Is it me or is Casual Discussion kinda dead lately?

@Exhumatika Well, good for him if that's what happened since that's somehow a better outcome then literally rotting in a cave.

How often does "Casual Discussion is dead" come up? There's been threads about how mods are killing CD since at least 2021 and yet CD is still hanging on.


Even deg is still here in spite of the above 4 year old post!


DesuMaiden turned off his bot just to frame us, I see. ; ;

Regarding the topic: Some people are saying it's over-moderation but I don't think that's true from this side of things. There's a few times now that I've seen assumptions that various users were permabanned that weren't, they just wandered off.

As for the general idea that edgy users get banned and that kills CD, I really don't see how bait/flame posts or stuff that got ignored by everyone else in the thread counts as bringing life into CD. Sure, the post count goes up, but most of those posts aren't even replied to. If your grievance is that people should be allowed to be hateful and that's "fun" then you don't really like discussion anyway, you just want a ~safe space~ to act up in. Inflammatory/randomly hateful for no reason posts make some people think twice about posting in a thread in the first place, so in some cases they even discourage discussion. A guy who posts one line about his same 5 personal grievances regardless of the topic isn't really going to do anything for CD.

Other kinds of moderation? Sure, I do think we could have more lax rules for the kinds of topics permitted on CD but not everyone feels the way I do. I'd elaborate further but topically I just haven't had much time to write posts (and this one is too long by CD standards already). I'd like for that to change but it's been a busy several months!

@CC the thing is meaningful discussions is by default serious or controversial discussions so there is nothing casual about cd or you can make cd really casual talks like allowing picture meme threads and ask me anything or ask mal threads thats considered spam today

@deg I don't think it has to be serious or controversial, fleur's threads generate discussion all the time without getting locked or deleted. Picture threads exist in the forum games, there were some meme threads but they're inactive because people weren't using them. Even CE still exists in club form. Asking because I'm genuinely curious, why does it have to be on CD?

I made a killer thread yesterday to inject some laughs into this place, but it was "Not Encouraging Useful Discussion™."

*sigh*
@nep-nep
so this board used to be fun huh?

@fleurbleue What makes you think that his only option IRL is to rot in the cave or be eaten by worms?

Did he leave MAL with the promise to you "till death do you two part"?

I feel the presence of disappointment…

@CC well not just on cd but the whole forum i just said cd because this thread is here on cd

@deg But why would every subforum need its own picture thread? The forum game subforum exists and has picture threads, and club discussions are open to a wider range of topics than permitted elsewhere. Some clubs are very active, although there's a feature that only exists on the mobile app for some reason and that's where a lot of modern club traffic is in some cases.

As far as I can tell the reason for why personal threads aren't allowed is because it usually ends up as a "circlejerk"; it's difficult for new users to get involved as they don't know OP and might not feel comfortable participating, and so it doesn't "encourage discussion". People call fleur's threads circlejerks because the population of CD is small, but their questions are always open-ended enough that anyone can reply.


By no means did I say none of fleur's threads get locked, but most of them survive.

Sorry by the way, not trying to be argumentative, I just have a hard time seeing it the way you do but I'm doing my best to try and understand your perspective!


Oh right, I think you said it previously in the thread but that was another thing I meant to point out. Forums as a medium for online discussion are just dying. MAL is actually a bit of an anomaly in this regard.


This is really funny to me, because it's absolutely not even close to the most restrictive ones. Have you tried posting in any other anime communities that aren't 4chan or Twitter? I came back to MAL because it was less restrictive.

I'm not sure why you're asking this question when I've stated in the above post that I have, and that it is indeed one of the more restrictive ones. If you're a moderator on here, no one can take your opinion seriously because you have a huge bias.

Admittedly, I've not used this forum in a while, so maybe the weirdo mods that used to run this place have crawled back into whatever hole they came from. But judging from other users' posts in this thread, it seems it's still pretty restrictive. Sad!

@Daemon I became a moderator two months ago (and users in this thread know that because I was regularly on CD), do you really think my opinion from two months ago magically ceases to exist and warps into a new one? I've had and expressed the same opinion more than once.


I'm not going to cease to share said opinion with my friends in a thread I was pinged in, especially when I have a different perspective on things, like knowing users they've assumed are banned are in fact, not.


You do know why I'm asking, silly! It's because I doubt what you're saying. It just doesn't seem to be the case if you think this website is restrictive. I've made a thread asking about how gay it is or isn't to ejaculate to gay pornography based on view time without getting moderated, so I'm sorry I just can't see MAL as especially restrictive in a modern landscape. That's a ridiculous take to me, as a user, not as a moderator.

You seem to have a weird thing about mods based on your profile though, so I can back off here.

I've seen mods lock threads just because it doesn't align with their beliefs- not because it broke the rules.

Also, there's not much interesting threads lately, so there's that.

@XMGA030 you could argue more broadly that the "internet as a whole was more fun". even if CD operated exactly the same as before, even if you flooded it with a critical mass of people from "today", you'd get a different product.

but some random things i can recall. or maybe only partially recall. it's been a long time...

1. structurally, the MAL forums were very different.
-there didn't used to be a character minimum for posting, so you had a lot more dumb one line and one-liner responses
-people argued to the death over extremely stupid subjects like "How do blind people know when to stop wiping?", so you would see gigantic walls of quote-quote-quote-quote response replies from two people who kept quoting each other, completely derailing threads. or not really, since you kind of just ignore them like two drunks fighting at a bar or something.
-literal billions of "yes/no" topics that would probably be considered to be non-discussion today

2. there was an incredibly fraught dynamic between the big shitposters and mods.
like, shitposters were constantly trying to push the bounds of what was acceptable discussion. You could get super elaborate bait threads, super blatantly obvious bait threads (that have twenty people calling the bait out and still yet another four people fighting), or everyday taboo discussion topics (incest was a very common one). i remember one regular poster from italy with a gorilla pfp who openly boasted about having an 11 yr.old gf, and argued that "it is wrong to inflict bodily injury on someone who raped you, because rape wasn't a physical injury", further citing that he himself was "assaulted" and it was fine. probably why so many of them got banned and/or left later on.
edit: yeah what @CC said about people leaving rather than being banned is likely true. its a miracle that some people continued to post as long as they did.

...Oh yeah, the "How do blind people know when to stop wiping" thread was part of a mass assault wave of shitposting threads on CD on crappy psuedo-philosophical mundane musings from a group of people, but i think all of the threads got locked after a couple hours.


3. the MAL forums were just very active.
there were fewer places to go, so you just had a lot more volume of people and people posting. i dont recall ever seeing AD or CD with threads that were last responded to more than a day ago on the first page.

@CC



This is a poor argument. Users who suck up to the moderators and ignore the moderators' flaws are more likely to become moderators, and even if that wasn't you, yes, now that you are a moderator, your opinions could easily change. I'm not mentioning politics but merely using it as an example here (the fact that I even have to make this disclaimer proves how restrictive this forum is), but think of the current US president and how many of the officials in his administration have said bad things about him in the past and have now completely changed their tune now that they're working for him.



I've been banned for far less restrictive things than that, so "it just doesn't seem to be the case" if you think this website is not restrictive.



Ignoring the fact that you were creeping on my profile, it wasn't if I just woke up one day and decided to randomly hate on the MAL mods. Maybe, just maybe, there was a reason why I hold the views I do?

You seem to have a weird thing about users who criticize the mods given how desperately you're defending them in this thread. It's natural that you would defend the group you're part of, but don't pretend to be unbiased, then.

How often does "Casual Discussion is dead" come up? There's been threads about how mods are killing CD since at least 2021 and yet CD is still hanging on.


Even deg is still here in spite of the above 4 year old post!


DesuMaiden turned off his bot just to frame us, I see. ; ;

Regarding the topic: Some people are saying it's over-moderation but I don't think that's true from this side of things. There's a few times now that I've seen assumptions that various users were permabanned that weren't, they just wandered off.

As for the general idea that edgy users get banned and that kills CD, I really don't see how bait/flame posts or stuff that got ignored by everyone else in the thread counts as bringing life into CD. Sure, the post count goes up, but most of those posts aren't even replied to. If your grievance is that people should be allowed to be hateful and that's "fun" then you don't really like discussion anyway, you just want a ~safe space~ to act up in. Inflammatory/randomly hateful for no reason posts make some people think twice about posting in a thread in the first place, so in some cases they even discourage discussion. A guy who posts one line about his same 5 personal grievances regardless of the topic isn't really going to do anything for CD.

Other kinds of moderation? Sure, I do think we could have more lax rules for the kinds of topics permitted on CD but not everyone feels the way I do. I'd elaborate further but topically I just haven't had much time to write posts (and this one is too long by CD standards already). I'd like for that to change but it's been a busy several months!

I have to wonder about the lowest effort posts people DO reply to. What did anyone see in DesuMaiden?

@Daemon I became a moderator two months ago (and users in this thread know that because I was regularly on CD), do you really think my opinion from two months ago magically ceases to exist and warps into a new one? I've had and expressed the same opinion more than once.


I'm not going to cease to share said opinion with my friends in a thread I was pinged in, especially when I have a different perspective on things, like knowing users they've assumed are banned are in fact, not.


You do know why I'm asking, silly! It's because I doubt what you're saying. It just doesn't seem to be the case if you think this website is restrictive. I've made a thread asking about how gay it is or isn't to ejaculate to gay pornography based on view time without getting moderated, so I'm sorry I just can't see MAL as especially restrictive in a modern landscape. That's a ridiculous take to me, as a user, not as a moderator.

You seem to have a weird thing about mods based on your profile though, so I can back off here.

It only makes it harder for me to take moderation seriously when you reveal that the most blatant, notorious rule breakers have not been banned. If mods are not interested in enforcing rules, just change them and spare us this song and dance.

@Lucifrost I don't think I did that, though. Nowhere in my post did I say that no one is banned, just that people often assume someone left because they've been permabanned and that isn't always the case. eg. DesuMaiden

It only makes it harder for me to take moderation seriously when you reveal that the most blatant, notorious rule breakers have not been banned. If mods are not interested in enforcing rules, just change them and spare us this song and dance.

this is 100% a boomer-ass opinion, but from my perspective it's been dead for almost 10 years. the incredibly stupid dumb blatantly insulting but fun shitposters that infested this place and other old forums have moved on to other platforms that have replaced MAL (or been banned), as a consequence of other people disappearing or because of tighter moderation.

at the same time, forums have kinda gone away as a natural social media platform anyhow

I think whether or not the moderation runs rampant any forum will eventually have tumbleweeds, and that's good. It means people are touching grass