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
Yes there appears to be a problem with this. I can see more than the occasional rogue post, however asking for code and schematics for a project (thinking of an elevator request) is way out of line. The first thing may be to put a list of before you post rules in the message (IE force them to read and or think).
I believe a major part of this is a torrent of people who are from a very different cultural background posting, add the difference in language and nuances of said languages might be leading to what one may think be 'perfectly acceptable', appear to be denigrating, demanding, overbearing, rudeness to those fluent in the lingua franca of the forum (aka English) or even those who aren't. Add to that youth and ignorance things can get out of hand.
Bottom line is yes something to reduce the quantity of odd posts would be helpful. Logging in may work, and if people wish to post anon (IE without identification) then they get there TCP address flagged for those who moderate.
Voting could help, although initially it might be a bit difficult.
Stephen
I don't care much about off-topic requests or discussions. If someone want to know about charging lead-acid batteries, I don't mind answering.
But I don't like eople answering with invectives when the answer they get is to a question they haven't understood yet that they need answered.
And now and then, this forum turns into a local chat page for private use.
The most efficient way to get that kind of posters to stop is when their posts are removed, or the thread ets locked. They would then find other forums to play with.
An alternative is to not have public voting (at least for lock and remove) but to give out the right to vote for removal or locking to a limited number of people and require that at least three of them need to vote for a lock or removal. It is not a democratic solution but probably the simplest to implement. The only disadvantage is that the Keil employee who makes the initial decision to distribute voting rights must have at least some knowledge about what happens on the forum to be able to make the decision. The advantage is that it may be enough that this jury logs in - no possiblity for someone else to craete 10 aliases (possibly from different IP numbers) and produce a denial-of-service by locking/deleting everything.
Here are a few of my thoughts.
How is this for a starting point?
Jon it appears to be students from a particular university that are causing this problem right now. An IP range ban may be the appropriate answer to the problem as well as an email to the university in regard's to the posting. You do log IP address's from which people post from I assume? It should be possible to get enough information to put a stop to it via first banning the IP range associated with that university from forum access then finding the proper email address of the authorities there.
Although I don't like that type of thing, I believe the behavior is not only out of hand it's also possibly a breech of the university's rules and regulations. Either way it's making it difficult for people who have legitimate questions to even FIND there own questions let alone the answer to them.
I myself don't mind most of the humor (life is too short to be taken seriously) and when it gets a bit crazy it's never been without provocation. However the recent group of posts appear to be from people who have yet to have a moral compass (or know what one is for that matter) as well as have very little background in being civil. Much if not all of the verbal words used with them is of there own doing (or undoing as it may be).
The bottom line it appears to be people from a specific university (thus associated IP's) behaving badly. Just my thought.
Stephen, good idea - certainly contacting the institution in question might help. but unfortunately people can still use effective countermeasures - proxy browsers to gain anonymity, anonymous browser etc. thumbs up for the initiative, though.
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.