I have received complaints about the quality of some of the threads and messages posted to the forum these days.
If I see a thread that is out of control, I can and do mark it as Read-Only. This effectively shuts down the thread. However, I just don't see a majority of the rogue threads.
So, my question is, should we try to inhibit the noise and improve the quality of the responses in some way? For example,
Let me know your thoughts and feelings on this.
Jon
Actually I have some experience with administrating forums. There are numerous things you can do. IP bans are a last resort usually however all things considered it's students who are behaving badly (they give themselves away by there poor use of language and generally crude methods), and judging just how little effort they are putting into doing there school work means that proxies etc won't be a big problem (since they didn't put much effort into very important work).
For registration if it is enforced captcha is needed (IE those twisted password images) this will deter bots (there are numerous spam bots that spam forums like this out there). I think really the big problem is just one university at the moment. If I see a few annoyance posts that doesn't bother me (thick skin from being an admin of a forum I guess). It's when it's when a consistent flagrant abuse of things occurs my ire is raised.
I suppose registration is going to have to happen, I hope they choose software that is less prone to the spam bots (VERY annoying as they can posts 100's of useless posts in a few minutes).
Hopefully the schools administration will straighten the kids out. If not there school won't have access to Keil's website (woops) or forums for anything. That's an appropriate consequence for lack of discipline.
Stephen