Keith Tanner wrote:
One of the forums I moderate on has a feature called "Coventry". It's evil genius - when someone is sent to Coventry, only they can see their own posts. Nobody else see them. You don't even need to tell the victim. They can troll all they want, but nobody ever takes the bait
I think I'm living there sometimes...
T.J.
UltimaDork
9/19/15 7:36 a.m.
Keith Tanner wrote:
One of the forums I moderate on has a feature called "Coventry". It's evil genius - when someone is sent to Coventry, only they can see their own posts. Nobody else see them. You don't even need to tell the victim. They can troll all they want, but nobody ever takes the bait
I wonder if anyone is in coventry? It is funny to think that there may be posts that I can't see. Speaking of that, anyone heard from chandlerGTI lately?
Gary wrote:
It was about what Margie said ... posting one's opinion ad nauseum for the sole purpose of gaining post count. The person who starts the thread knows it's controversial, knows he's going to have an opportunity to post multiple opinions of his absolute "knowledge" on the topic, and thereby display how intelligent he is, as well as add 20-30 more posts to his count. I think Margie is onto that scam, and I agree. It seems to be the same protagonists ... with high post counts ... which really means nothing in terms of what this forum is about. But by now, I think we know who the real "dorks" are.
I wonder if it's possible to steal some aspects of the Slashdot system? Posts have quality ratings. Users have quality readings. Users with higher quality ratings can elect to mark their posts has having a higher quality rating. Readers can choose what quality they're willing to see.
I'll let Wikipedia explain:
Peer ModerationEdit
Slashdot's editors are primarily responsible for selecting and editing the primary stories daily from submitters; they provide a one-paragraph summary for each and a link to an external site where the story originated. Each story becomes the topic for a threaded discussion among the site's users.[42] A user-based moderation system is employed to filter out abusive comments.[43] Every comment is initially given a score of -1 to +2, with a default score of +1 for registered users, 0 for anonymous users (Anonymous Coward), +2 for users with high "karma", or −1 for users with low "karma". As moderators read comments attached to articles, they click to moderate the comment, either up (+1) or down (−1). Moderators may choose to attach a particular descriptor to the comments as well, such as "normal", "offtopic", "flamebait", "troll", "redundant", "insightful", "interesting", "informative", "funny", "overrated", or "underrated", with each corresponding to a -1 or +1 rating. So a comment may be seen to have a rating of "+1 insightful" or "-1 troll".[38] Comments are very rarely deleted, even if they contain hateful remarks.[44][45]
Moderation points add to a user's karma, and users with high "karma" are eligible to become moderators themselves. The system does not promote regular users as "moderators" and instead assigns five moderation points at a time to users based on the number of comments they have entered in the system – once a user's moderation points are used up, they can no longer moderate articles (though they can be assigned more moderation points at a later date). Paid staff editors have an unlimited number of moderation points.[38][42][46]
A given comment can have any integer score from -1 to +5, and registered users of Slashdot can set a personal threshold so that no comments with a lesser score are displayed.[42][46] For instance, a user reading Slashdot at level +5 will only see the highest rated comments, while a user reading at level -1 will see a more "unfiltered, anarchic version".[38]
A meta-moderation system was implemented on September 7, 1999,[47] to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses in the moderation system.[48][unreliable source?][page needed] Meta-moderators are presented with a set of moderations that they may rate as either fair or unfair. For each moderation, the meta-moderator sees the original comment and the reason assigned by the moderator (e.g. troll, funny), and the meta-moderator can click to see the context of comments surrounding the one that was moderated.[42][46]
There was nothing wrong with that thread except it managed to irritate the forum owner for, in my opinion, not very good reasons. Again, if the criteria is "some people are arguing" in a thread, then the whole forum should be shut down.
I love the "let the community decide" voting suggestions. Because groupthink is great (insert rolling of eyes here). Oh teh noze, someone is disagreeing with someone else, better put a stop to that!
And as for the person commenting on advertising, I sincerely doubt any advertisers care. They want you to buy stuff, they really don't care about your e-pinions.
Would it be tough to have the title for a thread somehow reflect how many +1s or !s it has? Maybe color shift more green for +1s and red for !s? You could spot threads that have floundered without even reading the title.
If we were better about flagging stuff I would think something like three flags for a post locks the poster out of that thread and five for a post locks them out for the day. Certain number of locks and someone gets a month of vacation or puts their posts into a buffer that has to be moderated before it actually posts. Pick a couple dozen active posters who "get" our standards to do that moderation, if necessary, so the real mods don't have to take up the burden. Forcing posts to slow down should kill off a lot of the back and forth that sends some of these threads down the rabbit hole.
Actually, that could be an option too: Slowing down the posts. Can the forum software support a minimum time between posts in a thread? If so then maybe those folks with lots of !s should have to wait longer between posts or edits within a thread than folks with lots of +1s? The guys who flounder would get one chance to say something and then have to sit on their hands for a while to cool off.
While I know she doesn't like the reference, I smile and think about Margie and this place every time someone says patio, which is a lot right now as we are planning on building a large one next spring. I like having her around.
wbjones
MegaDork
9/19/15 10:23 a.m.
there's another forum I'm on that has gone to a
A) 1 day ban
B) a week ban
C) a month ban
D) if they complain to the mod(s) … then the ban can/does extend for up to 6 months … which is the longest that has been needed so far …
Margie, if you want us (your mods) to do this … there would need to be some programing done …
something to think about
there have been a few posts to this thread that I would landed the bam hammer on the poster already for various lengths of time
Why not a 4 (or whatever) posts per thread in off topic per day? Or maybe 10 posts in off topic in general per day? For everyone? Tech sections can be different because someone may actually be sorting out a problem with a car and need help. Most of what I think the issue is is that the same few people make the same point again and again in the same thread, when (not all, but mostly) nobody actually cares. This way, someone may say their piece and move on, as they don't want to waste their posts.
Joey
GSmith
HalfDork
9/19/15 1:12 p.m.
Keith Tanner wrote:
One of the forums I moderate on has a feature called "Coventry". It's evil genius - when someone is sent to Coventry, only they can see their own posts. Nobody else see them. You don't even need to tell the victim. They can troll all they want, but nobody ever takes the bait
Nice. From the Heinlein story, maybe?
Datsun1500 wrote:
I like the +1 and -1 system, regulated by the regular people. If you leave it up to a few people then what's to keep them from banning someone just because they disagree?
It seems like any discussion of global warming gets locked because Momma believes in it and gets angry when people doubt it. That's not fair.
Margie doesn't get involved with those until it starts to get obnoxious … there have been several of those threads over the yrs, that DIDN'T get locked … why ? they stayed civil
that's pretty much all it takes … civility .. a hard concept for some on here
The problem is, it only takes 2 people to turn a conversation uncivil.
I really like about GRM that we can have civil conversations about controversial topics... sometimes. But things seem to be sliding more and more to the point where I just don't want to get involved in the vitriol anymore. I would be for something that reprimands the E36 M3 stirrers. If we kick the worst offenders out, it gives the rest of us a chance to talk about things more civilly.
joey48442 wrote:
Why not a 4 (or whatever) posts per thread in off topic per day?
Talk about cure being worse than the disease.
Gary
Dork
9/19/15 8:42 p.m.
Datsun1500 wrote:
It seems like any discussion of global warming gets locked because Momma believes in it and gets angry when people doubt it. That's not fair.
That's not the case at all. If you go back to Margie's post when she originally locked the thread, you'll see that it has nothing to do with her opinion on the topic, but all to do with ... well I've already posted my thoughts in support of Margie on this yesterday.
keethrax wrote:
joey48442 wrote:
Why not a 4 (or whatever) posts per thread in off topic per day?
Talk about cure being worse than the disease.
Maybe, maybe not. If you only have a finite amount of posts, most likely I think you would try to make your posts count for more. I wouldn't necessarily want the limit either, but it would shut up the people saying the same thing 15 slightly different ways, just to boost post count. Because remember, it's the Internet, and there is about a billion to one chance someone is going to come around to your way of thinking, no matter how many ways you make your point.
Yeesh. So much butthurt over an internet forum. Go work on your cars, people!
Gary
Dork
9/19/15 9:01 p.m.
Tom_Spangler wrote:
Yeesh. So much butthurt over an internet forum. Go work on your cars, people!
Yeah, but ain't it fun?
And I need an amusing distraction from my Spitfire project.
joey48442 wrote:
keethrax wrote:
joey48442 wrote:
Why not a 4 (or whatever) posts per thread in off topic per day?
Talk about cure being worse than the disease.
Maybe, maybe not. If you only have a finite amount of posts, most likely I think you would try to make your posts count for more. I wouldn't necessarily want the limit either, but it would shut up the people saying the same thing 15 slightly different ways, just to boost post count. Because remember, it's the Internet, and there is about a billion to one chance someone is going to come around to your way of thinking, no matter how many ways you make your point.
You are proposing shutting down a small minority of threads where that happens vs allowing discussions to continue more naturally in the rest. There's no maybe about it.
Gary
Dork
9/19/15 10:23 p.m.
Gary wrote:
Tom_Spangler wrote:
Yeesh. So much butthurt over an internet forum. Go work on your cars, people!
Yeah, but ain't it fun?
And I need an amusing distraction from my Spitfire project.
But seriously, there is something important going on here on this thread, as well as a couple related threads.
https://classicmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/turns-out-exxon-was-far-more-evil-than-we-knew/105834/page1/
and:
https://classicmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/damn-party-got-shut-down-while-i-was-doing-a-keg-stand/105877/page1/
To the casual observer who hasn't read these carefully, or only skimmed the content, it might seem trivial or frivolous, but it's really much more than that.
keethrax wrote:
joey48442 wrote:
keethrax wrote:
joey48442 wrote:
Why not a 4 (or whatever) posts per thread in off topic per day?
Talk about cure being worse than the disease.
Maybe, maybe not. If you only have a finite amount of posts, most likely I think you would try to make your posts count for more. I wouldn't necessarily want the limit either, but it would shut up the people saying the same thing 15 slightly different ways, just to boost post count. Because remember, it's the Internet, and there is about a billion to one chance someone is going to come around to your way of thinking, no matter how many ways you make your point.
You are proposing shutting down a small minority of threads where that happens vs allowing discussions to continue more naturally in the rest. There's no maybe about it.
Maybe. Maybe not. By posting right now I'm doing what I was just talking about. Dammit. Never mind.
:the following post to be read in the voice of Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man:
Back when I was a young lad, people had manners. We'd say please and thank you and we'd know when to shut up. We would never continue blabbering away long after anyone cared that we were saying anything just to hear ourselves talk. That's the way it was, and we LIKED IT!
What about a "Hide Thread" button? If a thread becomes such a E36 M3 storm that you don't want to see it, click the button and it doesn't show up on the page anymore. If enough people click "Hide Thread" it disappears for everyone who has not already posted in that thread.
It's called an "ignore" button.
It's built into most commercial forum software.
In reply to Trans_Maro:
This isn't commercial forum software though is it?
T.J.
UltimaDork
9/20/15 10:29 a.m.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/annoying-deadly-debate-killing-isiss-twitter-tough-guys/story?id=33603248
Maybe we should just use the technique that the Pentagon is using. Just send in the drones to blow up anyone who posts something that is not liked. Be careful what you post because twitter apparently is a capital offense these days.
Datsun1500 wrote: How come bicyclist can't just ride somewhere other than the road?
Because the police will ticket you for riding on the sidewalk...