Reopening Architecture and Products + rules and guidelines changes

[Shifty Geezer]

On the point of link posting, we need to make it an official requirement to elaborate. See here.

Microsoft v CMA: Failure to respect the understanding on which Tribunal Proceedings are livestreamed | 8 June 2023

That link was posted, no explanation. Now people respond just to the information of that one line which doesn't explain any of the detail, making assumptions about who is at fault and why. This post absolutely required the details of the release to be expounded, that someone released unlawful images from the tribunal outside of the official livestream - we don't even know who.

Some links are self explanatory, but plenty aren't and these generate noise, particular when shared from content coloured by journalists who create inaccurate titles ro drive clicks, not knowledge. We need to put an official stop to people posting partial- and mis-information from titles and headlines and link texts, and ensure shared info has enough basic details and context that responses are on topic and relevant to reality as opposed to people's guesswork. If the meat of the story isn't in the link, the content needs to be described. Posters not adhering to that should be prevented from posting links (warnings, temp bans for training, etc).

 

[Arun]

So I gave this a bunch of thought and realised I was overcomplicating things. I have an extremely simple suggestion.

Add this plugin (I’ll gladly pay for it myself): https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xenconcept-minimum-post-length.6430/ (EDIT: or maybe not since it includes quotes in the word count, sigh… not sure there’s another extension that would work as-is)

Exclude all other forums (for now at least) so it only applies to this one and enforce a fairly significant minimum post length (>100 words excluding quotes etc.?)

A lot of the problem would improve if everyone was forced to *explain* their position… it’s not a magic bullet but I suspect it can only help.

——————

Also, I personally think splitting threads will help a lot (e.g. split “release date/performance leaks” from “architectural discussions”, and possibly even create brand new threads after major reliable leaks that “reset” everyone’s expectations). From my personal standpoint, the two things that make me less likely to post are:

1) Every thread is a random mix of technical analysis/thinking and “random low signal-to-noise news of the day”. The latter ends up derailing the former, even when it is of relatively decent quality.

2) We end up with mega-threads that are nearly impossible to navigate or keep up with. What was discussed about GPU X’s architectural changes in the past? Who knows! (unless you want to read pages and pages of low quality leaks on release dates etc…)

The risk of splitting threads is you end up with many inactive threads, but if done in moderation, I think it will help a lot.

—
P.S.:

It’s a bit sad that so many of the negative points raised are the kinds of things GPT models could trivially solve or at least improve, but I can’t find any plugins for this, and I don’t think the economics would work great right now.

The real benefit wouldn’t be the fact it’s automated - it is that it creates a “non-human judge” which cannot be personally blamed, and encourages users to improve their post *before* posting rather than *after*.

Literally all you’d need to do is provide a bunch of examples as part of a prompt, and based on that ask it to make a decision on whether the post is allowed, allowed with a disclaimer/warning at the top, or refused (forcing the user to edit it). The economics probably don’t work at GPT4’s cost per token though… if you used RLHF (good luck with that!) to train a GPT3-class model for this so you’d barely need a prompt and had very low cost per token, maybe it’d get cheap enough. That’s unrealistic right now though.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

On the point of link posting, we need to make it an official requirement to elaborate. See here.

Microsoft v CMA: Failure to respect the understanding on which Tribunal Proceedings are livestreamed | 8 June 2023

That link was posted, no explanation. Now people respond just to the information of that one line which doesn't explain any of the detail, making assumptions about who is at fault and why. This post absolutely required the details of the release to be expounded, that someone released unlawful images from the tribunal outside of the official livestream - we don't even know who.

Some links are self explanatory, but plenty aren't and these generate noise, particular when shared from content coloured by journalists who create inaccurate titles ro drive clicks, not knowledge. We need to put an official stop to people posting partial- and mis-information from titles and headlines and link texts, and ensure shared info has enough basic details and context that responses are on topic and relevant to reality as opposed to people's guesswork. If the meat of the story isn't in the link, the content needs to be described. Posters not adhering to that should be prevented from posting links (warnings, temp bans for training, etc).

Yes, that's a perfect example where it may have been obvious to the poster why it should be posted and the relevance it had to a conversation, but not everyone would [1] bother to read it and [2] interpret what they read the same way.

And to another person's response to me, there may be valid reasons to have an uncommented link, but part of enforcing a rule is doing so fairly without cries of favoritism or bias if exceptions are constantly made for seemingly valid links without comments. Any rule should be applied uniformly without bias. Exceptions to a rule can give the impression of bias. The flipside of allowing uncommented links but removing bad ones would also give the impression of favoritism/bias.

I mean how hard is it to at least do some minimal explanation of why a link was posted and why it's relevant?

That said, the suggestion of a forum area where this would be allowed would seem to be a solution. Although if comments and replies were also allowed, I can see that also turning into a toxic morass.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So I gave this a bunch of thought and realised I was overcomplicating things. I have an extremely simple suggestion.

Add this plugin (I’ll gladly pay for it myself): https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xenconcept-minimum-post-length.6430/ (EDIT: or maybe not since it includes quotes in the word count, sigh… not sure there’s another extension that would work as-is)

Exclude all other forums (for now at least) so it only applies to this one and enforce a fairly significant minimum post length (>100 words excluding quotes etc.?)

A lot of the problem would improve if everyone was forced to *explain* their position… it’s not a magic bullet but I suspect it can only help.

An interesting idea, although somewhat inflexible. Sometimes we actually lighten up around here and have short, witty banter.

 

[homerdog]

An interesting idea, although somewhat inflexible. Sometimes we actually lighten up around here and have short, witty banter.

Also that would make it impossible to ask a simple question or give a simple answer. Not that there's much of that going on lately, but it seems wrong to make such an interaction impossible. If the forum were functioning as intended I think this would be a fairly common thing. Like if I simply needed to know the feature set of GM107 and I'm not sure if google is correct, I could ask and someone could answer me in way less than 100 words.

 

[Rys]

Splitting the rumour mill grind out from the more serious pre- and post-release analysis threads is a good idea, along with links having to be summarised and the link poster’s thoughts attached.

Feels like there’s some momentum behind that: if you bring a link or quote or whatever to the table for discussion, you should lead the discussion with a thoughtful summary and reasoning as to why it‘s valuable to discuss.

Minimum word count doesn’t pass the bar for me in a workable way, but the spirit of that idea in bringing more fully-formed posts to the party will be encoded in the guidelines.

What I’ll do next is update the OP with the above, and sketch out a view of what the typical threads in A+P could look like in practice, and set a date for reopening. I’ll do all that by the end of the week.

 

[trinibwoy]

Is there another forum out there that meets the standard and can be used as an example?

Requiring every post to be deeply thoughtful and/or insightful doesn’t seem very compatible with being human. I’m not sure policing individual posts is the answer. Echoing Shifty’s point above even the most erudite and serious among us are entitled to a cheeky note now and then. Policing incorrigible offenders seems more realistic.

Splitting speculation and technical discussion threads will help a bit but usually after launch the rumor mill dries up anyway. I think it’s more important to keep product reviews, performance comparisons, IHV execution, market share, business strategy etc out of architecture threads.

 

[Rys]

Is there another forum out there that meets the standard and can be used as an example?

Requiring every post to be deeply thoughtful and/or insightful doesn’t seem very compatible with being human. I’m not sure policing individual posts is the answer. Echoing Shifty’s point above even the most erudite and serious among us are entitled to a cheeky note now and then. Policing incorrigible offenders seems more realistic.

Splitting speculation and technical discussion threads will help a bit but usually after launch the rumor mill dries up anyway. I think it’s more important to keep product reviews, performance comparisons, IHV execution, market share, business strategy etc out of architecture threads.

Yeah, obviously there’s no need for a thoroughly considered opus in every post, it’s more about raising the bar just a bit so that knee-jerk reaction and low-effort trolling and whatnot are reduced. We all know it when we see shit posts in a thread that aren’t adding anything other than fuel to a fire.

The main benefit is that steering away from that is more deeply embedded in the spirit of the guidelines, and we can point at that while moderating.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is there another forum out there that meets the standard and can be used as an example?

Simply move towards ever more professional communities. You don't get shit talking at the British Medical Journal for example.

 

[pharma]

Simply move towards ever more professional communities. You don't get shit talking at the British Medical Journal for example.

True but the percentage of posters who are graphics professionals in this forum is likely less than 10% if that.

 

[trinibwoy]

Simply move towards ever more professional communities. You don't get shit talking at the British Medical Journal for example.

I meant comparable forums with similar demographics. B3D isn’t a professional community today even if it was one many moons ago.

 

[pharma]

It's almost like you need to have two Architecture and Products forums (subforums) - one for graphics professionals and the other everyone else. Topics might overlap but the discussion level and degree of participation would not exclude individuals from participating at a level they feel comfortable with.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I meant comparable forums with similar demographics. B3D isn’t a professional community today even if it was one many moons ago.

Not that I know of. B3D has always aspired to a more professional level on content even if many of the contributors are just hobbyists. I still believe to date it's the most civil place to discuss graphics and gaming.

 

[nutball]

I meant comparable forums with similar demographics. B3D isn’t a professional community today even if it was one many moons ago.

RWT is the only other place I know. That seems to be quite low traffic compared to here though, and lightly moderated, and is not immune from bickering.

It's not really graphics focussed though.

 

[LordEC911]

Splitting the rumour mill grind out from the more serious pre- and post-release analysis threads is a good idea, along with links having to be summarised and the link poster’s thoughts attached.

Feels like there’s some momentum behind that: if you bring a link or quote or whatever to the table for discussion, you should lead the discussion with a thoughtful summary and reasoning as to why it‘s valuable to discuss.

Minimum word count doesn’t pass the bar for me in a workable way, but the spirit of that idea in bringing more fully-formed posts to the party will be encoded in the guidelines.

What I’ll do next is update the OP with the above, and sketch out a view of what the typical threads in A+P could look like in practice, and set a date for reopening. I’ll do all that by the end of the week.

*snip*
——————

Also, I personally think splitting threads will help a lot (e.g. split “release date/performance leaks” from “architectural discussions”, and possibly even create brand new threads after major reliable leaks that “reset” everyone’s expectations). From my personal standpoint, the two things that make me less likely to post are:

1) Every thread is a random mix of technical analysis/thinking and “random low signal-to-noise news of the day”. The latter ends up derailing the former, even when it is of relatively decent quality.

2) We end up with mega-threads that are nearly impossible to navigate or keep up with. What was discussed about GPU X’s architectural changes in the past? Who knows! (unless you want to read pages and pages of low quality leaks on release dates etc…)

The risk of splitting threads is you end up with many inactive threads, but if done in moderation, I think it will help a lot.

—
*snip*

I was thinking of something similar when reading through this thread, especially on splitting the main "mega-threads" into multiple smaller threads.

The main drawback I can see in taking this path is that, at some point, all these discussions start being "related" enough that then you start questioning where the best place is to make your post or, for some, they may just make multiple similar posts in all the "related" threads. You have to start somewhere with rumors/leaks to get a starting point for any discussion on a future architecture/product. Splitting up the discussion into multiple threads may lead to having the same few discussions over-and-over again in different threads at different times or, like already mentioned, multiple dead threads with everyone posting in the 1-2 "live" ones.

I personally like the "mega-threads" as that way, if I really want to, I can see how the discussion/information changed throughout the ~2years or so we have been discussing the topic. Or, if I'm out of the loop, I can come back up to "current" info by reading the last month's worth of posts. The current split seems like a pretty solid line, the "Pre" and "Post" release.

 

[RedVi]

I personally like the "mega-threads" as that way, if I really want to, I can see how the discussion/information changed throughout the ~2years or so we have been discussing the topic. Or, if I'm out of the loop, I can come back up to "current" info by reading the last month's worth of posts. The current split seems like a pretty solid line, the "Pre" and "Post" release.

I agree with this. The obvious caveat is the SNR ratio of the posts themselves. If people follow the posting guidelines, the megathread format is personally preferable to having separate threads with too much overlap.

 

[LordEC911]

I agree with this. The obvious caveat is the SNR ratio of the posts themselves. If people follow the posting guidelines, the megathread format is personally preferable to having separate threads with too much overlap.

I think that is a pretty big caveat... I know we don't want endless noise or banter in the threads that are posted here...
But realistically, how can you split a SNR "Rumor Mill" into a different thread and also have a "Normal" discussion thread, while also managing a "technical" architecture thread?

I think it, at least, partially comes back to my original post here about what is considered "high-level" posts vs "technical" posts.
What is considered a "natural post" based on "current information" and what is considered a "speculative" or "SNR" info that could lead into a "real" discussion in any of the threads? (late edit was the "real")

How can you both limit/approve of the "technical" knowledge while also taking into consideration the "randomness/banter" (lacking a better term) or the "high-level" / "good intentioned" posts?
And most importantly... how can we do that when "no one" can give a real "intimate source" to back up any sort of the regular discussion that is had in a Pre-release (Speculation) thread?

I personally think that the "good intentioned" of this membership will generally give a decent theory behind most of the potential "speculation" that might be in the "Rumor Mill."


PS- I just don't know how we can split the threads... if we know that some leaks/rumors could completely change our perception/POV of what a future architecture/product could be....
Where is the line drawn between a "reasonable/solid" leak vs a "uncorroborated/misinformation" leak?
I realize this may be treading a line... but it also sorta follows/tracks closely with other very controversial subject/s...

Edit- I also don't want to act like I have answers to the above... I don't.
I just want to raise my concerns to parties that have more knowledge and experience than I do.

Edit2- And whatever decision the aforementioned come to, I will do my best to adhere to those requirements... though I'm sure I will have a few silly-season posts in me.

 

[DegustatoR]

I just don't know how we can split the threads... if we know that some leaks/rumors could completely change our perception/POV of what a future architecture/product could be....
Where is the line drawn between a "reasonable/solid" leak vs a "uncorroborated/misinformation" leak?

1. Rumor threads on future h/w (lets call these "next h/w generations" as in RDNA4/Blackwell etc). OPs of these threads contain thread rules which specify which sources are banned explicitly as they are unreliable. Otherwise it is allowed to post all rumors there with an added requirement to actually screenshot tweets and not just embed them or add a text summary when you're linking to a video for example.

2. Separate threads on released architectures discussions. RDNA2/3, Ampere, Lovelace.

3. All else goes into their own threads. I'd probably prefer each product to have its own thread, each new happening (like the melting power plugs etc) has its own thread, etc.

Now the tricky part are the cross vendor comparisons. These will inevitably happen and they should be either prohibited, allowed in some/all threads or pushed into dedicated threads.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS- I just don't know how we can split the threads... if we know that some leaks/rumors could completely change our perception/POV of what a future architecture/product could be....
Where is the line drawn between a "reasonable/solid" leak vs a "uncorroborated/misinformation" leak?

Discussions on theories don't need to rely on leaks. We can discuss possibole technological trajectories whether the source is an insider, a random tweet, or a dream we had ourselves. We can have a post in a rumours thread from a known shill spreading FUD, and discuss the technical merits of their speculation fairly and intelligently in a tech thread without 1) talking about the shill and his past and 2) talking about those who believe in said shill and are betting on that outcome.

We can consider and discuss any religion without having to go to their place of worship.

 

[Bludd]

1. Rumor threads on future h/w (lets call these "next h/w generations" as in RDNA4/Blackwell etc). OPs of these threads contain thread rules which specify which sources are banned explicitly as they are unreliable. Otherwise it is allowed to post all rumors there with an added requirement to actually screenshot tweets and not just embed them or add a text summary when you're linking to a video for example.

Thread rules should show up on the top of every page of the thread if they don't already.