Forum Moderators: open
In some of the forums at WebmasterWorld we get a lot of 'sticky mail me' posts and 'test pages' or demos.
For me, these can really bring the quality of a thread down.
I'm interested in knowing what other members think about these issues and what we might do to improve the quality of our posts both in general and with regard to the specific issues listed below:
Sticky Me Posts
The point (or one of) WebmasterWorld is to provide news and discussion for the advanced webmaster. When we take a thread into sticky mail, whether it be to swap a url and bypass the url policies or just to talk more privately the thread suffers.
At best, it just gives the impression that other members are not invited. At worst, if the conversation comes back to the thread after urls have been exchanged other members coming later to the discussion have little or no idea of what the thread is about.
Test Pages and Demos
As I'm lucky enough to have scored a 'mod spot' here at WebmasterWorld I spend a fair bit of time each week explaining why I think these types of links damage posts.
If we put the whole issue of spam to one side for a moment, I'll give you my personal take on it:
Whereas a demonstration of a coding problem (or anything else) often helps the guy with the problem, the question we have to ask is: "How useful will this thread be in 2wks"?
Test pages, demos and other urls change. Especially if the problem is resolved. This leaves us with a thread that relies upon a non-existent or altered link which effectivly renders it useless for members coming into the discussion at a later date.
So, what can we do?
Well, that's my pet peeves done with ;) so, what can we do? - Are there any other issues that need to be addressed?
Would appreciate you thoughts....
Thanks
Nick
If you're unable to discuss search relevancy problems without mentioning specific sites or search terms, please have the professional courtesy to use the proper spam reporting form and not this forum.
Nick
If you're unable to discuss search relevancy problems without mentioning specific sites or search terms, please have the professional courtesy to use the proper spam reporting form and not this forum.
And if you're not sure where to find such a form - ask. More often than not members will provide you with the resources you need. It may not be a URL but if I say W3C a quick search on W3C will yield the URL for you - if you don't already know it.
Stickies - It's quite strange sometimes for everything on WW to be 'widgetised' and quite often it is obvious that although the post is framed in general terms, it's actually about a specific site. This is especially true of spam-related posts where the posters normally have a paricular spammer in mind and find it hard to separate their emotional involvement with this, and the general post that should be made about it.
A couple of thoughts on what I think might help.
Earlier in the thread someone mentioned "until these ground rules are shoved in a newbies face at the time of registration, we're going to have to keep seeing this kind of behavior."
Shoved in the face is probably a bit much, but how about forcing a read of the TOS/charters before posting, so on your first post you are taken to one of these before you can submit anything. This might cut down on the number of 'ooops, sorry, didn't know I shouldn't do that' type of posts.
Would it be useful to have some 'standard responses' to the most common (problematic) messages? Someone posts 'have I been banned?' Point them at the banning FAQ and have done with it. 'Do I report xyz spammer?' - point them at the spam report FAQ. If there was a post somewhere summing up these types of 'best responses', then perhaps members who haven't been around for so long (like myself) can chip in and ease some of the workload on the mods (I know there are quite a few standard posts already, but maybe this could be expanded?).
Obviously everyone wants to keep hold of the friendly atmosphere at WW, and I think that in general posts are still of a really good standard. I think I recall a post from Heini recently about some rather unfriendly/outright rude responses in some forums. Maybe it's time for the mods to be a bit more hard-hitting?
Everyone makes mistakes and it's easy to trip up when you're a new member, but when I step out of line, please slap me down ;0)
In order for me as a technician to pin down a problem and determine the cause and the solution, I have to have details. Mac or PC; Windows or O/S or Linux or...; 3.1 or 95 or 98 or 2000 or XP or...; amount of RAM; CPU speed; IE or Netscape or Opera or...; which version; etc., etc.
The same thing goes for CSS and PHP and ASP and Perl and JavaScript and HTML and XML and other coding languages and issues. When someone asks a coding related question, my first question is ok, where are you coming from? How are you coding, manually or are you relying on a software product? If so, what product? What version of that product? What browser are you checking it in? What version? I want to see the code in its entirety, preferably within the page or file in situ. I'm going to test it myself. I'll view it in ALL my browsers (I use AOL and three versions each of IE and Netscape and two of Opera, plus three HTML editors), to see how it works or displays. I'll take the code apart and put it back together again. I may even rewrite the code to achieve the same affect and see where the codes differ.
It can get pretty lengthy when people post their code out of context and responses do the same. Sometimes I can work with that, sometimes not. If I need a URL in order to follow up on it, I won't hesitate to sticky the poster. But I think it is a waste of bandwidth and people's time and attention to post a little message asking for a sticky response openly on the message forum. If someone wants a sticky then send a sticky to that effect. That's what the sticky mail system is for, IMHO.
One of the things that disappoints and frustrates me intensely, however, is when I've been surfing the forum a lot and come up with some great tips and info I want to pursue. People often talk about this site or that site of theirs that they've done this or that with and how successful such and such turned out to be but there is no URL or link given. So I go to their user profile and find they didn't even include the URL or link to their main site. Is this because they are concerned their URL is going to be harvested and they'll be inundated by spam? Understandable. Is it then expected, even ok, for them to be inundated by stickys asking for their URL? I don't want to be a pest but I really really want to see the sites and study them and learn from them. Perhaps those who don't choose to post their URL openly on their user profiles would instead enter a phrase, ex. http:// available-upon-request.com This would at least reassure members that a sticky request for a URL will likely be well received.
I guess my point is (1) send sticky requests, don't post open messages asking for stickys; (2) and either post a referral link openly (if allowed) or maybe on an information page on your site and put the URL in your user profile or some nonsense URL to encourage sticky requests for the URL.
Sometimes threads just appear to die after several suggestions have been offered to the initial poster as possible resolutions to their problem.
It would be nice if the initial poster could come back to their thread and post the final resolution. In other words, let folks know what worked to fix their problem.
I've tried to do that, especially when no one has been able to post a sure-fire resolution to my problem. If I come up with a fix on my own, by whatever means, I post it to my initial thread so other folks can (hopefully) benefit from whatever I've learned.
- Ash
TOS, as any rules, must always serve the common goals of the community, it should never be the other way round.
That said, any TOS or set of rules is imperfect, as it tries to generalize and formalize. Any set of rules will always be open to debate and interpretation.
As to links/urls: in my view we generally allow links to the well known resouce sites, which encompasses news sites, and generally accepted tech resource sites.
We generally do not do urls of the members here, we generally do not do links to sites in this industry which sell products or services, we do not allow urls put up in order to expose them for alleged spam/fraud/ whatever.
As to the specifics: those are searchterms or other stuff making sites easily identifiable.
In it's very basics the policy with urls in my view is this:
Never promote sites, never expose sites.
WebmasterWorld is a community which to a large extent consists of webpromoters.
Q: How do you manage to get webpromoters to share their knowledge without promoting their own sites or services? After all that's a webpromoters main mission!
A: Simply exclude all promotion from the board. Just take that burden away, and create a space where all members can freely share, learn, and relax.
This concept has worked exceptionally well for this community. To me that is the basic common aim our TOS and specifically the policy with urls tries to serve.
Coming back to my first remark: As any TOS is only as good as it serves the goals of the community, we still, after all that tremendous growth over the last months and years, try to evaluate each message and each member and each link and url individually.
We mods are not safe from failures and errors. Also a community is a living thing. No need to cite the old saying about the speed of changes on the web.
The most sophisticated TOS will not take away the daily interaction of members and mods about what is right and what is not.
The day we go overregulated and automated in our approach to serving the community is the day we are in trouble.
Often the borders are blurred, and thats when the 'spirit' of the community rather than the exact wording of the TOS, takes priority.
Overall, I think the balance is OK at the moment, and probably works as well as can be expected given the massive growth of WebmasterWorld.
I think the main way to improve the thread quality is for us all to pause before hitting the 'submit' button and ask questions such as:
..which in itself is reworking what others have said and so infringes my own point 4 above - close call, decided to post anyway
I was referring to overlapping layers [webmasterworld.com] and complicated designs [webmasterworld.com] using strictly css for layout. IMO, that can get very intense and hard to describe without a visual.
I agree with you one hundred percent that there are some questions that are challenging to describe, especially those that are visually oriented. It is definitely easier to point to a url and "show" it, especially for those who are visually oriented.
However, anybody who has ever read a book can attest to the power of descriptive writing. For instance, I have been to the planet Tralfamador with Billy Pilgrim (Kurt Vonnegut), and I have ridden a sticky humid bus in the deep south (Flannery O'Connor) without ever leaving my house.
I have come across many threads by people who pose questions with a url for "show". I usually ask them to remove the url, with an explanation why (so as not to hurt feelings), and given them encouragement to rephrase the question.
Some people, for whatever good reason, don't have the capacity to write descriptively. That's when it becomes OUR responsibility, as responsible members of a community, to ask questions, to draw out a description. And it happens every day on these boards.
No matter how difficult the question, it can still be adequately described. If millions of readers have seen the moons of a non-existent planet, then a css layout can certainly be visualized with words.
For example, here's a thread about CSS layout in which a moderator gently and politely guides the poster into describing the problem:
[webmasterworld.com ]
And here is a beautifully descriptive discussion of overlapping and offset layers: [webmasterworld.com ]
It is possible to describe a complicated css issue without resorting to stickies and url drops. If someone is having a problem describing it, what often happens is that the better elements of WebmasterWorld step forward and ask the right questions.
Helping others out with their descriptions is a great way to improve the quality of the threads.
we've had some threads which were more Monty Python than anything else..
I think that was me [webmasterworld.com].
I would suggest adding a forum for only spam complaints:
Google News
Google SPAM Complaints
