Adding an "All (Excluding Off-Topic)" link to the bottom of the forum list might reduce OT downvoting. I'd guess that a significant portion of the downvoters would rather not see OT at all.

But for example,
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/253143-discord-chat
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/252438-oldest-active-forumer
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/4307-question-
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/52649-person-last-reply
are hidden right now. (Those post's are threads I upvoted, and therefore I picked them.)

"Oldest active forumer" isn't downvoted, unless it just got upvoted in the last few minutes?

"so the question is" and "person last reply" threads are kind of nonsense. They may be fun little games but I can understand why some people downvote them since they have no substance.

Discord chat I'm not sure if belongs or not. Only two non-alts upvoted it, while 9 downvoted it. I don't see you as having voted on it at all.

Adding an "All (Excluding Off-Topic)" link to the bottom of the forum list might reduce OT downvoting. I'd guess that a significant portion of the downvoters would rather not see OT at all.

I agree, that would probably help.

Why not after a week of being hidden they are just deleted?

that doesn't make any sense. Even if most of the community sees it as trash someone still cares about it. and they will just remake it.

Who has 6 alts (4 with memberships and lvl 58+) and downvotes everything in the off topic forum every 3 days? This guy

aye screw you too FK

Edited 3/31/2017 02:34:29

I think it's Nauz, not FK.

Fizzer, is there a way for you to set the thresholds dynamically when a page is loaded? I tend to downvote OT posts far more often than other posts when I'm viewing all forums at once, simply because OT posts tend to be pretty weak on the quality front (since pretty much everything is allowed, seems like that discourages effort)... and I don't think I'm the only one, given this thread. So it seems like people would prefer to not see OT-style posts when they're viewing the forums in general, but obviously if you're heading to OT you probably want to see at least half the posts on each page.

Maybe set some percentile- so you'll have to make two passes through the posts on a given page, first to get their scores to find the value at some percentile (say 20th, 30th, or 50th? I don't know what would work best)- and if a post is either above the absolute threshold you already have or above the percentile threshold for the page being viewed, it gets displayed. Would that be viable/implementable given the current technical setup?

I think one issue with the voting system is that- in the context of other voting systems we're already familiar with (reddit, YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, etc.), it seems incomplete without all that fancy recommendation system machine learning going on. Absolute thresholds have their limitations, especially when your output is just the posts with some subset marked hidden (instead of say, 25 non-hidden posts)- I guess voting systems just have this connotation of customization and that could get confusing for users since here they're instead being used purely as distributed moderation. But I don't know if it's viable to rebuild that infrastructure, since it seems like you're mainly held back here by the way the existing forum setup works (or maybe not- I'm just going off assumptions based on the way browser requests are formatted).

80% of tabby or the usual racist threads i downvote without clicking on them. And i think these are probably over 50% of the off topic forum. I should probably open all of them at least, but that seems like too much effort for their bad trolling.

same here, if the title already implies nonsense, i don't bother to even open and straightforward downvote it

Same here.
Whenever I see Tabby posts or Wally bitching about Trump, I downvote without opening.

F***

"Oldest active forumer" isn't downvoted, unless it just got upvoted in the last few minutes?

"so the question is" and "person last reply" threads are kind of nonsense. They may be fun little games but I can understand why some people downvote them since they have no substance"


The Oldest active forum thread was indeed hidden for a long time. (until I made my post, and it got voted up)

While "so the question is" and "person last reply" threads are not super 'intelligent' threads, they are forum games, and in my view, this is what off-topic threads are for. Games like Mafia, counting, political discussions and random batter etc. Just the fact that they have accumulated several thousands posts each means that they clearly have a rightful place on the forum. I would not make them notable, but hiding the threads is just not right.

"Adding an "All (Excluding Off-Topic)" link to the bottom of the forum list might reduce OT downvoting. I'd guess that a significant portion of the downvoters would rather not see OT at all."

It does indeed appear to be needed.

Clicking the "all" forums should exclude off-topic. I come to the forums to see warlight content, not random ramblings of the off-topic people. I also downvote the off-topic sections when viewing the "all forums", just like knyte. This should solve the problem.

Or create another link "All except off-topic" that knyte, myself, and others can use.

Let's say you have a room in your house that's filled with cockroaches. Each time you see one, you stomp on it and kill it.

After a while you get tired of killing cockroaches. Plus the dead carcasses start to smell. So you start to brainstorm solutions to this problem.

Your friend proposes a solution: Close the door to that room, never open it, and never look inside. On the surface, this is solving both of your problems -- you no longer have to stomp cockroaches, and the door will contain the smell. Problems solved.

However, if you take a step back and analyze the situation as a whole, that's not a good solution. Eventually you'll be entertaining some clients, they won't know that this room is off-limits and wander in while looking for the bathroom. They'll be disgusted when they find a room full of live cockroaches, which will cause you to lose their business and you'll go bankrupt.

Also allowing cockroaches to live freely in a room may cause them to breed and eventually start creeping into other areas of the house. Yeah, you can stomp the ones that escape the room, but the fact that the room exists makes it more likely they'll pop up elsewhere.

Ultimately a better solution is to find a better way at killing cockroaches. Send a message that this is a no-cockroach household.

Wally Balls is a grade-A cockroach breeder then.

The fastest and easiest way to get rid of WL cockroaches would be to ban them. I'm not sure why Squiggles was allowed to spam the forums for months before he was finally suspended, but doing that certainly saved peeople a lot of headache.

Now that Squiggles is gone, Wally Balls comes to mind as a giant cockroach. While some his posts contain some sense, they're still nitpicky and repetitive. And he makes new threads daily, not weekly as Squiggles was advised to do.

Send a message that this is a no-cockroach household.

Happily done. https://i.snag.gy/EJedD4.jpg

Now that Squiggles is gone, Wally Balls comes to mind as a giant cockroach.

Tabby doesn't come to mind first?! At least Wally Balls talks and gives biased summaries of some news, Tabby's threads are somehow even more worthless than that.

By far this should tell you who is the worst about.

https://i.snag.gy/3JGZQR.jpg

Tabby doesn't come to mind first?! At least Wally Balls talks and gives biased summaries of some news, Tabby's threads are somehow even more worthless than that.

By far this should tell you who is the worst about.

https://i.snag.gy/3JGZQR.jpg

It depends. A week ago, Tabby would've been the clear winner, and if we take the last 6 months as reference, then yes, it's Tabby. However if we only look at the recent 7 days, then I see Wally taking the lead by a small margin. Tabby has actually made a couple sensible posts among all the BS and he doesn't believe that sex is evil anymore.

Why not? I typically downvote these as well. If the creator of a thread can't even provide something of value, why does the thread deserve to be seen by others?

because that's not the main point. it is a priority for the creator to keep a discussion ongoing by having a lot of people responding to it, that is what creates new content. How stupid that may be, but actually a lot of nostalgic threads were also started by oneliners or simply one image at the top. Of course you'll be inclined to downvote a short thread immediately because of lack of content, but the major thing you see as the thread develops is that people will regularly regret their decision and will actually engage in the discussion later on.

example: https://www.warlight.net/Forum/24277-chrome-v-firefox-v-internet-explorer

having a lot of people engaging in a social way and there's no vital point to prove again that it is not always necessary to have a unnecessary long post as first post. Though that's what most of people downvote on. The first thing they see when a new thread appears is a short text. They'll immediately downvote on that. Rather then having someone engaging the post will be buried in a mere fraction of minutes. And the conversation will never come. I think that's quite sad.

Besides I just noticed I've had my voting power taken away from me. I don't clearly understand why since I never massively downvote things. I only downvote spam like when creators make more threads in a day then they're allowed to or when something is against the rules (regards to language). I hold strictly to my belief that I'm not a red button jerk. This is so frustrating for me. I'm by myself a person that tends more to upvote posts than any other player. Having no voting power at all is for me difficult to accept since I'd do anything to get nice and positive posts being visible from view rather then they are burried away. Please would you be kindly to me and give me my voting power back so this scheme of having only a couple of visible threads will be less likely?

Furthermore he thing is not the OT is getting worse by the day, because even in the past a couple years ago, we also had empty threads and trolls. Maybe with a little less activity but they were a thing. Perhaps we look at the past with way too much nostalgia while we forget the realism. And to be quite frank, the "should it be legal threads" were way more horrific then Tabby's current subjects. https://www.warlight.net/Forum/f8-topic?Offset=4150

It can't be worse than that

Also allowing cockroaches to live freely in a room may cause them to breed and eventually start creeping into other areas of the house. Yeah, you can stomp the ones that escape the room, but the fact that the room exists makes it more likely they'll pop up elsewhere.

Trolls and cockroaches alike. They will always find their way. I think that's the clear message of what you're trying to say here with a little bit added fantasy to it.

Edited 3/31/2017 20:50:50

Maybe you upvoted all hidden threads and lost your voting powers because of that rather than excessive downvoting?

I believe this is the only hidden thread worth upvoting in the first page of hidden OT threads:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/253467-income-inequality-west-part-1

It's probably only hidden because it was created by Paugers.

On the other hand, you have these threads:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/253257-snaaaaaaaaaaaaake
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/253422-9-unhidden-threads-busy-downvote-trolls
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/252864-thicc-

I don't think there is any argument that can change the fact that those threads are abolsutely useless.

And then you have absolute stupidity:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/253116-exposed
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/252469-jews-columbine
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/253400-attention-please

All in all, 1/47 (2%) of the hidden threads on the first page don't deserve to be downvoted. The percentage might be greater for other pages, but I'm willing to bet that it never goes above 10%. That's a small price to pay to keep the other 90+% of racist, idiotic garbage hidden.

when you want to have a forum like this, don't expect a lot of quality from it or an influx of newcomers

But doesn't the fact that only the good quality threads are unhidden mean that quality is automatically preserved? Newcomers who only see the good quality threads will be induced to post good quality material, whereas if they see an overwhelmingly big fraction of useless threads, they'll be more likely to contribute to the garbage. Not to mention that downvoting bad threads will either force people who spout junk all the time to start creating worthwhile threads so that their posts won't be hidden, or leave the forums which would benefit everyone anyways. And do you really want more Tabbies and Wally Babies? There is already enough entertainment in watching only those two pretend to be intelligent.

Off-topic discussions most of the time start out with someone writing a couple of phrases (a short text) followed by people talking about the issue that is presented.

You're talking about how the OT forum should ideally be used (the College Talk thread and the Paugers thread I posted are examples of how unhidden OT forum threads should look like). But it just seems like OT is a place to post idiotic comments and opinions. If OT was used in the way you said, then I would agree with you that the massive downvoting of all OT threads would be problematic. But when maybe 2-3 threads follow the criteria that you stated, I have no sympathy for the remaining threads being hidden. There's just no use for people to see most of that junk.

So yeah, I think the voting system is working pretty well.

@master of desaster probably. I'm of opinion that nothing should be buried though it is frustrating

So yeah, I think the voting system is working pretty well.

You're shocking me right there. But as you're one of those guys we call `elitists' I'm not surprised to hear. The OT is very hostile in current state. You like it better when it's all dead but I ain't one of those elite guys

topkek you upvoted hol up doe