Another Friendly Reminder

Aren't you the guy who was insulting people really carelessly for evidently no reason at all yesterday?

Trust me, you're better off...although it was entertaining in that "watching a train wreck unfold" kinda way.

One potential alternative is to implement the current item and player comments rating system to forum posts, and let you guys moderate yourselves.

Thoughts?

Idunno Jaerik, people really say a lot of stupid stuff, not to mention I can foresee anything somebody says getting rated down just because, every time I see a nice picture someone has posted on their profile it gets down rated just because people can..sigh

People will rate down for the stupidest stuff, and I fear it will only cause more bickering cause people are finding themselves rated down.

Hell look at screenshots. Most of them barely get above 5. People will rate down everything!

This

TBH, I've always felt that the rating systems, while working on people being incredible douches in their posts, also start to end up as a censor of sorts, where an unpopular idea is rated down, not because it was a bad idea or abusive, but because people just don't like what the OP was saying, regardless of it's merits.

I've left other forums with similar systems, because any time someone made a suggestion or topic that a handful of elites deemed "stupid", they were rated down, and then of course the mob mentality plays in, and other people ALSO jump on the "rate down" bandwagon. Not saying that I would leave this forum, because the atmosphere here is decidedly less "STFU NUB" then most when it comes to new ideas being brought up...but I would hate to see it ending up the playground of a select few and not be accessible to everyone. Then, of course, are the down-ratings because people just don't like a particular person...that's always nice.

At any rate, obviously the ultimate decision is left to you guys. I just think it sucks that it's come to that...but I guess it's to be expected with more traffic coming through here now.

#2 said it far better then I did...

Bad idea. Watch any unpopular idea get modded to hell in a heartbeat, no matter how valid it may be.

Here's a good idea. Allow the OP to delete any post they want, but also keep them in a separate location such as Deleted Posts, that way people could open a thread and see "Oh, this guy deleted 207 posts." and hopefully realize that it's not a thread worth posting in. ^^

Gonna drag this slight derail over from the previous friendly reminder thread:


Any chance we can get less RMT ads so that legit players will actually want to click on them? I really hate the fact that a lot of threads are along the lines of "RMT are scum", yet the site appears to be funded by them.

As for the rating system, I think as #2 said, there'd be too much band-wagon action. However I'd like to see how it goes if we rate down the actual user for their posts rather than rating down the posts themselves. If people are consistently getting rated down (and I can think of a few that would be, probably myself included) then maybe they'll finally get the message that they're just not contributing anything.


I vote Bart! Give Bart the banhammer! (errr... the power to wield I mean, don't ban him O_O)


I'm pretty sure Jaerik knows I'd more than happily argue with him if I thought he was wrong, but he hasn't given me an opportunity yet, ***!

I'm all for the blacklist function, but I will probably be the one in the most blacklists anyway

Frankly anyone would take the open opportunity to ***all over something whether it has good merit or valid point or not. I too agree this would turn into a bandwagon of negativity for virtually no reason or purpose other than to in essence... be a douchebag. We got plenty of those already.

Alright, seems that's a universally unpopular idea then. =) I was off-base on that one. Back to the drawing board.

Thanks for the input, guys. I'd be happy to consider any other ideas people have.

The Same thing would happen. People will vote someone down just because they can, it's clearly evident they do it with pictures so why wouldn't they do it with anything else?

Im against the rating system too. Blazza did have a good idea tho, if we could somehow let ppl know that they are not contributing in a way that doesnt consist of flaming, so that they may either stop posting or think more about what they post.

These are great ideas everyone is suggesting, unfortunately as we've seen numerous times, good intentions are often turned into opportunities to stir up a ruckus and drama for the sheer sake of being a negative creep and successfully alienate and annoy others. They're good enough at it with what we currently have, I rather keep their doors of malicious activity to a minimum if it's within our power to do so.

Totally just heard the Nirvana song in my head when I read that. Now I gotta go listen to it ^^

At any rate, I really think the only way to maintain an open forum like we have here, while still having some sort of "douchebag" filter for the end user, is a blacklist function. Personally, someone would have to be pretty damn nasty to warrant me blacklisting them, but it would give those that are being deliberately antagonized a physical way to ignore it, if mentally ignoring it just doesn't suffice.

A private tabulation of the number of times a person's been blacklisted, visible only to the mods, would allow them to identify a pattern...if someone's getting blacklisted by 2/3 of the people here, chances are pretty good they're being an ***, and the mods can then investigate and make a determination if said person needs to go.

Out of curiosity, as a question to the mods...can YOU guys see all the posts by a particular user? It's an ability I'd like to see for all of us here, but you Mods could at least use that to quickly identify douchebaggery by a single user across multiple topics without having to "troll" them all.

Also, a "report this post" function could be helpful, although with some of the "Player Warnings" I've seen, the potential for abuse is high. The last thing I'd want to see is the Mods logging in one morning to 6,396 reported posts over simple disagreements, but then again, warnings for excessive/inappropriate use of the reporting function could be meted out as needed as well. Again, something I would personally probably never do...but recent cases (The racial epithets being dropped constantly in that thread), in my opinion, need to be reported.

Just my 2 gil ^^

I kind of like this idea. I don't see Jonis or Rikapi on here anymore, only Jaerik and Scragg, and this forum does require a little more policing than anything.

I don't think you need to hire anyone in order to moderate the forums better, but maybe put some people who are willing to donate a bit of their time to the task of at least flagging necessary threads, if not being able to lock them altogether. One problem is the question of the impartiality of those people... *shrug* just throwing ideas out there :)

Oooh, I like this one :D

Honestly a report thread tab would be great, I know you would get sent a lot of unneeded ones but the one from yesterday needed to be stopped after the first racial remark was typed. I looked for some way to report it yesterday for awhile but didn't see any way too.

If we want a rating system, there is a way to impliment it that would make sure only regular posters that count can rate other people's posts. Make it that somebody needs to have X number of posts before they can rate somebody's posts, or posts X number of times in Y space of time.

That way, we wouldn't have people who don't post coming on here and rating everyone down just because they can. I used to do this on one of my old forums and it worked a treat.

Some moderators would be a good idea too, there are some people on these forums who are about a lot of the time since they can also browse from work; around a lot more than the admins are.

Problem about this point is, if there is a disagreement, what would keep that moderator from being biased towards somebody (i.e. Blazza) or biased against somebody (i.e. Me). That doesn't sound fair in my book (i.e. everyone would love it, I would hate it).

I'm not too sure how this works exactaly, but from what little I know, on most forums and sites such as these advertisment is automatically generated to corespond with the material on the site. Web Site owners have no control over what can be advertised.

The problem with a rating system implemented that way is like I said earlier, a core group of elites and their minions would down rate every post or idea they didn't like or agree with. I personally think that a new visitor here should be on equal footing with someone that's been here a while, regardless of their post count. I'd rather there be no filter at all then to end up with a core group of 10 people that "rule from on high with an iron fist" and moderate topics based on personal biases and opinions.

That's why I brought up the blacklist function, because that's totally end user and won't effect discussion topics here in a public sense. Someone can blacklist the hell out of whoever they want as long as it doesn't effect my ability to see their posts.

what is the point of calling him out like that? get him started again and turn this thread into what iut was made to prevent?



in all honesty i think its fine how it is. there is no solution to the problem almost every forum has. i like the features of this site and im sure i'll like the ones to come. no need to waste time on the forums that seem to be on a good system as it is.