EPT[?]Too much stress on moderators? - Page 3
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
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CDRdude
United States5625 Posts
Or, you could try doing what the XKCD boards do. I once read that there is a wordfilter in place that prevents a post from being exactly the same as another post. Since I don't read the XKCD boards, I have no idea how well it works, but its an interesting idea. Overall though, I think that Hot_Bid is right; forum quality has to come from the users, not the mods. I'll keep trying to post well, but I don't know if I'm the kind of person to lead any kind of user iniative. Edit: I just realized that the eternal problem with all internet forums, that of post quality can be summed up by the fact that mods have a stick, but no carrot. The only thing we can really do is give mods bigger sticks. Forums with post feedback (voting a post up or down, like slashdot, digg, reddit, etc) have a carrot, but no stick. Forums need both. Also, a couple of ideas occured to me. First, you could block all posts that don't have a space somewhere in them. This ought to prevent one-word posts, or at least provide a warning to the user to stop and think about his/her post. Secondly, perhaps you could block quoting without adding anything extra. Sometimes its funny, but usually pretty stupid. | ||
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HonestTea
5007 Posts
On January 02 2009 12:05 thedeadhaji wrote: wanna be a mod HT? So I can join the halls of Active Forum Vets who Retire After Gaining Mod Status? | ||
micronesia
United States24779 Posts
Chill tried to single-handedly fix strategy. He was doing a very good job, but it honestly looked like too much work for one person. He can't be on tl 24/7, but if he and a couple of other guys (maybe from other time zones) all kept a close eye on the strategy forum specifically, there would be much less opportunity for bad posters to propagate in there. Rather than only give this responsibility to people on a 'for life' basis it would, in my opinion, be better to give it to a wave of people for an interim period of say a few weeks/months. Suppose there were suddenly 3 people assigned to strategy, broodwar, general, blogs, etc... A couple of the current tl leaders (current red/black) could make it their initiative to keep an eye on what all the new staff are doing. I think it would be worth putting a little bit of effort into working with a somewhat large amount of new staff if it ultimately created a very viable and adaptable system. As for staff assignments, I think one current staff member could be put in charge of picking some people they think would be reliable/willing for each section. For example, Chill could recruit a couple of people to help him with strategy, and could lead that small team. This is all just brainstorming and I'm sure could be adapted to tl's needs. | ||
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Ack1027
United States7873 Posts
I respectfully disagree with Hot_Bid's sentiment that a user-initiative toward better posting is required. For me its like, sure there were people I looked up to and people I modeled my posts after but I think bad posters will almost certainly remain bad. I don't think any of the posters who need to be banned, read a good poster and say ' oh hey i want to be like him ' and on the reverse I think anyone who says ' oh hey I WANT to post well ' was someone who was already going to post well to begin with [ granted it would be over time ] Or maybe I misunderstood, but that's my response to it. The only other way I could even think of a ' user-initiative ' is having a bunch of good users agree to not reply/post to bad posters/bad poster's threads. I think that's ineffective and will just cause forum split in unity. Don't get me wrong, over the past 3 months there's been a steadily growing mental list in my head of people I just skip over. I literally see their username and just leave the thread. That's how bad it is. On another note I'm still really glad the mods now who posted here like chill, kennigit, hot bid, all realize this problem and are trying to brainstorm some kind of solution. Still waiting on Mani's response though. | ||
Hot_Bid
Braavos36401 Posts
On January 02 2009 13:51 Ack1027 wrote: I agree mostly with CDR and Micro's suggestions. Additional people even with lesser power is what we seem to need. I respectfully disagree with Hot_Bid's sentiment that a user-initiative toward better posting is required. For me its like, sure there were people I looked up to and people I modeled my posts after but I think bad posters will almost certainly remain bad. I don't think any of the posters who need to be banned, read a good poster and say ' oh hey i want to be like him ' and on the reverse I think anyone who says ' oh hey I WANT to post well ' was someone who was already going to post well to begin with [ granted it would be over time ] Or maybe I misunderstood, but that's my response to it. The only other way I could even think of a ' user-initiative ' is having a bunch of good users agree to not reply/post to bad posters/bad poster's threads. I think that's ineffective and will just cause forum split in unity. Don't get me wrong, over the past 3 months there's been a steadily growing mental list in my head of people I just skip over. I literally see their username and just leave the thread. That's how bad it is. I am saying that more moderation can weed out more bad posters and prevent bad posts, but more moderation cannot create good posts. We need a ground level change among the vets and frequent posters to achieve an overall rise in posting quality. Simply banning all the idiots doesn't change the overall blah-ness of General or the apathy among veterans. I disagree with you that posters cannot impact each others' behavior. I think if there's a thread and a lot of people are posting thoughtfully and intelligently, it does impact how everyone else will post. It's not necessarily simply looking at someones posts and consciously thinking "oh I want to be like him", that's ridiculous. It's a subconscious, atmospheric thing, if a lot of people care and posts well, you can't help but care and post well. Also, bad posters certainly do not remain bad. A vast majority of the current vets, and heck even the current staff, were immature kids when they joined this site. The community grows, people mature, and many bad posters slowly are won over. Sure there are a lot that will never change, but leave that to the mods; there are plenty that have changed. I just don't see how you can expect an overall increase in forum quality without a user-based awareness and initiative. Increased moderation cannot solve everything, especially when this forum is growing and only will get bigger. The nostalgic TL you remember is easy to maintain when the number of users is smaller and the staff projects less frequent. It's a trade-off. Thus, we need our vets to help us out a bit. Don't just post memes and one liners. Show others what good posting is, try to help and guide new posters instead of making fun or attacking them. This sort of behavior will certainly help create better posters. On another note I'm still really glad the mods now who posted here like chill, kennigit, hot bid, all realize this problem and are trying to brainstorm some kind of solution. Still waiting on Mani's response though. Again, it's not like one thread or one solution can fix this problem. It's a huge issue that we will struggle with for a long time; we've always wanted to improve post quality. Recently, we've been very busy with many projects. We are in the process of finding new mods. However, in order for such a change to be effective, we definitely need large, community wide cooperation to get this done, not just more Mods telling people what to do and what not to do. There is no way our forum gets better without our veterans help. If they continue to post the way they have been, no amount of Moderation will accomplish the goals we want. | ||
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Cloud
Sexico5880 Posts
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Hot_Bid
Braavos36401 Posts
An idea that was proposed in MiR is to have a queue of user-alerted moderation actions, kind of like reporting when a thread should be closed or when a specific post needs moderation. The ability to add stuff to this "bulletin board" that the Mods read can be given to veteran or high quality posters to allow us to cover more ground. | ||
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Ack1027
United States7873 Posts
On January 02 2009 15:49 Hot_Bid wrote: An idea that was proposed in MiR is to have a queue of user-alerted moderation actions, kind of like reporting when a thread should be closed or when a specific post needs moderation. The ability to add stuff to this "bulletin board" that the Mods read can be given to veteran or high quality posters to allow us to cover more ground. This is what I was looking for. I can remember several times where I was 100% sure a mod would close a thread and sure enough it was closed. But the thing that pisses me off more is that a thread which should've been closed fairly quickly [ but mods were busy or none were on at the time ] survives and so a good poster saves it. So everything that was posted before the good user stays, and readers of the thread see that as acceptable...To me that's pretty dumb. By bad posters I meant posters who are almost certainly deemed ban-worthy. I apologize if I didn't make this clear. There's pyramid schemes, spam posters, etc that are ban-worthy and then there are people who only make threads in blogs who are ban-worthy, even further there's people who blatantly break TL's commandments. Those people break commandments get warned/banned and continue to habitually break them. So for these mentioned posters, shouldn't perma-bans be auto? I understand your point that posters improve. I'm not saying a bad poster can never improve. I'm just saying the vast majority of people who post with the logic of those I listed above are going to stay that way. I'll admit, I was a pretty shitty poster too when I started. I think almost everyone is. I've seen all sorts of posters. Posters who are great since day 1, some who improve with time, some who are selfish and use features or leech off others etc.... My complaint here is not ' Oh woe is TL ' stimey style or anything. Its just I think there are definitely vets and threads that are left alone the past few months and they have the same mentality as spam posters and blog shitters. To me it sounds like having a police force or snitching vets is where this discussion is leading to....I don't know if anyone actually wants to do that. I know I sure as hell don't, which is why I've refrained [ with much effort I might add ] from saying any of the relatively long time posters' names. Anyway thanks for the response. I just wanted to make clear I'm not ' wishing for the days of old ' I'm frustrated at how some terrible posters are allowed to stay. There are bad posters who improve, and then imho there are bad poster who've stayed a LONG time and haven't improved a bit or significantly, or even much at all. I think they should be looked at. | ||
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pachi
Melbourne5338 Posts
On January 02 2009 12:34 HonestTea wrote: So I can join the halls of Active Forum Vets who Retire After Gaining Mod Status? You get a nice retirement package. | ||
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SpiritoftheTunA
United States20903 Posts
do it | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
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SpiritoftheTunA
United States20903 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + okay maybe but they dont deserve to live ?!?!??! plus i'd also ban all the crappy people | ||
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Nitrogen
United States5345 Posts
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SayaSP
Laos5494 Posts
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fight_or_flight
United States3988 Posts
I don't know if the problem is more of low quality posts or low quality topics. If the topics are dumb its not easy to get good intelligent replies in them from anybody. Perhaps the blog section killed general and that is the problem, though its not trivially obvious. + Show Spoiler + It seems to me like blogs in general are less of an interactive topic (not necessarily because there are less replies or discussion, but the OP generally is written in such a way that it is self contained and doesn't require responses to be worthwhile to read). For example, I have confined my blog to a single thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=80710 I'm not necessarily saying we should change it though (I like the current blog section). | ||
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micronesia
United States24779 Posts
On January 02 2009 18:14 fight_or_flight wrote: I'd be careful with implementing a semi-mod position. I think it has the potential to improve moderation overall, however you have to ask yourself two things. First is hotbid's point about whether heavier moderation is necessarily the solution. Second, is the possibility of petty bannings and power struggles which frankly I see on a lot of forums (but not this one) which really have the potential to kill forums. I don't know if the problem is more of low quality posts or low quality topics. If the topics are dumb its not easy to get good intelligent replies in them from anybody. Perhaps the blog section killed general and that is the problem, though its not trivially obvious. + Show Spoiler + It seems to me like blogs in general are less of an interactive topic (not necessarily because there are less replies or discussion, but the OP generally is written in such a way that it is self contained and doesn't require responses to be worthwhile to read). For example, I have confined my blog to a single thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=80710 I'm not necessarily saying we should change it though (I like the current blog section). I agree we don't want to overemphasize power and create tension/struggles etc. However, I think more manpower is needed to maintain a clear level of consistency which is something tl sometimes lacks. I don't think 'semi-mod' positions specifically would create problems. I also feel an ideal solution would be a user driven initiative to slowly morph the community into more like what we want it to be. However, it is indeed idealistic, and will require some help from moderation to see any significant change. | ||
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TeCh)PsylO
United States3552 Posts
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Fontong
United States6454 Posts
This is a great example of how the many shitstorms in the general forum get started, that thread is about 1/3 people blatantly saying "Microsoft sux" or "Apple sux," 1/3 people telling the first third to stop trolling, and 1/3 flamewars about trolling. On January 01 2009 11:43 H wrote: I used to give a shit about posting but when it all goes unpunished and good post(er)s are just torn down by idiots, who gives a fuck This is so true. Sometimes they are torn down by other good posters/forum vets too though. I think a big problem we have is that once you have >1000 posts under your belt it becomes exponentially harder for you to get banned. Oh? Kennigit is cracking down even as a post this, great. | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
That's a scary thought. | ||
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