Discipline around low effort posts or poorly sourced posts

Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
Software changes, which would facilitate as automated infraction and repercussion system as possible, would be the best. Where most of the work is done by forum users (reporting posts) and the software (doing a lot of the "clicking") with moderators just... moderating those user reports and sifting through them, before relaying them to the automated infraction/warning process.

Of course, that probably requires a new forum software. Which should not be something dismissed as unattainable but a true goal.

Another thing - just deleting offtopic posts isn't productive. If post has SOME value, but is merely in the wrong thread - then it should not be deleted but relocated. Again, automated software could help quite a bit there, to a point where a moderator could just click once "move to predetermined military/economy/politics discussion thread", leaving an automated message in the original thread that the post has been moved, with the link involved. Such forum software exists, it's a matter of money and willpower to make the switch. (that does not mean the poster should not get some warning/infraction as well)
 

Jiang ZeminFanboy

Senior Member
Registered 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?
Sources valuable for sinodefence are ~99% in Chinese. It's English sources and articles that take info from sinodefence forum, not the other way around.

Posting a vague summary should be enough if the user doesn't speak Chinese but is using the translator. Should also ask a Chinese speaking audience at sdf for later translation.
 

vesicles

Colonel
It is easier when you try to ban simple things like profanities or something similar. When you try to separate political posts in flagship weapons threads, I'm not sure it's possible.

Military is a political tool. You cannot eliminate politics from military discussions. Every part of a weapon, from designing it to using it, involves politics. Design specifics and philosophy of a weapon system are entirely determined by politics. What is your strategic and tactical geopolitical goals? What kind of weapons can help you achieve such goals? Once you are clear of these goals, you can figure out what you want. Engineers can then start designing a system to satisfy your goals. Who gets the contracts? Where do you get the funding? Why should an air force project get the priority over a navy project? Strategic reasons. In other words, politics. Who allocates the materials and various resources? The government. Again, politics. Who organizes the whole industry? The government. Again, politics. How should a mature system be used? Politics determine that.

It is ok to keep a thread entirely technical from an engineering perspective. As soon as you want to get deeper and try to figure out why and how, you will undoubtedly touch politics. Especially with the Chinese weapons, so much stuff must be speculated. That would require a whole lot of politics. I'm not sure it is realistic and physically doable to separate politics from military topics.

I do agree that many times, politics go too far, and becomes distractive in these flagship threads. That's why we have these highly respected moderators to monitor the threads. Every once in a while, moderators must step in and cool things off. It's the same as referees in a sports game. You can set as many rules as you want, you still need referees to physically intervene and tell the athletes to stand down. Also like in a sports game, you actually allow certain level of grey area. You cannot completely clean it out. I think what we have now is good. I know it's messy at times, just like everything else in the world. Also like everything else in the world, constant moderation is required. And we have it with this forum. So I am actually happy with what we have now.
 

by78

General
You cannot eliminate politics from military discussions.

No, but you can most certainly minimize it.

Every part of a weapon, from designing it to using it, involves politics. Design specifics and philosophy of a weapon system are entirely determined by politics. What is your strategic and tactical geopolitical goals? What kind of weapons can help you achieve such goals? Once you are clear of these goals, you can figure out what you want. Engineers can then start designing a system to satisfy your goals. Who gets the contracts? Where do you get the funding? Why should an air force project get the priority over a navy project? Strategic reasons. In other words, politics. Who allocates the materials and various resources? The government. Again, politics. Who organizes the whole industry? The government. Again, politics. How should a mature system be used? Politics determine that.

It is ok to keep a thread entirely technical from an engineering perspective. As soon as you want to get deeper and try to figure out why and how, you will undoubtedly touch politics. Especially with the Chinese weapons, so much stuff must be speculated. That would require a whole lot of politics. I'm not sure it is realistic and physically doable to separate politics from military topics.

I think you are confusing politics and geopolitics with military strategy and tactics that lie behind the technical aspects of weapon systems, the understanding of which is not helped by emotionally charged discussions on politics and geopolitics. One can discuss the pros and cons of a weapon system, how its range, lethality, on-station time, persistence, accuracy, and other parameters without explicitly denouncing Taiwanese independence or coach it in terms of a naval and air war in the western Pacific between China and the West.

I think what we have now is good. I know it's messy at times, just like everything else in the world. Also like everything else in the world, constant moderation is required. And we have it with this forum. So I am actually happy with what we have now.

What we had before, from even a year ago, was far better. The reason for this very discussion is the alarming and continuing decline in quality of our flagship forums. I completely agree that policing the forums is a never ending endeavor, but surely something has to be done to arrest the precipitous decline. As they say, good enough is the enemy of great. I think we can have great, and it's not unreasonable to expect great, because we had great not that long ago.

At this point, I'm frankly of the opinion that penalty guidelines should be made far more stringent. Bans need to be handed out left, right, and center in order to right the ship. Banning offenders for months at a time has proven effective. It just needs to be done more. I think it will make a huge difference over the current slap-on-the-wrist approach. Fortunately, the number of egregious offenders remains small, but the bad news is that their continued existence is having a wider effect on the tenor and quality of the forum. I think we are witnessing the
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in real life. The solution would be to ban the offenders outright, but first the guidelines and rules must be tightened.
 
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Rachmaninov

Junior Member
Registered Member
Just my two cents - I used to remember seeing “report post” buttons in other forums. It enlists the help of fellow forumers to raise potentially problematic posts to moderators’ attention - essentially you’re crowdsourcing policing. Then we can have a Twitter-style thing that hides all such posts (deemed to be detrimental to the flagship threads by moderators) by default, but any forumer can still choose to see it by clicking a “show post” button. By minimising exposure to such posts we might attract less equally-unproductive responses, thereby nipping it in the bud (broken-window theory). In virus terms we lower the R value.

But of course this might require some software changes and I’m not so sure how this can be achieved.
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
Just my two cents - I used to remember seeing “report post” buttons in other forums. It enlists the help of fellow forumers to raise potentially problematic posts to moderators’ attention - essentially you’re crowdsourcing policing. Then we can have a Twitter-style thing that hides all such posts (deemed to be detrimental to the flagship threads by moderators) by default, but any forumer can still choose to see it by clicking a “show post” button. By minimising exposure to such posts we might attract less equally-unproductive responses, thereby nipping it in the bud (broken-window theory). In virus terms we lower the R value.

But of course this might require some software changes and I’m not so sure how this can be achieved.
There is a report button, it's just only available to senior members.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
When I was silently banned earlier in the year, I was literally locked-out. When I go to this site, a warning showed up that said I was banned for a week. I was logged-in but could not log out and locked-in to one page I couldn't get out of. I don't know how some others get banned but they seem to be able to create new accounts when they're banned. For me no functions on this site worked. Is it because of VPNs? I have no idea how those work. It seems to me most of the problems are because of these repeat offenders. They've been lurking around long enough to know which subjects are most argued and never ends swaying anyone and is why they try to bring them up later to start it all over again. When Deino was banning members with multiple accounts, he was posting for a time their IP addresses. I was checking out where they were from. Most of them seem to be coming from Texas. Is it only the last numbers of an IP address someone can change because the first numbers were mostly all the same? So it makes me think is it one guy changing his address all the time whatever how way or there are a lot of trolls from Texas. Pardon those outstanding members in here that we know of who live in Texas.
 
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ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
So it makes me think is it one guy changing his address all the time whatever how way or there are a lot of trolls from Texas.
I've noticed this as well. A lot of new members who post low-quality content or engage in political discussions in flagship forums seem to come from Texas.
In a completely unrelated coincidence, guess where tidalwave lives...
 
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ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
As a solution to the quality problem in flagship threads, I'd like to propose that posting rights in those threads be restricted to a few members who have both established credibility on these topics and access to primary sources (to be clear, I wouldn't include myself among those members). Those threads would be more announcement threads than they are discussion threads.

There could be general discussion threads in other subforums that discuss the topics of the flagship threads, so the lower quality discussion could go on there rather than in the flagship threads themselves.
 
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