Felasco

Hi there, thanks for your reply. Please understand, I'm making a general point about all forums, not trying to tell you what you should do with your forum, which is clearly your business. The vast majority of intellectual forums are VERY concerned about spam, somewhat concerned about personal conflict, but otherwise allow just about anybody to post just about anything. Lower quality posters are rewarded, while higher quality posters are discouraged by the low signal to noise ratio. The higher quality posters wander off one by one, and over time the lower quality posters dominate more and more. Eventually the admin and mods lose interest in managing such an audience, and they wander off as well. In my view this is the inevitable result of the "almost anybody can join and say almost anything" publishing model that in use on the vast majority of forums, a slow but steady decline of the forum world. It's possible it's already too late to reverse the trend, rendering this post largely pointless. If the only way a post can be published is for a mod to approve it, nobody can spam. If the sign up form makes this policy completely clear, the spammers move on to some other target. If the standards for the forum are raised at the same time, then the trend is set in motion in the opposite direction of what it is currently. Now the impatient and demanding lower quality posters are discouraged, and the higher quality more mature posters are rewarded with a higher signal to noise ratio. Over time a forum of this nature should see fewer members and posts, but higher quality members and posts. Less work for the mods (both in number of posts and number of problems), and more interesting reading for both mods and members. What's most likely to happen in my view is that folks will stick stubbornly with the current model until it's driven in to the ground, forums close one by one, and there's no where left online to have thoughtful in depth conversations with intelligent people over the age of 22. I don't know what happens then. Perhaps Facebook installs a decent forum system, forum owners finally rethink their publishing model, or something else. There's an inherent unresolvable conflict between "anybody can post anything" and "intelligent, articulate, thoughtful conversations". There's a place online for both, but trying to do both at the same time in the same place is never going to work for long, in my long winded opinion.

Making it works requires rethinking forums in a way few are willing to do. The price tag for this unwillingness is most forums are dominated by low quality chat style content, and of course, the never ending spam battle. The spam battle is steadily destroying the entire forum experience. It pits forum owners and mods against their members. As example, just this week I was banned from a forum specifically for trying to make a significant donation to the cause of that forum. I kid you not, this is literally true. The mod was so traumatized by spam that she'd entered a deep state of hysterical paranoia, and just couldn't believe my offer was sincere. She was SURE there must be some nefarious hidden agenda, and so she banned me. I've been banned from forums for posting non-controversial content that significantly exceeded the quality of the vast majority of posts. Again, literally exactly true, I kid you not. The solution is to rethink forums. Fewer posts and members, but higher quality posts and members. If the standards are raised, there will be LESS work for the mods to do, and it will be more satisfying work. It will go away on the day that forum owners want it to go away. Simple recipe: 1) Use Facebook for the chatty quipy empty content exchanges that are so popular. 2) Use forums for intelligent, articulate, thoughtful conversations. If a post doesn't meet that standard, it doesn't get published. This will result in the end of all spam, and the end of low quality posters (ie. those that cause most of the problems), and a better experience for owners, mods and members willing to raise their game to meet the standard. What's most likely going to happen instead is that we'll spend the next few years listing 35,873 reasons why this could never possibly work, until all the forum owners finally grow weary of the current experience, and close their forums, one by one by one. Most of the best posters have already fled forum land.

The constant that remains the same is a reader's desire for a quality reading experience. To me, just one view, there's no fundamental difference between spam and low quality junk content. To me, just one view, it's all just stuff that I don't want to deal with. I don't quite see the logic of a universal adamant passionate consensus against spam, combined with a casual and largely unexamined "almost anything goes" relationship with the rest of the content.

Hi Clay, thanks for joining in. I hope you read the part that none of my comments are about this forum specifically, but about forums in general. Where are such forums? Intellectual forums that pre-approve all content. This isn't an argument, but a sincere question. Well, one way to look at it could be to not be the average discussion forum, of which there are already way too many. I'm not really arguing that all "anybody can join and say anything" forums should vanish, but that the net would be enhanced if there was more variety. I do understand this. As it stands, on most forums, the mods have the job of basically being junior high school hall monitors, dealing with spam and the juvenile behaviors of some members etc. Not a very satisfying job perhaps. If the mod job was elevated to something more interesting, perhaps there would be more volunteers. And, if the content standard was set higher, there'd be less junk and problem members to deal with. I would agree with this good point. In reply I'd suggest the way to get more skilled mods is to serve a more skilled audience, which requires some method of keeping the signal to noise ratio high. Again, I'm talking about forums in general, almost all of which are run on the "almost anybody can join and say almost anything" model. There's little incentive for the best thinker/writers in any niche to invest time in such a system. What I see all across the net is that the more skilled posters are gradually crowded out by the more numerous less skilled posters, leading to a slow but steady decline in the content quality. It seems to be a process that accelerates as it unfolds. As a reader, this concerns me more than spam. Just one old forum blowhard casting his one little vote, that's all.

Thanks again for your replies. The solution here is to create a forum the mods and forum owner would actually like to read, by raising the content quality standards, which can only be accomplished with prior review of content. Less content, better content. This is exactly what just about every print publication over the last few hundred years already does. Only in forum land is this considered a radical wacky unworkable idea. Um, well, no they wouldn't. I'm a forum software developer. What would happen is that everybody would immediately focus on why anything that's new and different is wrong, wrong, wrong, because it's new and different, and not part of the group consensus routine. :-) This is the challenge any software developer faces. Folks want improvements, but they also want everything to stay the same way they're already used to. The new posts that appear on the forum would be posts approved a day or two ago, instead of posts that were written and posted a few hours ago. There'd still be plenty of things to read, and it wouldn't matter when they were written, as it doesn't matter already the vast majority of time. Do you read the publish date on every post you respond to, or do you just hit reply? What difference would it make if you read and reply to this post on Tuesday instead of Sunday? In the meantime you could be reading and replying to the posts I wrote a few days ago, which would have been approved today. If we simply removed the publication date from posts, few people would probably even notice. But there's no way to prevent people from complaining, no matter what a forum owner does. We could hand out free money to every new member, and it'd be only a matter of time before someone was asking why the amount is X instead of a larger number. How about this? Simply limit the forum to those members who understand what the word "censorship" actually means. If somebody yells "Censorship!" don't publish that post, and let them decide for themselves whether they wish to continue. Now we have a more intelligent and educated membership, and the quality of the conversations is enhanced for all. A more intelligent and educated membership would attract more intelligent and educated members. Yes, I understand, you are not alone, this is a quite unpopular proposal. I have a different vision of the challenge facing forums. To me, the main challenge is that on most forums (those using the "almost anybody can join and say almost anything" model) the majority of the posts aren't worth reading. To me, this problem dwarfs the spam problem. The result of this problem being ignored is that those members a forum would most like to have are discouraged by a low signal to noise ratio. They never even join, let alone complain. They scroll around for a few minutes on the first visit, and then vanish, never to be seen again. Or they've given up on forums altogether. A forum that was serious about attracting such members would have much less moderating to do. Just a point of view, that's all. I think it's useful to remind mods that if they really want to leave the spam era behind once and for all, that option is available.

Hi there, thanks for your reply. First, I should emphasize I'm talking about forums in general, and have no opinion on what this forum should do. I have a longstanding interest in this issue, regarding forums in general. Understood. My proposal assume mods are already reading the content their forum. If this is the case, it's no more work to read the posts before publication instead of after. Sure, of course. If there was a fully automated solution that would prevent all spam and enhance overall content quality, that'd be great. A forum using this solution would move no more slowly than any other forum, there would just be a delay between when a post is written and when it is read. So what? We readers aren't on a forum 24 hours a day either, right? We almost always experience a delay now, with the current model most forums use. Censorship refers to the government limiting speech, not a private publication. We don't accuse a magazine or newspaper of censorship if they don't print anything anybody submits. Forums aren't a democracy, they are private property. Instead of censorship, think editing. Editing is a very valuable service. Any publication that prints anything anybody submits is not going to be a quality reading experience. Somebody will always be mad no matter what the system is. Each moderating team would decide that for themselves, just as the editors of any other publication do. Anyway, like I said, I have no opinion on what this forum should do. I'm just saying, if any forum wants to finally once and for all leave the spam era, and improve their quality too, a free solution that involves no more work is readily available.

There is a solution that is guaranteed to end all spam on any forum, and probably raise the overall content quality of a forum as well. Moderators review posts before they are published instead of after. This assumes the mods of a forum are already reviewing the content, and simply moves the time when they do that job from the back end of the process to the front end. Most of the significant problems forums face are a direct result of the open "almost anybody can say almost anything" publishing model in use on almost all forums. Spam, personal arguments, off topic comments, low quality junk posts, empty one line clever quip posts and so on. All of that can be solved by using the same publishing model that almost all publications have been using for hundreds of years. Somebody reviews the content before publishing it. This would probably be overkill on say, a Britney Spears fan forum. But any intellectual forum could be considerably enhanced by this one change.