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I would like to welcome all of our new members, so greetings and salutations.

But I would also like to formally ask that the plethora of newcomers we have here at this site to please refrain from turning our wonderful safe haven into the likes of sites like 4 chan and all the other angsty teen spam sites. We have a great community with some of the most talented minds you'll find. With some very respectable and amazing people, it would be a shame to see that ruined by 30 threads of MLP picture battles, and grumpy cat spam posts in every thread. 

Please respect one another, and if you feel the overwhelming urge to express your inward troll please stick to 1 thread and 1 thread only that is full of like minded people and things. 

Have fun, enjoy the site! Contribute stories, grow your expertise while here. Make friends with some truly great people, but please respect each other and your post count by not trolling/spamming threads. 

Sincerely,
Ryan (aka Aeon)

True enough - the humorous thread here or there is fine but don't intentionally derail real conversations in other peoples legitimate threads with garbage posts.

 

Damn straight Aeon. 

(Though, as BZ said, some are amusing, like the old mustache thread were hilarious, and not that spammy)

"...turning our wonderful safe haven into the likes of sites like 4 chan and all the other angsty teen spam sites."

It's already happened to an extent. I haven't been deleting many posts of this nature recently as everyone who remains at CYS seems to be involved in it. I think I have a much broader definition of spam than most people here (it's not that I'm a no-nonsense guy but my sense of humour is clearly different) hence I don't delete much because I'm not sure if the community sees it as spam.

I'm glad you made this post, Aeon (and I'm glad BZ replied in support of it). I'm happy to have support for deleting things, haha. To start with, what do people think of actively enforcing no. 2 of March's forum rules?

2) Keep on topic. This means that if the discussion is about birds, you don't start talking about gorillas. Unless, of course, you are talking about gorillas in relation to birds.

By "actively enforce" I mean unless the derailed part of the thread is a serious debate or something really interesting worth moving to another thread, derailing posts (and all of their replies - doesn't matter if there are 50 replies or none) will be deleted. Thoughts?

Matters. If it talks about birds and their habitats, then goes on to gorilla habitats, it's fine. But if it derails into Gorrila's wearing pink dresses, and MLP popping in, then no. 

I disagree. If the thread turns into an insightful conversation about gorilla habitats, I would move those posts to a separate thread because it is no longer related to bird habitats.

(If the posts were talking about gorilla habitats in relation to bird habitats, or the thread was "Animal Habitats" and not "Bird Habitats" it would be okay, though.)

Ah, fine then. Makes sense ^_^

I don't mean to sound like a first grader, but, what if, if the discussion was about birds, someone brought up an equally interesting, and relevant related fact about gorrillas, and within several posts discussing that fact, someone would mention their thoughts on gorillas and the moon, in the context of the bird thread, due to the facts stated prior, and so on?

(I think that's what's supposed to happen in a socratic seminar, but I'm not really sure...)

Somewhere along the line (depending on the content of the posts) the thread would be split so the gorilla+moon posts would be moved to a separate thread.

If it started to talk about monkeys in space then it would probably be moved to a seperate thread.

Real problem is that it happens daily, and I don't know if the admins are active enough to scroll through each thread looking for it, unless they'd accept a bunch of PMs a week.

I read most of the threads on here but now there's such a sheer volume of posts, and 99% of them don't interest me. Generally, if a thread interests me I'll usually post in it. Not including this thread, I've posted in 6 threads since 26/08 so that speaks for itself.

Don't get excited, but I brought up the topic of appointing another mod a few days ago, seeing JJJ's so busy with school, madglee's been less active recently and I'm losing patience reading through all these threads. Unfortunately, everyone with the power to make someone a moderator (madglee, JJJ, Alex, Choco, and March) haven't responded to me yet. I expect madglee'll see it soon enough, and if the situation gets desperate I could always just ask JJJ to come online (I'd really like to keep this as an absolute last resort though, given how hard he's studying at the moment), but yeah like I said don't get excited yet.

Cool, if it comes down to that, I think BerkZerka would make a good pseudo-admin.

Thanks for the suggestion! I've already got someone picked out (not saying who to avoid people going "no, it should be this guy instead!" etc - that's not to rule BZ out, though!).

Who gets appointed will depend on what the other mods/admins think - community opinion will probably not come into play. Just making a note of this now in case people start treating this as a nomination thread.

Yes, depending on the thread.

A serious thread needs to be kept that way

- and especially delete crap that goes off to the right of the page

- any "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..." bullshit or leet speak shit that creates a horizontal scroll-bar should be deleted regardless of what thread it is in

- AND anything that breaks the Thread and makes the whole thing Marquee scroll (probably 50% of SyftStryker's posts haha!)...

I'm sortof known for derailing, but yeah, it's gotten out of hand here. We don't want a strict feeling in this place, so a joke or two is fine, but once we get on tangents, it's probably best to either delete (for spam) or move it into another thread. 

Yeah, like I said though, I think it depends on the thread and it's weight.

For example, I think pretty much all Hi/Introduction threads are fair game for wild tangent posting - but a specific thread - like debate 'such and such' or 'How do I Post a Pic' etc... should stay pretty much on topic. 

Even intro threads shouldn't have the annoying thread breaking marquees or big letters, it's annoying, and pointless.

That is a given. That crap should always be deleted.

Sorry if that falls down to my wee thread also. 

If it's just the conversation naturally flowing into something else (Like the political conversation on whether communism could actually work, if enforced the right way) then yes, I believe it should be moved to a different thread, but not deleted. You can find a lot of great topics after you move past the initial - the real conversation and interest comes after you realize what you want to talk about, not once you start discussing an initial topic.

And of course, annoying or irrelevent posts should be deleted.

As for adding another mod, i'd suggest BZ, or Aman.

I agree with you, this was an extremely nice, mature site until people started spamming pun pictures and MLP shit (Unless it's a MLP CYOA keep it to yourself please). I'd also like to apologize for the spamy stuff I've done, as I hate feeling like a hypocrite.   

Agree to all the above posts. I also want to ask people not to post pictures in their posts as much. It gets annoying when 3-# pictures are right after another. 

I've only been a part of the forums here about a month or two myself, but I can assure you I won't take part in such nonsense. I'd been playing the storygames for qiute awhile before joining, and one of the reasons I joined to begin with was because the forums here were actually decent and had a purpose. I've seen a lot of what is, in my opinion, spam or pointlessness lately and its rather unfortunate. I haven't been very active in a while due to it.

I like these rules these are good. Spammers I'm looking at you.

End, I am really sorry to hear that. This post was to deter exactly what you just said, from happening. It is most unfortunate and I hope I (and the core posters here) can remain in your good graces enough to keep you around :)

Oh, you guys are lovely. I think most of it comes from newer folk like myself. This remains a good site anyhow

Of course I agree, as you've seen me and Aman say previously in the mythic Nippon thread.

Essentially, this is what's happening:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

With the recent (again) influx of questionable users. (Someone started a spam thread just yesterday I believe.) I would like to give this a big bump. If you are new here please give this thread a read. Thank you.

The one really positive thing that came from this thread was BZ getting mod. That's a huge step in the right direction :)

Agreed.

And this is why I've stopped reading aall the threads...earlier they were interesting but now not.

Best longest simple request ever. :3