New feature: crackdown on senseless posts

General Discussions
#1

The past few weeks average post quality has dropped significantly, after some new members joined, dragging other members into their annoying habbits. In order to break this horrible trend, posts that are grossly offtopic in serious threads and post that are offensive to the intelligence will be moved into the ‘Facepalm thread’, which has been locked to prevent even more meaningless chattery. This is a forum people, not a chatbox. Everything you post here is meant to be viewed by more than two or three people. Keep that in mind when you create a ‘lolololol’ post, because it will be moderated.

I’m only going to interfere with the extremes. The vast majority shouldn’t even bother with this new ‘rule’. Meaningless remarks are allowed, just as usual, until the majority of your posts are meaningless.

#2

Sorry for that post Riven :slight_smile:

#3

I think it’s because of me :persecutioncomplex:

#4

‘until the majority of your posts are meaningless’, damn, I have to make more meaningful posts. Anyway, it’s a shame that this has to be done. If the new members hadn’t lowered the bar, we would still be enjoying the high-quality deluxe posts that inhabit the majority of this forum.

#5

Whew!

[quote=“Riven,post:1,topic:40456”]
Doh!

#6

Your vigilance is appreciated, Riven

#7

That’s a great idea, thanks Riven.
By the way, the problem with new members is that they try to get their post-count up to become more ‘senior’, so they spam senseless comments.
Maybe the seniority given under a person’s could be a count of medals only, or by the number of games in the games showcase, or time since the member first joined?
Or seniority could be an average of those things and post-count, plus or minus a random number just to confuse the noobs a bit so they give up trying to game the system. Or seniority could be ditched.

#8

I concur; medal count is much more interesting than post count. Just remove the post count from general display and show only ranking based on medals perhaps.

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

Looks like that has been done now. At least it says how many games each person have and their number of medals, instead of number of posts. :slight_smile:

#10

I like the games count, motivating!

For level, I suggest this variables: registered time, medals, games (WIP dan Featured have different values), and post counts (on small portion).

#11

Hm, looks like my games count is based simply on posts put in Showcase - it would appear a bunch of those posts need moving.

Cas :slight_smile:

#12

Game count based on: showcase, featured, wip and all Java4K boards (which needs some adjustment).

Star count is based on black magic, with a maximum of 9.

Rank is solely based on star count: Junior Newbie, Senior Newbie, Junior Member, Senior Member, JGO Apprentice, JGO Knight, JGO Ninja, JGO Wizard, JGO Kernel.

#13

This feature is one of the best I’ve seen in a game dev forum. Not because of the ranking system per se, but the sorting of games of a member, and the link to the Member’s game showcase.

Maybe if you’re feeling really productive you should add a “Not a Game” button in a member’s Showcase, in which the member can remove the game from his showcase. (Maybe a point(?) given to the person who clicked “Not a Game” to reward his honesty).

Edit:
Oh and it would also be nice if this info was shown in Member’s summary page.

Anyway, kudos for the great idea!

#14

Thanks for the kind words! (but credits to CommanderKeith for the idea!)

Although ‘not a game’-functionality is perfectly reasonable, it’s a bit of a hassle, in the database. I’m already running ‘cronjobs’ (which I added to SMF), to keep all statistics up to date, and the more fancy functionality I add, the more caching and/or denormalizing I end up with. Not to mention that it’d take a few hours to implement. I’ve got other stuff to do too, like writing fancy code for/with Cas.

So let’s say, I wrote it down on this mystic to-do list, safely stored in a vault.

Done! Added Medals & Games in the listing. The links to the detailed pages, were already at the bottom.

Update:
Added some heuristics, to see whether a topic is really a game topic. :persecutioncomplex:

#15

I am only 1/3 of Riven in terms of black magicness … :’(

-Pickle

#16

Very good idea Riven! Now, maybe people will make more games… ;D

#17

Showing how many games a person posted will only result in people posting unfinished crap, if that.

I dont get why there are medals anyway - does anyone care?
“Rank” - does anyone care ?
ridiculous social stats with number rating - srsly ?

Do you really think all that is going to improve forum posts in some way ? “I’m going to improve quality of my posts so get medals…” why would they be desirable ?

Maybe I’m the wrong guy since I have never cared for Achievements or Trophies or whatever either - but this isn’t really a game

The only thing that makes marginally sense, is showing how many posts a person has, because newbies who dont know the people yet can than tell (not with certainty but at least probability), that this guy has been here long / might know a thing or two
other than that I only care for the name and the avatar ._.

#18

so are ranks based on games now? or games and medals? or games and medals and posts? Apparently I’m an apprentice but since this ranking system is very recent I don’t exactly know how high/low that is.

need to learn how to read xD
and @cero I pretty much agree, I think it should be a combination. I mean if you look at the stuff in WIP some of it is nothing but concept art.

#19

Wow that was lightning quick implementation, thanks Riven. This is cool.

Cero: I agree that rank is a bit silly, but it motivates new members, and I am now motivated to crank out some games. I’m feeling quite inadequate with my zero games status!

Riven’s black magic for calculating star count is a great idea. Keeping the formula secret is the way to go so that newbs can’t game the system

#20

Oh, and the members page still displays our old ranks.