Discipline around low effort posts or poorly sourced posts

horse said:

That is why everyone is interested in the non-military threads, because everyone senses something important is happening. We are witnessing history happen before our eyes.

That kind of leaves the military threads in the Catch-22 situation.

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Putting aside what can and can't be posted on SDF, I think it's weird that people who want to discuss economic issues would come to a defence forum. These days it couldn't be easier to chat about stuff on the internet, not least given the spread of Reddit and Discord. It's not like the old days where you had to create a bespoke account to post on one place so you wanted to pick somewhere you could discuss lots of issues.

As for the wider issues, I think by78 has some interesting ideas about a probationary period so people are limited where they can post for a while, as well as actively requiring them to actively agree to a code of conduct. Also it might be necessary to step up disciplinary actions even if they might seem harsh - killing the chickens to scare the monkeys, so to spreak.

Mr T said:

Putting aside what can and can't be posted on SDF, I think it's weird that people who want to discuss economic issues would come to a defence forum. These days it couldn't be easier to chat about stuff on the internet, not least given the spread of Reddit and Discord. It's not like the old days where you had to create a bespoke account to post on one place so you wanted to pick somewhere you could discuss lots of issues.

As for the wider issues, I think by78 has some interesting ideas about a probationary period so people are limited where they can post for a while, as well as actively requiring them to actively agree to a code of conduct. Also it might be necessary to step up disciplinary actions even if they might seem harsh - killing the chickens to scare the monkeys, so to spreak.

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Technically, economics can be discussed here on this forum since economic warfare is a type of warfare and falls under "defense". However, it shouldn't spread into technical threads. For example, in the COMAC C919 thread, there shouldn't be a discussion of how GE should be crippled by the Chinese or a "F**k the US" rant.

by78 said:

What are you banging on about? Did you not read Bltizo's original post? He was talking about the excessive politicization of the flagship military threads, which are frequently being derailed by off-topic political discussions that are wildly outside the scope of the said threads. In other words, the flagship military threads were never intended to be political threads, and they should stay that way.

Don't worry, you can still have your political discussions to your heart's content, just NOT in the flagship military threads. What's so hard to understand about that?

Let me put this in yet another way: if you just want to talk politics or geopolitics, then stay away from the flagship military threads.

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My. This is exactly the sort of rant we try to avoid! How ironic.

LawLeadsToPeace said:

Technically, economics can be discussed here on this forum since economic warfare is a type of warfare and falls under "defense". However, it shouldn't spread into technical threads. For example, in the COMAC C919 thread, there shouldn't be a discussion of how GE should be crippled by the Chinese or a "F**k the US" rant.

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As Blitzo already pointed out. They are talking about military threads. IMO, I don't see much off topic discussions on these threads. Maybe they were cleared up by the time I get to read them.

All major defence forums over the years have economic and political discussions. Previously, this forum is just attempted to minimize these discussions to avoid flame wars.

Sinodefence has a younger audience than other old defence forums from the very beginning which is good since most forums are losing members as the old generations disappear or lose interests. However, a younger member base means more chest-thumping and trolling. If the forum has a dedicated moderation team that can monitor 24/7, then it is easy to enforce rules and discipline bad behaviors. Since we only 3 active moderators, it is just impossible to monitor 24/7. I do think Bltizo, Deino, and siegecrossobw have done a great job and put in their valuable time to keep the forum decent already. So it is unfair to ask them to do more.

For military threads, the biggest problem is non essential discussions and deviation from the main topics. Most senior members don't want to waste their time reading these stuffs but many new members just can't stop wandering into these types of discussions.

My suggestion is to give senior members the ability to hide posts that are not essential or relevant to the military threads.

Gatekeeper said:

As Blitzo already pointed out. They are talking about military threads. IMO, I don't see much off topic discussions on these threads. Maybe they were cleared up by the time I get to read them.

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While they do get cleaned up, they come up again, and the cleaning up process starts all over again. This adds an unnecessary amount of work to the moderators' job, and there are only like 3 of them constantly active. While the Army section isn't plagued with those types of discussions, the Air Force and Navy ones are. I guess you got lucky with your experiences.

LawLeadsToPeace said:

While they do get cleaned up, they come up again, and the cleaning up process starts all over again. This adds an unnecessary amount of work to the moderators' job, and there are only like 3 of them constantly active. While the Army section isn't plagued with those types of discussions, the Air Force and Navy ones are. I guess you got lucky with your experiences.

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I'm not sure if it's lucky or the way I read military threads. Basically, I tends to read them in batches unless something new or major crops up. Otherwise, it is pretty mundane and not much news to read.

So I guess if something happens in these military threads, by the time I got to it, it's all cleared up. So which is why I don't see any problems ( it doesn't mean there wasn't any in the first place.)

KYli said:

My suggestion is to give senior members the ability to hide posts that are not essential or relevant to the military threads.

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This probably won't work in practice, as seniority is determined by the number of posts a member has. A politically-obsessed member can easily gain senior status by way of racking up a large number of posts in the political threads, and I'm sure quite a few already have, and more will soon follow. I might not be a good idea to entrust political monomaniacs with the task of guarding the flagship military threads.

Gatekeeper said:

I'm not sure if it's lucky or the way I read military threads. Basically, I tends to read them in batches unless something new or major crops up. Otherwise, it is pretty mundane and not much news to read.

So I guess if something happens in these military threads, by the time I got to it, it's all cleared up. So which is why I don't see any problems ( it doesn't mean there wasn't any in the first place.)

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They get cleaned up pretty fast, although offenders are not being punished severely enough to deter them. I bet it's tedious to keep deleting these posts. It'd be much easier if the posters are banned outright. It'd save all of us a lot of grief.

by78 said:

This probably won't work in practice, as seniority is determined by the number of posts a member has. A politically-obsessed member can easily gain senior status by way of racking up a large number of posts in the political threads, and I'm sure quite a few already have, and more will soon follow. I might not be a good idea to entrust political monomaniacs with the task of guarding the flagship military threads.

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1. Both Seniority and objectivity, the moderation team grants 2 dozens of senior members that are active and objective the ability to hide posts.

2. Give each member the function to choose reading all posts or just relevant posts in the military threads.

3. Very strict rules, all posts not related to the topic and deem to be off topic can be hiden. For example, India vs Pakistan vs China, hide no matter what. Off topic discussion, hide, such as gloves and nuclear discussion just not relevant to the thread.