There seem to be a couple of people here who like to post a lot of useless responses such as “that’s great” or “tell me more” or just repeating other peoples post basically in order to pad their post count/get extra points. Would it be possible to have a daily limit on posts under 5 or 10 words to cut down some of this crap?
It’s rather annoying looking for new posts or trying to help people when someone has gone through every thread on the site and posted “ok cool” and “thats great” when there was no need for any response. I’m all for people saying someone’s project is awesome however responding to a long running thread with a useless post for no other reason than to just make a post clogs up the forum.
I know this is a bit of a rant, but it’s been bugging me for awhile. The points system is flawed in that it encourages users to be douchebags and post useless sh*t everywhere.
I can’t think of a better way except to modify the way that points are assigned to users to a method that would discourage this behaviour. Other forums i’ve used have set limits on time between posts which doesn’t work because if you’re a fast typer you can easily out pace it. Limiting posts per day would be rather counter productive.
Btw Gus, go to bed it’s like 3am! Gotta have your beauty sleep
I think this is the drawback with the focus on experience points and rank.
It’s a bit like World of Warcraft when you start out you envy all the high level guys and start grinding for no purpose at all in stead for enjoying the game.
For the hobbyist there are’t really that much to be gained from a higher rank.
This might seem stupid but I think that if we had personalized avatars and a small mark for the rank the ‘grinding posts’ would be less.
I wasn’t going to comment on this, but I figured I will…
I normally don’t check out forums other than the Panda and General, so I didn’t see this one, had I have seen this one I would have never commented on the Ranks in the General Forum that started a little debate.
I guess I was just adding a little light humor to what seems to be a tense subject, which I see now.
I don’t much care about the ranks, it wouldn’t bother me if there were none at all, I would still come here and ask questions and try to learn all this stuff because it’s fascinating.
And for any reason anyone thinks I am one that is ‘spamming’, I apologize. I personally respond to anyone that helps me out as a sign of gratitude for that help.
At the very least, if you guys think ‘spamming’ for points is an issue, you could always take the approach to let someone know (constructively) what the proper forum etiquette is. I would sure hope that a simple thing like ranking wouldn’t make this site cliquey like others seem to be.
I agree with Robert (the contest king), I don’t think it is worth the worry. We all know who are real contributors here and who isn’t.
And I’m going to continue saying “Thank You” when some one helps me or “Good Job!” when I see something that warrants praise and I’m not worried whether it generates points or not.
Also some people may have limited English skills and a few word comment is a major effort for them and others just like to feel that they are contributing something even if it is in the form of a simple “Great!” or “Atta Boy!” message.
Best way to get points quickly is to contribute to Fezzer and so if you are into points … have at it.
[quote]And I’m going to continue saying “Thank You” when some one helps me or “Good Job!” when I see something that warrants praise and I’m not worried whether it generates points or not.
Also some people may have limited English skills and a few word comment is a major effort for them and others just like to feel that they are contributing something even if it is in the form of a simple “Great!” or “Atta Boy!” message.
Best way to get points quickly is to contribute to Fezzer and so if you are into points … have at it.[/quote]
Exactly. That’s what I am trying to say. I’m often in a hurry and I do not have time to post a 20 line response.
Even better: mostly I do not read long responses, unless it’s about something I am REALLY interested in. Less is often more
I tried to look up for the word spam, in my Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus (Second Edition, 2002), believe it or not!, There is no “spam” in the dictionary.
I wondered who coined this term that is coincident with the name of the processed meat in the can.
Why they have to related the food that help people survives from starving to dead, to be a bad things?
Mike in MN:
[quote]At the very least, if you guys think ‘spamming’ for points is an issue, you could always take the approach to let someone know (constructively) what the proper forum etiquette is.
[/quote]
I totally agree.
And there were a few lines of rule, that Josh posted before, and I did not see it any more.
It used to be in the General Discussion Topic.
OK, I found it here:
[url]http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/1/10/[/url]
Here are all the rules
Be polite and respect others; harassment, vulgar insults and namecalling will not be tolerated.
Message must make sense, contain a real topic, contain more than just an emoticon.
Racist, homophobic and sexual posts, images, or signatures not allowed.
No flooding allowed (member will be banned without warning).
Remember that this is the Internet. You never know who's at the other end of a computer. Keep this in mind when you post and when you choose to share personal info or photos of yourselves with others.
Do not post phone numbers, addresses or any other personal information.
By limiting the word in a post won’t make sense.
Sometime, one want to share their opinion with only a few good encouraging words, i.e “I agree”.or “Cool”, etc…
And posting few good encouraging words doesn’t break the rule either.
(And yet the constructive criticism, or comments, or advices would be even better!)
On the history of the use of ‘spam’, IIRC the reason was that Spam (the meat) is made out of all the otherwise worthless trimmings from meat processing, and is therefore of dubious nutritional merit.
So, in messaging terms, ‘spam’ is similarly devoid of any nutritional (informational) benefit.
For me, I have found some of the short “Good job!” posts about my projects to be very encouraging - especially in the first few days when i didn’t know how to fit in and if I would be welcome. I saw who the posts were from and felt that they were probably sincere.
I hesitate to say it, but the place I felt spamming might be happening was on fezzer.com where there seemed to be multiple projects posted with no real content changes between them. But that isn’t my worry. You guys are great and I appreciate the encouragement.
Come to think of it, even Gus and some of the other Support Monkeys have posted short, “Way to go” messages - and it helps keep up the interest and energy. So, we are just discussing the topic, not arguing a position that has to be right or wrong - right?
@ BHB: [quote]For me, I have found some of the short “Good job!” posts about my projects to be very encouraging - especially in the first few days when i didn’t know how to fit in and if I would be welcome. I saw who the posts were from and felt that they were probably sincere.
[/quote]
Maybe the equivalent of a Facebook ‘Like’ button for a thread or post would accomplish this. This killed the ‘Yep!’ comments there.
kinda reminds me of the early days of nntp, there was a really good community and then over time the signal to noise ratio declined to unusable levels, presumably josh keeps track of these things but sounds like the census is to keep the forums lively and fun since this is in en sympatico with the community
You can +1 all day long and it will not get you far enough. You need to start posting code on fezzer or adding project to the wiki. That is where you get hundreds if points. Or win a contest and get more points
Not to mention that GHI is on this forum and we know if someone is spamming the forum and we we keep a note of it
We hope that the community will benefit from this points system not over think on how to get points. Look at fezzer.com for example…all kind of fantastic code
