Hi-Jacking threads

Originally Posted by gonzo

The ideal solution would not overburden Jeff with complains.

A board of co- moderators with limited rights could solve the problem easily and is a proven tool on a German motorbike board since ten years.

Regards
Richard

Originally Posted by Jeff

I will do my best in 2010 to not have as choppy a year as 2009. Hopefully we will be able to encourage other members and also attract some new posters with experience and skills and generosity to fill the shoes of the handful of very prolific posters who have left this year; though it will not be easy to fill those shoes (and I sincerely thank them for their contributions), on a positive note, every day we do get new and interesting people with diverse experience joining too. It's too bad that everyone cannot agree and get along at all times, but I will try my best to do a better job of enforcing forum rules and keeping the forum sailing through the waves that do hit us in 2010. And with all of your help hopefully we will be able to focus the forums on more productive and constructive discussion in 2010.

Thank you for that comment Jeff!

Being a member on a German motobike forum too, I have noticed over the years that a board of co- moderators do a very nice and efficient job to assist the admin.
They have limited rights, but can delete posts or parts of them.

Members like Mike Johns, Terry Haynes, Will Allison come in my mind, as being calm, polite and intelligent. Moreover they are spread over the globe to handle time related issues.

Maybe worth a thought!?

Regards
Richard

[Jeff]

In creating a board or committee/group, getting the right mix is the tricky part. I'm not sure it's so easy to get right, but when it's finally the right mix, it works well. For example, often those who have the most experience can also have the least patience (this is a general observation, definitely not aimed at anyone mentioned).

One other major concern is that if I chose a group of people I respect greatly and who contribute a great deal of design and building info to the forum now, it would be awful if they grew turned off by the generally thankless job of moderating. It would be awful if over the loss of 4 I ended up choosing the brightest 10, and they were dulled or gradually offended by the experience and conflicts of bilge duty.

So in that respect, I like the idea of finding a way to better empower the majority to control rather than basically asking the best to deal with the worst. On the other hand, systematic tools are more likely to be abused, gamed, and skewed.

Admittedly a bit stubborn and possibly a bit too close having put in so much time, I still believe that the simplicity of the first 7 or 8 years when things went smoothly can be brought back through a bit more control without having to make things too complex. Maybe I am wrong, so I'm definitely thinking about which way to go as the next solution and how to best go about it, even if I do generally dislike adding complexity.

[Guillermo]

I greatly appreciate Jeff commentary and strongly support Richard's idea. A group of moderators for the various forums are needed to help Jeff in the task of controlling them.

All the best.

[capt vimes]

i like the idea of giving the OP some limited administrative rights to their threads...

@apex1
what motorbike board is that?
still riding a hayabusa?

[Crag Cay]

If I may, I would like to add some observations to this discussion. I used to really enjoy it here, but I've found the last year or so very unrewarding. Ironically it's not the 'off the wall' deluded posts that concern me as those are easy to ignore. I'm more deterred by the very aggressive posting style of some. It's very noticeable that there are some 'experts' on here who manage to add their contributions gently without recourse to constantly reminded us how 'professional' they are. Others have a fundamentalist missionary zeal that is used to hammer home their stance, despite much of it being no more than personal preference or their own normal practice and even resorting to the infantile 'I must be right, I'm a Naval Architect' when all else fails.

The appointment of additional moderators can't be allowed to 'institutionalise' this behaviour. I would rather see a commitment from all forum members to exercise more self control, more humility, more listening and when necessary, an enhanced ability to walk away and leave things well alone.

Boat design is a multifaceted and constantly evolving discipline where its practitioners hold passionate views on how to skin any particular cat. But over the years I've enjoyed discovering alternative opinions and methods of achieving stuff for which I already considered I had my own 'perfect' solution! Sifting through the dross to find a pearl is so rewarding! But to allow this, we must ensure this site remains a forum for all and doesn't become an organ for the dissemination of the gospel according to a few.

[Jeff]

I hope you don't mind, I moved your post here from the Where is This thread as well as I think it's on topic here.

I feel strongly that this should be a place where people are never afraid to ask about something sincere or propose something off the wall because they fear they'll be judged harshly or barked at or told they're stupid for not knowing the way it is. One task then is to better keep the "odd" posts from derailing or overrunning the more real-build-focused discussions. In a broader sense, the question is how best both the unconventional ideas and outsider/beginner questions can be comfortably allowed but better kept from making the professionals and more serious members frustrated by these. Everyone starts somewhere, and both the amateurs and outsiders who have a sincere desire to learn and grow bring a fresh enthusiasm that needs to be nourished and fostered, not squashed, but at the same time the community does depend on active working professionals to provide a reality check and guidance. We need to find a way to come to a balance that works without offending either those just starting out or those working day-in and day-out for real.

[Angélique]

Originally Posted by apex1

Long forgotten Angelique!

Thank You Richard !!

[Angélique]

Originally Posted by Jeff

I hope you don't mind, I moved your post here from the Where is This thread as well as I think it's on topic here.

You moved my post as well and I think it's a good thing. I've posted a link there to inform the regulars of that thread.

I wish you strength Jeff, and thanks for keeping this place running !!

Regards,
Angel

[hoytedow]

60 days may be a little too short a time before archiving a thread. Sometimes posters are away for 90 days or more before having the opportunity to get back to it. mgriffin was just one such example. He was between homes and just got back. Maybe 120 days would be a better time limit, or some mechanism to re-activate an archived thread would be appropriate if there were a sound reason to do so, such as new tech that could bring new life to an almost forgotten method. I'm just saying...

[marshmat]

There have been quite a few ideas tossed around on this thread, many of which are good and could be made to work.

I'll chime in with a few comments of my own. This may be slightly out of date; as some of you may have noticed, I haven't been on here much in the last couple of months.

LOSS OF HELPFUL LONG-TIME MEMBERS
We're hemorrhaging these folks, guys. And the ones who are jumping ship aren't the trolls, they're the busy professionals who do boat stuff for a living and have, for years, generously shared their knowledge with us. A few of them could get a bit abrasive when correcting misconceptions, and ended up the targets of old Usenet-style flaming. Look at the domain name, guys- we're a design forum, supposedly the land of civilized professionals.

REP SYSTEM
IMHO, reputation points should be reflective of a user's tendency to post accurate, helpful information about the topic at hand.
At present, it is quite easy to build an enormous stash of rep points by posting enormous quantities of material in the "open discussion" section and trusting in "I'll rub your back, you rub mine". I have nothing against the people who do this, but I do think it detracts from the system's usefulness. Perhaps rep points, like post counts, should only accumulate in the 'real' forums?
I will admit that I do, on rare occasions, give negative points- but with a comment such as "This reads like a personal/political attack, please try to be less offensive next time". I'm all in favour of keeping this system anonymous, else we would degrade into private-messaging flamewars. But people do need to start taking it more seriously- out with the "mehfag" and "n00btard" comments, etc.

POLITICS
Let's just leave this one out of the real discussions, OK? We're a boat forum, our members come from all over the place. If you want to share politics with like-minded folk, take it to a blog or board for people of your political leaning. If you want to fight over politics with people who hate your favourite leader's guts, take it to Usenet or any of the political forums descended therefrom.

OLD THREADS
Are they actually a problem? I've never seen a single problem created by an old thread getting dragged back out. Sometimes it's good to revisit a topic as new information becomes available.

MODERATION, ETC.
Jeff has a thankless job. We currently have 17876 or 35384 members (I don't know which counter to believe), 29001 threads and nearly a third of a million posts. And this one guy is expected to keep it all under control, in addition to his family and whatever it is he does for a living. Let's not make things any harder for him.
I fully agree with two of the points raised earlier about assistant moderators: Members with "community guru" standing are likely to be discouraged by bilge duty, and most of us can't claim to be as even-handed as our beloved Moderator.
I would suggest that a carefully worded letter to all forum members, explaining why we are concerned about the personal attacks and thread hijacks that have plagued us in the last year, would be a good start. The vast majority of bd.net members seem to be decent people who really do enjoy a good discussion, but- as humans- are fallible and can get sidetracked or lose their temper now and then.

MY OWN STANDING IN THIS
(or, Why you haven't seen me in months)
Some of us really are busy, me included. BDnet is a time killer and completely irrelevant to my actual work (medical imaging research and teaching physics). I do like to help, of course. But when a thread has run on for twelve pages, the OP is long lost and the OQ remains unanswered, is there really any point in trying to bring things back? Frankly, it's not worth my time. And if it's not worth my time, it's certainly not worth the real experts' time.

Thus, I encourage all to adopt some form of the following:
- I will only post material relevant to the topic of the thread, otherwise I will start a new thread for it.
- I will only answer questions if I have something helpful to say.
And perhaps most importantly:
- I will recognize that behind each screen name and avatar is a real person, with a real life, friends and family, who deserves my respect even if I don't agree with his/her opinions.

[Wynand N]

Originally Posted by marshmat

Thus, I encourage all to adopt some form of the following:
- I will only post material relevant to the topic of the thread, otherwise I will start a new thread for it.
- I will only answer questions if I have something helpful to say.
And perhaps most importantly:
- I will recognize that behind each screen name and avatar is a real person, with a real life, friends and family, who deserves my respect even if I don't agree with his/her opinions.

Kudos

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by marshmat
Thus, I encourage all to adopt some form of the following:
- I will only post material relevant to the topic of the thread, otherwise I will start a new thread for it.
- I will only answer questions if I have something helpful to say.
And perhaps most importantly:
- I will recognize that behind each screen name and avatar is a real person, with a real life, friends and family, who deserves my respect even if I don't agree with his/her opinions.

Yes, kudo indeed.

Originally Posted by capt vimes

i like the idea of giving the OP some limited administrative rights to their threads...

@apex1
what motorbike board is that?
still riding a hayabusa?

Fully concur on the idea to give the thread opener some limited rights to handle his thread.

Yes Hayabusa.de........

But that is fully off topic!

Regards
Richard

[ancient kayaker]

While this is a good discussion of how to deal with refugees from the great unwashed that is the modern Web, there is one simple method of self-protection open to us all. Just ignore these people.

I vote for the negative votes below -50 and off you go method. Simple, automatic and it would get rid of the single most annoying person currently in the forum. Given how much damage that person has inflicted already, perhaps the trip point should be set earlier, say -25.