Discipline around low effort posts or poorly sourced posts

This is just a pet peeve of mine. For posts with images, poster's comments or explanations should be placed on top, followed by the images. Placing comments on top is more convenient for readers because it prepares them for what they are about to see. I just hate scrolling down and down until the very bottom to see a comment, especially when the significance of the images is not immediately clear, then I have to scroll back up to re-examine the images with the comment in mind.

I understand why some might think it's a good idea to place comments after images, because this is how newspapers and books do it with image captions. However, most images in printed media are of modest dimensions, meaning you can take in an image and its accompanying caption in one glance. This is not the case for Sinodefence Forum, because the forum software doesn't downsize images to make them small enough. This is especially true for posts with multiple images, which often span one third of a page or more, so your eyes have to travel very far to take in the information.

Placing comments after images is yet another trend brought in by the new wave of members, and it makes the forum less readable and feel unnecessarily cluttered.

Deleted post.

Any update on this front, or has it died on the vine?

by78 said:

Any update on this front, or has it died on the vine?

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haven't seen anything more to it, so it probably died on the vine.

The Observer said:

haven't seen anything more to it, so it probably died on the vine.

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Too difficult to draw clear boundaries and enforce.

Blitzo said:

Too difficult to draw clear boundaries and enforce.

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Then can we at least put a strict NO off topic post in flagship threads? These posts are particularly prone at derailing the thread, and IMO makes for a lower quality forum experience.

For example: Type 055 DDG discussion is 055 DDG & its weapon/sensor only. No DF-21/26 ASBM, no comparison with AB DDG, no comparison of various missile loads with foreign designs, etc.

And especially no teasing/joking post that's made just to get a laugh. We've already got Member's club room for that.

The Observer said:

For example: Type 055 DDG discussion is 055 DDG & its weapon/sensor only. No DF-21/26 ASBM, no comparison with AB DDG, no comparison of various missile loads with foreign designs, etc.

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This part is tricky, IMHO. A weapon platform doesn't exist in a vacuum, especially for something like the 055. I don't think it's off-topic to discuss what missiles are carried by its VLS farm and how they pertain to tactics and strategies under various hypothetical scenarios, which cannot be fully appreciated without also discussing potential adversaries' platforms and their associated tactics and strategies.

Yes, it's a slippery slope and will attract attention from wrong kinds of people who will probably hijack the technical discussions and turn them into nationalistic war talk, but that's what the ban hammers are for.

On balance, I think some allowance should be made for dispassionate technical discussions, provided that they don't meander too far off course. If they do, the established practice is to divert them to the appropriate thread, and if no such threads exist, they are specially created (as seen here).

Other than that, I'm in complete agreement with your other points. I think jokes, lackadaisical one-liners, general banter, thoughtless shitposting, off-topic tangents, sounding like a broken record, and other low-effort posts should be grounds for banning. I would also add that users who consistently exhibit fanboy behavior – such as citing (known) poor sources, making careless and exaggerated claims without sources, posting information/images without checking to see if it's already been posted by others very recently, and chest-thumping and jingoistic boasting – should be banned.

Anyway, just my two cents.

The Observer said:

Then can we at least put a strict NO off topic post in flagship threads? These posts are particularly prone at derailing the thread, and IMO makes for a lower quality forum experience.

For example: Type 055 DDG discussion is 055 DDG & its weapon/sensor only. No DF-21/26 ASBM, no comparison with AB DDG, no comparison of various missile loads with foreign designs, etc.

And especially no teasing/joking post that's made just to get a laugh. We've already got Member's club room for that.

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Transient, productive and constructive off topic posts are difficult to "disallow" and when they go on for too long they are usually deleted or moved into a different appropriate thread.

The nature of discussions means staying always "on topic" is often difficult.


Those of topic talks aren't really an area of concern for me, so much as low effort, short posts where nothing of use is contributed.