Something that has been bugging me for a while are posts like this:

QFT

+1

I agree

^ ^
great


To my mind, these are all spam posts. They offer nothing of substance, and just clutter up threads. Would it be possible for the moderation team to start deleting these as spam in the future please?

I'm sure that a number of others here may disagree, but the fact of the matter is that posts such as those I've written above add no content to a thread at all. If you agree with someone, it doesn't take much to explain why you agree, and that makes for a proper post then. This shouldn't be IRC or IM, and posts like that are suited to that environment, not a forum, in my opinion.

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They do add something - it shows that the opinion of one is shared with others. Especially on a site where we're often searching for consensus on rules and balance, that's actually important.

A "like" button or something would help, but I'd guess that that's not trivial to set up.

Yeah as Ulrik alludes to, this is very context specific. On the other hand Irisado is asking for a human to make a value judgment on those contexts so fair enough. It's probably worth using the Polling thread option more than we do, even with "what do you guys think about x, y, or z?" questions, especially in the development threads.

No auto moderation (outside of violating the TOS) should be happening under any issue in the hobby logs and the General subforum. There is exactly where "GG", "ditto", etc posts would most be likely to happen and be totally appropriate.

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+1 i agree with this opinion. Sorry had to be done!

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-1

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Exactly my thoughts, lighten up fellow!

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"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

As far as i can see, writing out how and why you agree with someone takes up more screen space and reading time - ie. more spammy. Taccoms never ends up with pages of these like some forums.

I completely disagree. Though not adding new content to a discussion these show support for an existing idea in the thread and are therefore valid and useful as part of the discussion. If 3-4 others post up with something along the line of "+1" in a thread much more support for it can be seen than if just one person posts up.

Personally I mostly write out full posts but sometimes I write "+1" if what I wish to write has basically been encapsulated by someone else already. I find your dislike of this form of short-hand bizarre and suggest you just try not to let it bother you, as posts like these are generally useful and worthwhile and definitely not spam.

Sorry Irisado, given the lack of a like feature I also think these posts add some useful info, blame me as one of the annoying people!!

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Frankly Irisado, I largely agree with you about posts like this, but I dislike excessive moderation on forums more, so even I don't want to see them deleting more stuff.

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Thanks,
Troy


Once Upon a Midnight Dreary....

Err, no, that's simply untrue I'm afraid. Any well thought out post is going to comprise more than one word, and is not spam. Where I moderate, here is our definition of spam:



'QFT, +1, I agree' would all be deleted according to that rule, and removing them boosts quality. If you (impersonal) do not have anything to add beyond those comments, then it's not worth posting in the first place in my opinion. They don't add anything constructive to the topic.

People can show support by actually writing why they agree. Not explaining reasoning for support, or adding adding additional points is, in my opinion, just lazy, albeit with one caveat that I'm about to mention below.

Jimmyzimms made a salient point about the need to express support or dissent for proposed rule changes, and these would be the only threads where +1 type posts are actually needed. Using polls, as he suggested though, would be the way around that.

Finally, just to be clear, all moderation would be carried out by a human moderator, it's the thankless job of a moderator to have to delete stuff from time to time, and usually get moaned at by users as a result.

Regardless of what I think, however, CS has the final say on this, so if he agrees with all of you and says nay, then he can lock this thread.

Edit: One final note, the chit chat type board we have here, is it General Wargames Discussion? That could be exempt. I'm talking about these spam posts being annoying on the main boards.

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While I agree with Irisado, I don't think it's practical with the setup taccomms has at the moment.

I suggested a 'like' like feature a couple years ago, and met stiff opposition.

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Let there be code.

At the moment, looking at the traffic on this forum, I see no evidence of the forum bogging down with low-content posts. On the other hand, especially with the recent cancellation of SG, the real risk is that the forum becomes a ghost town. While that doesn't look likely on a vibrant forum like this, it's surprising how little a change in the tone of the forum can do that. Because while the forum is mostly driven by the 20% of members who generate 80% of the content (actually, much more extreme than even than), it's the low-activity members who are the health of the forum.

I'm just not seeing what Irisado is complaining about. The signal:noise ratio on this forum is excellent. The time for a crackdown is when threads start getting serially derailed. In other words, let's hold off on implementing solutions until we actually have problems that need solving.