Closed For Business
Bugler
Join Date: 2003-09-04 Member: 20561Members
Join Date: 2003-09-04 Member: 20561Members
<div class="IPBDescription">INdeed</div> Whats with all the closed topics recently? I'm not trying to start an admin abuse thread (since those should be in private msgs)- but just as a discussion topic- why the heck are so many threads closed? You look at a typical forum, you see a VERY occasional locked thread- maybe 1 every other page..... here, its upwards of 40%......surely 40% of the posts don't deserve intervention...?
This is getting out of hand though..... when you see posts like the one i read today about gorge strategy- after a couple pages of input from many people, one moderator decided it was all spam and worthless. Yet, just above that last post, was a post well over 3 paragraphs long, which seemed to have a lot of thought put in to it. It's just rude and arrogant to stop posts whenever some mod believes they can be stretched to breach the rules.
Another common target post: Any post where someone will ask "have you seen that" or "how about this".... people talk about it- then some moderator comes on, and closes the thread because "well that was already discussed back here(link) WHO CARES! not all of us have the time to search 50 pages back for any thread REMOTELY relating to the question at hand- and even if we did, old discussions are no guarantee of resolution. It would be as absurd as dismissing a discussion on Vietnam obselete and spam since it has already been discussed millions of times.
Additionally- theres rule outlined on the ns forum rules against such a post.... so its really an issue of the moderators making their own de facto rulings....
Do any of you frequent forum browsers find this to be true? And no, im not asking the admins- if i wanted your opinion, id personal message some of you- this isnt an attack on abuse, only a discussion of what could turn out to be an unneccesary step in regulating the forums.
This is getting out of hand though..... when you see posts like the one i read today about gorge strategy- after a couple pages of input from many people, one moderator decided it was all spam and worthless. Yet, just above that last post, was a post well over 3 paragraphs long, which seemed to have a lot of thought put in to it. It's just rude and arrogant to stop posts whenever some mod believes they can be stretched to breach the rules.
Another common target post: Any post where someone will ask "have you seen that" or "how about this".... people talk about it- then some moderator comes on, and closes the thread because "well that was already discussed back here(link) WHO CARES! not all of us have the time to search 50 pages back for any thread REMOTELY relating to the question at hand- and even if we did, old discussions are no guarantee of resolution. It would be as absurd as dismissing a discussion on Vietnam obselete and spam since it has already been discussed millions of times.
Additionally- theres rule outlined on the ns forum rules against such a post.... so its really an issue of the moderators making their own de facto rulings....
Do any of you frequent forum browsers find this to be true? And no, im not asking the admins- if i wanted your opinion, id personal message some of you- this isnt an attack on abuse, only a discussion of what could turn out to be an unneccesary step in regulating the forums.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
<span style='color:white'>X</span> A idiot, causing a comotion. AKA "Trolls"
<span style='color:white'>X</span> A post which no one wants or should read, again. AKA "Too much of something"
and lots of other reasons.
When you see a lot of locked threads that all <i>deserve</i> to be locked, then that's a good sign of a good mod team, imo.
See, assuming admin intervention only for extreme circumstances (fullthread porn images, entire pages of obscenities..... we would have a great forum.
Think about it- the posts that no one cares about drop, and the posts that people invest time writing in stay high on the list.... it makes perfect sense- the only thing that could wreck it are bored admins who feel the need to speed that routine up. (of course, to their own direction)
and ThinG- i could care less (i did read it) about another post on the same topic. Im raising these points in my own words, and whether they overlap a bit with other issues doesnt mean you can group them together- its rather insulting actually, to have any thought sharing a bit of resemblance to any other- then fusing them into one....
What id rather hear, ThinG, is instead of you using the search feature, use your brain and take the time to respond to me with some thoughts of your own, right here.
<span style='color:white'>X</span> A idiot, causing a comotion. AKA "Trolls"
<span style='color:white'>X</span> A post which no one wants or should read, again. AKA "Too much of something"
and lots of other reasons.
When you see a lot of locked threads that all <i>deserve</i> to be locked, then that's a good sign of a good mod team, imo. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lock the troll then, muahaha <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
the admins keep it well and clean so i see no problem
In reference to the specific example of the gorge strat thread...first off it's a <u>gorge strategy</u> thread. Wrong forum in the first place. Second, as stated in the lock message of that thread, every single post had become repetitive. One side said that the gorge should just stay away from combat, the other side said the gorge was capable of holding its own. No one was saying anything different, everyone was just voicing their preference for one side or another. That's not contributing to the discussion, therefore it is spam.
And there are plenty of reasons to post in topics that would otherwise be locked:
postcount++
just to be annoying
some people just like to flame
turn it into a joke thread, which are generally reserved for the offtopic forum
[edit]Hmm, Talesin's reading this, locked? [/edit]
and why do stupid threads not die normaly (with out locks?) b/c people don't get the concept of Don't Spam, and the concept of DON'T FEED THE TROLL!
thus mods lock.
and every so often they messup, and if you think they did, PM em, and they will talk to you about it.
Point one. The thread in question was closed (as noted in the final post) as it was going nowhere. It was becoming spam, with people repeating the same arguments in very slightly different manners.
Point two. If you attend a forum where the moderation staff are as 'hands off' as you've stated above, only intervening in the case of tourrettes-wannabes or porn threads... kindly feel free to wander over to the Steampowered, CS, FireArms, or DoD forums and see just how the community acts, by comparison.
Point three. Not to put this the wrong way, and get people upset... simply stating a truth. These forums are not a public means of communication. They are not federally funded. They are the private property of Charles 'Flayra' Cleveland, who has entrusted their care to the moderation and administration staff. There is no First Amendment Right here. This is a benign dictatorship, who answer to Flayra.
The funny part is, unless it's stated outright, most don't even notice. Threads that are serving no purpose are culled. Discussion stays lively and polite, for a major gaming community; flames and hate-spam are killed quickly. People like the atmosphere that the mods and admins maintain... after all, if they didn't, they would not frequent the boards.
Now then, for the other bits in your post.
Abuse complaints are directed to 'abuse@natural-selection.org', not to PMs.
Locked topics are locked as needed, not on some type of quota basis. Some days, forums will go without needing a single lock. Others (which has happened in the past, and people still keep screenshots apparently) you log in and the entire front page is literally locked thread after locked thread. Locks are committed at the discretion of each given mod, which is why mods are considered by the existing staff on their level of maturity before they are offered the position.
And the forums have a <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=Search&f=1' target='_blank'>Search Function</a> for a reason, as well as a search box at the bottom of each forum for those (IE users) who error out on the advanced search tool. It's a shame few use it, which causes a number of locks to occur... most especially in the Ideas & Suggestions forum.
Cmon, lighten up. Some topics dont deserve to be closed only so we can continue our discussion on a one year old topic from long ago...
" Discussion stays lively and polite, for a major gaming community; flames and hate-spam are killed quickly. People like the atmosphere that the mods and admins maintain... after all, if they didn't, they would not frequent the boards."
is completely off-base; you have no idea if people like it or not, since any criticism of the system is usually removed in a quick manner.
And please, dont remind be about the legality of such issues- i dont debate that the owner, who pays for the space, can make any rules he wants. However, that doesnt mean he SHOULD.... additionally, theres a distinction between what Flayra probably expects on the forums and how they're frequently modded nowadays.
And please, you people should realize that I only brought up the gorge post as a mere example, a single thread in a whole quilt so to speak, so dont spend so much energy pouncing on that.... i agree that it should have been in the strategy forum.
THe real issue is, anytime someone forcibly closes a thread, its like verbally interrupting a group of people in a conversation. Do you think free speech is a bad thing? (AGAIN IM NOT QUESTIONING THE LEGALITY OF A PRIVATE FORUM, JUST MAKING A POINT) It seems to have worked in the USA. I mean, how idiotic would it be, if everytime you and a group of people started having a conversation, and it was deemed unfit by a 3rd ruling party, they broke it up....
It gets really, really frustrating when you've spent a while reading through a particular thread and spent longer crafting a reply only to find that it's been locked because it's deemed "spam" by the powers that be.
We've all bitched about this many times before - theres usually a good selection of alternaives to locking but moderators are epople too and they have better things to do than clean up after us all day...
errrr that doesnt really make sense.... if they have better things to do, they wouldnt spend so much time going over every thing with a fine toothed comb.... And cleaning? I guess that's the preferred euphemism for silienced people's honest opinions and thoughts.
in customization, old threads are CONSTANTLY braught back to life by people saying "OMG, whers teh link!?" -or- "any updates?" ... there is a sticky containing information about what to do in the situation of a downed link, and if there were updates, they would have been posted prior to your post.
also, on the rare occasion an UPDATE is the reason to revive the thread, this is looked as a GOOD thing. (ex: necrosis reviving his alien V_ model release topic from over 8 months posting an update and teaser for the second version of the pack)
if you don't quite understand the process described in a thread, or with to discuss it more in depth, put a link in a NEW topic, and continue your more focused/exstensive discussion.
also locking a thread because "the discussion is done" or "the thread poster's question has been answered" is really moronic, because if the discussion is done then the thread will sink by itself, yet i see moderators doing this frequently
Moderators and Admins, as they are, are people like us. That means they can make mistakes like us, and that would include thread locking (but it IS rare)
Remember that if you feel that a thread has been locked for no reason, be sure to PM the moderator/admin in quesion with a <b><i>GOOD</i></b> reason for it to be reopened.
And by good reason, I do not mean "OMG we wants to discussz0rs!!" but something which you know is a good enough reason. And no, threatening them or bribing them won't work. I remember an instance where a member on my old boards tried to bribe me with pr0n for not locking his topics....you could guess what happened to him.
I would also like to point out that there was none of this discussion during the 1.0 days.
What are you implying?
Anyway, Delarosa if you were refering to Recoup's comments, I think you misinterpreted what he said. He was opposed to thread necromancy, whereas the mod who locked his topic would rather him revive the year old thread dicussing a slightly relevant topic.
I would have liked to continued the topic on Gorges. It probably should have been moved to the Kharaa Strategy and died there instead of being locked. I completely disagree with Talesin on his gorge strat, and would liked to have expressed my opinion on the matter, yet by the time, I was able to read the thread it was already locked for spam.
I agree with titler :o, in that mods should take care of the few people spamming or flaming instead of nuking the whole thread. I think there are plenty of other methods to deal with problems in threads other than locking them.
we need to stress this one a few times... as i've got TOO many pms in my inbox with "locked topic" as the subject, a link to the thread in question and " <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif' /><!--endemo--> " as the message...
no where in that does it explain to me what your thinking, what you think i did wrong, or what your take on the situation is, other than you look " <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif' /><!--endemo--> " now because of it...
Apocalypse, i have several specific cases in mind when i made that comment, and i will not divulge them as they run along the "personal bias" part of me... Recoup isn't the one i was specifically pointing my "hypothetical" finger at... there are several other members that deserve it more.
no, actually, you do not, because if i'm reading a thread i'm interested in and it gets locked i really don't care enough to waste my time attempting to convince a moderator to unlock it, as it isn't worth the effort
how about instead of locking every thread you think there may even be a small reason to lock, you err on the side of caution and only lock those which really require it
i don't see why this is such a big problem. if you consider replies about strategy which may be repetitive but are thought-out and long (100+ words) then why would you say it is spam? "LOL", "ROFL", "POSTCOUNT++", and "sup guys" is spam. a six paragraph post on something which may have been discussed before <b>isn't spam</b>. by your logic anyone that posts preexisting ideas must be just spamming. if you're so concerned over people spamming why don't you turn postcounts off
also i'm aware that you can run your board however you damn well please but at the end of the day the reason you're running it is for all of the people reading it, not for yourself, and if the people reading it are complaining about the way something is done, perhaps it's time to take a different perspective on it
If people didn't like it here, they would leave. No one is stoping you from creating your own NS Comunity.
and the reason why threads don't die is this (as I said before, but every one ignored me <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->):
People don't read through the enitire thread generaly. All to often the 'good' post that they jsut wrote was written after reading only the first page (or first post) and has already been said about 10 times beofre by other people who did the same thing.
That Is Spam.
Stupid threads don't die b/c people like feeding the trolls.
The number of times I seen racist/stupid/flame bait threads bumped before a mod could get to them is just silly.
now for specifics:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->no, actually, you do not, because if i'm reading a thread i'm interested in and it gets locked i really don't care enough to waste my time attempting to convince a moderator to unlock it, as it isn't worth the effort<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, its one of the rules/guidlines of the forums. IF you don't like it, don't post/complain.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->how about instead of locking every thread you think there may even be a small reason to lock, you err on the side of caution and only lock those which really require it<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
and who decides that?
you?
The comunity?
How about the admins/mods who were picked for that job? (I like that idea)
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->by your logic anyone that posts preexisting ideas must be just spamming. if you're so concerned over people spamming why don't you turn postcounts off<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
b/c that was brought up and discussed and most of the forums didn't want them turned off.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> and if the people reading it are complaining about the way something is done, perhaps it's time to take a different perspective on it <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
well, I only see... about 20 people complaing in this thread (and I am being generous), soooooooooo 20 vs couple thousand active members......
<!--QuoteBegin-bugler+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (bugler)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->is completely off-base; you have no idea if people like it or not, since any criticism of the system is usually removed in a quick manner.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is this thread locked?
Has it disapeared?
Is the comunity leaving these forums?
nope, nope, nope.
guess people like it here.
If you don't like it, go join another forums <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I am sure scooter blue would be glad to have you.
Negative.
People love to spam, and I don't think you quite understand this. If you leave a topic open after it has been discussed to death and no one is posting anything new, then you'll just end up with pages and pages of "You're wrong!" "No, you're wrong!" "I'm right SUYF!" "You're so stupid I'm right dammit!".
There is a difference between spam discussion and constructive discussion. We don't need the former clogging the tops of forums.
While putting the metal to old topics does sometimes get out of hand, there's a reason for it. Learn about bandwidth, and how important it is on a forum.
Negative.
People love to spam, and I don't think you quite understand this. If you leave a topic open after it has been discussed to death and no one is posting anything new, then you'll just end up with pages and pages of "You're wrong!" "No, you're wrong!" "I'm right SUYF!" "You're so stupid I'm right dammit!".
There is a difference between spam discussion and constructive discussion. We don't need the former clogging the tops of forums. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
then delete the posts of spammers and tell them if they do it again they will be banned
locking the entire thread because you don't feel like addressing the actual issue is stupid
<!--QuoteBegin-Thansal+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Thansal)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->If you don't like it, go join another forums<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
thanks, armchair moderator
also to the guy above me if you're going to comment on <b>bandwidth</b>, posting a new thread uses the same amount of bandwidth as viewing an old one does (less, actually, since a new thread will only contain your initial post whereas the old one will contain dozens of posts which will be loaded whether or not you read them), so you don't know what you're talking about. if you're talking about server <b>load</b>, searching is the most processor-intense function users can use, so posting a new thread is actually far more efficient than searching for old ones, purely from a technical standpoint
EDIT - Oops didn't quote right. I was responding to titanium's take on how to handle spammers.
But anyhow, the mods often lock something just because they 'feel' it needs a lock