Hi,
Due to the increasing number of trolls, flamewars, and other abuses in this forum, I decied to go on and abuse it myself, posting a poll in a coding related forum.
Maybe this thread will be noticed by webmasters, so our various opinions may be read… BTW, what are they? Do you want to have this forum moderated, or do you prefer keeping it in his current form in spite of the late pollution?
Julien.
Ha-ha-ha!
Hey, guys!
Where is our moderators?
Delete this nasty topic “DirectX->Direct3D” as soon as possible!
I prefer moderation. As long as the moderators aren’t too strict… 
coughshamelessplugcough my own forums are moderated. Any crap posted and its removed within 24 hours. 
[This message has been edited by Nutty (edited 05-07-2003).]
I think you’re all old enough and ugly enough to put up with the odd dickhead such as myself & C++ without the need for moderators (or your mother, as Freud would suggest).
Originally posted by knackered:
I think you’re all old enough and ugly enough to put up with the odd dickhead such as myself & C++ without the need for moderators (or your mother, as Freud would suggest).
Personally I volunteer to moderate this list. Really all that needs to be done is locking threads posted by C++ (ahem) and other butt heads that don’t understand the relevance of the words “OpenGL” and “Advanced”.
I also think Jon’s suggestion of “Three strikes and you’re gone” is a good one.
Moderators are definitely needed - 11 out of the 40 threads on the first page are nube/OT questions with a couple more being borderline…
I volunteer as well, although I am not on these forums as often as I used to. But the reason is precisely that I got fed up with trolls posting anything and everything. Having to read 10 useless posts to find 1 interesting one really killed me…
Anyway, as far as moderators are concerned: I remember asking the web master of this forum to delete one or two posts in the past (you know the kind of post with “We can help you earn $100000 in 3secs!!!”) and he did it.
Perhaps we should contact him directly to see if they would be able to get a moderator on the forums or if they would nominate one of us to do the job.
I know we SHOULDN’T need a moderator but what can you do against kiddies like C++ who spend their time posting useless messages? Even if we don’t answer his posts, his IQ of around 5 will lead him to post again and again. Granted, he will eventually get off the forum but you can be sure that one of his kind will come the minute after he leaves…
I don’t really want a moderator who will decide e.g. which post should be in Beginners or Advanced forum (i.e. move topics). What I want is a moderator who can close topics and ban people who are abusing the forums…
Regards,
Eric
Originally posted by knackered:
I think you’re all old enough and ugly enough to put up with the odd dickhead such as myself & C++ without the need for moderators (or your mother, as Freud would suggest).
I partially agree, while I think this kind of OT/trolling/childish posts is bad publicity, and potentially new users may not join because of them.
Julien.
Someone once said something along the lines of:
“Anyone who actively seeks to be a politician should immediately be prohibited from being a politician”.
I think that applies to moderators too.
Eric, I’m sorry but I don’t believe you stopped visiting this forum because of an outbreak of trolls…whatever your reasons for it, the trolling could not have been a significant one - there simply aren’t enough troll posts in this forum (10-1 ratio?! Are you kidding? You must have been in the wrong forum). Or are you getting confused between trolling (such as c++) and beginners posts?
[This message has been edited by knackered (edited 05-08-2003).]
Originally posted by Eric:
Perhaps we should contact him directly to see if they would be able to get a moderator on the forums or if they would nominate one of us to do the job.
I did it, as V-Man and maybe others did. No answer so far. Perhaps it means it’s “in progress”, who knows.
Julien.
knackered,
I think you are probably right: beginner questions started the thing but then I realised people posting them had some good arguments (mainly that their questions were not answered when posted in the Beginners section).
Then came trolls (and I mean it). I should have a look to give names (I’ll do if you really want) but there were some and it made the forum much less interesting.
One last thing is that even regular contributors sometimes get out of their head insulting each other (recent example can be found…).
So you’re right, it’s not only the “trolling” thing. But in all 3 cases I mentioned, a moderator would help (although as I said I am not sure moving topics between forums is a solution).
As for me asking to become a moderator, it’s more a way of making the point that one is needed rather than me really wanting to do the job (as I said, I am not on theser forums often enough to be useful at this…).
Anyway, I visit other forums (not coding related) that are moderated and I really think it can be a good thing.
Regards,
Eric
Why don’t we all become moderators and let the simple guys rule us ?
Yea, I’m for moderators!!!
And actually we need more specialized topics as in gamedev net. It would be nice to split beginners/advanced to beginners/intermediate/advanced!
Just had a quick look through the archives and found some interesting topics about behaving correctly (shame on me!) and moderators:
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003709.html
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum3/HTML/005830.html
Just to say that this has been discussed a million times and I guess there will never be a solution for these forums.
By the way, I am wondering what happened to the “new forums” that were to be created…
It would be nice to split beginners/advanced to beginners/intermediate/advanced!
Nah, thats a crap way to do it. Whats beginner material for one, is advanced for another.
It would be better to have distinct categories like;
Core GL. (texturing, arrays, the usual jaff)
Shaders. (fragment programs, vertex programs etc…)
Rendering Concepts (engine stuff, quadtrees, data methods)
etc…
thats how I did mine.
I agree on moderators - personally I was used to post only in beginner’s section (leaving the advanced to the people who are doing business with GL), I started to post in advanced when I saw other people didn’t care.
My vote also goes on the basic/intermediate/advanced thing. It’s easier to do. I fear things like “shaders”, “core” and stuff may require more work which I surely don’t need to explain to you, you can figure out yourself.
Maybe we can drop togheter some mails for that. I personally didn’t, but I’ll do if needed. GL forums needs to me moderated even because GL it’s an industry standard and a model so, their forums should be also…
I definately vote for Nutty’s idea. And the reason is this, having another “skill” category(intermediate) just extends the problems we have today. People will post in the forum that matches their own experience, not the standards virtually defined here.The moderator could of course move posts, but it would be better if they ended up in the right place to start with. Having topic forums is better just because it removes the subjectivness(valid word?) of the poster.In other words, it is better for everyone if the poster has to decide between, lets say lighting/tetxuring/etc than newbie/uber-coder/godlike.
My two cents…
Originally posted by rgpc:
I also think Jon’s suggestion of “Three Strikes and you’re gone” is a good one.
Yeah, i like that idea. But only registered contributors must be allowed to do this. Maybe for every 5th post one has done (which got not deleted by the others), one shall be allowed to mark someone else´s post as “bad”.
If there are no such restrictions, people like C++ register a thousand times and delete everyone´s posts.
Jan.
I like Nutty’s forums. Phpbb is much more featureful. The topics are layed out more sensibly. I believe Nutty put up the forum the last time we had this discussion.
There just isn’t enough traffic and enough interesting discussions. We need the regulars to move over for that to be a success. To do my part, I’m linking to the forums in my posts. I encourage others to as well.
Here are the first 10 threads from right when I write this:
I’d say 7. and possibly 10. aren’t too off topic from “advanced OpenGL”, although 10. probably should have gone to “beginners”. 3. 5. and 9. are mostly beginners questions, too, although some of them are more about how to create art, rather than OpenGL.