Hello again

[davis.anthony]

It's nice to be back!!!

Random thought while trying to figure out why I couldn't post (I didn't reverify my email) - That act alone should have shut down at lot of the accounts who cause trouble as they might not be bothered to go through the process of reverifying.

I also thought about charging a signup fee (which I would gladly pay) as this would also weed out the trolls as they won't pay to sign up to a forum just to troll.

 

[Sxotty]

I think we should simply have a higher tier, or secret cadre, of members with voting rights. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Presently you might....

Many good words. I have a bit of a crazy idea though it might just be dumb as it popped into my head reading your post. Those secret voters could have the ability to say what the basic issue is. For example, attacking another member and likewise could just be rudeness, inaccuracy might be one ( though as I'm writing this and thinking about it, perhaps it is really just rudeness in almost every case). I am imagining that there might be other things though like posting infringing material or something. I've been a mod in the past on servers for games, but I doubt there are many aimbots on here . I suppose there is no reason to have these categories but I like to imagine people are good overall and maybe if they saw their post disappearing under rudeness tags or something else they might change their behavior.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Immediately, we're back to square one. You are bringing this fight here, to the bloody peace talk?! If you care more about that war than the very existence of B3D, please leave of your own volition.

I think there should be a zero tolerance policy for posts containing personal attacks. If you can't make a point without attacking the poster, you shouldn't be on the forum.

 

[DavidGraham]

I think there should be a zero tolerance policy for posts containing personal attacks. If you can't make a point without attacking the poster, you shouldn't be on the forum.

I second that wholeheartedly, the number one cause of dicussion deterioration on B3D forums has been and always is the personal attacks, tolerance for such behavior has lead to many unnecessary escalations.

 

[milk]

I don't have much insight to add, but I cannot simply go on without just chiming in to say: I'm very glad to see B3D back. I love this place, and love you guys.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I think we should simply have a higher tier, or secret cadre, of members with voting rights. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Presently you might have a tricky situation, a mod discussion, some disagreement how to proceed, the issue escalates, etc. The person that wants to act doesn't because other don't agree with the course of action. The committee stalls at inaction, as is often the case.

The moment you have a couple dozen voting members who can downvote content in secret, you can just reject content that's downvoted enough. You needn't know who voted so there's no recriminations or ganging up. Heck, they don't even need to be made public. No member needs know who has voting rights. You just post. Those that aren't posting right would get content removed and warnings that the Order doesn't think they're up to snuff. Downvoted posts can still be present and a change in voting thresholds could adjust to hit to sweet spot and return silenced posts that weren't all that bad.

It just needs noteworthy, trustable active members to be given the downvote option. That'd be everyone in the industry so they can downvote noise generators polluting technical discussions, and those who clearly want genuine good-faith discussions.

You wouldn't even need to ask their permission! Just give some people the power. If they don't want it, they don't have to use it.

You could come up with a fancy 3D inspired analogy about stochastic sampling and ground truth etc. for this, I'm sure.

Edit: Florin mentions above "Ignore Poster". Just needs another "Reject Post" and "Reject Poster" option for senior members, a simple button they can press they get on with talk or work. Instead of writing, "I'm fed up with this," you can vote (if you are a senior member) 1) with actual power to your opinion and 2) without contributing to the noise about the post/posters instead of the topic.

There are clearly a lot of invested 'lurkers' who'd probably make ideal senior executive members/secret-police/fairy godvoters who could be left to drop votes here and there and do a lot of work in a very distributed manner.

To start with, should this happen, if the system were even doable, you could just accumulate votes and then have a mod/admin look at what should go, what shouldn't and fine-tune before rolling out. Heck, mods could just be notified of content with too many downvotes to start with, to handle the final decision making.

I think this could work but it would be good if users can privately see when they have had a down vote (but not who from) as it might make people think twice about continuing a line of debate. Part of the problem IMO is that some posters (no doubt including myself) aren't even aware that some of their posts are seen as negative and so a gentle prompt like this could help generate a self correction without requiring direct mod intervention.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yes, I would think so. Privately though, as you say. Likewise, voters shouldn't get to see what posts have been downvoted as they shouldn't be influenced. It should just be someone seeing a post, thinking, "this isn't really B3D," clicking a button and moving on, not caring whether people do or don't agree with them.

 

[Karamazov]

I read many forums, but here is the only one i have an account and participate actively, so i'm relieved it's open again.
i'll do my best to bring constructive discussions with a touch of humor and not derail subjects.
I have no tech knowledge but i learnt a lot here over the past 19 years and i'm glad i'll be able to learn more as we continue the journey together.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

To start with, should this happen, if the system were even doable, you could just accumulate votes and then have a mod/admin look at what should go, what shouldn't and fine-tune before rolling out. Heck, mods could just be notified of content with too many downvotes to start with, to handle the final decision making.

For a voting system, I think this is absolutely imperative that at the minimum a moderator or even Rhys, at least do a cursory inspection to see whether further actions are actually warranted (IE - while unlikely to happen with vested industry people and maybe even senior trusted members, there's always a small chance of dogpiling happening).

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How would 'dogpiling' happen if voting is obscured? I'm not quite sure of the problem from that word.

Observing a voting system would definitely need to happen at first and just be prompts for moderators, but once it's in operation and shown to produce voting that represents the board's values, it should be able to be left to its own devices. In short, it's no different to having a report come up and 5 mods discuss what to do about it and decide on an action. You'd just have 5 people see a post and vote for/against without any idea how other people voting, making their opinions honest and unprejudiced by other people making arguments on the action.

 

[Sega_Model_4]

It's good that the forum is back, when I found the courage to create an account and start interacting, the forum closed. I've been following for a long time, but I spent more time reading the posts, here is one of the most informative places on the internet and it inspired me to aim for a career as a graphics programmer, which is not only difficult but seems distant to me as I'm far from the world's hubs of technology. But the knowledge present here motivates me to continue this dream.

Thank you for rethinking and reopening the forum, I'm very happy about it.

 

[Metal_Spirit]

Can´t tell How happy I get with this.. Been here since 2007. It was blow for me to see a forum like this closed!

Thank you all for re-opening it!

 

[tuna]

I think there should be a zero tolerance policy for posts containing personal attacks. If you can't make a point without attacking the poster, you shouldn't be on the forum.

Are personal attacks against people like 60 fps hater Mike Acton OK?

(Sorry if this is sensitive right now...)

 

[tuna]

Thanks for re-opening BTW!

I really like this place!

 

[Albuquerque]

Are personal attacks against people like 60 fps hater Mike Acton OK?

(Sorry if this is sensitive right now...)

Joking aside, no they aren't nor should they be. And I do take your comment as in good humor as you seem to have proposed it!

Foundationally: if the problem can't be sorted on its own merit, then it's not any more solvable by berating the messenger.

I believe this logic extends to giving people labels such as "vetted" or the like. While it's a suggestion based on good intentions, this still relies on a well documented logical fallacy: "appeal to authority." When we talk about big scientific consensus topics, like climate change, it stops becoming a fallacy because you have an aggregate professional opinion that holds sufficient weight to rely upon. However, when it's one singular authority, there are absolutely cases where AN authority isn't THE authority.

For example, think of the quacks with doctor titles who were propping up anti-mask updates and invermectin and the like. In nearly all cases, those doctors were not from the field of immunobiology or pulmonology (lungs) or phlebotomoy (blood), but rather doctors of podiatry (feet) or doctors of dentistry or even a doctorate from a non-medical field. Yeah, that person telling you that dewormer solves COVID and masks are for pussies has a doctorate, but that doctorate isn't in a field that has even the slightest bearing on COVID or related fields. As such, hiding behind a label isn't always useful.

All that to say: either the logic and facts stand up for themselves (regardless of who is saying it) or they don't. And if it's a question that has no specifically right answer such as "Hey, what's the next best car for my wife to buy when I finally convince her to junk that terrible Jeep! " (yes the cheeky example is in honor of one of my favorite posters) then hey, nobody needs to get their panties twisted over opinions. For those who want to make it a religious war, they can start their crusade in a different forum with a polite but forced pause to their posting habits.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I agree somewhat in principle. However, a benefit of industry labels which I mentioned elsewhere, certainly on moderators, is if that moderator is aligned with a poster's favourite brand, it nullifies arguments of bias. An Imagination Tech fan getting all het up over a Qualcomm post may feel attacked by a moderator with known Qualcomm connections, but can't feel prejudiced by a known ImageTec-affiliated moderator.

There's also a certain common sense level of 'appeal to authority' where you can identify a sort of class of poster. A complete outsider is likely going to contribute less on-point content than someone working in graphics rendering. In the past, particularly with some new posters, they've sometimes continued a perspective that's a dead end and countered by (oft many) voices including the technically knowledgable but not yielded the point, or just drop the subject. If the replies can be identified as 'this person actually has some decent insight you lack; they may not be 100% right but they are someone worth listening too for a perspective you can't get yourself', new posters might take a quieter approach to their counter-arguments.

 

[MrSpiggott]

A big thank you to the team for giving the forum another go. I’ve been a 19 year member and avid reader, but to my shame a very infrequent poster, and at its best this has been the most insightful, thoughtful and eloquent technical forum anywhere on the internet. A place I visited to read informed and often expert opinions on all aspects of gaming hardware. A place of bubbling, palpable excitement in the latest hardware and software developments in this hobby we all love so much, without caring about which company made it.
(Well maybe that last part is a bit rose tinted glasses…without caring too much about which company made it.)
May those days return.

There used to be a way of making a donation to the running of the site. Is that option likely to come back if the relaunch is successful?

 

[Albuquerque]

It's also fair to say there are insiders here who aren't moderators and who might also deserve similar weight to their positions, in the sense of "this is the thing I do for a living, have done for years, and in my experience..." The way I'm seeing it, no part of a potential labeling system (or lack thereof) stops anyone from calling out such truths. I myself have pulled the "I've done this stuff for a decade and I'm really good at it, and in my experience..." card in more than one thread on this forum, and even a few times on Reddit hehe. Most folks really have no idea where I work, and funny story I only work for myself at this exact moment in time.

I think the real trouble comes from those posters who simply don't care. Most rational people will consider a position, whether from authority or not, and do their best to judge what they can on what merit they can deduce. For those posters who have already made up their minds come hell or high water, well a labeling system or even a "seriously, I do this for a living" post may only serve to inflame.

As it comes back to defending moderation decisions? At some point, everyone needs to recognize forums aren't democracies or even meritocracies. At the very end of the day, the forums (all forums, not just this one) are totalitarian regimes fully owned and operated by one person -- in our case, it's Rys. We should strive to maintain a consistent policy on how we approach challenging users, but at the end of the day, if the signal to noise ratio is too far in favor of noise, then the source of the noise needs to be solved. They may not like that, they may even be an insider, but if they're causing more harm than good, then good riddance.

That means others may get their feelings hurt, which means there needs to be consistent discipline and transparent communication on exactly how those decisions are made and executed.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Didn't there used to be sign-up T&Cs that kinda said that? Do they still exist?

"Hello. Welcome to my forum. It's like my house on the internet, and as such I'm totally within my rights to decide who does and doesn't hang out here."

 

[Albuquerque]

Yeah, I think that's a great start for sure. Simple ground rules are always good, along with how infractions are decided, how escalation occurs, what remedies are allowed, and eventually what consequences may result. Being able to say "well, I didn't know I could get banned for telling someone about their mother's profitable promiscuity" isn't a thing anymore when one of the easily defined upfront rules is "There is zero tolerance for personal attacks."

I mean, it's sad that we have to list out such rules, but here we are