What's the point in the secrecy and being so restrictive?

Discussion in 'HOW TO JOIN' started by morgolock, Oct 1, 2012.

  1. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    Hello,

    While waiting to be approved (a couple of months now, without even a reply to the email I sent), I was wondering what the point is in being so picky when approving users...

    Is there any benefits? Personally I think secrecy is not a good thing, specially when it comes to software. Openness and sharing of information are the cornerstones of science and great products like Linux.

    Cheers,
    Pablo
     
  2. trave

    trave Muppet One Of Us

    Hey Pablo,

    (I'm just a member here, btw, I don't run anything.)

    As I understand it, those that do run things don't have much time to spend on approvals, as they're fairly busy being game developers and there are a LOT of approvals to be dealt with!

    The quickest way to get approved is to get someone who is already a member to vouch for you. This would usually be someone you work with who can confirm that you work in the games industry. They just need to send a PM to explaining who you are to one of the admins.

    Approvals around here are in a shoddy state, which nobody is particularly proud of.

    Good luck!
     
  3. Bitterman

    Bitterman Not From Round Here One Of Us

    Disclaimer: I'm also just a member. To expand on what trave said...

    It's not about "secrecy" as much as being a forum for professional game developers only - not games media, not management, not games players. Assuming someone is a pro game dev, they can get in (...eventually). It's not elitist, it's not trying to keep things secret, it's just trying to keep the noise down from people who aren't the target audience of the forum. Unfortunately that means there has to be an "approval" process, and yeah... it can take too long for that to happen... but it's not because anyone's trying to protect their precious secrets, just because the admins have got day jobs too. :)
     
  4. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    Hey thanks for your replies.

    I believe everybody is busy nowadays and that's no excuse for the long time in the approval process :)

    Bitterman: I don't completely agree with you. What about not being able to read a post a fellow professional programmer has written on these boards just because I haven't been approved? I'm not sure about you, but I call that secrecy! :)

    If you want to reduce the "noise" you could very easily setup the board to allow all people to read the boards and not let them post until they have been blessed with the "approval" :)

    Cheers,
    Pablo.
     
  5. Dog

    Dog Artisan Cheese One Of Us

    What you are missing:

    * cat pictures
    * circular political debates
    * animated cat pictures
    * the occasional sniping at Gamasutra or Stackoverflow articles
    * hedgedog
     
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  6. m_hael

    m_hael Professional Coffee Drinker One Of Us

    + grumpy old men (like Dog)
     
  7. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    I've just started another circular political debate :)
     
  8. doubledeckerdog

    doubledeckerdog Industry Professional One Of Us

    Also,

    Bickering about used sales.

    Bickering about crunch.

    Rubbernecking Bruce.
     
  9. Bitterman

    Bitterman Not From Round Here One Of Us

    Dude, the admins do it in their spare time AFAIK, certainly for free. I know they feel a certain embarrassment about how long it can take and nobody's pretending it's a good thing, but they don't owe anybody anything, so to say there's "no excuse" is a bit out of order don't you think?

    You are looking too much into the word "approval". It's not a judgement on you... no secrets are withheld. It's just determining whether or not you're an industry professional.

    Open forums have been tried before. I think fatbabies.com is still archived somewhere if you want to see the horrible, horrible, horrible mess that resulted. TCE works. I understand your frustration that you're not 'in' yet, but I suspect a suggestion to change how it works for no particularly convincingly good reason might fall on deaf ears. Even the ability for non-approved members to have read only access would drastically change the nature of the forum - never again could anything be said that could risk being read by a member of the public, or a manager, or a journalist looking for a sensationalist headline. All so you don't have to wait to be approved? Wow.

    trave already gave good advice on how to speed things up. Let me requote it for your convenience. Following this advice is likely to see results more quickly than campaigning to change the nature of the forum.

     
  10. Prof. Shminky

    Prof. Shminky Truth Wrangler Administrator

    Honestly, we're busy. Sorry!
    But like the guys have said, if you can get vouched for it's the easiest way in!
    Ask around, see if you know anyone already in TCE and get them to PM me.
    :D

    And if there is any privacy or secrecy it's because the first rule of TCE Club is that we don't talk about TCE Club.
    ;)
     
  11. Columbo

    Columbo Just one more thing... One Of Us

    What is your fascination with the forbidden closet of mystery?
     
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  12. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    Prof. Shminky: Thanks for the advice. I know some members of TCE. I asked one of my colleagues to send you a message. But really?! It's a pain in the ass to bother other colleagues and cry for help to be able to read the contents of these boards.

    Bitterman: I can't see how enabling reading for general public will do harm! Please enlight me, help me to see the light. I still remain in the shadows and I don't understand what the reason for secrecy is :)

    Columbo: To be honest, I was hoping to see some pictures of naked women. But I can't get myself blessed with the approval of the Gods :)
     
  13. parm

    parm Just barely adequate One Of Us

    It's not the reading, it's the writing. Have you seen the comments on Kotaku/IGN/YouTube/etc? We have a good signal:noise ratio and we'd like to keep it that way.
     
  14. doubledeckerdog

    doubledeckerdog Industry Professional One Of Us

    Look at the way Kotaku trawl Linkedin whenever they're having a slow news day and run stories along the lines of 'Random employee leaves Studio X, is Game Y in trouble'.

    We wouldn't be able to give each other impartial advice about working conditions within any company for fear of unwanted journalistic or legal attention.
     
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  15. urgaffel

    urgaffel Industry Legend One Of Us

    If you really can't see the reason for not letting every fan boy, troll, journalist, manager and curious person read what a group of professionals discuss in private... Should you really be allowed in? Are you going to start sharing posts and stories from the private section with the rest of the internet out of some misguided attempt at openess?

    Only half-joking ;p
     
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  16. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    *cough* cough* :-$

    Oh noooo! how did you find out?!

    Seriously, I see no harm in openness. Most scientific publications are freely available to people. Anyone could read a scientific paper and that hasn't had a negative effect in the science.

    In your terms, science should have been destroyed by fan boys, mad journalists, managers or innocent curious people!. On the contrary, it's freely available information what has pushed science forward.

    For how long TCM has been closed to people? I'm just curious. :)
     
  17. Butcher

    Butcher Futuristic Techno Wizard One Of Us

    Because games journalists are collectively a bunch of shitehawks quite simply. They cannot be trusted to not shout everything they see, no mater how damaging to the people involved, across the internet, so we have to keep them out. Hence a vetting process is required.
     
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  18. Butcher

    Butcher Futuristic Techno Wizard One Of Us

    Science journals are prepared as documents for the public before being published. Conversation on TCE is a completely different thing - it's more like putting a hidden camera in the break room than publishing a paper in a journal.
     
  19. Hypercube

    Hypercube Industry Legend One Of Us

    Because, as others have said, there's the risk that journalists will also read the forum, and write stories based on the things that people have said here. This would limit the things that people are able to share here, which would obviously be a bad thing.

    Well, I say risk, more of an inevitability.
     
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  20. Bitterman

    Bitterman Not From Round Here One Of Us

    It's the difference between having a conversation with your colleagues in the pub after work, and publishing the transcript of that conversation on reddit.
     
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