Them Trolls (Split)

[Lucifer]

This forum and userbase is old and established and can weather a lot of inconveniences. I would even go as far as disabling all posts until they are moderator approved, and applying that policy indefinitely. I know that would be impractical, but I would support it. Heck, it might even save time since so many posts need to be cleaned up anyway.

Other than how often moderators show up, I'd be supportive of putting a probation on new users, where they have to have X number of posts before they can post freely. That would be posts that actually get moderator approved, of course, and I'd be a bit aggressive (i.e. if you're just posting a "Yeah, me too" or "smack my head" post, it don't get approved, so you'd have to make 10 posts that make a genuine contribution, no matter how small).

I'd also want a bulk "disapprove" feature in there so when someone uses the probation feature to try to DOS the forums, we'd be able to quickly remove all that crap and focus on people who really are trying to be good forum users.

Edit: Add to the wishlist the ability to put older users on some sort of probation where they have to have X posts moderator approved before they can post freely again. This would be people who behave for 100 posts or so, then turn all troll for awhile (think: /dev/null, this would be the Right Way to deal with him, imo).

[Monkey]

I pretty much agree with what sinewav and Lucifer are saying.

As for the identity of the trolls, believe me, there are at most 3 proper trolls involved in the ddossing and spamming these forums: Swag, rookie and tweezy. You already know my opinion as to what to do with them.

[TaZ]

Sooo...not one person has talked to them directly about why they're doing this? Lucifer's idea of having a certain number of approved posts work, but banning them is laughable.

Also, Dev/null should be unbanned

[Magi]

Sooo...not one person has talked to them directly about why they're doing this?

Do you ask mosquitoes why they suck your blood?

A period of "approval" for new users seems fine too, our forums aren't so active that people need to be posting every 10 minutes or that people will even respond that soon before a moderator is likely to see it and approve it. However if we do go forth with that, it might not be a bad idea to look into getting one or two more dedicated people to help with it.

[sinewav]

Sooo...not one person has talked to them directly about why they're doing this?

What possible reason justifies that behavior? Spoiled brats is what they are.

[niin]

I think that it is a great idea to give new players a time for approval. If it's not that hard to do it it will help getting rid of the spam. New players that are here to play the game or to get advice would understand it in my opinion.

In the community there are plenty of players who are suitable for this task.
I'd do it too even tho I don't post often I check the forums daily.

Edit: What about making a minimum time or post amount. When people are on this forum for long but don't use it often they shouldn't need to wait for a moderator to approve it. Something like 3 months or something

[ConVicT]

New players that are here to play the game or to get advice would understand it in my opinion.

The problem isn't that new players wouldn't understand.
The problem (if any) will be that moderators might not do what they're supposed to (they don't have the time) and the new players' questions are left there for a week without approval.
When it finally does get approved, the answer will always be coming from the moderator that approved it, which might not always have been the best or correct solution.
This all assuming we:

look into getting one or two more dedicated people to help with it.

I think I'd be quite happy getting my first answer from Z-Man.

[niin]

The problem (if any) will be that moderators might not do what they're supposed to (they don't have the time) and the new players' questions are left there for a week without approval.

That is not a problem you can't solve imo. It just matters who you get to check them. First of all you need players that are active on the forums not only ingame. Second it would be useful to have people from different timezones so they get checked even if it's night at where ever. And ofc the biggest question is how many people you need, best way is probably to start with not that many cause you really need to trust them. If that are not enough get more one by one.
I'm not even sure if we need that many. Everytime I checked the newest member in the past few weeks it was no one that wanted to use this forum seriously

When it finally does get approved, the answer will always be coming from the moderator that approved it, which might not always have been the best or correct solution.

Maybe I didn't get the previous posts right but isn't it about any post someone new makes? So it could be at every thread with every message in it? And even if it's a question wouldn't that make a thread somewhere that's open for everyone to see and answer?

[Magi]

. When people are on this forum for long but don't use it often they shouldn't need to wait for a moderator to approve it. Something like 3 months or something

The problem with that is they can just set up troll accounts and come back to them later. One of their accounts they tried using for this past ladle was made months ago and only just made a post, and when you consider how easy it is to make new accounts, making a new one once a week or something so they always have a new account wouldn't be that hard.

[Lucifer]

The problem (if any) will be that moderators might not do what they're supposed to (they don't have the time) and the new players' questions are left there for a week without approval.

That is not a problem you can't solve imo. It just matters who you get to check them. First of all you need players that are active on the forums not only ingame. Second it would be useful to have people from different timezones so they get checked even if it's night at where ever. And ofc the biggest question is how many people you need, best way is probably to start with not that many cause you really need to trust them. If that are not enough get more one by one.
I'm not even sure if we need that many. Everytime I checked the newest member in the past few weeks it was no one that wanted to use this forum seriously

Of course, we're approaching an area where we'd need Tank Program to come out of hiding as well. So, not unsolvable, but could be a little bit. (Actually, you can often ping him in irc, so it's not like he's completely gone)

I've seen forums use trusted community members where the only things they can do are approve/disapprove new posts. That would avoid the headache of having many moderators (which has failed every time it's been tried here), but still allow for many people to help with the problem.

When it finally does get approved, the answer will always be coming from the moderator that approved it, which might not always have been the best or correct solution.

Maybe I didn't get the previous posts right but isn't it about any post someone new makes? So it could be at every thread with every message in it? And even if it's a question wouldn't that make a thread somewhere that's open for everyone to see and answer?

Try not to get lost. There is a specific concern of when someone new is asking support questions and how long before a moderator can approve it. We generally try to get support requests pumped through as quickly as possible. Right now, anyone can show up with such questions and ask, and even if moderators are MIA, anybody else can at least try to answer the question. The vast majority of support questions are easily handled by other players, so the concern would be that someone asks such a question but has to wait a week to get an answer because they have to wait for a moderator to come out of hibernation and approve the question.

Then you're correct that it would apply to all posts, not just tech support posts. The system wouldn't work at all if it were any other way.

[Word]

related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zxy_dS ... e=youtu.be
("The science of trolls")

[[Anonymous]]

related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zxy_dS ... e=youtu.be
("The science of trolls")

Word the Nerd. HAHAHAHA

[Slov]

this one is actually pretty decent. the rest of your trolling is just lame (except for the Biggie reference, that was cool)

[niin]

Just wanted to ask what happened to the idea of an approval time?
Is there something I missed and there is no need anymore or something else? This just stopped at one point and idk why

[Z-Man]

Approval time is active since about a week. Works quite well against the spambots, that's for sure. Scares half of them away right of the bat, it seems. No troll alias account prevented yet, though, and only one legitimate post by a new user that had to be approved.

To the other moderators: I'm personally leaving what I suspect to be stealth copy/paste spam hanging in the queue for a bit. Those guys are really convincing by now, and it seems after you dismissed a post, it's gone for good and you can't tell who tried to post what. By leaving suspicious posts visibly in the queue, we can look at correlations between them. One generic post in the 'what are you watching' thread could be a real user, but two more in necrobumbed threads, it's a bot.
Plus, I'm checking the queue from my phone, where approving is easy, but dismissing and banning is a chore.