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Edited for clarity.
I've been prowling TL for a bit now and this is sad first post but I have to say it.
The quality of responses on the forum have degraded far past the point of respectability. Instead each thread valid or not is flooded with nonsense. In response I find myself unable to reply to any thread because it will get lost in the mess of useless, unfiltered comments. In my opinion the forum is ruined by hundreds of people sharing their less than intelligent opinions or worse the "I have that same problem" responses.
It's truly unfortunate to see Team Liquid's threads devolve into Youtube like comments where no one says anything of subsistence.
I find myself reading the OP and ignoring the 50 comments that follow, even if there are valid responses amongst the mass of uselessness, this is not a healthy forum.
I hope to make this into more than just a complaint but a warning. If the culture on the forum doesn't change I fear it will degrade further and further. True you'll still have a large community, but quality over quantity. Please.
Finally I understand this is more than a bit hypocritical as this adds little more than a warning to the forum. And if it's removed by a mod that's fine, at least that means someone read it, it needed to be said.
TL;DR
QQ
Ideas provided from the replies.
Rekul
How about if mods can highlight posts? And users can flag posts so that mods can highlight them. Add a filter button to toggle to show only them. Only needed if the thread gets past 5+ pages or something. Would be very useful in threads like LR and the NASL ones.
R3condite
How about thumbs up and thumbs down for helpfulness and relevance?
then the user could have the option of viewing only posts that are above the threshold?
ScarletKnight
1. More Moderators.
2. Harsher bans.
3. Zero tolerance.
Milkis - I took the liberty of breaking down what you said, hope that's okay.
Allow users with a "highlighted post" to highlight another post(s). This will allow for self monitoring, without the increase of mods(a challenge) and with out the difficult/impossible process of instating an upboat system.
-Potential System
1. Mods have unlimited highlights to give
2. Once given a highlight, the user then has a single highlight to give
3. Process continues forever, the number of highlighted posts will increase linearly, and the mods have the power to increase or decrease the amount of highlighted posts and the rate at which they are increasing(slope)
All great thoughts, thanks for sharing your ideas! I hope this thread continues to produce suggestions and hopefully work towards implementing some of them.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
moved to website feedback
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I don't think the General forum is that bad.
Only after the GSL finals when massive QQ ensues.
While I appreciate a good opening post with content I don't think that all topics need a 4 paragraph introduction. Just my 2 cents on this
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I think what you describe is a very hard problem for TL to combat. I think the current moderators do their best to maintain posting quality but the sheer volume of posts makes it a doomed venture. I really like the idea of TL being a haven of quality information but the simple fact is Starcraft 2 has made the site way too popular--not that I think that that's a bad thing. When it comes down to it I believe that the best you can do is lead by example and try to post in a meaningful manner. It is admittedly disappointing that many quality posts may go unnoticed and there may not be a good way to be heard above the din, so to speak, but I think TL is very aware of this problem.
There's still lots of high quality content all over the website but I get the feeling that content has been migrating away from the Strategy Forum and the SC2 General Forum. I'm glad I came to TL before the big SC2 boom but I still think it is the best SC site on the internet.
All in all, just lead by example and don't worry too much about the masses that you can't, and probably shouldn't, control.
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Zurich15348 Posts
I am sure everyone is aware of this issue. Do you have any suggestion how to fix it though?
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How about if mods can highlight posts? And users can flag posts so that mods can highlight them.
Add a filter button to toggle to show only them. Only needed if the thread gets past 5+ pages or something. Would be very useful in threads like LR and the NASL ones.
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Hyrule19087 Posts
On March 31 2011 14:48 zab329 wrote:
Edited for clarity.
I'm a Lurker, and I've never contributed before but I'm going to list off a bunch of problems.
Everyone is dumb.
TL is full of spamming 12 year olds.
I don't care about reading the first 3 pages of replies even if there's good ones in there because they are probably all bad anyway.
I just wanted to let you all know about what I think
MARTYR
TL;DR
QQ
Basically what I read. Instead of registering to post a bunch of whine, perhaps you should just start to contribute in a meaningful manner? Or maybe give some suggestions as how to resolve the situation.
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Already even in this thread buried in the depths of website feedback we have three prime examples of noncontributing replys and two good replys (imo)
1. Windsupernova, you "added your two cents" without adding anything.
2. ThePiper, you provided a well thought out response and disagreed, thank-you
3. Zatic, what did that contribute?
4. Rekul, good ideas and a good addition, expanding on the OP in an effort to better the community
5. Tofucake, How did you "contribute in a meaningful manner", or "offer solutions to resolve the situation". You didn't and this is the exact kind of post I am talking about. Furthermore, this is "website feedback" I gave my feedback and it has already started a valid discussion.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to point out the less than affective comments without being extremely hypocritical, I understand this didn't add anything to the OP just continue the QQ, but I hope this narrows in on the point I am trying to make.
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Hyrule19087 Posts
I contribute by moderating various stream chats, by writing news for and editing changes made to Liquipedia, reporting awful posts, and by clicking Preview and rereading what I wrote before I post. What do you do?
Your post was feedback the same way whining is (because you were whining). My reply to your post pointed out that it lacked suggestions. I then gave two ways you could improve the post and your life here on TL.
On April 01 2011 03:58 zab329 wrote:
Already even in this thread buried in the depths of website feedback we have three prime examples of noncontributing replys and two good replys (imo)
[snip]
5. Tofucake, How did you "contribute in a meaningful manner", or "offer solutions to resolve the situation". You didn't and this is the exact kind of post I am talking about. Furthermore, this is "website feedback" I gave my feedback and it has already started a valid discussion.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to point out the less than affective comments without being extremely hypocritical, I understand this didn't add anything to the OP just continue the QQ, but I hope this narrows in on the point I am trying to make.
replies*
tofucake*
effective*
There's some constructive feedback.
Should I also point out my two suggestions again? Or were they just QQ?
From what I have gleaned from the 2 of your posts I've read, you approach every thread and reply with a negative attitude. If you had read my post in a positive light, you would probably have clearly noticed my suggestions were not meant to deride you or be useless at all. In fact, you could expand (with a minimal amount of effort) the suggestion to beef up your post a bit. So there's 3 suggestions.
[edit]
The fact that two people asked you for suggestions on how to resolve the situation (which we are all aware of, by the way, which you would have noticed if you'd used the Search before posting) should possibly have clued you in to the fact that your post was actually completely useless. And instead of one of those people (zatic btw, the Red guy, which means he's one of the guys that runs things around here) asks for a suggestion instead of just locking the thread, it should clue you in to the fact that the staff (again, second clue here) is aware of the problem and has not found a way to solve it, and that your post is (again...) completely useless.
PS, feel free to read this post in a negative light, since now you've annoyed me and I am being hostile.
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On March 31 2011 14:48 zab329 wrote:
I find myself reading the OP and ignoring the 50 comments that follow, even if there are valid responses amongst the mass of uselessness, this is not a healthy forum.
This is the culprit behind the problem. Personally, I read every post in every thread I respond to, whether I'm the first responder or the thread is 80 pages long. (LR threads and such excluded of course) These problems crop up when people just give up, and start posting with your attitude, and I think the only solution is for everyone to do their part and try to clean up their posting, and imo that begins with putting in the time to reading before posting. Sure, sometimes that means you have something to say, but can't, whether it's because the discussion has moved on, or you don't have the time/want to read through all the posts in the thread so far, but don't you think it's arrogant to think that your opinion deserves to be heard when you won't give others the chance to be heard as well?
Ultimately, I think it's going to be nigh-impossible to enforce or moderate quality into posts, but I like to think that slowly, the combination of bans culling the fat with everyone doing their own best can only improve TL's quality in the long run.
Finally I understand this is more than a bit hypocritical as this adds little more than a warning to the forum. And if it's removed by a mod that's fine, at least that means someone read it, it needed to be said.
TL;DR
QQ
btw, stuff like this is exactly the trash that should be culled. =/
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Hyrule19087 Posts
elmizzt, he's not going to be reading any of this since we're still on the first page. I suggest we just spam random nonsense for 3 pages and then post our real responses.
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On April 01 2011 03:58 zab329 wrote:
3. Zatic, what did that contribute?
he asked you what solutions you recommend. A problem is only a problem if you have a solution. Otherwise it's just something that is. Personally, I don't have a solution short of stricter moderation via an extended moderating team (which TL is already moving towards with introduction of banlings and so on), hence I don't make threads about it.
So, what solutions do you recommend?
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You got any examples?
A lot of people seem to complain about this but 1. have no solutions, 2. never post examples of what they deem as "unacceptable".
Problem is your problem is that these things are very easily distinguished and in most cases, entirely valid, just not up to the standards of one person (but is to another).
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Zurich15348 Posts
Again, everyone is aware of this and it has been pointed out several times already. I invite you to suggest improvements we as staff of the site can implement, which is what the Website Forum here is mainly about. Other than that it's entirely in the hands of every user on this site including you to make this forum a better place.
If you are only here to point out the obvious you are just part of the problem.
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how about thumbs up and thumbs down for helpfulness and relevance?
then the user could have the option of viewing only posts that are above the threshold?
not sure if that's too much like digg
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Again the goal of the post was to give feedback and start a discussion. It has been derailed into something else entirely so in an attempt to right the ship I'm going to ignore the bashing and take the good ideas this thread has invoked and edit the OP with them. #highroad
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On April 04 2011 08:20 zab329 wrote:
Again the goal of the post was to give feedback and start a discussion. It has been derailed into something else entirely so in an attempt to right the ship I'm going to ignore the bashing and take the good ideas this thread has invoked and edit the OP with them. #highroad
I don't see any bashing, at least none that isn't justified or analytically supported.
Bottom line is, everyone can talk about it, but so far, there are no solutions and this feedback thus becomes relatively useless because there is no way to fix or acknowledge it with actions.
P.S: the suggestions made have been suggested a million times before.
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On April 01 2011 05:25 elmizzt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2011 14:48 zab329 wrote:
I find myself reading the OP and ignoring the 50 comments that follow, even if there are valid responses amongst the mass of uselessness, this is not a healthy forum. This is the culprit behind the problem. Personally, I read every post in every thread I respond to, whether I'm the first responder or the thread is 80 pages long.
Personally I would love the ability to agree with something some wrote in a thread without having to quote them. I know the up/down thing has been raised many times and I am aware of the opportunity for abuse. I'm not sure how to support an argurment/point without quoting or simply parroting what has been said.
Thoughts on a solution:
Perhaps instead of up/down, have an agree check box that you can only be accessed once per post. For example Person A says he is awesome, I agree so I click it, but I can only agree once. It removes the opportunity for negative feedback by asking forum members to promote positive posting. I know this may lead to cliques etc but I'm not sure what else to suggest.
Oh well thanks for reading 
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When I first came here back in August this site was a bit of a revelation to me during the beta. It was the most informed, mannered, best web forum/site that I had ever been to, mainly due to the community that it associated with.
Since the release of SC2 however, it seems like the site has been degrading in quality posts day by day. Nowhere is this more apparent than LR threads, and the Strat forum. That seems to be where most of the trolls/bad posters seem to congregate and where bans a plenty are handed out. But it looks to be bleeding into other areas of the site now and even in General and the Brood War sections are starting to feel the hurt. A lot of poor quality posts come from people who have not been here too long (not unlike myself, I'm relatively new around here compared with some people).
I myself though have never been banned or even received a warning for anything I have ever posted on this site. I feel like it's pretty easy to be okay here and not get yourself warned/banned. It's almost puzzling to me to see how many bad posters/trolls inhabit here and I wonder whether they act out of sheer ignorance or potential malice.
The most disheartening thing is to see posters like this get away with what they're doing, and there's little to nothing I can do about it. That being said I have a few suggestions as to what can be done:
1. More Moderators.
- This one is a bit self-explanitory, but I'll extrapolate anyway. More mods = More eyes watching the forum. It seems like with the explosion in the popularity of TL that the amount of mods has not really been increased as well. It's a simple supply demand sort of thing, where as the greater amount of posters should be adequately attended to by the implementation of more mods. A lot of times I see people saying "Well the mods can't be everywhere at once, there's only so many" etc, well then why not increase your numbers?
Find select members here that are willing to receive the responsibility and add them to the mod list. A literal larger physical presence in mod staff could help out immensely as you will have more eyes and more ban hammers.
2. Harsher bans.
- This is my own personal opinion, but 2 day bans don't seem to curtail poor posting. Make bans longer (1 week minimum maybe?) and I think people will be more wary of what they post.
Possibly implement a 3 strike rule of some sort. 3 warns = 1 Week ban. Post 1st ban, each ban gets considerably longer, make the 3rd ban a perm. Zero tolerance.
This may seem a bit harsh, but possibly necessary.
3. Zero tolerance.
Speaking of zero tolerance, zatic I believe got this ball rolling in the strat forum. Something like this could be implemented throughout the SC2 section and possibly site-wide.
All of these things seem harsh, but sometimes you gotta slam down that iron fist and say enough is enough.
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tofucake is the man
User was warned for this post
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On April 04 2011 11:42 ScarletKnight wrote:
When I first came here back in August this site was a bit of a revelation to me during the beta. It was the most informed, mannered, best web forum/site that I had ever been to, mainly due to the community that it associated with.
Since the release of SC2 however, it seems like the site has been degrading in quality posts day by day. Nowhere is this more apparent than LR threads, and the Strat forum. That seems to be where most of the trolls/bad posters seem to congregate and where bans a plenty are handed out. But it looks to be bleeding into other areas of the site now and even in General and the Brood War sections are starting to feel the hurt. A lot of poor quality posts come from people who have not been here too long (not unlike myself, I'm relatively new around here compared with some people).
I myself though have never been banned or even received a warning for anything I have ever posted on this site. I feel like it's pretty easy to be okay here and not get yourself warned/banned. It's almost puzzling to me to see how many bad posters/trolls inhabit here and I wonder whether they act out of sheer ignorance or potential malice.
The most disheartening thing is to see posters like this get away with what they're doing, and there's little to nothing I can do about it. That being said I have a few suggestions as to what can be done:
1. More Moderators.
- This one is a bit self-explanitory, but I'll extrapolate anyway. More mods = More eyes watching the forum. It seems like with the explosion in the popularity of TL that the amount of mods has not really been increased as well. It's a simple supply demand sort of thing, where as the greater amount of posters should be adequately attended to by the implementation of more mods. A lot of times I see people saying "Well the mods can't be everywhere at once, there's only so many" etc, well then why not increase your numbers?
Find select members here that are willing to receive the responsibility and add them to the mod list. A literal larger physical presence in mod staff could help out immensely as you will have more eyes and more ban hammers.
Perhaps more mods are needed, but then again, everyone who is contributory to the site and/or have been with TL for a year get a report button, this reduces the need for moderators when a lot of respected members have the report button and are active with it. While I don't disagree with the idea of more moderators, I am indicating what to take into account. No matter how many mods there are, you'll never have enough to watch all posts anyways
2. Harsher bans.
- This is my own personal opinion, but 2 day bans don't seem to curtail poor posting. Make bans longer (1 week minimum maybe?) and I think people will be more wary of what they post.
Possibly implement a 3 strike rule of some sort. 3 warns = 1 Week ban. Post 1st ban, each ban gets considerably longer, make the 3rd ban a perm. Zero tolerance.
This may seem a bit harsh, but possibly necessary.
The ban times are subjective, so it's difficult to take your suggestion into account.
3. Zero tolerance.
Speaking of zero tolerance, zatic I believe got this ball rolling in the strat forum. Something like this could be implemented throughout the SC2 section and possibly site-wide.
All of these things seem harsh, but sometimes you gotta slam down that iron fist and say enough is enough.
I added in italics my views of your suggestions. While I think they are thought of in the right direction, they're a bit shortcoming in terms of overall changes. Harsher bans, intolerance and more authority or enforcement might drive more people away than keep down an arbitrary detail of how deterred the quality of these forums are. Additionally, after awhile, those very tactics become more and more irrelevant as people become either desensitized of the punitive actions or simply receive a harsh penalty for what they weren't aware of and thus feel less compelled to ever come back to the site more so than adapt and understand how this website works.
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MURICA15980 Posts
From the staff perspective:
1) It's hard to find the right people. We at TL have some incredibly high standards in regards to staff. We not only require competence, but passion, dedication, and loyalty. Of course, we have "opened the floodgates" to many very awesome staff members recently as the site's features are really exploding, but it seems our numbers are quickly outpaced by the growth of the industry. This is both a good and bad thing in that regards. But in general, finding more moderators is something we are always on the look for but it is a much more difficult job than you would think to magically find 20+ more that would actually let TL be the all-seeing-eye.
2) We usually warn, then temp ban, then keep extending ban lengths for repeat offenders. So we already do what you suggest. The only thing is that so many of our members are new that the problem is usually not the repeat offenders but the large amounts of people who have never been warned or banned.
3) Zero-tolerance is much easier said than done.
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On April 04 2011 10:52 Probulous wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 01 2011 05:25 elmizzt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2011 14:48 zab329 wrote:
I find myself reading the OP and ignoring the 50 comments that follow, even if there are valid responses amongst the mass of uselessness, this is not a healthy forum. This is the culprit behind the problem. Personally, I read every post in every thread I respond to, whether I'm the first responder or the thread is 80 pages long. Personally I would love the ability to agree with something some wrote in a thread without having to quote them. I know the up/down thing has been raised many times and I am aware of the opportunity for abuse. I'm not sure how to support an argurment/point without quoting or simply parroting what has been said. Thoughts on a solution: Perhaps instead of up/down, have an agree check box that you can only be accessed once per post. For example Person A says he is awesome, I agree so I click it, but I can only agree once. It removes the opportunity for negative feedback by asking forum members to promote positive posting. I know this may lead to cliques etc but I'm not sure what else to suggest. Oh well thanks for reading
Ok I know I am quoting myself but I figured it would be better to stay in the same thread rather than starting a new one. My question is simply how would the mods like us to show our support for a particular post?
For example, here is a big thread in SC2 General about blizzards reasons for 1.3 patch
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=209023
On the first page the following quotes state almost the same thing
+ Show Spoiler +On April 05 2011 01:43 Mommas Boy wrote:
It definatley sounds like a Collosi nerf is on the way.
"2.We felt late game protoss splash damage was slightly overpowered. This applies both to high templars and colossi."
+ Show Spoiler +On April 05 2011 01:45 Heraklitus wrote:
Yea, the hint at a possible future collossus nerf is the big news there.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 05 2011 01:47 hunts wrote:
Nice to see they have actual reasoning behind their changes. Wonder what the bunker build time will be in 1.4
yeah it does kinda sound like they're hinting at a collosus nerf.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 05 2011 01:48 BGrael wrote:
The report seems well thought out. Looking forward to the next balance change, maybe it will do something about the colossus. However, just nerfing it won't do the trick I think.
I understand that these posts don't just parrot what has been conjectured but they are all essentially stating the same thing. This is four posts out of 20, just taking up space. That particular thread is now 12 pages long and it would be my guess that a lot of it is about a possible collusus nerf.
My point is that there is no way currently to support a particular post without creating one yourself, which just spams the forums. This is spam from people who actually want to contribute something positive. My example is not the best, it was just the first thread on SC2 General at the time.
I guess exanding on their point would be one way but then I still feel like I am spamming trying to think up something that may not actually be of value.
It would be great to get some advice on what mods think I should do to show my support for someone's point?
Cheers 
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Zero tolerance would be terrible. I have gotten banned 4 or so times and I think except for those few instances I am one of the better posters on this site. If you look where I post mostly it's tech support and the mafia forum where my posts are pretty detailed. If I got perm'd on my third it would of been pretty retarded. As a general rule maybe under a certain number of posts/time on the website and 3 bans you could perm them, but sometimes bans reasons can be so trivial it boarders on how can you leave it at just 3 strikes? Can I make 2 threads and insane posts being an ignorant racist fuck and not get perm banned, but double post a few times and get perm'd? It's a really blurry line and I think the staff does it best on a case by case basis.
Zero tolerance has WAY too many faults on a forum. Too many first time offenses might deserve a perm, and too many people with third offenses might not deserve it at all.
I liked the highlighting/thumbing up posts. I wouldn't just leave it up to staff though. It would be awesome to have a button we can push to get "cliff notes" of the thread so to speak, which filters out all the junk and leaves only the important shit.
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I like the idea of having some sort of way to register agreement. The problem is that there are lots of threads that essentially become debates. Usually one or two people on each side make most of the arguments very quickly. However, it often becomes clear from the following comments that most people agree with one side or the other. I think that's valuable, and given that it exists, of course everyone wants to add their comment to influence the balance of the thread. (Even if readers aren't reading the whole thing, they can glance at it and see which way it's leaning.) The obvious best way around that is to use polls, but people don't think so far ahead as to put yes/no polls in the OP for every controversy that could come up. (I should say that I don't advocate hiding posts without many agreements or anything like that - just something that allows people to get an idea of what the community thinks without reading a little statement from everyone in the community. Maybe a lot of agreements on your post gets you a little icon or something.) Obviously this wouldn't solve the problem, but I think it'd help a little.
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5003 Posts
k, I'm going to speak from the 3 years I've spent moderating a god damn Pokemon forum.
First, you have the recognize the more people that use a forum, the more noise there will be. The increase in amount of noise is enough to stifle intelligent discussion even if you just look at it probabilistically since we all have preferences on how much posts and content we want to see on a page and we naturally judge based on that. Thus any problem regarding the quality of the forum should be addressing this noise issue -- after all, quality forums I think can be measured by a the noise/signal ratio and the more noise there is the harder it is for any legit posts to go through. Keep that in mind if you're looking to tackle this issue.
Rekul
How about if mods can highlight posts? And users can flag posts so that mods can highlight them. Add a filter button to toggle to show only them. Only needed if the thread gets past 5+ pages or something. Would be very useful in threads like LR and the NASL ones.
This is a very good idea on theory but the thing is that there isn't enough mod staff at the moment. It's hard to find a good moderating staff and still look competent -- as pointed out by Klogon. Yes, it is really hard to find good moderators mostly because overall it's really hard to make the mod team as a whole look consistent and afaik this is already kind of an issue.
Honestly the best way as the site gets larger is to diffuse moderation responsibilities to the public. Even with that though I dislike the reddit system (honestly traditional forums are much better for overall discussion of a topic and I can go into reasons why I think reddit systems aren't productive for discussions), their idea of self moderation is kind of what TL needs. Of course TL can implement them in a more traditional, organizational way. While Klogon is likely correct in that TL is probably doing a much better job looking out for potential new mods and such but at least for me and the site that i worked for most staff members had their arms full with whatever they were doing and didn't really have that kind of chance to look for new good posters/forumers actively.
Given that we can't implement an upvote/downvote system to determine if a post should be highlighted or not (i'm sure that requires a lot more coding), my suggestion would be to take Rekul's idea a bit further and give the highlighted posters in SC2 forums the ability to highlight posts. If they do a good job then bam, you have a good banling and you know who to look at in order to recruit new mods. I'm not too sure how often these users read and post in the SC2 forums but if they post/read enough them giving them such an ability would make it easier to determine things in the long run too -- if you're looking for new highlighted posters then just look at the number of highlighted posts users have gotten.
Kill two birds in one stone.
Perhaps more mods are needed, but then again, everyone who is contributory to the site and/or have been with TL for a year get a report button, this reduces the need for moderators when a lot of respected members have the report button and are active with it. While I don't disagree with the idea of more moderators, I am indicating what to take into account. No matter how many mods there are, you'll never have enough to watch all posts anyways
Report buttons aren't an end all solution -- report buttons are great if people are breaking rules but report buttons are terrible if you're looking to up the quality of a forum because it takes context out of everything and usually the iffier posts are quite harmless and their only crime is that they are noise not that they break any explicit TL rules.
Harsher Bans and Zero Tolerance
The thing about these policies is that you have to be really well defined on what you ban and what you do not ban. A lot of "bad" posts don't break any rules and they're quite harmless in nature -- they are simply just noise that clutters up the forum and the noise happens to have a lot of negative externalities when they reach a critical mass (I think i've mentioned that already). Once you start hammering those posts -- what are you going to do? You can't really ban for them, warning them seems harsh. One solution is to just silently delete the posts (and you can even count how many posts are deleted to see how often people are just noise and ban them if they're just mostly noise), but TL seems to have a policy against post deletion since they don't even delete the posts of people who get banned, so I'm sure that's out of the bag.
Furthermore this also just increases the workload of the moderators since being zero tolerance just means you're reading through the posts a lot closer and given the size of TL it's lots and lots and lots of work. I've run these kinds of policies before where I even warned for people being ignorant or wrong (something I'm sure TL is quite against) and I spent like 5+ hours a day moderating at that point. It's a lot more work than you think it is because people will also complain and you have to just explain to them, etc.
It's not a good long run policy since it's very abrasive. This is the reason why I prefer Rekul's suggestion (after you add onto it, of course) because it works a lot more subtly and it isn't abrasive at all. Reward positive behavior and filter out negative behavior -- just make it clear that bad posts get ignored and people won't even see it and we should all be fine.
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On April 06 2011 07:58 Milkis wrote:+ Show Spoiler +k, I'm going to speak from the 3 years I've spent moderating a god damn Pokemon forum. First, you have the recognize the more people that use a forum, the more noise there will be. The increase in amount of noise is enough to stifle intelligent discussion even if you just look at it probabilistically since we all have preferences on how much posts and content we want to see on a page and we naturally judge based on that. Thus any problem regarding the quality of the forum should be addressing this noise issue -- after all, quality forums I think can be measured by a the noise/signal ratio and the more noise there is the harder it is for any legit posts to go through. Keep that in mind if you're looking to tackle this issue. Rekul
How about if mods can highlight posts? And users can flag posts so that mods can highlight them. Add a filter button to toggle to show only them. Only needed if the thread gets past 5+ pages or something. Would be very useful in threads like LR and the NASL ones. This is a very good idea on theory but the thing is that there isn't enough mod staff at the moment. It's hard to find a good moderating staff and still look competent -- as pointed out by Klogon. Yes, it is really hard to find good moderators mostly because overall it's really hard to make the mod team as a whole look consistent and afaik this is already kind of an issue. Honestly the best way as the site gets larger is to diffuse moderation responsibilities to the public. Even with that though I dislike the reddit system (honestly traditional forums are much better for overall discussion of a topic and I can go into reasons why I think reddit systems aren't productive for discussions), their idea of self moderation is kind of what TL needs. Of course TL can implement them in a more traditional, organizational way. While Klogon is likely correct in that TL is probably doing a much better job looking out for potential new mods and such but at least for me and the site that i worked for most staff members had their arms full with whatever they were doing and didn't really have that kind of chance to look for new good posters/forumers actively. Given that we can't implement an upvote/downvote system to determine if a post should be highlighted or not (i'm sure that requires a lot more coding), my suggestion would be to take Rekul's idea a bit further and give the highlighted posters in SC2 forums the ability to highlight posts. If they do a good job then bam, you have a good banling and you know who to look at in order to recruit new mods. I'm not too sure how often these users read and post in the SC2 forums but if they post/read enough them giving them such an ability would make it easier to determine things in the long run too -- if you're looking for new highlighted posters then just look at the number of highlighted posts users have gotten. Kill two birds in one stone. Perhaps more mods are needed, but then again, everyone who is contributory to the site and/or have been with TL for a year get a report button, this reduces the need for moderators when a lot of respected members have the report button and are active with it. While I don't disagree with the idea of more moderators, I am indicating what to take into account. No matter how many mods there are, you'll never have enough to watch all posts anyways Report buttons aren't an end all solution -- report buttons are great if people are breaking rules but report buttons are terrible if you're looking to up the quality of a forum because it takes context out of everything and usually the iffier posts are quite harmless and their only crime is that they are noise not that they break any explicit TL rules. Harsher Bans and Zero Tolerance The thing about these policies is that you have to be really well defined on what you ban and what you do not ban. A lot of "bad" posts don't break any rules and they're quite harmless in nature -- they are simply just noise that clutters up the forum and the noise happens to have a lot of negative externalities when they reach a critical mass (I think i've mentioned that already). Once you start hammering those posts -- what are you going to do? You can't really ban for them, warning them seems harsh. One solution is to just silently delete the posts (and you can even count how many posts are deleted to see how often people are just noise and ban them if they're just mostly noise), but TL seems to have a policy against post deletion since they don't even delete the posts of people who get banned, so I'm sure that's out of the bag. Furthermore this also just increases the workload of the moderators since being zero tolerance just means you're reading through the posts a lot closer and given the size of TL it's lots and lots and lots of work. I've run these kinds of policies before where I even warned for people being ignorant or wrong (something I'm sure TL is quite against) and I spent like 5+ hours a day moderating at that point. It's a lot more work than you think it is because people will also complain and you have to just explain to them, etc. It's not a good long run policy since it's very abrasive. This is the reason why I prefer Rekul's suggestion (after you add onto it, of course) because it works a lot more subtly and it isn't abrasive at all. Reward positive behavior and filter out negative behavior -- just make it clear that bad posts get ignored and people won't even see it and we should all be fine.
Thanks Milkis, this is why I would appreciate some way of expressing my support for a post.
I don't want to be noise. As you say it clutters up the forum and adds work for the mods. I guess I will just not post unless I have something new to add and hope that people can recognise the valid points in the threads. I like Rekul's idea as well, at least the higlighted posters have shown some level of maturity, passion and responsibility so they look like a good place to start. They also have something to lose.
Once again thanks for the post and expressing exactly the general frustration with noise.
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Haha guess my ideas got shut down pretty quickly. D:
Just trying to help. Everyone makes valid points, and I do like the highlighted posts idea.
Zero tolerance was a bit of a loopy suggestion but maybe build off of that idea into a more formal "this is what goes, this is what doesn't" sort of list the mods could potentially follow? There is a lot of grey area when decided what to warn/ban/leave be so something like that could be incredibly tricky, but experienced mods who have been here for a long time would/should know that sort of situation. As every type of thread is different, maybe forego standardized rules and have different sets for different thread types.
For example, I frequent the HF Boards (Hockey) and they indeed have strict rules there and good moderation (for the most part). But they have thread designations as to what is okay and what is not per thread.
Like a thread can be about stuff only designated for that thread. A thread about music can only be about music and nothing else, if someone tried to de-rail the topic they would get moderated.
Maybe TL could implement some sort of thread standardization? Like for LR threads there's already unwritten rules of no balance whining and no going OT. Why not spread that to the rest of the site? And have different rules per type of thread.
I dunno, I'm rambling now. I just want to see TL be the best site there is.
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United States13896 Posts
In general we already have a lot of those things you mentioned. Aside from LR thread rules there are numerous other forums/thread that have clearly stated rules. The SFW Funny pictures thread/Youtube Thread/Fan Club Threads/Strategy Forum Guidelines come to mind as areas that have designated rules. I'm sure there are more but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. There are numerous topics that are auto-close to boot that guide moderation.
The problem comes with many of the forums (and a vast majority of the threads) you can't lump every thread into a specific category where you can set further parameters beyond our usual guidelines for posting on the forum. And moderators don't have time to set new rules in notes for every single thread, its just not practical.
We have many general guidelines for moderating that go for the entire site, such as discouraging and punishing the posting of image macros, identifying spam-posting of 1 line comments with no content, etc. If you could see the default warning messages we have they outline many of these things, and there are numerous other things that aren't included with those that are well known. I feel like most effective moderation is in the consistent and effective use of these general guidelines, rather than trying to pigeon-hole every thread into more standardization.
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Hyrule19087 Posts
Strict per-thread rules are counter intuitive anyway. At least I think so. When having a conversation with your friends you don't set a topic and then punch anyone in the face who says something off topic, do you? Conversations should flow naturally. If it gets wayyyy off topic for a long time, I've got no problem with a mod coming and saying so.
Personally, I think a tree system of forums works well for this (when people behave). It allows people to continue a discussion in one part of a thread (which sometimes you can collapse, depending on the site) while primary discussion happens elsewhere. Unfortunately, this has other consequences, such as delinearizing a thread and making it more complicated to moderate.
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Tree System
By a tree-like system you mean a http://www.reddit.comReddit like system? I think that works well for short fast-paced comments, but that is the kind of "additions" I think degrade the quality of the posts. Instead longer well thought-out posts that add genuine value to a thread should be encouraged. That's why I very much like the Highlighted post idea.
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There are too many warnings and two day bans and not enough long term bans or permabans. I actually think this causes more work for the already overworked staff.
Letting people accumulate these tiny bans just adds to a history that mods/admins have to go through every time they have to discipline a member. One warning is fine but it needs to be followed up with like a week ban at least on a second offense. Take the offenders out of the system for a while.
I mean one guy recently got his last 25 posts listed and they were all like less than 3 words replies, and he gets a two day? He was terrible. He needs way more time to think, and way more time away from the forums so mods/admins can move on to other things.
To Mods/Admins: GO WITH YOUR INSTINCTS
I guarantee you can spot a terrible poster immediately. You guys are too smart and too experienced to not notice a bad poster when you see one. Why play this game of warning, warning, 2day, 30day, permaban? Just boot the guy out already. You already let people remake under new names. You are just making more work for yourselves.
in conclusion, punishments should be swifter and harsher and mods/admins should go with their experience/instinct/judgement and boot those people they know are bad. You guys are being too lenient in regards to the truly awful.
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I'm not sure why you guys think harsher bans equates to faster reform of one's actions or posting abilities. In most cases, the time-out just either deters the person from ever coming back.
I'm all for leniency actually. I do think the forums are getting a bit scuffed up, but not immensely and taking people out of the equation doesn't do much, weeds just grow back.
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On Harsher Bans and Zatic's response
It looks like Zatic has taken some of what has been said here(and other places and his own observations I'm sure) to heart. Just in case you didn't see it, he posted this on April 3rd.
Related: counter comments on harsher bans pooled from replies
1. Will limit discussion, and limit relevant branches
2. Longer/harsher bans result in people not returning
3. When one goes, another returns, or returns with a new ID
4. Unfair bans
5. Increased workload on already limited mods
I do agree with the above as potential issues, but I feel the positives that will come from it far outweigh the negatives. I am of the shared opinion of Zatic: "This is an experimental purge that will hopefully bring back some usefulness to this forum. Right now it has become so bad with all the spam that I feel really sorry for the poor people who come here with good intentions seeking advice. "
Conclusion
I think this is a good place to start as it doesn't require any further implementation just hard work from a mod, thanks Zatic! This will quickly reveal how true the problems above are and if this is a viable solution to fix the "flood". However, I think this needs to be a 1 of many steps, I strongly encourage staff to implement a highlight like system.
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I used to be a moderator both in game on on a forum for a small private server for an MMORPG a while ago. The primary problem with forums as they get larger and larger is as stated above, the noise post. From the discussion I had there with both the admins and other mods, besides having an absurd amount of moderators, there were a few options that actually worked pretty well.
1. Personalized hide posts from user X. If you as a person believe that one or two people are spamming up a thread with noise, you can choose to hide all posts from that person. This solution works best against a few people who love to post, but never constructively or off topic enough that you can ban them. This can be both a thread specific and a forum specific feature (I was never part of the implementation so I have absolutely no idea how it's done) The only catch was that OP was always visible in his own threads regardless of whatever state you set.
2. Similar to youtube, the uprate/downrate and enough downrates = hidden post. This works pretty well in conjunction with flagging posts for moderation but the problem is that this doesn't quite remove the majority of noise.
3. A lifetime posting quality rating. Similar to the uprate/downrate system but far more detailed. Every post you have can be up/downed and that's added to your lifetime score. If it goes too far negative, you get autobanned for a few hours to a few days (This is community based, however, does have the potential to be abused). On the other hand if you consistently post quality, you get benefits(we never did figure out how to do this part)
4. Steam forums style repping. The serious problem with this is the flood of people who love to quote the OP or someone with a long post followed by "+rep 10char" or something similar, a seriously annoying thing to bring the hammer down for. The only thing we would've changed was that all posts would have a maximum amount of rep accruable so that one insane OP wouldn't net the person 500 rep for one post. This does result in some people increasing their effort to post well but winds up with the problem of some people posting less to keep their "Rep to post ratio" nice and high which is the exact opposite of what most forums want from quality posters
5. Shading of posts. Similar to the system in the strategy forums although possibly conflicts with the admin darker blue. Complemented by uprate/downrate, good posts get more "solid" bars around their name, being darker and more blue while bad posts get closer to grey. This is actually awesome for larger threads and given that some people will take the time to go through and read through everything + rate everything makes it amazingly easy to go through a thread and find the quality posts.
6. Helps a lot in guide threads and such, the OP's name/post is shaded differently than anyone else's. Makes for easy scrolling and less ctrl+f to find replies and such from the OP.
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I would like to be able to filter posts based on the user profile. For example, I want all posts from users who joined TL less than a year ago, users that have less than 100 total posts or users who make more than 10 average posts per day to be spoilered automatically. From my experience, most of the garbage posts come from the new members or members who spam one-liners to increase their post count.
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From the staff perspective:
1) It's hard to find the right people. We at TL have some incredibly high standards in regards to staff. We not only require competence, but passion, dedication, and loyalty. Of course, we have "opened the floodgates" to many very awesome staff members recently as the site's features are really exploding, but it seems our numbers are quickly outpaced by the growth of the industry. This is both a good and bad thing in that regards. But in general, finding more moderators is something we are always on the look for but it is a much more difficult job than you would think to magically find 20+ more that would actually let TL be the all-seeing-eye.
2) We usually warn, then temp ban, then keep extending ban lengths for repeat offenders. So we already do what you suggest. The only thing is that so many of our members are new that the problem is usually not the repeat offenders but the large amounts of people who have never been warned or banned.
3) Zero-tolerance is much easier said than done.
So I think there are already some good posts in this threat..I definitely think some kind of Thumbs up/down system would help quite a lot.
also you are talking about the problem to find moderators and I have to say I never saw any "looking for mods" post anywhere and I can't find a way to do that except the normal "contact us" i guess? maybe add a mod application subject there?
Maybe I just missed it tho ;D
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I agree with you OP and this is one of the reason why I very rarely contribute. I could be a quality poster (4000 Masters Terran with about 8 years of high level RTS play) but it's just so hard to have your posts not been drown in the mass of useless posts. For every single post i'll make in the strategy forums you will have 20+ low level players saying the opposite and telling me I'm "dumb".
So how do we fix this? There have already been suggestion of creating a forum where only XXX Masters players could post, others being allowed to read only. That's a bit elitist and I don't like that idea very much but this could be tested atleast.
One thing to NOT do is allowing every user to give "thumbs up" and "thumbs down". I can tell you from experience that this works extremely badly. On team-aaa.com (french community website) I could post whatever crap I want users will give me thumbs up because i'm known in the french community, that works for every other known player who has a good reputation even if their posting standards aren't good. Sometimes very good posts are hidden because a lot of users down votes them because they suggest nerfing their favorite race. To summarize it : there are more people who have no clue than the opposite so giving them the possibility to highlight posts just by mass voting isn't good.
On the other hand what Rekul is suggesting seems to be a very good compromise. Only mods can highlights posts, users can just suggest posts to highlight and mods will be there to check it's worth it. The filter option would be extremely useful in large threads (i'm sorry I really have no time to read a 900+ pages thread).
In a dream world of course every user would think twice before posting but that is just not happening.
Hope that helps, and sorry for my bad english.
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So I think there are already some good posts in this threat..I definitely think some kind of Thumbs up/down system would help quite a lot.
I have yet to hear 1 good argument besides "it´s good" in favor of a thumps up or down system.
Most people upvote stupid things (youtube comments).
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in order to change u need to go back to the basics.
i say we wipe the forums clean, start from scratch.
id also like to see a limit to the amount one can post in a day/week/month like slow mode in iirc
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On April 07 2011 20:22 L.F.Haunt wrote:
in order to change u need to go back to the basics.
i say we wipe the forums clean, start from scratch.
id also like to see a limit to the amount one can post in a day/week/month like slow mode in iirc
Um, what? I honestly can't think of a single bonus to either of your proposals. Wanna explain your thought process a little more? 
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I think 0 tolerance policy is the way to go. I have been at the receiving end of a couple of warnings myself(mostly deserved ), and I think that the best way to ensure quality is to have 0 tolerance for nonsensical posts. I'm a big fan of the ElitistJerks forum model, and the discussions there are incredibly cerebral, and strictly moderated for poor quality posts. It is one of the few sites on the internet where you can click any link and not be disappointed at the overall quality of discussions.
A few suggestions
1) Create a separate Balance Forum
Let all balance/imbalance discussions be relegated to this cesspool. It will give trolls and whiners a place to vent their frustration, or for other people to get their daily dose of balance whines.
However any mention of balance/imbalance in the other threads (and especially LR threads) should be awarded with an instant temp ban, and repeated violations resulting in a permanent ban/ip ban.
2) Include a minimum word count for posts in the strategy forum
Especially for OPs, there needs to be a minimum word count for posts in the strategy forum. Atleast this way, we can prevent random people from creating posts with horrible content. Also it prevents people from discrediting good OPs with lame, 2 word posts.
3) Create a separate Newbie/Help Forum
All Help-me threads should go to this forum. No more "How do I stop this 4 gate/6 pool/2 rax scv all in" in strategy forum.
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bonus? what more do you need? what more do WE need? i though this thread was to cut out all the crap spewing out of thousands of ppl. we dont need more we need less.
like day 9 says, if you restrict someones actions, those actions will be so much more creative.
knowing that i can only have 3 post or whatever a day will make me put that much more effort into those 3 posts, and for the ppl that dont think like that, well atleast we only hear from them 3 times a day ( and possibly take away 1 or 2 posts from his daily postings). and obviously i would implement a hiearchy where minds that prove themselves worthy would beable to post more then others. or maybe even a lvling system where if you have XXXX post you can have 5 post a day etc.
if you want an elitist forum you must favor the leet
baptisims being reborn into a new culture in order to become a better person.
season 2 a fresh new start, hopefully i get promoted, hopefully i well become a better player.
with season 2 i now practice alot in customs carefully deciding when to ladder knowing that a descent player will have a 10/1 points to win ratio.
if you believe that XX% of the ppl on here are talking nonsense then XX% of then post are nonsense and XX% of all threads are nonsense which makes XX% of TL nonsense.
if you wipe everything you have 0% nonsense.
as the frist couple of thread start to make there way up onto TL mod will immediately be able to pick out the good from the crap
~your comp has just been f***ed cuz u been watching to much pron. i guess its time to reinstall windows. let me save wats very important (not that much though cuz im poor and ill i got is a 2gb memory stick) and who cares about all the other crap. atleast my comp will be running like its almost brand new, and this time ill do my business elsewhere. keep my comp clean for as long as possible.
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On April 07 2011 20:42 elmizzt wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 20:22 L.F.Haunt wrote:
in order to change u need to go back to the basics.
i say we wipe the forums clean, start from scratch.
id also like to see a limit to the amount one can post in a day/week/month like slow mode in iirc
Um, what? I honestly can't think of a single bonus to either of your proposals. Wanna explain your thought process a little more?
Agreed, why limit posters? Some of us are just active and contributory!
Wiping the forums cleans does nothing, doesn't prevent the problem, just gives it a slate to shit on!
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On April 07 2011 20:45 Piledriver wrote:I think 0 tolerance policy is the way to go. I have been at the receiving end of a couple of warnings myself(mostly deserved ), and I think that the best way to ensure quality is to have 0 tolerance for nonsensical posts. I'm a big fan of the ElitistJerks forum model, and the discussions there are incredibly cerebral, and strictly moderated for poor quality posts. It is one of the few sites on the internet where you can click any link and not be disappointed at the overall quality of discussions.
The zero tolerance problems have been raised already in this thread. There is just no way to be fair about it as the mods want to be as consistent as possible. As Milkis explains on the previous page
+ Show Spoiler +On April 06 2011 07:58 Milkis wrote:
The thing about these policies is that you have to be really well defined on what you ban and what you do not ban. A lot of "bad" posts don't break any rules and they're quite harmless in nature -- they are simply just noise that clutters up the forum and the noise happens to have a lot of negative externalities when they reach a critical mass (I think i've mentioned that already). Once you start hammering those posts -- what are you going to do? You can't really ban for them, warning them seems harsh. One solution is to just silently delete the posts (and you can even count how many posts are deleted to see how often people are just noise and ban them if they're just mostly noise), but TL seems to have a policy against post deletion since they don't even delete the posts of people who get banned, so I'm sure that's out of the bag.
Furthermore this also just increases the workload of the moderators since being zero tolerance just means you're reading through the posts a lot closer and given the size of TL it's lots and lots and lots of work. I've run these kinds of policies before where I even warned for people being ignorant or wrong (something I'm sure TL is quite against) and I spent like 5+ hours a day moderating at that point. It's a lot more work than you think it is because people will also complain and you have to just explain to them, etc.
It's not a good long run policy since it's very abrasive. This is the reason why I prefer Rekul's suggestion (after you add onto it, of course) because it works a lot more subtly and it isn't abrasive at all. Reward positive behavior and filter out negative behavior -- just make it clear that bad posts get ignored and people won't even see it and we should all be fine.
1) Create a separate Balance Forum
Let all balance/imbalance discussions be relegated to this cesspool. It will give trolls and whiners a place to vent their frustration, or for other people to get their daily dose of balance whines.
However any mention of balance/imbalance in the other threads (and especially LR threads) should be awarded with an instant temp ban, and repeated violations resulting in a permanent ban/ip ban.
I like the thinking behind this but to me this will just provide motivation for more balance whining. TL doesn't support balance whinges at all and this will just provide a place for people to push the rules. Perhaps instead of carrot (balance forum) and stick (instant temp ban) method, the purges that occur should be associated with longer bans. This give people time to sort out their posting as purges don't happen often but if you haven't improved by then you get a serious penalty.
2) Include a minimum word count for posts in the strategy forum
Especially for OPs, there needs to be a minimum word count for posts in the strategy forum. Atleast this way, we can prevent random people from creating posts with horrible content. Also it prevents people from discrediting good OPs with lame, 2 word posts.
I love this idea. Even if it makes stupid people just post longer stupid stuff at least it forces them to think of stupid stuff to say. I'm all for it.
3) Create a separate Newbie/Help Forum
All Help-me threads should go to this forum. No more "How do I stop this 4 gate/6 pool/2 rax scv all in" in strategy forum.
Yeah, I'm not sure about this one. I guess this is what the strategy forum is for but isn't often used properly. I'll reserve my thoughts for now.
Thanks for the ideas. Cheers
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I got caught up in the moment..
sorry about the bump <.<....
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EPT
