- x Foman123 x
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- Master Forum Ninja
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A problem -- perhaps the BIGGEST problem -- is that new members see the flames and get the wrong impression.
New members join up here because they are excited about Halo 3. It is rare that a new member's first few posts are "bad posts," even if they are old news or simply excited gushing about Halo 3. Unfortunately, when they stick around and read a few threads, they see the flamers and spammers and think to themselves, "Gosh, those guys are funny."
Links to youfail sites and "so-and-so just got own'd" sites are admittedly amusing the first one or two times you see them. So are original insults (which, after being here awhile, you realize usually turn out not to be so original). Moreover, when everyone piles on, it often becomes a competition to see who can be the most insulting or obnoxious. New members see this behavior and, unsurprisingly, begin to emulate it.
Sadly, a lot of the time, these new users never see the consequences of flaming until it happens to them. A user who responds in a thread with a flame or spam and is subsequently banned suddenly disappears from the thread as if they never existed. Unless a new user is constantly refreshing the same thread, they do not know how, what, or why this happened.
Enforcement of the rules is necessarily inconsistent, however, depending on the number and nature of the moderators online. Thus flames and spam are still frequently visible on the forum. This leads to a snowball effect as more users join up every day and find themselves amused and thinking that this is the culture of the Halo 3 forum.
Of course, it's very easy to point out problems with something, and much harder to point out a solution that works. So rather than be one of those who merely complains without proposing a solution, I will propose a very simple solution, just for starters.
Currently, a blacklisted user's entire post disappears from the forum as if they had never posted, unless they were the thread creator. If they are the thread creator, the following message appears instead of his or her original post: "Moderator Notice: This user has been blacklisted from this forum. Until the user is removed from the blacklist, all posts this user has made have been hidden, and all topics created by this user have been censored."
Why not have a similar message for ALL blacklisted posts rather than hiding them from the forum? This would alert other users that punishments are being doled out, rather than hiding them from the forum as if bungie.net is embarrassed to have punished a bad post.
Admittedly, this is a simplistic solution, but could be made more comprehensive. Users would know that certain posts are not tolerated if moderators had a simple "drop down" menu on their unleash ninjas menu that allowed them to choose from a simple list for the reason for the warning or blacklisting --
-Spam
-Excessive Flaming
-Illegal link
-Violation of Terms of Use
-Violation of Code of Conduct
-Other
The "other" would encompass things like impersonation of moderators, use of the "n" word, racist or political discussion, quote pyramids, and so on.
Instead of the replier's post disappearing from the forum like it never happened, a member viewing the thread would see the user's name and avatar (same as a blacklisted thread creator) and the following message: "Moderator Notice: This user has been blacklisted from this forum for [Spam, Excessive Flaming, lllegal Link, etc.]. Until the user is removed from the blacklist, all posts this user has made have been hidden, and all topics created by this user have been censored.
Anyway, this has become yet another long Foman post, so I will stop now. But it was just a thought I had.... there IS too much flaming and spam on this forum, and I think that it is encouraged by the fact that it is already so prevalent (a self-feeding effect) and the fact that punishments are invisible and thus have no deterrent value.
[Edited on 07.30.2007 9:01 AM PDT]