Postings with Duplicate Information Debate

[Automation Gallery]

this is getting out of hand. Could the moderators please step back and let people post whatever they feel is relevant to the discussion. These rants against posters are wasting far more space on this board than links to articles that "might" have been posted before. It is blatant hijacking and far worse than the "disease" you are trying to cure. Instead of discussing the building at hand, I am instead dragged into this nonsense discussion. The aggressive/negative tone doesn't help matters either. I have been a regular reader since this board started and it is honestly putting me off visiting the site altogether when every other post consists of nitpicking the newest members post that either doesn't include enough information or that repeats something for the second time on a hundred page thread. Let the people speak. This is a forum, not a news outlet.

Right on...

 

[khris]

silentworth, great post. You couldn't be more right. People seem to want to have some sort of power over others to shut them up. They shouldn't be on a discussion board. It's not the place for them. They should just simply get their news from a source, and talk to themselves about it instead.

 

[Torontovibe]

this is getting out of hand. Could the moderators please step back and let people post whatever they feel is relevant to the discussion. These rants against posters are wasting far more space on this board than links to articles that "might" have been posted before. It is blatant hijacking and far worse than the "disease" you are trying to cure. Instead of discussing the building at hand, I am instead dragged into this nonsense discussion. The aggressive/negative tone doesn't help matters either. I have been a regular reader since this board started and it is honestly putting me off visiting the site altogether when every other post consists of nitpicking the newest members post that either doesn't include enough information or that repeats something for the second time on a hundred page thread. Let the people speak. This is a forum, not a news outlet.

I couldn't agree more!

 

[DSC]

IIf you find no new information, however, then please stop and think for a moment before posting. There's so much to read here already, do UT members need to have their attention drawn yet here again to read something they already know?

Similarly, many UT members are expressing frustration at the number of posts lately which neither add to our knowledge nor to our discussion: one or two line put-downs or accolades that are not expanded upon and which do not invite discussion ultimately tell us more about the poster's ego than anything else. Not that we don't appreciate one-liners when they are either clever or funny or preferably both: we do!

The bottom line when posting: please have some content, have something worthwhile to add, and everybody should be happy!42

As I said earlier on this thread (yes, repetition!), I think that the Mods are doing what good moderators do. They are trying to prevent UT becoming so large, through repetition and posts (short or otherwise) that add nothing new to the discussion, that people really can't read every post (even if one restricts oneself to certain threads) and some of the great stuff in UT gets lost amid the noise.

Compared to many such boards, UT is run with a very gentle hand - some of us would say it is sometimes too gentle!

 

[EnviroTO]

I think there really aren't enough rules and enforcement. This forum shouldn't be just the same as the other forums out there. Any "me too", "i like it", etc posts belong in a poll. Discussion threads are for discussion. A discussion means opinions and new information including pictures. I'm sure everyone on here can go to Google News and Google a topic. It doesn't add value.

If an improvement is made to this forum's rules or software what I would like to see is:
(a) a rule that all news must be placed in QUOTE tags,
(b) a minimum post length which does not include the text in QUOTE tags (this would prevent poll type responses in discussion threads and prevent people from asking for updates),
(c) quotes of other poster comments should not include the entire text of their message and their pictures... only quote the relevant text because there is no point seeing the same picture over and over again,
(d) remove the number of posts counters because how many times a person posts doesn't matter,
(e) if a ranking system of members is desired (not sure if it adds value but some members seem to have a need for it) then replace the quantitative measure of posts made with a more qualitative measure. Perhaps a thumbs up / down count, hidden behind the scenes on each posting can be kept and some measure can be derived from it.
(f) I have seen other forums with a "suggest for deletion" button which makes sense rather than having a discussion about a post occurring within a thread.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

(c) quotes of other poster comments should not include the entire text of their message and their pictures... only quote the relevant text because there is no point seeing the same picture over and over again,

agree with the pictures part. i usually just leave a link to the quoted photo. the only problem with your suggestion is that i have done the quoting of relevant text and some people see it as selective quoting. sometimes while not done intentionally, it could seem that way because if you take away part of a post, it can convey a different message or tone.

maybe it would make sense that when replying to an entire post or instead of quoting an entire post, one could reply like this:

***

^^^the quote above has a link to the post it is replying to. if one would like to see that post, you can click the blue arrow right after the original poster's name.

such a style would be useful when replying to a post as a whole. when replying to individual segments of a post, it probably makes sense to break up the original post into segments and reply to those segments. in that case, the original text is needed in those segments to avoid confusion (to know what reply part goes with what original post part).