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Something I've noticed recently is that the best parts of this website are the articles, the battle-reports, and the painting/modeling forums. Otherwise the forums tend to be full of blather, particularly because people can whip off posts without really thinking about what they're saying, or thinking about how to express themselves clearly, or actually making a contribution to a thread. And that's ignoring those obnoxious posts where a previous post is quoted in its entirety. Almost as bad are the posts where someone takes another's post, breaks it down into small pieces and replies to each point in turn without bothering to engage with the point all those sub-points are directed towards making. I'm not innocent of this crime, though I'm working on it. I think that's why so many of my favourite posters no longer seem to be around, because one eventually gets tired of slogging through the same old nonsense.

But a thought occurred to me: creativity and quality are both things that can be enhanced by limits.

So I'd like to propose some changes to the forum, artificial limits really, to encourage people to think about what they post, and to increase the signal to noise ratio by cutting out both people's incentive and opportunity to post.

1. Limit people to five posts per day. The idea is that members need to make their posts count.

2. Give posts a delay between pressing the post button, and the message appearing in the thread. I'd suggest a delay of a couple of hours, but at minimum about 15 minutes. The idea is to prevent hot tempers from derailing a discussion.

Your thoughts?

No. Simple and sweet.

DakkaDakka is a great place to wade through the mud, and the Mods do a very consistent job of keeping things in line. Quite frankly most of the "blather" is just two people arguing about nothing, the rest is just people saying nothing. I don't see anything wrong with this as long as they don't spam pointless one-liners in every thread they visit... unless they are funny .

one down 4 to go nurglitch. Are you kidding! That appears to be a little extreme.

The modern Internet is all about rapid sharing of opinions and instant feedback. Those changes would very quickly kill the entire site and lead to a storm of complaints.

Nurglitch wrote:Almost as bad are the posts where someone takes another's post, breaks it down into small pieces and replies to each point in turn without bothering to engage with the point all those sub-points are directed towards making. I'm not innocent of this crime, though I'm working on it. I think that's why so many of my favourite posters no longer seem to be around, because one eventually gets tired of slogging through the same old nonsense.

First off, yes, I understand the irony in my posting this way

But to address this point:
I feel like this comment is not entirely fair. People break down others' posts in this manner so that they can address specific points brought up over the course of a thread. The quoting is especially useful so that peoples' posts can have context, and lets others know just what it is he/she is responding to. It can be incredibly difficult to follow who's replying to what in a thread, especially if its a particularly 'hot' discussion and lots of people are posting at a rapid pace. Also, addressing sub-points doesn't necessarily detract away from main point arguments. Sometimes it's crucial to comment on sub-points in order to discuss a larger topic.

That being said, I agree that the Signal-to-Noise ratio in some parts of the site are getting kind of bad, but I think that's a slightly promising sign that Dakka as a whole is growing - which isn't a bad thing. Creativity and quality can be enhanced by limits at times. However, especially in this community that tries to strive off of feedback from others, artificially imposing limitations on input (note that there're a lot of people that give a lot of good input any given day as well as people who give a lot of not good input) would be a bad thing, in my opinion, and only hinder Dakka. So basically, I agree with Lego on this one.

Also, if you really wanna cut down on the mindless blather, consider the Ignore function for those members you find particularly prodigal with their posts.

I think it's a bad idea. Some days I have a lot of things to say and post. A lot of days I don't post anything. A post limit would be very annoying, and pretty pointless. I don't have any problem with encouraging people to post clear, well thought-out posts that contribute to a good discussion, but I don't think a post limit will be of much help in that pursuit.

Hordini wrote:I think it's a bad idea. Some days I have a lot of things to say and post. A lot of days I don't post anything. A post limit would be very annoying, and pretty pointless. I don't have any problem with encouraging people to post clear, well thought-out posts that contribute to a good discussion, but I don't think a post limit will be of much help in that pursuit.

Maybe we could have "rollover posts" like rollover minutes on a cell phone?

Jin:

Firstly, it is only ironic if you yourself are writing to oppose the way in which you compose your posts. Secondly, I do make liberal use of the Ignore function. But, as mentioned, some people make a habit of quoting other people's posts in their entirety, which renders the Ignore function less than fully effective in helping me ignore certain posters. In addition, the ignore function applies to members and not posts. Despite the fact that some members continually post garbage, it would not be impossible for them to post something worth reading, and the ignore function does not distinguish between worthless garble, and well considered writing. So despite the fact that I use the Ignore function, that function is neither particularly effective at helping me ignore other posters, because those poster can continue to participate in a discussion, nor particularly effective at helping me distinguish the chafe from the wheat, as it were, without either throwing out the latter, or slogging through the former anyways.

Secondly, it is actually quite easy to provide context for a comment. All you have to do is paraphrase the point you are addressing, and address it. For example:

"In your post you suggested that it's crucial to comment on a part or sub-point of someone's post, which is something that is obviously true because that's what discussions are about. However, given that we can address those points within a coherent post, rather than quoting each point separately and addressing it separately with no effort to connect that to the greater whole, such 'quote-cutting' is not only tedious, but an impediment to effective communication."

It's interesting to note that while, as Legoburner suggests, the modern Internet enables the rapid sharing of opinions, and instant feedback, these things are not necessarily good. They are only so good as the thought that has been put into them, and the ability to reply instantly requires incredible wit for one to put it to good use. Since none of us, including Oscar Wilde, are Oscar Wilde, I suggest that enforcing an opportunity for reflection and composition, and incentive to making what you post to count, is a good thing despite interfering with our convenience. After all, the quickest and easiest reply to make to anyone to disagrees with you is: "Feth off!"

Surely anyone who has frequented Internet fora understands that the best way for a discussion to degenerate into spam, trolling, and flaming is for the interlocators to start posting past each other, quote-cutting each other's posts, and not actually taking the time to engage in constructive discussion. After all, if you're going to win the Internet, you need to be able to come up with a snappy reply faster than the other person...

So I'll certainly agree with the criticism that imposing limits on members' ability to post will be inconvenient. That's the point, to make it inconvenient to post worthless noise, while retaining the convenience to point the content for which we actually frequent these forums. We already have Warseer and other sites for the kind of mental diarrhea seen elsewhere on the Internet, so why not go with Dakka's strengths, the articles, the painting forums, the battle-reports, the content, the signal, to differentiate it from the rest of the gaming fora out there?

Consider this:

How often does the same subject get brought up, time after time, despite the instructions to search for a topic using the search function? How often does the opportunity for petty-bickering derail a thread, turning the forum into a forum for personal animosities to be aired, rather than a forum for ideas about gaming? How often is are the forums treated as someone's instant messenger service, smeared with net-speak, malpropisms, mis-spellings, and painful abortions of grammar (usually the British and American posters, oddly, with the Germans, in my experience, have the best English!)?

I think many people get turned off by having to slog through so much noise to find something worth reading on here. I've noticed that so many of the posters whose messages I used to enjoy reading appear to have given up and left Dakka Dakka (at least I can't find their posts). I know I get fed up at times, unfortunately becoming more frequent, where I can click through a ton of threads and find nothing worth reading, let alone worth the effort of a reply.

I don't really disagree with many of your points. In fact, I have much the same grievances you do, though in the context of the internet in general.

The main problem I have with this suggestion is that it arbitrarily punishes the good posters.

There are plenty of prolific yet insightful and constructive posters on these forums. Why punish them and limit their input because a bunch of kids (and some adults) haven't learned to actually think before they hit that "Submit" button? Most of the time, it tends to be the same handful of individuals who drag down threads and lead to the issues that you've brought up. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a heavier hand being brought down on those individuals since I agree that they do detract from the atmosphere of Dakka. However, applying heavy-handed moderation to everyone when moderation for a select few would work just as effectively just seems daft. Overly lax and overly strict moderation both only serve to drive away members new and old.

With regard to the same subject getting brought up again and again, petty bickering, poor writing, etc - I'm with you. It's annoying as hell (especially the poor writing, which I've called people out on lots of times in the past). But the problem lies with those individuals - don't punish the other members for their behavior. As it is right now, the Mods are pretty good about shutting down de-railed threads and repeat threads, and most of the veteran Dakkites are pretty quick to succinctly answer and end questions that have been asked many times before. Ultimately, though, it's up to the Admins/Mods to discipline users who commit these infractions, but they've got their day-jobs/lives to take care of as well. You sound like an intelligent person, so I'm sure you know this and don't need someone like me to be so damn pedantic.

GoFenris wrote:

Hordini wrote:I think it's a bad idea. Some days I have a lot of things to say and post. A lot of days I don't post anything. A post limit would be very annoying, and pretty pointless. I don't have any problem with encouraging people to post clear, well thought-out posts that contribute to a good discussion, but I don't think a post limit will be of much help in that pursuit.

Maybe we could have "rollover posts" like rollover minutes on a cell phone?

OT -- in the wargame Panzer Pranks, units got rollover movement points allowance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seriously though, the problems with all mechanical restrictions or incentives on posting (voting, etc.) are that they do not model the good behaviour we wish to encourage, and often arbitrarily restrict it.

I think the concept is certainly noble, but the problem is that people visit a forum not just to read stuff, but to read new stuff and in many cases to interact and be part of a community.

When we first took over Dakka, the traffic on the site had gotten fairly low and many people were commenting about how it seemed like a ghost town and that there was very little new things of interest to keep them coming back to read and comment on.

When it comes to a forum, it is very important for visitors to feel like the site is vibrant and active. If it isn't, then people will simply go elsewhere to find that sense of immediacy.

I don't know why exactly, but that's just how people, gamers especially, seem to be wired. Its like when a company stops putting out new expansions for a game, many people instantly deem the game 'dead' and decide to stop playing it, even though the game is just as viable as it was the day before when it was still being supported. But somehow, the lack of something 'new' means many people don't want anything to do with it anymore.


Placing limitations on how many posts people could make would simply frustrate many users and force them to go to other sites instead. . .which really isn't something that will help grow this site's community in the long run.

I'm afraid really the best thing we can do is to keep tabs on people who really do just only make junk posts and give them warnings, suspensions and finally a permanent ban if they don't change their ways.

A couple of hours delay?

Someone posts a popular/easy question? They needlessly recieve ten replies, all basically stating the same thing... they also recieve one with an obvious mistake, as is often the case. Another ten replies are made to correct the situation. Someone forgets to quote the post they're replying to, which by this time is on a completely different page. He could be replying to anyone. Confusion ensues. I put on my robe and wizard hat.

I'm mixed on this. Admittedly it is a noble idea but ultimately just too unrealistic.

Realistically, these types of forums are an amalgam of a conversation and a lecture. Real speech flows and evolves and we all invariably say something that firmly puts our feet in our mouths. I don't think threads are much different other than when I put my foot in my mouth on DakkaDakka, it stays for all too see, judge, comment on and even look back and laugh at. It's better than memory! (and yes, of course I am as guilty as the next user, from both angles).

I think we jump at the chance to get our point across quickly because we so rarely get to in real life. How often has your boss/wife/kids/parents understood what you were trying to tell them, or the other way round for that matter? On a web forum, we get to type exactly (well, we try anyway) what we want to say for all to see. I think on some level the same issue that makes it annoying also makes it appealing.

And, it probably replaces some other types of social interactions within our lives.

It would be an interesting exercise to try in a limited thread.

Just my thoughts about it, to go on would be redundant.