Discipline around low effort posts or poorly sourced posts

Webmaster

Webmaster

The Troll Hunter
Staff member
Administrator
All great ideas and good discussion everyone.

One of the things we did at DefenceTalk forum from very start (2003) was to not tolerate:
  1. One liners
  2. posts without sources
  3. article posts WITHOUT user's own comments/view
And we've done that consistently over the years. I think we tried parts of that here as well but unfortunately, it did not catch on.
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
LawLeadsToPeace said:
I believe Blitzo already addressed and accepted those types of threads since US-China politics is an elephant in the room and will be inevitably discussed. He was mainly alarmed by the uptick in irrelevant political discussion that start derailing threads like the ones about carriers or the J-20. Heck there was a full blown war in the mbt thread due to an ultranationalist poster who attempted to convince everyone that Indian tanks are better that of China with insults and regurgitated and debunked info.
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That guy has already been banned so there shouldn’t be an issue for now. However as long as the tensions remain in Ladakh expect more people like him to show up here.
 
LawLeadsToPeace

LawLeadsToPeace

Senior Member
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Registered Member
siegecrossbow said:
That guy has already been banned so there shouldn’t be an issue for now. However as long as the tensions remain in Ladakh expect more people like him to show up here.
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True, but the time it took to notice this issue and to clean it up was relatively too long. I'm not attacking you moderators since you all are doing the best you can. However, I believe that there needs to be a system that informs these users on the consequences of doing something dumb and irrelevant (like what by78 and Blitzo said early in the thread) and that there needs to be an increase in the number of mods and perhaps even a hierarchy of mods to prevent new ones from going awol.
 
PiSigma

PiSigma

"the engineer"
WebMaster said:
All great ideas and good discussion everyone.

One of the things we did at DefenceTalk forum from very start (2003) was to not tolerate:
  1. One liners
  2. posts without sources
  3. article posts WITHOUT user's own comments/view
And we've done that consistently over the years. I think we tried parts of that here as well but unfortunately, it did not catch on.
Click to expand...
This was part of the official rules 10 years ago, I used to crack down on it hard. But it also require a lot of moderator time to crack down on this since new members usually ignore these rules, so often it falls through the cracks and then eventually get forgotten.
 
by78

by78

General
There has also been a disturbing trend of new members sharing content from Youtube channels of dubious credibility and quality. Some of the channels have videos that are nothing more than glorified slideshows with computer-generated voices reciting wikipedia articles, while others are fanboy channels whose content lack basic research. Below are some examples:

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Worse still, some new members share content from random online political commentators whose channels are full of click-bait content, wild conspiracies, and political commentary, and whose knowledge on military matters is beyond laughable:

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Posting such low-quality content in our flagship military forums should be highly discouraged. Preferably our forum rules should explicitly prohibit sharing such content. Of course, new members might not be experienced enough to discern good-quality content from bad, in which case our more seasoned members should give feedback. But some new members are in it purely to get a rise and to troll, and in which case forum rules should make it an offense punishable by banning.
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
WebMaster said:
All great ideas and good discussion everyone.

One of the things we did at DefenceTalk forum from very start (2003) was to not tolerate:
  1. One liners
  2. posts without sources
  3. article posts WITHOUT user's own comments/view
And we've done that consistently over the years. I think we tried parts of that here as well but unfortunately, it did not catch on.
Click to expand...

I think all of those things are okay in certain situations, the problem is when they're made inappropriately.

One liners can be useful and provide useful information, but if they're made in an off topic way without being constructive or if they're personal and petty then they're undesirable.

Posts without sources is unfortunately a given for PLA watching where we don't have obvious traditional sources for other military forces. Similarly, posts with sources are not always useful either because there are people who can't recognize a good source from a bad source and will defend their choice of source to the hilt despite everyone else recognizing it is rubbish.

Some article and news events might be big enough or straight forward enough that simply copying and pasting it is enough to convey its information, but there are also innumerable poor quality articles and news events which are simply irrelevant -- or worse, designed to provoke a response -- and those sort of articles do not serve any purpose especially if it lacks commentary.



That's why I think a reassessment of some of the forum's rules may be beneficial, as well as a recognition that if those rules want to be properly enforced then there should be more open acceptance that moderators will have to use their own judgement and discretion for what is "desirable" versus "useless" and appropriate ladders of punishment devised and understood by all.
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Mr T said:
That makes sense to me. I had no idea the moderators felt somewhat restrained in dealing with low quality material, but if that's the case then giving them more discretion in a good idea.
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I can only speak for myself, but I prefer to avoid throwing my weight around too much unless it is an obvious barn door infarction.

Especially if it is for some politically and/or emotionally exhaustive topics that people are debating about.



But for many other posts there are a lot of just frankly "stupid" and non-constructive posts which don't add anything to the flagship threads and where active discouragement of those sort of posts may be beneficial.
To achieve that however will need the community to accept that the moderators will be more empowered to make judgement calls on their own in terms of what is deemed low quality, and there will likely inevitably be accusations of bias and/or preference etc despite best efforts. I've tried to tread lightly specifically because of those concerns.
 
Webmaster

Webmaster

The Troll Hunter
Staff member
Administrator
Bltizo said:
I think all of those things are okay in certain situations, the problem is when they're made inappropriately.

One liners can be useful and provide useful information, but if they're made in an off topic way without being constructive or if they're personal and petty then they're undesirable.

Posts without sources is unfortunately a given for PLA watching where we don't have obvious traditional sources for other military forces. Similarly, posts with sources are not always useful either because there are people who can't recognize a good source from a bad source and will defend their choice of source to the hilt despite everyone else recognizing it is rubbish.

Some article and news events might be big enough or straight forward enough that simply copying and pasting it is enough to convey its information, but there are also innumerable poor quality articles and news events which are simply irrelevant -- or worse, designed to provoke a response -- and those sort of articles do not serve any purpose especially if it lacks commentary.



That's why I think a reassessment of some of the forum's rules may be beneficial, as well as a recognition that if those rules want to be properly enforced then there should be more open acceptance that moderators will have to use their own judgement and discretion for what is "desirable" versus "useless" and appropriate ladders of punishment devised and understood by all.
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If you introduce an "if" into an issue you are trying to resolve then it just boils down to the person who is posting vs who is reviewing/moderating. So to make things simple, IMO, it is best to avoid and stick to not having one liners.
A source doesn't have to be a link but it can be offline source as well.

I think review and reassessment and simplification of the rules may be in order here (might consider importing rules from DT, why reinvent the wheel?). Also, we need to add additional moderators, as not having enough people around to police the forum can impact it negatively as well. So, who is up for it? ;o)
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
WebMaster said:
If you introduce an "if" into an issue you are trying to resolve then it just boils down to the person who is posting vs who is reviewing/moderating. So to make things simple, IMO, it is best to avoid and stick to not having one liners.
A source doesn't have to be a link but it can be offline source as well.

I think review and reassessment and simplification of the rules may be in order here (might consider importing rules from DT, why reinvent the wheel?). Also, we need to add additional moderators, as not having enough people around to police the forum can impact it negatively as well. So, who is up for it? ;o)
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I'm not sure -- because while I think the current rules are imperfect, I also don't think that forcing in black and white rules is ideal either, in fact that might result in a situation which is even worse than what we currently have.

Fundamentally IMO it's a question of trust. That is to say, there needs to be a degree of trust in the judgement of the moderators in terms of what is considered to be "low quality" or not.


I would also say that what's needed is not "more moderators" simply but having a moderator team that is trusted to prosecute the mission properly and empowered to do so.


In the first post of this thread I described 3-4 key issues which I've identified as problematic. I think if there is a way to give moderators the ability to judge posts which fit into those categories and issue graduated warnings (a 3 strike or 5 strike system) to various members, I think that might be more beneficial than simply forcing in black/white rules and recruiting more moderators.



SDF IMO requires a very different wheel to DT. The way in which PLA watching is done, and the norms of what is considered credible, and I would daresay the overarching goals of military watching here vs DT is also quite different.
 
Mr T

Mr T

Senior Member
I've also noticed a few users posting non-English language sources with only a vague summary of what they say. Are the mods ok with this, or should a) the sources only be in English/ b) have a full translation?
 
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