I remember when I first joined this site one of the first things that made me keep on visiting was that despite this site being massive (nothing compared to what it is now of course but still pretty crowded) moderation kept pretty much everyone in line, if someone wanted to throw a joke in a thread it was good, if he was boring or annoying he was quickly banned or warned.
Sure there was a lot of goofing around and some flame wars over the course of different topics but you still could get different insight in what was being discussed, remember that joke about how many tlers do you need to screw a ligthbulb? Where despite all the shit there would still be an "isnider of the lightbulb business"That kind of shit doesn't happen anymore. Just look a this thread http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=363979
Im just linking that one because its currently on the front page on general but it would take no effort at all to fin another one like that from past days or in other subforum. Theres pages and pages of people saying absolutely nothing besides one liners or idiotic memes. Sure, they arent being rude, they arent being offensive, but they are making NOISE, and after a while all that NOISE makes it impossible to TALK. How can we have a disccusion forum where theres impossible to have any kind of meaningful discussion. The only thing thats missing is to have the first three post arguing about who was "first".
I strongly believe what is needed is to start enforcing one simply rule, which I hope to whoever is reading this still sounds familiar. THOU SHALT CONTRIBUTE. When people keep posting the same shit of the first page on the sixth its impossible to get anything out of a thread.
I understand a lot of this is because after SC2 this the site grew exponentially, sure now there are banlings and a lot more moderators but if you guys are moderating only those who are blatantly trolling, the threads will still get overrun by one liners with no content at all which in turns makes anyone who can actually contribute by posting something insightful, or at least having an interesting point of view getting discouraged to actually post something. (the perfect example is the "pros" staying the fuck away of strategy threads).
People need to be afraid to post again, people need to wonder if what they are saying is truly a contribution or not. People should READ THE THREAD before posting.
What do you expect moderation to do? The problem is that nearly all those posts are fine by themselves - the problem comes only from that there are thousands of them. I agree people should contribute more and post less - but how could moderation force them to?
On August 29 2012 22:31 zatic wrote: What do you expect moderation to do? The problem is that nearly all those posts are fine by themselves - the problem comes only from that there are thousands of them. I agree people should contribute more and post less - but how could moderation force them to?
Because posters *should* be able to figure out that repeating certain behavior is obnoxious or detrimental to the discussion after a while. Imagine this: Poster A, B and C are arguing about whether maps should have destructible rocks on a thread about map design. A is pro destructible rocks, B is against and C while totally engaged in the discussion is uncertain. After a while poster B makes a great post arguing that in the current state of the game destructible rocks are hurting map design and poster C, in a way to side with poster B quotes him and says "Yeah, pretty much this" or just quotes him without saying anything which is pretty standard.
Of course there's NOTHING wrong with what the C poster did. BUT what happens when comes poster D and E and F and start doing the same thing? Just quoting and pasting B's argument ad infinitum? It becomes annoying and fills the thread with noise which eventually kills it. Now normally, this people under current standard would NOT be banned or warned. Which makes sense, after all they just did the same thing that poster C did right? I'm arguing that they SHOULD be WARNED.
First because due to the sheer amount of posters nowadays the only way to keep the quality standard is with harsher moderation, people need to understand that when you have a 4k people reading a thread of which at least 400 are willing to just go ahead and say stuff like "LOL Apples gonna get owned"or "dis gunna b good" [b]You are gonna end up with those 400 posts saying exactly that clouding at least 3 or 4 pages of a thread with completely useless information[b]
The second reason is because of netiquette, Teamliquid is a FORUM, a DISCUSSION FORUM, can you imagine in real life seeing two people arguing about, lets say, Evolution, and just coming ahead and seeing "YO BUT WHAT ABOUT THE EYE STRUCTURE" , or even worse just going ahead and saying "WOW EVOLUTION? check this south park video where they mock creationist". At best you'll just be disruptive, I presume that any barely edfucated individual would at least wait to hear what are they saying. But even if you DONT, and even if you just go ahead and start arguing something that they already discussed its AT LEAST excusable because you had NO REAL WAY to know what they were talking BEFORE YOU ARRIVED.
But in TL's case, or any other forum for that matter, that is NOT THE CASE, this is the INTERNET, we are communicating through a permanent written media where the only thing I need to do to know what people have discussed is TO READ THE PREVIOUS PAGES. And if a poster IS LAZY ENOUGH to not do that, or worse yet, has is head so up his ass that think HE DOESN'T NEEDS TO DO IT before joining the discussion, is it really a poster worth keeping?
Its all about context. Sure this is totally excusable on threads like Live Reports where people are just keeping up on real time but when discussing gun control or patent infringement? Is it really too much too ask for the users to READ the thread before posting and to question themselves if its necessary for them to keep repeating one liners that contribute nothing?
Another example, this is from the Google v Apple thread, this are all post from the first page:
On August 28 2012 14:21 FinestHour wrote: SAMSUNG WILL BE AVENGED
On August 28 2012 14:21 Emnjay808 wrote: Idk why, but im very happy for this. Apple gets a taste of their own medicine.
On August 28 2012 14:20 Selkie wrote: *grabs popcorn*
I hope copyright law changes
On August 28 2012 14:19 Chairman Ray wrote: Holy shit this is epic. Gonna be following this war closely.
Now, this post are completely valid, I have nothing against people expressing their sentiment against an important event, but when YOU KEEP POSTING STUFF LIKE THAT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE THREAD it clusters it and kills it:
Page 9:
On August 29 2012 00:50 Maxd11 wrote: Apple Fighting!
On August 29 2012 00:57 TsGBruzze wrote: gogo google xD
On August 29 2012 01:32 IntoTheheart wrote: This is great. Gogogo Google!
Mood music?
On August 29 2012 01:51 b3n3tt3 wrote: winter is coming, apple.
it's only a matter of time
Did you learn anything by that? Is it necesary to keep reading that shit EVERY SINGLE PAGE? Sure, a position like the one im arguing for will end up with more threads dying quickly, but if that happens its simply means THERE WAS NOTHING TO DISCUSS about them, and thus, THEY WEREN'T NEEDED. At best they were a circlejerk and at worst they were just sensationalist crap.
Page 12: Page 12:
On August 29 2012 07:56 IMHope wrote: This is going to turn out into a big and ugly mess. Hope everything gets resolved for the better.
On August 29 2012 07:54 TranceKuja wrote: Everything Apple makes is stolen from someone and somehow they always get away with it.
So, the Google vs Apple thing is gonna be a mess and Apple are thiefs too, you really think no one said that at least three times already on the previous ELEVEN PAGES?.
BTW I already said this was different on the LR threads for obvious reason but id also argue that the same applies to persistent threads like the US election threads or any other that gets constanly "updated"through real life. For instance I would see it as totally acceptable if people started reposting that stuff I quoted after a verdict has been reached. Its common sense really.
Warning definitely. Its just to remind them that, despite what they might think, they are NOT ALONE on Teamliquid, and despite their uniqueness we also have nine thousand other perfectly unique snowflakes trying to voice their opinion and if they want to get hear, they better take the effort to set themselves apart of the other nine thousand voices. But if their posting behavior is that of a zombie, they'll be treated as such.
Of course, if despite several warnings they keep doing it, well, I've heard Disney World is specially well suited to deal with all kind of annoyances.
We do regularly warn and ban people for just generally bad posting. If someone's posting history is just a string of one-liners, they will be warned for it - if it continues, they will be banned. Those mod actions are mostly not visible to the public (or not as visible as a big has been banned for this post line), but they do happen.
Warning / banning for every single one liner though is not feasible nor is it desired.
Some people just have a laconic style or don't feel particularly verbose but would like to express solidarity or "just be there" in the thread for some reason, so I don't think all one-liners are such a bad thing, at least not in every situation; and I think at least I prefer an honest one-liner to an artificial paragraph worth of text without real content. It would therefore be very controversial to sanction them, especially on a single post basis. But perhaps clearly worthless posts like, "wow! what a worthless thread!" (oh irony) could be deleted by moderators on sight/by report. I suspect deleting them on sight would work better than any sort of warnings, penalties etc. that create bad blood and endless discussion. Same could go for posts that only offer some negative feedback on the OP's personality or intelligence or mental health or some other clearly gratuitous insult.
Except from my own experience with moderating a forum, posters sometimes create a storm in a glass of water if you edit or delete their posts. But again, that specific type of one-liners I mentioned above can be show to violate multiple different rules, off-topicness being the easiest to show.
Going further than the above with the moderation of unproductive or inappropriate content would require a lot of subjective, situational judgement by moderators, who are only human and subject to the same temptations as everybody else. Imagine a thread about religion, morality, politics, where not even expression but the views held by one poster are deemed offensive by others to the point they'd like him to be banned. There would also be an entire line of problems with equal treatment (e.g. "you banned me today but the guy yesterday got off with a warning"). That could result in bad feelings overall.
Also, discussion could be largely stiffled if what's offensive or productive depended on the judgement of a moderator (people not expressing themselves at liberty for fear of drawing ire); heck, last time I was a moderator, the five of us weren't able to agree on the principles of a common policy (e.g. where to draw the line between the liberty of speech and the need to act against defamation/insults, where non-action could actually result in lawsuits and damages because anti-defamation and anti-insult laws in our part of the world very harsh and coinflippy), much less the implementation of it. With the users, it was the perceived stiffening of discussion, limitation of their own rights, some perceived injustice, deep emotions. In fact, we'd have preferred to stay away, we simply couldn't because of the law. It was a hugely bad experience overall.
Edit: Sorry, I messed up the structure of what I wanted to say but the post is already made. Please be understanding of an overworked person, thank you. Hope any of this babble is actually helpful.
On August 30 2012 01:35 zatic wrote: We do regularly warn and ban people for just generally bad posting. If someone's posting history is just a string of one-liners, they will be warned for it - if it continues, they will be banned. Those mod actions are mostly not visible to the public (or not as visible as a big has been banned for this post line), but they do happen.
Warning / banning for every single one liner though is not feasible nor is it desired.
But Im not saying you should warn someone just for posting a one liner. I don't believe one liners are bad per se, its just the repetition of them that its unnecesary and hurtful to the threads, specially when they are accompanied by some kind of meme. Threads are getting increasingly clustered by unnecesary post that dont contribute anything. Why would people take the time to write something more elaborate when they know that their post is gonna get surrounded by irrelevant commentaries and whats worse just the sheer amount of useless pages will probably scare away those who are genuinely interested in a subject.
Im not against free speech. But when you have a website as massive as Teamliquid you just cant have everyone "shouting" yes or no or LOL. Why should EVERYONE have to post on any given thread, there's nothing wrong with just reading what others are saying. If you make people think twice or hopefully thrice everytime before they post you are gonna give more room for an actual conversation to come out of a thread. (As Ive said before, they should be afraid post).
If people "come up" with 30 post a day and we make them post just their 5 best post I see no other conclusion that ending up with a better forum. Whats better is that well have all the other lurkers READING BETTER POST which in turn will lead them to post better response.
Well, the problem with restricting 30-post a day people is that there are several that post truly good content each post, like Aerisky. There's nothing wrong with them.
I actually think moderation is in something of a sweet spot right now, and the rate of bans is increasing as more users register.
All in all, I think the mods, banlings and admins are doing a great job.
On August 30 2012 11:09 Plexa wrote: Are you suggesting we implement post restrictions like, all users are only allowed to make 30posts week or something similar?
nooo, what, how did you get that? that was just an example u.u. When I said that I was referring to people that post just for the sake of posting, it was a completely arbritary number it could be 100, someone could post 100 posts a day of which only 5 or 10 are really worth to post.
On August 30 2012 11:13 Praetorial wrote: That would kill LR threads and the LoL subforum though.
On August 30 2012 11:30 Praetorial wrote: And General, what with the US election thread and other that have constant posters.
On August 30 2012 01:08 skindzer wrote: BTW I already said this was different on the LR threads for obvious reason but id also argue that the same applies to persistent threads like the US election threads or any other that gets constanly "updated"through real life. For instance I would see it as totally acceptable if people started reposting that stuff I quoted after a verdict has been reached. Its common sense really.
OK I still don't understand what you are requesting really. Can you give an actual suggestion what moderation should change? So far you are only describing what annoys you, and again, everyone agrees.
On August 30 2012 18:07 zatic wrote: OK I still don't understand what you are requesting really. Can you give an actual suggestion what moderation should change? So far you are only describing what annoys you, and again, everyone agrees.
My suggestion in particular is that people that keep on posting unnecessary one liners after page 2 or 3 of a thread should be warned. Specially when what they say has been said already (which is pretty much always). Hell, sometimes I would even do it on page one after seeing that the first 5 or so post are of the same nature and its start to get obvious that if the trends continues (on the same thread) its gonna end up being just noise.
Same with people that uses memes or pictures (dis gun a b good) or videos (and here we go),etc. This is for the most part taking care of but for some reason its becoming more common.
On a more abstract way I propose that unnecessary post/posters get warned on the basis of context. non trolling non flaming post can still be hurtful to a thread/discussion simply by being there making "noise".
EPT
