The recent rise in the locking of threads

[Cameleon]

BP has indeed shifted most of his threads to off-topic, but with the "Please do not lock this thread" thread he even managed to be off-topic in the off-topic session. If I were Gruso I would have banned him for a week at this point.


BP is most welcome in this community, but he does need to learn to behave in public.

^this

 

[Christoph.Krn]

The alternative to locking useless threads is to (i) let them run free, which might send the message to newcomers that they've arrived at pandorachan, or (ii) simply hide/delete them, which I suspect would raise peoples' anti-censorship hackles even more than the locks.

In the middle of last year we had a discussion in the moderation section of the German boards about how to keep keep the forum structured and avoid that garbage posts can litter up the forum. During that discussion I found that the definition of "Off-Topic" wasn't clear enough. Some people think of "Off-Topic" as a garbage bin, some think of it as a place where only good discussions should take place, most are inbetween.


On the German boards, in addition to "Off-Topic" there's a separate section for particularly silly topics called "DR_SOMMER.GER". Something like this could help. Then, if users keep complaining about whatever Blue Protoman (or anyone else) does, first talk to him. If that doesn't work, tell him that he'll get banned temporarily if users keep complaining. There's no other way as everything else would be unfair.


I think that as a rule, locking a thread should NEVER happen unless it's absolutely necessary to keep the situation calm. The reason for this is that as long as the situation is calm when the thread gets closed, closing it does not solve anything. If anything it probably only makes something worse. Problems have to be dealt with in another way. Make use of your creativity!

 

[vadsamoht]

On the German boards, in addition to "Off-Topic" there's a separate section for particularly silly topics called "DR_SOMMER.GER". Something like this could help. Then, if users keep complaining about whatever Blue Protoman (or anyone else) does, first talk to him. If that doesn't work, tell him that he'll get banned temporarily if users keep complaining. There's no other way as everything else would be unfair.

I think the idea of having two subforums, one for *decent* off-topic discussion, and another for pretty much any garbage is a good idea. I've seen it on other, much busier forums and it work well.


Also, I believe the two items I put in bold already occurred.

 

[gadgetoid]

Blue was in the IRC channel, following that absurd photoshop thread, asking for someone else to prepare an image of Craig's head for use in the..err.. photoshop shenanigans he hoped to ensue.


All this other nonsense aside, starting a photoshop thread when you can't even use photoshop is, at best, f*(£*(King moronic!


Gruso did the right thing. If anything, threads started by BlueProtoman should just appear to him, and him only. That way he could spam crappy threads to his hearts content. Mu ha ha ha.


I wonder if there's a mod for that?


P.S. No hard feelings, Blue, you're just... slightly annoying.

 

[Gerix]

There was one thread where I was sure BP was going to get banned, because it seemed he had just sidestepped a threadlock. Anyway, Gruso locked one thread that was pretty active and told us to continue the discussion in the Offtopic thread. But very little activity transferred. Anyway, it's a good thread for discussions that don't warrant their own threads. But BP doesn't seem to have discovered it.

 

[vadsamoht]

All this other nonsense aside, starting a photoshop thread when you can't even use photoshop is, at best, f*(£*(king moronic!

ROFL.

 

[Jourdy288]

Hmm, well the paste Craig's head thread did die too early =\


Still, I think a temp ban in fair anyway.

 

[Klaue]

On the German boards, in addition to "Off-Topic" there's a separate section for particularly silly topics called "DR_SOMMER.GER". Something like this could help.

I think the idea of having two subforums, one for *decent* off-topic discussion, and another for pretty much any garbage is a good idea.

I vote against that. In another forum I'm in that has several thousand members, this was done too, for the exact reason of preventing spam in the off-topic


Situation before the spam section:


Spamthreads happened in the Off-Topic and were deleted and spamming users were, after several spamthreads, banned. Generally, it had many high-quality threads, even in the offtopic. Exceptions were granted for a few select threads, like the humor one.


Situation after it:


Most of the activity is only in the spam section. Nearly no one cares anymore about serious threads because it is much easier to write a single-line spam post than a thought-out serious one. Intelligent conversation is at an all-time low. A side effect of this is that more and more of the "old guard" quit the forum because there's nearly no one remaining to have a meaningfull conversation with, which is of course a catch-22, and more and more users that have no intention whatsoever to use their brains join just because of the spam section. We now have several users that have not a single post outside of the spam section but hundrets in it. Also, as an interesting side-side-effect, the language abilities of the common member was lower than ever because most of the newcomers are not only quite young, but have no intention to even give so much thought to their posts that they would read them again before submitting them (This, of course, may just be the effect of the SMS generation and not of the spam section).


It is really quite sad.

 

[SNESFAN]

kids these days.... MEH!!!!