Making CD a More Constructive Place

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Outside of tracking and banning IP addresses there really is nothing that can be done.

Are you sure? You don't believe that moderators have any standards by which they judge posts?

Well, I might as well jump in with my own opinion.

My main concern is for the balance between too much and too little censorship. It is important that we allow others to bring up problems that need to be solved, even if they come from a minority opinion. However, it is very easy for discussions about these issues to digress into emotional rants. A fine line seems to exist between adressing a problem in a constructive manner, and addressing a problem in a destructive manner. We don't want ChiefDelphi to become a homogenous group of people who have the same opinion about everything. A diversity of opinions is necessary for progress.

I think that moderators should weigh posts against two very important standards when deciding whether or not to delete a post or close a thread.

1) Does the post ask the community to provide legitamate solutions to a problem?

An example of a post which does not ask the community to solve a problem is one which may complain about a bad call by a ref, the fact that their team did not get picked for finals, the fact that other teams have more resources than they do, etc. The purpose of this type of complaint is to get people riled up and angry along with them, not to try to come up with a constructive solution. This kind of complaint serves no purpose except to express and release anger.


2) Is the post presented maturely and accurately? Does the post use REAL events and circumstances to show that there is, in fact, an actual problem that needs to be solved?

A post which is not presented factually and maturely is one which uses speculative remarks which are unjustifiable by actual events. If the poster does not address a problem which actually exists, it is impossible for the community to provide them with a solution to the problem. The only thing a post like this accomplishes is by hurting the accused and causing people to be very angry about the statements that the poster made.

I also felt that Evan (Nuttyman54) made a very interesting suggestion in this post. Perhaps this relates more with the way we all personally treat negative posters, but I do believe that a ton of negative rep bars should only be given to a person who constantly, consistently writes numerous destructive posts. For those of you who didn't click on the link:

1) Allow a maximum of 5 or 10 negative reps PER POST. This will get the point across well enough, but ensures that it is not too damaging. It also means that "instigators" (those who make multiple offending posts) can still be penalized heavily, hopefully notifying them that their conduct is unacceptable. Also, if someone receives the maximum negative reps for a post, they should be notified similar Billfred's suggestion in this thread


2) If someone has recieved more than a specified number (like 30 or 40) negative reps in the past 24 hours, their account is temporarily suspended (eg. for the next 24 hours). This makes it so that they have time to "cool off", and could possibly mitigate some of the "hot" threads we see. Multiple temporary bans could be grounds for a longer term ban and/or account deletion. Because of the way the current rep system works, it should be fairly hard to abuse this (it would require a lot of offended peple to cause a temporary ban).

Think about it. Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea? What else might you do?

-- Jaine