What can we do to Off-topic to make it...something that's not this?

[Noomz]

You know what I'm talking about. What could we do to make off-topic a place you can actually look at without having to filter out all the baits, the latest political tangent stupidity or what have you?

I'd love to have a place where I can go and talk about stuff like science, some happenings in the world, some news and what have you. But most of hte time it's just some bait, a flame-fest or another invasion of You-know-who's. People spew out anything, misinformation is rampant, source criticism doesn't exist, self-reflection is a legend, polite discourse is a miracle.

Should we stop all political discussion? Stop all controversial discussion? I dunno. Some things might be controversial without being targets for stupidity. Though it tends to be the exception...


How do we make people more responsible and accountable, without taking away privacy and personal integrity?
Do the staff have some ideas cooking perhaps? I'm sure you'd all love to not have to put all this time into the off-topic forum for above stated reasons.

[Deleted]

inb4;
Ban the right wing nazi trumpeteers
Ban the left wing libturd SJWs
Close thread

Just like every other thread on the forum

[Shadowferal]

Socio-political topics tend to be the hottest topics, and the most posted. Everyone has their respective opinions, if not entirely respected informed opinions.
Can't really change that without seeing dramatic drop in traffic...and if hardly anyone posts, then those annoying advertisements will probably find another outlet....y'know OP might have an idea.

[Celista]

If you and I know what bait threads are, then moderators can also figure it out. There is also the same 5 people posting inane shit all of the time, or shit that is designed to be inflammatory.

My suggestion is to cap started threads per account in OT to 5 a month (if you want to give people an incentive to buy premium accounts, you could raise or remove this cap with an annual purchase).

[Noomz]

If you and I know what bait threads are, then moderators can also figure it out. There is also the same 5 people posting inane shit all of the time, or shit that is designed to be inflammatory.

My suggestion is to cap started threads per account in OT to 5 a month (if you want to give people an incentive to buy premium accounts, you could raise or remove this cap with an annual purchase).

Hmm, some kind of cap on threads or minimum time between posts might help make people write more thoughtfully and it might give mods more time to react to things.

[Daedius]

Keep all left vs right political crap in the politics section, and infract anyone that derails an OT thread into a left/right thing like many tend to do.

[Noomz]

inb4;
Ban the right wing nazi trumpeteers
Ban the left wing libturd SJWs
Close thread

Just like every other thread on the forum

And here you are, making an "inb4" response. How very ironic.

[Blueobelisk]

I have around 50 people on my MMO-C ignore list, and I usually never see any problem threads.

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Actually I just counted and I have exactly 75 people on my ignore list. Some might be spam bots, but for sure others are people who have made dumb threads or posts.

[Noomz]

I have around 50 people on my MMO-C ignore list, and I usually never see any problem threads.

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Actually I just counted and I have exactly 75 people on my ignore list. Some might be spam bots, but for sure others are people who have made dumb threads or posts.

But many get banned and just make new trash accounts, constantly.

[Travis B]

Nothing will make it perfect, but here are some ideas that would help improve it:

1. Recruit more mods. As far as I can tell, they have added exactly one new mod in the past year. He was active for about 10 days, and hasn't been heard from since. He hasn't logged in in over 2 months. We recently had a blatant bait/troll thread that made it to 30 hours and nearly 20 pages before a mod logged on to finally close it. Note I'm not blaming the current mods at all, they are volunteers and have their own lives, I obviously don't expect them to make this a priority.

What I do expect is for MMOC admins to realize that Gen-OT needs more mods than just a single guy who was active for less than 2 weeks before never logging in again. Maybe take that as a sign that your recruiting process could use some changes? Maybe give promising applicants a trial period with limited moderator abilities to see how well they do before making them a full mod.

2. Use perma-bans more often. There are some posters who are clearly here for the sole purpose of turning the forum into a shitshow, and yet MMOC still thinks they might change and learn their lesson after their 30th ban. Is whatever ad revenue these people generate really worth it?

3. Find some way to finally deal with posters who get banned and then post on burner account after burner account. I don't know exactly how to do this, but one idea is to make it so posters have to reach a certain number of posts or time period before they can make a thread in Gen-OT. Another idea is to shadow ban burner accounts to at least make it a little more frustrating for them.

[Celista]

Nothing will make it perfect, but here are some ideas that would help improve it:

1. Recruit more mods. As far as I can tell, they have added exactly one new mod in the past year. He was active for about 10 days, and hasn't been heard from since. He hasn't logged in in over 2 months. We recently had a blatant bait/troll thread that made it to 30 hours and nearly 20 pages before a mod logged on to finally close it. Note I'm not blaming the current mods at all, they are volunteers and have their own lives, I obviously don't expect them to make this a priority.

What I do expect is for MMOC admins to realize that Gen-OT needs more mods than just a single guy who was active for less than 2 weeks before never logging in again. Maybe take that as a sign that your recruiting process could use some changes? Maybe give promising applicants a trial period with limited moderator abilities to see how well they do before making them a full mod.

2. Use perma-bans more often. There are some posters who are clearly here for the sole purpose of turning the forum into a shitshow, and yet MMOC still thinks they might change and learn their lesson after their 30th ban. Is whatever ad revenue these people generate really worth it?

3. Find some way to finally deal with posters who get banned and then post on burner account after burner account. I don't know exactly how to do this, but one idea is to make it so posters have to reach a certain number of posts or time period before they can make a thread in Gen-OT. Another idea is to shadow ban burner accounts to at least make it a little more frustrating for them.

All good ideas. I have nothing to add here, just wanted to say that each suggestion is a good one. Hope someone reads and considers it.

[Endus]

Nothing will make it perfect, but here are some ideas that would help improve it:

1. Recruit more mods. As far as I can tell, they have added exactly one new mod in the past year. He was active for about 10 days, and hasn't been heard from since. He hasn't logged in in over 2 months. We recently had a blatant bait/troll thread that made it to 30 hours and nearly 20 pages before a mod logged on to finally close it. Note I'm not blaming the current mods at all, they are volunteers and have their own lives, I obviously don't expect them to make this a priority.

What I do expect is for MMOC admins to realize that Gen-OT needs more mods than just a single guy who was active for less than 2 weeks before never logging in again. Maybe take that as a sign that your recruiting process could use some changes? Maybe give promising applicants a trial period with limited moderator abilities to see how well they do before making them a full mod.

Seriously, as an ex-moderator, the problem is lack of applicants. The green mods are well aware there's not enough mods for GenOT. The blues are aware. But they'll process a batch of applicants, and often, we get 0-1 applicants who pass the initial review to make sure they're not obviously terrible posters, and often, that 1 will fail the next round, because green mods generally know where the dirt is.

I was the one Shaman mod for about a year after I quit playing WoW, solely because nobody else applied for that forum in that period, at all. I wanted out. The blues knew I wanted out. There was literally no one else.

If you're not constantly banned and you think you're a decent poster and you want to help the site out, apply. The mod team are good folks.

2. Use perma-bans more often. There are some posters who are clearly here for the sole purpose of turning the forum into a shitshow, and yet MMOC still thinks they might change and learn their lesson after their 30th ban. Is whatever ad revenue these people generate really worth it?

The counter is that a perma-ban convinces them to start making alternate accounts to evade the ban rather than waiting it out, meaning it puts more pressure on staff to catch that ban evading. I tend to agree with you on this, but I'll point out that it's not a cut-and-dry factor.

[Aeula]

Do nothing. Let off topic be what off topic wants.

[Travis B]

Seriously, as an ex-moderator, the problem is lack of applicants. The green mods are well aware there's not enough mods for GenOT. The blues are aware. But they'll process a batch of applicants, and often, we get 0-1 applicants who pass the initial review to make sure they're not obviously terrible posters, and often, that 1 will fail the next round, because green mods generally know where the dirt is.

I was the one Shaman mod for about a year after I quit playing WoW, solely because nobody else applied for that forum in that period, at all. I wanted out. The blues knew I wanted out. There was literally no one else.

If you're not constantly banned and you think you're a decent poster and you want to help the site out, apply. The mod team are good folks.

I can't speak for the shaman forum, but as far as Gen-OT goes recently, I applied a while ago, only to get a rejection notice several months later with no explanation. I've only been banned once in seven years on here. But whatever, I don't take it personally. I just want the forum to have more active moderation, whether that's me or other posters.

I've spoken with a few others on here who also applied around the same time and they got rejected as well. All of the ones I spoke with are rarely, if ever, banned and are in general respectable posters. That includes someone who is pretty much the exact opposite of me politically, but is someone who posts constructively and in good faith.

So people did apply for Gen-OT, but apparently the standards are so high that only one guy passed in an entire year, only to go AWOL 10 days later. My suggestion is to not be quite as picky and give people who might be a decent moderator a chance on a trial basis. If they do well, great. If they don't, then de-mod them. I'm really not sure what the harm is in that. Especially considering the alternative is the complete shitshow that is the current state of Gen-OT and Politics.

[Celista]

I can't speak for the shaman forum, but as far as Gen-OT goes recently, I applied a while ago, only to get a rejection notice several months later with no explanation. I've only been banned once in seven years on here. But whatever, I don't take it personally. I just want the forum to have more active moderation, whether that's me or other posters.

I've spoken with a few others on here who also applied around the same time and they got rejected as well. All of the ones I spoke with are rarely, if ever, banned and are in general respectable posters. That includes someone who is pretty much the exact opposite of me politically, but is someone who posts constructively and in good faith.

So people did apply for Gen-OT, but apparently the standards are so high that only one guy passed in an entire year, only to go AWOL 10 days later. My suggestion is to not be quite as picky and give people who might be a decent moderator a chance on a trial basis. If they do well, great. If they don't, then de-mod them. I'm really not sure what the harm is in that. Especially considering the alternative is the complete shitshow that is the current state of Gen-OT and Politics.

Same, I applied and wasn't chosen. Now, I had only applied because I thought OT was low on mods and my posts are...what they are (how does one rate yourself?), but I do at least try to post constructively.

[Knaar]

@Endus But why not get "shadow" mods instead of having mods that are basicaly required to posts and everything? They could get a few green-level mods that just go around and close the useless/bait/worthless thread w/o having a 10 000 posts counts, couldnt they?

[Endus]

@Endus But why not get "shadow" mods instead of having mods that are basicaly required to posts and everything? They could get a few green-level mods that just go around and close the useless/bait/worthless thread w/o having a 10 000 posts counts, couldnt they?

You don't need a high post count, you need high activity. I can't recall offhand what the numbers are; for GenOT it's higher than for class forums or the like. It's something like 150 posts in the last 3 months; a couple posts a day on average is all it takes.

Mods are also meant to be examples and a visible presence to try and tamp down bad conduct, but the activity requirement is more that a good moderator needs to have some feel for the "flow" of the forum, who posters are, etc. You get way better at that over time, but a baseline is useful.

[Minikin]

Keep all left vs right political crap in the politics section, and infract anyone that derails an OT thread into a left/right thing like many tend to do.

I like this idea. It's fairly annoying to get into a topic only to have it turn into a left vs right shit flinging contest.

[mvaliz]

You know what I'm talking about. What could we do to make off-topic a place you can actually look at without having to filter out all the baits, the latest political tangent stupidity or what have you?.

I can answer that one.

Have the mods actually move any political threads to the "Politics" forums, and infract people in Off-Topic trying to divert things to their political tangent.

The whole point of Politics forums, if I recal, was to allow the great number of political threads that began cropping up in 2016+ to not clutter up General Off-Topic. But, not enough is being done to enforce it.

Sadly, many people from one side (to remain objective) tend to move back to Gen-Off because they're tired of not having their opinion validated or having their opinions being completely discredited, so instead of debating - they move back here hoping to re-create their own little bubble again.

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Keep all left vs right political crap in the politics section, and infract anyone that derails an OT thread into a left/right thing like many tend to do.

In short... this! ;P

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The counter is that a perma-ban convinces them to start making alternate accounts to evade the ban rather than waiting it out, meaning it puts more pressure on staff to catch that ban evading. I tend to agree with you on this, but I'll point out that it's not a cut-and-dry factor.

I don't know about that. There's at least 3 posters I can think of had a specific style about them that eventually got them perma-banned, and they seem to have not returned. Or maybe changed their style on another account? If so, then it's working to a degree. >.>

[Endus]

I don't know about that. There's at least 3 posters I can think of had a specific style about them that eventually got them perma-banned, and they seem to have not returned. Or maybe changed their style on another account? If so, then it's working to a degree. >.>

Not everyone tries to evade. But it happens often enough.