Re: Big talk timers - they don't do the job intended, get rid of them

Posted by Orinoco, 2012-04-29 17:09 BST

This is not 4chan - what I think is really needed is a retrospective way of tidying up, by deleting threads or moving them to ST, or flagging them somehow, or allowing authors the right to edit, archive, or delete them.

One of the most poisonous words you can utter with respect to forums is "moderation". rec.juggling afficionados are extremely fond of its lack of moderation which is regarded as being much, much more important than filtering out tiresome spam and trolling. Put simply, I personally will not bother with your forums until you implement a space which is unmoderated. Spam and other antisocial content is a very small price to pay for freedom of speech. If I want moderated forums I can use the Anthony Gatto forums, WTForums, and numerous other places. I don't want moderation. I will not bother with moderated forums.

ahem :)


But it's silly in a place like the Edge, which is full of thoughtful, articulate, reflective people, to speculatively block possible unwanted behaviour before it even happens.

I've been thinking about this quote for 2 days. I still can't work out why stopping problems before they occur is a bad thing! The limited high quality userbase we have here is largely down to the restrictive invitation system. A lot of people think that is silly too!


This conversation has continued over Small Talk, Big Talk, Meta Talk, ##juggling & rec.juggling. One good thing about winding everyone up is that it shows there is a demand for a serious discussion area. People want to post to Big Talk. Why? Even though I quite clearly haven't succeeded on this first attempt, I think I have demonstrated that people want a place to discuss big ideas, where posts have a degree of prestige attached to them. No other juggling forum has achieved this as far as I am aware.

Just providing a renamed version of Small Talk (which is all Big Talk is once you strip out the timers) & hoping that it will generate in depth well thought out posts is naive at best. There must be a barrier to entry & some mechanism that encourages you stop & think.

Taking the average preferred solution from everyone's posts on the subject I have now changed the system so that you can create a reply instantly, but you can't submit your post until one hour after it has first been saved.