Derailment

[Kintaro]

There has been a bit of discussion of derailment and a little editting along with it. We need to work out something that can be considered a little more legitimant regarding derailment. However what is considered legitimant is also debateable. Nonetheless there are better ways of handling derailments then deleting posts and things.

A thread derailing usually means that a discussion, or shall we call it a subdiscussion has happened in a topic that is not directly related to the actual topic itself. These have occured in forums for the longest time, and these have occured in usenet and mailinglists for a long time as well. This derailment is usually based on circumstances of the thread, or it happens more suttle in most cases with the topic slowly leading into another topic.

When a discussion does this I have witnessed one really good way of them sorting themselves out. Basically on a lot of forums and mailinglists, when the thread or discussion leads offtopic, or gets derailed they change the topic heading. For example on a mailinglist a discussion about pizza could lead to a discussion about cheese, and a person will realise this and change the subject line from "pizza" to "cheese (was pizza)", and it spawns another discussion. However this is not a mailinglist, so if a discussion about "Windows" lead to a lot of talk about "Linux" in it, the discussion could be renamed from "Windows" to "Windows and Linux". I think this is sensible, as moderation tactics like deletion and editing should only be used as a worst case scenario. In a worst case scenario a new thread could be started with the original posts moved in that direction.

Make sense?

[Laukev7]

I also would like some guidelines concerning so-called 'useless' threads which take up space and contain no meaningful or entertaining debate, and lead to no constructive discussion.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I agreee but if a Windows thread in the Windows section becomes a Windows and Linux thread should it be moved to a more general section like the lounge.

Also I don't know because I've never started a topic that's got binned but do the moderators tell the poster that their topic has been binned and why? I feel they should be sent a  private message or something and the same if their topic gets moved. I know they normally give a reason and this is more to help newbs.

Moveing post should also be an alternative to deleteing or binning the entire thread. For example if some starts a toplic that already exists and loads of people reply their posts shouldn't be deleted along with the thread they should be just moved into the existing thread.

I don't know what you could do about editing. Maybe each post could be saved in MS Word format because it always tracks the changes and both the editing and display pages could be MS Word AcitveX controls or something.

[Kintaro]

Maybe each post could be saved in MS Word format because it always tracks the changes and both the editing and display pages could be MS Word AcitveX controls or something.

Or we could just use mediawiki to do the whole thing.

[Calum]

Nonetheless there are better ways of handling derailments then deleting posts and things.

thank you!
yes there are.

this board's habit of encouraging people to leave snippy remarks when they do delete entire posts is a bit redundant as well.

A thread derailing usually means that a discussion, or shall we call it a subdiscussion has happened in a topic that is not directly related to the actual topic itself. These have occured in forums for the longest time, and these have occured in usenet and mailinglists for a long time as well. This derailment is usually based on circumstances of the thread, or it happens more suttle in most cases with the topic slowly leading into another topic.

in my opinion if a discussion's direction changes, this is the essence of discussion. it is only "derailment" if somebody has filled the thread with drivel when serious discussion is *still* going on there. if the original discussion has fizzled out, and other people have moved onto another topic, then what's the bloody problem?

When a discussion does this I have witnessed one really good way of them sorting themselves out. Basically on a lot of forums and mailinglists, when the thread or discussion leads offtopic, or gets derailed they change the topic heading.

thank you thank you!!!
i really had lost hope that people could make sensible observations about this sort of thing here.

For example on a mailinglist a discussion about pizza could lead to a discussion about cheese, and a person will realise this and change the subject line from "pizza" to "cheese (was pizza)", and it spawns another discussion. However this is not a mailinglist, so if a discussion about "Windows" lead to a lot of talk about "Linux" in it, the discussion could be renamed from "Windows" to "Windows and Linux". I think this is sensible, as moderation tactics like deletion and editing should only be used as a worst case scenario. In a worst case scenario a new thread could be started with the original posts moved in that direction.

in my opinion this solution is better than anything else i have heard from anybody at all ever since the board started up again.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Or we could just use mediawiki to do the whole thing.

Now that would be cool, if we did I'm sure we'd be the first forum run be run on MediaWiki. But doesn't this VB software have the ability to save the origional post when someone edits it?

What would be good if when a post is edited copy or the origional is saved in a secrete location in the Mods forum.

[Laukev7]

Personally, I find it a simple solution to just split the thread and give them different titles. Renaming the thread does work, but dedicating a thread to different topics allows members to post their ideas on a topic that's been superceeded without leading to long and very confusing threads or posts with loads of quotes and responses.
 
The advantage of forums is that you have many conversations on any topic you wish, as opposed to spoken conversations where people interrupt each other and go from one topic to another before you can express what you wanted to say. Keeping different topics in a single thread seems to defeat that advantage in my opinion.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I agree that would be better as long as there's an easy way for you mods to move multiple posts from one topic to another.

[Kintaro]

Is VB open source, it would be fucking easy to implement, really.

[Calum]

of course it isn't.

remember this site is the dream of an applemac freak.

they have been known to pay lipservice to the idea of open source, but in reality they're only interested in what closed source software can take from open source released code.

more specifically speaking, this board is not using open source software, probably because some people still believe that expensive closed source solutions are inherently "better".

[bedouin]

they have been known to pay lipservice to the idea of open source, but in reality they're only interested in what closed source software can take from open source released code.

more specifically speaking, this board is not using open source software, probably because some people still believe that expensive closed source solutions are inherently "better".

Or it could be that they explored the open-source alternatives and thought they sucked.  If there was some inherent belief that open-source alternatives were inferior this site would be hosted on a Windows server, not Linux.  If an open source project can do the job, then people will embrace it.  Nothing beats free.  If Linux were equal to OS X I'd happily not pay the Apple tax; unfortunately that's not the case.

And if you want to be a purist and insist corporations simply steal from open source, then one could just as easily state that the biggest open-source projects only are usable because of previous corporate investments (Mozilla from Netscape and AOL; OpenOffice from Sun).  It's a two-way streak.  People like IBM and Apple are finally getting it.  I'm sure the Konqueror folks benefit a great deal from Apple's contributions, not to mention they've open-sourced things like Rendezvous at their own will.

[Calum]

well, i didn'tinsist that, and incidentally my outburst gave you the perfect opportunity to make the above explanation!

everybody wins!

[MrX]

im famous!
here are some pics to help the mods.



Mr X

[Aloone_Jonez]

MrX, don't you fucking listen!, stop posting stupid fucking pictures!

 :fu:  :fu:  :fu:  :fu:  :fu:  :fu:

[MrX]

can i do ascii pictures instead? i mean whats wrong with pictures. its not like we all use dial up here.

Mr X