My Position on other Forging Sites (Revised)

I looked back on this post I made on sites like Proforge and Forge Dome, and decided to revise it a bit to be more relevant by present opinions and thoughts, as well as my own present opinions and thoughts.

Most people today on Forge Hub are now plagued with this epidemic that's spreading at a repulsively fast rate. Many people have this irrational fear/hate of other Halo Forge sites. The site I will be discussing is Halo Tracks.

Halo Tracks, if you've been living under a rock, is a Halo fansite dedicated to the making of quality race tracks. They have a very, very, very good selection of very high quality race maps, since only a select few are allowed to post maps there. They also have a great community...most of the time.

There have been numerous disputes and confrontations between these two sites that I am appalled by. For an example, I can't prove that this was a FH member who did this, but there was an account made on HT solely to flame them. That is unacceptable.

In a conversation I had with one of their higher-up members who happened to be an ex-FH member, he had this perverse belief that we rig up the Featured Maps unfairly, and/or rigged the voting. The Featured Maps system? It's a way of showing the maps that the staff likes, if you read the description and listened to the staff. As for the voting, well, I already listed it above. Also, this member used to be a very unhelpful person, and was constantly flaming FH and not listening to the rules. I explained this to him, then showed him the evidence from when he was a member. Now, he's a well-known member of HT, and his maps now are excellent. It's an interesting and altogether great jump from his earlier maps, such as a zombie rush fort. This should show that FH isn't suitable for all people. This should be blatantly obvious, but some people don't understand this.

One of my favorites (not) is the oh-so mature battle of the Best Of Forge Summer '08 for Racetracks. Example -rep comments I've heard being made against HT members who voted were...
Extreme.

If you neg repped these people, you know who you are. You should be ashamed.

Of course, I can't deny that their members were also partially at fault. Example from HT:

There was also an outright denial from some staff members from HT that any of their HT members created duplicate accounts in the voting. To be frank, I felt that they were promptly ignoring this problem and were encouraging this cheating.
Additionally, there were many HT members that registered solely to nominate and/or vote for the HT map in the Best Of Forge competition.
I do know, however, that there were also many FH members who did this same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. Again, you should be ashamed.

Here's the thing. I didn't spend days on end writing this post just so I could 'get even' with HT. No. I'm discussing this because cheating in some contest on a video game fansite is the stupidest and most immature thing I can think of. It's just as immature as cheating in a school-yard game would be. It's a God damn game; who gives a crap if you win or lose? Here's who cares about winning or losing. The people who can't act mature and respectful. I realize, that this is the internet. You'll retain some amount of anonymity, so you can do things you never would dare to do in real life. But do we want to become a site who's only members are immature little kids that think winning a contest is all that matters, throwing away all senses of decency? I sure don't. I would extrapolate on this if FH members cheated on a contest on HT, as well. Because if they cheated, they don't deserve to be part of FH's community.
The Best Of Forge Contest was made by FH to be fun. Not a rivalry powerhouse. Fun. Halo is meant to be fun. Forging is meant to be fun. Racing is meant to be fun.
Those who thought it was acceptable to cheat in some contest designed to be fun are nothing better than immature kids that can't accept defeat. And these are the people that really show the bad side of any community. HT is very troubled to have these users.

Equally, FH is troubled to have users that have an urge to bash another site for no good reason. You will hear from me time and time again that I tend to join other Forging sites. Why do I do this? By joining, I want to show that I'm appreciative of their site, and not only am I loyal to FH, but their site as well, and I'm willing to help them as much as I can. You might read from their forums and be discouraged by the amount of anti-FH posting. This is most likely because a few of their members are ex-FH members who held a grudge with our old system of forums, and think that we still follow suit.

Which is why, when I say I detest this kind of rivalry between FH and other sites, I am partially selfish. I want to show off the best that FH has to offer. Not just in map making. In community. In respect. In maturity. When I look back on this in 5 years, I want to know that I was glad to be part of such an outstanding community.
I want the same for any community, be it FH or HaloTracks. I want each and every one of you to be able to look back on your childhood when you're grown up, and think, 'Man, I'm glad I was part of that site. I'm glad I helped shape such a respectable and fine community.'

I like to join these sites that we 'compete' with just to show that FH is willing to be friendly competition. I encourage you all to do the same. I love competition. It's motivating, and provides a way for even more creativity to be constantly developed. But if we're just gonna continue hating each other, it's counterproductive, and more importantly, immature behavior.
I will admit, making our relationship between these two sites will be a process that involves not just the co-operation of FH's member, but also from HT. Because of events such as the BoF voting, HT is very hostile towards FH. But as a often-quoted proverb puts it, it's always darkest before the dawn. One day, soon, we will all be together as a community. Maybe we won't all be on the same site, but we'll be a community. And as a community, we'll have respect, honor, and camaraderie for one another.
Right now, I ask you to do one simple thing. Go to another online community, and sign up there. Be it Halo Tracks, Halo 3 Forgery, or some other site I don't know the name of. It doesn't even have to be Halo related at all. Maybe it's a clan for Armored Core. Maybe it's a site where the members are dedicated to the production of gaming art. Maybe your niche is not in Halo, but in real-time strategy games. Who knows, you might actually like their site a lot. Maybe even better than here.
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Extra: I want to promote another site that I've noticed. They are very interestingly different, and they are called Halo 3 Forgery.

Halo 3 Forgery is this neat site that also offers a place for people to post their maps. However, this is on a much smaller scale. I'm sure everyone's gonna start saying, "They're small, screw them." Remember, FH was small when it began out, too. Anywho, the prime reason I like this site is because it's small. This means that the staff can communicate with members of all kinds very rapidly and easily on a friend-level basis.
One of the best examples of this is the Official Rating System. Basically, since there are so few maps, there is an official review team that is allowed to edit the complete rating of your map in your post, showing how good or bad it is.
One of the nice random gimmicks it has is a plugin in their forums to directly upload images from your HDD to Imageshack, thus making it easier for users to embed pictures.
The downside, of course, is the limited map selection. There are probably less than 150 maps total in there. That's why I highly recommend checking them out. They're small for now, so you'd better hurry up if you want to continue with this very neat experience before they grow exponentially from me recommending it to everyone.

Topic on Halotracks
Topic on Halo3Forgery

 

I made that tag for my older version of this, referring to an actual clone site. I just thought I'd reuse the tag.
Incidentally, I was much less neutral in that one than this one.

 

I wouldn't say that the main source of commotion is FH's staff not agreeing with HT's staff, but FH's community not agreeing with HT's community. It's really despicable that all of this even happened because of a game. It's supposed to be fun, not the cause of a huge arguement. So I never really believed that the staff on HT had huge issues with FH, but some of your members really incited the whole 'phantom voting' process.

And Warthogs have 4 weels. =D

 

Yes, we have IP permabans.

And great idea. Let's add yet another way for higher-up members to be able to be pricks to lower members.

They're not FH. They're entirely different beasts. FH is 'everyone post your maps here and stuffs'. HT is basically organized just for racetracks. And H3F is organized in an entirely different manner.

They all have their ups and downs, and it's just a matter of taste that differentiates them.

 

GrimPeeper, the reason why FH has so much 'not enough interlocking 2/5' posts is because it's big. If it grows, then you'll definitely start seeing more of those.

 

In his sentence, the phrase 'More Better' was used appropriately. 'Better' is an adjective that describes maps, and 'more' is an adjective that describes the maps as well.

And stop being competitive.