Board mood meter disabled

I dare! I dare!

All the pontificating about "quality" posting, useful information, bickering, and the like will come to naught without LEADERSHIP by the "old dogs"...

A GENTLE guiding tap on the shoulder here and a swift kick in the pants there is what's needed. When you see MYCROFT posting 342 news links with NOTHING added by him, absolutely NO RESPONSE from him when you post a reply it requires a "nudge"... I tried Saturday night, but unfortunately he never looked at his post again!

To hammer William about issues he can only do "so much about" with his limited budget is counterproductive IMHO. Lord knows, I am doing what I can to aleviate the budget crunch but still he has only so much time in a day, the man DOES have to feed his family.

I wonder if between us ( like Bill said, the CONTENT is up to US) we can't come up with a way to IMPROVE and or dissuade rediculous posts?

I look at this thread and there are three "Top Cats" in line, Tass, Dr and Masked Avatar, this trio ought to be able to come up with SOMETHING concrete yes?

PEACE...
m...

Did someone say that longer posts are better posts?

Tell me this, how does a half dozen responses become better than one or two?

neo- Well I would think that a longer post would have more thought put into it than several couple-liners. That's why I suggested a word count limit.

kpt,

to a point,
but most thought goes into the shortest things,
poetry is the rambling of kings!
now smoke a joint.

I click the ads 3 to 4 times a day!!!!! I think pop up ads would help generate more money for ATS. I am sure the casino pop up ads would bring in a lot of money.

Originally posted by Springer
* To hammer William about issues he can only do "so much about" with his limited budget is counterproductive IMHO.

* I look at this thread and there are three "Top Cats" in line, Tass, Dr and Masked Avatar, this trio ought to be able to come up with SOMETHING concrete yes?

Springer

A useful interjection. I have no problem with role modelling as part of a solution, so long as there is recognition that there is actually a problem.

To the first issue, I don't feel that I am hammering William, but it is sometimes important to get his attention, if he is a one-man army reinventing the community's space in his spare time. No successful enterprise ever stayed in the #1 spot without listening to its customers.

To the second point, in this case I believe the Mods have needed far clearer guidelines for a time, and to contribute to the evolution of quality they need clear and succinct standards to start with. I have already made my concrete suggestion on that issue, in my previous post. Whether or not it happens is not up to me!

Glad you could see my feline self, more often my womenfolk treat me as a cute puppy.

Just a thought.

It seems there needs to be more "nudges" and "kicks in the pants" from the moderators. But that takes time. Maybe there needs to be an extra 1 or 2 moderators per forum. Maybe the "old dogs" in this thread could tap all the moderators and reitterate the issues facing the board. It doesn't appear everyone that is in a lead position here is on the same page. In other words more active roles as moderators may be called for to curb the influx of crap. Has the moderator u2u the guy with 300+ news links? Maybe several should. Maybe a week without posting rights could be implimented. That's what moderators are for, to moderate. If it's too much to handle add more moderators. I seriously doubt 2 moderators per forum is going to be enough when you reach 20,000 users. Ya got ta make it scalable.

Just my 2 pesos.

Edit: Also about word count. I just can't see that. There are quite a few good opinions that only need a line. Maybe increase to 50 characters (not words) to ensure a complete sentence. Otherwise you may run the chance of A LOT of filler words so that someone can get their opinion in.

Is there anyway to edit a new post title. I often times think of a more appropriate title after I submit but there's no way to go back and change that (that I have found). Still getting used to the format though.

[Edited on 24-9-2003 by uIVIa]

[Edited on 24-9-2003 by uIVIa]

Can someone explain how it work and what are the data's used to make it ?

Nans

The one for the whole Board, that was at the top of the page, measured the number of posts made to conspiracy forums as opposed to non-conspiracy forums.

The more on conpiracy, the more the meter would move right to Running For The Hills. The less on conspiracy, the more the meter would read tranquil.

Some people saw an aberration one day when the meter moved so far right it was off the scale, and minutes later it ended up 'tranquil' on the left hand side. That eventuality is coming in the reality of the world as well, in the next 10 months, in the opinion of some.

Your own mood meter is meant to work the same way, but I'm not sure that mine does. Although the ATS points reinforcement system should have a tendency to make people move to the right of 'aware' as they go to higher value forums, in principle.

Nans

Do you scream as loudly as Lola in the casino scene?

Originally posted by uIVIa
I seriously doubt 2 moderators per forum is going to be enough when you reach 20,000 users. Ya got ta make it scalable.

actually, I'm a regular at a board with about 19,500 members, and they only have 3-4 mods per forum. I don't really know how they keep things from devolving into anarchy, but they do, and do it well.

Thanks for your explanation about the mood meter.

You saw the movie "lola rennt" ? Great no ? The music is really cool and the story rock !

It was aired last week on "arte" (the frenco-german cultural channel). That's why I use some pix from this movie for avatar. It's a cult movie for me and some friends.

[Edited on 24-9-2003 by Nans DESMICHELS]

Nans

It translates as Run Lola Run. I have seen it three times (video, 2x on TV) which makes nine times, when you think about it. I have the soundtrack.

For anyone that hasn't seen it, the movie is set very much in the 'Running For The Hills' portion of the mood meter, and has a lot of running.

QUOTE:

5. (Recent development) Spamming of loosely relevant material across multiple topics in a short space of time, and not returning to the topics at all to discuss member comments or queries on that content - the original behavior probably in pursuit of points reinforcement.





Thank you MA.


I thought i was the only one who noticed.





Start a (poll) and then walk away from it.


A good way to make easy points, you don't have to do any of the work.

Let the other members acumulate the points for you.

Originally posted by uIVIa
Just a thought.

It seems there needs to be more "nudges" and "kicks in the pants" from the moderators. But that takes time. Maybe there needs to be an extra 1 or 2 moderators per forum.

There maybe two Moderators specifically assigned to each forum...however there are also 3 Admin Level Members, and 9 Super Moderator Level Members who can operate across ALL forums.

Maybe the "old dogs" in this thread could tap all the moderators and reitterate the issues facing the board. It doesn't appear everyone that is in a lead position here is on the same page. In other words more active roles as moderators may be called for to curb the influx of crap. Has the moderator u2u the guy with 300+ news links? Maybe several should. Maybe a week without posting rights could be implimented. That's what moderators are for, to moderate. If it's too much to handle add more moderators. I seriously doubt 2 moderators per forum is going to be enough when you reach 20,000 users. Ya got ta make it scalable.

Just my 2 pesos.

...ahhh, the age old question "How much is too much".

We moderate and eradicate crap and what do we hear? "Mods are Nazis, mods are delete-happy". We don't moderate enough and what do we hear? "Mods need to do more work, theres too much crap."

Whats crap and meaningless to one person may well not be to another...so at the end of the day there's gonna be something somewhere people don't like...ATS is not Subway people...you don't get it all your own way...

If theres a crap thread, then report it, as some people do. We'll decide from there wether we deem it to be so, and axe or edit or otherwise.

Ana aku rua hiineti...



Peace,
ALIEN

MA- i suggested to William that quality be improved by upping the word limit in posts. If people could only post 150 word or more a lot of filler crap wouldn't get through.

Adding more words just to get to 150 can be considered filler when less words brings the point across already.

Also sometimes off comments intermixed with serious conversation even if unrelated to the overall topic releases built up tension that can arise with heated topics with opposing views.

This would no longer constitute a discussion board if the desire for perfection, intolerance, & restrictions goes too far. And you know what the final result would be. Popularity freefall.

Yeah

The balance between popularity and quality is a hard one to maintain.

I just wanted to point out that the suggestion quoted by Questor above was from ktprktpr, who was addressing me. It's not my suggestion, but I think it's not a bad one. It would encourage at least a contribution to discussion with a coherent argument in serious Forums, rather than me-too posts.

Maybe 100 words? Try those lengths in a couple of posts, see what feels right.

Simple Solution (I'm sure someone will find fault):

The Conspiracy Related Topics should require 500 characters per post.
This way, members will not have to use words, besides, character count is plenty easier to encode then word count.

This would also help reduce religous bashing so people can't just say "Your God sucks", "My God is better than yours", "Lets's kill God", "I am GOD!", etc....
*I used to do that until Valhall gave me a polite slap in the face, then I "moved on".*

Then your Current Events perhaps a higher number such as 600 would be better.
Again, this would slow down the mudpit and change it from "Democrats suck" to "The Democratic party's goals harm America's future because..."

As for general, only include Introductions, Chit-Chat, and Board Questions...
Perhaps a 300-350 character count.

This way, during introductions, members will be able to do more than say "Hey", they'll have to say something like "Welcome to ATS ****. Best place to be on the net..."

Chit-chat, slow down threads such as "what kind of music do you listen to?".

Board Questions, members can not simply say, "I don't know, or I have the same problem." They'll have to truly nowhat they are talking about.

The character count may need to change for the various areas, however, it's the principle idea we need to work off of.
Cheers,
- Tass

Hmmmmm.

I think the expression "leading by example" could be used here.

It seems to me, if you want to keep people from bickering, short posting, irrelevent posting etc, the long time members need to start first.

MA, I mean ABSOLUTELY no offense to you, but many of the new people on the board see your presence on the forum. They know you to be a longstanding ATS member, and they look to you for the "correct way" to do things. Same with others here with your stature (no other names at this time), yet, when you start bickering and implying that the MODS needs to keep things tidy, the newer members think, hey, why the hell should I bother watching what I post??? The mods should do it.

As far as coming back to your post after you post, ever notice how soemtimes you post, two replies show up, and someone else posts the EXACT same thing, and that one gets the replies??? This happened to me TWICE this week already. The poster has no control over the responses, and I have seen that half the time the original poster never comes back is due to either ridicule, or useless replies.

It is up to the POSTER to make sure they do it right. It is up to US to make sure they are REASONABLY pointed out as having a bad post. No name calling, no bashing, no ridicule. Send a U2U (I know MA, this will be tough, but it is very simple to do) to the person saying hey, I like your post, but howabout elaborating on it. Or whatever it needs. And if for some reason it just needs moved or removed, U2U a mod.

Again, no offense MA, but, I have noticed the way you have handled things lately is not true to your usual form.

Originally posted by ImAlreadyPsycho
MA, I mean ABSOLUTELY no offense to you, but many of the new people on the board see your presence on the forum. They know you to be a longstanding ATS member, and they look to you for the "correct way" to do things. Same with others here with your stature (no other names at this time), yet, when you start bickering and implying that the MODS needs to keep things tidy, the newer members think, hey, why the hell should I bother watching what I post??? The mods should do it.

No offense taken.

While if you think I am more visible than others on the board, this should make me a role model of some sort, I am inclined to disagree. I'm not a longstanding member.

More importantly, the Board has rules, and if the rules are meaningful, then they are to be enforced - simple as that.

I try not to post abusively, or stupidly, or present things that are harmful or irrelevant to discussions. And I tend to stick to those things that I'm interested in.

If some people see those things as positive behaviors, that's fine, but they don't have to. Some people might think it's quite OK to come to a public forum and sprout off nonsense over anything and everything with the objective of disrupting. I don't encourage that, nor am I in the position of doing anything about it.

If someone thinks "I'll say anything I want, nobody cares and the Mods can clean it up after" I have no responsibility for that. Frankly, in my opinion that behavior should not appear in the first place if people are obliged to read and live b the Rules.

So, no, I don't take on the 'role model' capacity, and if people don't like the concrete suggestions for improvement that I or others have made in this thread, then that is their prerogative also. I continue to call things as I see them, in accordance with my principles, but I am not the Board mother.

Again, no offense taken at all.