Tighter enforcement of rules and heavier moderation

[Guest turbo lag]

First of all: I'd like to point out that I'm writing this from the perspective of somebody who has come from a much larger scale forum which is very tightly moderated, and enforces rules quite forcefully.

 

As TDU:C grows larger, I find it rather annoying that there are so many "off topic" posts in many threads, especially the "Mod Shop". Almost every thread you look in, you'll find someone requesting something completely random. There'll be a thread for a mod for an Evo or something, people will be requesting an RS6 or something. There's a dedicated "request forum" which is basically full of requests, almost none of which are being answered for (not that anyone cares, or I do anyway). The point is that there's way too many off topic posts and nothing is being done about it. Now look, I'm not saying that this place should be controlled strictly, but I'm saying that as the place grows larger, more rules need to be put in place or the place will end up being a mess. What I think we need is some strictly enforced rules, not 'tight' rules, but simple ones that are kept under control. I can understand if somebody is requesting, but this shouldn't be done under the "Mod Shop" forum but rather the requests. The more requests the new members see under the "Released" threads, the more they will think that it's allowed.

 

There also seems to be another problem: language. Some people just completely decide to skip on punctuation, and simply general grammar skills. I do not see why people cannot type/speak proper English if they are from a English speaking country. I can understand that there is a large userbase of members of TDU:C in non-English speaking countries, but if they decide to participate actively in an English speaking forum they should take some effort to put into a post. Some of these people type e-slang eg. 'u', 'wat' etc. If they're trying to put some effort in, they should at least pay attention to what they're typing. I find it very ironic that I have seen posts similar to:

 

"hi plz make rs6 thx sry my english not gud"

 

What's the point of this? Seriously? I honestly think these posts should be simply deleted, including with stupid threads like this. I'm not asking for a lot, just a little bit more care into some posts and this place will be clean. I can understand accidentally missing a comma, or forgetting a capital letter. I don't expect everyone to proofread every post. What I'm saying is that if you can easily spot a lazy post, where the poster has obviously not taken any care, their post should be removed.

 

I do not care at all about stupid posts, people claiming to own a Veyron in real life, or any other general 'stoopid', all I am asking for is a controlled environment free of spam, off topic and lazy posts.

 

----------------

 

I know I'm maybe a bit extreme but just sayin'.

[t.]

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[E] Nah, actually I'm not getting involved with people's opinions of other members.

[T0M722]

I sort of agree. What i think is there needs to be a couple more moderators.

[T3hReaper91]

As TDU:C grows larger, I find it rather annoying that there are so many "off topic" posts in many threads, especially the "Mod Shop". Almost every thread you look in, you'll find someone requesting something completely random. There'll be a thread for a mod for an Evo or something, people will be requesting an RS6 or something. There's a dedicated "request forum" which is basically full of requests, almost none of which are being answered for (not that anyone cares, or I do anyway). The point is that there's way too many off topic posts and nothing is being done about it. Now look, I'm not saying that this place should be controlled strictly, but I'm saying that as the place grows larger, more rules need to be put in place or the place will end up being a mess. What I think we need is some strictly enforced rules, not 'tight' rules, but simple ones that are kept under control. I can understand if somebody is requesting, but this shouldn't be done under the "Mod Shop" forum but rather the requests. The more requests the new members see under the "Released" threads, the more they will think that it's allowed.

 

Agreed. There is alot of off topic discussion in alot of the threads that really needs to be moderated.

 

There also seems to be another problem: language. Some people just completely decide to skip on punctuation, and simply general grammar skills. I do not see why people cannot type/speak proper English if they are from a English speaking country. I can understand that there is a large userbase of members of TDU:C in non-English speaking countries, but if they decide to participate actively in an English speaking forum they should take some effort to put into a post. Some of these people type e-slang eg. 'u', 'wat' etc. If they're trying to put some effort in, they should at least pay attention to what they're typing. I find it very ironic that I have seen posts similar to:

 

"hi plz make rs6 thx sry my english not gud"

 

What's the point of this? Seriously? I honestly think these posts should be simply deleted, including with stupid threads like this. I'm not asking for a lot, just a little bit more care into some posts and this place will be clean. I can understand accidentally missing a comma, or forgetting a capital letter. I don't expect everyone to proofread every post. What I'm saying is that if you can easily spot a lazy post, where the poster has obviously not taken any care, their post should be removed.

 

I do not care at all about stupid posts, people claiming to own a Veyron in real life, or any other general 'stoopid', all I am asking for is a controlled environment free of spam, off topic and lazy posts.

 

Defiantly do not agree here. Alot of the members here do not have English as there first language they may have it as a second language or even not at all. They rely on translators or other methods to post in English and they do not take into account grammar etc. Also alot of people here could have learning difficulties such as Dyslexia and saying that there post should be deleted does annoy me as they may not be able to talk English properly even if it is first language. Yes i do feel strongly about this as my sister is Dyslexic and has had alot of problems in the past. And deleting posts because they can not speak proper English is discrimination to those people.

[T0M722]

Yeah you're right. I think part of what he was saying was... instead of just saying what car you want, maybe you could propose an argument or say why we would need this car in TDU. Opposed to just typing what car and adding please at the end.

[Speed]

As hard as it may be to believe, we (the staff) do not read every thread or post created, this is why we have the report button:

 

 

I've just checked how many times you've reported something you feel inappropriate turbo lag, but you never have.

 

If you want us to do something about something, click the button and tell us so we know about it :)

[Guest turbo lag]

Defiantly do not agree here. Alot of the members here do not have English as there first language they may have it as a second language or even not at all. They rely on translators or other methods to post in English and they do not take into account grammar etc. Also alot of people here could have learning difficulties such as Dyslexia and saying that there post should be deleted does annoy me as they may not be able to talk English properly even if it is first language. Yes i do feel strongly about this as my sister is Dyslexic and has had alot of problems in the past. And deleting posts because they can not speak proper English is discrimination to those people.

 

I'm not trying to be discriminatory or wanting to offend anyone, but it's up to the people affected by the problem to tell us, what's wrong with that? If they do not want to make the problem public, so be it. Anyway that's off topic itself.

 

I'm talking about the people who are simply lazy, I can understand doing it sometimes and not regularly, but some people do it on a daily basis and are obviously not caring towards their posts. We know who they are because they always post without grammar and have no apparent reason to do so other than being lazy. If they can post with 'proper' grammar, I think they should. I will say this again, if anybody has a problem with this I think it's up to them to inform us about it so we can make special exceptions.

 

As hard as it may be to believe, we (the staff) do not read every thread or post created, this is why we have the report button:

 

 

I've just checked how many times you've reported something you feel inappropriate turbo lag, but you never have.

 

If you want us to do something about something, click the button and tell us so we know about it :)

 

Well then I'll be clicking that report button a lot. In forums I only ever use the report button for obvious breaches of forum rules like excessive swearing or racism or whatever. Technically lazy posts aren't a set rule but I'd like to think that even though there may be certain exceptions, that this should be enforced more. I personally find it quite stupid reporting a million OT posts, I think it's rather up to the regular moderators to 'weed' these OT posts rather than us reporting all of them. If there's a better solution, since I know not all mods have time to do this, suggest it.

 

-------------

 

So what will be done about the OT posts? I guess it's the only thing which people agree on.

 

My suggestion?

 

Have a new button or specific type of instant reporting in the form of a 'SPAM' button. So every post will have this button, and if you think it's spam it'd send the mods a notification about spam. Probably can't even be implemented and it'd probably be abused but whatever, I don't see any better way to get rid of this.

[T3hReaper91]

Report the off topic but u simply can not report the bad grammar and incorrect spelling posts.

 

It is discrimination about these people and it is not allowed on the forum.

 

So any off topic posts u can report but that is it.

 

In my opinion.

[Guest turbo lag]

I have no intention to randomly start reporting people for random spelling mistakes and such, but it's rather annoying when people who obviously have the skills and have the knowledge obviously simply are lazy about the grammar. I can understand people using translators and such, because they usually tell us that they're using one and that I think is acceptable by all means.

 

I'm saying that it's the lazy people that have to be dealth with.

[CarMadMike]

As speed and others have said, All you need to do is report a post and the staff will deal with the post in question, Quite a few posts get made on TDU-C, so we can't expect tge staff to read every post, as they do have a life off of TDU-C.

 

One thing that annoys me is back seat moderation, as it normally leads to the topic going way off subject - it happens regularly here.

[Jazzi]

I like turtles.

 

 

Ahhh the OT bunnies will get me now!

:leaves:

 

[mod edit:] OI. Stay on topic you!

[jazz edit:] OI. Make me some toast!

[Sponge]

As speed said, we can't read EVERY post in EVERY topic. The forum is just too large for that. The report button is there for a reason, so instead of moaning that things aren't on topic / are getting a little bit out of hand, report it! We'll deal with it and then everyone's a happy chap. One of the main reasons arguments and off topic posts get out of hand is the fact that some members' internet ego's are far too great for them to just let others get on with it. They need to sort it out, and then they're just going to cause more trouble.

 

So instead of whining that things aren't being done, just use that pretty little button. We'll deal with anything you report (unless it's stupid, of course!) as soon as we see it (as the staff room is at the top of the forums, it's the first thing the admins and mods see)

[hpluls]

I have no intention to randomly start reporting people for random spelling mistakes and such, but it's rather annoying when people who obviously have the skills and have the knowledge obviously simply are lazy about the grammar. I can understand people using translators and such, because they usually tell us that they're using one and that I think is acceptable by all means.

 

I'm saying that it's the lazy people that have to be dealth with.

 

How can you tell whether a person is too lazy to spell properly or has a learning difficulty? :confused:

[Eudemon]

Plenty of people do report requests, spam, swearing and flaming to us and we deal with it. In fact it's sometimes a race between us staff to get it done and reply that's it's been taken care of. There are too many posts being made to look at every single one and see if it's fine but we know others will look at it and hopefully these people will if they see a breach of the rules or something else not permitted, report it and thus one of us will take care of it.

 

Adding more Moderators is like the old "too many cooks spoil the broth", we'd have more staff sure but if like us they aren't looking at every new post either then it's still going to be missed.

 

As for the non-English speaking subject, if I do remember correctly we ask via the rules to actually post in correct English because it is not only easier to read for us native speakers but also foreigners learn English in the proper manner too so those who have some teaching and understanding in it will be able to interpret it a lot more effectively. As will online translators, think how many times you have used a translator and got a good result because those people are responding in their own language and then picture that same person doing the same to your gibberish, it's not really fair is it? Also txt and leet speak is not permitted, please do not do it, this isn't to be grammatical or improve language skills of the world it's for the above reasons, typing in correct English actually benefits those who do not speak it. As strange as that sounds it's completely true.

 

Of course those of non-English speaking are also required to provide a translation to English so that the topic can progress without many people scratching their heads wondering if the topic is still about X or is now about Penguins.

 

Back-seat moderation happens everywhere and for the most part it's helpful and actually relevant, what I hate ...no despise is people who Whack-Attack-Mod, you know the sort the ones who popup to say one thing that doesn't help, like Use the search or Noob and the usual favourite Wow mega bump and then hide again ready to spring up and spout nonsense at the next unweary member looking for an actual answer.

 

Please people don't be a Whack-Attack-Mod!!

 

Cheesy Pasta!!

[Immelmann]

My big thought when I read this was that every forum I've seen this on has taken it too far, and as a result, it's like Soviet Russia. No freedom at all, no leeway or slack, just harsh moderation, even in regards to little things. Not to mention what the mods become.

 

I remember one place actually banned me. I had only posted once. And why?

"Reason for ban: I don't like the XJ220"

:confused:

[Who]

All this amounted to for me was BAWWWWWWW because someone who wants free mods (and hasn't supported) has to actually use their brain to see the decent content. At the end of the day, we're a game forum which is centred around cars, and the modshop is all about people wanting something for nothing (and, IMO is the arse of TDUC).

 

Having mods is quite the attraction for people who have never dealt with forums before, the idea of having your favourite car in-game lures them in, and without the necessary forum etiquette, they make the place unpleasant. TBH I'd rather correct their ways than delete their posts or they will never improve

 

Just my £0.02

[KoenigseggBG]

Having mods is quite the attraction for people who have never dealt with forums before, the idea of having your favourite car in-game lures them in, and without the necessary forum etiquette, they make the place unpleasant. TBH I'd rather correct their ways than delete their posts or they will never improve

 

Just my £0.02

Couldn't agree more. If you really want a mod, you can atleast know how to ask for it. YOU'RE GREATEST, OMG. PLZ, MAKE A *random car name*.

 

You see, there are arrguments in the other sections (such as the Auto and General ones). Difference is, we try to keep it as civilized as possible. Arrguments in the mod shop usually end up with :

 

- pissed off modders

- pissed off moderatros

- pissed off memebers

 

And that really isn't helping for the healthy development of the forum, is it?

[Guest turbo lag]

Well I'm not saying that everything should be taken to an extreme, I'm not saying to immediately ban or delete the person's posts but after a couple of times something should be done against this or the new members will just start following along.

[Sponge]

I'm not saying to immediately ban or delete the person's posts but after a couple of times something should be done against this or the new members will just start following along.

 

That's exactly what we do.

You (the members) don't see the infractions and warnings we give out.

[Camel]

That's exactly what we do.

You (the members) don't see the infractions and warnings we give out.

 

And the countless amount of PMs I(maybe we) send out asking people to stop doing something or what not before they get infracted.