Defining superfluous as off-topic, the format does not inherently invite superfluous content. In both the traditional forum and engagement ranking schemes, the off-topic post will be ignored and the poster has the same experience in both settings. I argue that the culture of some forums may invite noise, but the forum has several mechanisms to make this invitation a net-positive attribute.
If a post has negative value, then the moderators will probate or ban a poster and the offending content becomes an example for everyone to learn from. If the community deems an off-topic comment to have neutral value, then it is ignored and the individual poster gains information about what the community does not value. There is also the subforum structure which tends to create dedicated threads oriented towards off-topic noise. In turn, these subforums spawn subcultures, each with different relationships towards content and posting styles.
The result is that forums become more representative of their members than upvote ranking communities. The forum benefits come at the cost of higher friction to assimilate as a new poster. The forum structure is also fragile; moderators must operate with high judgement and pulse with the beat of their communities.
The superfluous content I was thinking about is all the extra content besides the discussion. Forum signatures and gratuitous UI layouts that take up a significant part of the screen. I think the minimalism of the comment tree is partly why it works so well.
What I'm hearing from you and the other people who prefer the old format is appreciation of a tighter knit community and a thread of conversation that lasts more than a day. I can appreciate that too.
Sailors may be a small and dwindling community, but this is our core use case. When you are sailing offshore you need to download weather predictions so that you can chart your course to catch favorable winds. My experience with Iridium is that you open a targeted set of ports for the modem to feed your phone via, and then you don't have to think about it again. 100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works.
Richard Garfield recently stated in an interview with The Professor that he took heat back in the day for pushing to have goblins with guns. Playing with the world aspect of the game’s design is as old as the game itself!I agree that it’s fair for anyone to criticize a divergence from a preferred game atmosphere. I also personally don’t mind, because looking at images on cardboard has never felt like an immersive experience. I like the game because of the strategy - so long as the cards tell some story with the graphics I don’t much care what that story is.
In the main menu of Commander Keen 1: Invasion of the Vorticons, there's an option called "Previews!" (between "Ordering Info" and "Restart Demo"). First it shows a couple screenshots of the next two games. Then a text screen with more details appears. It can be scrolled up and down. At the very end there's a description of what would eventually end up as Quake. It was quite different from what we actually got. Only the "Quake" name survived, I think :)
Amazing - I just remembered that all these old games are playable via the internet archive. Fired it up, followed your instructions, and found the text.
I don’t think I ever explored that menu option as a youngster. Seeing that blue wolf-like man before the text appeared sent a chill down my spine. Thanks for enabling this blast from the past.
It looks like a single comment [1] and s/he has many unrelated comments [2]. Looks organic. I'd be worried about cases when all the comments have a link to the project in spite it's barely related. I've seen a few, but most of the times they are downvoted or flagged.
If a post has negative value, then the moderators will probate or ban a poster and the offending content becomes an example for everyone to learn from. If the community deems an off-topic comment to have neutral value, then it is ignored and the individual poster gains information about what the community does not value. There is also the subforum structure which tends to create dedicated threads oriented towards off-topic noise. In turn, these subforums spawn subcultures, each with different relationships towards content and posting styles.
The result is that forums become more representative of their members than upvote ranking communities. The forum benefits come at the cost of higher friction to assimilate as a new poster. The forum structure is also fragile; moderators must operate with high judgement and pulse with the beat of their communities.