Message 4053 of 22774 in Behind the Bar

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> But all we've seen is vacuous post-farming, karma-whoring and 
> alt.cascade tactics. 


For everyone's edification:
 (sorry it's off topic, but my erstwhile lectures on the meaning of "troll" in 
discussion groups were well received)

Post Farming

Some forums out there require an active member to stay active - to log on and 
post at least once a week/month or lose 'status'.
This status is usually 'earned' by making a quota of 'contributions', ie make 
50 comments to graduate from newbie to junior member.
This leads to Post Farming - a lot of "me too" type posts - which may or may 
not make work for the moderators who have to continually monitor abuse of the 
system.
Systems which require 'seniority' have their own merit, especially in 
cooperative projects like wikipedia.org, h2g2.com or everything2.org

Some forums (like blog comments) are dominated by one-line posts, making the 
archives look more like a chat session. This breed has a more temporary 
atmosphere, but is interesting in its own way. Usually dominated by personal 
chatter like "wat U doin now kev?" or current events and not much use for 
reference or deep thoughts.

Karma-Whoring

... is a term that came about from slashdot.org s moderation system. A 'good' 
post in the discussion boards was voted on by other readers. The poster was 
awarded 'karma' points which eventually gave them the right to vote on others, 
and so on. Bad posts were demoted, and the forum can be browsed only looking 
at the 'good' posts without wading through crap.
As Karma was awarded for, among other things "Informative" contributions, 
someone could 'earn' a vote by linking to a relevant page, an alternative 
copy, a news item or even a search result. Doing this excessively became 
derided as Karma Whoring. However, even Karma Whores sometimes got awarded for 
being "interesting" and "insightful" ... depending on the whim of the readers.
The Slashdot forum system was one of the most advanced of its time.
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml (and complicated)


alt.cascade

... was (is?) an old newsgroup (like a massively distributed email list) where 
people used to hang out and, for reasons known only to themselves, enjoy 
reposting quotes of previous quotes until the >> signs (as seen in forwarded 
emails) fell off the end of the page.
The, um, challenge was to be the one to post just as the line filled up.
Danged if I know why, but some folk enjoyed it.
This hobby sometimes re-appears in other nested forums, until everyone gets 
annoyed.


OK,
My addition here, such as it is, is that, well, most discussions here at the 
Webtender don't work that way. 
And I like that. 
It's sometimes nice to see old threads unearthed (I remember one came back 
from the dead after about a year and a half) and it works well like that.

We are (mostly) pretty light on the chit-chat fluff. Often someone will 
comment a "welcome back" to a poster that hasn't been active for a while, but 
we don't spend time asking how their cat is (I'll refrain from linking to one 
of the thousands of discussion boards where that IS the reality)

I think (giving the benefit of the doubt here) that what I see here with the 
lightweight posts is simply etiquitte/habits that are normal/good in other 
realms not working here. It's good to say thank you a lot, and use someones 
name in every sentence in some situations. But in others it just makes people 
look at you funny.

So I'm try to point out as clearly, and non-judgmentally as possible, what 
it's best not to do >:-)
I've given university courses on the sociology of the net - to the lecturers. 
And I know how misunderstandings can occur.

Arg. About now I realise how far off-topic and irrelevant this whole 'issue' 
has become, but I ...can't ... quite... reach... the CANCEL button.

.dan.