomy between the two sections of the community.

I agree, I feel this would create two groups, the roleplayers, and the CA people. This might be a thing to do in some other forums, but I feel that here would not be the place to do it.

[confocaloid]

There are some forum threads containing multiple medium-to-large RLEs, with few or no added meaningful explanations or descriptions or comments regarding what those RLEs are about and why those RLEs were posted.

Some of those threads are mostly "incremental", in that many RLEs are minor modifications of earlier RLEs, reposted in a separate post.
Others are more or less random pastebins.
Sometimes there are attempts to add some "story" to the patterns, but the thread ends up being yet another "RLE pastebin" anyway.

Does this forum really need so many threads that are basically high-volume pastebins?

Below is an incomplete list of examples:
(note that there are also threads created by various people as "sandbox threads for themselves", which are not included below)

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3316 "RLE copy/paste thread - everyone else"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6377 "Search Results Dump"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6496 "derivative rle copy paste zone"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6670 "(game) Conduit Chain (my ver.)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6626 "(SI) Induction Coilage (game)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6516 "conways game of life roleplay"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6645 "CA empires"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6558 "Core Destruction"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3021 "Continue the infinite path!"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6717 "CGOL Roleplay (alt universe)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6711 "CGOL Roleplay 2"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6569 "CGOL Roleplay 3"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6567 "-- CGOL ROLEPLAY TWO --"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6713 "Conway & Nway Co."
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6598 "New ca realm"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5697 "Blorpus ( Game )"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6614 "Start a Colony!'
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6390 "QuadLife VS (Game)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5967 "Dueling Patterns (Game)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6068 "My Pattern is Larger (Game)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6477 "expand the spark (game)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5683 "Extend the Pattern 3(The whole message is important so please read through it and make sure you understand it)"
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6515 "glider destruction of ash"

Old related discussion:

Hm. Forum games like Mafia or Corrupt a Wish would IMO be a wonderful addition to the Random Posts thread or the Sandbox (that is, the subforum, not the section!), but I have a feeling that role-playing activities wouldn't be much of interest to regulars in the mostly-academic spirit of the forum at large -- and therefore perhaps better-relegated to their own thread than to a subforum, if accommodated at all.
Likewise, I don't really feel that bringing in a bunch of new users to kickstart a specially-made roleplaying-slash-forum-games area would go over smoothly, because an interest in those activities would presumably translate shakily (at best) into any sort of interest in GoL, and they would likely after a month or so find themselves isolated in their participation... eventually either quitting or staying in their own bubble and effecting a weird dichotomy between the two sections of the community.
So I'm not too sure, especially with regard to how this could boost the forum's popularity in the long run. I'm aware that my own two cents, however, aren't necessarily shared by the rest of the forum, so I'll wait for somebody else to weigh in before writing it off entirely!

Likewise, I don't really feel that bringing in a bunch of new users to kickstart a specially-made roleplaying-slash-forum-games area would go over smoothly, because an interest in those activities would presumably translate shakily (at best) into any sort of interest in GoL, and they would likely after a month or so find themselves isolated in their participation... eventually either quitting or staying in their own bubble and effecting a weird dichotomy between the two sections of the community.

I agree, I feel this would create two groups, the roleplayers, and the CA people. This might be a thing to do in some other forums, but I feel that here would not be the place to do it.

[hotcrystal0]

Time to revive this discussion. I like this idea, but to prevent roleplayers joining the forums, it should be for CA games and roleplays only, and it should be hidden for new users and unregistered users.

[confocaloid]

There should be no "roleplaying" subforum at all. It's simply offtopic (and can be noisy, without contributing much to the main purpose of the forums).

As a forum user, I don't see any need to prevent anyone joining the forums. It becomes a problem only when people get involved into offtopic or counterproductive activity (such as high-volume low-contribution forum games).

Time to revive this discussion. I like this idea, but to prevent roleplayers joining the forums, it should be for CA games and roleplays only, and it should be hidden for new users and unregistered users.

[hotcrystal0]

There should be no "roleplaying" subforum at all. It's simply offtopic (and can be noisy, without contributing much to the main purpose of the forums).

As a forum user, I don't see any need to prevent anyone joining the forums. It becomes a problem only when people get involved into offtopic or counterproductive activity (such as high-volume low-contribution forum games).

The goal is really to separate the “more serious Sandbox” from the games and roleplays.

[b-engine]

There should be no "roleplaying" subforum at all. It's simply offtopic (and can be noisy, without contributing much to the main purpose of the forums).

Prohibiting the use of LifeSuper in the Sandbox might solve the problem - most threads became problematic like you described just because of LifeSuper.

[confocaloid]

Forum rule 4: "This is an academic forum, not a chat or microblogging platform." viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2092

There should be no "roleplaying" subforum at all. It's simply offtopic (and can be noisy, without contributing much to the main purpose of the forums).

As a forum user, I don't see any need to prevent anyone joining the forums. It becomes a problem only when people get involved into offtopic or counterproductive activity (such as high-volume low-contribution forum games).

The goal is really to separate the “more serious Sandbox” from the games and roleplays.

High-volume sandbox games fail to be a way to explore Conway's Life or other cellular automata.

High-volume sandbox games fail to evolve into activity that would contribute something to existing CA knowledge, or evolve into activity that would improve understanding of CA, or evolve into activity that would otherwise be on-topic and of interest to the community.

If someone is here because of their curiosity about CGoL/CA, then presumably hopefully they will not stuck for too long in the "sandbox games" modus operandi for too long. Hopefully they will be able to escape the gravitation of the current Sandbox, and find a way to explore, contribute, and keep their curiosity and enthusiasm alive.

On the other hand, if someone is here because they want to participate in high-volume low-contribution chatty forum games, then that might be some misunderstanding of the main purpose of the forums. Those games that might make sense at all, would work much better outside this website, in some other environment that is closer to a "chatroom".

There should be no "roleplaying" subforum at all. It's simply offtopic (and can be noisy, without contributing much to the main purpose of the forums).

Prohibiting the use of LifeSuper in the Sandbox might solve the problem - most threads became problematic like you described just because of LifeSuper.

It will not solve the problem by itself. Those people who really want to have that sort of high-volume low-contribution games will just invent a replacement ruletable. That will be even more of a "just drawing random pictures without this having much to do with cellular automata" type activity.

It's not that the use of LifeSuper is a problem. I believe the idea of having such games on these forums is inherently problematic.

[Citation needed]

Maybe some member could volunteer to create a website along the lines of "conwaylife.fandom.com" with LifeViewer imported so that "Conway Life Roleplay" could continue there.
The "Conway Life Skyscraper" might also be moved to that website.

[hotdogPi]

Just so you're aware, Fandom has many problems at the organizational level and also ads. If it were to exist, a different host would be better.

[hotcrystal0]

The goal is really to separate the “more serious Sandbox” from the games and roleplays.

I feel like I should add more to this. The Sandless group hides the Sandbox from view, but the problem is that meaningful threads like users’ sandbox threads are mixed in with noisy threads like roleplays. Separate the signal from the noise like this would be a great addition, but once again it carries the issue of splitting apart the community into the roleplayers and the actual contributors. Even if this were to be accepted, it should be restricted to CA-related games and roleplays, as there are already other places for non-CA forum games and roleplays, and even though you could argue “but it would bring the community together” the non-CA threads would be noisy and likely cause moderation issues (unlike serious discussion about non-CA topics).

[hth3]

I feel like the serious Sandbox should be separated from forum games and roleplaying, since as hotcrystal said, many people are Sandless just to block noise like games and roleplaying, but there are also things that aren't games and roleplaying in the sandbox too, like user threads.
Still, I think people should be free to choose to block the entire Sandbox if they want, but there should also be an option to block just the forum games and roleplaying subforum.

[b-engine]

Alternatively, add an option to only block those threads flagged as noisy. There's pretty much only five of them or less.

[hth3]

Alternatively, add an option to only block those threads flagged as noisy. There's pretty much only five of them or less.

It would be useless, since anyone can create a noisy thread, you just need to create a game thread or something and post a lot of stuff in it rapidly, even though though that would be most probably against the rules.

[b-engine]

It would be useless, since anyone can create a noisy thread, you just need to create a game thread or something and post a lot of stuff in it rapidly, even though though that would be most probably against the rules.

I'm pretty sure that any new noisy thread would been shut down by moderators. Applies even without the proposal applied.
I don't know if this would increase the work of mods, however.

[hotcrystal0]

I'm pretty sure that any new noisy thread would been shut down by moderators. Applies even without the proposal applied.
I don't know if this would increase the work of mods, however.

Maybe there should be a system in place where if a thread in the subforum gets too many posts in the span of 24 hours or something, it should automatically get locked and only able to be reopened by a moderator.

Likewise, I don't really feel that bringing in a bunch of new users to kickstart a specially-made roleplaying-slash-forum-games area would go over smoothly, because an interest in those activities would presumably translate shakily (at best) into any sort of interest in GoL, and they would likely after a month or so find themselves isolated in their participation... eventually either quitting or staying in their own bubble and effecting a weird dichotomy between the two sections of the community.

I agree, I feel this would create two groups, the roleplayers, and the CA people. This might be a thing to do in some other forums, but I feel that here would not be the place to do it.

Taking today's forum etiquette into account, this would translate to tons of noise. Although you could still make valid arguments for serious off-topic discussion, off-topic games would simply not be appropriate here because of the noise. Plus, there are already forums dedicated to forum games/roleplays. Anyone who wants to play such games should head there instead of cluttering things up here.

[hth3]

Would it be good if you could only access this new subforum after your account is a 3 days old? What about a week?

[hotdogPi]

Would it be good if you could only access this new subforum after your account is a 3 days old? What about a week?

That wouldn't help. Many of the problematic users have been here for months or over a year.

This isn't a spambot issue.

[hth3]

Would it be good if you could only access this new subforum after your account is a 3 days old? What about a week?

That wouldn't help. Many of the problematic users have been here for months or over a year.

This isn't a spambot issue.

Would it be possible to add rate limits to the new subforum, then? Personally I think account-age gating and rate limits combined would be good, however that is just an opinion and not a fact.