arnhemland - (phil)

Member since March 16, 2009

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Recent Comments

• Comment on About last night ...
  Says the guy with an avatar featuring a kid with a habs logo on his shirt urinating on the Boston logo.
• Comment on What happens now?
  

  What's happening to H I/O happens to ever messageboard which grows quickly in popularity. The original crew, and ideas that kept people coming back are being pushed around by an influx of "new" people who don't have the same agenda, or interests. Mostly the idea that a large number of people are reading what they say is motivation to post anything that gets a reaction. Hence, the troll. Some don't fit the the label of troll because they post actual content, but others motivated by the same agenda (fame) go about it in other ways and we tend to remember them first. But my post so far is stating the obvious.

   

  In my "expert internet opinion" (cue laughter, it does make me giggle), there are a few things you can do as a site adminsitrator to counter this. The first is put in the hands of people you trust the ability to moderate user comments and users themselves, ie the ability to ban people. Some of the larger forums (somethingawful.com) have a system where any moderator who proposes a ban of a user has to have the idea approved by a moderator. This reduces the workload on the admins, but still allows them to make critical decisions that help the site in regards to individual users. This system does have its flaws, there will be some drama but if implemented and administered correctly can go a long way.

   

  The second prong in my opinion is giving the end user more control over the site and how the content (comments) are shown. By default, I would leave everything  as is now. However, give the option for registered users to filter posts by rating or even by username. The CMS H I/O is using is Drupal, which has a boatload of customization options/mods available to it. I'm sure you guys can find one that would work well within your vision of the site. If I hate tonyrandomnumber, it would be great if I could completely erase him for the boards (for myself) by filtering any of his comments and comments in response to his comments (The thread in its entirety). The other more global idea is something where users can rate other users based on them being users, or I would consider more safely based one individual posts which aggregates over time giving that user a rating. Then a registered member can set a threshold, only display posts with a rating greater than 3 stars out of 5 for example.

   

  Anyway, these are just ideas. By themselves they won't solve any problems but they can certainly help in combination with one another and the thoughtful and careful guidance of the site administrators. It's a lot of work, but I think H I/O would be worth it, it's a great  place I'd hate to see it go down the drain when there are options available.

   

  Good luck!