actually, if the thread is on the carbonex series and someone want to say that carbonex sucks. that is ok if the person give valid reasons. just plain stating that it sucks serves absolutely no purpose imho and not much better than non-sense. however, if the thread is on the carbonex series and then someone comes in and start talking about the MP series or start asking about where to buy rackets, etc, then i would consider that out of topic and better belong to somewhere else. it is hard to draw the line, however, as sometimes slightly out of topic discussions are also valuable. tis is the gray area.
prophet, it is very difficult to set social rules. too strict then everyone's mouth are bounded and the place gets boring, too loose, than all hell break lose. we can only seek to encourage and discourage certain type of behaviours like in-sensible postings, and then post reminders when the trend of the discussions are tipping the wrong side. and this is what we are doing here. and i do agree with you that there is little correlation between high post count and post quality. many members whom i personally considered to be very valuable to the BF community have post counts in only the lower hundreds. some new members with only a few posts also provide immense amount of insight. Joanne has a good point that the Chit-Chat forum is designed for off-topic discussions. i wonder what will happen to the post count distribution if i were to turn off counting posts that are made in the chit-chat section?
Hmm... Kwun, how would you consider 'valuable'? Those who post useful replies to people who ask questions? Those are the experienced people right? What about those who are new to the game? They will be the ones asking around, not replying. Are they considered valuable too? I'm just wondering about this... I don't know about turning off the amount of post in the chit-chat forum...how will that affect the members? I doubt many are posting just for the sake of the quantity of posts. But then it doesn't have anything to do with badminton either...
Actually Kwun, I think you and and the other moderators do a really good job of setting and monitoring the 'social' and etiquette boundaries of this site. I think you usually use a high level of discretion to monitor the site's content. In fact, you probably give a post the benefit of the doubt more often times than not. Actually, you have every right to set up the system and rules that we as a community should abide by. So I do appreciate little reminders (like this thread) for every person to think before they put words on the page, and definitely think before pressing that submit button. I think that overall the moderators will do their part in monitoring posts, and we as a badminton community need to do our small part to monitor and dissuade insensible comments and insensible type posts that do nothing to enhance the thread.
I just thought that I might add my 2 cents.. One of the nice things about Badmintonforum is that the regulars (or "hardcore" regulars) aren't a**holes! This is otherwise a typical trend on other community forums. Another nice thing is that there's almonst no use of acronyms on badmintonforum. This is largely attributable to badminton in general of couse. Very nice however. One bad thing however is the many posts containing crappy english, words like "cuz", "wont" etc. I doesn't make the posts easier to read. Additionally, the poster doesn't learn any english either.. Also, "bumping" shouldn't be allowed too often. It's hard to regulate, I know..
Well, sometimes people miss out the '... isn't that just a mistake? Don't understand about the "People who follow-up old threads" Please explain.
Joanne: The last post (Made by "prophet") was 3 months old when I added my post. People usually don't like to follow threads for that long unless it's being populated with posts. Dill: "Bumping" is when you simply type "bump" to renew the thread so that it's placed at the top of a forum. This is to catch the attention of the readers. (PS. You don't have to type "bump", any other word would do the trick..)
Joanne: Bumping is generally used after a while when someone posts a question to which he really wants an answer and noone replies. Or, when people are trying to sell stuff (Marketplace forum)
I think the forum has been better lately, not too many insensible posts. It is important that the moderators continue to do a great job, at the badders forum they have had massive problems with hundreds of abusive posts and fake members! Its better to keep things under control from the start, if people post riubbish and it is deleted then they will lose interest, if however they post rubbish and it turns into an arguement they see that they can annoy people and get a perverse pleasure in it and continue! But perhaps we should have a frequently asked stupid questions FASQ: Q Every time I hit the shuttle it goes out the side of the court, will the new Yonex 700000 at $300 with laser guided sights turn me into Peter Gade? A No, if you play with that and Gade plays with a frying pan you'll still lose Q I like to serve overarm off the feathers whilst running is this a fault? A Have you ever seen a game? Q I can't clear the length of the court. I can bench press 200kg though, will doing wrist strength work fix my problem? A 10 year old girls can clear the length of the court, try practising or getting coaching! But joking aside this remains the best forum by far with an excellant positive atmosphere and something for everyone from beginner to fan to elite player.
aren't we all fans? anyways...that idea about a sticky where we can recommend people on succesful transactions is quite a good idea. it doesn't have to be as complicated as the ebay one, it just needs to show that the person is trustworthy
i really think u should do examples on what u think is unacceptable.If that is not happening,ppl wouldn't know if they post something u dislike.some of the people really do post something ridiculous to raise their posts count.all they want is just to be the person to hav the most posts.I know this because before i join a forum i always wanted to do that.But now dun hav la of coz....TQ
All right, I have read enough of this, along with tons of annoying and careless threads in past few months. I think I will be able to give you guys some examples of threads (other than bumps) which are very annoying and non-sense. ---------------Examples starts below this line----------------- #1, "What racquets/strings do you guys think is the best for me? Do you think it will fit me well? " Reason: What people think is irrelavent to you. It will make zero sense if you have never tried the racquet/strings before. #2, "Have you guys tried X, , what do you think about it?" (X=something we have discussed a lot already for years) Reason: Obviously, the poster did Not search prior the posting, and we have lots of threads like this.
yeah, i agree with you. i don't understand why some post questions that have already been answered and taken up. until i got really curious and tried the search function. sad to say but it really does not offer much or no results at all. and having to go through all the threads just to find what you are looking for is really so time consuming (which i think most of us don't have lots of). while i share your sentiments, as i also get annoyed reading the same questions, topics/threads, i also now understand why questions and threads are asked/posted again and again. let's try to understand other posters and hope the search function be improved and offer more results. i think even those posters get annoyed everytime they get a reply to do or use the search function first coz i bet they already did but did not have any luck on the results. i hope something could be done to improve the search function.
How about introducing a point system which link to each member? Like all the board admin have the power to "give" a point for a GOOD post, and deduct a point for those BS post. I think it will eliminate a lot of junk posts, cuz it will simply look bad if you have negative points. It will also help the marketplace cuz now we will know the seller/buyer with high points is likely a "good" person, since he/she has contributed to the board with GOOD posts, vice versa. Whereas right now people judged by the number of posts, which means jack.
In time, through experience, we all will learn. I've had some really BS posts myself, still do sometimes... BUT, the more mistakes you make, the more you learn from them.
