The Mod Squad has been discussing a handful of associated issues
in camera for some time now, and it would seem as good a moment as any to spill our brains to the membership.
We don't have any infallible yardstick with which to measure this, but we're now all in agreement that the level of 'drive-by' posting has been on the rise for quite some time.
1. One such issue is the increasing number of instances where members 'drop' photographs or videos (usually YouTube) without any contextualising or editorial comment.
The reasons, generally speaking, why this is undesirable are that:
- Videos frequently move or disappear, leaving a trail or broken links and zero clues as to where replacements can be found.
- Those browsing the board using 'accessibility aids' of various flavours are often stumped by the lack of explicatory text and tags, and are hence excluded from portions of otherwise intelligible threads.
- It subverts the whole 'discussion' concept that we've always sought to promote alongside the archive function that the board has developed.
If members could, therefore, really make an effort to bear this in mind when posting 'visual' material, it would be an improvement.
2. Another problem--and this one is more of a problem than a matter of etiquette or convenience--is what we could probably drop any pretence and call the spamming of threads.
It wasn't wholly uncommon to see single members make multiple successive posts in short succession in the CHAT sub-forum, but this tendency has now spilt over onto threads in the Fortean fora and is most unwelcome. It is extremely off-putting for lurkers, non-posting or new members to find that on clicking to see the most recent post on a promisingly titled thread that the half of the last page comprises multiple consecutive posts by a single user who has explicably uploaded only one image, one video, one sentence or one word per post.
We have charitably merged and moved many such posts, but we consider the practice to be antisocial and will issue warnings if it continues. There is speculation that such a habit is acquired via social media, and that certain members are hoping for a 'high score' in terms of POST COUNT or LIKES; whether this is the case or not, it isn't on.
3. Similarly, tangents and sidebars, notes and footnotes to subjects are often interesting, and we very frequently attempt to preserve and transplant interesting digressions, but it's a surprising amount of trouble to do so, and when tangents upon tangents take us from, say, night terrors to cooking tips for asparagus, we are led to wonder whether some regular posters are actually reading the thread title before they post. At times, it resembles a game of Chinese Whispers, with posters referring only to the most recent contributions when writing.
4. Humour. Often what can be witty, bathetic, incisive and pithy in small quantities turns out to be tedious in the extreme when drawn out over multiple months or multiple pages. No doubt the frequency with which we post 'nudges' such as the one you are now reading leads some among you to think that we delete posts on a daily basis according only to the vagaries of personal taste. I can assure you, however, that only a tiny percentage actually 'get the flush'. To refer back to point 2, it is equally off-putting for members--perhaps the less frequent variety--to find very long stretches of a thread taken up with one-liners about the town of Cromer or the atavism of farmers, for instance. From this point on, this is the kind of thing that certainly
will get the flush, because when such comments outweigh meaningful material on a thread, it gives the impression that the discussion is over and the topic is dead.
5. The SEARCH function largely works. This was not the case for many years, but it is now. Further, we've done an awful lot of work to make sure that topics are well tagged, that thread titles reflect content, and that the contents of the various sub-fora are correct. Please take a minute or two to check which is the
best place for your new material, not just where it might kinda fit. The opening gambit of 'Mods feel free to move this' sounds admirably flexible, but it's actually an invitation for us to do what we'd prefer you to do for yourself.
6. Finally, I'm not here to tell anybody what to believe, but our advice--often delivered by private message when consulted-- is that if you happen to find yourself in a bad-tempered argument about an issue that can't conceivably be covered by the Fortean umbrella, how about you just drop it and walk away? It doesn't mean you lost the debate, it usually means that you found your sense of perspective. We don't convene here to put the world to rights or reshape society; they're just idle sidelines for when there's not much of greater interest on the radar. If you ever find yourself typing the cliche 'this is not political, but...,' I'd suggest that you're posting the equivalent of a giant neon sign that warns us that you're about to waste everybody's time with material that will not remain visible for long.
As usual, we're not interested in reading a flood of reports about what Posters A, B and C posted in 1999, but
from this point on, we'd really like members who may have been guilty of some (or all) of the above--and I don't exclude myself or other moderators from that group--to up their game.
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