The ban was for reasons given.
Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean that there was some ulterior motive that has been hidden for (supposedly) nefarious reasons.
maybe ban posting privilages as a warning
To be precise, we have a spam problem. Not really a trolling problem.
dude its all your fault not the mods he got banned
The main issue is that there is not enough content creation here. If there were 20 new threads today, people like CvM would not be frustrated with annoyingly sticky topics, since trolls and other inane posters would be diluted. There also needs to be a way to encourage circulation of new members. When the membership base is stagnant, people become grumpy and complain.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to create a “Welcome” section for new members. Upon registration, new members should receive a welcome email encouraging them to share their background and interests in the Welcome forum. A few links to the best threads in the other sections can also be posted there, to guide the new members to visit these other sections. This will help increase the number of active posters, from the many people who would otherwise just be “lurkers”.
Also, the Rewards program should be more active. Have Chad pretend to have hired a hot girl helper (let’s call her “Jenny”, and take some internet stock photo for the profile). Have “Jenny” actively email everyone who makes 500 points, ask for their address, and send them some stickers or other cheap item. This helps people feel “initiated”. I get free t-shirts and stuff from Jennys of other sites.
Once a day, also link the top thread in a different section to the top of other sections. This will encourage people to visit these other sections.
well said
What’s your point? Chad is the only one that can make changes. The only similarity between god and Chad appears to be neither answer prayers.
You better keep quite.You are a genuine troll with no value addition.I wish we could have traded you for CVM in the ban list.
LOL not a bad idea. We’ll float it and see how this goes…
I like your precision. I agree. See my thread on guidelines, and I welcome your suggestions. Hopefully this will help define what we categorize as spam, so that it becomes easier to clear it out.
The main reason I let some stuff stand is because even if the initial post is dumb or spam-like, it can often turns into good or interesting stuff in the responses, or it just drops off the page and gets, and so I like to give some stuff a little opportunity to improve.
The challenge is when something stupid does not improve, but gets endlessly commented upon so that it remains up front, or worse, starts generating a ton of me-too threads.
boardmembers can I get some feedback on this idea?
They also both have “d” as the last letter of their name.
This belongs in the Feedback Forum.
this whole thread does, but here we are
It’s an interesting thought. I’m not sure if that’s possible given the underlying technology, but maybe.
We’ve also thought about time-outs, where posting is prohibited for a day or a week or a month. Some boardmembers think people will just wait and start posting crap again when the time-out is over. I think the inconvenience will mean that people will try to be good when they come back, plus if they start all over again, one can move forward with a ban.
Another thought is no WC until you get a certain number of AF points elsewhere, though a Welcome forum or Jr. WC is possible. Chad did seem to warm to the idea of a WC for the WC where spamish and trollish posts get moved (that’s not the same as a Jr WC forum but is another variation). I suspect Chad liked this idea because it is easy to implement with the current technology, but hey, that means it can happen fast, and that’s not bad.
and they’re both WASPs.
But why risk it? Just get rid of dubious threads if they look like spam or a topic that is borderline offensive. In waiting for an opportunity for the thread to improve, this fills up the boards with stupid threads and discourages and angers regular posters. The no nonsense policy of a few years ago needs to be implemented again. Allowing bad posts and threads to linger is what has hurt the site over the long run in my opinion.
Offensive stuff gets axed faster, though I also think it’s more powerful when offensive stuff gets pushback from the community and everyone can see it, so I do let it stand if that happens.
The harder question is the dumb stuff. It sounds like you want the mods to curate your posts for you. Decide what you’re going to be interested in, etc…
I think sports is dumb, maybe I delete those?
I am not in favor of deleting threads. Many people make legitimate responses in threads that are later deleted. Later, it feels like we have wasted our time, since our posts are deleted. Instead, threads should be locked and selectively edited to remove offensive material.
CvM himself was actually a great example of why people typically don’t change and partial bans don’t work.
he disappeared for months in a row at one point following a near-ban from us. he came back, was ok for a while and descended back into garbage shortly thereafter. we give him a stern warning, he cools off for a while, then goes bad again. rinse repeat 4x
We’ve had multiple near-bans as we mentioned, and you can literally track the email chains quite some time back