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So if you really want to get to know me, you're welcome to add me anywhere.

Yeah, and I believe that Foman explicitly states in the OP that he doesn't have any idea how the frameworking works, and that he wasn't even sure whether it was possible or not.

I also know nothing about webcode, but how hard could it be? There's a static post throttle that everyone gets, and the Soul would control all the add-ons from there..

I hope it's as easy as something like that.

  • 08.01.2007 10:38 PM PDT
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Posted by: Recon Number 54
Posted by: DarkKnight38
Posted by: Recon Number 54
Stop me if I am wrong, but isn't this all dependent on whether the "post throttle" (I find the term "spam filter" to be misleading) is dynamic and able to set a varying "time between posts" to individual member accounts, based on a value given by the trust system (of which we know so little)?

Has anyone crossed the first hurdle of determining that the post throttle is capable of assigning such time limits to specific user accounts and that it can be controlled by a feed from another system?


I don't think anyone who's posted so far has the answer to that one.

Ah. I hate to say it, but perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves then.

Planning feature sets and parameters when it's not even certain that the framework will allow it is a great mental exercise, but can turn into frustration if/when it turns out that "you can't get there from here".


Well it would also be frustrating realizing the system is flawed after putting in time and effort to get the technical aspect to work.

  • 08.01.2007 10:39 PM PDT
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Posted by: DEATHPIMP72
Anyone but Foman. He smells like cheese.

Posted by: Recon Number 54
Posted by: DarkKnight38
Posted by: Recon Number 54
Stop me if I am wrong, but isn't this all dependent on whether the "post throttle" (I find the term "spam filter" to be misleading) is dynamic and able to set a varying "time between posts" to individual member accounts, based on a value given by the trust system (of which we know so little)?

Has anyone crossed the first hurdle of determining that the post throttle is capable of assigning such time limits to specific user accounts and that it can be controlled by a feed from another system?


I don't think anyone who's posted so far has the answer to that one.

Ah. I hate to say it, but perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves then.

Planning feature sets and parameters when it's not even certain that the framework will allow it is a great mental exercise, but can turn into frustration if/when it turns out that "you can't get there from here".
Yes, that's all true, unfortunately.

But as the first half of the original post implies, the idea about the "post throttle" (lol) was really intended to function as both a potential idea (but perhaps impossible, as noted) and some brain food to jump-start us all start thinking of ways to turn around the culture of the Halo 3 Forum from mindless spamming and flaming to somewhat more intelligent and well-thought-out discussion. Such thoughts and ideas are, in my opinion, a more useful exercise than thinking of newer and more creative ways to punish bad behavior after it has already happened :-)

[Edited on 08.01.2007 10:45 PM PDT]

  • 08.01.2007 10:44 PM PDT
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I have my qualms about this system.

Please, Foman, clearly define what causes you to "lose trust." If you've already done it, spread over the course of 5 or 6 posts, I really don't care- progressive posts are subject to contradict or override older ones. I want a clear picture of what, specifically, would cause you to lose trust, as you have decided upon at this time.

In general, I have problems with any moderator-based trust system: the ninjas are far from infallible. Let's take Adreniline's thread, for example. The actual flaming was limited to people who clearly didn't understand the nature of the thread. There were a few heated arguments, with attitude problems on both sides of the argument. No, not all of the supporters or Adreniline were nice, thoughtful, and completely in the right. But anyways, most of those arguments had slowed down or finished. There was maybe 1 or two flame posts in the last 2 pages of the thread, again from people who clearly did not understand the nature of that thread. There was no reason for that thread to be locked- had said ninja actually looked at timestamps, or spent 2-3 minutes following the most recent conversations, he would have realized that the actual flaming was at a minimum, around the time of the thread being locked.

Unless flaming is now applied to posts with irritated undertones? If that thread was locked for flaming for that reason, the debate between you and elmicker should have gotten this thread locked. Either way, "flaming" is clearly subjective. So if getting logged as "flaming" could hurt your trust points, different people would receive different consequences for their actions, and the same people would receive different consequences for the same actions at different times depending on which moderator saw their posts. Not at all conducive to a consistent system of punishment/reward. Any system subject to human input is therefore inherently flawed.

In addition, how much penalty to your posting time would 1 warning or 1 blacklisting cause? How hard would it be to rebuild your trust rating?

The big problem with this system, as I see it, are the huge number of variables that would have to be tweaked just right for it to work. If any of those fails, it could spell trouble for the community. In theory, the system could work. The thing is, everything looks much better on paper.

[Edited on 08.01.2007 11:40 PM PDT]

  • 08.01.2007 11:07 PM PDT
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Posted by: DEATHPIMP72
Anyone but Foman. He smells like cheese.

Posted by: Avisan
I have my qualms about this system.

Please, Foman, clearly define what causes you to "lose trust." If you've already done it, spread over the course of 5 or 6 posts, I really don't care- progressive posts are subject to contradict or override older ones. I want a clear picture of what, specifically, would cause you to lose trust, as you have decided upon at this time.

In general, I have problems with any moderator-based trust system: the ninjas are far from infallible. Let's take Adreniline's thread, for example. The actual flaming was limited to people who clearly didn't understand the nature of the thread. There were a few heated arguments, with attitude problems on both sides of the argument. No, not all of the supporters or Adreniline were nice, thoughtful, and completely in the right. But anyways, most of those arguments had slowed down or finished. There was maybe 1 or two flame posts in the last 2 pages of the thread, again from people who clearly did not understand the nature of that thread. There was no reason for that thread to be locked- had said ninja actually looked at timestamps, or spent 2-3 minutes following the most recent conversations, he would have realized that the actual flaming was at a minimum.

Unless flaming is now applied to posts with irritated undertones? If that thread was locked for flaming, the debate between you and elmicker should have gotten this thread locked. Either way, "flaming" is clearly subjective. So if getting logged as "flaming" could hurt your trust points, different people would receive different consequences for their actions, and the same people would receive different consequences for the same actions at different times depending on which moderator saw their posts. Not at all conducive to a consistent system of punishment/reward. Any system subject to human input is therefore inherently flawed.

In addition, how much penalty to your posting time would 1 warning or 1 blacklisting cause? How hard would it be to rebuild your trust rating?

The big problem with this system, as I see it, are the huge number of variables that would have to be tweaked just right for it to work. If any of those fails, it could spell trouble for the community. In theory, the system could work. The thing is, everything looks much better on paper.

Avisan,
The "variable spam filter/post throttle" idea was never about my subjective view of what should or should not cause a user to "lose trust." In that sense, I relied solely upon inferences and a few statements by Achronos about the latent trust rating system embedded in Bungie.net. I am sure that this system is being tweaked and evaluated to be as fair as possible, but it is not my place or intention to define what can or should cause a trust rating to go up or down. If the Bungie web team determines that certain actions should cause a user to gain or lose trust, then, well, it's their site and they get to have that privilege.

Perhaps this fact is why you were unable to find any concrete opinion from me on how a trust rating goes up or down. The spam-filter idea assumes that the trust rating system has been or will be adjusted to whatever the administrators and owners of this site believe it should be. And because they are entitled to that right, I do not pass upon the merits of the trust rating system itself.

As to Adreniline's MLG thread, the stated reason for its lock was because it had gone far off-topic into a realm that is prohibited discussion on these forums -- namely, an MLG/Anti-MLG discussion. Yes, many of the posts, including yours, mine, Adreniline's, and many others, were on-topic and relevant. But that thread, filled with blam filtering, several spam posts, and general-but-biting insults directed at entire groups of people, was a far cry from the 4-post debate on the previous page of this thread that had a few accusations of hypocrisy and straw-man arguments, all related to the original topic of this thread.

At any rate, yes, "flaming" and "spamming" are subjective judgment calls made by the moderators. But that is a necessary element of moderating any forum. Once again, if Bungie.net's web team sees fit to include the subjective judgment calls of its own chosen moderators in the latent trust rating system, that is most certainly Bungie.net's call to make -- not ours.

As such, I can't really answer your questions about how far a trust rating goes up or down based upon certain actions. That's up to the web team.

But I don't think that this system or the Community are quite as fragile as you make them out to be. I completely admit that, while this idea looks good on paper, it IS difficult to predict its practical effects. But that uncertainty goes both ways -- while we can't say with 100% certainty that this idea would be great for the Halo 3 Forum and community in general, neither can we say that any variable, not tweaked just right, would spell trouble for them.

Who knows? I guess we'll just have to test it out to be sure! Just kidding ;-)

[Edited on 08.02.2007 12:04 AM PDT]

  • 08.02.2007 12:03 AM PDT
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The End

‘The conscious is cancerous if allowed to linger’

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

I really respect everyones input here and I'd like to see a evaluated version of Foman's idea put into practice in the near future because I think it would be both beneficial and a good way of reducing the ammount of Spam from users frequently convicted. Now I would also like to say one more thing, do you guys have to use 9999 characters for every post? I am fed up of having to read about 2 pages every time I post here. Some of it is repatition too, o well I support this idea and don't know how you guys write so much lol!

~TOM T 117

  • 08.02.2007 12:23 AM PDT
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Hmmmm.

You're almost certainly right about the lock reasons, but this would be the source of my original thinking for the reasons for lock:
I've only seen a few other three letter abbreviations cause such stress and disagreement in people.

Amazing.

Though technically, the link you provided only gives precedence for blacklisting pro-MLG/anti-MLG flamers. Anyways.

Operating word in my community concerns were could, not would. My intention was to point out that for a system such as this it would be wiser to err on the side of caution.

My questions were directed to you because this idea is your brainchild. As such, I would like to hear your ideas on it, for this system (trust rating effecting your posting delay) is neither being used at the moment nor being officially endorsed at the moment. Because this is the case, there are no administrator's for me to question. You are currently the one charged with dispelling the fears of the commonfolk such as myself : )

Which is, of course, why I asked you what you had decided. As you are the proposer of this idea, I figured you would be the best person to question on the specifics at this time. If it gets picked up by administrators, I'll of course be asking them for the specifics instead of you. I think my current state of tiredness resulted in poor wording: by saying things along the lines of "what causes," I meant "what would cause," and so on and so forth.

In general I'm pretty sold on the idea. There are a few aspects that might put me off to it, which is why I was asking you for clarification.

[Edited on 08.02.2007 12:41 AM PDT]

  • 08.02.2007 12:35 AM PDT
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Posted by: DEATHPIMP72
Anyone but Foman. He smells like cheese.

Posted by: Avisan
Hmmmm.

You're almost certainly right about the lock reasons, but this would be the source of my original thinking for the reasons for lock:
I've only seen a few other three letter abbreviations cause such stress and disagreement in people.

Amazing.

Though technically, the link you provided only gives precedence for blacklisting pro-MLG/anti-MLG flamers. Anyways.

Operating word in my community concerns were could, not would. My intention was to point out that for a system such as this it would be wiser to err on the side of caution.

My questions were directed to you because this idea is your brainchild. As such, I would like to hear your ideas on it, for this system (trust rating effecting your posting delay) is neither being used at the moment nor being officially endorsed at the moment. Because this is the case, there are no administrator's for me to question. You are currently the one charged with dispelling the fears of the commonfolk such as myself : )

Which is, of course, why I asked you what you had decided. As you are the proposer of this idea, I figured you would be the best person to question on the specifics at this time. If it gets picked up by administrators, I'll of course be asking them for the specifics instead of you. I think my current state of tiredness resulted in poor wording: by saying things along the lines of "what causes," I meant "what would cause," and so on and so forth.

In general I'm pretty sold on the idea. There are a few aspects that might put me off to it, which is why I was asking you for clarification.
Haha, okay cool, I understand.

Unfortunately, back when the trust system was first announced in the Spring of 2007, Recon and a few others posted about us all exercising a self-imposed rule of refusing to try to opine or guess about the inner workings of the trust-rating system, so as to avoid the temptation or possibility of us or others attempting to "game the system." I posted my agreement to that concept in that thread and I still believe that it is a good one. So I can't really comment on how I think the trust rating system works other than to say that blacklistings and official Disembodied Soul warnings are taken into account as two of many factors (as confirmed by Achronos several months ago), and that the web team has decided what factors are most important to it in its administration of its own site. Beyond those perfectly reasonable and somewhat self-evident concepts, I refuse to guess at how the system does or should work :-)

I can comment, however, on my opinion of the appropriate time penalties for losing trust ratings. I speak, as I must, in very general terms, and incorporate comments posted throughout this thread by myself and others. This is my current opinion, swayed by others' good arguments:

* New users and users with average-to-excellent trust ratings would have an anti-spam filter/post throttle of 30 seconds, with no changes from the current system. (I'm still not entirely convinced that new users should not be restricted until they raise their trust ratings, but so many people seem to dislike the idea of restricting new users that I am willing to concede this notion)

* Users with below-average trust ratings, depending on the rating, would have an anti-spam filter/post throttle ranging from 1 minute to 6 minutes in one-minute increments, depending on the range of trust rating in which they fall. And because (at least under my outline of this plan) the maximum time and particular times specific to certain users would all be kept generally secret by the web team, they could feel free to tweak or play with these ranges at their leisure to find the right level. Maybe they could start out small and then expand the maximum time if merited.

* My own opinion for a happy medium is something along these lines: one warning would likely not affect your posting time at all, but perhaps 3 warnings over a certain period of time would -- maybe 3 warnings within the space of any 20-day period or so. A blacklisting would drop your trust rating by one or more increments depending on the severity of the blacklisting. Again, multiple blacklistings within certain spaces of time would cause incrementally larger increases in your time-between-posts. But never to the point where any non-blacklisted user -- even if he or she is the most untrusted spamming, flaming, alt-accounting scum of the forum -- must wait more than 6 minutes between posts (again, the exact numbers could be tweaked).

* Ideally, it should be relatively simple and painless to get your trust rating back up to where it used to be. Hopefully it would be dependent on multiple factors, centering largely on simply going for a certain period of time without violating any rules or acting inappropriately. According to my agreement above, I won't really speculate any further than this on how to raise the trust rating, except to say that I think it should be attainable within a reasonable time frame for any user who commits himself or herself to being a "good" member.

Hope that helps, man.

  • 08.02.2007 1:29 AM PDT

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The main issue I have with this is that it is basically a plan to remove responsibility from the poster, whether spammer or not. Sure, it's probably an easy thing to change the time limit between postings, but this opens up a hole in the forum logic, where the spammer is no longer responsible for making terrible offerings, because the site should have checked and balanced his actions. there is also the problem of various post types from non spammers, for instance, the threads of Interest and whatnot, which are usually started by making 4 or 5 empty posts, and editing the details in later.

It's really late and I'm a little groggy, so I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd rather punish the single culprit than punish a whole forum in an attempt to thwart the culprits' possible attempt.

  • 08.02.2007 1:47 AM PDT
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Posted by: GameJunkieJim
It's really late and I'm a little groggy, so I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd rather punish the single culprit than punish a whole forum in an attempt to thwart the culprits' possible attempt.

Oh my gosh thank you. This is what I've been telling people. I am worried that many people who have done nothing wrong might be affected by the system.

NOTE: I am tired i just woke up. So I will try to get more in tonight (Today I am going to a water park...yey!)

  • 08.02.2007 4:30 AM PDT
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Posted by: DEATHPIMP72
Anyone but Foman. He smells like cheese.

Posted by: GameJunkieJim
The main issue I have with this is that it is basically a plan to remove responsibility from the poster, whether spammer or not. Sure, it's probably an easy thing to change the time limit between postings, but this opens up a hole in the forum logic, where the spammer is no longer responsible for making terrible offerings, because the site should have checked and balanced his actions. there is also the problem of various post types from non spammers, for instance, the threads of Interest and whatnot, which are usually started by making 4 or 5 empty posts, and editing the details in later.

It's really late and I'm a little groggy, so I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd rather punish the single culprit than punish a whole forum in an attempt to thwart the culprits' possible attempt.
This is precisely why my original idea contained no spam filter for moderators and site administrators -- I was actually thinking directly of the examples of the creation of stickies.

Moreover, most users, provided that their trust rating is high enough, would still be able to create multiple posts for purposes of things like extremely long theories, fan fictions, or otherwise longer-than-10,000-word posts. A person with a low trust rating (i.e., a history of spamming or flaming, or otherwise bad behavior that results in a lower trust rating under the secret "latent trust rating" system) would have to suffer the consequences of his or her behavior by not being able to make multiple quick posts, just like a user who is blacklisted must suffer the consequences of his or her behavior by not being able to post at all.

I do not think that this idea punishes an entire forum; why do you think that it does?


edited for typo

[Edited on 08.02.2007 7:15 AM PDT]

  • 08.02.2007 7:14 AM PDT

Strange evolution how people have come to believe
That we are it's greatest achievement
We're barely, we're just a collection of cells
Overrating themselves

Posted by: x Foman123 x
Posted by: twinkiemaker
Yes, we are all equal. The only forum that is strictly regulated is the Halo 3 forum. It doesnt take a brainiac to figure out why that is. Its not that members are treated differently, its the forums that are treated differently, and rightly so.

No, we are not "all equal" and any such assertion is blatantly wrong. Such a statement is a gross oversimplification of the truth. What you probably (and hopefully, for your sakes) meant to say is that we all have equal rights and equal opportunity on this forum. Not that we "are all equal."

Just like in real life (at least in most places) where people generally (ideally) have equal rights and opportunities, here, everybody has an equal right and equal opportunity to participate in these forums. What a user does with that opportunity is what creates inequality. Users are not treated identically here, nor should they be, nor COULD they be.

I was painting in broad strokes, as referenced by your second paragraph. When we join, we all have equal rights and opportunities. It is our individual actions that define how we're treated. Generally speaking, if you play by the rules, you wont have to worry about anything, but if you, or I, or Elmicker posted a Rick Roll video in the Flood, there would be consequences.

Very broad strokes if you will.

A better question would be what in the hell are you doing up at 4:30 in the AM?

[Edited on 08.02.2007 7:25 AM PDT]

  • 08.02.2007 7:24 AM PDT
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Posted by: DEATHPIMP72
Anyone but Foman. He smells like cheese.

Posted by: twinkiemaker
A better question would be what in the hell are you doing up at 4:30 in the AM?
Two words:

Marathon: Durandal

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  • 08.02.2007 7:38 AM PDT
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IMO, the real way to get people to contribute valuable posts: is to incorporate some sort of ranking system. As far as I have seen, if you incorporate a ranking system every Tom, Dick, and Harry go after it like mad men, MMORPG style. So if there was somehow a ranking system that forced you to create well thought out posts.... that would be a great solution.

Maybe it could be that only people above you in rank can increase your rank? That would be a great idea.

Now everybody will cry "elitism". So why not just make that something you can ban people for? Or really, keep in mind that if somebody is constantly "elitist" then their rank will GO DOWN, because obviously they lose trust rating from people who are not elitist?

And rank would go up for not getting banned, for not getting warned, for making more posts, etc etc.

  • 08.02.2007 8:39 AM PDT

etc etc/glaringly obvious/and so on, and such <=Not redundant!
Posted by: Cr4ne Style
Taxes do nothing to affect the share of wealth, since taxes are only applied to income.

So that's not even a part of the conversation at all, so it's pointless talking about it....

"for a "best" moral to exist, there must exist the "best" moral base. If the base of morality varies from location to location, culture to culture...then there can't be an absolute moral..

i think that this is a bad idea for ten tons of reasons. while i would also like to see more thoughtful posts and fewer inappropriate and inane posts, the system that you have in mind would be logistically impossible to implement and goes against the primary aim of the bnet forums.

for starters, it would be nearly impossible (it is logically possible, but i do not think that we have such computing abilities in the world right now, and i doubt that they will exist in the near future) to construct a program that could assign quantitative values based on qualitative value of posts. simply put, no program would be able to accurately assess how intelligent or dumb a post is. our language (along with all other natural languages) is so rich that no computer program could accurately detect and rate the quality of a collection of statements.

to get anything like the rating system that you have in mind, people would have to read each and every post and assign some sort of value, and this would obviously be problematic in many ways (resource allocation, the subjective nature of the material involved, reviewer bias and preference, and so on).

and, most importantly, a rating system of any kind that affected how often people could post and the order in which posts are displayed would curb our ability to jump online and share thoughts about halo. the forums are fun because any of us can chime in on anything that we see fit. this means that some posts will be of use, some will be entertaining, and many posts will be boring and mindless crud.

as for the trust system stuff that the bungie guys have mentioned, this could be a useful tool for them to moderate the forums. mods can assign demerits when a poster breaks the rules, and when a given poster earns enough negative marks, that poster's new posts could be brought to the attention of the moderators in an attempt to spot inapproriate posts more quickly and to mete out punishment.

  • 08.16.2007 1:37 PM PDT
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I've only read the first page of this thread, and I like the sound of the idea... but when I read the Halo 3 forum (Or the news forum), it seems that a lot of the worthless one-liners come from average, rule-abiding members (accounts I should say). Suppose I visit the Halo 3 forum infrequently at best (like now). I see a post on the new flamethrower or something and throw in my one-liner saying how awesome it will be to toast grunts. That in itself is not such a problem, but if we have hundreds of thousands of people throwing in their one-liners to the Halo 3 forum, I think we have pretty much what there is today: A forum of meaningless crap.

I don't know if there's members who feel obliged to post one-liners in each and every thread they see, but I forsee this as only stopping them (Even then, we would have to punish them for posting crap, even though it's not against the rules). If there's a guy who throws his burger wrapper into the park every day on the way home from work, then we have a problem. If every inhabitant of the city throws their burger wrappers in the park monthly, then we have a new landfill. I don't think the problem is high-volume posters, it's that everybody saves their burger wrapper to throw it into the Halo 3 forum, even if they only do it every once in a while. :/

I think that you would have to have an exceptionally long posting time limit to see an improvement. I think by the sheer number of people, even limited to posting every 5 hours, would still manage to make a mess of the Halo 3 forum.

EDIT: Re-reading my post, I don't think I'm posting very clearly... what I'm saying is, the Halo 3 forum has enough people that it would still be filled with crap, even if people agreed to post once a week in there. Hell, it's daytime and I'm not typing straight.

[Edited on 08.16.2007 2:22 PM PDT]

  • 08.16.2007 2:18 PM PDT
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Posted by: DEATHPIMP72
Anyone but Foman. He smells like cheese.

Posted by: sesquipadelian
i think that this is a bad idea for ten tons of reasons. while i would also like to see more thoughtful posts and fewer inappropriate and inane posts, the system that you have in mind would be logistically impossible to implement and goes against the primary aim of the bnet forums.

for starters, it would be nearly impossible (it is logically possible, but i do not think that we have such computing abilities in the world right now, and i doubt that they will exist in the near future) to construct a program that could assign quantitative values based on qualitative value of posts. simply put, no program would be able to accurately assess how intelligent or dumb a post is. our language (along with all other natural languages) is so rich that no computer program could accurately detect and rate the quality of a collection of statements.

to get anything like the rating system that you have in mind, people would have to read each and every post and assign some sort of value, and this would obviously be problematic in many ways (resource allocation, the subjective nature of the material involved, reviewer bias and preference, and so on).

and, most importantly, a rating system of any kind that affected how often people could post and the order in which posts are displayed would curb our ability to jump online and share thoughts about halo. the forums are fun because any of us can chime in on anything that we see fit. this means that some posts will be of use, some will be entertaining, and many posts will be boring and mindless crud.

as for the trust system stuff that the bungie guys have mentioned, this could be a useful tool for them to moderate the forums. mods can assign demerits when a poster breaks the rules, and when a given poster earns enough negative marks, that poster's new posts could be brought to the attention of the moderators in an attempt to spot inapproriate posts more quickly and to mete out punishment.

Sesquip, I do not mean to give your post short shrift, but it seems as though you did not read the first post or any subsequent posts at all. This is not about designing a new trust system. This is about putting the current trust system to use.

As such, this makes your entire post moot. Sorry.
.
Pyrobellum, you raise good points. I think that there are indeed a hell of a lot of people throwing burger wrappers, but some of them throw more than others. And some throw a LOT more. But thinking about your analogy, what if you told everybody that they could only have a burger every few weeks if they were caught littering? Even if they didn't think they wanted a burger more often than that, they would be less inclined to litter so that if they DID want two burgers in one day, they could do so.

  • 08.16.2007 3:23 PM PDT

etc etc/glaringly obvious/and so on, and such <=Not redundant!
Posted by: Cr4ne Style
Taxes do nothing to affect the share of wealth, since taxes are only applied to income.

So that's not even a part of the conversation at all, so it's pointless talking about it....

"for a "best" moral to exist, there must exist the "best" moral base. If the base of morality varies from location to location, culture to culture...then there can't be an absolute moral..

Posted by: x Foman123 x
Sesquip, I do not mean to give your post short shrift, but it seems as though you did not read the first post or any subsequent posts at all. This is not about designing a new trust system. This is about putting the current trust system to use.

As such, this makes your entire post moot. Sorry.


fair enough. i only looked at the start of your post and bungie employee posts provided in links. i will read your enitre post and respond to your specific plan.

  • 08.16.2007 3:45 PM PDT

etc etc/glaringly obvious/and so on, and such <=Not redundant!
Posted by: Cr4ne Style
Taxes do nothing to affect the share of wealth, since taxes are only applied to income.

So that's not even a part of the conversation at all, so it's pointless talking about it....

"for a "best" moral to exist, there must exist the "best" moral base. If the base of morality varies from location to location, culture to culture...then there can't be an absolute moral..

Posted by: x Foman123 x
I have devised the following idea.

An Idea: Variable Spam Filters
As we all know already, Achronos has a subcutaneous, stealthy "trust ratings" system working on this site right now.

As we also already know, the Bungie.net spam filter prevents you from posting more than once within a certain amount of time, somewhere between 30 seconds and one minute.

Well why not combine those two concepts into a much more severe system that would encourage longer, better thought out posts? I introduce the Bungie.net Trust Rating-Dependent Variable Spam Filter.

New users who start out with some certain trust rating (we don't know whether it is a comparably "low" trust rating or whether it is comparably "average") are restricted by the Variable Spam Filter to posting say, once every 6 or 8 minutes (sample somewhat arbitrarily chosen for discussion purposes). As their trust rating goes up, their Spam Filter timer goes down. Develop a high enough trust rating, and your spam filter might go down to 10 or 20 seconds. Moderators and site admin, of course, would have no spam filter at all (0 seconds).

Receive a warning or blacklisting from a moderator, and your trust rating goes down. Inversely, your spam filter increases. Log in on an alternate account and your trust ratings on both accounts go down (hopefully). For "untrusted" users, their spam filter goes up to 25 or 30 minutes -- even when not on the blacklist.


i have read your post and here are my thoughts: my points in my first post apply to your idea and your idea would do little if anything to increase the quality of posts in all of the threads.

the trust system COULD NOT accurately assign points to users based on the quality of posts. all that it would do is make it harder for people who make inappropriate posts (those that break the forum rules and are worthy of punishment) to make quite as many posts as they do now. no program would be able to detect all of the posts that break forum rules, and mods would still have to get involved. if your plan were in place, all that it would do is add the wait time for offenders to post, but they could still post quite often, and they could surely add to the clutter in the threads quite efficiently. let's suppose that a bigtime jerkball was suspended and flagged for being a bad poster, and your design was in place. well, then they could only make some number of posts a day, but they could still post loads and loads of times per day, and they could still make countless posts that are devoid of thought or value. they might not be able to pound out 10 rotten posts in one hour, but they could still make 10 crappy posts in any given day.

also, you seem to presuppose that adding the amount of time between making posts will cause posters to add more thought to their posts, but there is no reason at all to suppose that this would be the case. if a person could only post after waiting 10 minutes, there is no reason to think that he would spend that time crafting a well-conceived post. instead, it just means that whatever he wanted to post really fast will now require a wait.

in any case, your idea will do nothing to solve the problem that you have with the forums. given the flexibility and freedom of the bnet forums (we can make countless posts and do so with virtually no delay or mediation), the best that i can imagine that we can hope for is something along the lines of what i suggested. but, that system would do nothing to increase the quality of posts in the forums, it would just make it easier for mods to find and punish people who make posts that vreak the rules.

EDIT: here are specific benefits that you suppose would result from your plan:
Posted by: x Foman123 x
Benefits
1) Such a system would have immediate effects on the quality of posts in the forums.
2) By restricting posts to only once every few (or several) minutes for new or "bad" users, they would be both encouraged and forced to put some time and thought into their posts.
3) I hypothesize a distinct decrease in one-liner insults, flames, "youfail" links, and sarcastic comments.
4) Users most likely to post such garbage in the Halo 3 Forum are the very users who would be losing the most (wasting one of their few available posts) by posting them. This may be painful for them, but it will force-feed them the culture of good posts.
5) As for "trusted" users, they have earned the right to post frequently as well as to post the occasional one-liner in exchange for their observation of the forum rules and conventions of contribution to good discussion. And clearly, they are much less likely to abuse the spam filter. If they do spam, they get a warning or blacklisting and suddenly find their allowed response time increased.


none of these will result from implementing your plan.
1) no it would not. as i have made clear, your idea will not be able to qualitatively assess posts, so the trust system wil not be directly tied to the quality of posts made by a given users. all that it would do is make it so that rule breakers could not post constantly. but, since they could still post many times a day, they could still fill the threads with crud.

2) no, this simply does not follow. all that it would mean is that users must wait to make additional posts. it does not mean that users would spend that time putting thought and effort into constructing posts. a person could make a post with an inane comment, step away from the computer, pick his nose for 10 minutes, make another inane post, return to nose picking, make another inane post, and so on.

3) no, this would only be true of people who make posts every few minutes all of the time. people who make this kind of post could still make the exact same kind of post, they would just be forced to wait a few minutes between new posts.

4) no, this is also false. we have no evidence to support your claim that there is correlation between how frequently a person posts and the quality of his posts. some jerkballs may make only one post a day but only make dumb posts, some jerkballs may make 10 posts a day and always make dumb posts, and some jerkballs may make 50 posts a say and only make dumb posts. all three of these kinds of dumb posters would be able to continue to make as many dumb posts under your system as they would without it, so your plan is not efficacious.

5) trusted users under your plan would not necessarily be persons making thoughtful posts, they would merely be people who did not break forum rules that would ding their trust ratings. again, the primary reason that your system cannot work is that you cannot construct an accurate system to assign value to posts. a person could earn a high trust rating yet never make a clever or insightful post, he would simply have played by the rules.

and, here is a quote from achronos from another thread that is consistent with my claims:
Posted by: Achronos
You're right - an automated system cannot make value judgements about the content of posts... but it can use information about an account to determine a different thing: trust. It is entirely possible for the system to make an educated guess as to how "trusted" you are. By this, I mean it can look at the sum of your history here and decide "hey, this guy is a troublemaker" or "hey this guy gets warned every once in a while, but is otherwise okay" or "this guy is squeaky clean".

Remember, the purpose would be to try and make sure that someone can't escape their past, even if they create a new account. The tricky part is to make sure it is newbie friendly - that real new users aren't screwed by protections against spammers. However, I have an idea about that, but I'll keep that to myself for now.




[Edited on 08.16.2007 4:16 PM PDT]

  • 08.16.2007 3:57 PM PDT
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Talk to the Soul | ~B.B. | Know Your Duardo |  | Hero | ISFJ | 77135 | 94371

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."

I can understand how this would help make more quality posts, however, I do not think it would work. Most forum members are here, not to make quality posts, but to simply discuss Halo and Bungie's other games. Sure, there are some members here that are here for Bungie, and to discuss Bungie projects, but most are not. Most members do not care whether or not they post one word or five paragraphs. To them, it doesn't matter. They just want to discuss what they're here for, and leave it at that.

Sure, most members have pretty good grammar when it comes to posting, and there are some members who go above and beyond good by posting with more intellect. This sometimes draws other members away, saying something along the lines of "I didnt read ur entire post, but I disagree with you," simply because they read the title of the post, saw too much text, or the wording was beyond their comprehension.

Quality posts from time to time are a good thing for the community, almost like a breath of fresh air. However, punishing people simply because they didn't reply to a post by the system's standards isn't a good thing for the community, and it will most likely draw more people away rather than bringing new members in.

Perhaps making a group to discuss in a more intelligent manner would be a better solution.

  • 08.17.2007 2:57 PM PDT

I'm not that active, but never dead.

In this topic, I feel like I'm back in 2004, discussing what's going to happen when Halo 2 comes out, and what the effect it's going to be on the forums. Back then we had so few spammers there was only two mods, and then 4.

This discussion on discussions is at the level or around the level I wouldl like to see in all corners of B.net, except perhaps the Flood. I ask to myself, what happened/has happened to bring this topic to that level of discussion? I have no answers because I need to sleep it it s 3:20 and I need to get up at 7:10, goodnight.

-Alex

  • 08.17.2007 11:23 PM PDT

I am a Floodian

I have not read every post, and honestly, don't intend to. My Brain would asplode. I think that there was something you left out of the original post that needed to be addressed, or could be the cause of the problems Bungie.net is currently experiencing: The influx of new members, and the exit of older regulars.

I have not read every post, and honestly, don't intend to. My Brain would asplode. I think that there was something you left out of the original post that needed to be addressed, or could be the cause of the problems Bungie.net is currently experiencing: The influx of new members, and the exit of older regulars.

Regulars are leaving from the groups I am in, and the public forums. This has three, primary, effects.
A) New members are given a larger voice because regulars can't constantly rain on their parade: This has a negative and positive results.
The positive - The new members are given a larger voice to add to the community
The negative - The new members are given a larger voice to detriment the community

B) More regulars leave, as it becomes a domino effect. This gives more new members room to talk, but it also gives regulars a higher status because there are less of them. Thus it leads to more elitism

C) Groups falter: When regulars leave, who are often group leaders, or perhaps even creates, it can't destroy groups. A system which is just now barely coming back to the prevalence it once was. It's like we are chopping at it legs, and eventually it may topple.

Now, I like many new members. However, many of them walk in and expect to be loved instantly, or that they will be given some role of power relatively quickly. Their posts then become arrogant, following a trend of regulars. In response regulars flame them. Now, it is not their posts that are the problem in many cases, but their threads.

Copies of threads are made over and over. Examples in The Flood would be: Who's hotter?, Have you gotten the 3 red lights, PS Triple vs Xbox 360, Halo vs. Something or other, etc. Those are just spam threads. There are worse threads, threads like "I will cast a shadow over Bungie.net" which was a one liner thread that simply stated how the OP was the ruler of The Flood.

Anyway, to sum it up. Right now this plan, though it is well planned, will not work because the new members will not allow it to. Not yet anyway. When the new members begin to get a feel for how things work at Bungie.net, and the regulars begin to feel more comfortable with the new members, it can be implemented.

  • 08.18.2007 9:21 AM PDT
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Totally incorrect squirrel dude. We are equal. Nobody has more "voice" than anybody else. Just because old members are gone doesn't mean new members have more say. Every member has their own opinion on a subject. It doesn't matter how old a member is. Every member is right and wrong.

There is no "Higher Status" between members. Every member is equally important in the success of this community. If you have a problem with a newer member you help them to adjust to our forum setting. You will give them the experience they need to move on in the community.

Groups are fine the way they are. A group moderater isn't about how old a member they are. It's about leadership skills and understanding of the rules. I have seen newer members make awsome groups, and older ones make terrible groups. It's a question of responsebility and if you can handle it or not.

New members are always coming in. I can see thousands of new members popping by with the launch of Halo 3. So get used to it. This community is far from dying.

[Edited on 08.18.2007 10:18 AM PDT]

  • 08.18.2007 10:13 AM PDT
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Talk to the Soul | ~B.B. | Know Your Duardo |  | Hero | ISFJ | 77135 | 94371

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."

Posted by: odmichael
Totally incorrect squirrel dude. We are equal. Nobody has more "voice" than anybody else. Just because old members are gone doesn't mean new members have more say. Every member has their own opinion on a subject. It doesn't matter how old a member is. Every member is right and wrong.

There is no "Higher Status" between members. Every member is equally important in the success of this community. If you have a problem with a newer member you help them to adjust to our forum setting. You will give them the experience they need to move on in the community.

Groups are fine the way they are. A group moderater isn't about how old a member they are. It's about leadership skills and understanding of the rules. I have seen newer members make awsome groups, and older ones make terrible groups. It's a question of responsebility and if you can handle it or not.

New members are always coming in. I can see thousands of new members popping by with the launch of Halo 3. So get used to it. This community is far from dying.

odmichael hit the nail on the head. There is no "higher status" between members. There's no elitism, although people like to think so (Speaking of which, I'm getting tired of seeing this so called "elitism" being the problem with everything. It's getting really old and quite ridiculous).

It doesn't matter whether someone is a Forum Ninja, a Webcam MVP, a Theme Master, or just a regular member. No one is higher than anyone else. Remember the Forum Ninjas are members too. They still like to interact with the community, however, they have more responsibilities because they are more trustworthy and are more experienced.

  • 08.18.2007 11:25 AM PDT