Discipline around low effort posts or poorly sourced posts

Maybe some wiki or sticky on the baseline of what is generally agree for some platforms? Same for white/black list sources. There are some threads that are 100s of pages in length. Someone new isn't gonna have time to find some issue that has debated long time ago.

KYli said:

My suggestion is to give senior members the ability to hide posts that are not essential or relevant to the military threads.

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Given that seniority is based on length of time posting on the forum and not quality of posts or personal empathy, I could easily see that being abused much like the idea that was advanced some time ago of having a Reddit-like system of disliked comments being hidden.

The only way I could see that working is if the new "hidden" system would apply just to new members/those below a certain message count. Also a note would need to be sent to the user explaining why the comment had been hidden, otherwise they'd keep doing it.

Just my 2 cents, I think @KYli got a point. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be ‘senior members’ as it were... Since seniority is based on number of posts made, this would not be a good measure by itself, but perhaps as a method to determine activity on the forum... then like @KYli suggested, first having the mods select some members... should the selected members accept the responsibility then the selected members can be given authority to mark if the post should be hidden due to relevance, where the members can then choose to expand the post to read or not... should there be a dispute on the relevance of the post, the group of selected members will collectively decide and if the dispute continues then the issue can be further escalated to the mods for the final decision of hide/delete/stay. This can also be limited to those threads that are deemed non-discussion or non-off-topic threads to reduce issues or workload.

The selected member group can be added to or removed from by group consensus then such consensus raised with the mods after a decision is made then mods have the final say or mods can add/remove members directly into/from the group, for the add part, of course with the member’s acceptance... hopefully this will also lessen what the mods need to do in the longer term, tho the initial selection process will probably increase work for a little while.

If the system allows then something like a auto removal from inactivity or recommendation based on active can be made... ultimately the decision will not be based on ‘seniority’ alone, but by those deemed responsible enough in the first place.

Of course this is prefaced on whether the system can do all this.

Mt1701d said:

Of course this is prefaced on whether the system can do all this.

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I don't think the forum has those sorts of controls, or at least they couldn't be brought in without work being done by Webby.

How about this. The mods could agree a small group of people who would take on a sort of "welcoming group" role, where they privately message users, especially new ones, informing them that they've posted an unhelpful message or one that otherwise might be breaking the rules, so asking them nicely if they could try in future to post something more helpful.

There could be an agreed message template, with a screenshot of a high quality message from one of the mods or defence pros to show what they should be aiming for.

It wouldn't stop people misbehaving out of malice but at least it would set new joiners with good intentions on the right road.

Mr T said:

I don't think the forum has those sorts of controls, or at least they couldn't be brought in without work being done by Webby.

How about this. The mods could agree a small group of people who would take on a sort of "welcoming group" role, where they privately message users, especially new ones, informing them that they've posted an unhelpful message or one that otherwise might be breaking the rules, so asking them nicely if they could try in future to post something more helpful.

There could be an agreed message template, with a screenshot of a high quality message from one of the mods or defence pros to show what they should be aiming for.

It wouldn't stop people misbehaving out of malice but at least it would set new joiners with good intentions on the right road.

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The private message ‘welcoming group’ could certainly help, however there will still be members who either wouldn’t comply or sometimes get a bit over excited during a discussion or over certain topics and all the work will be defaulted on to the mods... tho I guess the group could help with noting the posts in question, lowering the need for the mods to go through everything, maybe...

The problem is tho that there will be minor quips and discussions that can’t really be avoided... in these cases where would the group/mods draw the line since the workload would be huge if every one of these are taken into account... I guess some of my prior suggestions can be manually done but if hiding/collapsing a post, as well as authority to do so, is possible then I think that would solve or at least mitigate a lot of the issues that @Bltizo had in the first place.

horse said:

I read slow.

Maybe you can explain it to me again?

Please!

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Just FYI, assuming you are the same cyberhorse at CDF by the way you write, over there your pattern of half joking posting is accepted but here it is less acceptable etiquette.

If you have something to say please just say it outright rather than using excess sarcasm and beating around the bush, or draping it in humour and leading people to wonder what you are actually on about.


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As for the various responses and ideas people have made, increasing the mod team is one good idea but my suggestions were also something that I think could be done with the current team.

It's more about having the forum rules readjusted so everyone is consenting and in agreement that those are a desirable goal for the purpose of the forums military threads.
Specifically the question is about making sure people understand the discretion of judging how political a post is or how off topic or how poor quality a post is, will be dependent on an individual moderator's judgement.

In essence it is a question of whether the forum users agree with the judgement of current moderators to implement those changes -- and also is why selection of future moderators is something that needs to be treated with care.




Basically, the question at its basest level is: how high is this forums tolerance for incompetence and non useful contributions, and is incompetence and non useful contributions to a certain level or certain repetition sufficient grounds (aka beneficial to th forum at large) for punishment and/or banning?

There are those that put out "stupid" questions or points because they want to be an annoyance. Why are old arguments repeated time and time again? There are those that just want to stir the pot. Why the last two years seems to be more active? It more follows events, then the trolls come out. Every time there's an international incident regarding China, it's only a matter of time when the trolls start showing up.

AssassinsMace said:

There are those that put out "stupid" questions or points because they want to be an annoyance. Why are old arguments repeated time and time again? There are those that just want to stir the pot. Why the last two years seems to be more active? It more follows events, then the trolls come out. Every time there's an international incident regarding China, it's only a matter of time when the trolls start showing up.

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Yes, I think AMace got to the heart of the situation. There's always been far more lurkers than posters here, and important events bring out more posters.

Now myself, I think the forum could use a bit of reorganization. The current divisions don't make a lot of sense:

- What does "strategic defense" mean, anyway? Seems like it's a magnet for attracting political discussions.
- Why do we have 3 forums for technical military discussions? Why not just merge them into one? It's not like anyone's going to confuse the WS-15 with the DF-21.
- The "Member's Club Room" right now just means "anything goes". Why not organize it a bit?

Here's my suggestion:

China Defense & Military:
- Technical Military Discussions (No Politics Allowed!)
- Science, Technology, and Economics
- Current Events
- Historical Discussions

solarz said:

Yes, I think AMace got to the heart of the situation. There's always been far more lurkers than posters here, and important events bring out more posters.

Now myself, I think the forum could use a bit of reorganization. The current divisions don't make a lot of sense:

- What does "strategic defense" mean, anyway? Seems like it's a magnet for attracting political discussions.
- Why do we have 3 forums for technical military discussions? Why not just merge them into one? It's not like anyone's going to confuse the WS-15 with the DF-21.
- The "Member's Club Room" right now just means "anything goes". Why not organize it a bit?

Here's my suggestion:

China Defense & Military:
- Technical Military Discussions (No Politics Allowed!)
- Science, Technology, and Economics
- Current Events
- Historical Discussions

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I think having three primary military defense subforums does make sense -- the issue isn't so much around confusing WS-15 with DF-21 but rather ease of access.

If you're wanting to look up WS-15, going to the air force sub forum means you can narrow down your search a lot easier than having to trawl through a massive subforum that includes everything from air force, army and navy shenanigans.
It's hard enough right now to look for the right thread even with only the air force, army and navy subforums.
[Over at CDF they literally have subforums within subforums and each page lists like 30 threads on a single page so you don't have to click "back" too many times to see something recently discussed. Of course that's an issue around website/forum structure and formatting and isn't the reason I created this thread, I digress]

Strategic defense I appreciate is a bit vague, but I think separating nuclear matters from the rest of the three main military subforums/military arms is a good idea. We have to accept that strategic defense as a subforum will attract some political discussions, but that's just something to sacrifice.



Reorganization of the forum's structure and subforums IMO is something worth discussing (maybe in a different thread), but doesn't really target the issue which I'm talking about which is largely related to the current rules and/or lack of rules in relation to the 3-4 main undesirable patterns I described.

My belief is that rejigging the rules and if the community largely agrees to giving moderators more leeway to judge which posts fit the 3-4 undesirable patterns that was mentioned, that could significantly improve the forum.

Bltizo said:

My belief is that rejigging the rules and if the community largely agrees to giving moderators more leeway to judge which posts fit the 3-4 undesirable patterns that was mentioned, that could significantly improve the forum.

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That makes sense to me. I had no idea the moderators felt somewhat restrained in dealing with low quality material, but if that's the case then giving them more discretion in a good idea.