Would you like 'Preview' to be required in order to post?

[Brandon Martus]

I've seen it suggested in a thread somewhere, and then it was brought to my attention via AIM.

Would the quality of posts increase if everybody had to preview their post before actually posting it? I know I preview any important (non chit-chat) posts I make, so I won't care. I thought I would get general overall thoughts from everybody on this before acting.

So -- vote, comment, etc.



[edit]
One Idea: It could be applied everywhere but Chit-Chat
[/edit]

[Madison]

Meh.

I never preview anything. I take time to write it well the first time around.

If it means that less garbage finds its way onto the site, I could live with it, though.

[Alavinus]

It sounds like a good idea. It will help make sure that people have their thoughts spelled out before posting. Also, is there anyway to integrate the spell-checker with the preview button?

[Gadget470]

I don't think it will really help clear out the garbage.

The people who WANT their stuff to look good preview. The people who don't care will still hit preview, then hit post. I think it's just going to be an extra step for most people and won't solve much of anything. (Besides maybe a typo here and there by someone who cares what they put)

[Jeff_Rice]

I think it is an excellent idea. You should put in a delay, though. Maybe seven seconds before the post button appears. That would get most people to have at least a second look at what they will be posting.

[Madison]

Originally posted by Jeff_Rice
I think it is an excellent idea. You should put in a delay, though. Maybe seven seconds before the post button appears. That would get most people to have at least a second look at what they will be posting.

That would just be tedious beyond imagination.

In my opinion, I've seen the quality of the posting on this site begin to degrade significantly. The People Who Know (tm) have done a good job of keeping it low key, so far, but it's happening. There are many, many new members who lack the benefit of seeing quality discussion as it used to exist.

I do what I can to give them something to look at, and there are others who are trying to do the same. There are equally many who have given up visiting this site altogether from frustration. I'm nearing that myself. For me, personally, to add a delay would frustrate me endlessly and I wouldn't post as much. ...and I'd like to think that, for the most part, I don't post nonsense.

[Jeff Waegelin]

It's too much trouble. I read my posts in the post window before I post it, but I rarely ever preview. The only time I ever preview is when I'm posting an image or link, just to make sure it works. I think that requiring a preview would put too much of an imposition on most members. Anyone interested in causing trouble would post what they want regardless of whether they previewed first.

[Jack]

I don't really think i'd like it. If people are going to post dumb stuff, they still will.

What's happening here at CD happens at any forum as the users begin to grow very fast. In the past, most users on CD were "Internet junkies" and already were involved in other on line forums and thus knew proper forum etiquette. Also, when a person did make a stupid post, because there were less total posts, it was very easy to catch and moderate.

There is really no easy solution to this. You can make all the announcements you want. You can have a rules page which someone must look at for five minutes before being able to post, but people will still ignore it.

I'd say look at other forms and see how they handle the problems. My example would be the biggest forms I use, www.phpbb.com/phpBB Coming in at a little under .5 million posts, and close to 52,000 users, it's pretty big. Of course, there are tons of "bad" posts. The way they solve this problem is by having somewhere around 20 moderators. (who have wayyyy too much time on their hands )

I guess another idea would be to have a slow progression in which forums you can post in based on your post count. But... the obvious problem here is spamming, therefore it wouldn't work.

Another thing I'm going to do, and suggest that other veteran CD'ers do to do... is when a person makes a bad post, is not to reply yelling at them. (Trust me, i've been guilty of this) Instead, I'm just going to hit the 'Report this post to a moderator' button. This way, the stupid threads will just fall to the bottom of the list, while the good ones rise with replies.

Finally, a last note of advice. I personally know that I just don't make posts that have anything to do with God, Politics, etc... Yes, I know we all should be able to handle something like that, but i've never seen a single thread that dealt with those topics that stayed alive. So just bite your tongue and save it for somewhere else.

Ok... I've rambled for long enough,

Jack

[Elgin Clock]

Brandon, was this my question that you are trying to answer??

The only thing I had said is to have spell check as a default, but if you can intergrate that into the preview then it get's my vote!

[jon]

I think you should just hurry up and implement karma. It seems to keep most of the nonsense comments tucked away in all the other places that use it... so why not CD? And if people don't like it, there could be an option to turn it off.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by jon
I think you should just hurry up and implement karma. It seems to keep most of the nonsense comments tucked away in all the other places that use it... so why not CD? And if people don't like it, there could be an option to turn it off.

I was hoping VB3 would come out near their predicted release time. It has a karma system built in, so I was holding off.

If they don't have VB3 ready by next season, I may install a karma hack this summer. We'll see.

[evulish]

I think it's a bad idea. People shouldn't be forced to write a certain way. If they want to write like they're using SMS, let them. If people really want to clean up their post, they'll hit spell-check or preview themselves. I really don't see this as that big of a problem. If you have that hard of a time reading it, PM me the message and I'll translate it for you. I admit, some posts are hard to read...but if it's taking too much time, just skip it. Don't force people to improve their writing skills. It will be an obnoxious extra step that will accomplish nothing. I know if it does happen, I'm not going to go back and re-read what I wrote.

The Internet is about freedom...not forcing people to do things a certain way.

(And for the people talking about bad grammar (not in this thread), there were grammar mistakes in their posts (and there's probably a whole bunch in this post ))

[Hailfire]

Well, what's the point of previewing the message when you can always go back and edit it? That's what I always do whenever I find a mistake or if I'm not satisfied with what I posted.

[Ian W.]

If I see a post written like an SMS message, it's not that bad. sure, it's annoying to read, but i'll deal with it. my major problem is posts where every other word is mispelled. for that reason, i think that instead of previewing, spellchecking, should be required before a post is accepted. that just seems to make the most sense to me.

as for grammatical mistakes, well, no stopping those. have people try to write better, but it's never perfect.

[jon]

Usually though, with spelling mistakes, you know what they mean. Besides, if they don't want to take the time to spell correctly, you don't have to take the time to read/respond.

This isn't just a CD problem though. It happens everywhere on the Internet. And the fact that CD is mostly high school students doesn't help. Yes, CD is becoming infested with trolls. Just remember, DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

Oh, Brandon... from what I read, VB3 won't be out until around September.

P.S. - phpBB is better.