The monastery forum going off-track?

[Spartakus]

"A discussion forum linked to the historical periods depicted in the Total War games series."

So it is written, the description of this forum.

However, lately I've seen quite an increase in threads dealing with historical periods which have little or nothing to do with either medieval times, antiquity or feudal Japan. Threads like "Hardest looking aircraft", "Greatest British Prime Minister", "Austria-Hungary survival" and the ones about the US and terrorism, are in my opinion way out of place in this forum.

Not that there's anything wrong with the threads themselves, I think most of them are quite interesting. It's just that the monastery, to me, was one of the few historical forums where I could find threads and discussions about the periods which fascinate me the most, which are exactly the ones this forum is supposed to cover according to description.

If there's been a change in policy, then I'm the fool here. If not, I would appreciate it if we could move these non-medieval, non-antiquity and non-feudal Japan threads to either the entrance hall or tavern forums.

[Red Harvest]

I agree, the monastery forum has been derailed.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Restricting the time periods has recently been discussed and didn't find much favour from "different" members of the ORG. I'm personally not bothered about discussing non-TW topcs or watching them discussed. Threads that aren't historical, although they might seem to be to some, should be -and are- moved out of the Monastry.

I don't like the "what if" speculations about unrelated issues, lik the recent thread about matching Moltke's Prussin army and the US Union Forces, but they're still history-related in a sense and I'm not against them.

Improving the content is in our very hands. I've started several topics with no replies. If you have anything to contribute, you're cordially invited.
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[Mount Suribachi]

Well, as long as I've been here, The Monastry whilst described as a forum for the historical periods of the TW series has always been, in practise, a general history forum.

Spartakus, have you tried the Paradox forums? Their historical forums are divided by period, and are also an excellent - the level of knowledge there is very high, higher than here IMO (and that is in no way meant as a criticism of the level of historical knowledge of the org)

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Where is that?
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[The Wizard]

Here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...splay.php?f=44

Also, try the excellent All Empires forums: http://www.allempires.com/forum/

The latter is an all-history forum, and the level of knowledge on subjects is very great, although there are many "lesser" amateur historians there as well. Look out especially for the excellent articles by the creator of the site, Cyrus Shahmiri.



~Wiz

[Gregoshi]

Since I've been riding shotgun over this forum for 7-8 months now, I should comment on this. In general, as MS stated, the description and actual practice have been that all historical periods were fair game. The current thread in the Watchtower was to discuss 1) should the description of the Monastery be updated to include history in general, and 2) should there be a cut-off date as to what is "history" and what is "current events". It seems everyone agreed that the description should be updated, but where the cut-off should be was not adequately resolved. While early replies indicated a cut-off somewhere in the first half of the 20th century, many of the later responders differed with this, one even suggesting "history" as anything up until the fall of the Soviet Union. It isn't clear to me where we go from here, but I'd definitely prefer 1960 as the absolute latest date, with 1945 being better and 1900 or 1918 as being best.

As for some of the more recent and more controversial threads (in subject matter and applicability to the Monastery), I have to take the brunt of this criticism. Unfortunately I am out of time at the moment, so I'll comment on this later. Sorry.