This whole thing has been quite concerning and frankly, I was very hesitant to give my own opinion, but I decided to still write it.
From what I can gather, the main thing problem here is how AI is been handled and how the staff of the site has handled some situations. So, In regards to first, I personally don’t dislike it’s use, however, I do hate its misuse and unfortunately, that’s an issue that is affecting not only sites like WG, but also globally. You can see everywhere the stolen art, shovelware games, scam projects and more. And lately there has been a concerning amount of low quality/effort games with AI content, so it’s understandable that people are frustrated. That doesn’t mean that AI is inherently bad, because there are some games and projects that does use AI properly and has true effort behind it. AI isn’t also that different from games that use other easy/ready made assets like V-A-M or even RPG maker (but is far more egregious and dangerous in comparison). With all of this in mind, completely removing AI or ban it won’t solve the issue at the long run to be honest, but having better filtering and moderation should be taking in consideration with any kind of content that use AI to avoid situations like the mentioned by the other people here.
The 2nd thing, I get it. The whole thing was brought up because that sketchy game “the story of Rose” and that issue with the gain jam. The sketchy game is something that is very worrisome, because that game is sketchy (excuse the redundancy), did very illegal stuff and how staff handled it, (and I’m sorry for saying it), has been very poorly. I understand the idea of having a more neutral stance on the situation, but i do agree on taking a better action on the matter, for the sake of everyone on this site and to avoid more harm. The gain jam thing, I lack info on it, so i can’t say anything.
I haven’t been that long on this site, but in the few that i’ve been here it has been great. Playing games with good content and myself working one is awesome, but this whole situation will blow up if not handled properly. I don’t have bad opinons on the staff and in the few interactions I have with them they have been very kind. I just hope that this get solved in the most amicable or pragmatic way and we can continue working and thriving together for the better.
1 Like
Somebody mentioned being able to mute categories and tags btw, how would I actually do that for the chatbots one? Would it filter it out of latest for me?
1 Like
Yep. Check my first post on this topic. Blocks it nearly everywhere.
It wasn’t an insult. I gave my genuine opinion about the current state of affairs and the way I feel the site is regressing. Sure they have done good work but this situation is not exemplary of that at all
1 Like
I added it to my muted but it still shows up in latest
Edit: I didn’t save changes
Everybody seems to be a little confused. The main problem in this case is not the proliferation of AI games or the way they are presented with other games. The actual current problem is the fact that there is a guy peddling stolen material on this website (@gojicks) and is being given the green light by the administration.
We get that the “demo” version of the game DIRECTLY linked to the website ostensibly doesn’t contain images, but there is a paid version he is funneling people towards ON THE SAME ITCH ACCOUNT which absolutely does still contain the offending images. The actual problem which is being glossed over is that there is a man profiting off the work of somebody else and the weightgaming administration is contributing to that by not taking any sort of action whatsoever.
8 Likes
I feel like there should be a system that allows the community to vote to add tags, or some way for people to help tag things.
3 Likes
Actually, the title of the thread says it’s about whatever is deemed the enshittification of the site, so I think the scope of the conversation is highly up to interpretation, though yes, that individual incident is inciting and heavily included already
You can edit the tags of another person’s post when you become a “regular” instead of a member and I just learned that you can lose that status I guess? I used to have it
4 Likes
Ok after opening 30gb worth of chrome tabs for topics in the Projects board i found ~92 new topics started since the beginning of the year.
After lookin doing a quick sort of them:
- 9 were for mods
- 4 blatently used ai assets
- the rest looked fairly normal ok.
My main takeaway is the whole there is an enormous amount of ai or scam games, is just not true, 4/91 is 4% of games/mods posted. To act like its this wide spread problem is just an over reaction.
@grotlover2 i would love to hear if you have any tools as an admin on better statistics for posts.
6 Likes
Who likes statistics, nerds?
You should be angry with us.
7 Likes
The demo cost money at one point too. Being 1 dollar, then 2, and only now is it free.
1 Like
I do actually have some numbers I will be sharing that we have collected. That being said for anyone who wants to compile data the discourse API is fairly well documented and you can figure out everything else from the networking tab in the debugger if you wish.
Just dont abuse it please, would hate to have that DOS the site.
4 Likes
lol, sorry I already did that control clicking like 400 topics in a minuts time, most tabs had to be reloaded becuse the site complinaed about me opeing to many pages in 10secs
In any case I’m super glad that nothing will continue to be done whatsoever. This whole scenario is complete bullshit
1 Like
I think we should introduce a system on the site where you can only read like 5 free threads, until a pop-up comes up saying you need to pay for a subscription to see any more
The point is setting aside the whole ai issue most of you are letting 1/92 games upset you. And @grotlover2 did take action. And the comunity vehemently rejected the game. With a thread that basicly screems stay away. Yet here you all are raging on. Just trying to upset more people in the comunity, and make the comunity more toxic.
Why?
To what end just ignore the 1 out of 92 topics and move on with your lives.
1 Like
There are definitely grievances to be talked about independent of Discourse, but I am GLAD someone else is pointing to Discourse because it structurally makes it far harder to solve those issues in the way that’d benefit the site the most.
I pushed back against Discourse as a platform before and during the early days of the site because of its structural problems and these complaints were ignored at the time, or at the most hand-waved as ‘we will fix them’ or ‘Discourse will improve’. Neither thing happened.
Does it mean WeightGaming should keep entertaining non-gaming stuff or grifters in the same space as higher-quality games after a structural change? Hell no, but a change of underlying frameworks does make it MUCH easier to actually use the site in the way that a specific site member wants to.
Now, the follow-up question becomes ‘if not Discourse, then what?’ and hopefully we can have that convo as well.
I think the ownership doesn’t care enough about systemic problems and would rather hope (pointlessly) that WG will become cost-neutral before it dies. But happy to be proven wrong!
4 Likes
One bad apple spoils the cart.
Textually shouting on a thread is not a healthy, viable avenue for managing community expectations about games and their creators on the site. If you think that was ‘enough’, then be prepared for brigading to become more prevalent and intense.
3 Likes