Guild Wars 2

Greetings all,

Forums and other text-focussed media are prone to misconceptions.
This isn’t news to most people.

What I was wondering however was:
“Why do we often not clarify our statements with comprehensive “’tags”?"

Build discussion is often misunderstood for example.
One claims the profession is overpowered, the other claims it is underpowered.
After a certain amount of time the conclusion arises that their opinions are split based on game-modes.
Misconceptions like these could’ve been avoided by a thread-title along the lines of:
[PvE]Is the Reaper Elite Specialization Overpowered?
Effectively isolating it from the general PvE/PvP/WvWvW-range prone to misconceptions and possible arguments.

Other examples can be minor things alike Crowd Control (CC):
CC currently implies all CC.
Why is it not split between:

• Positive CC (CC+?) CC’s that Push.
• Negative CC (CC-?) CC’s that Pull.
• Neutral CC (CC) CC’s that decrease Movement Speed or are inert. (Stuns, Wards)

The Guardian’s Shield of Absorption is a CC, it knocks targets away, yet the topic of discussion may be CC intended on closing gaps.
The conclusion could thus be.
The Guardian’s Off-hand skills do not include Negative CC.

I’m not hinting towards a Propositional- or Predicate Logic, but isn’t clarity in everyone’s favour?

Thanks for your attention,

-Nero.

I, for one, absolutely hate abbreviations and internet shorthand.

I dislike the excessive brevity in most posts/sentences as well but sometimes it’s just useful or even necessary!

The titles in a thread for example are very short.
Due to this limitation you can’t write things like:
“Is the Necromancer’s Elite Specialization the “Reaper” considered as overpowered for power-based builds in the Player versus Environment game mode?"

The attention span online is short as well.
Most comments on a long post are along the lines of:
“TL;DR” (Too long; didn’t read.)

Which often gives the impression of being a very rude remark.
Long posts are mostly the result of someone’s care for a certain topic.
the answer of “TL;DR” bashes upon this care and interest.

In the above case, I agree with you.
I dislike these abbreviations despite their apparant use. ]

If you are hoping to inspire an international standard for consistently tagging forum thread titles then give up now. This is the Internet. Most folks can’t even be bothered to post in the correct sub-forum.

However, if you want to start an argument about exactly what form those tags should take then carry on. Because this is the Internet, where the most insignificant, petty detail can start a war.

I can’t believe you want to use square brackets. Only an idiot would choose square brackets. Curly brackets are much better. (<- this is a joke…)

DoctorDing.5890:

If you are hoping to inspire an international standard for consistently tagging forum thread titles then give up now.

I’m not really looking for an international standard but a clarification of communication in threads (both their titles and bodies) is, in my opinion, very desirable!

The reason why:

Because this is the Internet, where the most insignificant, petty detail can start a war.

Limiting the possibilities for these misunderstandings would be beneficial, would it not? (had to edit this bit because Wouldn’t + it resulted in Wouldn’kitten. :P)

DoctorDing.5890:

This is the Internet. Most folks can’t even be bothered to post in the correct sub-forum.

This certainly is a problem. I guess most people wouldn’t bother tagging their posts, even if the forum in question offered a drop-down list of them.

DoctorDing.5890:

However, if you want to start an argument about exactly what form those tags should take then carry on.

I can’t believe you want to use square brackets. Only an idiot would choose square brackets. Curly brackets are much better. (<- this is a joke…)

Obviously square brackets are superior to curved ones! :P
(leaves out the reason as to why they’re better and even causes more confusion by using curved brackets now.)

Nah, the real reason was to differentiate.
“[” , “]” for tags and “(” ,“)” for extra (-or left out) details.

It just doesn’t seem necessary to me. You can cram a little extra information into the thread title, but it’s still up to the OP to write a thought-out first post, and if they couldn’t provide enough detail to determine what game mode they’re talking about in the first place, they’re unlikely to clarify it with a tag. If someone is just reading the title and skips the OP, title tags aren’t going to make up for it.

I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t see it making a significant difference either way, especially when PvP and WvW have their own boards already. Edit: This makes more sense in the context of profession-specific boards. My bad.

I agree with you as well.

Also for the PvE/PvP/WvWvW tag it was mostly for the Profession-pages.

Where there is no current split for PvE/PvP/WvWvW.
We have only 1 sub-forum for each profession leading to these misconceptions.