post padding

[RumorsOFsurF]

Usually once a person is warned they either leave the site or apologize and behave. Obviously the mods would have to discuss it, but I believe a temporary or permanent ban would likely be placed on someone who repeatedly broke the post-padding rule.

I understand if you don't want to "rat" someone out, but if you want to discuss it via PM we will take a look at the member in question.


As far as the question regarding the 50 post rule, I believe it works 90% of the time. I also think it weeds out most of the people who are just looking to use this place as a place to pimp their shit, rather than to actually participate. We have members who are vendors, but most of them come here to ask our opinions and get feedback for the development of their products. I value those vendors who actually listen to us and implement the ideas we come up with. That's completely different than some guy who just wants to find a good deal on a CIJ Jazzmaster or to sell a fuzz pedal.

I can't speak for the other mods and admins, but this is how I feel about it.

[Jay]

We've actually discussed this a lot amongst the modmins. The problem with lifting the rule is pretty obvious so I don't think I need to get into that. A couple of other options we've discussed are raising the requirement to a larger number that makes post padding much more difficult. This would probably eliminate post padding entirely becuase the sheer number of posts required would take so long and not be worth it really. The downside is that far fewer people have access to the classifieds and it eliminates a lot of users who might otherwise have some cool stuff to sell or trade. Another option is to make the classifieds read only for folks up to a certain point. The hope would be that people would see there's not a ton of '62 JMs for sale at bargain basement prices and not be bothered to run up a bunch of posts to have a go in there. The drawback here is that anyone can respond to a FS post and it opens things up to potential scammers that have no standing in the OSG community. Plus it doesn't necessarily discourage a padder from junking up the joint to post their French Toast pedal. Your suggestion would eliminate the need for folks to post a bunch in order to drop something in the FS section obviously but I see the drawbacks being more frustrating then the problem. Personally, I don't want to see the FS section stuffed with items from 1 and 2 post members. I also, as a modmin, don't want to have to figure out how to evaluate who I should let into the FS and who I should not. It just doesn't seem fair. If I'm going to do that I might as well let everyone in. I'd say the reason we've left it the way it is, is because in our opinions it provides the best balance between keeping the amount of work required from us low while keeping the FS within reach of just about anyone that chooses to hang out and talk shop for a modest period of time. Still, I think I can speak for all the modmins and say we're always open to a constructive discussion on any forum related rules that may need to be addressed. I'd love to hear from other established members on this... what suggestions/preferences do you guys have?

[andrewdoeshair]

What if people were voted or nominated into the FS section? I don't know specifically how something like that could work... But I guess I just feel like there are some people who come off as PEOPLE whether they have a high or low post count, and then there are people who come off as, well, the people we're trying to weed out of the FS section, whether their count is high or low...

Am I crazy?

But then I guess people would get pissed if they were denied access based on their poor grammar, conversational skills, or whatever...

[MT]

What if you opened the Wanted secction but not the for sale section? Then the buyers without 50 posts could ask for what they're after and deal via PM (or posts to get their count up) but the "sell & run" people would have to still work for their access.

Just thinking out loud.

[mezcalhead]

But then I guess people would get pissed if they were denied access based on their poor grammar, conversational skills, or whatever...

Yeah, I can foresee people getting really ticked off that they're not into the FS yet and someone with a much lower post count is. It kinda turns it into a popularity contest which is not ideal.

We did have one member we thought was post-padding because of his terse posts - it turned out he was not confident in his English but genuinely wanted to contribute & be involved.

One benefit of the post requirement is that it hides the section from bots, so google & others don't index what is in there. That's a big plus for the ebay section IMHO.

[Jay]

One benefit of the post requirement is that it hides the section from bots, so google & others don't index what is in there. That's a big plus for the ebay section IMHO.

For the record I'm pretty sure the software allows us to set permissions specifically for bots.

[Britfingers]

As a relatively new member, I can still remember when I was below fifty posts. It was no big deal, but then I was only after information, and had nothing I wanted to sell, but I was still highly curious to what was in the for sale section. Reaching fifty posts seemed to take ages.
I think my 50th post took around 3 weeks, I was actually weary of posting anything because I did not want to be accused of paddling (I had not intentionally paddled any posts by the way)
I do remember wanting to post a couple of "WOW what a great guitar/idea/build) but forced myself to refrain because it added little to the thread, but I do remember wanting to do this just to let the guy know what a great job he had done.
I also do not use things like facebook, myspace, tweeter or any other form of "quick electronic media", I guess to many though they want instant results after pressing a pc key, its the world of speed that many live in.
I can see how a younger guy full of "offset excitment" may get carried away, and of course written language barriers are a problem also. I think the mods have a hard enough job anyway, without complicating the rules anymore.
The 50 post is a decent rule..and after all, patience is a virture, especially whilst building a guitar, or looking for that rare part, or even learning to play that sparkly offset.

[slavemaster]

I think that the rule is quite OK as it is. The modmins have full discretionary rights to decide whether somebody is post padding or not, and how to deal with it. As I wrote in that other thread, the FS section here operates on trust - how many of you will send money via Paypal as a gift to a person with, let us say, a post count of 60?

Now, I want to give you my personal experience - When I joined the forum, I had very limited knowledge about guitars, and virtually zero knowledge about offset guitars (hence the +1 and posts), but I was eager to participate, so I made those 50 posts in no time. However, I rarely visit that part of the forum, and haven't made any deals there. I believe there are many people who were (are) in the same situation. In other words, what we may see as post padding may well be just sheer enthusiasm and a desire to participate. Just my two cents on this.

[RumorsOFsurF]

Ideally, there'd be some sort of 'trigger' in the software that would automatically alert a modmin if any one user made, say, 10 posts in one hour. I imagine the alerts would be fairly rare (maybe?) and if it was a username they'd never heard of, they could check out a few of the posts to make sure they were kosher, and if not, issue a warning or bring the hammer down.

The way I always catch them(and I never go looking for them intentionally) is I always hit the "View unread posts" link when I sign in. This is the only way I really surf the site. I just browse through the first couple pages once in a while. When a new member's name shows up 10 or 15 times in the first page or two I look through their posts via their profile.

[Britfingers]

[tatotateman]

I know I'm not an established member (I've been reading for about a year though), but I think the 50 post idea is a good one.

One thing you could try to discourage post padding would be to limit the number of posts per day that count toward the 50 post threshold. If only 5 posts per day counted toward the 50, someone would have to come back at least 10 days. It would probably be more work than someone who just wants to see the FS section would be willing to do; it would be a lot easier to just watch ebay or craigslist.

It would really only prevent post padding if new members are aware of it. Someone who's second post is "d00d wheres the sales" already didn't read the rules.

[Jay]

I know I'm not an established member (I've been reading for about a year though), but I think the 50 post idea is a good one.

One thing you could try to discourage post padding would be to limit the number of posts per day that count toward the 50 post threshold. If only 5 posts per day counted toward the 50, someone would have to come back at least 10 days. It would probably be more work than someone who just wants to see the FS section would be willing to do; it would be a lot easier to just watch ebay or craigslist.

It would really only prevent post padding if new members are aware of it. Someone who's second post is "d00d wheres the sales" already didn't read the rules.

That's a great idea actually but I'm pretty sure there's no way for us to automate that. And if we can't automate it it's just too impractical.

[tatotateman]

I know I'm not an established member (I've been reading for about a year though), but I think the 50 post idea is a good one.

One thing you could try to discourage post padding would be to limit the number of posts per day that count toward the 50 post threshold. If only 5 posts per day counted toward the 50, someone would have to come back at least 10 days. It would probably be more work than someone who just wants to see the FS section would be willing to do; it would be a lot easier to just watch ebay or craigslist.

It would really only prevent post padding if new members are aware of it. Someone who's second post is "d00d wheres the sales" already didn't read the rules.

That's a great idea actually but I'm pretty sure there's no way for us to automate that. And if we can't automate it it's just too impractical.

I don't know what the backend is on the server, but I have a rough idea of how it might be done.

From the "search user's posts" on the profile pages, it looks like it's possible to pull posts made by a user with the date the posts were made from a database. It also looks like when a user posts, there is a variable associated with the username that tracks the number of posts, so I'm guessing that there's some script that is executed each time a post is made.

If you added a variable that counted the number of posts counted toward the for sale section, you might be able to add some code to the script that increments the post count that would be something like this:

if(user group == PAT PEND){
SQL statement to get user's posts having the same date as the current date
if(number of posts in set of users posts today < 5){increment number_of_posts_toward_FS}
}

It's been a while since I've done any web/database stuff, so I don't remember all the stuff that can be done with SQL, but you wouldn't have to return any of the field data, you would just need the count of posts where the post date matches the current date. I think there's an SQL command that will just return the number of entries that match a query.

It might add three database accesses for each post made by a member in the PAT PEND group. I don't know how much overhead that would add to the server compared to a normal post.

[Jay]

I totally understand the logic behind your description but I couldn't write code to do any of that if my life depended on it. I'll ask our only modmin that understands this stuff better what he thinks about trying something like this.

[luau]

I don't know what the backend is on the server, but I have a rough idea of how ....

Post-padding with pseudo-code, eh tatotateman? That's pretty crafty.

Seriously though, I think the 50 post rule is a great one and this is potentially a good improvement on it. We'll hash it over (there are some side-effects/unintended consequences to consider) and I'll look into implementing it, or something similar.

The SQL function you've forgotten is, oddly enough, count().