Totallympics Announcements Thread

[Sindo 1,504]

Every Olympic Thread has been now opened. Thanks to everyone who gave their contribution, I have opened all threads using my admin powers from your accounts so that a standard format was kept. Users who own a thread can now keep the schedule updated when a more detailed schedule will be released in the next weeks, or anyway few days before the Olympics start when the Rio 2016 website will have a detailed schedule for each sport.

 

You can also start using the Olympic Threads for the discussion, predictions and news related to the Olympic Games about each sport, instead of the general discussion thread. You can continue using the Olympic Qualification Threads for the qualification related events.

[Sindo 1,504]

 

 

Hi everyone,

 

just two weeks left before Rio 2016, the event we all were waiting for when working/surfing on Totallympics in the past years.

 

I guess about 90% of today’s Totallympics community already knew Totallympics before February 2016, when as you know the “old” Totallympics (March 2011-February 2016) died and the “new” Totallympics has borne in March 2016. Some other users probably has discovered Totallympics after the February 2016 event and so they know Totallympics only as it is now.

 

As many of you know, after many years of hard work I had totally lost my motivations some months ago and a forum’s database huge problem was the peak of it, and I have decided to start everything again from scratch, starting a new forum with a new software and a new webmaster, with 0 posts on the forum but a community already formed.

 

I will have to decide what to do in my personal and professional life in the next months and I still have too many variables to guarantee you I will try to make out of Totallympics a results database as it was before (which I would like to do starting from September 2016, but I am not sure I will be able to realize it), but I am glad I have decided to start Totallympics again and did not let the community to die and spread Totallympics’ users around national forums/forums focused only on one sport/social networks.

 

The next 4 weeks will be the most important for Totallympics, even if as you know the best thing of Totallympics has always been to live for 4 years and not only for the 16 Olympic days.

 

I will not be able to focus 20 hours per day on Totallympics like I did for London 2012, therefore I am asking some little help to all Totallympics users who like the community and will follow the Olympic Games on the forum and would like Totallympics to keep growing day after day.

 

You all have various ways to help the forum and I will list some of them here. Of course you will decide if and in which way to help, those are just some suggestions.

 

1) If you are a”silent reader”, register on Totallympics and take part in the disussion. There are a lot of visitors who reads Totallympics, maybe even everyday, but who are not registered on the forum. Don’t be shy! Register and join the discussion during the Olympic Games!

 

2) Respect Totallympics’ Rules. It is very important to keep the community a peaceful place even during the “hottest” Olympic days, when every user will have happy and sad moments according to his/her nation’s performance in Rio. If you feel you are too nervous please try to limit yourself and wait some minutes/hours to connect/post on the forum to avoid fights around the forum.

 

3) Use the Report button instead of replying to the provocations. If you read a post you think should be deleted or edited, please report it to the moderators instead of replying and make the fight bigger. Moderators will then decide whether to edit/delete the post or not and whether to give some “punishments” to the involved users. Admins have already been authorized to give 24 or more hours post-prevention punishment when they feel it is necessary to calm down someone, which means you will still be able to read the forum but not to post anything for 24 or more hours, so please behave!

 

4) Try to make your nation’s National Thread active. National Threads are important to attract more users from your Nation on the forum and discuss in the National Thread also in your own national language. It is not easy to make a National Thread active if you are the only user from your Nation on Totallympics but sometimes you just need a “flash” to start and more users will then join to discuss in the thread. Using your nation’s language is also important because it allows users who don’t speak English language at all to take part in Totallympics too. So even if you are alone or just 2 users from your Nation, try to write in the National Thread with the hope more users from your Nation will join the discussion. Take India and Serbia National Threads as examples to follow, those two are the most active National Threads since years and more users have joined Totallympics to be able to take part in the National Thread.

 

5) Try to spread Totallympics around your Nation’s sports communities. Of course you know better than anyone else the forums/social networks pages where your nation’s sport fans gather to discuss about Olympic Games. If you want to make your Nation’s community bigger on Totallympics, you can invite those interested to join and make the community bigger and more represented, both in the National Thread, in Prediction Contests and around the forum.

 

6) Take part in Rio 2016 Prediction Contests. More participants could attract more users to take part. And a link to Totallympics Prediction Contests in your national forums/social networks communities could also be a good way to find more interested users to join Totallympics and its Prediction Contests.

 

7) If you still don’t have one, set an avatar. It is pretty bad for the instant view of the home page and inside a thread to see many users with the same avatar (the default one, a no-face man :d). Setting an avatar is free and very quick, so please unless you like the no-face default avatar, choose a picture and set it as your avatar (your national flag will also work!). Please note that some months ago the maximum size of avatars has been increased, so if you set your avatar long time ago it could be in a very low quality, you can now upload it in a better quality.

 

Sorry for the long post, I hope you will take the time to read it and follow it as much as you can

 

Enjoy the Olympic Games on Totallympics!

 

[gvaisakh 23]

We are with you, Sindo 

[heywoodu 15,141]

1 hour ago, Sindo said:

 

 

Sorry for the long post, I hope you will take the time to read it and follow it as much as you can

 

 

 

You could have written that in the beginning, now I read this sentence and thought "Dude, I just read the entire post already!"  

 

But of course we're gonna make it a great month during the Olympics and hopefully (in a lesser degree, I know) during the Paralympics 

[Suneet 16]

Yoohoo! Just can't wait for the games to begin! 

[bestmen 2,818]

1 hour ago, Sindo said:

2) Respect Totallympics’ Rules. It is very important to keep the community a peaceful place even during the “hottest” Olympic days, when every user will have happy and sad moments according to his/her nation’s performance in Rio. If you feel you are too nervous please try to limit yourself and wait some minutes/hours to connect/post on the forum to avoid fights around the forum.

 

3) Use the Report button instead of replying to the provocations. If you read a post you think should be deleted or edited, please report it to the moderators instead of replying and make the fight bigger. Moderators will then decide whether to edit/delete the post or not and whether to give some “punishments” to the involved users. Admins have already been authorized to give 24 or more hours post-prevention punishment when they feel it is necessary to calm down someone, which means you will still be able to read the forum but not to post anything for 24 or more hours, so please behave!

 

 

 

 

it's not really fighting or no respect but normal discussions for me  , just some people are not open minded
and these discussions are pretty good for the forum because attractive for users and newcomers

if you limit the discussion no one will stay here

[heywoodu 15,141]

46 minutes ago, bestmen said:

 

 

it's not really fighting or no respect but normal discussions for me  , just some people are not open minded
and these discussions are pretty good for the forum because attractive for users and newcomers

if you limit the discussion no one will stay here

But there's a difference between discussing and outright insulting entire nations and people

 

I mean:

 

1. "You think athlete A can win a medal? Nah, I doubt it very much.."

2. "You think athlete A can win a medal? No way, you're an idiot if you really think that."

 

Sort of the same meaning, but very different way of saying it  

[Griff88 1,952]

3 hours ago, Sindo said:

4) Try to make your nation’s National Thread active. National Threads are important to attract more users from your Nation on the forum and discuss in the National Thread also in your own national language. It is not easy to make a National Thread active if you are the only user from your Nation on Totallympics but sometimes you just need a “flash” to start and more users will then join to discuss in the thread. Using your nation’s language is also important because it allows users who don’t speak English language at all to take part in Totallympics too. So even if you are alone or just 2 users from your Nation, try to write in the National Thread with the hope more users from your Nation will join the discussion. Take India and Serbia National Threads as examples to follow, those two are the most active National Threads since years and more users have joined Totallympics to be able to take part in the National Thread.

 

It's sad to be a lone representative

 

Just kidding, I can't wait the Games to start

[OlympicIRL 5,532]

Good luck Sindo and Totallympics for the huge period ahead for us

 

I just wanted to offer my opinion on one thing:

 

Quote

3) Use the Report button instead of replying to the provocations. If you read a post you think should be deleted or edited, please report it to the moderators instead of replying and make the fight bigger. Moderators will then decide whether to edit/delete the post or not and whether to give some “punishments” to the involved users. Admins have already been authorized to give 24 or more hours post-prevention punishment when they feel it is necessary to calm down someone, which means you will still be able to read the forum but not to post anything for 24 or more hours, so please behave!

 

 

I think it might be more constructive to have some deterrent for users posting inflammatory comments. At the moment, if a user posts something blatantly inflammatory then their post simply gets deleted (maybe I'm wrong, but that's all user see that happens anyway). This in turn makes it more likely for another user to respond in kind, possibly out of frustration and the lack of a deterrent.... if User A can write something nasty without a punishment, then User B, C, D, E might think about doing the same in the knowledge that the posts will simply get deleted but they have in the meantime satisfied their ego. If there are no repercussions to constantly dragging threads into petty fights then we are going to see it happen all the time.

 

I don't think it's a particular problem right now and indeed punishments or not, I still would not engage in that type of "tit for tat" but I think having at least some procedure in place in terms of what happens to users if they keep posting in a style where their comments need to be deleted to prevent a thread being side-tracked would be a good thing. But I would add that being at the other end of the spectrum of being too harsh and quick with punishments would be equally damaging and undermine the great tone we have in our forum.

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by OlympicIRL

[Sindo 1,504]

2 hours ago, bestmen said:

 

 

it's not really fighting or no respect but normal discussions for me  , just some people are not open minded
and these discussions are pretty good for the forum because attractive for users and newcomers

if you limit the discussion no one will stay here

 

I agree that normal discussions  should go ahead even if users disagree on certain themes, but there is always a border which if you go beyond it someone should take actions to avoid Totallympics to become a gladiator's arena instead of a forum As heywoodu has already explained.

 

 

 

48 minutes ago, OlympicIRL said:

Good luck Sindo and Totallympics for the huge period ahead for us

 

I just wanted to offer my opinion on one thing:

 

 

 

I think it might be more constructive to have some deterrent for users posting inflammatory comments. At the moment, if a user posts something blatantly inflammatory then their post simply gets deleted (maybe I'm wrong, but that's all user see that happens anyway). This in turn makes it more likely for another user to respond in kind, possibly out of frustration and the lack of a deterrent.... if User A can write something nasty without a punishment, then User B, C, D, E might think about doing the same in the knowledge that the posts will simply get deleted but they have in the meantime satisfied their ego. If there are no repercussions to constantly dragging threads into petty fights then we are going to see it happen all the time.

 

I don't think it's a particular problem right now and indeed punishments or not, I still would not engage in that type of "tit for tat" but I think having at least some procedure in place in terms of what happens to users if they keep posting in a style where their comments need to be deleted to prevent a thread being side-tracked would be a good thing. But I would add that being at the other end of the spectrum of being too harsh and quick with punishments would be equally damaging and undermine the great tone we have in our forum.

 

 

I agree and that is the reason why during Rio 2016 some other actions will be taken if necessary, like the 24 hours ban for users who will not be able to control their negative emotions.

 

Anyway as I have always thought, I think there are many situations when deleting the post(s) is enough to avoid the discussion to degenerate and no further actions are needed.