Terribly Moderated Forums / Your Worst Forum Experiences

[Peter]

Another disgruntled Codexer here.

What people fail to see are the VERY well discussed topics that abound there. While they are few and far between (and you would have to actually search for them), people just look at one or 2 threads inhabited by spammers and people using derogatory remarks and think that is all we do.

It's not even that, though. If you were to look at the first 15 thread on the RPG Discussion subforum right now, you'd see, among others, 4 threads discussing the gameplay/story/questing of Skyrim, a game that has been surprisingly well-received on the Codex, a thread discussing Skyrim modding, a thread about Ultima 5, a thread praising the DaggerXL project (look it up; great stuff), a thread about the Matt Chat Youtube show/series thing that is quite well liked on the Codex etc. I won't deny that there's not anti-semitic talk in a thread about Richard Garriot (though in that particular case it seems to be played for laughs), or that the Skyrim threads have quite a bit of insult hurling (mostly by an infamous poster known as Skyway). But the point is that while the site may be uncensored, it still has a ton of decent discussion. Hell, at it's best, the Codex is probably one of the best places on the internet to actually deeply discuss game-design, the RPG genre, the industry etc. Look no further than the Codex Workshop subforum, which is full of interesting design-talk and mod/indie projects.

That being said, keep out of General Discussion, which is populated by trolls, alts and drama queens. That one subforum is pretty much responsible for 90% of the bad rep for the Codex. It's like judging all of 4chan by /b/ and /v/.