Subductionzone
Senior Member

Registered: 01-31-08
Posts: 1830 Posted 05-13-08 12:10 PM The bigger question is "Why did this guy revive this thread that was dead for half a year?"



Why even bother to be polite about the find button or anything else? The example cited above was a first time poster who used the find button and this is what happens.

SIMPLY RIDICULOUS!

bsflag,

That can happen. It's a work in progress. Give time for people to adjust their behavior. That stuff doesn't happen over night.

MythMod

The only solution is a complicated one, in which, after a new topic has been made, it does a search for other similar topics already created, giving you a list of those topics. After that, then you can continue to post your topic

I just wanted to dredge this up again.

It seems that Discovery has been getting complaints about the way the senior members are treating new members who come here to post.

I don't care if something's been posted to death - there is no reason to be rude, obnoxious and just plain mean. If you don't want to comment on a topic - DON'T. If it's posted to death, email me a link.

I really don't want to start recommending senior members to the modqueue because you can't hold your fingers still long enough so your brain will engage to prevent you from going off the deep end.

If you feel it necessary to lay into someone - do what I've suggested to others - swear at your monitor, do NOT type it in. Swearing at your monitor will not get you put into the moderation queue.

I don't want to start cracking down on senior members because, let's face it, you guys know better. Don't make me fill up the mod queue with familiar names, ok?

MythMod (Who's none too happy right now.)

[quote]MythMod (Who's none too happy right now.)[/quote]

You Don't worry about me, Mythmod. I'm the best, and nicest person on the board that never had been rude to no one specially on the new members. Sometimes I will just say to myself Goodness this person never quit posting the same thing all over again, but never actually complained about them or made any smart remarks about them.

So you should be happy just for a bit, because I'm a good fellow member that never gives you trouble.

Regarding assumptions:

I once heard a useful bit of advice about bad drivers. You can assume that a person is in such a hurry because they are a jerk, or you can ussume that they are rushing their kid to the hospital. You may never know, but the latter assumption, giving them the benefit of the doubt, may save you some stress.

So, in regards forum ettiquette, assuming that a person is ignorant may help YOU be a nicer person, whether the other poster is actually ignorant, or whatever.

"An eye for an eye only serves to make the world blind"

[quote]It seems that Discovery has been getting complaints about the way the senior members are treating new members who come here to post.[/quote]

It looks like a majority of the people who are senior members are people who seem to know a thing or two about certain subjects and enjoy a good exchange on any given topic. So long as its interesting, relevant or controversial.

Intellects don't respond well to,"i think u should fil a room with jelo and blow up a gernade...",or anything truly Posted to Death.

Everyones guilty of bending/breaking rules in our society, whether it's not reading directions on a message board, or running a redlight while driving.

I have struggled with my rude demon many times in here and I've had good posts and bad.

Seems to me that many of us seniors could indeed try to exercise more self-discipline when responding to the lazy, the blissfully unaware and the intentional nasties.

In turn, I feel Discovery might see the newest wave of complaints as evidence of a deeper problem than just plain rudeness. Rudeness is sometimes a knee-jerk reaction to something un-pleasant.

Maybe Discovery could use the opportunity to examine the state of the boards for themselves and perhaps implement some kind of solution for the inncessant posted to death myths.

The biggest loser in this issue are the topics/threads themselves, diluted and dispersed facts and info from too many threads on the same thing.

If someone has a problem with reading more than a few pages on a topic, then maybe they could re-examine thier motives for clicking on the thread to begin with.

Respectfully,
Evil-Monkey

I usually say "please"... usually.

And I still recommend new posters have to go through something like the below site before being allowed to post:

http://www.geocities.com/mthbstr/

So, we're not even able to argue a point with new members anymore because they may get upset and complain to Disco?

Yeah, I guess we get a little militant with the find button, but if no one else cares then I don't care, but I'd like to have the ability to bump my post and others that are relevant and original when they are swallowed whole by the throng of a dozen curving a bullet posts.

Nothing against you, Mythmod, I know you're just doing your job, but now, the new members can blitz the board (many of them being from another site that quite frequently likes to flash ours with a slew of posts on the same topic) and we aren't even able to tell them that it has been posted to death and use the find button? What's to stop them from emailing Disco if we disagree with their point of view during a debate and telling Disco that we were mean to them?

I understand half of where this is coming from, but I also foresee problems coming from this.

From now on though, I'll keep my mouth shut to the newbs. I'll post to the people I know and I won't bother with those I don't. That should fix it on my end.

That is if no one else cares if they use the find button.

I didn't say you couldn't debate with the newbies.

Remember that the squeaky oil gets the grease. You can still tell them to use the Find button or that "no" a bullet can not be "curved" and you can still report posted to death threads.

There will be those who will report people when they disagree - I've dealt with those before, I will deal with them again.

Please, Please, Please do not stop posting on new threads. Just don't read them the riot act.

MythMod

[quote]From now on though, I'll keep my mouth shut to the newbs. I'll post to the people I know and I won't bother with those I don't. That should fix it on my end.[/quote]

I totally sympathize with you on this one Uggae. I think that he best way to prevent troubles is to avoid them completely that means ignore those one-time posters that post things to death. Even if sometimes those things drives us a bit crazy, seeing them ignore the rules(*Find button Feature and all *the stickies) of the forums like to them they don't care about anything at all. On my part, I'm gonna just simply ignore the new post like if they don't exist, that way mythmod will not get any more complain about us being mean to the newbies.

[quote] So, we're not even able to argue a point with new members anymore because they may get upset and complain to Disco? [/quote]

To me that's a bit ridiculous(let me say) we are not been mean to them, we are just explaining to them the rule that they must follow before they even begin to post their myth on the board. I don't really understand on the why complain to disco at all, instead of saying "They are right on this community/society have rules that everyone(particularly me) should follow we are not above the law/rules". Anyways We should (*Be smart)just ignore them, that all. That way their post gets lost among the newer post(that comes in recently) until they are on the second page.

Why on earth would you ignore new people?

You were new once yourself, and you didn't get ignored. How would you have felt if on your first posts NO ONE even acknowledged you? That's even more harsh than being rude to them.

I find it incredible that you would chose to simply ignore new posters instead of acting like an adult when posting. Is it that hard to not snap at people if they ask a question that's been asked before?

MythMod

[quote]It seems that Discovery has been getting complaints about the way the senior members are treating new members who come here to post.[/quote]

Well, maybe I just have a thick skin, but I thought the only ones I treated badly were the ones that come here to advertise.

I've seen new posters reply "you don't have to be so rude" to responses other senior members have made, and yet I see no rudeness in the majority of the senior posts that the new members are complaining about. Yes, once in a while someone opens up with both barrels, but if the polite "over-posted"/"use find" responses are being seen as "rude", and complaints are being raised, then what is it Disco is asking us to do? Go into a full re-cap of everything that's been said in the other 400 threads about it?

Yes, there is some harshness sometimes, and it can easily be toned down, but it almost seems as if the lunatics want control of the asylum.

[quote]Maybe Discovery could use the opportunity to examine the state of the boards for themselves and perhaps implement some kind of solution for the inncessant posted to death myths.[/quote]

I can't see that happening. Discovery doesn't manage the discussion boards - the contract for the software through Eve Community. They may contract with them for anything up to and including complete, day-to-day management and moderation; I don't know. But they have no control over the software with Eve. At best, they can choose from a finite list of features offered by EC.

They could contract EC to provide new features, but believe me, this is incredibly expensive. EC isn't in the business of writing software; they're in the business of selling it, and managing the resulting boards, a completely different thing.

They could ask for, or provide, more proactive moderation - a system where new posts must pass through a moderation check before being published. Lots of boards do this. But it is labor intensive. And therefore costly. Like EC, Discovery isn't in the business of writing software, and they aren't in the business of running message boards - they contract with EC for that. They're in the business of developing content for broadcast. Period. They're not going to sink any dollars into something that isn't their core business and that they're not making a significant amount of money on. The forums may be popular with fans, but Discovery could pull the plug on them tomorrow and never even see a blip in their ratings, which are what determine how much money Discovery makes.

Finally - yes, you could search new posts automatically for keywords. It would be a disaster. Look at all the problems they have already with the fairly innocuous word filter bouncing perfectly reasonable posts without explanation. Trying to be more clever than simple keyword recognition bounces you straight into the realm of content analysis, an unsolved - and presently, unsolvable - problem. And anyway, it's my impression that Discovery doesn't have much control over the word filter; that seems to be a creation offered and maintained by EC, given it's static nature.

Sometimes, you just have to do things the old-fashioned way, and have an actual person do the job.

[quote]Why on earth would you ignore new people?

You were new once yourself, and you didn't get ignored. How would you have felt if on your first posts NO ONE even acknowledged you? That's even more harsh than being rude to them.

I find it incredible that you would chose to simply ignore new posters instead of acting like an adult when posting.[/quote]

No mythmod you misunderstood me completely, I was just been a little bit of sarcastic in a way. That's not what I meant at all, mythmod. Firs thing, I will always treat others members with respect at all times, I will never try to ignore them because that is not the way to go. Yes mythmod you are correct, when I first registered to the forums I was treated nicely a lot of people responded to my forums some liked mine and others disliked them. No one ever treated me badly, so there is no reason why should I treat them badly.

I do not understand because they have to make complaints to the administrators of this prestigious site that some members of a section of the discovery forums are been mean and a little rude to them. When did it became rude to say to someone it has been posted to death, please use the find button ? That's a bit ridiculous we are been the nicest that we could ever be to them, all we are trying to do is explain to them the rules and reinforce them to read the top stickies. I think to avoid problems (complaints) and that of those new members who say that we are the baddest guys in the world. It's better not say anything at all and that could somehow avoid more troubles in the future. I think that those new members that ignore the rules, got what they deserved in the first place, because they have to know that every message board have rules that everyone should have to follow. A little bit of mockery or by other means will get them to think before they act. That kind of attention will avoid them to post things that had been posted to death like a thousand times and will get them to read all the rules. But I thought wrong, because we did the total opposite of that, it got us on the chopping block.

I get that the "squeaky wheel gets the grease", and if new members are complaining to Discovery about "rudeness" Discovery will step in and try to accommodate them. But, you know... we could always become the "squeaky wheels" and complain to Discovery about the problems of over-postings and the return arrogance over being asked to use "Find".

I would think the site's advertisers would balk at the advertising rates if the actual numbers of page views plummeted to under a tenth the current numbers of views because the "senior members" were staying away in droves. And Discovery presumably doesn't intend to operate a losing proposition.

You know, I'm just not seeing it. Yeah, I mean, okay, there are times when someone posts something and gets jumped on in a rude and overly aggressive way. But it seems to me that that sort of thing happens pretty infrequently.

More often what happens is that someone posts something that has already been posted to death, or something that is--let's face it--just plain stupid. Someone else tells them to use the "find," or read the rules, or that their idea just can't work. They argue about it--they didn't see the find, they think their idea is worth repeating, or they're just SURE that they are going to be able to build the PMM if they can just get enough magnets. Then others tell them that their idea is NOT that great, or that PMMs are impossible, or whatever.

THAT is when feelings start getting hurt! The OP starts whining about how mean people are, and how they're jumping down his throat, not being open-minded, and that sort of thing.

In other words, from what I've seen, it is very rarely the FIRST response that is rude, mocking, or whatever. It is LATER responses, after the OP has demonstrated a clear unwillingness to listen, learn, or just THINK!

Maybe my perception is off, but that's how I see it... At least mostly, like I said, there are exceptions and there is no excuse for a FIRST response that is rude and derisive.

Maybe my attitude is off, but it seems to me that there is an aspect of this issue being ignored. As denverd0n points out in the previous post, "More often what happens is that someone posts something that has already been posted to death, or something that is--let's face it--just plain stupid."

The 'attitude' isn't an unprovoked attack on someone, it is a RESPONSE to an attack on intelligence, common sense, and adherence to the rules of the forum.

So many of the posts on this forum are 'myths' that are not myths at all, just mindless questions that would be recognized as such by anyone who put more than a few seconds of thought toward the question.

So these whiners don't want to be treated with 'attitude'. They want to be free to fill the board with nonsense, but we are NOT to be free to respond with our opinions about their posts?

If posters are free to post whatever they want, then I should be unrestricted in posting my opinion of the post. And if they get their feelings hurt, well, I am offended by their promotion of the ideas that ouija boards work, that cars can run on water, that martial artists can throw 'chi' balls of energy, etc.

I'm not going start a thread by posting "Hey if you believe in ghosts (water witching, perpetual motion, ESP, popping corn with a cell phone) you are stupid, ugly and smell bad!" But if someone posts "Hey I believe in ghosts (water witching, perpetual motion, ESP, popping corn with a cell phone) and I insist the MBs try to disprove my superstition!!" then I should be free to respond. And if the OP leads me to be disgusted, then should I be dishonest in my response and hide my disgust? Or should I let the OP know exactly and truly the effect of his post?