Min Post Count limit for GenOT+Politics

[Slant]

So, as has been suggested before, how about that 100 post count limit? What was the official response to it? I don't remember, or was it "We're looking into it"?

Edit: You would save yourself so much work with it. You know it. And bans may actually be a threat to the offenders for a change, supercharging your already present mod tools!

[Skroe]

So, as has been suggested before, how about that 100 post count limit? What was the official response to it? I don't remember, or was it "We're looking into it"?

Edit: You would save yourself so much work with it. You know it. And bans may actually be a threat to the offenders for a change, supercharging your already present mod tools!

This has been suggested many, many times. The powers that be are evidently completely against doing it. We've never gotten anything within a metric light year of a good explanation.

Rather large internet forums have been around for what.... 25 years by this point? Most of the techniques in proper management of malicious actors in them were figured out over 10 years ago. Things like minimum post-counts, waiting periods, reply-only accounts, or requiring verified accounts for certain areas, or shutting down entire sections. MMO-OT implements basically none of them, evidently wanting to go through the evolution of forums on the internet in a linear order. It's made no sense to practically anyone why the powers that be don't "implement the strat they read online", in WoW parlance.

The requirement of a minimum post count for OT is one of the most mindbloggling. The powers that be act like forum bots or automated spammers on the issue. When confronted they invariably bring this up. This is nothing more than chaff to get the missile off their rear end, and frankly, it's extremely patronizing to even hear it. The problem isn't forum bots or automated spammers. It's forum trolls, banned or unbanned, using burner accounts to stir up trouble.

This wasn't a problem a few years ago. It's gotten real bad, particularly in the last year, because the people doing it have suffered no repercussions. The lack of a minimum post-count is another. Another, easy one, that I had access to when I was a forum mod elsewhere (NASA Spaceflight) is the ability to look at an IP and see all the accounts that have posted from that IP. The rather lame excuse given here is that "oh they'll just use a proxy server". Perhaps, but not often. People are too lazy and too cheap.

If this forum had a 100 post minimum, and every time a burner account was banned, it was policy to look up the burner account's IP and match that to any other registered accounts (and ban the IP too), and do a one-strike perm ban policy for burners, this forum would be cleaned up and I think go back to the better place it was a few years ago.

But hell, I'm frankly not sure how committed the powers that be really are to cleaning up this place. The last time I even brought it up and reminded a mod of their commitment to fight burners and bait threads, I got a 10 point infraction that won't expire until next year. Imagine that. A "Major Trolling infraction" for wanting this place to actually not be a troll cave and be a decent place again. And then of course there is the issue that mods of the mods assigned to OT and Politics, if you look at their post history, almost never participate in the forum at all, or in the types of threads that are problematic (meaning how can they understand the "context", to use a supermod's words).

I think this place would be much improved if we actually got an indication about the direction the powers that be want to go. If they want OT to be a free for all, where there are few rules other than not posting porn and not making death threats, and moderation is extremely light, they should say so. The problem is right now, frankly on their end - an ongoing series of mixed signals. Occasional severe moderation, but an utter unwillingness to attack the root of the problem.


All I can say is at this point, if I was an actual malicious forum poster, like the people making the burner accounts that make a 100 post requirement a desirable feature, I would never stop doing it, because all I've seen, putting myself in such a person's shoes, is a whack-a-mole approach that never actually leads to consequences. If I were to on a burner, start a thread about something that is designed to start problems rather than trigger meaningful discussion, if that thread goes 3 or 4 pages and gets people riled up, then I would have accomplished my trollish-task and who cares if the burner got banned. I'd just do it again tomorrow. The way most forums consider it that do deal with this sort of thing, any discussion in a thread started on less-than-good-faith grounds isn't a legitimate or viable discussion to allow to continue.

The reactive approach is clearly discredited and has not meaningfully reduced the problem. But it's what TPTB want to stick to. It's too bad, because this place used to be rather thoughtful. Now? It's a minefield.

I'll take my infraction for actually giving a shit about our little community now, if you don't mind.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

Psst, they like trolls. It gets them more add hits, as does the people who reply to them. That's why no one ever gets a permanent ban.

It's also why I use four different types of ad blocking software.

[XDurionX]

This will only generate 100 useless posts in other threads, and make everything way worse. Burner accounts are really annoying, but there is no good solution.

[Skroe]

This will only generate 100 useless posts in other threads, and make everything way worse. Burner accounts are really annoying, but there is no good solution.

There really is.

This is not the first forum to be created on the internet. As I said, the "strat" is known. They just need to do it rather than act like they are pioneering something here.

[Tziva]

We don't have a way to set posting requirements on a per-forum basis. Doing that would require custom development time, and chaud has a lot of things on his plate right now. He is a one man show for all that stuff, so it's just a matter of whether he would have time to make custom modifications.

The rest of the suggestions we see people make are for things we already o and have been doing for a very long time but unsurprisingly this is 2018 and motivated people know their way around various standard barriers and there is only so much we can do to keep up.

And since this thread is just complaining about moderation now, I am closing.