None meant, none taken.

In some sense I suppose I should apologize for hijacking the thread except for the fact that this thread was headed nowhere to begin with, but yeah I definitely consider skins to be frills and although I can see *some* potential use for organizational aids I still suspect that there's nothing they can really do for you. I view these kinds of things like the fancy closet organizer systems you can get at home depot. If you're too lazy to keep your closet neat and clean then a closet organizer probably won't do much but give you more place to pile crap.

Of course, All generalizations are false, including this one. I'm sure there are many people that can benefit from the use of such organizational aids and it's your PC and I'm certainly not going to say what anyone should or should not have on their own PC. It's just for me personally I find these things to be about as much use as tits on a bull. 

As far as the intermix on the SD forums that's something I've spoken about rather vehemently, however I don't totally object to the mixing of the forums, what I object to is the "forced" intermixing of different forums and the "unknowing" intermixing.

The proponents of this mixing say that it generates interaction between people of different interests and that interchange can be a good thing. I actually agree with this premise but I also believe that the objection to "forced" and "unknowing" interaction is valid as well.

For example by "forced" interaction I mean where there is a so much traffic from a foreign source that it begins to overpower the "normal" traffic of that site. This is certainly what has happened with the GalCiv2 site and Impulse. Basically looking at the top 50 most recent post list on the GalCiv2 site you'll see that threads from the Impulse and the Off-Topic categories outnumber the GalCiv2 specific threads on a regular basis. This has been true for months now and continues to be true today.

The other aspect is the "unkowning" part of this mix. These sites mostly grew up by themselves and have an obvious primary interest that attracts people of different ages, interests and temperment. Certainly there is overlap. I'm sure there are many that frequent both Sins and GalCiv2 but there are probably more that don't than do.

Like Mark Twain said "All generalizations are false, including this one". But there *are* elements of truth in them and we do end up sorting ourselves out by shared interests. I have no problem interacting with Win Customize folks as long as I know that's what they are. I can then understand at least a little bit what their interests may be and how their opinions may differ from mine. I also want them to know that my interests are GalCiv2 and that in some sense should geive them a basic understanding of where my interests and opinions lie.

The other part about knowing someone may not share your particular interests is the acceptance that this exists and the willingness to at least attempt to see the other persons point of view.

Basically I dislike the internet and have always disliked the internet. I've found most of the "blogosphere" to be populated with people that spout the same kind of opinions that I hear all too frequently on sports or political talk radio stations. For me there's just too much yelling and shouting. Plus all the right wingers call in on the right wing shows and all pretty much tend to agree and the same with the left wingers. If the someone from the opposite political side stumbles onto the wrong show they are simply ridiculed, ignored or just simply shouted down.

That's what mostly happens on the internet if you're arguing the "wrong" side of a particular arugment. You can write a 10 paragraph argument bringing up multiple points and usually 9 of the 10 points will get ignored and the point responded to will be mis-stated. And that's probably a more reasoned response. Often a 10 paragraph argument will simply be ridiculed by someone posting a flaming.gif or the like. How can you argue with that?

I have no problem with people holding opinions that differ from mine, but I do have a problem with people who consider every opinion I have to be unreasonable to hold while their every opinion is not just opinion but fact. This is no interchange of rational discourse, you're just wasting your breath.

So anyway the GalCiv2 site used to be different from that. It used to be a place where everyone shared an interest in the same game and gave each other advice pertaining to the game. Now the GalCiv2 site is just like the rest of the internet.

So here's another 10 paragraphs that try to rationally explain my position, let's see who can dismiss every point I brought up in the least number of words possible.

You were all brought here by the power of the space ponies!

GC2aholics unite!

Ah, but to the [approximately] 3.5 Million members of WinCustomize, it isn't.

It's a case of 'each to their own' ...you don't have to like skinning & customizing, but that figure up there suggests that many others do...

 

Not sure whare you get the 3.5 million number but given there are 1 billion PC's in the world, 3.5 million represents an exceedingly small percentage. But as you say to each his own.

In any case I have no particular intention to denigrate anyone in particular or any of Stardock's products. Also I didn't deny that there are a noticable number of people interested in such things I merely expressed the *opinion* that I couldn't really understand the motivation for that interest.

Err that number is the number of registered users across all the SD sites. Here on GC2 the count is exactly the same, so to laud that there is 3.5 million wincustomizers is misleading. Thats not to say that wincustomize may well make up a great majority of those 3.5 million registered users.

What you have to understand, and this has been my argument for well over a year, is that you are reading this from, i assume, wincustomize.com, i am reading this from GC2.com and is the OP on JU.com? The cross pollination of threads across all of SD's sites causes far more confusion than any benefit it brings.

Those of us that are GC2aholics, well put DA, pretty much don't want to have "our" forum full of JU topics, wincustomize threads and Impulse complaints. As i am sure nor do those on Ju or wincustomize want to hear our strategies for winning a gigantic abundant all or the best tech tree to use for the highest score. It's just gibberish to you guys and you really dont care about us. Thats is fine but it is what is at the crux of the problem, SD seem to think it is better, for whatever reason to combine and share topics across all it's sites.

I argue, and it works for whatever side of the SD fence you are on, that our forum experience would be far better off if we didn't have to sort through the maze of threads that have little to nothing to do with the said forum you may happen to be on. I come to GC2.com for chat about the game to be part of that community. I have no need to go to wincustomize.com or JU and im sure those who visit those sites have no need to be part of the GC2 community. It's the same if i want to buy a book, i can go to Amazon or eBay. But if i want a site about skinning (yes i have WB) i have to go to wincustomize and go through all the threads that have nothing to do with skinning. Same here (GC2), we get flooded by Ju topics and Impulse threads as the user base for those exceed GC2 and render our recent post lists useless.There was nothing more annoying than going to a game site and being confronted with political and religious threads from JU. If i want to see them, i would go to a blog site, or one would have thought. The new annoyance is going to a game site and being flooded with "i hate/love impulse". I'm sure the flip side is that you guys on wincustomize/JU/impulsedriven would live quite happily enough without the red headed step child that GC2 (which seems to be labeled as and not by folks here so dont start steaming.. ) users chatting about their specific topics, or topics such as these.

There is no reason why our respective forum's could not have remained separate and we would all live our virtual lives online in wondrous ignorance of each other. Gamers, bloggers and skinners have very little in common with each other most of the time (sure there are exceptions so don't raise hell on me) so why share a forum.

Being ignorant of the other SD sites and their communities is one thing, being arrogant about is another. It certainly is a case of "each to their own", if only that would extend to the community we have to share.....

 

 

I am sure that a huge percentage of those see it exactly as that: A way to make their desktop look nicer or have some cool animated wallpaper.

That's what I said, cosmetics.

In addition to what Neilo said, I've run into a few threads where a question was posed about a problem in-game having to do with planet colonies and ship battles or some such. If it's stuck in one of the broader gaming categories and the OP is kinda vague you can't tell at first if the question is for GC2 or SoaSE. I've almost replied to a couple with a GC2 answer only to find they were asking about Sins. Luckily this doesn't happen too often.

The powers that be seems to feel it's a good idea to mix like this, which from a marketing standpoint it does give broader product saturation across the enitre user base. The thing is many of us here at GC2 do have some of these other products, we just use them and have no need to discuss them. It's not like there is strategy to be talked about with those types of apps When i have a problem with one I go to it's forum to resolve it, and I try not to drag it to unrelated areas. It's like a culture clash of sorts and as long as these forums are setup like this these kinds of discussions/debates will popup.

and to the OP; I hope we haven't totally hijacked and screwed up your bloggin experience in any way here. Just seemed like this was kind of a test post and I guess a good place to have an open discussion about this.

With a mature crowd no less. If you recall many of the other discussions about the crossing posting has ended very badly, i assume as back then onluy GC2 was seeing the negative affect of cross posting but now iot is all over the SD network more and more users are coming across this.

 

And yes i have already answered a Sins question with a GC2 response.....i backed out of the thread quietly and made no further eye contact.....

Arrghhh edit broke...again..

I tried fixing the (sp) errors. I am finding myself making my post replies on ToE.com then CTRL-Ving them over here, at least we still have spellchecker there.

Now theres an argument we could get behind....

Actually since this thread was created by a person that has set up a blog then it can be edited as one. Just go over to http://putradi.impulsedriven.net/article/324462 and you'll find that edit in that context works just fine. Don't know how or why, but it does. You still have the limitation of only being able to edit until someone else posts a reply (unless of course you're the author of the thread and you're editing the OP).

You wouldn't necessarily know where to go but if you just tried to access the thread as if you were the author i.e. http://neilo-bmf.impulsedriven.net/article/324462 then you'd get redirected to the proper place and be able to edit the your reply assuming it was still the last one.

[edit] For example, I just went to Impulsedriven to fix up the above links that were pointing to the wrong article. [/edit]

[edit] Actually I had to then go over to JoeUser to fix up the links pointing to Imuplsedriven. The problem is that when you are at a particular site and you link to an article on that site, the full path is not placed in the link, only the relative path to the link from that site. So then when someone on GalCiv2 (for example) tries to follow the link they get a 404 error on the relative path "/article/324462" because it doesn't exist on GalCiv2. However going to JoeUser and editing the Impulsedriven path works properly.

Oh what a tangled web we weave. [/edit]

I'd like to see two things: (Why am I posting this here?)

1. Each post/reply listing the site it was made from in the upper right corner. (Hey, it might pique somebody's curiosity.)

2. Topic specific recent posts page. Listing all the posts under Impulse forums, but none of the others for example.

This post was made from forums.sinsofasolarempire.com.

 

Because this thread has wandered in and out of the same points you're making.

But yes I agree that knowing where a reply comes from would be a big benefit. I mean you still need to be careful about making too much out of it (all generalizations are wrong) but it does provide at least some context to where someone's coming from in more than just the literal sense.

Your second point is good as well but there is a bit of an issue when it comes to some forums where there are many subforums. In this kind of case a recent posts list should contain the recent post from the main forum as well as all it's lower subforums. I'm primarily thinking of the GalCiv II forum here that has 9 subforums.

The essense of these two points agree with what I posted earlier in reply #46 of this thread. Point 1 addresses knowing something about who you're talking to. And your second point is in line with the idea of having the control to address a wider audience when you wish or think it's appropriate while leaving the real detailed stuff that's totally specific to your "home" site separate.

I actually do find myself intentionally using the Off-Topic forum for issues that I believe relate to more than just the GalCiv2 site. And certainly this intermixing of sites applies to many sites. The problem is that the mixing is sporadic and almost random. Which forums are shared between which sites is certainly not well known or understood by me. I suppose Andrew would know the structure the best but I think if we're going to mix then we should do so fully and not just this random and partial mixing.

The formation of site specific issues forums and general "All" forums issues forums was an important and necessary step. If we're going to share forums then fine but we should all understand how it works and have an informed choice about when we might want to discuss something across *all* of SD's site versus how you can hit 1 million points in a GC2 game.

In the same vein I would say "games is childish pasttime....for kids".

So what if I have upwards of 90 games installed currently [incl. demos]...and at the same time don't even BOTHER with Microsoft's default shell.

It very definitely is NOT 'vanity'.....not in this little woodchuck's Dictionary interpretation of the word.

It MAY be purely 'cosmetic'....in the same way that a Drysdale is 'purely cosmetic'.

Skinning is an artform....no less legitimate than any other....