How about members getting voted off?

[AlphaWolf]

Is there a 1million dollar prize at the end?

I don't know that it sets great precedent. I'm not sure there would even be comfort with it among the voters.

Sometimes debate needs unpopular contrary positions just to get it moving. I always hope that the signal will just drown out the noise.

 

[nutball]

You could re-enable down-votes.

Sure on any given thread or post a given poster might swing one way or another depending on the issue and the flow of the popular tide, but someone who is persistently and wilfully being a bell-end should be pretty easy to spot by looking at their overall average.

 

[digitalwanderer]

You could re-enable down-votes.

Sure on any given thread or post a given poster might swing one way or another depending on the issue and the flow of the popular tide, but someone who is persistently and wilfully being a bell-end should be pretty easy to spot by looking at their overall average.

Again, if you want to get rid of me just ask me to leave. No reason for all the over elaboration.

 

[Rootax]

Guys, I think he knows ...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is there a 1million dollar prize at the end?

I don't know that it sets great precedent. I'm not sure there would even be comfort with it among the voters.

Sometimes debate needs unpopular contrary positions just to get it moving. I always hope that the signal will just drown out the noise.

I don't understand why people assume it'll be unpopular opinions getting voted off. It's not about opinions but attitudes and level of quality discussion. Maybe I just have more faith in the people I'm envisioning having such powers than most? If moderators are entrusted to manage discussions impartially, why can't a special form of moderators be trusted to vote off only those persons who's contributions destabilise discussions rather than contribute to them?

I don't know that it sets great precedent. I'm not sure there would even be comfort with it among the voters.

If they don't want to vote, they won't vote and nothing will change. But if they find themselves in a position where there's a member they just don't understand why they're on the board, they'll have the option to act.

I always hope that the signal will just drown out the noise.

Some posters just generate so much noise that half a discussion becomes the board arguing with them and the nonsense of their discussions.

You could re-enable down-votes.

Public votes get abused. They aren't at all reliable which is why they were removed. My proposition provides voting rights as a meritocracy, and hides the mechanics so it can't be abused.

 

[Rodéric]

So those contributing quality input would get a say over those who don't, sounds good to me.
I assume those very people are also wise and won't abuse the system so it will be fine.

 

[AlNom]

Likes received!
ಠ_ಠ

 

[manux]

If people could self moderate and then strongly asking to keep biases and fud away from technical threads would go long way. Keep the bullshit in non technical versus threads.

I don't believe reporting posts containing slight fud or obvious bias would do anything at the moment. It's just the lay of the land. And no, I don't want to link posts containing this type of behavior. It would just be seen as an attack against member and that would not be useful at all.

We would first need better posting policy for technical threads(minimum quality bar, avoid bias, avoid fud), make sure everyone knows policy and then police some of the threads rather heavy handedly. Questions should always be fine and that's where less educated members can be very useful as it will allow the discussion to expand.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

If people could self moderate and then strongly asking to keep biases and fud away from technical threads would go long way. Keep the bullshit in non technical versus threads.
...
We would first need better posting policy for technical threads(minimum quality bar, avoid bias, avoid fud), make sure everyone knows policy and then police some of the threads rather heavy handedly. Questions should always be fine and that's where less educated members can be very useful as it will allow the discussion to expand

I think that is a good idea. Since the majority of threads in the forum would be non technical it would be preferred to have a "technical" moniker in the thread title, and create new "technical" threads as opposed to converting previously non-technical threads to carry the discussion.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Some of the problem posters post technical stuff in technical threads. They just don't know what they're talking about, or converse in a destructive way. We could limit the bans to technical subfora so the Most Valuable Members can avoid the riff-raff if preferred.

 

[manux]

Other issue can easily be seen from the cerny ps5 presentation. Many people just didn't listen to it or understand what they heard. It's then frustrating to try to discuss when there already is clear official message. Folks write "facts" that directly contradicts or ignores what cerny said. That would be fine if it was prefixed it like "cerny claimed x but he is wrong because,... or that cerny claimed x but it doesn't take Y into account leading into Z".

I digress, that is nature of internet, one can't expect people to first learn the known information before jumping in. That probably is another reason why having some technical threads with higher bar for participating in discussion would be beneficial. Same thing has happened to developers/people really developing stuff. They give their view and many people feel like they know better while they have almost no understanding of the topic. It's also easy to ignore limitation set by reality when not working on things in practical world.

I know I'm dummy and selfish. I would just want to read what people knowing more think and learn from that.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Crazy thought, but if you're having trouble because you only have three mods and you want to give those members authority to block/suspend/ban accounts why not make them mods or honorary mods or something. No pressure on them for the day to day stuff, but if they run in to some problems when no one is around they could deal with it themselves.

Then you won't be granting "regular" users with extra power, you'll just be deputizing members to be on the moderation enforcement staff or something.

Sort of semantics, sort of really what I think would work best. Changing the way it works, but doing so within the existing framework rather than making exceptional exceptions.

C'mon, these aren't people you don't trust. Why not?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

1) There are several mods (proper seasoned, insider types with real industry cred) with full powers who aren't active. We're lucky if the most valued members ever find time to post, let alone engage in even the smallest moderation engagements. None of Rys's newer appointments manage to be fully active mod members. I guess you break them.
2) They'd need to spend time discussing users, and we'd have a different dynamic behind the scenes versus a secret ballot system where no-one knows who voted for a member's removal - only that enough people we in agreement. I'm thinking something like a 'Like' button, only perhaps a 'Boo' button, to make it super easy to register a vote so there are zero barriers to their enablement.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I like the idea, but I think it might be a good idea if, once a threshold is passed, that said user then comes up for discussion among those with the power to vote.

• If it's taken a long time to get enough votes, it's possible, albeit unlikely, that the person has gotten better over time to where the people that first voted to have them booted may no longer feel the same way.
• At the time that enough votes are accumulated do any of the people that have voting power think there's a chance this person can become a contributing member of the forum versus a disruptive pest? Again, highly unlikely, but you never know.
  • Sometimes it takes new users a period of time to realize that B3D is unlike other forums they've been on. They may have developed antagonistic language due to the culture of those forums and it takes time to divest themselves of that posting style.
  • When realization hits that they don't need that language here and it isn't appreciated, sometimes they'll drop it and become contributing members.
  • I'm just concerned that's it's possible for enough votes to get racked that a person is booted before they have a chance to adjust to the forum.
• So basically to see if they should be immediately kicked or maybe put them on strict probation.

Just something to think about. But by and large, I support the idea.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think that's reasonable. I think the concerns are really dependent on how impatient one thinks the MVM would be. Are they likely to make a judgement call on someone within a few posts? New users would be targeted by the moderators for Correctional Measures. If the concerns chiefly fall down to how the MVM's vote, it could result in a Request to Ban rather than a ban, and the mods can evaluate and consider if it's fair or not. Then if it's shown that black balling is rare and reasonable, we could automate the system. If it's shown the MVMs want to vote everyone off and have the forum to themselves...we could keep moderation level in place, or sling our hooks and just let them take over.

 

[Pixel]

Some of the problem posters post technical stuff in technical threads. They just don't know what they're talking about, or converse in a destructive way. We could limit the bans to technical subfora so the Most Valuable Members can avoid the riff-raff if preferred.

Is there a danger of being too dismissive of new members? As a new member pre-PS4 launch pushing for the possibility PS4 suffers from a small-to-moderate amount of memory contention and some more senior members getting annoyed and dismissing as "there was no proof" and the thread was locked. What if something similar happens in the future with a new member and not only results in the thread getting shut down, but also a temp tech discussion ban with this new system? A cold reception might drive away new members. Such occurrences are pretty rare though. Though if it becomes just a temp tech discussion ban and not a permanent forum-wide ban is there the danger MVM might become a little too trigger happy?
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/is-ps4-hampered-by-its-memory-system.54916/page-2

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nothing in that discussion would warrant a black-balling. I can't imagine anyone getting black-balled until they've been here a year or two, or been very verbose over a period of months, and shown over time that they are The Right Stuff. Obvious trouble makers can be dealt with by the mods. The thread was locked as it was a bit of a muddle of ideas (CPU stalls and low-res textures), and a new posted mentioning 'xbots'.

There's a qualitative difference in the types of posting I'm thinking would be removed. I can't really convey that. It's not a problem of being wrong (or even right and just against the views of the mainstream B3Der!) or naive. It's about being a habitual noise-generator. it's a system new users wouldn't even know exist. they come, post, discuss, possibly be moderated. It's only when MVM's start to tire of them that they've face removal, and that will depend on who the MVM's are. If you trust they aren't short-tempered or arrogant or intolerant (and going by their post histories, they should be assumed not), you should trust they wouldn't want to remove someone with good reason.

 

[iroboto]

Assuming we go forward with this plan; do you even have MVM that want to participate in this process?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I think most of the people Shifty is talking about would cut newcomers slack, every one needs time to adjust to a new forum and as long as they're not total asshats about it I think that's normal and most people who've been on the boards for a while get it.

If it fucks up, ya can get rid of it. Experiment, have some funs!

 

[Arwin]

I would prefer a feature that just limits the number of posts someone can make temporarily to cool things down. Then mods (I will try to pick up some slack in these busy new console generation times ) should use these powers more liberally during new console generation years.

Incidentally we used to have posts or threads I think that warned people of the rules and guidelines for posting here and that they would be enforced more strictly during these times (like during E3 console gen presentations iirc). We should probably do something similar now, anyone can remind anyone of these guidelines and hit the report button etc.

But I do think that especially during these times the most effective would be to have an option to restrict users to one post a day. Also nice could be if we could connect this to the dislike button. And isn’t there also an ignore user option?