Oh, thanks, this will help a lot. Am a bit lost after finishing TWP 
Good to have somewhere to float around while I wait for the sequel… 
Thnx for th welcome. Nice to be here!
I have moderated phpBB (2 & 3) forum before, and it hasn’t been terrible. Even created a theme for it (there was an outrage when it was put to rest 
). But I have to say Discourse is way better. This seems to be more intuitive and flexible. Don’t know what it is like to moderate with this software, but for a user it’s great, although there is a bit of a learning curve.
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I think we are that kind of audience who doesn’t need a moderator. We are clever enough to self-control our messages.
You are probably right. I don’t think there have been many (if any?) messages deleted from blog comments.
But boy there are the scum(m) of the earth in a public forum of fairly common things when there are +200 000 users.
EDIT: if you want to build stamina and your decision making skills, seek out to moderate that kind of a forum 
Well…
[CONFESSION TIME]
Once I got one message of mine deleted.
And Nor Treblig, too 
It was when we discovered a bug in the blog: it was possible to write messages even when comments were closed!
When I had noticed that Nor Treblig wrote a message AFTER the comments were closed, typically during the Friday Questions post, I managed to find how he could have been able to do that.
Thanks to the experience in adventure games, I solved the puzzle 
So, I wrote a message like:
“Ehi, Nor Treblig, how did you succeed to write a message if comments are closed?”
I think that Ron, reading those messages, had thought something like:
-
BEEEEEEEP!! *
Then, the bug was fixed, and the comments deleted.
I never complained about that. I think Ron was right, and did the right thing.
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I only deleted 3 or 4 comments from the blog. I have yet to delete anything from this forum.
(fingers crossed)
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The observation of similar microcosms suggests me that we don’t need a moderator yet.
What a wonderful proof. TWP 100% troll-free <3
(since I´m too dull to quote, my post depends to @RonGilbert crossed fingers)
I fear you are correct. The forum I have moderated was polite, cheerful and helpful at first, but when user base skyrocketed, the polite, cheerful and helpful people vanished and critical, trolling, dissatisfied users emerged.
Yes, this phenomenon is absolutely normal in any community that grows. It’s just statistics: the more the people, the more the chances that a few unpleasant individual will set the mood for the rest of all the other users.
In the past it happened to me and the community owners were interested more to the quantity of users than to the quality of the interactions. As a result, I lost any interest in participating and I left the community.
If one of the long-term goals of this forum is to help Terrible Toybox to extend the circle of people who know and play their games, the community will grow to the point that a moderation will be necessary.
The only way to avoid the need of a moderation is to set a different goal, for example keeping the community small and focused on the people who loved and respected the work of the authors of the game. It’s possible that Terrible Toybox is not interested to use the forum as a marketing channel/tool. It’s up to them to decide which goals the forum has and how to manage it.
As Ron said, finger crossed.
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Sadly. It has already happened. And i agree with the deletion.
What happened, did I miss something? What was it about?
I’m not sure what you are referring to because I was busy on a project and didn’t read the forum in the last days. But even if a few posts have been deleted while I wasn’t watching, I still think that this community, as a whole, is a paradise compared to the others that I have observed.
Real troubles arise when relational problems become a norm or when specific people start to systematically show confrontational behavior towards anyone. My opinion is that we are still pretty far from that scenario.
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I am one of the admins in a football* fan forum. All fans of the same team, keep in mind. Well, it’s a hell anyway. Now the user base is very small because the forum is old and outdated (btw, thanks to the TWP forum I got to know Discourse and we’re thinking of migrating to it) and people prefer Facebook to talk about football and such, so it’s easier, but in the older days it was always a mess, insults and threats everywhere.
*for the Americans: we’re talking the literal kind of football, not the one that should be called handegg 
You mean: soccer?
Which team are you admin of? I’m curious, even if I have one name in mind… 
…SASSARI
Why do you want to wake up the 
in me?
@RonGilbert I just saw that the forum is not mentioned on the games page (https://thimbleweedpark.com).
Is this on purpose?
(I would have expected an entry Forums in the top navigation.)
Thank you for the welcome, it is really great to be here. As a fan of Ron’s work and the genre for 25 years I was bowled over to discover yesterday that this game had become a reality. I bought it immediately and as soon as I started to play I could tell it it had the magic.
I even took my MacBook with me on the train this morning just so that I could play it.
So if you are on the train into Glasgow Central station in the next wee while, and you recognise what I have on my screen, say hello. 
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And another thanks from me. Much appreciated!
LOL!