Forum hygiene

[jj2007]

Not sure if this is the right place...

This morning the forum (recent unread posts) greeted me with seven posts from a new member. All of them in Soap Box or Colosseum, none had anything to do with programming, let alone assembler.

There is a tendency in recent months to open many small threads that would better fit in a general housewives chat room than in a Masm32 Forum. A look at Forum stats is interesting in this respect: Top 10 Topics, for example, shows 9 out of 10 (by replies) and 8 out of 10 (by views) are programming-related. Fine, it clearly demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of forum members want to discuss assembler programming.

However, Soap Box and Colosseum have almost as many threads as The Campus, and the top thread starter is neither Hutch nor DednDave nor hyperactive jj.

In short: THERE IS AN AWFUL LOT OF CRAP IN THIS FORUM.

Now it is nice to have a lot of activity, that's good for stats and Google hits, BUT...

Of course, it is useless to ask for discipline, but maybe there is a technical fix? It would be extremely helpful, for example, if the "most recent" link could filter out all the Soap Box and Colosseum crap and just show the programming-related threads. Is that feasible?

Any other views on this?

[qWord]

IMO this forum has a TROLL-problem and hutch seems to ignore it...

[hutch--]

I don't miss the amount of noise but its the reason why there is a Soap box and Collesseum so it does not end up in the programming sub forums. I do keep deleting and banning spam joins which is a lot of work with a few persistent pests but most of the noise we have been hearing in the non-programming area has been from a few members, not spammers and the like so I have left it alone so far.

[dedndave]

there are two sides to it, i suppose
sometimes, it's nice to have a distraction from pure code
other times, i wonder what these guys are thinking - lol

there are a couple that start off-the-wall threads
noone replies or seems interested
you'd think they'd take that as a hint

i might mention....
you can't really judge much by how many views a thread has
i view all of them - if it's not interesting, i view the next one

[Magnum]

I think your post would probably belong in the Collesseum since it is a gripe.

I think the Collesseum functions as a Lounge of sorts where a wide variety is acceptable as long as there are no curse words,
personal attacks, or malware coding requests. :-)

Some forums are very strict about posting non assembly questions in any forum other than a "lounge" or accidentally forgetting to use code tags and can result in a month long of non-posting privileges.

Andy

[Gunther]

IMO this forum has a TROLL-problem and hutch seems to ignore it...

I don't think so. A short look into the forum statistics shows that we heve approximately 1000 members (sometimes more, sometimes less). On the other hand, we had over 2000 new registrations during the last 2 years. This shows that Hutch and the other moderators are working in the background to keep us spam bots at bay. This is a difficult task, but it's done well.

Jochen,

However, Soap Box and Colosseum have almost as many threads as The Campus, and the top thread starter is neither Hutch nor DednDave nor hyperactive jj.

right. But this is only one side of the coin. I've started a few programming related threads, with a lot of views, a lot of downloads, but not a single response. What does that mean? If other posts about death and the devil have more answers, I am already thinking. Such material seems to be more interesting.

Anyway, under no circumstances do I want to be the censor. 

Gunther

[dedndave]

Anyway, under no circumstances do I want to be the censor.

good point
deciding where to draw the line would be as hard as drawing it

[jj2007]

Anyway, under no circumstances do I want to be the censor.

good point
deciding where to draw the line would be as hard as drawing it

You are both right, of course - censoring is tricky and should only be a last resort. That's why I thought of a filter, such as
  "recent posts outside the troll corners"
  "recent posts except if coming from members A, B, C"
  "recent posts except if they contain the word 'MasmBasic'"

Don't know what is possible with SMF, though...

[dedndave]

well, you can go into your account preferences and ignore posts from specific users
that could help, a little

[jj2007]

well, you can go into your account preferences and ignore posts from specific users
that could help, a little

Where exactly is that setting? Can't find it... ::)

The best option would be a trainable spam filter. Soap Box & Colosseum are not always crap; if, example, somebody posts to remember Mersenne's birthday, I'd like to see it.

[dedndave]

i don't see it, now
maybe it was the old forum

[Gunther]

Jochen,

You are both right, of course - censoring is tricky and should only be a last resort. That's why I thought of a filter, such as
  "recent posts outside the troll corners"
  "recent posts except if coming from members A, B, C"
  "recent posts except if they contain the word 'MasmBasic'"

Don't know what is possible with SMF, though...

is it so tricky to filter the unwanted posts by hand? Mark them as read and the job is done.

Gunther

[sinsi]

On the old forum, if you collapsed the headers (sections? Welcome etc.) then going to 'http://masm32.com/board/index.php?action=unread' wouldn't show those new posts.

[daydreamer]

Are these posts smellbad or the posters :P

[Zen]

...THERE IS AN AWFUL LOT OF CRAP IN THIS FORUM,...

Hey, buddy,...I know what you mean,...and, really,...I think about 98% of it is my fault,... :icon_cool:

...In my opinion,...we should adopt a Bill Maher, New Rules kind of attitude towards these malcontents,...:icon_eek: