If that had been applied to the Destiny thread, mods would have had to have done a hundred times the work accomplishing really nothing.
Requesting for harsher moderation - Page 2
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Praetorial
United States4241 Posts
If that had been applied to the Destiny thread, mods would have had to have done a hundred times the work accomplishing really nothing. | ||
minus_human
4784 Posts
1. Disallow posts that have less than a certain number of characters. Let's say 400 - 500 (just an example). This would force posters to write more than 1-2 sentences. EDIT: text that is quoted from others should not count here, only what you write. 2. People could still get a limited number of restriction free posts per day/week. Maybe there could be a system in place that rewards posters who make lengthy posts with the right to write more short posts, as a way to cut some slack to the folks are not mindless drones all the time. This is all based on the premise that moderation works as far as stopping offensive posting, bad behavior and trolling go - so the real problem is the average, polite, almost void of any original thought, one-or-two-line a-la-Reddit post. In this sense, a longer post is usually a better one. If people have nothing to say - just keep them from posting one-liners. Of course, exceptions should be present in forums like Mafia, LoL, and a way to make specific Live-report or official TL announcements/hype threads restriction-free would be imperative imo. Sounds like a lot of work to implement, but could have the desired effect. Thoughts? For some perspective, this whole post has a total of 1266 characters. | ||
minus_human
4784 Posts
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Praetorial
United States4241 Posts
On August 31 2012 04:03 minus_human wrote: ...or the staff could give Rekrul his banhammer back, and then run to the hills. nukenukenuke #2: a system that rewards posters is already in place, isn't it, the icon system. With it, longer registered users who post frequently get ever-cooler Brood War icons. I think it's perfect. | ||
minus_human
4784 Posts
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Praetorial
United States4241 Posts
On August 31 2012 04:23 minus_human wrote: that's basically just an indicative of post count and time registered! | ||
tec27
United States3690 Posts
On August 31 2012 04:01 minus_human wrote: How about this: 1. Disallow posts that have less than a certain number of characters. Let's say 400 - 500 (just an example). This would force posters to write more than 1-2 sentences. EDIT: text that is quoted from others should not count here, only what you write. 2. People could still get a limited number of restriction free posts per day/week. Maybe there could be a system in place that rewards posters who make lengthy posts with the right to write more short posts, as a way to cut some slack to the folks are not mindless drones all the time. This is all based on the premise that moderation works as far as stopping offensive posting, bad behavior and trolling go - so the real problem is the average, polite, almost void of any original thought, one-or-two-line a-la-Reddit post. In this sense, a longer post is usually a better one. If people have nothing to say - just keep them from posting one-liners. Of course, exceptions should be present in forums like Mafia, LoL, and a way to make specific Live-report or official TL announcements/hype threads restriction-free would be imperative imo. Sounds like a lot of work to implement, but could have the desired effect. Thoughts? For some perspective, this whole post has a total of 1266 characters. I think whatever the solution is, it does require some degree of automation, like you're saying. But it also needs to be some fairly intelligent automation, or else we'd end up like many of the vbulletins out there where people pad their posts just to get past character limits. And of course the other thing we don't want to do is to block legitimate, constructive posts that are just slightly below the limit (so we'd need to be very careful about choosing the limit). And then we also probably don't want to include quoted text in the character count (but then there are also legitimate ways of posting new content inside other people's quotes, so how do we handle that?). Its a pretty complex problem, to say the least. Its basically what the reddit system of upvoting tries to solve, but I think their solution is not the optimal one, or at least not the one I'd like to see at TL. Their system is to allow everything and rely on community effort to pick out the stuff that doesn't suck. This greatly inhibits discussion though, as the organization of the content changes over time. So yeah, in the end, I'm not really sure of what the solution is. In brainstorming stuff for this, I came up with basically the same thoughts (of automated limits, and earning restriction-free posts), but its just tough to predict what the effects of that would be. I think the best thing would be to pick a subforum and introduce those changes there, see what works, what doesn't, and iterate from there. | ||
mythandier
United States828 Posts
What I would suggest, if something were to actually be implemented, would be to revise those specific forums policies to state something along the lines of: Only reply to a post if you're response will add value that pertains to the topic being discussed. If you want to give props, kudos, or flame someone individually then do so via PM. Obviously, that could be tweaked but you get the idea. This would allow for actual enforcement of what I'm picking up on as the suggestion. However, this sort of enforcement is a slippery slope (since what is or isn't a meaningful contribution is entirely subjective or at least is perceived to be entirely subjective) and may possibly cause dissent and distrust of mods within the general community. edit to address minus_human's ideas I think you guys are on the right track because the enforcement to this degree would require a lot of manpower unless there was an automated solution. However, I don't think you can reasonably assume that just because a post meets a certain length that the post actually contributes to a thread. I could easily write or copy/paste 500+ characters of total troll/flaming nonsense. | ||
Azzur
Australia6251 Posts
As you can see, in the first page, there are posts such as: On August 31 2012 00:18 Kipsate wrote: Yay yay yay yay On August 31 2012 00:19 Bakkendepao wrote: This is epic. On August 31 2012 00:19 TRAP[yoo] wrote: great news!!!!!!! If TL were to implement your policy, all these posts "should" be warned. However, these posts are great because they provide feedback to TL that what they are doing is a good thing. Likewise, when TSL4 was announced, there were many "low-content" posts expounding hype. Should these be warned as well? | ||
tec27
United States3690 Posts
There was a time before TL had this many people when threads didn't balloon to 30+ pages with no added content outside of the OP. There was a time when you didn't have to wade through 500 "me too" and one-line content-less posts to find something that added to the discussion in a meaningful way. Thats what we want to see a return to, its just difficult to think of a system that doesn't also punish constructive posters. On August 31 2012 05:26 mythandier wrote: edit to address minus_human's ideas I think you guys are on the right track because the enforcement to this degree would require a lot of manpower unless there was an automated solution. However, I don't think you can reasonably assume that just because a post meets a certain length that the post actually contributes to a thread. I could easily write or copy/paste 500+ characters of total troll/flaming nonsense. To address this specific concern: I don't think its necessary that it 100% eradicates the problem. Mods would still exist to clean up the trash that happens to meet the character limit. The major point is to greatly reduce the amount of non-constructive posting that happens, to change the environment and thought process surrounding TL posting. Right now everyone posts the 1-line useless posts, and its largely seen as something that is okay to do. People read other people doing it, so it seems acceptable to them to do as well. Simply stating, "Hey, don't do this" won't do anything because its happening on too large of a scale, and some sort of punishment or at least prevention is necessary to change the direction of the site. My main questions of the automated solution would be A) Does this harm legitimate posting, and posting that contributes to discussions? And B) Does this harm the culture of TeamLiquid? If either of those are true, I think its not worth it, but again, its tough to know without trying it *somewhere*. | ||
Zocat
Germany2229 Posts
I'd say the majority of threads would be hurt - the possibility to post short posts is actually useful in the majority of threads. i.e. providing links to additional material (or old threads about the same topic), providing a short answer (tech support, ...), etc. The "problem" with the "Google sues Apple" thread (and a lot of the other General Forum threads) is actually: There's nothing to discuss. It's just a news. Sure some people use it to discuss the patent system overall - but that's actually offtopic and would be more useful in a dedicated patent discussion thread. | ||
bITt.mAN
Switzerland3689 Posts
I PM'd this guy this morning, basically telling him to not quote the OP, and contribute to the discussion, rather than just post his uninformative opinion: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=365706#8 Go on down in the thread, and Ret takes the time to make an absolutely fantastic post! Then the next page people quote him with 1 liners, agreeing and duly complementing him. So, we need an automated way to improve post content, but distinguish between these two types of post. Heh, that's been my job this summer, so allow my inept advice! BTW it'll require a lot of automated assessing of people's posts directly after they hit 'Post', but if that slows stuff down, that's ok, since they shouldn't be rapid-firing anyways. Redirect people's posts to a reply page, similar to "dis be old, u sure u wanna bump it?" You have automated features set up that trip if there are indicators their post is crappy, so when those fire, you prompt them with a little text warning, and give them a chance to reconsider. Kinda like the warning of starting a new thread in General (well, doesn't that feature work?) With this system, you aren't heavy-handed in auto-moderation, but you appeal to their better-posting-nature. It's a message they can ignore, but ignoring it too much would raise a red flag, like a "Report". Different sub-forums have different posting styles or expectancies, so you'd implement the different features according to which specific posting issues you're trying to remedy. But what's key about using this 'redirecting warning' system is that it is innocoious enough to not dissuade posting, but is inconvenient enough (redirecting takes time) that people will minimize their inconvenience by adopting better posting habits. Yay! What should constitute a 'trip':
( [#characters reply] / [#characters quoted post] ) * ( [# "QUOTE]" 's found ] / 2 ) # = 'number of' For a 800 character post with no nested quotes, and a reply of 100 characters (less than one line), it would yield (100 / 800) * (2 / 2) = 0.125, which is unnaceptably low (i.e. would 'trip). Searching for the "Quote]" string and dividing by two accounts for lots of nested replies. For example, if the above 800 characters were made up of 3 replies, it would give ratio = 0.375, which is acceptable. You'd have to fiddle to implement it, and experiment to gauge what is an appropriate reply:quote character ratio < : People should be snipping and replying to little sections of long posts, not quoting the whole thing intact. Lol one way to completely juke this method would be to put lots of little quotes from a big one, and reply sequentially. So, looking for the "[QUOTE][B]On " thread would be more reliable, and you wouldn't divide by 2. <3 Coputational Forum Dynamics! I can't think of any other types of trip. Just the little inconvenience of having to read a notice, think about improving your post, deciding not to, than hitting post again, would really put it on people's minds to post better. Again, a Trip for "Twits" would not be appropriate for LR threads, so you wouldn't implement it in "Tournaments". Also, if people break a threshold for 'number of Trips they trigger in a certain time-frame', that would be reported under a separate category "1Liner?". You'd gauge what time-period and Trip limit are necessairy by examinig the posting habits of people you are currently moderating for 'crappy posting', then you'd have some coefficients to plug into your runtimes, and bam, forum gets better! | ||
bITt.mAN
Switzerland3689 Posts
I believe the KwarK did perfectly right here (one post to the effect, I bet DivinO reported, but the next guys decided to repeat the obvious and got rightly told off for not reading), but we need some sort of community 'Posting Standard Head's Up' to let others learn from those guys' mistakes before repeating them themselves. Even if posts are crappy and clutter with noise, replying with a shallow one-liner telling them off is almost just as bad. In that instance, they should have simply reported, and responded as if it was already fixed. Or at least, responded in conjunction with telling them off.\ "Report and leave be." Yes, but imagine trying to Report ALL the crap, impossribruuuuuuuu! The easiest way to filter out crappy 1Liners is a Twit Trip that I explained above. But, if people get pro at not contributing or discussing, while still managing to pass the 'suggested character-floor', I suggest implementing a "1Liner?" function, similar to the current "Report". This could be given to those who already have 'Report', and/or those with a notably high #character/post ratio. See a crappy 1Liner which doesn't deserve a warning, but is still bad enough to deserve a PM from a mod to 'clean up your act' ? Click "1Liner?" and that post will be flagged for 'assesment by a worthy one'. Most times I'd like to do this with report, but that system isn't suited to weeding out short, mediocre posts, but which aren't actually all that bad. I don't wanna waste the Mod's time, and IMO a big red 'Warning" would scare a lot of people who wouldn't understand. Is it possible for a Mod to PM people about specific posts, just to kindly remind them to contribute more? They'd have to have a good collection of '1Liner?' 's to merit one, but maybe that could help. It would all be nicer if you'd just implement a Twit Trip, where after (for example) you've made 10 twits in 4 hours, you're flagged to get a PM from a mod asking to take more consideration with the content you're posting. It could even be automated from TL.netBot! Finally, about #character/post ratio, you'd account for quotes, so the number you'd extract would only be (an approximatio to) how much you yourself wrote. Somehow some time a super-computer would have to go all the way back to the beginning of time to troll through and take the sum of 'number of characters you've ever posted on the site'. I don't know how you store the "User's post number" count, but each time they post, you could add to their "Total Characters posted" , and find the ratio characters per post. It wouldn't even have to be retroactive (ok maybe from 1 Jan 2012 onwards), but I think it'd be a really nice little number for people to have access to, and to be able to display in their profiles if they so choose. Maybe I'm just looking for some recognition for the massive ammount I type per post, but having that number displayed would be a nice whollistic estimate if someone's more of a spammer or a contributor, and it would incentivize people to try and increase their char/post ratio, that is, encourage them to post longer and less! | ||
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