Moderator Approval of Threads: Do you want it back?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DuckRacer
  • 60 comments
  • 3,617 views

Do you want moderator approval of thread back?

  • Yes

    Votes: 37 56.1%
  • No

    Votes: 29 43.9%

  • Total voters
    66

DuckRacer

Premium
Messages
10,164
In the GT4 forums, I believe moderator approval of threads should come back. There are complaints on the board about threads that are not helpful, or have been repeated many times. For example: this, this, and
this.

And one of my questions is that why did moderator approval of threads get removed anyway?

Mods, could you guys give us any insight on this matter?



Disclamer: I am not against the creators of the above threads. I am merely using those threads as examples.
 
I think that's asking the Mods/Admins to put in a lot of thankless work.

One of the things I've always liked about the GTP is that it's pretty self moderating when it comes to sensless posts by the uninformed new people...someone is always pretty quick to point out "Did you search?" when a question gets asked for the umpteenth time. Sometimes, it's blunt/rude, sometimes not. I've been guilty, myself, of jumping on a noob for asking ridiculous questions that have been asked too many times.

Perhaps we could all practice a bit of patience and politely suggest the Search function in future innocuous noob posts in the future. If a noob post is particularly obnoxious, one could always click the "Report this post" link, and it will get whatever attention it deserves.
 
Would I WANT it? Yes, but would I be willing to ask the mods to do all the extra work? No, they do enough already.
 
Yes, lately there have been many repeats lately. For example, the age of GTP members has been repeated twice. (Not including the original thread[but that repeated one in the rumple strip, but that's not about the GT4 forum])
 
Interesting thread gentlemen. So, you'd really like it to go to an approval process again?
 
The hype for GT4 has died down a lot since February, we felt thread moderation wasn't really needed anymore. Ironic how most people didn't like the idea back then, but now most people want it reinstated. Pure case of "I told you so".
 
I think the bad threads will die down soon enough, just give it a little time. No need to put so much work on the mods when any user can direct the poster on how to correctly search etc.
 
cardude2004
I have no opinion. I will abstain from voting. I really don't use the GT4 section of this site.

I always get a kick out of it when members post saying that it doesn't matter or doesn't apply to them. Then why bother postsing?:dunce:
 
PunkRock
The hype for GT4 has died down a lot since February, we felt thread moderation wasn't really needed anymore. Ironic how most people didn't like the idea back then, but now most people want it reinstated. Pure case of "I told you so".

Not in moderator spirit to be nasty like that. :p
 
I beleive it is up the mods to decide whether they want the extra workload.Multiple pointless threads are a common problem with many forum boards,not just GTP.

Personnally I never had the need to start threads here as I Do "search" for answers,especially to any questions about Settings and tuning :sly:
 
WhoFarted
I beleive it is up the mods to decide whether they want the extra workload.Multiple pointless threads are a common problem with many forum boards,not just GTP.

Personnally I never had the need to start threads here as I Do "search" for answers,especially to any questions about Settings and tuning :sly:
If only more new members had this attitude.

Lately, the attitude in new members is becomg BAD...I think we need more moderation in the threads than in thread approvals.
 
It seems that, to me, most stupid threads posted recently have been in the write ups forum. The thread moderation thing wouldn't stop that, so I don't really see the point in bringing it back.

McLaren F1GTR
Lately, the attitude in new members is becomg BAD...I think we need more moderation in the threads than in thread approvals.
I agree with this. I noticed Swift doing a great job yesterday of controlling/closing threads. 👍
 
I'm guilty!!!!!!! I posted in at least 3 of the threads that were closed yesterday. Many times I see a new post from the main forum board and will go directly to it and post because there's nothing else going on. I do however try to offer a little search advise and often offer a link to an older thread , or an already performed search containing the information they are asking for.

I think the moderators are doing a good job. I wouldn't even want to begin to imagine how many threads would have to be reviewed if we went to full thread review by mods prior to being posted on a particular forum. I would like it in a way though, it would keep me from post wh****g. :)

JParker
 
daan
I agree with this. I noticed Swift doing a great job yesterday of controlling/closing threads. 👍

Thanks :)

I think the main challenge is that new members especially don't take the 10 seconds to read/search. So they post a thread, it gets closed because there is an identical thread a few posts down, now the mods are bad guys.

So, it's more of a matter of laziness then intelligence.
 
daan
It seems that, to me, most stupid threads posted recently have been in the write ups forum.

INFERNO to the rescue! I've got a hilarious write up coming as soon as my PS2 gets fixed, that will single handedly turn the write-up's thread around. it follows the course of the typical ricer car from its first owner(s) to eventual defilement. :dopey: :sly: :dunce:

Ok seriously, I do think it's funny that this time around people are asking for the thread approval system when they moaned about it back then. Ultimately it's the moderators who have to decide if the chaos is bad enough to put that kind of workload on themselves. personaly I dont think we will see the approval system return untill the release of GT5, but the more popular GT gets, the more wortless and repeated new threads will get.
 
I wasn't complaining about it... :D

While I agree in part that the forum has been slowly filling up with reposts, I don't think it's THAT bad. We've been so used to having a steady flow of new members re-asking questions about GT3 that now we have a somewhat faster flow re-asking about GT4 we feel inundated.

In any case, as daan points out, it's not the main forum which suffers most - the satellite/child ones suffer because the gonks learned that they could post their question in there, regardless of relevancy.

I feel that, although thread moderation would be good occasionally in there, the tide is slowly ebbing and we're safe enough without it.
 
Although I will be responsive to feedback, at this point I don't have any plans on bringing back the thread moderation feature. However, it's not for the reasons other people have pointed out here. There is a fine line between two extremes of community moderation. On one side, it could be a free-for-all. Low quality posts, high turnover (you can't retain long-term users). On the other, you have extreme moderation, where only approved users can make posts which must also be approved. In that case, you'd have a very boring site and only a tiny handful of users, which wouldn't be much fun. And once those users move on, you have no new users to pick up conversation and the site is dead.

I personally prefer a site that rests right in the middle of those two extremes. Not open enough that it's not orderly, and not orderly enough that it isn't any fun. I want one section of GTPlanet to be highly informative and factual, and I want the forums to be a lively and comfortable place for discussion. If somebody creates a thread that was brought up a few weeks ago, it's OK, and just because a thread is there does not mean that you need to reply to it. There are only so many things that can be said, and you can't expect every new thread to be a profound revalation or ground-breaking insight.

Now, that's certainly no excuse for some of the trash that gets posted here, but you have to allow new users to contribute or your community will be slow, stagnate, and not useful or entertaining for anyone.
 
More mods should be put in place, since there are a few that haven't been around for a long time. If you had more people look over the forum, then good threads would stay in exsistance even if they were repeats. The problem ones could be put out easy. Although I'm guessing Jordan's already had that idea thrown at him a lot.
 
I have to say that after buying GT4 recently, i really wanted to go and properly be a part of the GT4 section of the forum, but each day i go back and nothing really interests me because it's just all junk when i'm kind of after interesting comments and such forth about interesting topics. Don't seem to have the problem else where on the site, it's generally quite good, but i guess that section is worse than any other. So, yes.
 
Well said, Jordan. However, I do think we need some more mods around here.

What about an automatic PM or e-mail to every new user, saying something like on the page before you make a new thread in the GT4 forum?
So when someone registers, they'll get a PM or e-mail about to search before posting a question, reading the AUP and TOS, etc?
 
Not a bad idea...the PM would probably get ignored, but an email might really catch their attention. I'm going to look into that. 👍
 
I feel that the hype (especially in the GT4 forum) has died completely now and there is no need to monitor thread creation......as is there is not much left to say about GT4 in terms of new info so at most there are only like 5 or so threads created a day......
 
Jordan
Not a bad idea...the PM would probably get ignored, but an email might really catch their attention. I'm going to look into that. 👍

You could include it in the email that says Welcome to GTPlanet!, that comes after your authentification email.
 
cardude2004
You could include it in the email that says Welcome to GTPlanet!, that comes after your authentification email.

Then it really would be ignored...

Maybe an email the first time a user posts a thread would be the best method?

C.
 
Don't ask to be a mod, you won't get it if you ask.
 
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