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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
Many thumbs up.
Just a question: Without logging in, I can post using a large number of aliases. But that also implies that unless you add accounts, I would be able to vote using a large number of aliases.
With real accounts, I think the voting would help a lot. It would be no fun to write stupid comments if all it took to clear it out was a number of negative votes.
But trolls are likely to give out false votes too.
I would think that you would have to weitht votes. People who have received many positive votes for earlier posts may get a bigger weight when giving out a negative vote. That makes it hard for quick drive-by attacks on the forum. You have to actively fight for the right to "moderate" bad posts by spending time giving helpful answers.
Jon, First, I must agree with you. The last couple of days have been very bad - so many weirdos, on the brink of eccentric really. I do agree that something should be done - but I would not like to see a registration system. That should be the last resort, I think. The other proposal (voting based) sounds better. Some of the fiercest discussions here (between very capable people) that have descended into personal attacks would not have been filtered out by such a system (I think), which is good. I would not want to see threads containing the word "smoked sardine" or "read the C standard" being set to read only. But it really is time to plug the flow of crazed, homework sick students into the forum, that behave as if they own the place, and as if we are the members of a harem...
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?
We could institute a weighted voting system of some kind to limit the noise. Threads with too many negative votes would be closed (read-only). Messages with too many negative votes would be removed.
I suspect this would just generate a load of worthless bickering from bruised egos.
We could require forum users to login to reply to message threads. I would only want to do this if we can make it painless for legitimate users.
As pointed out by others I also suspect this would not deter timewasters.
I think you have two options: 1) Do nothing. 2) Vet all posts before they appear on the forum.
As a general note to others: The complete nonsense posts are mostly made by people wishing to do nothing more than provoke a reaction. The usual description for this is trolling. Usually it is rather more subtle than the ones we see here - Usenet contributors, for instance, would ignore them completely. Unfortunately many of the regular contributors here don't seem to be able to spot these and try and ridicule them in the same way they ridicule genuine posts from desperate students. This is exactly what they want - if you want them to go away then just ignore them.
I believe that both SiLabs and 8052.com require registration to post. Anyone can read the posts but cannot reply without registration. I don't see the vituperative posts on those fora yet many of the egos of this forum post on these two other fora. Registration does not seem to me to be an undue hardship to use the forum. I feel if Keil tech support could just glance at the posts occasionally to block or wipe the undesired post, that the forum would soon become a bit more professional. Please don't censor spelling. I would never get anything posted ;-). Bradford
Removed posts seldom leads to bickering. An existing post can be read again and again and produce more agitation. A lost post will not be missed - most people wouldn't even know that it did exist.
People loosing a post have basically three choices. - ignore it - scream about it and loose more posts - repost again, but this time using a filtered language and less personal attacks.
Most normal people would choose alternative 1 or 3. The problematic visitors would go for alternative 2, but after having lost enough posts it would be no fun anymore to just loose their posts without being able to trig large numbers of irritated responses to keep the war ongoing.
Recognizing trolls? The problem is that a troll and a really lost noob with wrong expectations make very similar posts. If we just ignore all posters who looks like trolls, we will at the same time ignore lots of people who need help. So a troll here or there will feel macho for getting people to waste time on a dummy thread. I can live with that - it is still their loss to possibly be bright but have stayed at a maturity level closer to what could be expected of our closest pelted relatives.
"I feel if Keil tech support could just glance at the posts occasionally to block or wipe the undesired post, [...]"
If Keil had the time then it would probably be easiest with just a "report this post" button. Very quick to implement and works quite well, but requires some form of attention on a 24x7 basis. This concept works best for national sites, where most posters are in the same time zone as the private or organisation that hosts the site. Distributing the role to a subset of the regulars can solve the time-zone problem but be a bit problematic since many posters will feel that one or more of the "user-space" moderators will have received more power than they where capable of wielding.
Removed posts seldom leads to bickering.
Sure, but a voting system certainly would.
The problematic visitors would go for alternative 2, but after having lost enough posts it would be no fun anymore to just loose their posts without being able to trig large numbers of irritated responses to keep the war ongoing.
Without full moderation (ie posts viewed by a moderator before they appear) I think they'll still find it satisfying enough.
Recognizing trolls? The problem is that a troll and a really lost noob with wrong expectations make very similar posts.
Do you really think so? I'd say in most cases the difference is fairly obvious.
If we just ignore all posters who looks like trolls, we will at the same time ignore lots of people who need help.
Well, I'm not sure that many of the responses that the troll/lost noob category receive really count as help.
So a troll here or there will feel macho for getting people to waste time on a dummy thread. I can live with that - it is still their loss to possibly be bright but have stayed at a maturity level closer to what could be expected of our closest pelted relatives.
I don't think they're bright - the clever ones are all trolling Usenet.
"Well, I'm not sure that many of the responses that the troll/lost noob category receive really count as help."
I was talking about the look of the original post, where a lot of noobs produces very similar requests as the trolls.
Its on the second, third, forth post that the trolls and the noobs diverge, but without some form of moderation, then it is too late to stop the rolling snowball. With many real threads ongoing, the trolls gets gets ignored but on slow days, the people on this forum has to be able to offload some comments somewhere ;)
"...but on slow days, the people on this forum has to be able to offload some comments somewhere ;)"
I cannot speak on behalf of everybody, but I never considered this forum to be a kind of therapy :-)
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.