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[OT] Regarding all these locked posts

and a Ranking system might make me want to do that also, but im not sure since i haven't been on a forum that ranks you

I like the policy of deleting shorter posts, just because they make people actually have to stop and think and actually say something that might be of interest to other people. It leads to much more interesting topics than just going stating an opinion and then going away. That's what polls are for.

Well, if I may toss in my 2 cents...

I've been an Admin on a decent-sized forum (current stats: Threads: 204,473, Posts: 2,058,179, Members: 112,356, Active Members: 6,648) for a bit over eight years now. We started with maybe six people in a chatroom in the summer of 1998, & grew it from there. So while I'm a relative n00b here, I'm not to forum culture in general.

I don't want to bag on the Staff for everything I would do differently here, because it's not my board, but I do want to address one thing: posts being deleted (or members being flamed) for the post being too short. I find that to be a completely unnecessary practice on the part of the Mods, & I read the flaming by members as nothing more than snarky elitism.

Chastising a person because their post isn't sufficiently long enough to be deemed a worthwhile response is something I've never seen on any other forum. Sure, moderating is required to keep things running smoothly, but this is a case of useless micro-management.

Sometimes, "+1" expresses everything you want to say perfectly. Sometimes, nothing more is needed, & any more is worthless filler.

Sometimes, you don't really want some people writing long posts. Perhaps one fairly coherent sentence is their limit. I know for me, if you can't spell worth a damn, I don't really want to read much more than one sentence from you, anyway.

Also, from a volunteer Staffer's viewpoint, it's a lot of added work for no benefit. You're not really stopping anything detrimental. Getting rid of spambot threads, now there's a worthwhile task.

In the long run, though, I don't dislike it here enough to leave, so I will jump through the hoops placed before me in order to participate. If it gets under my skin too much, I'll wander off to somewhere else. (Took me long enough to find this place, btw. I've used the Encyclopedia for quite awhile, but never bothered even looking for a forum here until I noticed a mention of it in a Greg Ayres blog.)

In closing, I would've just posted "Deleting short posts SUCKS" but I was afraid it would be deleted.

Why would rank even matter? This is what I'm talking about; people should post here because they want to have fun and mingle with other anime fans, not so they can rank themselves and build up some kind of self-praising pedestal.

Moved back by what? Threads you didn't like?

Cloe wrote:

Why would rank even matter? This is what I'm talking about; people should post here because they want to have fun and mingle with other anime fans, not so they can rank themselves and build up some kind of self-praising pedestal.

Personally, I like the rank system. Not limited to the other reasons I mentioned before, but also because it often times makes forums fun to post on. I find it fun having some little rank thing under your avatar. I know, may be childish, but I won't deny for a second that it's an aspect of internet forums that I enjoy. Also, it doesn't always create elitism. It's a pretty common aspect on forums, and I can name more than one forum where it has had basically no effect at all on this "elitism" thing (Anime on DVD for one, don't see much elitism there, though, I don't post that often...).

Edit:

Although, on the other hand, I really wouldn't be surprised if it really did influence people to post more often, just to get higher in the ranks. I mean, look at the Anime on DVD's forums, Anime Nation's, or any other with ranks. Users with thousands of posts are far more common than on this forum. They even have some posters with over 10,000 posts... Something nobody on this forum has.

Cloe wrote:

Why would rank even matter? This is what I'm talking about; people should post here because they want to have fun and mingle with other anime fans, not so they can rank themselves and build up some kind of self-praising pedestal.

Personally, I like the rank system. Not limited to the other reasons I mentioned before, but also because it often times makes forums fun to post on. I find it fun having some little rank thing under your avatar. I know, may be childish, but I won't deny for a second that it's an aspect of internet forums that I enjoy. Also, it doesn't always create elitism. It's a pretty common aspect on forums, and I can name more than one forum where it has had basically no effect at all on this "elitism" thing (Anime on DVD for one, don't see much elitism there, though, I don't post that often...).

As troublesome as it may seem from a user's viewpoint, I am deleting these short posts and locking those vague/badly constructed threads to force you all into actually thinking or maturing a little.