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Newbies and the like
AbsoluteZero
The new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered User regular
The new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered User regular
I would just like to make a suggestion. New comers to the boards have a severe tendancy to completely miss the rules, and go forth spreading filth about the boards in the form of pointless, often times redundant threads.
I believe that all newly registered forumers should recieve an automatic 2 week jail term in order to discourage bad posting, and encourage lurking and rule reading. I've seen similar processes used in other forums and it seems to work quite well as far as cutting down on the useless threads full of "n00b flaming" and bad grammar. This way new forumers would be able to get a feel for the forums, and hopefully divert them from the deadly mistake that is the "Hi, I'm new!" thread.
EDIT: darkmayo suggests we call it "Quarantine." Good idea.
I believe that all newly registered forumers should recieve an automatic 2 week jail term in order to discourage bad posting, and encourage lurking and rule reading. I've seen similar processes used in other forums and it seems to work quite well as far as cutting down on the useless threads full of "n00b flaming" and bad grammar. This way new forumers would be able to get a feel for the forums, and hopefully divert them from the deadly mistake that is the "Hi, I'm new!" thread.
EDIT: darkmayo suggests we call it "Quarantine." Good idea.
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Rather than bumping the bad thread for three days so everyone can get their insult in, why not just leave it alone so it vanishes into obscurity?
I do not think it's extreme. I've been to boards that don't allow you to post at all for your first 2 weeks. A little quarantine I think would provide a nice safety measure.
As far as those useless threads that do get made and repeatedly bumped, they should undergo immediate lockage. Can deputy's lock threads? If not, perhaps they should be able to. Theres a thread in G&T right now that needs to be locked, badly.
It would however lead to more "how do I post imagaes" threads.
I like the idea of including rules with the activation e-mail a lot.. Maybe no insta-ban though, perhaps just two warnings, then a ban, then a perma unless in extreme circumstances (goatse, etc).
They'd have to read the activation email though, to know their account has been activated. So if they miss the linking to rules there, they're too dumb to be a forumer in the first place. It puts the responsibility on them to read the rules and know them, as opposed to the mods/regs pointing the rules out when someone new breaks them.
True. New idea for quarantine:
Deactivated "New Topic" button for 2 weeks. Post reply still possible.
Make it clear to the new comer that the rules will be enforced weather they bothered to read them or not, so they had best read them.
Would work for regular noobs, however, goat.se in threads is harder to clean up than goat.se topics.
I don't see anything too wrong with the current system personally.
Mods can edit posts. Any newbie that pulls something like that obviously does not want to be here, because thats begging for a perma-ban.
Mods have to find it first. Threads are easier to clean up than posts within otherwise good threads.
And I'd rather just be able to spot and avoid goat.se threads rather than have it show up in the threads I'm browsing.
Raijin is just obsessed with my belly.
Get in my belly
Its almost as hairy as the giant hairy Yeti's of the Serengeti.
Problem here is as long as morons exist every internet forum will be full of them. There is no way to prevent idiot posts or threads. Telling someone you can't make a thread for 2 weeks or whatever would just postpone the inevitable.
Either way, I think goatse is inevitable. Besides, a good forumer would surely fire off a PM to any mod to inform of a goatse posting within a thread. I know I would, I don't need to see that, and I would want whoever did it to have their ass banned promptly.
I firmly believe a quarantine would effectively cut down on useless threads. The only casualty would be perhaps a stupid post popping up within a thread here and there, though I feel that is much less likely when the topic is not one chosen by the newbie making the post. At least it would not clutter the boards with locked threads that should have never existed.
A more extreme measure would perhaps to be revoking all posting privledges for 1 week to newbies. If they can't wait out a week of no posting, then they are probably someone we really don't want posting here anyhow.
The only way to be effectively sure that all newbies had read the rules, would be to somehow quiz them on it before allowing them to post. But that is rediculous. I feel a quarantine is the best solution to the flood of stupid we have been awash in. Second only to shutting off registration all together.
no that's illegal
what if we banned them off the bat
that's really extreme, besides not all noobs do bad
what if we forced them to read the rules
to what? there are no truly standard rules
what if we made sure they were all resposible members of society?
like you
yes
looked in a mirror lately?
grrr I hate noobs
don't hate the game hate the players. Like I said not every noob is bad. Yes some are down right evil off the bat, but not all of them, some lurk and then are bad, while others are just all good.
so what can I do to avoid the noob problem
short of your just leaving the phorum there's nothing you can do.
well that's not entirely true, you can try being nice to the noobs and help them better integrate into the community... like that's ever going to happen.
yes we all hate stupid noobs.
but really, it isn't ALL that bad. off all the threads in SE++ you can ignore one.
on top of that, some people need to vent at something/someone. stupid people on forums = fodder for venting.
just remember: without noobs, we wouldn't have flames
The beaver makes an excellent point.
"If you're going to play tiddly winks, play it with man hole covers."
- John McCallum
Hey, it worked for Minority Report.
Besides, that means that Tom Cruise will be the focus of attention sometime in the future. He's so hunky.
It's not so much punishment, as it is poor wording in the suggestion in this thread (using Jail, iknstead of suggestion to remove their new topic creating possibilities.)
An example of a mostly working system like this would be the Goats forum (which stole the idea from elsewhere, mind you). At the Goats forum, each forumer has an ammount of "karma" points, that are mostly the sum of moderation to their posts. You see, every post has a natural karma ranking of 1, but can be modded up or down by forumers with moderation points (randomly selected forumers are given five moderation points each from time to time.) When a post by a forumer is moderated, they gain or lose personal karma points equal to the action taken on their post. A forumer must have five personal karma points to make a new thread, meaning that anyone who is able to make a thread must have had AT LEAST five meaningful posts already, more if any of their posts had been modded down.
Now, I don't think this entire system would work out over here, but using it as an "inspiration", or sorts, I think that maybe some system could be devised where a new forumer would some how have to "prove that they aren't a complete fucking moron" before being able to make a new thread.
I like this better than the idea of having them wait two weeks, since they might not read the forums at all in those two weeks, where a system like this forces them to have been active.
But maybe disabling the new topic button for a couple of weeks would work, but then again, after 2 weeks you'll have a bunch of "OMG I can make threadz now!" topics popping up.
"If you're going to play tiddly winks, play it with man hole covers."
- John McCallum
The karma wouldn't work in a forum this large, not by any means, but maybe connecting topic making abilities to post count would be better. I'm not sure what post count it ought to be, but anyone who just spams their way up to that post count could be banned (since there would be a warning about that in the rules thread).
Of course, there have always been forumers who post very little but add a lot, but A) they tend not to make new threads that often,
Of course, that last suggestion is probably asking a lot of ramius, since I don't know how easy it would be to create that code.
Everybody go take a look at GameFAQs right now so we can figure out a way to avoid the system they have.
EDIT: Hey hey, Evander, remember when we used to have postcount here? Remember how people would try to flaunt that to win arguments? I've seen it happen a zillion times before. I rather like the system we're currently in, even though we get the occasional hiccup in uniformity.
I'm not suggesting any postcount would be viewable.
As long as we don't have idiots posting like mad to reach the designated post count in order to be able to make their own topics. It should be a number of GOOD posts.
The problem is that words like "good" are subjective.
Make it a high enough number that Mods would notice anyone spaming their way up to it, and anyone who does so will recieve a name ban and have to start over.
I think the best system is flaming the fuck out of idiots so that they learn thier lesson.
1 - You can start threads
0 - You can only reply
-1 - You can only read
Obviously the -1 would be like a temp-ban... Self expiring after say, a day or so? This is how I had 3dpower setup and it worked pretty well. Each post would have a little + or - icon on it, and each "hit" on the icon would register a vote for or against, with each vote being worth a set value- and no vote at all being worth half that ammount.
Sounds complex I know but its really simple, 100 page views with no votes would come out to 50 votes worth of positive hits.
The thing is that I dont think PHPBB is set up to do this kind of ranking. It would be a pretty extensive hack to add it if not, I have only worked on modding UBB and IKonboard...
Don't fuck with me, I play Tribes.
how about not telling them about the post number and letting them figgure it out
They'll spam until the button works anyway.
Also, it feels a bit elitist and secretive.