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Subject: A solution to the useless repeat threads on The Flood

<3 Forky

Posted by: RighteousTyrant
Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
Posted by: RighteousTyrant
I think you'd get an "Overkill" medal, because that's what that solution is IMO, overkill.

And for the record, you're right. I wasn't surprised to see another "black armor" thread, but the audacity of the OP was a bit stunning.

*Walks outside, opens box, pulls out Overkill medal*

I already have one.

On Topic: Have you noticed that theres a topic in the Halo 3 forum with around 9000 replies that's just utterly spam? That's whats so bad about it.

One of the "rate the person above you's trophy shot/stats/armor/whatever" threads? Or something else?

Yeah. Theres one that has 10,000 replies on it.

  • 03.21.2008 10:32 AM PDT

Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos

"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."

Except that the file forums are BROKEN right now. "Popularity" is being determined by how many times people post. How many replies you can post to a thread about a screenshot should have no bearing on its popularity.

Indeed, as I said before, you're not even supposed to be finding content via the file forum index pages. You're supposed to be going from indidivual file items that you find via other means and then talking about them. The topic index is just an artifiact from using the forums to provide comment functionality to the files.

The problem is that there aren't many good ways of locating files. So, everybody just uses the topic index, and then abused the fact that they can inflate their file's popularity by bumping it and getting their buddies or alt accounts to bump it.

Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
Yeah, if it were put the way Achronos has suggested, then the Files Forum wouldn't work correctly. I, being someone who enjoys taking screenshots, would hate to have it organized by most popular because my screenshots, not to mention practically everyone else's, would not be seen.

  • 03.21.2008 11:32 AM PDT

Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos

"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."

Being a difficult problem doesn't make it irreparable. It just means you have to be more creative to solve it.

Think of it this way - solving said problem would impact many thousands of people and improve the community immeasurably. Can you afford not to solve it?

Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
As I've said before, there's not much we can do about the Halo 3 forum. It's to the point where it's almost irreparable.

  • 03.21.2008 11:35 AM PDT

Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos

"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."

That's called "fixing the symptom, not the actual problem, thus eventually making everything worse."

You focus so much on the threads themselves, but you're not dealing with the actual problems. The threads aren't the problem. The people aren't even the problem. It is one of volume. Things seem like spam that really aren't - they just show up so much because people can't keep track of everything and just give up and post their own version of something that has been discussed a billion times.

That means any real solution has to deal with the problem of volume. Ideally, you make your disadvantage the solution. In this case, we have to take the volume of people and posts and make it a positive thing rather than a negative. Easier said than done, but that's the only way to succeed.

Besides, big challenges make life interesting.

Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
I have an incredibly drastic idea to fix the Halo 3 forum. What if the Halo 3 forum was purged of all of it's topics except for the ones that are stickied? Some people might learn a lesson, but we'd get all the topics that would say "Bungie sucks they deleted all the topics." At least purging the Halo 3 forum would help for a slight while.

  • 03.21.2008 11:44 AM PDT

<3 Forky

Posted by: Achronos
Being a difficult problem doesn't make it irreparable. It just means you have to be more creative to solve it.

Think of it this way - solving said problem would impact many thousands of people and improve the community immeasurably. Can you afford not to solve it?
Ah, I see. So we need to get creative about solving the problem, instead of complaining about it. Perhaps we could sub-divide the Halo 3 Forum into smaller forums for certain things, instead of just having one jumbled mess. I'll have to elaborate on this more until I can think of a really good idea, though.
Posted by: Achronos
That's called "fixing the symptom, not the actual problem, thus eventually making everything worse."

You focus so much on the threads themselves, but you're not dealing with the actual problems. The threads aren't the problem. The people aren't even the problem. It is one of volume. Things seem like spam that really aren't - they just show up so much because people can't keep track of everything and just give up and post their own version of something that has been discussed a billion times.

That means any real solution has to deal with the problem of volume. Ideally, you make your disadvantage the solution. In this case, we have to take the volume of people and posts and make it a positive thing rather than a negative. Easier said than done, but that's the only way to succeed.

Besides, big challenges make life interesting.
Well, your idea to hide posts seems like a good idea, so I'm guessing that's one of the ways you mean by "taking the volume of people and posts and making it a positive thing rather than a negative". So my solution to solve this, again, is to divide the forums into smaller sub-forums. I can't think of anything better than that, unless the moderators want to make stickies for topics. I think I'm still not dealing with the problem of volume though.
Posted by: Achronos
Except that the file forums are BROKEN right now. "Popularity" is being determined by how many times people post. How many replies you can post to a thread about a screenshot should have no bearing on its popularity.

Indeed, as I said before, you're not even supposed to be finding content via the file forum index pages. You're supposed to be going from indidivual file items that you find via other means and then talking about them. The topic index is just an artifiact from using the forums to provide comment functionality to the files.

The problem is that there aren't many good ways of locating files. So, everybody just uses the topic index, and then abused the fact that they can inflate their file's popularity by bumping it and getting their buddies or alt accounts to bump it.
I can't think of a good way to solve this problem. The only thing I can think of is to have three sub-forums for each Files Forum. One of these sub-forums would be sorted by new topics, another by most downloads, and another by most recently replied to. It would be time-consuming, but it could help a little bit.

[Edited on 03.21.2008 11:57 AM PDT]

  • 03.21.2008 11:45 AM PDT
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Posted by: Achronos
."

You focus so much on the threads themselves, but you're not dealing with the actual problems. The threads aren't the problem. The people aren't even the problem. It is one of volume. Things seem like spam that really aren't - they just show up so much because people can't keep track of everything and just give up and post their own version of something that has been discussed a billion times.


"Prevention is better then a solution" a phrase I totally agree with even if Achronos didn't actually say it I think that is what he is getting at.

Perhaps a system whereby X number of reports on the OP "hide" the thread until a mod reads it and then decides to lock or unhide. Once it is unhidden it will return to the top of the forum (to get over the fact it will have had no posts for a while). Also the thread's "report count" or whatever it is supposed to be called is reset to 0 and the only reports that are counted are for posts after the thread was originally hidden.

That way if the OP and therefore the thread itself is totally useless it is fairly reported and hidden before then being locked. If the thread is maliciously reported the Mod can unhide it then reporting the OP has no effect (though still let people report the OP, just make it essentially useless so if people are doing it out of spite for some reason they don't resort to reporting posts that DO count) and if the OP is fine but then the thread gets spammed by people after being unhidden then the mod can then re-look at the thread and decide to then lock it if its needed.

Even though I do feel that considering the amount of users Bnet does have an amazingly small amount of moderators, just adding more moderators doesn't prevent the problem from occurring. It'd be like saying "How do we solve more crimes?" "I know! Hire more policemen!". It works to a point but doesn't actually stop the problems from occurring.

  • 03.21.2008 12:47 PM PDT

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Posted by: RichBlake88
Even though I do feel that considering the amount of users Bnet does have an amazingly small amount of moderators, just adding more moderators doesn't prevent the problem from occurring. It'd be like saying "How do we solve more crimes?" "I know! Hire more policemen!". It works to a point but doesn't actually stop the problems from occurring.
That's an excellent analogy. The new moderators have helped a little bit but it hasn't actually solved the core of the problem.

  • 03.21.2008 1:20 PM PDT

Trailer Park Boys ~ One of the best Canadian made comedies ever.

How about changing the File Forums so instead of deciding the topic ranking on the number of replies, it’s changed to the “number of views" or possibly the "number of downloads?"

Potentially, it could remove the amount of abuse caused by ALTs and friends replying to one’s thread to bump it. But the thing is, it could still be exploited by clicking the thread or downloading it an “x” number of times to increase your ranking. How about each account counts as one view/download per IP address?

Just throwing out an idea.

Posted by: Achronos
The problem is that there aren't many good ways of locating files. So, everybody just uses the topic index, and then abused the fact that they can inflate their file's popularity by bumping it and getting their buddies or alt accounts to bump it.

  • 03.21.2008 2:02 PM PDT

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Posted by: ReZeNeR
How about changing the File Forums so instead of deciding the topic ranking on the number of replies, it’s changed to the “number of views" or possibly the "number of downloads?"

Potentially, it could remove the amount of abuse caused by ALTs and friends replying to one’s thread to bump it. But the thing is, it could still be exploited by clicking the thread or downloading it an “x” number of times to increase your ranking. How about each account counts as one view/download per IP address?

Just throwing out an idea.
I'm not sure if that would work. Things from Bungie Favorites would always be at the top of the forum.

  • 03.21.2008 4:06 PM PDT
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Posted by: Yoozel
I've got it! Let's just get rid of the Flood. No worries about hiding posts, etc... etc..!
why would you want them to remove that? Sure some parts of the flood are like a giant cesspool. but I cant stand only talking about halo3 or bungie related topics. I would like to discuss something different once in a while. Like computer hardware, favorite stuff .etc. I cant go in the septagon discussing that. nor the halo3 forum. So were am I to turn to when I want to talk about something random? The Flood.

But for some reason I always see people complaining about repetitive topics and what not or annoying threads that they want so bad locked. Basically they make threads complaining about other threads. I don't even notice them. But to solve the problem all together. You simply just don't reply. Let the thread die. ignore it, and if the topic creator keeps trying to make it stay alive. he is already violating the rules by double posting or bumping. That I believe is were the report buttion can be used as a tool.

It is also becoming very rare for me to reply in one of these threads. so you won't find me in here very often anymore. But the thing i got mixed up with the other day is when a thread gets locked that you don't know about. Meaning you got to the thread by other sources with out noticing it was locked. For some reason since I thought the reply button was in that spot of which it isn't displayed when a thread is locked. So I guess what happened was that i accidentally hit the report button with out noticing. Then a bar popped up and i thought it was some error withing my os (of course i wasn't paying attention so i accidentally clicked ok thinking it would get rid of this bar and I accidentally reported by mistake.

Probably one of the strangest mess ups I have ever done.

-=[Ep!Dem!c]=-

[Edited on 03.21.2008 5:27 PM PDT]

  • 03.21.2008 5:26 PM PDT

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Posted by: EpiDemic 1
Posted by: Yoozel
I've got it! Let's just get rid of the Flood. No worries about hiding posts, etc... etc..!
why would you want them to remove that? Sure some parts of the flood are like a giant cesspool. but I cant stand only talking about halo3 or bungie related topics. I would like to discuss something different once in a while. Like computer hardware, favorite stuff .etc. I cant go in the septagon discussing that. nor the halo3 forum. So were am I to turn to when I want to talk about something random? The Flood.

But for some reason I always see people complaining about repetitive topics and what not or annoying threads that they want so bad locked. Basically they make threads complaining about other threads. I don't even notice them. But to solve the problem all together. You simply just don't reply. Let the thread die. ignore it, and if the topic creator keeps trying to make it stay alive. he is already violating the rules by double posting or bumping. That I believe is were the report buttion can be used as a tool.

It is also becoming very rare for me to reply in one of these threads. so you won't find me in here very often anymore. But the thing i got mixed up with the other day is when a thread gets locked that you don't know about. Meaning you got to the thread by other sources with out noticing it was locked. For some reason since I thought the reply button was in that spot of which it isn't displayed when a thread is locked. So I guess what happened was that i accidentally hit the report button with out noticing. Then a bar popped up and i thought it was some error withing my os (of course i wasn't paying attention so i accidentally clicked ok thinking it would get rid of this bar and I accidentally reported by mistake.

Probably one of the strangest mess ups I have ever done.

-=[Ep!Dem!c]=-
Just the other day I saw a thread that said "Things I don't like in forums". It was almost immediately locked. Ten seconds later I see a thread that said something like "Good job mods", which was created by the same person, but in this thread he was angry that his other thread was locked. It was pointless, and there was so much irony involved with what he was saying.

  • 03.22.2008 7:40 AM PDT
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Posted by: Achronos
The threads aren't the problem. The people aren't even the problem. It is one of volume. Things seem like spam that really aren't - they just show up so much because people can't keep track of everything and just give up and post their own version of something that has been discussed a billion times.

A pretty drastic idea, but what about taking away thread posting abilities and just having set threads for certain topics.
e.g. A DLC thread
A general map discussion thread
A Recon thread
etc...

That way people can see the thread relevant to what they want to talk about, and go post it there...
Unfortunately there is probably about 100,000 too many people to successfully do this...
(I don't think this would ever work, I'm just throwing the idea out there)

[Edited on 03.22.2008 7:55 AM PDT]

  • 03.22.2008 7:49 AM PDT
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Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
Just the other day I saw a thread that said "Things I don't like in forums". It was almost immediately locked. Ten seconds later I see a thread that said something like "Good job mods", which was created by the same person, but in this thread he was angry that his other thread was locked. It was pointless, and there was so much irony involved with what he was saying.
I think that guy should really go on myspace. P.S I hate myspace lol. but you always find people in their with a lot of drama and issues. Sort of like some of those annoying little teenage girls :)

  • 03.22.2008 8:19 AM PDT

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Posted by: EpiDemic 1
Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
Just the other day I saw a thread that said "Things I don't like in forums". It was almost immediately locked. Ten seconds later I see a thread that said something like "Good job mods", which was created by the same person, but in this thread he was angry that his other thread was locked. It was pointless, and there was so much irony involved with what he was saying.
I think that guy should really go on myspace. P.S I hate myspace lol. but you always find people in their with a lot of drama and issues. Sort of like some of those annoying little teenage girls :)
I have a myspace, but I just use it to annoy or yell at people. Anyways, I'm hoping Achronos will come by soon and reply to my answers to the three replies he posted earlier.

  • 03.22.2008 11:37 AM PDT
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I don't really see "massive" problems like everybody here comments on. Basically, IMO I think the forums are fine. Perfection + Internet = impossible. The only way to create a perfect forum is to take away the "Create new post" and "reply" buttons, that is the only way to 100% reduce spam.

However, I think the "hide" post button would be cool. However, I think number of votes is a bad idea. More popular threads would get more so they would get hidden. A percentage vote would be a better idea. I'm not sure how you could stop people from creating alt accounts and "spam reporting" threads they didn't like ~ that would be a major problem. IMO a feature where the user can "hide" threads they don't like a "hide" posts by certain users (that might be harder), but if you can't see the spam, why should you care?

And did Achronos just "triple post" *shifty eyes* who are you and what have you done with the real Achronos!

[Edited on 03.22.2008 11:57 AM PDT]

  • 03.22.2008 11:52 AM PDT

Dating Age

For those looking to vent, get proper advice, or give it to those in need.

In my opinion one thing that may help slow down the number of spam threads is to put the pinned topics back at the top of the forum. Now I don't think all of the pinned threads should but anything pertaining to the rules of that forum should.

  • 03.22.2008 3:17 PM PDT

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Posted by: xfire grunt
And did Achronos just "triple post" *shifty eyes* who are you and what have you done with the real Achronos!
Achronos is like God. Well, God with yellow text.

  • 03.22.2008 8:05 PM PDT
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The flood is once again out of control and nothing we can do about it atm.

Already reported too many ppl.

  • 03.22.2008 8:12 PM PDT
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Posted by: GoW I Lord Hood
Posted by: xfire grunt
And did Achronos just "triple post" *shifty eyes* who are you and what have you done with the real Achronos!
Achronos is like God. Well, God with yellow text.
no God is up their *points up* Hi god!

[Edited on 03.22.2008 8:41 PM PDT]

  • 03.22.2008 8:40 PM PDT

Come check out the The Christian Halo Union. Whether you’re looking for fellowship, intelligent discussion, positive gamers, or maybe you just want to have fun, you'll find it with us. With over 650 members and counting, we're the most active Christian group on Bungie.net.

Achronos is Achronos. He does what he does.

As for the subject matter, I don't think there's much hope. Much like Achronos, spammers do what spammers do. Having more moderators isn't going to change this. In my personal opinion, we need more specific explanations as to what is—and is not—spam.

To further this point, a few days ago I was warned for replying to spam, and lost my member status because of it. The topic I posted in was a harmless "Forum Game." I had no idea forum games were considered spam. Maybe this is because I don't frequent public forums. More likely, it's because there's nothing in the Flood's forum rules that explains what the moderators consider spam. The current explanation goes no further than "do not post or reply to spam."

Aside from that, we need a search feature that actually works. What we have now just doesn't cut it. The average member—albeit the impatient one—isn't going to wade through five pages of results to see if his discussion is stale.

[Edited on 03.22.2008 9:30 PM PDT]

  • 03.22.2008 9:06 PM PDT

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