Be Excellent To Each Other

Answer the poll! Most people came here from WoS, a site primarily about video games but, admittedly not entirely - and for the good.

But how do you categorise BETEO? Personally I still see it as a place that I can talk about games primarily, but it seems people disagree with this. I assumed, seeing as the one thing that ties 95% of us together is games, that most would agree with me. But the poll will tell all.

A place full of people I enjoy chatting to.

That's lovely, Plissken, but what is its theme to you?

Its theme is "a place full of people I enjoy chatting to about stuff".

Jonny, you originally said it was a games forum, which is what I took issue with. Your new categorisation is more accurate (but I still chose the other option just to annoy you).

Like an Internet version of a cosy countryside pub with a roaring fire, a good selection of ales, and a flexible interpretation of the licensing laws.

I'd agree with Plissken. I'd say it has a gaming bias, as there are a lot of games discussion and a lot of organised gaming sessions, but other than that it's just a decent place for idle online interaction, interspersed with useful sources of info and assistance on varied topics.

There is a side question here, I'd like to have a go at if they can: if we are a Seinfeld-esque "forum about nothing", how do we sell it to new people? I can imagine how you sell a gaming forum, and I can imagine how you first sell someone the gaming content, then get them hooked on how excellent you are, then sell them our non-game content. But I'm having trouble figuring out how you present people with Beex in its current form and encourage them to stay, because it's not obvious what we're about.

It's possible I'm being silly, of course. I'm not sure this is a real issue.

Most of the time it's like watching a cockfight.

"It's called 'Be Excellent To Each Other'"
"What do you talk about."
"Anything."
"What are the people like?"
"Clue is in the title, dude."

It's kind of like the school playground with games and jokes and gangs and name-calling and people flouncing out in tears and strops.

And lots of people making belm faces.

This is my problem as well. Trying to get people to join a forum about, well, nothing in particular isn't going to be easy.

It's not about nothing, it's about anything (except sports )

I think it's about anything, but games is a common theme.

I'd describe Beex as a forum which is about games, and anything else that someone interested in games might want to talk about.

Then all the cocks left, so now it's just like watching a fight.

Jonarob: I've gone done some maths for you. On the first page alone we have 19 gaming threads and 28 non-gaming threads. There are three threads which a bit meta, as they're talking about talking about games.

So it is, far and away, a gaming forum - unless those 28 threads have something in common.

Again, very little of the talk either here or on WoS forums was about games, and I don't think that's why most people frequent it.

It may be a "theme" of this place, but only in the absence of other identifiable themes.

In what way would being about games be a selling point? There are a million and one places to go talk about games on the net, which have more users, and use topic icons.


It's not like even *that's* a unique selling point, as the internet is largely where the belms come out to play in all their glory.

If I want to discuss games, I'd definitely make this my first port of call. But I don't see this as a games forum, just a forum full of gamers.

Yeah, they do. They're not about games.

"not being about games"

Any bunch of blokes under the age of 40 will largely talk about either games or sport, so it's not surprising that there will be a fair few posts about games. It doesn't make it a "gaming" forum, just a forum full of youngish blokes.

You're both rather missing the point.
Or, to put it another way, DEEX.

I'd forgotten about the sport threads! Only the football one would make it onto the first page in the main forum, though.

Actually, that's a really nice tagline.

I seem to remember talking a hell of a lot about games on WoS. Sure, I talked about other stuff as well, but games was definitely the main theme for me. And BETEO, being a supposed replacement for the WoS glory days surely must follow a similar theme?

I usually come here to talk about games, then get sidetracked by other stuff and go off on tangents.
If 'The Big Yin' was a forum, he'd probably be this one.

Well, not really - BETEO is pretty much BETEO now. Gaming is still the common theme though, it seems.

We're not, though. The majority of threads are 'no theme'. FACT.

Jon: this place isn't a replacement for the WoS glory days - no one ever said it was. Stop living in the past, man.

It was never really meant to be a replacement, though - it was to be a place for the people that came from there, along with whatever other miscreants could be dragged along on the way. The place itself was empty - it got filled with what those people wanted to talk about.

Yes... I'm not going to be able to explain the wrongness of that to you, am I?
Erm... You know how the majority of people voted against labour..?


We most certainly did - that's exactly what it was - WoS but free.

Either I'm remembering very wrongly, or you all are...

Which, one would assume would be the same topics discussed at WoS, seeing as everyone upped and left.

Wasn't for me. I recall it being largely about politics and books and speeding and stuff. Cavey never posted about games, man.



Was it, though? I thought it was just somewhere where a bunch of people who wanted to keep talking to each other could do so?

YES. Is everyone else forgetting what happened or something?

I agree with Grim...; if we drew a pie chart of thread themes, broken into, I dunno, "Games", "Funny links", "Current affairs", "Metadata" (i.e. threads about Beex itself), "Other", then "Games" is by far the biggest piece of the pie.

Yup, which was WoS, and then became (eventually) Beex.

It's probably Mafiascum, TBH

I do think of here as a gaming forum, the same way I think of another forum I go to as a festival forum, another as a footy forum and another as a *gasp* wrestling forum.

Most of those sites have more topics away from their main 'subject' than they do on it.

Also, I only joined you merry band of vagabonds due to video games. More specifically, myp told me you had a regular Halo 3 night.

Yes, WoS was removed from the grasp of most of its users so we created a new version here. That was the idea at the time.

You can prove anything with statistics. It depends how you lump things together or divide them up into categories. Arguably this place is mostly about FPSs, following that train of thought.

I missed Sports off my grouping there.

And clearly WoS wasn't a "games" forum for quite a lot of its users.

Yes, but I think this breakdown is genuinely valid.

But it was the overall THEME, which is what I'm bloody talking about.

ARRRRRRGHGHGHGGHHGHG

But conversation is a result of the conversers - a subsection of WoS posters came here, and were added to by an amount of people who were never there. It's thoroughly natural to expect the focus to shift.

So we're selling ourselves as an FPS forum, then?

I think you've got a tough job there, and ascribing an identity and promoting a "brand" to a bunch of people who mostly witter aimlessly about stuff isn't something I'd want to try myself.


I think I've posted this before but a couple of years ago, a load of people (led by one particular high post-count individual who'd fallen out with the mod team) broke away from YakYak and started a new gaming site (largely populated by and with content provided by ex-yakyak members) and forum http://wayoftherodent.com/

They are still going but had a fairly strong mission statement and identity from the start. The owner is (AFAIK) the mod of the forum and I believe operates in a sort of Rev Stu wrath of god mode.

But have you heard of them? Would you bother to stop at the site and read the articles? Genuine question, I'm not saying you wouldn't, but it might be worth looking into and asking around to see how it's worked out.

Stuart was the theme of WoS.

Pretty much this
I havent been here that long, but people are very helpful when it comes to game related things

I think we should sell ourselves as a forum that is tough on Mr Chris, and tough on the causes of Mr Chris.